Slashdot Mirror

Thanks for the links -- I hadn't read either of those. Illinois Tool Works doesn't give us anything about inherent limitations on licenses that limit copyright, right? It looks like it's just about limitations on bundling where a party controls the market. While Microsoft surely does, there isn't any bundling going on here, is there?

Eldred is interesting, and you're right that my argument probably won't work with the current court, but it doesn't totally close the door:

"Congress passed the CTEA in light of demographic, economic, and technological changes, and rationally credited projections that longer terms would encourage copyright holders to invest in the restoration and public distribution of their works [...] In sum, we find that the CTEA is a rational enactment; we are not at liberty to second-guess congressional determinations and policy judgments of this order, however debatable or arguably unwise they may be."

Basically, the court can only perform rational basis review, since there isn't something wrong with the way Congress passed the law. Eldred hoped that the "limited time" dodge would make the extension for existing works per se invalid, and so didn't really get into the "is it rational?" argument. If the issue comes up again, I would go straight for the heart of it: there's just no way this law rationally serves its purpose.

Actually, I stole that idea from Lawrence Lessig. :) "HL: In your argument before the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy asks you for empirical evidence that extending copyright has impeded cultural progress. You keep the focus on a point of Constitutional law, though you now regret not citing such evidence. If you could do it over again, what empirical evidence would you give Justice Kennedy and the Court?"

Etc: http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2006/01/the_second _life.html

We've been using the C version of BDB (via Guy Decoux's Ruby extension) as a data store for indi; it's been working pretty well. It doesn't take up much space, either, so it's easy to fit it on a flash drive.

Of course, on the backend we use PostgreSQL. Rails + PostgreSQL is good stuff.

Sun will be forced to open source Java sooner than you think. Take a look at this article by Danese Cooper in which she says: "Today at JavaONE my pal Geir Magnusson is announcing that Harmony has full support for SWING/AWT. This is really big news if you're following Harmony from the sidelines (as Sun has been doing)." If SWING has been implemented fully, I think a fully compatible open source Java is very nearby.

Wow. Such forethought. This coming from the man that proclaimed that the internet was only a fad.

I thought the computer was supposed to end the "Paper and Pen" era.

"A study by the University of California in Berkeley found that paper consumption in offices has gone up 43% since 1999"

Well, for one thing, it is slower than native code.

Patently false. It has been false for years now. Ever since Chris Rijk published his earth shattering benchmarks. (More recent benchmarks here.)

It's now down to the skill of the programmer. A good programmer will write speedy code, and a bad programmer will write garbage. Who'da'thunk?

For another, its garbage collection has a tendency to result in really bad performance stalls

When was the last time you used Java? 1.1? The modern hotspot JVM uses a generational collector which should NEVER stall during runtime unless it begins running into memory pressure. Go try this game and tell us how many stalls you see. If you think that's too "simple", try this one.

For another, its portability has been hampered by not fully supporting interesting OS features, which means that there are all these OS-specific extensions to add things like audio support,

Is there something wrong with the javax.sound packages? I'm REALLY thinking that you haven't tried Java since 1.1.

They don't integrate well with other apps, don't do a good job of supporting OS services, etc.

Psst!

Finally, Java makes it hard to add debug functionality into your code without a performance hit.

That's just a weak argument. Debugging info can really screw up a codebase and should be removed after debugging. But if you're wedded to the idea, get one of the three billion preprocessors that are available.

The bottom line is that pretty much any compiled language has great advantages over Java.

The bottom line is that you haven't used Java since the days of 1.1, but you feel that you're fully qualified to make statements about a platform you know nothing about. Whether you intend to or not, you are trolling, sir. So I would ask you to stop spreading FUD by not commenting on Java until you are again familiar with the platform.

Our democracy is threatened not by over-active imaginations of slashdot participants, but by the under-active frontal lobes of the solid 30% of this country that refuses to recognize that the current administration practices a wanton disregard for the law.

The people kicking in your door probably won't club your kids with a baton, but they will spirit you off under cover of night to a place where nobody knows you've been taken. You will be denied access to an attorney, and in some cases your very existence as a "detainee" will be denied.

There have already been credible accounts of innocent people arrested and detained secretly, and even relocated to foreign countries to be tortured. I'm referring here to well documented cases (including those starting out as simple mistaken identity), not to the various claims of people whose stories don't add up and who were likely "terrorist wannabes" who didn't get connected in time.

