I just finished reading the final book of a five-part series by Lloyd Alexander, a series that I first read ten years ago and hadn’t read again since.  These books belong to the "fantasy" genre, I think, but that is a vague descriptor.  I’ll not attempt to give any sort of summary, but the story involves themes of courage and honor and heroism and love, and is set in a time when battles were fought with swords.  Though fictional, the story gives a thoroughly real account of the the struggles between good and evil, among men at war with eachother, and in the heart of every man.  Across the five books, Taran’s character is developed in a way that shows his own struggle to learn what is right, and to do what is right, and to learn to reconcile that with the desires of his heart.

Having mentioned a character’s name, I suppose I should name the books, eh?  They are The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King.  Though each could be read separately, they form one series about a set of characters that you can’t fully understand without reading all five.  I was never really into reading these kinds of books (fantasy novels) as a kid, but most of my good friends were, and somehow they got me to read this series.  It’s still the only one I’ve ever read -- I never read the Tolkien series, though I was forced to read The Hobbit for school.

It turns out that ten years was a nearly ideal interval between readings of this story.  I had forgotten almost all of the major plot elements, along with the details that make the books so enjoyable.  I remembered some things, of course, but for most of this re-reading I had no idea what was going to happen next.  At times I had a sort of premonition of good or bad about to befall the characters, but rarely knew exactly what it would be until it happened.  I had thought I remembered one big thing, though -- the question of what would happen with Eilonwy -- until I got to the last ten pages of the final book.  I had totally forgotten about Taran’s final decision (and thus, his final destiny), and I was so incredibly sad when he announced it.  I almost never cry, but I did get a little misty at that point.

One thing that I didn’t forget was how much I loved this story, and I love it just as much now having read it again.  It’s classified as a children’s book, but I don’t think that’s accurate at all.  It’s easy to read, but it isn’t written in childish language, and the themes are certainly not childish.  Still, I thought that perhaps I only love it now as an adult because I’d read it as a boy.  But then I just read some reviews of it on amazon.com, and there are hundreds, and they are glowing.  And apparently the story is forty years old; I had no idea it was that old.  It’s also compared to the Tolkien series, and many people seem to think it’s right up there with the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I think three things in particular make this story exceptional.  First, it deals with themes that every person relates to, and more than that, ideals that every person aspires to in some way.  It makes you identify strongly with the characters and get emotionally attached and want things to work out a certain way.  As I said, though the story is fictional, the main ideas are very real and very familiar to us.  Second is that there are endless plot twists that have you saying, "No, no NO!!" and then "Whew," and also ones that have you thinking things are just fine right before everything is suddenly dashed to bits in some way.  Many times I got extremely angry about events in the books, and equally often I was just completely elated, feeling as though it were me on the receiving end of whatever great thing just occurred.  The element of the story that’s either the main element or the "other" main element, depending on how you see the overall story, involved at least 3 giant twists for itself alone.  It was gut-wrenching waiting and wondering how it would turn out, and then just when you think it’s settled and over, it twists again, twice right in a row, right at the end!  Finally, the books are just plain hilarious at times.  Whether because of events, or the ways that the author often arranges spoken phrases in riddles, or just the sarcasm of the characters, I laughed out loud not a few times while completing the series.

So I highly recommend this series to anyone who has not read it, and anyone who has not read it since grade school.  I am anxious for the passage of time to make me forget the story again, so that I can read it anew in another ten years.

The major media outlets in this country are spineless propagandists.  There were multiple large anti-terrorism pro-democracy rallies in Iraq last week and, with pitifully few exceptions, American reporters who were on the scene didn’t report them.

