Okay, the fact that this even exists is a distrubing tribute to the cult-like following of the the one-man satire who is Stephen Colbert.

Run-on prepositional clauses aside, I find Wikipedia to be an interesting reflection of the people who use and edit it. For instance, I popped onto Wikipedia to take a look at what it had to say about interest-only mortgages. Snuck in there was a random comment about the Great Depression, which I had to pull. The end of the paragraph on US Interest-Only Loans was:

This enables a borrower who expects to increase their salary substantially over the course of the loan to borrow more than they would have otherwise been able to afford. Interest-only loans were popular in the [[1920s]]. Due to the economic downturn and lack of work for the average person, there were many foreclosures during the [[Great Depression]] of the [[1930s]].

Uh, whether interest-only loans were popular in the 1920s or not is fine — but what does that have to do with the high foreclosure rate in the 1930s? The “economic downturn and lack of work for the average person” made any mortgage, interest-only or otherwise, an impossible burden (as Wikipedia talks about over on the article about the Great Depression, where this entire conversation belongs).

Now, it looks like the comment — a weird tack-on in the version I editted — started out as a passing comment in a larger conversation on the re-amortization after the interest-only period expires. Even then, it was a weird comment, without any obvious connection to the paragraph it resided in.

Somehow, however, that survived from April of 2004 until I caught it. Why would that be?

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’ve been pretty active on a LiveJournal community called Convert Me, where I step up representing a reformed Christianity. It’s a pretty vicious place: a comment that simply said “God loves you and is looking for an excuse to bless you. He’s not mad at you, he loves you.” opened up a 60+ comment rant log.

I was asked by one of the people to explain why there was a Christ. What’s the point? This gets back to the whole fundamental basis of Christianity, so the commentary is going to be a bit long.

What’s interesting is how hard this has been to write down. It’s weird: I can go to town in a dialog with someone else on this topic, but there’s something particularly difficult about just sitting down and writing this all out. I guess it just seems so huge — it’s being asked to explain integral calculus without even agreeing on rudimentary arithmetic. And there’s something just improper feeling about discussing religion without being in dialog with someone else. I’m not sure why I feel that way, but I do. It’s all weird.

In any case, here’s the post.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Updated: Thanks to Captain Bedsock, link is restored.

I’m reading this post on the C++ committee’s dealings on threading, and, I am pleased to announce, there is absolutely no chance what so ever of anything sane, workable, or sensible accidentally arising from these precedings. That’s saracasm, but not by much. By the very nature of their responses, most of the people participating in this design meeting had no experience what so ever with multithreaded programs, and the problems that accompany them. Worse yet, they display a gross ignorance of compiler construction and optimization. Just who you want defining what is inarguably the most tricky aspect of an imperitive language (as the Java people found out the hard way).
Continue Reading »

Popularity: 27% [?]

Well, I thought I had things kinda figured out…and then Friday the 13th happened.

I posted that statement saying that things were settling down, that I wasn’t looking for another opportunity, etc., etc. Then the car died, we had some financial excitement, and two req’s I applied for suddenly become hot after some long, dreary coldness. The Hell…?

The good news is that the two reqs are both on the east side of the metro — one of them is about 4 miles away from me (closer and longer but less money) and the other is in Energy Park (further away and shorter but more money). I’m not entirely sure what the roles would be: it seems pretty common to not really find that out until you get an interview. Hopefully they’ll both heat up at about the same rate and I’ll be able to take the better offer. Quite frankly, though, my current gig has made me feel like it’s better to go with the Devil I don’t know. If I get an offer, I’m probably out — and I don’t think they’ll be surprised.

The other news is that we got a new (to us) car: an 06 Mitsu Galant with about 16k miles. Normally, I’d qualify this as “good news”, since we had been looking for a new car, but the death of our Chrysler really pushed our timeframe pretty hard. The Galant is an excellent car, and I’m really happy with One of tha Few’s job in picking it out. It’s got a lot of really strong crash test, fuel economy, and reliability ratings, but it has the decency to not hold value very well, so we were able to get a nominally used car for cheap. It’s also small enough for me to like it but big enough for her to like it, and it was even the color that we both really liked (”Titanium Perl”…er…”Pearl”).

I’ve also been arguing on LiveJournal communities quite a bit, for better or for worse.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Democratic Edge on Issues Extends to Terrorism, Morality

I know it’s a “No, Duh!” kinda moment, but the Republicans now officially represent a minority of America’s views on ALL the following issues:

Healthcare, Corruption in government, Gas prices, The economy, The situation in Iraq, Immigration, Moral standards in the country, Terrorism

The “Moral Majority” isn’t, and now we have the polls to prove it. And people are looking to the “Cut and Runners” and anti-PATRIOT ACT people for leadership in handling Iraq and terrorism.

Thank God.

Edit: No, this doesn’t mean that I’ve converted into being a Democrat. It just means that if you force me to choose between Democrats and Republicans, particularly on issues like Iraq, government’s involvement in morality, and terrorism, I’ll take the current Democratic party line over the current Republican party line.

Popularity: 2% [?]