Happy Mother's Day Mom... and here's to knowing when to stop having kids after you finally got it right.

I don't know... some of what they're describing in the hyena world might actually pass for what goes on in some bars these days... well except for the female hyena anatomy.  Damn.  Via Jeff Atwood.

It's pretty easy to tell that this guy was just searching the newspaper for some reason to bash our modern ways and technological advancements.  In case you didn't know, UWM is trying to build a new engineering campus on the county grounds in Wauwatosa.  They've now hired a new dean, and earmarked for new professors, though its unclear whether they are for this new campus, or for UWM's extensive pre-existing engineering program.

I can understand being against the expansion of the school to Wauwatosa in this area.  UWM is taxpayer funded, and believe me, I'm very understanding of anyone who questions taxpayer outlays that are not necessary.  But he just can't stop there, he goes way beyond with this tripe:

Before the university builds a new engineering school on our land, perhaps it should create a school of thought we could call the School of Putting Universities in Their Place. Such a school would study just how academic research has benefited corporations and the careers of professors at the expense of local communities, rural people, taxpayers, endangered species, world peace– you name it. Such a school would not require much space; a good dean could do most of the work alone.

As one who has taught in several universities, I am not blind to the benefits of higher education. But when education becomes too “high” and specialized, when the applied sciences are given precedence over the humanities, when profit, rather than knowledge and critical thinking, rules, when professors abandon any sense of public obligation, we are all one step closer to living in a world that doesn’t exist. And that, of course, is the stuff of tragedy.

Right... because what this world needs are people who have a major in Literature with a minor in Women's Studies.  I'm sure that certificate in Gay and Lesbian Studies will really help the world too.  And Lord knows that engineering has never helped the poor, the hungry or those in rural areas.

Because the massive engineering feats of the Tennessee Valley Authority didn't help bring water, electricity, and flood control to millions of poor farmers.  Genetically engineered crops have done nothing to increase crop yields which lower food prices so that more poor people can eat better every day.  Of course you can argue that engineers build bombs, but you also have to remember that next to religion, the next biggest cause of war is depravation (usually food or water), and engineers have done more to alleviate that problem than poets.  And those trains and other massive transit options that liberals love to drool over?  Yep... designed by engineers.

To be honest, I don't want to turn this into a "my profession is better than your profession" debate.  But the reality is, we have very advanced and safe infrastructure because of highly specialized training in universities for engineers.  Long gone are the days when engineers could simply learn through apprenticeships and then experiment on the go.  Unlike doctors and lawyers who "practice" their profession, engineers get certified in ours.

I've written on the relationship between Engineering and the humanities before, and I stand by my statements.  Humanities are an invaluable partner in a good Engineering degree, but they are not a replacement, and they are not more important than the specialized learning... at least not if you want to be able to drive over the bridges we build.

Full Disclosure: I have a degree in Computer Engineering from MSOE

I was over at the Battlestar Gallactica page on SciFi.com today and saw this as their banner:

Using the Last Supper motif is interesting... but I'm not sure I'd compare Six to Jesus.

Some historical information from Jay Leno...

You may or may not have noticed (and you may or may not care) that I've started to more actively blog on The Coding Monkey again.  I had started to let that languish, but am trying to discipline myself to write there more often again.  If you're a software developer me, I hope you'll take a look.

I'd also like to give a little warning that within the next couple of weeks I'll be doing some upgrades around my blogs, including some changes to some of my blog themes (just polishing them up a bit more) and upgrading the blog engines a bit.  There may be some bumps in the road, which is why I mention this.

You may or may not be surprised to know that I really haven't been that into podcasts.  It's not that I have anything against them per se, but more that I have never figured out a good way to integrate listening to them into my schedule.  I've decided I'd like to try, especially since my new MP3 player makes it really easy, and I can do it in my car pretty simply.  So here is an official bleg... what podcasts do you think I should listen to and why?  I've already subscribed to three developer podcasts (.NET Rocks, Hanselminutes and RunAs Radio).  What other good non-developer podcasts are out there?

From Stephen Hawking, on whether there is life elsewhere in the universe:

"Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," he then quickly added: "Some would say it has yet to occur on earth."

Not long after September 11th, my mother gave me an American flag lapel pin.  I've never worn it.  I don't plan on wearing it either.  I don't question the patriotism of those who don't wear one either, no matter what office they hold, nor what office they are trying to attain.  I don't mark patriotism by the adornment of a suit by a cheap piece of painted tin... for I believe that would devalue patriotism to that same price...  $3.95 plus tax.  Patriotism is marked by actions (real actions), not accessories.  Be patriotic by what you do, not what you wear.  Of course that's not to say that those who wear the pin aren't patriotic either... merely that the wearing of the pin is not a requirement for patriotism.