Glenn Reynolds has a few pages on the rallies and the dearth of coverage.  Iraqi blogger Zeyad was there, though, and he took lots of photos, and has a few posts about the events.  Here’s a bit:

At one point it struck me that our many differences as an Iraqi people meant nothing.  Here we were all together shouting in different languages the same slogans "NO NO to terrorism, YES YES for peace".
...
What was interesting, a group of Al-Sadr supporters showed up and started shouting "NO NO to occupiers" obviously in an attempt to hijack the demonstration.  They drowned in the rest of the crowd.
...
When we were marching on Dec 10 I told Omar that maybe we didn’t need to cover the protests after all since it looked like reporters from all the major media agencies were doing so.  As you can see in my pictures there were scores of reporters and cameras all over the place.  And since the rallies ended in front of the Palestine hotel we thought that it would be impossible for the media to ignore this event.
...
The last thing we expected was to be the first to publish anything about the protests.  It felt both good and awful at the same time. Good for scooping Reuters, AFP, AP, and other wire services and media stations.  And awful for the people that depended on these services for their news.  I’m telling you there were reporters from every station in the world at the demos that day and yet only a few mentioned them at all.

...it was very obvious that the protestors were much more than 10,000.  The Anti-terrorism Popular Committee stated that there were more than 20,000 demonstrators marching.  Imagine if half or even a quarter of that number were demonstrating against the war or against the occupation. What do you think would have happened? Would the media ignore it?
...
Iraqis are getting bolder.  And despite the risk of being targetted we felt more safe than ever marching with the others.  The IP [Iraqi Police] did a great job of providing protection, and the Americans had two helicopters circling the area.

It was wonderful watching Iraqis from different backgrounds, ethnicities, age groups, and political beliefs all marching for the same cause.  Seeing Muslim clerics walking along Communists shouting "No to terrorism, Yes to peace and democracy" was priceless.

Throw out your TV.

Hey, I am looking for a NAS solution that comes with built in replication (deltas only) to like devices (other NAS) or CIFS.  Our main data center is trying to push us toward HP StorageWorks solution running Windows Storage Server 2003.  I would rather get a true (and open) appliance solution even if we have to drop one appliance box at each site.

Total of 3 sites to replicate one way to a central NAS.  Initially need 200GB space.  The main problem is that I don’t want to craft my own solution.  Best solution will be clean, slick, reliable and come built in or easy "add on" to NAS appliance.  I am also looking at Veritas Volume Replicator.  Any ideas?

From time.com:

When asked "How are you?" said the official, Saddam responded, "I am sad because my people are in bondage."  When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, "If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?"

I just don’t know what to say about a statement like that...

Well it’s 6am, I can’t sleep, and I can’t study any more... the words (ok, symbols and numbers, really) are all becoming a blur to me.  Lately I’ve been thinking that I should post a screenshot, because they’re fun and I’ve never done that before.  (For those who don’t know, this is a game where you find a really cool background image, and then set up some cool-looking programs to make it look like you were just working on them, and then take a screenshot of it.)  Oh, and I’m bucking the unwritten law of screenshots that says all screenshots must have at least 8 different gimp dialogs in them.  So... there you go.  Click the image to see the full-size one.

al-Reuters reports that "Washington’s beleaguered occupying force" has captured Saddam Hussein.  Of course, good news (for America) is no news to al-Reuters, so in the article about Saddam, they also had to report that Bin Laden is still at large.

Now as long as the Amnesty International crybabies don’t get involved, Saddam will get what he deserves from the Iraqi people: death.

i saw a band tonight called the milwaukees, they’re on the same label that put out Joshua’s first EP (a band i know anthony likes) and i was positively blown away by this band; download this song and i hope you’ll agree.  if i’m late on the uptake with this band and everyone knows about them, where was i all this time?  either way they rule.

Hey I came across this really cool site. I recommend everyone checks it out
Anthony, I read what you had to say about George W. Bush....do you seriously believe he is a Christian?

Marriage is a word with a definition, and the variant corresponding to matrimony explicitly defines it as the union of man and woman as husband and wife.  Therefore "homosexual marriage" is a logical impossibility; it makes as much sense as "cold heat" and "dry liquid."  The issue here is not whether it’s right or wrong.  The issue is that it’s self-contradicting.  Two homos cohabiting could be called a lot of things, but it cannot be called marriage by any sane person who speaks English.

I am a Christian, which means that I believe in the Bible, and the Bible states in no uncertain terms that homosexuality is sin.  Therefore I believe that homosexuality is sin.  I don’t hate homosexuals or any other sinners -- which is to say, everyone, because everyone sins.  I’m not "homophobic" (which is an entirely ridiculous term) -- I’m not scared of homos or any other sinners.  Well, I’m scared of murderers.  Anyway, just to make it perfectly clear for those people who are impervious to things which are painfully obvious to the rest of us: believing something is wrong does not imply hatred or fear of people who practice that thing.

