On economics, Lance mentioned a friend who had lived in Finland for a while. This friend observed that the people there were generally happy, but the interesting thing is that they’ve essentially “squelched” the amplitude of their economy—there are fewer really poor people, and fewer really rich people. The middle “band” of the economic wave is the place of the majority. Here in America, on the other hand, the capitalist economy is a little different. People have the potential for greater wealth as well as greater disaster and poverty.

We talked about the advantages of capitalism, especially in the context of a book called The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergen. From what I understood, Yergen makes a convincing case for capitalism by observing the many economic systems throughout the world and through time. I brought up the point that capitalism does not work in the context of families, however. That may be somewhat absurd (applying capitalism within a family structure), but the absurdity just shows how at some level of the social structure, capitalism loses touch with humanity. So we have competing ideologies that want more or less social responsibility and redistribution of wealth.

On another subject, Lance mentioned a book that I will definitely have to get my hands on, called “The Singularity is Near”. Apparently it’s quite popular, even though I hadn’t heard of it (but when did my having heard about it ever mean anything? ) The premise of the book is the the pace of progress is itself progressing, and that at some point in the near future, something that we humans create (e.g. self-replicating artificial intelligence) will be born and it will forever change the trajectory of our evolution and our planet.

We also had a chance to talk about EngineYard and the cool things going on there. Rubinius, Merb and a full stack hosted Rails solution are all enticing projects. They’re on the edge, pushing the technology forward and for that I applaud their willingness to take risks, as well as their vision for the future.

I’m still investigating how it happened. If you see anything more like this, I’d appreciate your help in tracking it down. Thanks—Duane.

The idea is really simple—if we each donate $5 bucks and find two friends to do the same B.J. Lawson will be in an awesome position to really make an impact by April 19th.

It’s only five bucks… let’s do it! (I did!)

1. End torture
2. Restore Habeas Corpus (the right to a trial)
3. Close the Guantanamo Bay prison

Perhaps more significantly, Obama has given notice that if elected president, he will make a significant speech directed to the Muslim world on behalf of America:

As president of the United States, I will directly address the people of the Muslim world to make it clear that the United States is not at war with Islam, that our enemy is al-Qaeda and its tactical and ideological affiliates, and that our struggle is shared. In this speech, I will make it clear that the United States rejects torture — without equivocation, and will close Guantanamo. I will make it clear that the United States stands ready to support those who reject violence with closer security cooperation; an agenda of hope — backed by increased foreign assistance — to support justice, development and democracy in the Muslim world; and a new program of outreach to strengthen ties between the American people and people in Muslim countries. I will also make it clear that we will expect greater cooperation from Muslim countries; and that the United States will always stand for basic human rights — including the rights of women — and reject the scourge of anti-Semitism. Simply put, I will say that we are on the side of the aspirations of all peace-loving Muslims, and together we must build a new spirit of partnership to combat terrorists who threaten our common security.

This speech would fundamentally alter the perception of a “clash of civilizations” and probably put an end to the phony “War on Terror”. It would also cripple the globalist neo-conservative agenda of forceful expansionism, perhaps for good.

Do you think Obama is for real? Can he be trusted as a civil libertarian? Will he reduce the power of the executive branch, or sustain the gross imbalance spearheaded by President Bush?

Also, if he proves good on his promise to restore basic human rights and decency to our honorable nation, can he also Do The Right Thing for the economy? Whom does he trust as economic advisors, and what are their policies?

Citigroup has barred investors in one of its hedge funds from withdrawing their money, and a new leveraged fund lost 52 percent in its first three months, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

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1. Unit Testing: Since there are no reference to global variables or external state in FP, unit tests can focus precisely on the function that needs testing, without the difficulty of setting up a particular state before calling the function.
2. Debugging: Again, without references to global variables or external state, debugging is simply a matter of drilling down to the problem.
3. Concurrency: As a mathematical abstraction, functional programs have the potential to be reasoned about by the compilers and interpreters that run them. As a consequence, concurrency becomes a compiler option rather than a difficult-to-implement coding pattern.
4. Hot Code Deployment: I would love to do this on a web server some time! No more software down time.
5. Higher Order Functions: As an alternative to object-oriented programming, this feature caught my eye. I’ve been thinking in terms of closures for quite some time (thanks to Ruby) but I’m still getting used to the idea that OOP isn’t necessarily the best way to do things in every circumstance.
6. Currying: This lets you build up functions from other functions. The typical example is in defining the “inc” function: it is simply the “add” function with the number “1″ bound to it for every subsequent call. No need to write a function to do that, just define “inc” in terms of “add”.
7. Continuations: This aspect of FP (and other languages, such as Ruby) is fascinating. It’s very nearly an assembly language instruction, longjmp, but with the added benefit of an environment where variable state is stored. I like how Slava compares this with putting a computer to “sleep”—when the computer wakes up, it’s like nothing happened, even though time elapsed.
8. Pattern Matching: Nice, but in agreement with the article, pattern matching doesn’t seem all that revolutionary. I could be wrong.
9. Closures: Slava points out that this is a bridge between the OOP world and the FP world. In a special way, closures allow the formal lambda calculus to have a little exception to its strict recursive environments: closures can also access their parent environment in addition to their own.

I highly recommend this article for anyone who’s been thinking of functional programming and wants a “big picture” view. Excellent examples of real-world usage and some fun history to boot

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One of the most visually impressive aspects of this film is the countryside itself. I had no idea Iran’s mountainous regions were so beautiful. As our friend Victoria put it, “I thought Iran was a desert!” Majidi seems to use his films to show his optimism and the beauty he’s seen in life—much like an earlier age in America when theater was more innocent. Of the films I’ve seen from him, all are clean and uplifting.mature lesbian moviesmp3 movie themesmovies free nudeporn movie forumquicktime movies diving scubasex movie previewsmovies hollywood sex in scenessleepy hollow moviestudio movie sony vegassweet movies boobloans personal 50000services american educations loans studenthigh $50,000 loan riskalabama loans land refinaceloan 50,000 cash credit badto a loan calendar add billabout stafford loanspersonal loan acceppted allstudent reporting credit loans acquiredand sloane alan company

I’m looking forward to meeting Ezra Z., the author of Merb, and as yet an “internet-only” friend of mine. There will be many other friends and brilliant minds there too. Come on out if you’re looking to learn more and meet new people in the business.

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