Posts

OK, debate fans. We’re back at it tonight. Here’s a link to the popup window. I’ll start the live blog roughly 30 minutes before the debate kicks off at 9pm Eastern. The big question for tonight is whether we’ll see the openly angry McCain or the barely hiding his anger McCain.

Andrew Sullivan makes a really good point in this blog post. It’s about politics, but it applies to, well, everything: Of course, without Margaret Thatcher (or her equivalent, Rudy Giuliani), there would be no Bloomberg. The “small c” conservative point here, it seems to me, is that policy should reflect changing times. People forget that Reagan’s attack on government was premised on a particular time and place: America 1980. Ditto Thatcher in Britain 1979. ...

For a long time the accepted optimal strategy for the prisoner’s dilemma was tit for tat. I don’t know if Barack Obama is a student of game theory, but his campaign pursued that strategy throughout. He doesn’t hit at his opponent until they have hit him, but once he’s been hit, his campaign always hits back. Over the past couple of days, Sarah Palin has repeatedly claimed that Obama pals around with terrorists. Today, the response. ...

Just wanted to flag two blog posts I’ve seen in the past 24 hours that are on the same topic – transparency. First, John Gruber explains how Apple is hurting itself by not establishing clear rules on which iPhone applications can be sold in the iTunes store. Anyone who’s interested in building a platform for developers should read this article. The second is Nate Silver attacking the methodology used by RealClearPolitics in formulating its poll of polls in the Presidential election. RCP changes the composition of it polls without explanation, in what appears to be a partisan fashion. Because they do not hew to any documented methodology, they undermine their own credibility. ...

First, let me say that the lupus walk is Saturday and I’m about halfway to my goal. If you feel so inclined, please donate to the cause, which is important to me personally, and probably to someone you know. Lupus is really not uncommon. I also wanted to talk a little bit about philanthropic giving. Awhile back I basically resolved to start donating money to causes that seem positive to me as soon as I was asked. What I realized is that when I’m asked to give a donation, if I don’t donate immediately I generally do not donate at all. Even if I fully intend to go back and make a donation, I rarely seem to follow through. ...

We’re on again for live debate blogging tonight at 9pm (Eastern). Last week’s trial run was great fun, and tonight’s debate is, of course, the event of the century. Please join in the fun! Here’s a popup link for the live blog (starts at 8). I’ll embed the actual live blog around the start time of the debate.

As a software developer, I love version control, and I love bug tracking systems. I honestly don’t know how anyone got any work done without them. I’ve got Subversion set up with a post-commit hook that reports my commits to FogBugz. This enables FogBugz to keep track of which code changes are associated with each issue. If, a year from now, I want to go back and see exactly which changes I made to fix a certain bug, FogBugz has that information. It’s really cool. ...

I loved this quote from Warren Buffett: The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard. I’m a big believer that every competition is really against the standards you’ve previously set.