Less obvious to some people is that not all Christians believe that sins should be illegal.  Cursing and lying are sins but shouldn’t be illegal; words or actions that intentionally hurt a person’s feelings could be sinful but certainly shouldn’t be against the law.  The American legal system has its roots in Christian ideals, but you can’t make the system an exact mirror of the Bible.  (If you think that’s a good idea, you’ll probably change your mind if I replace "Bible" with "Koran.")  Our Constitution is an ingenious document which states that the role of government is to protect our rights, not to grant rights to us; indeed, it recognizes that the rights existed beforehand.  Our system starts with the broad recognition that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and then it places restrictions on things which would infringe those rights.  Getting murdered, or beaten, or harassed, or imprisoned without trial, for example, would infringe upon those rights, so these kinds of things are restricted by law.  But in contrast, things which are merely offensive are not (and should not be) restricted by government.  Cursing is offensive to me, but it doesn’t damage me nor restrict my fundamental rights in any way, so the government has no right to restrict people’s freedom to curse.  That’s simply not what (most) Americans believe that government is for.  And again, even if you do believe that government should do those kinds of things, you’d probably regret giving it that authority if in 50 or 100 years the majority of people were muslim and they decided to change all the laws to reflect the ideals of the Koran instead of the Bible.

Although I believe homosexuality is wrong, and although I find it thoroughly disgusting and offensive, I don’t believe the government should do anything about it.  Indeed, I don’t believe the government has any right to do anything about it; I’m not willing to give the government the authority to decide what is and isn’t moral.

Now, all that to say this: the issue of "homosexual marriage" has nothing whatsoever to do with any of that.  "Homosexual marriage" is impossible because marriage is explicitly heterosexual by definition.  If two homos want to form a "civil union" or whatever, that’s fine with me; just don’t call it marriage because that’s an oxymoron.

And finally, I don’t support the idea of a Constitutional amendment to forbid homosexual marriage.  I don’t support it because that is not what the Constitution was designed for.  I don’t believe that homos have a "right" to be married, because as I’ve explained, that simply makes no sense if you speak English.  However it would be an abuse of the Constitution to use it for this purpose.  The only other time something like this was attempted was prohibition, and that amendment was repealed.  All the other Constitutional amendments that have been passed either recognize broader rights or deal with administrative affairs of the government.  The Constitution does not exist to limit the rights of the people; it exists to protect them.

From Wired:

Automatic teller machines at two banks running Microsoft’s popular Windows software were infected by a computer virus in August... Computer security experts predicted more problems to come as Windows migrates to critical systems consumers rely on.

You have got to be kidding me.  Whose genius idea was it to put a Microsoft operating system on an ATM??

Here’s a couple pictures of the snowstorm on Friday/Saturday:

Pretty exciting; we got about 10" or 12" I think.

Tonight after O’Reilly, I was flipping back down to the Seinfeld channel and came across Average Joe.  Apparently this was the final episode, and apparently I have a knack for coming upon these things at the last minute.  Which is perfectly fine with me, as judging from the previews they are by and large utter cruft.

But for some strange reason I started watching it, and actually liked it.  This one was sort of like Joe Millionaire except without the obnoxious commentation and without the hyper-dramatization -- in other words, pretty decent.  It was also backwards in that it was one girl picking amongst a bunch of guys, and instead of being millionaires they were "average joes" har har.  (Well, it turned out that one of the two last guys was very wealthy, though not via inheritance; he was one of the lucky ones who got (and stayed) rich through day-trading before the dot-com bubble burst.)

One thing that was interesting to me was that at one point, Adam and Melana are in a pool at some amazing desert resort, and Adam says "When people watch this, I bet every guy in the world is gonna wish he was me."  (Or something to that effect.)  I just thought it was interesting that he made reference to the audience like that, and they didn’t edit it out.  It’s almost like looking right into the camera.

(By the way, the photo of Melana at the top of the show’s website is hideous; she is actually very pretty.)