Not so Extraordinary

Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake (German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition')

Torture the Innocent, Release the Most Wanted

Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs

We are stepping out onto the slippery slope to fascism, and 30% of the country continues to support it, perhaps because admitting that we are doing wrong things would force them to re-assess their entire FOX News spun, Rush Limbaugh polished, Ann Coulter ass-fucking-the-undereducated-and-poor-and-getting -them-to-like-it world view.

When I was working on the PMD plugin for JDeveloper I had some problems getting it up to date for JDev 10.1.3. But a couple of Oracle guys monitor the JDev forums and were quite helpful in sorting through the updates.

End result was that I was able to get rid of a bunch of my old JList hackery and just use their built in CompilerPage component; good times. Screenshots are here...

Blue Security Blog

Netcraft Article on DDoS

My original article on the attack 4/1/06

The DDoS started with invalid PHP requests. I think the spammer is using a combination of methods to disable Blue Security now, but that's just an assumption. The question is, how long are spammers going to focus their efforts on the counter attack? Using their resources to attack Blue Security means less resources to send profitable spam. The spammer wants me to unregister from Blue Security's site, but at the same time, disabled it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to cave in to extortion. Right now I'm happy to have Gmail intercepting spam so others don't have to deal with it. I guess you can say I and the rest of the Blue Security community are drawing fire for the rest of ya'll.

Actually, I thought that the piece on avatar racism in Second Life that was linked to in the article was more interesting.

...I'd say that Amazon is starting to turn into one of these. Their new S3 storage service is a very nifty thing; I've seen folks using it all over the place.

We're using it for the indi downloads and it's been working great - especially when paired with the Ruby API.

What exactly was so irritating about Doubleclick that Google doesn't do? At this point Google sells text ads (including for your parked domains), image ads, and Flash ads. Google doesn't seem likely to follow the trend Doubleclick did into pop-up and pop-under ads, but there's very little to stop Google Adsense subscribers from intrusively slapping Google ads all over their web sites just like they did with Doubleclick ads.

The only difference between Doubleclick and Google is that people trust Google enough to archive their personal e-mail, search histories, and browsing histories (Web Accelerator, wi-fi hotspots) forever. That just don't sit right with me.

...is Amazon's excellent S3 storage service. We're using it for the indi downloads and it works great - they handle the big files while our Rails site serves up the site itself. Also, it's easy to automate since they've got a nice Ruby API. Good times.

The standard client download on the MS website only supports the old RDP protocol. Although I don't have my notes anymore, I found this blog that has a solution that sounds vaguely familiar.

We're using PostgreSQL as the indi backend; it handles requests both from a Jabber server and a Ruby on Rails web site and web service using the native extension (i.e., written in C) driver.

It's working great so far, and since ejabberd has native integration with PostgreSQL, we'll be able to switch to that pretty easily.

> How corporate involvement affects real open source projects

I dunno. PMD has certainly benefitted greatly from corporate involvement; the reason that the most recent release included support for checking JSP/JSF code was that a corporate-sponsored developer put together a nice JavaCC grammar and did all the integration work.

As the project lead, I'm happy that PMD has new functionality and a larger audience, not least of all because that may lead to more book sales! One can but hope, anyhow.

> If you want something with all the features, try PostgreSQL.

Right on. I'm using it for a Rails/Jabber backend; very solid.

Exactly. Speed is much more important than patents. We see that all the time in the telecom and software industries too. No one even has the time to seek patents on the good stuff anymore, because by the time the application goes through, there's something new on the market anyway. Then again, we have a functioning patent office that doesn't just rubberstamp anything that comes their way. Prior art searches take a while.

But, what if you infringe on someone else's patent? Since you're in such a hurry to patent everything, how can you take the time to do proper prior art searches? In fact, that's what we hear from VCs; they are wary to enter new fields exactly because they don't know the patent risks involved.

Steve Andriole, a venture capitalist who was most recently CTO of Safeguard Scientifics, offered the perspective of a VC investing in software and information technology. "In a way, intellectual property and patents are in the eye of the beholder," he said, noting that while entrepreneurs looking to raise capital often ascribe great value to their patents and patents pending, venture capitalists are not that impressed. "In the thousands of pitches I experienced personally, patents were considered one of the least important factors. Entrepreneurs would talk about the need to seize the marketplace within six months, but they didn't realize that this makes the patent process pretty much irrelevant," said Andriole, referring to the fact that patents take years to receive.
Why High-Tech Firms Can't Afford to Ignore Patents

> Expert's Exchange requires you to scroll three screens past advertisements
> from the actual question to the answers (when they're actually available without
> registering, that is). Not to mention the disgusting IntelliTXT ads they insert
> into the actual text...

