Posted 5:37 PM by Floyd

Mulder has stress fracture in hip, likely done for the season

You'll have to excuse me while I go drink myself into a coma.

Posted 12:06 PM by Floyd

One salutary side effect of California's recall election may be the death by reductio ad absurdum of the last shreds of the FCC's "Fairness Doctrine," which would be more accurately named the "Keep People Uninformed Doctrine." I quote from Jeff Jarvis' weblog:

Thanks to the innane FCC equal-time rule -- and to his company's spineless lawyers and bosses -- Howard Stern was forced to cancel an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger this morning.

This was going to be Schwarzenegger's first major interview and it would have been informative. Stern is a great interviewer and he'd be asking the questions the voters would want asked. On the weekend gab shows, they tried to make fun of Schwarzenegger's media choice but George Stephanopoulos got it right: He said Stern's is the No. 1 show in California and Schwarzenegger is going where the voters are.

But the voters won't get to hear what Schwarzenegger has to say under questioning because of the equal time rule. Stern's dimwitted station manager and wimpy lawyers said that if he talked to Arnold, he'd have to talk to all 130 candidates. Stern begged them to fight and get an FCC exemption but they didn't.

This is wrong on so many levels. Stern's show is facing this fight because he's not considered news (hey, there's just as much fluff on three hours of the Today Show -- and Stern makes a helluva lot more news than any other show) and also because the FCC has a hard-on for him. The FCC -- the government -- should not be in a position to determine what is news and what isn't and what we can and cannot hear. As a result of this rule and its unfair enforcement, it's the electorate that suffers. Instead of assuring that we are better informed, we are less informed. That is the government infringing free speech and the free market of ideas. That is wrong.

So Howard Stern is not allowed to interview Schwarzenegger unless he gives equal time to all other gubernatorial candidates, including a swordfish. Isn't it time to give up on the Fairness Doctrine, and accept that Rush Limbaugh is going to have a popular radio show no matter what the FCC does?

Posted 11:17 AM by Floyd

JUnit is the standard Java unit testing tool. That fact is quite an indictment of the current state of software testing: JUnit is a horrid hack that anyone could slap together in about three days.

Here is how JUnit works: You write a class containing methods whose names begin with "test". Inside those methods, you write code that you would like to test. The tests consists of assertions about the code's state. Here is an example from a test I am working on today:


QueryTree qt = HqlParser.parseHql(origHql);
String regenHql = qt.regenerateHql();

assertEquals("Checking that parsed HQL regenerates the same", origHql, regenHql);


JUnit thus approaches life like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon: With a gun in its mouth, threatening to commit suicide if your test is not in order. When a mismatch in an assertion is found, JUnit shows only the difference in expected and actual values. JUnit has access to all kinds of data passed to its assertion methods, but apparently it's important for JUnit to hide that information from you. Here is the test output that caused me to throw a tantrum on this blog:


Checking that parsed HQL regenerates the same expected <... > but was <...>


Well that's useful: I'm missing a space somewhere! Let's say that my expected and actual output were strings of several thousand characters that contained scores of spaces. Using JUnit I would know to quit my job, go home, and play Civilization III.

(A note: I had to type JUnit's error message because the error messages are not copyable. Whether this is due to crappy JUnit design or crappy Swing design is left an an exercise to the knowledgable reader.)

Posted 5:20 PM by Floyd

The Uncle and the Seven-Year-Old Nephew

Uncle: Scott, when you are my age you can tell people you saw Barry Bonds hit a game-winning home run.

Nephew: Why can't I tell them now?

Posted 5:16 PM by Floyd

The federal government has graciously allowed California to follow the directives of its constitution and hold a recall election:

A federal judge on Wednesday refused to delay the Oct. 7 recall election, rejecting arguments by a civil rights group that punch-card voting machines used in at least six counties won't accurately tally votes.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said he would not rule against the will of the people by delaying the recall vote, as requested by the American Civil Liberties Union.

...

ACLU attorneys asked the judge to delay the recall until March so that six counties can replace punch-card voting machines with modern touch-screens or written ballots.

I don't know what's more appalling: That an activist group solicits donations and support under the pretense of being a civil liberties lobby, and then asks to have an election postponed in order to prolong the lifespan of a Democratic incumbent; or that a federal judge has the power to delay elections according to his whim.

Posted 1:02 PM by Floyd

Mark Steyn chronicles the suppression of dissent (tm) in John Ashcroft's America (tm):

...the Irish Council for Civil Liberties has warned Catholic bishops that distributing the Vatican's latest statement on homosexuality could lead to prosecution under the 1989 Incitement to Hatred Act, and a six-month jail term.

...

From Dublin, let us zip 6,000 miles to Quesnel, a small paper-mill town in British Columbia. Chris Kempling is a high-school teacher and a Christian conservative and he likes writing letters to his local newspaper. In one of them he said that "homosexuality is not something to be applauded."

The regulatory body for his profession, the British Columbia College of Teachers, suspended him for a month without pay for "conduct unbecoming a member of the college."