It was really sad when she picked Jason.  The end of Joe Millionaire was like, tense and stuff, but this was just really sad.  When she told Adam, he was all "you gotta follow your heart" and stuff -- totally being a "good sport" about it -- and it was sad because you knew that inside, he was upset.  (I think I liked Jason better, but still.)  Then Jason came out and gave him a hug, and Adam said that he was glad that it was someone like Jason who won.

I think I might have had more I wanted to say about the show, but I forget now.

Well moving along, during O’Reilly there was a commercial for some horse-related store, and there was this priceless quote: "Need something for the horse-lover on your Christmas list?"  Man, I almost fell over laughing at that one.

And it’s ridiculous how all the cell phone companies are trying to act like it was their idea to let you keep your cell number when you switch providers.  Because they’re just so gracious and well-intentioned and they just want what’s best for us, so they decided to let us keep our numbers.  Right.  As if the government didn’t just enact legislation forcing you all to comply because your former policies on the matter were absurd.

OK, I think that’s all for now.  Oh, do check out the new song.

(show full-size image viewer)

Another week+weekend of nothing but programming assignments.  (Well, that’s not exactly true; I had two big music papers to write during the week...)  I had begun to take for granted the extent to which Perl is a DWIMmer language ("Do What I Mean"); there are forty different ways to program any given task, and they all just do what I mean with minimal fuss.  In contrast, the Java and C++ programming that I’ve been doing lately is more like "Please Do Something Reasonably Similar to What I Mean," combined with a lot of "Why The Heck Can’t You Understand What I Mean??"  After a couple months of this crap, s!(c\++|java)!perl!gi is all I have to say.

My brother asked me if my website was down last night.  He’d been trying to visit www.nodivisions.com and it wasn’t working.  Of course, nodivisions.com has worked fine even across the move to my new server a couple months ago, but I never use www.nodivisions.com so I didn’t know it wasn’t working.  It turns out that when I updated the DNS for my website to accommodate the new server, I forgot to add an alias for the www subdomain.  I added it this morning, and it should be available to everyone within a couple days, if not right now.  (And it will simply bounce you, transparently, to the non-www version, like it did before I moved servers.)  The moral of this story is: 1) do your DNS correctly, but also 2) if www.whatever.com doesn’t work, try just whatever.com, or vice-versa.  They virtually always point to the same place; the only time you’re likely to see an exception is when someone’s server is configured incorrectly.

While searching for a way to work with strings in C++ that’s slightly better than using character arrays (I don’t pretend to believe I’ll find something that’s much better than that, and certainly not anything that approaches the ease of regular expressions in Perl), I came across this post on some guy’s site.  It’s hilarious.  Just what I needed.  Go read it.

Or make that hypocrisy.

I’m watching an interview with some terrorist "Palestinian", WHO IS WEARING A BLACK SKI MASK, and the reporter says, "Do you think we’ll ever find out who is responsible for the bombing?"  And the liar says, "Certainly, nothing is ever hidden in Gaza."

It’s that time again.

Steve Den Beste has written a couple of posts recently discussing things like the doctrine of MAD, and the fact that war in Iraq was the least bad option amongst a lot of bad alternatives.  Here’s a quote from a little further back that considers some possible scenarios regarding North Korea:

NK could detonate a nuke. In that case, the Bush administration would have to publicly and formally renew a basic tenet of Cold War deterrence policy: any nuclear blackmail will be treated as if a nuke had actually been used, and the response to any such threat will be maximal.

During the Cold War, nuclear blackmail was one of the dangers. What would we do if the Hotline phone rang and the voice in the handset said, "Pull your forces out of Germany or we’ll nuke Pittsburgh"? The strategists wrestled with that, and ultimately concluded that only deterrence could prevent such a thing. Thus it became American doctrine that if we received such a phone call, then the President would "push the button" (or at least consider doing so). Understand that I don’t mean that it would happen ten seconds after hearing such a thing; there’d be time for diplomacy, and an attempt to deal with the situation via lesser means. But in the final resort, if we really faced such a demand, then it was publicly stated that American doctrine was to launch every nuke we had. No "proportional response", no city-trading-duel, no waiting to see if Pittsburgh really did get vaporized before launching. It was important that this be public because like any deterrent its real purpose was to make sure that the situation didn’t arise at all. Since the Soviet leadership knew that was American doctrine, they couldn’t be at all sure that we wouldn’t really do it if they made that phone call, and it never happened.