So true. They've gotten to the point that when I google a problem, I immediately scroll past the experts-exchange.com links to try to find a real solution.

And I'd never post anything there; if I figure out anything interesting about Rails or Ruby or PMD or whatever I just blog it.

Reading your post (and wholeheartedly agrreing), I have to offer this link: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2 005/11/the_zen_estheti.html

It's a comparison of presentation "styles" of Jobs and Gates (the 2nd and 3rd picture say it all, really).

We're using it for indi with a PostgreSQL back end. It's working pretty well so far, even with a Jabber server hitting the same database.

For those doing a FC4 to FC5 upgrade, here are some notes that may be helpful.

with some scanning problems at that:

Skype RICO complaint part 1

Skype RICO complaint part 2

with some scanning problems at that:

Skype RICO complaint part 1

Skype RICO complaint part 2

PostgreSQL is certainly working fine as a Ruby on Rails and Jabber backend for us... maybe I'll worry about it once we get up over a few terabytes, but for now, it's more than capable of handling everything we throw at it.

And good books keep coming out for it, too, which is reassuring.

PostgreSQL is certainly working fine as a Ruby on Rails and Jabber backend for us... maybe I'll worry about it once we get up over a few terabytes, but for now, it's more than capable of handling everything we throw at it.

And good books keep coming out for it, too, which is reassuring.

...coauthored an excellent book on PostgreSQL that was just published by Apress. The title makes it sound like it'd be a bit light, but it takes you all the way up to writing stored procedures, writing C programs that hit the database, using all the utilities, and so forth. I'm using PostgreSQL as a Jabber backend and the book has already proved useful.

Too bad they didn't talk about hitting PostgreSQL from Ruby... but since most folks are using ActiveRecord to do that, it's probably not a big deal. And if you use the Ruby/C client, it's quite snappy.

...coauthored an excellent book on PostgreSQL that was just published by Apress. The title makes it sound like it'd be a bit light, but it takes you all the way up to writing stored procedures, writing C programs that hit the database, using all the utilities, and so forth. I'm using PostgreSQL as a Jabber backend and the book has already proved useful.

Too bad they didn't talk about hitting PostgreSQL from Ruby... but since most folks are using ActiveRecord to do that, it's probably not a big deal. And if you use the Ruby/C client, it's quite snappy.

But when the US government does something, almost nobody says a word.

Pay closer attention, then. And those are just the conservatives who are normally supportive of Bush...

Yup, right on... would just need a Ruby extension that talks to it. Or I guess you could just exec it with a commands file, although that seems a bit clunkier.

OK, Googled, looks like someone's written one, good times.

Little domain specific languages are handy things... I've been doing a lot with JavaCC lately; powerful stuff...

I did some nice charts for the indi admin pages; worked out really nicely thanks to Gruff + RMagick.

I did have a spot of trouble getting the fonts working at first, but once that was fixed, it was easy to create some nice charts with very little code.

Thanks for the fascinating conversation, Slashdotters. Two quick corrections:

- My name is actually "Wagner James Au".
- I'm still blogging about Second Life as an embedded journalist at http://nwn.blogs.com/, though now on a commercial basis with Federated Media, the kids what bring you Boing Boing, Metafilter, and other juicy goodness.

Lot of worthwhile points worth discussing, but rather than wade in too deep, let me hit at one in particular:

> The author is trying to posit an implied (but untrue) connection between previews
> allowing mediocre games to sell and all games 'sucking.' Mediocre stuff sells in
> every entertainment industry that exists -- if only the best games sold then the
> market would be too risky to enter.

Actually, I didn't say all games sucked. What I did say is that due to previews, the few games which don't suck have to compete for shelf space with the 95% of games that do. Preview hype, not game quality, is what guarantees retail store shelf space--especially if the game is backed by a large publisher and/or it's connected to a known brand. And since the average consumer only buys the games that are on the retail shelf, they are far more prone to walk away with a shitty game. This means good games are artificially disadvantaged on the market, which is not open, and it's substantially different in this sense from all the other mediums. A good book or movie can cut through the clutter by word of mouth or good reviews, while it's far more difficult for the same thing to happen with a game, because all the good reviews in the world won't help a game that isn't even on the shelf in the first place.

