Democracy - the easy way

Canada was the first colony in any empire to extract full democracy from the central power without having to go to war.

-- John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country (p.132)

Definitely enjoying this book.

Democracy - the hard way

The great fear of the founders of the United States was that, having created their country out of a violence that papered over the country's fundamental internal contradictions ... it would break apart again. And it would do so violently. They were right to be afraid, as that was preciely what happened some 75 years later. That original fear of the founders still lies at the heart of nationalism in the United States and still drives the country's idea of citizenship expressed through loyalty.

-- John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country (p.139)

A git-subtree tutorial

Jakub Suder has a nice tutorial on how to use my git-subtree tool to manage git repositories that track other projects in subdirs.

It's quite nicely written, and unlike my own documentation, it has pretty diagrams.

The problem with the iPad is it has no ethernet ports or DVD drive

...just kidding. But those were the main reasons people gave when they decided the MacBook Air wouldn't be successful a couple of years ago.

It's very interesting that in a laptop, those two features are considered critical. In a "tablet," they apparently are not.

This sounds like classic "positioning" in marketing: since you don't know what a table computer is, you don't have expectations. Since you know what a laptop is, you do. I have a MacBook (not Air). I don't remember the last time I used the ethernet port or the DVD drive. But I wouldn't have bought it without them.

Or maybe the difference is just that the tablet is cheap, and the Air was expensive.

Things that are best lost in translation

A clever Toronto lawyer was deep into a technical argument before the Supreme Court. His position was dependent upon a close reading of the legal text and turned on the letter of the law. Suddenly the chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, leaned forward and asked if his argument also worked in French. After all, the law is the law in both languages and a loophole in one tends to evaporate in the other. Only an argument of substance stands up. ... Reality seen through two languages can protect us from the demeaning of justice by technical acrobatics.

-- John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country (p.128)

Parallel with the IETF's "at least two independent and inter-operable implementations" rule.