More here.

I first read this post by dad29 yesterday (via Jay) and it frankly made me so upset, that I posted a very restrained comment, and then decided I couldn't post here for at least a day until I calmed down.  Of course, re-reading that post, along with his follow up (also via Jay), has me very angry again.  The subject is women in the military, and the current statistics regarding incidents of rape between male and female members of the military:

The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service.

So?

This isn't shocking, this is entirely predictable. It was predicted, as it was one of the many reasons that sane individuals have opposed women serving in the military from the very start.

Fact: Women do NOT belong in the military. Sure, some have been heroic--but that's merely playing percentages. After all, some men have been heroic, too.

In his follow up post, dad29 states the following:

So with the case of "females in the military." That happens to be an attempt to contradict nature, and the consequences were laid out in lavender in the (linked) supporting news story.

"Conservatives" who object to the post clearly accept as 'normative' the militarization of women, which is the direct cause of using quotation marks when characterizing their philosophical bent.

Liberals are so blinded (or intellectually bereft) that they actually see the post as some sort of endorsement of assault.

Frankly I don't know where to begin with this.  On its face, dad29's original post, and even his follow up seem to express the idea that it's the woman's fault for being raped because she chose to join the military.  He denies this in the follow up, and also in various comment threads, but I just can't read his posts and not come up with very much of an alternate theory.

The real problem is that he chose a poor proxy argument.  dad29 clearly thinks women don't belong in the military for various reasons.  So when he saw a new item which talked about a problem regarding women in the military, he decided it was another good data point to use.  The problem is that the "issue" he decided to use is one that has significant moral repercussions.  By suggesting that the rape of women is reason to keep them out of the military implicitly says various things which are damning of dad29 personally, which he makes no real effort to refute, and in some ways are strengthened by his follow on post.

First it suggests that the rape is somehow justified by their being there.  This idea is what I find most highly offensive.  His follow on post which somehow suggests that some sort of natural law made this all predictable is disgusting at best.  Men do not rape women.  Monsters rape women.  The entire premise of his post suggests that the military is filled with monsters instead of heroes serving their country.  It also suggests that being in the military, and sacrificing certain things because of it, excuses rape somehow.

I should also point out that I find it amusing for a devout Catholic to argue that somehow these individuals don't have free will (the ultimate gift from God) to choose good acts over evil acts, and that somehow the nature of men and women in closer quarters makes it inevitable.  Of course, this small amount of amusement is vastly overwhelmed by my moral disgust.  There is never an excuse for rape.  And this entire discussion wreaks of making excuses for it.  Next we'll see dad29 suggesting that women in the Middle East who don't wear the hijab deserve to be stoned to death, because they violated some sort of natural law regarding the place of women in that society, and after all, what did they expect to happen?

There is no natural law that makes rape acceptable.  People have the freedom to choose whether to respect women or not, and those who choose not to should be punished to the greatest extent of the law.  Suggesting that men are not capable of doing this ought to offend the sensibility and morality of every good man on this Earth.  Suggesting that men in the military are incapable of doing this sullies the reputation of people who rightly should be considered heroes in this country.  Just the very idea that someone who is serving to protect this country would choose to violate and harm a fellow service member (nay, citizen), and that somehow this is to be expected?!  It boggles my mind.  The fact that these actions seem to be condoned by the military brass is shocking.  What needs to be investigated are those cover ups, not the fact that women are there in the first place.  After all, if you remove women from the military without looking at the cover ups regarding rape investigations, would dad29 find rapes by servicemen against civilian populations where the military is posted to be acceptable and expected?

The true folly with the proxy argument is that the debate argues different things.  dad29 is really arguing that women shouldn't be in the military, while all the people arguing with him are arguing the rape of women in the military.  These are entirely two different topics.  So while they argue that rape is wrong, he argues that women in the military is wrong, and everyone mistakes one argument for the other.  I'm probably doing the same thing.  But by creating such a poor proxy argument in the first place, dad29 deserves every bit of flack he is getting.  Rape is always wrong.  Period.  Tying it's occurrence to some other result you think is desirable is just plain stupid.

Emily Mills has a much more rationally written, and less angry post on all of this that is also worth reading.

I haven't made anything for ICanHasCheezburger in a while, but I saw this picture and was inspired.

Today's "Best Comment of the Day" Award goes to Paul Noonan who said:

You get a reaction for Hitler because HE'S FUCKING HITLER! HE KILLED 6 MILLION JEWS!

Context here.

You can learn more Lolcat by using this handy translator.  The Lolcat Bible project is coming along quite well too.

