The best humor has large elements of truth to it. This is no less the case for the article Reflections on Graphical User Interfaces.

Did you know that the song Happy Birthday is copyrighted? This is a really interesting, but useful, obscure fact; a great conversation starter from whence one can easily launch into a discussion with an ordinary person about Mickey Mouse (See also examples of just how creative Disney is: Atlantis, Lion King), Trusted Computing, Fair Use, etc.

The book ``Sugar Blues'', by William Dufty, is a health book surviving from the 1970s which surprisingly shows few signs of being dated.

The premise under which the book is written is that sugar is bad--very bad bad. To kick off the book, the author gives his account of how sugar affected, or rather controlled, his life until he decided he wanted out. From there he jumps to a history of sugar in Western civilization, and from there does topic juggling between more history, medical anecdotes, relating personal accounts of acquaintances, all while never forgetting to sound sour notes about refined sugar.

What exactly is so bad about sugar? First of all, the author suggests that sugar is very much a drug such as heroin in its effects on the body and the way in which it is refined. (See also: Is sugar bad for you?) Sugar canes or beets, (as well as rice and wheat) are stripped from all of their natural vitamins and minerals, leaving only the non-nutrient portion of the plant left. This refinement strips the food of its usefulness to man, and in fact, can leave the food, such as sugar, in the state of being an anti-nutrient.

The book throughout mentions many problems over a broad spectrum of health problems that sugar consumption can cause: addiction, head-aches, depression, hyperactivity, tooth decay, diabetes, obesity, worsened PMS, allergies, lung cancer, scurvy, Alzheimer Disease, weakened immune system, as well as many many other things. (See also: 108 ways sugar can ruin your health) Not stopping at that, he also finds that sugar has caused wars, slavery, circumcision, and the buying out of scientists and doctors to not disturb the industry tied up in sugar production. Some of the conclusions that he draws make perfect sense. Others are a bit more of a stretch, although i certainly can not rule them out.

One example where i wondered if the author was not taking things too far was that of tobacco and smoking. He suggested that problems caused by smoking are from the sugar, and not the tar and nicotine as we are usually lead to believe. While i have not been able to verify portions of this, the sugar being a function of the curing process indeed checks out. Furthermore, some stop-smoking sites suggest cutting back on refined foods while trying to quit smoking, which seems to link part of the addictive behavior with the sugar. (See: Curing Tobacco, and Addiction relapses: nicotine, caffeine, and sugar)

An interesting twist was the portion of the book which discussed how psychiatrists are unneeded and are trying to talk away problems while ignoring that they are diet related. For some time i've been of the opinion that there is little or no need for psychiatrists, but my reasoning was more along the lines of how that field of human health was trying to solve problems which could be very spiritually related. Forgiveness would be a good example; sin can create a huge amount of mental and emotional baggage which could trigger any number of symptoms. At the suggestion of William Dufty, i now have all the more reason to believe that my reasoning against modern psychology practice is appropriate.

The biggest question that this book raises for me, is to what extent is the medical world useful and to what extent is natural healing of sorts preferred. Raised in Western mindset, we are encouraged to trust science, doctors, the government, and church suggestions on health matters. Sugar Blues rightfully knocks these assumptions by coming down very hard on doctors, psychiatrists, the AMA, and the Catholic church. Meanwhile Dufty very much endorses natural healers and eastern thought (IE yin and yang)--both of which have very questionable components. The former, as described by the author, comes very close to the realm of medicine men, or witch doctors. The later has similar pitfalls. Obviously there is some truth in both of these, but to what extent, and how should a Christian relate to these?

Overall this is an excellent book for stimulating thought, as it raises red flags about numerous facets of Western life. It is also written in a very entertaining manner, which most any person could find appealing, although for some, the lack of rigorous scientific presentation may be a slight turn off.

Some collected excerpts from the book may be found in a Nexus Magazine article entitled Sugar Blues.

The Long Walk is an incredible true story of escape from a Soviet Siberian concentration camp, and walk to freedom across mountains and deserts. It is very touching to hear just to what extent and what risk man we go to obtain their freedom; it is equally sad that those of us with freedom regard it so little, and are so slow to defend it.

Larry Lessig gave an excellent presentation at the Stanford Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium on Feb 20, 2002. The topic of choice was that of IP and included sub-discussions on topics such as Open Source Software and the entertainment industry.

One very interesting point that is briefly mentioned is the fact that lawyers write code, but by law their code is public domain: anyone is free to draw on existing laws, arguments, etc. for their own benefit, gratis. Why can't software be written in the same way? This very well works with a number of comments made by Tom Lord on the Arch Users Mailing list (See mailing list posts: Arch for package management, Arch for package management II, and business proposal: arch revision control).

The basic idea is that code is free. Todays IT departments are replaced (or rather upgraded) to centers (in-house or out-sourced) which, given a company need, do what it takes to get software to solve that problem. This may be as simple as installing software from an existing project, or modifying an existing project, or creating an entirely new project. This very well solves the question of Won't programmers starve? (See also the GNU Manifesto). Now, just like lawyers, programmers are experts who are paid well to glue together solutions, to stand on shoulders, and achieve the needs of their clients.

Many societal benefits can be seen in this model.

• The cost of entry is low for newly developing countries, poor communities, small businesses, etc.
• Businesses will have software that exactly matches their needs. If they need a word processor, except with a twist, they have it for low cost, rather then trying to make due with what they can get in a box.
• Programmers will be working much closer to their clients problems, thus coming much closer to eliminating the effect of solving problems or adding features that nobody is really interested in.
• Programmers will be doing much more standing on shoulders rather than reinventing the wheel.
• Software updates can be much faster and safer. Right now a big obstacle to installing binary security fixes is often the granularity of them. For instance, some big company fixes a big security whole in their webserver. In the same patch though, they also upgrade some parts of their software and end up breaking some needed features. Using something like the arch-Tech would allow the individual IT departments to review the source code for security fixes, and know exactly what parts of the system will potentially be effected.
• Open Source projects would get much better funding, and the rate of ingenuity would soar.
• With program source code, and an intelligent IT department, companies would not have to be locked into particular sets of hardware, or even combinations of softwares.

Oh yeah, you can view the (obviously inspiring) presentation of Lessig by going to the Stanford University Computer Systems Laboratory EE380 Colloquium Schedule for 2001-2002, searching for Larry Lessig, and clicking on the camera icon found on the right of the line. MPlayer can be used to view the presentation, as documented on the Linux Player for Colloquium Tapes page.

This article, ``The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing'', describes the art to interviewing and get the right kind of candidates for technical positions: the smart people. A very good read if you are going to be interviewing or interviewed.

I ran across this book, ``Why I Escaped from Soviet Russia'', in the Walla Walla College library and found it quite a delightful read. Unfortunately it was getting quite old, and was about ready to fall apart. Deciding that it was a unique book, and somewhat rare, i took steps to preserve it: i typed it out.

Kur05hin has an interesting article: Confessions of an Unrepentant Code Commando. The first part is a defense of stand alone coders, it then delves into many other topics of interest to software engineering.