Light the Whole World

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 24 Dec 2004 13:00:00 GMT
From Love Poems from God, printed in the local community newsletter:
Such love does the sky now pour,
That whenever I stand in a field,
I have to wring out the light
When I get home.

--St .Francis of Assisi


Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth:
"You owe me."
Look what happens with a love like that --
It lights the whole world.

--Hafiz

# From clairefiles:

"You all have a great Solstice Day! Remember only 118 shopping days left until Patriots Day!" -- merlin419

# Jim Taylor at Gunblast - Christmas Eve 1896 - I've seen this before, but it's worth re-reading. A little Christmas spirit for this short day. [gunblast]

It was along about suppertime Christmas eve when I noticed one of the calves was gone. We had them in a pen by the barn where they could get in out of the cold and somehow one of them was missing. The temperature was hovering around 10 below and figured to go colder that night. Being as Pa was sick I was looking after the stock and keeping firewood hauled up to the house, chopping ice so's we could get water for ourselves and the livestock, and trying to keep Ma from worrying herself to death. Now here we were missing a calf!

Tracks in the snow told the story. I could see where several people had come up behind the barn from the woods and slipped around into the side gate. Looked to me like three of 'em ... a big one and two smaller ones. I could see where they had led the calf back around behind the barn and toward the woods.

# We've had a mighty flukey week here weather wise. Monday and Tuesday were just below zero, and windy. Frigid. Yesterday the mercury rose to about 52° Fahrenheit, and it rained and blew so hard that a tree fell across the road. Today it's back down to 20°, fairly normal for this time of year.

# My back bridge is slowly improving. I couldn't do it at all the first time. Now I can pretty easily get up on feet and top of head. Can't rock back very far, and can only hold it for about 15 seconds, but it's improving day by day. I'm not doing my Hindu squats and pushups every day, but I've only missed two days in a row once since I started, and I'm feeling better. Little by little. Dig out of the hole.

# My mom sent us a box of Harry and David Royal Riviera® Pears. They weren't quite ripe when they arrived, but a couple of days on the counter in their shipping box turned them into the finest tasting, most juicy pears I've ever eaten. Yum.

# Charley Hardman - raise a glass to bernhard - twenty years ago, Bernhard Goetz defended himself against thugs with screwdrivers by shooting each of them with a pistol. Mr. Goetz, I salute you. Unfortunately, New York doesn't have a million more Bernhards. Giuliani did a pretty good job of reducing the Big Apple crime rate, but I don't like "broken window" policing, and he makes my skin crawl. If, instead, the natives were encouraged to arm themselves and fix the problem once and for all, crime would become damn near nonexistent. [saltypig]

two thousand, seven hundred sixty "felonies" a year, on the subway alone, are evidence that "crime has been brought under control." what are these people smoking? imagine the crime rate if NYC had liberal concealed carry. imagine that a criminal had no idea if his next intended victim were armed and prepared to resist, with lethal force if necessary.

# Sierra at Fish or Man - Today - Jason's lawyer convinced the judge to set up a hearing after Christmas and New Years. A couple of cops posted comments blaming Jason for his arrest. I posted the following: [fishorman]

Yep. I've noticed that. Cops will not back down. Unless forced. Soon...

Jason, you did good, brother. None of the cops who arrested you without cause and hassled you mercilessly deserve to draw another breath. THEY are the criminals in this case, and you are their victim.

This always happens when cops misbehave. A bunch of other cops appear and support them. Even some non-cops support them. Don't listen to them. He who defends evil is evil.

We do not need cops. Never did. Never will. We can defend ourselves or contract for our defense with people who will actually be on our side, or be fired.

The monopoly on force enjoyed by our governments, and their minions behind the blue wall, has done what absolute power always does, corrupted everyone involved, absolutely. The only cure is to take away their power. Soon...

# Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata.net - "My name is Potter ... Harry Potter ..." - Mr. Micklethwait is no fan of J.K Rowlings' wizarding stories, but the public sure is. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($17.99 pre-order) is already number 1 in Amazon's book sales rank, over six months before it's July 16, 2005 release. [samizdata]

# Ron Avitzur at Pacific Tech - The Graphing Calculator Story - how the "Graphing Calculator", which has shipped as part of the Macintosh operating system since the first version on the PowerPC chip, was created, by two unpaid, not-supposed-to-even-be-in-the-building hackers with a vision. Bravo! Mr. Avitzur's company now sells a more featureful version for Macintosh and Windows. It costs $60 (or $100 if you must pay by corporate PO). [picks]

I knew nothing about the PowerPC and had no idea how to modify my software to run on it. One August night, after dinner, two guys showed up to announce that they would camp out in my office until the modification was done. The three of us spent the next six hours editing fifty thousand lines of code. The work was delicate surgery requiring arcane knowledge of the MacOS, the PowerPC, and my own software. It would have taken weeks for any one of us working alone.

At 1:00 a.m., we trekked to an office that had a PowerPC prototype. We looked at each other, took a deep breath, and launched the application. The monitor burst into flames. We calmly carried it outside to avoid setting off smoke detectors, plugged in another monitor, and tried again. The software hadn't caused the fire; the monitor had just chosen that moment to malfunction. The software ran over fifty times faster than it had run on the old microprocessor. We played with it for a while and agreed, "This doesn't suck" (high praise in Apple lingo). We had an impressive demo, but it would take months of hard work to turn it into a product.

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