In case you didn't know, I've been sucked into The Facebook.  I totally avoided MySpace on purpose because when I tried to use it, I thought the interface and actual application behind it sucked donkey balls.  Seriously, it's offensively bad.  And the home pages that people came up with were often times worse, with gaudy backgrounds, and annoying music which assaulted you automatically.  Horrible... just horrible.

Facebook on the other hand is fairly clean and well designed.  I'm still having issues with how I want to handle "friends" on Facebook though.  I'm already getting requests to be "friends" with people I really don't know.  How should I handle that?  The word "friend" has actual meaning for me, and I don't like the idea of trivializing it by becoming virtual friends with people that I'm not actual friends with.  On the other hand, I could just stop over analyzing it and realize that Facebook friendship isn't meant to be real friendship.  Anyway, my profile is here if you're interested.

For now, I'm still experimenting a bit with exactly how much I want to use it, and for what, so my profile is fairly minimal.  Mostly I'm using it as a convergence zone of my other Web 2.0 activities.

I was intrigued by this article in The Nation that John McAdams is pointing to, which laments the shrinking of English Departments, and the increasing call for experts in literature other than "the classics".  While I believe McAdams concentration is on the switch from more classic English Literature to multi-cultural studies, I want to concentrate on this little bit instead:

What's going on? Three things, to judge from their absence from Graff's history, that have never happened before. First, the number of students studying English literature appears to be in a steep, prolonged and apparently irreversible decline. In the past ten years, my department has gone from about 120 majors a year to about ninety a year. Fewer students mean fewer professors; during the same time, we've gone from about fifty-five full-time faculty positions to about forty-five. Student priorities are shifting to more "practical" majors like economics; university priorities are shifting to the sciences, which bring in a lot more money. In our new consumer-oriented model of higher education, schools compete for students, but so do departments within schools. The bleaker it looks for English departments, the more desperate they become to attract attention.

In other words, the profession's intellectual agenda is being set by teenagers. This is also unprecedented. However bitter the ideological battles Graff described, they were driven by the profession's internal dynamics, not by what our students wanted, or what they thought they wanted, or what we thought they thought they wanted. If grade schools behaved like this, every subject would be recess, and lunch would consist of chocolate cake.

I actually take this as a personal swipe at my college degree, and an unfair one at that.  As many of you know, I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.  One of the selling points of that school is that the degree programs are highly driven to studies in your major.  While there are credits which are devoted to non-major studies, they are not as many as at more traditional universities such as UW.  So while I did choose to take a philosophy class, I took no added literature courses (though there were limited selections available).  My English studies ended with "Technical Writing".

Now I suppose someone who teaches in a major English department may look at that and scoff.  They may see my lack of extra formal education in greats works by Sinclair, Hemingway and Fitzgerald as an indication that my college eduction is less worthy of others, it certainly does not mean that "teenagers are setting the agenda".  It actually means that experts are setting the agenda.

The reality is that having solid knowledge of great English literary works won't help someone write quality software, nor will it keep a bridge from falling down.  It is also important to realize that Technical Writing courses are not unimportant.  In fact, I think that utilitarian courses like Technical Writing are currently undervalued in "practical majors", and that more focus should be given to these studies.  Of course, one of the lessons I learned while working at MSOE is that there was a lot of pressure to keep the number of required credits under control.  So that would most likely mean that an increased number of writing credits would mean requiring fewer credits in things like literature.  I say if that's what it takes, then so be it.

The reason is quite simple.  The art of communicating important ideas to people who are not experts in your field is an under appreciated one... and one that can have deadly consequences.  One of the more valuable courses I took was one in Engineering Ethics.  Among other things, we examined certain historical events, and studied the events that lead up to them.  Examples of this would be the 1986 Challenger disaster, as well as the famous Pinto safety problems.  One thing that is common in many of these events is that Engineering teams were aware of the possible problems, and communicated them up, but because of the methods of communication and the style of writing, their warnings were not heeded by those who made the final decisions.  In essence, Engineers tend to write for Engineers, and they don't know how to write for other audiences effectively.

My general finding when I've talked to people with English degrees however, and in some discussions I've had with English professors after I graduated, is that they still look down upon these more technical and practical writing courses, and would rather have people read more Hemingway.  This article was a perfect example.  Wanting to take more writing courses is seen as letting teenagers drive the curriculum, because it's thought that they "don't want to read".  Instead they need to realize that Program Heads in other departments understand the incredible importance of having graduates who understand "how to write".  Most Engineers won't turn into Hemingways, but they might be helping to design your next car, and need to explain to non-Engineers how to make it safe.  Which is more important to you?

Happy Easter everyone!  And exactly what do bunnies and eggs have to do with Jesus?  Here's Jim Gaffigan's take on it: