See how smart I am? Here’s what Sunday’s Today’s Papers had to say about the Kerry campaign’s handling of the Swiftvets:

With Kerry’s push-back against critics of his Vietnam service so far succeeding only in prolonging the discussion over whether he earned his medals, the wisdom of his response seems increasingly questionable. The Post’s lead illustrates the dangers for Kerry: Before the Democratic nominee acknowledged the attacks on his record, the big papers didn’t have much to report. Now that he’s responded, however, papers like the Post are presenting both sides of the argument and leaving it to readers to decide what’s true and what isn’t. Reporters’ dogged commitment to “balance” makes them unwilling to say which side is being truthful and which is not. The Post lead takes this route; the paper says Kerry’s critics have failed to prove he’s lying but adds that neither side is being totally honest. This answer, although unclear and unhelpful, is where the issue is likely to remain. The article by Swift boat veteran and Tribune editor William B. Rood may push the debate in Kerry’s favor, however. Rood strongly supports Kerry’s side of the Silver Star story and undercuts a leading Kerry critic by noting that the man praised Kerry during the war.

I wrote up my pessimistic bit before Rood came out in Kerry’s defense. As it is, I haven’t thrown in the towel. The only thing to do is fight for the truth until the election is over, and then plot revenge if Kerry loses due to these lies.

It seems like coverage of the torture at Abu Ghraib has died down, but the truth is that details are still coming out, and the more you read, the worse it gets. Would you be surprised to learn that one of the doctors working at the prison taught an impromptu lesson in suturing wounds to a guard who asked, with a prisoner who was injured by that guard as the patient? That’s what some prisoners who were released claim. The news from Abu Ghraib is almost too horrific to contemplate, perhaps that’s why the nation prefers to discuss rumors and lies about Vietnam instead.

By the way, if you don’t read Body and Soul regularly, you should. It’s always enjoyable to see someone with an actual conscience at work.

Mark Cuban argues compellingly that DVD is dead, the industry just doesn’t know it yet.

William Rood, the commander of one of the swift boats that was on patrol with John Kerry on the day that Kerry was awarded his silver star, has gone public with a first person account of the day’s events. There were three boats on the patrol, one was commanded by Kerry, the second by Rood, and the third by Donald Droz, who was killed in action less than two months after that day. Here’s what Rood has to say:

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us–the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry’s service–even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry’s critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they’re not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It’s gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

By the way, the swiftvets bucket at del.icio.us is becoming a useful resource.

I started reading Tony Bourdain’s memoir, Kitchen Confidential this weekend, and it’s great. It’s been on my list since it was published in 2000, and I’ve only now gotten around to it. The book gained much notoriety for its warnings to diners about what not to order in restaurants (don’t order fish on Monday and avoid seafood at Sunday brunch being the the two most well known), but what interests me most is the insider look at what being a working chef is like.

In the book, he describes the concept of mise en place, which is French for “everything in its place” (more or less). What a cook’s workstation is “mise en place,” then all of his tools, condiments, and seasonings are well organized for use, and he has all the ingredients he needs for the dishes he’s tasked with making close at hand. It’s hard for a chef to work efficiently unless a state of mise en place has been achieved and can be maintained throughout his shift.

That led me to think about my own profession, programming. As I’ve matured as a programmer, my obsession with mise en place has increased. These days, I just can’t start on a project unless all of the files are properly organized, I have version control set up, and I have build scripts and so forth. That said, on my current proejct, I have all sorts of areas where my “miz” is being violated, and I was just this morning thinking about how much time it’s costing me.

My first problem is that my build scripts create WAR files that don’t deploy properly under Tomcat. For some reason, Tomcat can’t extract the files, so I have to create the directory myself and then unzip the files manually. That takes a little bite of time every time I want to update the application. Ideally, the build scripts would deploy the WAR files themselves, but they don’t do that yet. The second problem is that I’m not handling database configuration very gracefully. It’s in a configuration file that’s packaged inside the application, so whenever I move the application from development to staging to production, I have to do some manual hackery to make it work with the proper database. That also makes it more painful to deploy my applications.

There are some other little problems that make things a bit more difficult here and there that I need to address as well, and when you put it all together, it’s amazing what kind of impact it has on your overall productivity. When you can’t deploy your application quickly and easily, you’re less likely to update it with small fixes. It’s just too much of a pain. And when you’re in the Java world (as opposed to PHP, for example), small problems with your environment can be a big deal. The preparation to get things cooking is a lot more complex than just making sure a file is in the right directory, and so problems of organization and infrastructure are magnified. I urge you to make sure you keep your mise en place in shape.

I really think at this point John Kerry is going to lose the election, and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are the reason. The bottom line is that they’re gaining momentum, not losing it, and they’ve successfully forced Kerry to address them, which means that now the media can tell the story of the fight between Kerry and the other veterans rather than just talking about the Swift Boat Veterans as a fringe group that’s attacking him. Responding to them directly has given them stature that they never had before.

The other problem is that they’re making such a huge number of allegations on such a wide variety of fronts that most people are bound to believe some of them. And they have advantage of being right at least once, on the Cambodia thing. John Kerry said that the memory of being in Cambodia at Christmas, 1968 was seared into his memory, when it seems apparent that he wasn’t really there. That makes him look like a liar, whether he lied or not.

It’s been a lot of work for me to keep up with the inaccuracies and outright lies from the Swift Boat Vets, and I know that most people aren’t putting in the effort that I am. Unless people do begin to see this group as an unofficial arm of the Bush campaign willing to tell any lie to smear Kerry, I think that Kerry’s campaign is basically over. I’m feeling pretty down today about this.

Someone sent me an email telling me that if you want to find more on Bob Perry (the big Bush donor bankrolling the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth), Google robert perry gop houston.

It seems that BugMeNot has been taken down by its hosting provider, and is looking for new accommodations. It’s also being filtered by some content filtering companies.

Tyler Cowen explains succinctly why growth must be the linchpin of successful economic policy.

The Ninth Circuit US Court held yesterday that P2P software makers Grokster and StreamCast are not liable for copyright infringement by users of their software. The key difference between this software and Napster (which was, of course, smacked down with extreme prejudice) is that Napster used a central server to index files shared on the network, whereas these companies do not. Of course, this ruling just gives the copyright industry a greater incentive to bribe Congress to pass more absurd legislation restricting what kinds of software we can use and write.