[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 . . .
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 . . .
West Coast Tsunami Warning
Those of us who live on the west coast, including Alaska and Hawaii, got a tsunami warning yesterday morning, following a 7.9 earthquake in Alaska.
My first thought was “This is going to make me look like a genius for not getting my car washed last weekend.”
Something Terrible Would Happen
It sounds a little bit strange but the idea that something terrible would happen . . .
I feel something here . . .
Something over here . . . It’s like a pressure . . . on my heart.
It’s pushing, it’s like it’s pushing.
And it hurts.
Something is pushing there, it hurts.
Sadness, there’s a lot of sadness.
I don’t want to feel it.
Something is pushing there, it hurts, there is sadness, and there is something that doesn’t want to feel it.
I don’t want to feel it . . .
Neil Diamond Retires From Touring
Neil Diamond Announces Retirement From Touring After Parkinson’s Disease Diagnosis — Variety
Sorry to hear this . . . as a young person I had the Hot August Night live album on an 8-track tape and I played it till it wore out . . .
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Pope Francis and Donald Trump were both vexed this past week by natives of shithole countries.
The pope showed up in Chile to accuse local sex abuse victims of calumny against the church.
“Calumny” means he’s calling them liars. Look it up.
Oh that reminds me! Cardinal Law sends his regards.
Then he was on to Peru, where he called violence against women a “plague” across the Latin American region. They’re murderers, rapists . . . and some, I assume, are good people.
What a character! I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
See you in Hell!
Ghosts
You must not think that what I have
accomplished through youcould have been accomplished by any other means.
Each of us is to himself
indelible. I had to become that which could notbe, by time, from human memory, erased.
I had to burn my hungry, unappeasable
furious spiritso inconsolably into you
you would without cease
write to bring me rest.Bring us rest. Guilt is fecund. I knew
nothing I made
myself had enough steel in it to survive.I tried: I made beautiful
paintings, beautiful poems. Fluff. Garbage.The inextricability of love and hate?
If I had merely made you
love me you could not have saved me.
By Robert Lowell:
Best Place to Live in Every State
This Is the Best Place to Live in Every State — MONEY
I can’t speak to the other 49 states but Monterey Park is not — repeat, NOT — the best place to live in California . . .
Good News, Bad News on Minimum Wage
Good news: Seattle (among other cities) has established a $15.00 minimum wage.
Bad news: Seattle (among other cities) is automating minimum wage jobs out of existence.
Readers are invited to formulate their own cause-and-effect hypotheses.