No student, parent or fellow teacher at Correlieu Secondary School has ever complained about Mr. Kempling: he was punished by the BCCT for expressing an opinion in the paper.

...

In Sweden, meanwhile, they've passed a constitutional amendment making criticism of homosexuality a crime, punishable by up to four years in jail. Expressing a moral objection to homosexuality is illegal, even on religious grounds, even in church. Those preachers may not be talking about how gays are evil this Sunday. But they might do next week, or next month. As in Ireland and British Columbia, best to be on the safe side and shut down all debate.

What did all that have to do with America or its attorney general? I'm not sure, but it must be Ashcroft's fault somehow.

(Link via Tim Blair.)

Posted 2:29 PM by Floyd

Jeff Jarvis posted about an order by Pope John XXIII in 1962 ordering that sexual abuse cases be covered up.

The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church....
The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of 'strictest' secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.
They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to 'be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.' ...
Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases 'in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication'.

What I find dismaying about the Catholic sex abuse scandal is the people who can't accept that the Church is at fault. They complain about media bias and anti-Catholic bigotry. They make excuses -- which under these circumstances can only be very lame excuses. They enable the molestation of children because they don't want their side to look bad.

Consider the responses to Jeff's post:

Chuck C stated:

The document in question deals with the crime of
solicitation within the context of sacramental
confession. The secrecy provisions apply because
the seal of confession requires absolute secrecy.
Victims are required to denounce a priest who has
solicited them

It is not particularly important that the coverup pertains to confessions only. The privacy of the confessional is probably a reasonable protection, to be placed on a par with medical and legal privacy -- but only when the person hearing the confession is the confessor's agent, a spiritual advisor. Allowing a person to hear his subordinate's confession and to keep it confidential is a blank check for abuse and conspiracy. The Catholic Church cannot be given a free pass on antisocial behavior that fits its belief system, any more than we give a free pass to Islamic modesty enforcers who beat girls in burning buildings when they try to escape without veils.

Furthermore, it is ludicrous to state, in adjacent sentences no less, that "the seal of confession requires absolute secrecy" and "Victims are required to denounce a priest who has solicited them."

In a later comment, Chuck C introduced us to the topsy-turvy world of the Vatican's justiciary:

In fact, the Instruction from Cardinal Ottaviani stresses (in section 18) that every Catholic has a solemn duty to bring canon-law charges against a priest who attempts to solicit sex through the confessional. The importance of that obligation is underlined by the fact that a Catholic who fails to report solicitation is subject to excommunication. Moreover, the penitent remains under this solemn obligation to report solicitation even if the priest has already confessed his crime.

There's blaming the victim. Then there's capital punishment of the victim.

Cathy stated:

Yes, the document has been gleefully misrepresented by media folks with a reflexive hatred for organized religion, and a Watergate hangover that says everything is a conspiracy.

A wonderfully balanced take on the media's fault AND the Church's, concerning this document at John Allen's Letter from Rome column:

Wonderfully balanced, as defined by the faithful: The Church is at fault for enabling its employees to molest children. The media is at fault for reporting on same.

Digging deeper, I followed a link provided by the aforementioned Chuck to a Catholic World News article that tried to explain away the coverup with the "sanctity of the confessional" excuse. There were about 30 comments at the end of the article, all but one complaining about the awful biased media. Here are the most egregious:

If you haven't seen it yet, I call your attention to a CNS story of Aug. 7 that reports on a Vatican official stating that the 1962 norms were suspended, superceded by the 1983 Code of Canon Law revision.l

This technicality is supposed to impress me how? Were the victims' memories of being molested during this period were also "suspended" and "superceded"?

The world we live in is odd. A Vatican document is found that says that priests who solicit sex in confession are to be sent to Rome to face a secret trial by the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition, and the news media says that means Rome doesn't object to their actions.....

It's such an odd world that some people are at risk of having their felonies prosecuted by civil authorities!

An attack on the church is an attack on Christ.

Then is molestation by an official of the church an act of molestation by Christ?

Posted 5:21 PM by Floyd

We just got back from taking my nephews to the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. This is less a museum than a giant play area with a thin veneer of science and history education. My older nephew Scott (aged 7) played with a fire engine and pretended to cook some pizza. His younger brother Robbie (aged 3) ran a model railroad, and played with a Rube Goldberg machine that rolled tennis balls through tubes. They both had a lot of fun; I highly recommend the Discovery Museum to anyone who needs to entertain young children.

The Museum's web page is a another matter. It is filled with detailed graphics and menus, yet contains numerous design flaws:

• The home page contains an amusing little animated vehicle that makes little puttering sounds as it flies across the screen. After about ten seconds, this is no longer amusing.
  
  Design Principle Violated: Do not drive the user out of his Christforsaken mind.
  
  
• The Directions and Parking page provides driving directions. These directions -- which contain a few kilobytes' worth of line drawings and text -- are served via a browser-choking 163K of Postscript.
  
  Design Principle Violated: Do not sodomize the browser with bloatware.