You might want to check this out: http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/02/use _an_illegal_.html

It's an old link, you can probably find a better one, but, I think that one's good enough for the gist of it. If you don't want to check the link, the basic synopsis of it is that the author named Anton Tomov of one tool for PocketPCs INTENTIONALLY placed malicious responses into the code for the program should it detect that it was an illegal copy. He claimed to not have done this, but, then later it seems as if people proved that he did if I recall (there's a post on the forum as I recall, and if I remember correctly, he basically just kept dodging the question without really answering beyond an initial claim.) All I can say is, though by now it's probably fixed if there was such a thing, I'm sure as heck not installing that software on my PPC, legit copy or no. I can't afford to loose the data I keep on it, and a hard reset is a real pain since I have to restore a backup (which obviously wouldn't be possible if the backup is wiped out and someone mentioned that it may possibly wipe flash card too.)

Actually, I would be interested to know what happened in the end with that case. I may have to look it up later when I have more time. Looks to me like he got away with it though, his website is up and going strong and the particular program that was in question is still selling. Back then I didn't even have a PocketPC, so didn't care much beyond the interest in the claim that someone had actually resorted to such things. The fact is, the EULAs of most software say, when translated from Lawyerese to English "We are not responsible if our software screws up your system and we won't replace any drives ruined by our copy protection methods. If you don't like that we have full immunity, too bad, you'll just have to not run the software you just bought. Also, by running the software, you agree to give up your legal rights to make duplicates (see DMCA) or anything else we don't like." Actually, from prior discussions on such matters with some people who know a bit more about the legalities of it all, I have the impression they can't TRULY make you give up your rights or get away with causing damage, but, by making the user agree that they are immune, the user will probably not even think of sueing them.

public boolean foo(int x) {
  if (x>2) {
    return true;
  } else {
    return false;
  }
}

Lots more on all that in my book - there's a downloadable free chapter there on using static analysis to improve JUnit tests if you want to get a feel for things.

Right on! And with PostgreSQL as a Jabber backend, it scales quite well.

It's certainly working out fine for indi so far... routing multiplayer hearts games over Jabber, good times!

There are huge gaps in open source, it will be a long time before open source becomes popular for what we call mission critical database applications.

If you want a high ranking for "charts and graphs with Ruby On Rails", why not just blog about it? Is it really that hard to write something?

You're right : there is confusion and translation errors here.

China is not setting up a new TLD. They are just adding domains under the well known .cn domain, like .mil.cn for their military stuff. They also added domains like ".com.cn", but with chineese characters for the ".com" part. And they continue using the currend TLD servers, controlled by ICANN.

Thanks Technorati for helping me find more informed bloggers. Read it yourself:

• China's alt. root? Panic over confusion
• China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation
• China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation / comment

I work with a Brit and she hates Monty Python. She thinks they are the most unfunny "comedy" troupe around. Of course, she also says I have an accent. That said, I'll be watching. By the way, I now have can of Spamalot and a few bottles of Monty Python's Holy Ail. I'm all set for a night of taunting.

...from these things since no one entity owns it. I'm running a Jabber server with PostgreSQL as the data store and it's been quite solid... good times.

Sheesh. This was more a "Microsoft Suck0rs, Linux RULZ" article. Very little in the way of actual content and analysis. How did something like this make it on Slashdot? Ooops never mind

It is interesting that they are purchasing companies that almost fully control the software but give it away free as open source: Sleepycat, JBoss, and Zend. Oracle's purchase months ago of InnoDB used by MySQL was a similar move. What they are _not_ getting involved in is software that is community controlled, like PostgreSQL or Linux, because it much harder to see how a purchase would allow tight control of the software, resulting in revenue.

Two things:

1) Don't use VC's as a Stalking Horse. It's considered poor form.

2) If you need someone else to tell you whether your business will be able to make money or not then you probably don't understand what you are doing well enough to actually succeed.

Actually both Saab and Volvo are no longer independent companies anymore but bought up by the larger companies. GM owns Saab and Ford owns Volvo.