The US and the Muslim extremist terrorists are oppositely arrayed with regards to the capabilities/intentions balance. America has the capability but not the intention to quickly obliterate the majority of the Muslim world.  The Muslim extremists have the intentions but not the capability to bring an end to America.  But it’s only a matter of time until they acquire weapons that will allow them destroy large parts of our nation and kill massive amounts of our people.

There is no question that our destruction is their goal; it’s their publicly stated doctrine that we are the Great Satan and that we (together with Israel, of course) are the cause of all their problems; more than that, it’s their ultimate purpose from Allah to destroy us infidels.  September 11 was only the worst of a slew of Muslim terrorist attacks against us and our interests abroad.

So our choices are few and simple: kill them, let them kill us, or convince them that they shouldn’t kill us.  We’ve chosen door number 3, because although it’s difficult, dangerous, and costly, destabilizing and reforming the Arab world is a better alternative than killing them all, or letting them kill us.

Anyway, as Den Beste has been expounding upon these various paths and outcomes, some people have been getting their panties in a bunch:

...sitting in my apartment in Tehran, I can’t help but oscillate between despondency and amusement these days.  Do you not see what’s happening to you folks out in the yonder lands?  Debating "final solution" are we?  Mass murder in a cool, collected way?  Killing over a billion, or is it perhaps just a few hundred million?  Nuking a city or two, or is it only just the vicinity of a large metropolitan area?  Issuing ultimatums to the world to take sides between mass murderers in ties or those with rags on their heads?  Even here where passions run high and surrounded as we are by a bunch of religious bigots, I don’t hear discussions framed quite that way.

He is apparently one of the many people who either don’t understand, or aren’t willing to face the reality of this war.  (And it’s a shame; he sounds like one of the more sensible ones.)  Here’s part of Den Beste’s response, most of which should be painfully obvious to people who’ve been paying attention to the world for the past couple years:

One of the reasons I wrote about how I thought the US would act in case of a nuclear attack against us was to make clear why it was that we had to do everything we can, NOW, to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I know my nation. I know my people. We don’t want to destroy you all. But if you (I mean "Muslims") place us in a position where only you or us can survive, it’s going to be us, and you’ll all be dead. We can do that; we’ve had that capability for a very long time. We don’t want to, but we will if we must.
...
It’s not a question of my nation making a decision whether people will die. Islamic militants made that decision. America’s only decision now is who will die, and where and when. If we stand by idly and passively, then it will be Americans who die, whenever and wherever the Islamic extremists choose to kill them, probably in huge numbers.

We don’t consider that acceptable. That’s surrender. That’s not going to happen.

Instead, we’re attempting to take control of events, in hopes that we can minimize the total number of deaths caused by this war. That’s why we’ve embarked on the highly risky and unprecedented strategy we’re following. If we were only concerned with minimizing American casualties and if we didn’t care about anyone else, then every major Muslim city on the planet would have been vaporized by September 15, 2001, and the war would have ended in a week.

But we’re trying to minimize the total number of deaths, not just American deaths. In particular, we’re trying to minimize the number of Muslims who have to die. So we sent our young men into combat; we sacrificed some of our own in order to try to save Muslim lives -- because we think you are important, and we want you to keep living. Our men are sacrificing their lives for you in Tehran, because what we’re trying to do in Iraq seems to be the only way to keep the body count in this war from making WWII look small. Is it the act of a monstrous nation to sacrifice its own men to save the lives of people in hostile nations?

If Americans were truly the warmongers or Nazis or any of the other handy left-wing catch-phrases that seem to be in endless supply, we would not have chosen the path we’re on, so fraught with danger, risk of failure, and death of our own citizens as it is.  We possess means for complete destruction of our enemies which are much quicker and less costly than the ones we’re using now.  But we aren’t using them because we aren’t the bad guys here.

