it’s been a bad few months; ritchie, jobs and now hitch. love him or hate him, he forced you to think and digest things. i largely loved his columns and his books but i took issue with his iraq war stance. i never wrapped my mind around the falklands bit and didn’t square with his socialist leanings. (real socialism, not the shit tea party definitions) that said, i rarely missed the opportunity to read him....
the tl;dr summary - this stuff is hard. really, really hard, there are no easy answers and ones ability to make effective personal changes in their lifestyle has depressingly limited impact. ...
about a year ago we were in new zealand and we were surprised by how much emphasis they placed on environmental protections and labor management. it’s an impressively progressive country on an amazing array of topics, from civil liberties, environmentalism and nuclear non-proliferation (i suppose having U.S. atomic testing fallout impacting you will tend to color your perspective on a number of these topics.) that said, for all of their regulation they’re apparently outranking the U....
october 2011 is turning out to be the month we lose some giants. dennis ritchie died he gave us UNIX, we all learned C from him and we stood on his shoulders to build the internet and tools we have today.