Here is a table that shows which company own which brand:

http://carscarscars.blogs.com/index/2004/03/who_ow ns_who.html

Argh, so much for my JBuilder duplicate code detection plugin. Such is life...

One nice thing about Rails is that the unit tests are built in. Rather than having to go out and use JUnitWebTest or whatever, once you start writing Rails code the basic tests are generated for you and writing new tests involves fairly readable code, like this:

assert_redirected_to :action => "thanks_for_applying"
follow_redirect
assert_res ponse :success

It seems like the folks who are writing Rails are aware of the whole web development picture; not just getting a web app up but also making sure it's well tested. It's certainly making RubyForge much busier...

Oh, and, book plug!

PC & Defects in Reality Testing: Links

For the sake of convenience I am putting links to all the "PC & Defects in Reality Testing" posts:
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III: "Words Matter"
Part IV
Part V
Part VI

Part I: The Development of Reality Testing

[I apologize for the length of this post. This is a very complicated topic and the processes I describe are highly relevant to the ways in which PC damages rationality. The rest of the series can still be appreciated without reading this entire post, however.]

In order to fully understand how the ideology of political correctness traumatically interferes with the ability to adequately assess and describe reality, it is necessary to have some understanding of how it is that we learn to interpret the information pouring into our senses and create an understandable and predictable picture of reality.

When an infant is born, he has already been subject to some impingement from the external environment, though the violence of sensation has been mitigated by the mother's body and the womb cushioning him from the world. The intrauterine state of being of the unborn child becomes a template for the ubiquitous fantasy of living blissfully in union with an all powerful, all gratifying mother. At birth, the infant is violently expelled from the womb and assaulted by the world. However, his neonatal nervous system is incapable of comprehending the flood of sensory input. Infants can spend up to 20 hours a day in REM sleep, a state often thought of as being devoted to mental housecleaning, ie the brain is making connections (neural networks), discarding memory traces that do not fit with pre-existing data, and incorporating new inputs that have special (affective) relevance. During the earliest days to months, when the child is overwhelmed by sensations (internal and external) he turns to the mother, who picks him up and nurtures him, recreating a version of the protected, gratifying womb, at her breast.

Later on, during the process of separation-individuation, the child comes to recognize his separateness from the primitive, all encompassing, all gratifying mother. [I have described the process in some more detail here; scroll about half way down for my discussion of the work of Margaret Mahler.]

Once a child has achieved enough independence to recognize the existence of an external, frustrating reality, he must come to terms with the loss of his position as the (fantasied) center of the mother's universe.

He learns that he is not even the most important person in his mother's life. She prefers his father who protects and cares for the family and mediates the entire family's interaction with the environment, ie reality. It is the relationship with the father, with whom the child identifies, that forms the basis of the relationship with reality. The father is the child's rival for the affections of the mother as well as an object of love and nurturing for the child. (There are different schools of thought about what determines the eventual renunciation of the mother as the primary object of affection; this will be important in understanding the genesis of Political Correctness and I will expand on it in a future post.)

How can this developmental process, from experiencing the self/world as a blissfully, undifferentiated mass to the ability to recognize and manipulate external reality, be derailed? Since a large part of our

PC & Defects in Reality Testing: Links

For the sake of convenience I am putting links to all the "PC & Defects in Reality Testing" posts:
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III: "Words Matter"
Part IV
Part V
Part VI

Part I: The Development of Reality Testing

[I apologize for the length of this post. This is a very complicated topic and the processes I describe are highly relevant to the ways in which PC damages rationality. The rest of the series can still be appreciated without reading this entire post, however.]

In order to fully understand how the ideology of political correctness traumatically interferes with the ability to adequately assess and describe reality, it is necessary to have some understanding of how it is that we learn to interpret the information pouring into our senses and create an understandable and predictable picture of reality.

When an infant is born, he has already been subject to some impingement from the external environment, though the violence of sensation has been mitigated by the mother's body and the womb cushioning him from the world. The intrauterine state of being of the unborn child becomes a template for the ubiquitous fantasy of living blissfully in union with an all powerful, all gratifying mother. At birth, the infant is violently expelled from the womb and assaulted by the world. However, his neonatal nervous system is incapable of comprehending the flood of sensory input. Infants can spend up to 20 hours a day in REM sleep, a state often thought of as being devoted to mental housecleaning, ie the brain is making connections (neural networks), discarding memory traces that do not fit with pre-existing data, and incorporating new inputs that have special (affective) relevance. During the earliest days to months, when the child is overwhelmed by sensations (internal and external) he turns to the mother, who picks him up and nurtures him, recreating a version of the protected, gratifying womb, at her breast.

