Wink!
David Friedman on moral luck.#
Em and Lo on "Marriage with Benefits":#
For years, we have said—to each other, to our boyfriends, to people writing in to our advice column—that monogamy is a choice, and if you expect it to come naturally, then your relationship (or your shot at one) is doomed. In other words, don't take monogamy for granted; take the urge to stray for granted. But then again, our underlying assumption was that of course you'd choose monogamy, because what other choice was there? That's what happily-ever-after requires. Although we may crave a fling on the side, the thought of our partner's doing the same is heartbreaking, and so we agree to fidelity in order not to drive each other crazy.
Paul Graham writes in How To Do What You Love:#
The kids think their parents are "materialistic." Not necessarily. All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won't get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll have to deal with the consequences.
Charles Krauthammer is no fan of Munich.#
The Hampton Roads Peace Conference During the War Between the States by John V. Denson#
How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science, by Rodney Stark, from the Chronicle.#
RoR does make for more readable code. However, there is a caveat: when things go wrong, or when you want to do something different, it's a lot more work to fix the problem than if it's always obvious what's going on. In that way RoR is the anti-J2EE; it assumes everything for you. I can see the advantages, but I also find it annoying and presumptious: I want to decide upfront what methods to expose and how my data model should look. In fact, Zope has inspired such hatred amoing Pythonistas for just that reason: things like acquisition doing mysterious business behind the scenes that cannot be explained, which is lovely when it works but a source of immense frustration when it doesn't.