I haven’t posted much this week because I’ve been ridiculously busy with projects for school.  I spent virtually all of Monday - Thursday on just one project (that I started a week earlier), right up until 11:50pm Thursday when I submitted it via email.  Then I spent 10 more hours on it, from midnight till 10am, trying to figure out why it didn’t work as fast as it should.  It’s a program that implements a modified binary search tree, and supposedly it can be made to populate over 100 million nodes in 15 minutes.  For the longest time I was stuck and couldn’t figure out how to make it any faster than a few days, but between midnight and 10 am, I finally got it down to 88 minutes, with 566 lines of code.  I’m dying to see the 15-minute version.

Anyway I went to an awesome show last Sunday with my man Mark, and have a big post welling up inside me about it, but I’ve got too much stuff to do right now.  Hopefully it will make its way onto here soon.

Every time this guy speaks, I love him more.  During his surprise Thanksgiving-day visit with the troops in Iraq -- the first time an American president ever set foot in that country -- he said this:

Those who attack our coalition forces and kill innocent Iraqis are testing our will; they hope we will run.  We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost of casualties, defeat a ruthless dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins... We will stay until the job is done.

Read the report of how the secret trip was planned and executed; it’s really interesting.  Also noteworthy: Hilary Clinton just visited Afghanistan, and was served food by the troops; while Bush was in Iraq, he served food to the troops.

Update: for a good laugh, read the typical socialist knee-jerk reaction to Bush’s trip.  I guess you have to be a leftist to not understand the need for secrecy and security when flying the president into a war zone.

If you haven’t seen this yet, you should check it out.  Computer users, unite!

On Wednesday November 26, 1980 at 2:47 p.m. we celebrated (actually Dad celebrated, I was writhing in pain and cried alot) the blessing of the arrival of all 5 pounds, 13 ounces and 20 inches of you :-)  Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy B I R T H D A Y dear Anthonyyyyyyyyy, happy birthday to you !  Hope you go out tonight and have fun with friends to celebrate your day.

x o x o x o x o x o x

Ridiculous, but nothing like surprising.  From LGF:

The French translation of Robert Spencer’s book Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith has been cancelled--after the publisher and translator received death threats from representatives of the Religion of Peace™: France’s Rushdie Affair.

Soon after the book’s publication was approved in France last April, its translator, French writer Guy Milliere, began to receive death threats.

"I sent him (the publisher) the translation of the first thirty pages," said Milliere in a written interview. "A couple of weeks later I started to receive death threats by e-mail: ’You must be an enemy of Islam; you will die for what you do’; ’You must be a Jew; I hope somebody will slit your throat, you dirty Jew pig’, etc...I asked the police to act; I have received no answer." 

Milliere adds that the intended publisher, Yves Michalon, also received death threats. Moreover, opposition to the book’s publication in France came not only from outside, but also from within the publishing house, which bears the publisher’s name. According to Milliere, one of Michalon’s assistants told him that if he published the book, he would resign, because it was "racist." He also said he would go to the media with this charge.

"My publisher preferred to give it up," said Milliere. "But he is a nice man, and a bold one; he asked me to write a book about what happened."

For his part, Spencer calls the cancellation of his book’s publication "...a symptom of the Islamic agenda in France and the silencing of non-Muslims as ’dhimmis’."

"What you have here is a subjugation of public opinion in France," he said. "It’s ironic. If you don’t say Islam is a religion of peace, they will kill you. My book doesn’t advocate murdering anyone. It only investigates questions about Islam, but it is so threatening that they’ll kill to silence it."

This is the preliminary version of a report detailing over a decade of collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaeda.  It’s is the kind of thing that should be plastered all over the media right now.  It isn’t, of course, because the left owns the media.  In order for a story to be reported about the war on terror, it must call Bush a liar, refer to Iraq as a quagmire, praise Palestinian terrorists, or denounce Israel for fighting terrorism.  Fortunately FoxNews is around to report the important stuff.  (Via LGF)

Tasha sent me her photos of Rolly and Margie’s wedding reception, and they’re now online in the photos section.

This may well be the best Strong Bad email of all time, mainly because it has songs about using correct grammar.  At the end, click on the little beefy arm at the top, and a "Strong Bad’s Rhythm N’ Grammar" CD will pop up.  Click on the text on the cover to hear a bunch of different little ditties.  Scalawag.

...and it’s on Monday, no less!