Rep. Rangel's bill to reinstate the draft
WASHINGTON - Rep. Charles Rangel plans to resurrect a bill to reinstate the draft when Democrats take power in January, but the idea got a chilly reception yesterday in the heart of his Harlem district.From New York Daily News - Politics - Rangel feelin' a draft
Last time he brought this up, Mr. Rangel joined 400 other congressmen to vote against it. And this will fail once more. Sorry, but this is just like Terri Schiavo. The absolute worst in partisan political grandstanding. If Mr. Rangel was really concerned with who is being sent off to war, there are better things to spend your time on. Start with looking at funding health care for reservists and their families. Or expanding money available funding educational benefits under the GI-Bill.
Robert D. Steele
If you're like me, you don't have enough time to read all the important new books on Economics, Political Science, Diplomacy, War and Culture. That's why I make it a point to see what Robert D. Steele has to say. His one line capsule of Culture Warrior by Bill O'Reilly is both funny and brutal. Right Up There With Mein Kampf, But Less Sensible.
Mr Steele is a retired Intelligence professional and an Amazon TOP100 reviewer. While he comes off as an old-school conservative pragmatist of the Bush-41 school, He has given both Andrew Sullivan and Barack Obama five star reviews. Sometimes I feel smarter after just reading his reviews.
Ex-Quarterback Thrives as Lobbyist
Now as a lobbyist, he has shown a similar deftness — as the case of John Deere suggests — for turning his lobbying assignments into business deals for himself and his clients.From Ex-Quarterback Thrives as Lobbyist - New York Times
Few people demonstrate the revolving door between Congress and K-Street as well as JC Watts. It used to be that people went to congress after they've had a career. Now Congress is seen as a steeping stone to a career as a lobbyist.
Snap Circuits Electronic Educational Kits
The Snap Circuits Electronic Educational Kits reminds me of the old Radio Shack Science Fair kits.
I loved those old Radio Shack kits. My uncle bought me one every Christmas. I have many fond memories of burning my fingers with a soldering iron, adjusting the little snap-springs and searching for the tiny bits of electronic debris that would trail from room to room. Oh, and I build a radio that used a coat hanger as an antenna and my radiator for ground. Sadly, radio shack at the mall doesn't seem to carry these kits any more.
Chuck Reid Quote
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is."
- Chuck Reid
Spring 2.0 Final Released
More here: Spring 2.0 Final Released!
I took longer to download Spring than to port my Springframework 1.2.8 App to use Spring 2.0. No performance changes to report, but I can now try rebuilding it as a JDK1.5 App. Once I update my code to use the new Generics + Collections idioms, I should see a few gains by reducing a lot of the clutter that goes with using pre-JDK1.5 collections.
I've managed to get other developers here to use Spring to manage their applications. The selling point was the way I added confirmation email support to a set of forms in one mid-size app. I defined an interface called EmailService and implemented an a type for each of the three forms to add. I then added one line of code for each form in application-Context.xml and a whopping five lines of code in Formhandler. Now when an edit in one of those three form is saved, and the server agrees that the edit was successful; the user and his manager gets a summery email. Doing this without Spring would have resulted in at least five times more code.