Later on, during the process of separation-individuation, the child comes to recognize his separateness from the primitive, all encompassing, all gratifying mother. [I have described the process in some more detail here; scroll about half way down for my discussion of the work of Margaret Mahler.]

Once a child has achieved enough independence to recognize the existence of an external, frustrating reality, he must come to terms with the loss of his position as the (fantasied) center of the mother's universe.

He learns that he is not even the most important person in his mother's life. She prefers his father who protects and cares for the family and mediates the entire family's interaction with the environment, ie reality. It is the relationship with the father, with whom the child identifies, that forms the basis of the relationship with reality. The father is the child's rival for the affections of the mother as well as an object of love and nurturing for the child. (There are different schools of thought about what determines the eventual renunciation of the mother as the primary object of affection; this will be important in understanding the genesis of Political Correctness and I will expand on it in a future post.)

How can this developmental process, from experiencing the self/world as a blissfully, undifferentiated mass to the ability to recognize and manipulate external reality, be derailed? Since a large part of our

PC & Defects in Reality Testing: Links

For the sake of convenience I am putting links to all the "PC & Defects in Reality Testing" posts:
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III: "Words Matter"
Part IV
Part V
Part VI

Part I: The Development of Reality Testing

[I apologize for the length of this post. This is a very complicated topic and the processes I describe are highly relevant to the ways in which PC damages rationality. The rest of the series can still be appreciated without reading this entire post, however.]

In order to fully understand how the ideology of political correctness traumatically interferes with the ability to adequately assess and describe reality, it is necessary to have some understanding of how it is that we learn to interpret the information pouring into our senses and create an understandable and predictable picture of reality.

When an infant is born, he has already been subject to some impingement from the external environment, though the violence of sensation has been mitigated by the mother's body and the womb cushioning him from the world. The intrauterine state of being of the unborn child becomes a template for the ubiquitous fantasy of living blissfully in union with an all powerful, all gratifying mother. At birth, the infant is violently expelled from the womb and assaulted by the world. However, his neonatal nervous system is incapable of comprehending the flood of sensory input. Infants can spend up to 20 hours a day in REM sleep, a state often thought of as being devoted to mental housecleaning, ie the brain is making connections (neural networks), discarding memory traces that do not fit with pre-existing data, and incorporating new inputs that have special (affective) relevance. During the earliest days to months, when the child is overwhelmed by sensations (internal and external) he turns to the mother, who picks him up and nurtures him, recreating a version of the protected, gratifying womb, at her breast.

Later on, during the process of separation-individuation, the child comes to recognize his separateness from the primitive, all encompassing, all gratifying mother. [I have described the process in some more detail here; scroll about half way down for my discussion of the work of Margaret Mahler.]

Once a child has achieved enough independence to recognize the existence of an external, frustrating reality, he must come to terms with the loss of his position as the (fantasied) center of the mother's universe.

He learns that he is not even the most important person in his mother's life. She prefers his father who protects and cares for the family and mediates the entire family's interaction with the environment, ie reality. It is the relationship with the father, with whom the child identifies, that forms the basis of the relationship with reality. The father is the child's rival for the affections of the mother as well as an object of love and nurturing for the child. (There are different schools of thought about what determines the eventual renunciation of the mother as the primary object of affection; this will be important in understanding the genesis of Political Correctness and I will expand on it in a future post.)

How can this developmental process, from experiencing the self/world as a blissfully, undifferentiated mass to the ability to recognize and manipulate external reality, be derailed? Since a large part of our

PC & Defects in Reality Testing: Links

For the sake of convenience I am putting links to all the "PC & Defects in Reality Testing" posts:
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III: "Words Matter"
Part IV
Part V
Part VI

Part I: The Development of Reality Testing

[I apologize for the length of this post. This is a very complicated topic and the processes I describe are highly relevant to the ways in which PC damages rationality. The rest of the series can still be appreciated without reading this entire post, however.]

In order to fully understand how the ideology of political correctness traumatically interferes with the ability to adequately assess and describe reality, it is necessary to have some understanding of how it is that we learn to interpret the information pouring into our senses and create an understandable and predictable picture of reality.

