I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.
EppsNet at the Movies: A Man Called Ove
A Man Called Ove is about love, death, friendship, aging, hope and heroic decency in the face of disaster. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards and was the highest-grossing foreign language film in the United States in 2016.
Tom Hanks is attached to star in a remake of this movie. I mention that in the hopes of motivating you to watch the original.
The Tom Hanks version will be terrible because the movie, as the title suggests, is about an ordinary man with an ordinary name and the ordinary details that make up his life. Having the role played by a famous movie star is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Highly recommended!
Rating: 
A Man Called Ove
Ove, an ill-tempered, isolated retiree who spends his days enforcing block association rules and visiting his wife's grave, has finally given up on life just as an unlikely friendship develops with his boisterous new neighbors.Director: Hannes Holm
Cast: Rolf Lassgård, Bahar Pars, Filip Berg
IMDb rating: 7.7 (73332 votes)
Universities Are Beautiful, California Is Beautiful, UCs Are Beautiful
A Bite of Nostalgia
I drove through Carl’s Jr. today for lunch . . .
“Would you like to try a Western Bacon Cheeseburger?” the girl asked.
“Yes, that sounds good.”
The Western Bacon Cheeseburger was a favorite of mine when it was introduced in the early 1980s. A taste of nostalgia!
I was tempted when I got to the window to ask why she’d recommended a Western Bacon Cheeseburger and not some new-fangled menu item as is customary, but I was afraid she’d say they just had a couple lying around and needed to get rid of them . . .
Nietzsche Cartoons
All of My Great Ideas
Some Links on Work-Life Balance
Carol Bartz discusses the myth of work-life balance (Video)
“Bartz Says ‘Work/Life’ Balance is a Myth,” Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2012.
Beyond policies: Office culture must change (Article)
Susan Dominus, “Rethinking the Work-Life Equation,” New York Times, February 25, 2016.
The problem may be long hours not work-family conflict (Article)
Robin Ely and Irene Padavic, “Work-Family Conflict is Not the Problem: Overwork Is,” Huffington Post, November 6, 2013.
Managing work and life is an increasingly global problem (Report)
EY, Global Generations: A Global Study on Work-Life Challenges Across Generations (2015).
We know flexibility works, the challenge is execution (Article)
Stew Friedman, “‘Having It All’ Is Not a Women’s Issue,” Harvard Business Review, June 26, 2012.
The best way forward (Article)
Gigi Liu, “From Work-Life Balance to Work-Life Integration– The New Way Forward,” Entrepreneur, March 31, 2016.
When and where you work is increasingly the norm for many professionals (Article)
Laura Vanderkam, “Work-life Balance is Dead — Here’s Why That Might Be a Good Thing,” Fortune, March 6, 2015.
Key benefits for work place flexibility for managers (Report)
WGEA, Briefing Note: About Workplace Flexibility (May 2015).
How to understand and request flexibility at work (Report)
WGEA, Employee Flexibility Toolkit (May 2015).
Guide for companies (Report)
World at Work, Seven Categories of Work-Life Effectiveness: Successfully Evolving Your Organizations Portfolio (2011).
Stories with insight into the new global workforce and the case for flexibility (Report).
Emily Cohen, Liz Mulligan-Ferry, and Jan Combopiano, Flex Works (Catalyst, 2013).
Updates on the most recent research on the economics of flexible workplace practices and policies (report).
The Council of Economic Advisors, Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility (June 2014).
HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector (website).
“Workplaces That Work: Flexible Work Arrangements”
A few pointers to manage career success and a positive personal life (article).
Christine Riordin, “Work-Life ‘Balance’ Isn’t the Point” Harvard Business Review (2013).
Thinking about a post-balance world (Article)
“Balance is Bunk,” Fast Company, October 2004.
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Heaven has gates, a wall and extreme vetting.
Racist!
See you in Hell . . .
And That’s the Truth: Me Too
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE]
If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.
I have as much rights as any man, and can do as much work as any man. And ain’t I a woman?
Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman?
I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
That little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Jesus Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
And that’s the Truth!
Hitmen Take Credit Cards?
Too Few Women in Computer Science?
“We have too few women in computer science.” That’s something you hear a lot.
It’s an opinion presented as a fact. I never hear anyone say, “In my opinion, we have too few women in computer science.” Just “we have too few women in computer science.”
How do we know that? What is the right number? Maybe we have too many women in computer science. How do we know?
I’d love to see more women in computer science btw, I just object to people presuming to know what other people should be doing with their lives . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Theological Question
I hear people say that bad things happen to kids in schools because God isn’t allowed in schools. Why do bad things happen to kids in churches?
Teaching Computer Science: When You Need Help, Ask For Help
I’m volunteering a couple mornings a week at a local high school, helping out with computer science classes.
It’s a mixed class . . . most of the students are taking AP Computer Science Principles, and about 10 kids just recently started a second-semester Visual Basic class.
The VB kids were pretty inquisitive at first but started to get discouraged . . . in my opinion because of the way the material is presented to them via an online curriculum.
The current approach to teaching computer science in American schools, because of the shortage of (I almost said “lack of”) qualified teachers is to use packaged courses delivered to students online.
My observation is students assume that because they’ve been put in front of a computer full of lessons, they’re expected to be able to read and understand the material and complete the assignments on their own with no help.
This is a fatal misconception. The material is too difficult for most people who are not already programmers, so the kids decide pretty quickly that they just don’t have what it takes to learn the stuff.
“Tragedy” is probably too strong a word for what is happening in computer science education, but programming is what I do, I think programming and computational thinking are important and valuable skills, and it makes me sad to see them taught in a way that crushes students’ enthusiasm.
Brief digression: I take piano lessons. My teacher is a musician, a pianist. Music is part of her life, it’s part of who she is, part of how she thinks. How could someone who’s not a musician teach music?
How can someone who’s not a programmer teach computer science?
Because of everything I’ve said above, along with offering technical assistance, I try to encourage kids to stay engaged . . .
“I’m going to tell you a story,” I said this morning. “First I’ll tell you the moral of the story, then I’ll tell you the story. The moral is: When you need help, ask for help.
“That may seem obvious but I feel like some of you are thinking that you should be working through online lessons with a lot of independence.
“I worked with a class a couple years ago at another school. One of the students there was very quiet but she always asked for help when she needed help. She asked quietly, but she asked.
“And when I gave her an answer, she almost always asked ‘why?’ I don’t mean ‘why why why’ like a 5-year-old, but if she didn’t understand why something was important or why you’d want to do something one way and not another way, she asked why.
“It’s a good question because if the only reason for doing something is because I said to do it, what is she going to do if I’m not there?
“What happened to this girl? She’s now a computer science major at UC Santa Barbara. She was able to do that because she didn’t give up on herself when she didn’t understand something and because, even though she wasn’t the most naturally outgoing person she decided to own her own results and use the resources that were available.”
“You’ve got to own it, kids. When you need help, ask for help. Don’t give up on yourself.”
Thus spoke The Programmer.
TFW Hackers Steal $530 Million From Your Cryptocurrency Exchange
$530 million cryptocurrency heist may be biggest ever — CNNTech
It Was a Very Definite Thing
It was a very definite thing within myself, that happened, that I allowed myself be so open, and let my defenses down enough . . . it was almost as if, I’d got to the point . . . of no return . . . and I thought, “I’m going to go for it.”
All the Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch outLike a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
ChattingWhile stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
19 Insane Tidbits From James Damore’s Lawsuit
The Federalist recently published 19 insane tidbits about the Google office environment gleaned from the James Damore lawsuit.
Keep in mind I’m a programmer, not a lawyer, when I say that Damore has a prima facie case of illegal retaliation: he engaged in protected activity — i.e., exercising the right to improve working conditions — by opposing several discriminatory practices, and was fired from his job.
Damore wrote in his famous (or infamous) memo that “Google has created several discriminatory practices.” Classic case of opposition to an unlawful employment practice.
The law does not require that the employment practice actually be unlawful, only that the employee believes the practice to be unlawful.
Everyone’s a Critic
Funeral: For Us His Gold
after Gerald Stern
The insect was yellow with crumpled-black banded legs
and shellacked back that would outlast us
and wistful eyes from what I could discern on that trail
between fields,
and we laid him out in the open air under a sky fast-blue with
change, wedging
a leaf beneath his triple-belted belly so he didn’t rest on
plain dirt,
and we placed two cloverblooms by his head and he was old
you said, could tell by how definite the stripes were, how
complete
the patterns bold and dark, almost engraved,
and he was beautiful in that pasture of thirty-three cows and we
drank
milk in the blaring heat and ate the cake you’d made. We
were
the only humans there—unholy-seeming things with two
legs, dismal histories—
drinking and eating around his elegant husk,
and from the furze, fellow insects rose, a frenzied static
around our bodies,
while he remained in situ an unremitting yellow, the color more
vivid, louder now that he was a remnant. Was color the
purpose here?
Yellow had alerted us to him, and we took care
with leaf and clover to make his bed.
The insect’s gold our togetherness, its death from which we fed.
Fernando and Barbara Ann
I got an email today from a guy named Fernando and I can’t get the song out of my mind . . .
Can you hear the drums, Fernando?
There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando.
I would not want to have a name that reminds people of a song that they immediately start singing to me my whole life.
Like Jude. Or Barbara Ann. Barbara Ann would be a bad name to have . . .