Harry's Ruminations

We once were a nation that tolerated "intolerable" people, that balanced inhumanity with contrition and restoration of the contrite. All fall short. We abided Daniel Webster AND John C. Calhoun, Billy Graham and Larry Flynt, MLK and George Wallace, the Black Panthers and the KKK.   Did we particularly WANT TO?     Of course not. Why, then? Because tolerance of ideas is the price of freedom. I see that freedom ending soon. Emotion is truth. Outrage becomes mandate. Thoughts must not become a crime. At the height of the Terror, a woman came to the journalist Marat in 1793 and enumerated a list of people that were secretly against the Jacobin regime. "Soon I shall have them all guillotined in Paris," he replied confidently. Marat's pen had the power to stoke outrage that led to the scaffold. Is today's "Cancel Culture" any different? https://newrepublic.com/article/155141/cancel-cultur...

Hackathon (n) 1. a design sprint -like event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development , including graphic designers , interface designers , project managers , and others, often including domain experts, collaborate intensively on software projects. The goal of a hackathon is to create usable software or hardware with the goal of creating a functioning product by the end of the event. I posit Hackathons are Crap.   They are useless distractions from Actual Work® that have none of the intended outcomes for anyone involved. The goal of most hackathons are these: Provide a break from regular work for "creatives" like programmers and graphic designers. Break the top-down product cycle and let said creatives make something that seems relevant to them. Provide useful ideas as fodder for the next strategic planning cycle. Provide useful features for customers. Let me take each in turn. It is NOT a Break This is my major beef. "H...

There's no such thing as bad publicity -- P.T. Barnum So here we are.  As I type this, the House of Representatives seems ready to cave-in to impeachment proceedings . Allegedly, the President negotiated with a foreign power to obtain dirt on a possible opponent in the 2020 election.  To leverage that dirt, he withheld US foreign aid.  So the story goes. I really dislike our President.  Thankfully, in America, one can do that and not go to jail.  I resent how he personally took over my political party like a virus, how he made America less than it is for his own gain. Looking forward, if this impeachment goes forward it will have the following effects: He will not be removed from office.  The Senate will NEVER vote him out.  They've made that abundantly clear It feeds his narrative to his (minority) base that's "The Deep State" is against him because he won't play "their" game. It will lead to another 4 years of Donald Trump.  The center...