When an infant is born, he has already been subject to some impingement from the external environment, though the violence of sensation has been mitigated by the mother's body and the womb cushioning him from the world. The intrauterine state of being of the unborn child becomes a template for the ubiquitous fantasy of living blissfully in union with an all powerful, all gratifying mother. At birth, the infant is violently expelled from the womb and assaulted by the world. However, his neonatal nervous system is incapable of comprehending the flood of sensory input. Infants can spend up to 20 hours a day in REM sleep, a state often thought of as being devoted to mental housecleaning, ie the brain is making connections (neural networks), discarding memory traces that do not fit with pre-existing data, and incorporating new inputs that have special (affective) relevance. During the earliest days to months, when the child is overwhelmed by sensations (internal and external) he turns to the mother, who picks him up and nurtures him, recreating a version of the protected, gratifying womb, at her breast.

Later on, during the process of separation-individuation, the child comes to recognize his separateness from the primitive, all encompassing, all gratifying mother. [I have described the process in some more detail here; scroll about half way down for my discussion of the work of Margaret Mahler.]

Once a child has achieved enough independence to recognize the existence of an external, frustrating reality, he must come to terms with the loss of his position as the (fantasied) center of the mother's universe.

He learns that he is not even the most important person in his mother's life. She prefers his father who protects and cares for the family and mediates the entire family's interaction with the environment, ie reality. It is the relationship with the father, with whom the child identifies, that forms the basis of the relationship with reality. The father is the child's rival for the affections of the mother as well as an object of love and nurturing for the child. (There are different schools of thought about what determines the eventual renunciation of the mother as the primary object of affection; this will be important in understanding the genesis of Political Correctness and I will expand on it in a future post.)

How can this developmental process, from experiencing the self/world as a blissfully, undifferentiated mass to the ability to recognize and manipulate external reality, be derailed? Since a large part of our

PC & Defects in Reality Testing: Links

For the sake of convenience I am putting links to all the "PC & Defects in Reality Testing" posts:
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III: "Words Matter"
Part IV
Part V
Part VI

Part I: The Development of Reality Testing

[I apologize for the length of this post. This is a very complicated topic and the processes I describe are highly relevant to the ways in which PC damages rationality. The rest of the series can still be appreciated without reading this entire post, however.]

In order to fully understand how the ideology of political correctness traumatically interferes with the ability to adequately assess and describe reality, it is necessary to have some understanding of how it is that we learn to interpret the information pouring into our senses and create an understandable and predictable picture of reality.

When an infant is born, he has already been subject to some impingement from the external environment, though the violence of sensation has been mitigated by the mother's body and the womb cushioning him from the world. The intrauterine state of being of the unborn child becomes a template for the ubiquitous fantasy of living blissfully in union with an all powerful, all gratifying mother. At birth, the infant is violently expelled from the womb and assaulted by the world. However, his neonatal nervous system is incapable of comprehending the flood of sensory input. Infants can spend up to 20 hours a day in REM sleep, a state often thought of as being devoted to mental housecleaning, ie the brain is making connections (neural networks), discarding memory traces that do not fit with pre-existing data, and incorporating new inputs that have special (affective) relevance. During the earliest days to months, when the child is overwhelmed by sensations (internal and external) he turns to the mother, who picks him up and nurtures him, recreating a version of the protected, gratifying womb, at her breast.

Later on, during the process of separation-individuation, the child comes to recognize his separateness from the primitive, all encompassing, all gratifying mother. [I have described the process in some more detail here; scroll about half way down for my discussion of the work of Margaret Mahler.]

Once a child has achieved enough independence to recognize the existence of an external, frustrating reality, he must come to terms with the loss of his position as the (fantasied) center of the mother's universe.

He learns that he is not even the most important person in his mother's life. She prefers his father who protects and cares for the family and mediates the entire family's interaction with the environment, ie reality. It is the relationship with the father, with whom the child identifies, that forms the basis of the relationship with reality. The father is the child's rival for the affections of the mother as well as an object of love and nurturing for the child. (There are different schools of thought about what determines the eventual renunciation of the mother as the primary object of affection; this will be important in understanding the genesis of Political Correctness and I will expand on it in a future post.)

How can this developmental process, from experiencing the self/world as a blissfully, undifferentiated mass to the ability to recognize and manipulate external reality, be derailed? Since a large part of our