Author: Steve Yegge File Type: epub This book grew out of a lot of angst. Well, and wine. Put enough angst in me, and Ill start ranting. Pour in some wine, and the rants get meanand funny. I still go back and read these posts now and then, and I always laugh. I was so mean. My angst grew out of traveling different roads than most programmers. Those roads forced me to see the world differently. Now I see all sorts of patterns that many experienced programmers fail to seebecause, well, to put it bluntly, theyre stuck in ruts. Over the past 25 years Ive done a bunch of dramatically different types of programming, and Ive also written far more code than any programmer ever should. The long roads Ive traveled have basically given me a sixth sense. I see dead people. And it sucks. If youre ever unlucky enough to acquire a dreadful sixth sense, there are really only two choices you can be angry and depressed about it, or you can laugh about it. So I try to laugh. Its hard, but Im getting better at it. The wine helps. Practice helps, too. You need to get in the habit of laughingat yourself, at others, at the crazy world we live inor in time youll just stop laughing altogether. When I first started ranting, I was the ugly American, stomping around in my posts, and essentially yelling What the hell is wrong with all you people? But over the next ten years or so, I like to think Ive grown into more of an amateur software anthropologist. I now take cultural relativism seriously, and I try hard not to judge people who think differently from me. Of course I dont mind poking fun at them, because I dont mind people poking fun at me. And ultimately I would like to convince undecided programmers to share my view of the programming world, because programming works best if everyone nearby does it the same way. So Ill continue to argue that my view, which Ive recently taken to calling software liberalism, is a perfectly valid and perhaps even preferable way to do a lot of software development. Converting everyone to be more liberal is doomed to fail, of course. But even so, I hope I can still help people in radically different software cultures to understand each other better. Im going to keep ranting, because it appears to be the only way to make a message sink in to a very large audience. Some people still tell me that my blog posts are too long. They tell me I could have made my point in under a hundred words. I have noticed that this complaint comes most often from people who disagree with me. Theyre really just saying they want less work to voice their disagreement. But even some folks who agree with me find the posts too long to carry their attention, and they complain too. Theyre missing the point, though. The posts arent too long. You need a certain minimum heft to penetrate. Through years of trial and error, Ive found that the best way to get a lot of people to listen to you is to tell them a story. And you cant spin a good yarn without settling in and enjoying the ride. So thats what this book is. Its really a bunch of stories. Each might take the form of an article, essay, guide, rant, or occasionally a fiction tale. But behind the structure, each one of them is sharing a story. Even if you dont always agree, Im hoping youll at least find the stories entertaining and, with luck, sometimes even eye-opening. The guys at Hyperink chose which of my posts to include, by and large, and they also came up with the overall chapter organization. I made a couple of tweaks, but what youre looking at is largely their vision of how to curate this stuff into a cohesive book. I think they did an admirable job. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did. Steve Yegge August 2012 **

Author: James Calvin Davis File Type: pdf Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his refusal to conform to Puritan religious and social standards, Roger Williams established a haven in Rhode Island for those persecuted in the name of the religious establishment. He conducted a lifelong debate over religious freedom with distinguished figures of the seventeenth century, including Puritan minister John Cotton, Massachusetts governor John Endicott, and the English Parliament. James Calvin Davis gathers together important selections from Williamss public and private writings on religious liberty, illustrating how this renegade Puritan radically reinterpreted Christian moral theology and the events of his day in a powerful argument for freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state. For Williams, the enforcement of religious uniformity violated the basic values of Calvinist Christianity and presumed upon Gods authority to speak to the individual conscience. He argued that state coercion was rarely effective, often causing more harm to the church and strife to the social order than did religious pluralism. This is the first collection of Williamss writings in forty years reaching beyond his major work, The Bloody Tenent, to include other selections from his public and private writings. This carefully annotated book introduces Williams to a new generation of readers. **

Author: Diego E. Machuca File Type: pdf Moral skepticism is at present a vibrant topic of philosophical inquiry. Particularly since the turn of the millennium, the debates between moral skeptics of various stripes and their opponents have gained renewed force not only by taking account of innovative ideas in moral philosophy, but also by drawing on novel positions in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language as well as on recent findings in empirical sciences. As a result, new arguments for and against moral skepticism have been devised, while the traditional ones have been reexamined. This collection of original essays will advance the ongoing debates about various forms of moral skepticism by discussing such topics as error theory, disagreement, constructivism, non-naturalism, expressivism, fictionalism, and evolutionary debunking arguments. It will be a valuable resource for academics and advanced students working in metaethics and moral philosophy more generally.

Author: Gloria Allred File Type: pdf Voted by her peers as one of the best lawyers in America, and described by Time magazine as one of the nations most effective advocates of family rights and feminist causes, Allred has devoted her career to fighting for civil rights and has won hundreds of millions of dollars for victims of abuse. She has taken on countless institutions to promote equality, including the Boy Scouts, the Friars Club, and the United States Senate. And as the attorney for numerous high-profile clientsincluding Nicole Brown Simpsons family, actress Hunter Tylo, and Amber Frey, Scott Petersons girlfriendAllred has helped victims assert and protect their rights. Throughout her memoir, Allred offers colorfulsometimes shockingexamples of self-empowerment from her personal and professional life. Presenting nearly fifty of her most memorable cases, Allred takes us deep inside the justice system to show how its possible to win even in the face of staggering odds. Her inspiring true stories serve to remind us that winning justice depends on the righ-teousness of the cause and an individuals willingness to stand up, speak out, and fight back. Fight Back and Win is a powerful testament to Gloria Allreds trailblazing career and the battles she has fought alongside countless brave individuals to win justice for us all.**About the Author Gloria Allred is the most prominent womens rights attorney in the United States and is one of the highest-profile attorneys in the world. She has been a television commentator on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and Court TV, and is a three-time Emmy nominee for her television commentary on KABC Television Eyewitness News in Los Angeles. She was rated one of the most important radio talk show hosts in America by USA Today, and has won the Presidents Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers and the 1986 Presidents Volunteer Action Award for her work in child support enforcement, presented to her by President Ronald Reagan at the White House. A founding partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg, Allred lives in Southern California.