Reblogged: 10-26-13 Hodgepodge

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Between You and Your Doctor

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz discusses (via HBL) the regulatory and bureaucratic maze of ObamaCare, correctly noting that, "The officials who planned ObamaCare blame their Web engineers, but they're passing the buck." His column is well worth a read.

However, if you're pressed for time you could also just take a gander at the schematic posted on the Senate's web site...

... and remember it the next time you see or hear this monstrosity referred to as a "marketplace".

Weekend Reading

"[P]erfectionism and the quest for excellence are not the same thing." -- Michael Hurd, in "You Can't Be Too Perfect..." at The Delaware Coast Press

"Even in the midst of something heartbreaking and disastrous, we can use the strength of our minds and our free will to rebuild our lives around the disaster and possibly even come out stronger than before." -- Michael Hurd, in "It Really Is How You Look at It!" at The Delaware Wave

"Note that none of these promotions were mandated by the government (nor should they be)." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Northwestern University Did Right in Offering a Peanut-Free Football Game" at Forbes

My Two Cents

The Hsieh piece notes a common knee-jerk reaction against the Northwestern event among conservative commentators (i.e., equating the game to yet more political correctness run amok). It was good to see Hsieh step in and do what they failed to do: Note the difference between (a) a business concern -- which Northwestern practically is, in this context -- electing to hold an event like this and ( the government forcing it to hold such events.

This was a lost opportunity on those conservatives' part to support the right way to deal with an uncommon health problem, not to mention a revelation regarding their intellectual sloppiness. So what if leftist multiculturalists glom on to every problem anyone might have? That doesn't mean that someone choosing to address a problem afflicted by such attention is necessarily a multiculturalist or a useful idiot.

Computer Nostalgia

Wired ran a story about a collector of computer viruses who posts screenshots and videos of the malware in action. Some of the early stuff -- the article focuses on DOS viruses -- reminds me of some of the more artistic grafitti I have seen over the years. Unsurprisingly, so do the attitudes of its authors resemble those of the vandals who regard themselves as artists:

For at least some of these mischievous coders, the virus truly did serve as a creative medium. When asked about his view on destructive code

in a 1997 interview

, Spanska, the French lava master, replied: "I really do not like that…There are two principal reasons why I will never put a destructive code inside one my viruses. First, I respect other peoples' work…The second reason is that a destructive payload is too easy to code. Formatting a HD? Twenty lines of assembler, coded in one minute. Deleting a file? Five instructions. Written in one second. Easy things are not interesting for the coder. I prefer to spend weeks to code a beautiful VGA effect. I prefer create than destruct [sic]. It's so important for me that I put this phrase in my MarsLand virus: 'Coding a virus can be creative.'" [link in original]

Sure, "Spanska", but you were still forcing your audience to view your work, not to mention stealing time and resources (however small) from them on top of that, in the form of having to make sure you didn't just trash their data and work.

--CAV

Link to Original