gcjx update

This weekend saw many minor improvements: a round of “fixme”
removal, some internal cleanups I’d meant to do (e.g., caching the
constant-ness of an expression). I also wrote a couple nice warnings
(unused import and use of a static member in a non-static
context), plus I wrote folding code for constant expressions.

So contrary to my plan I ended up just doing general improvements
instead of working on generics.

Politics

I’ve been following the Richard Clarke story with great interest.
I saw him on Charlie Rose and also I got up Sunday to watch Meet the
Press to see what he had to say. I think he comes off as basically
credible, perhaps at times a bit pompous in delivery. And
occasionally I wish he took a stronger stance, for instance being more
forthright that one reason to write a book is to make money. Why not
admit that? I don’t think it would expose any real conflict of
interest; one can tell the truth and make money. Usually 🙂

Tutu

Last night we saw Desmond Tutu give a speech at the local
basketball stadium. He’s an engaging speaker, quite good at it
really. It was a bit annoying, though, since he talks in terms that I
generally don’t agree with; for instance the idea that some people are
“good” and that we can tell the difference between “good” and “evil”
was a main theme of his talk. Likewise that this is God’s world and
that the evil will “bite the dust ignominiously” — nearly an exact
quote.

The simple dualisms and commandments to be “good” seem simplistic
to me. And after reading The Embodied Mind I constantly come back to
the idea that the core of both materialism and dualism is a kind of
alienation or nihilism. Of course Tutu doesn’t let it go there, but
you can see its thumb print all over contemporary culture.

A statement I’m sure we could also find in Ovid or Catullus, if we
were to look. Sub sole nihil…

Anyway I ended up translating his speech internally into my own
terms, which I suppose is a way of destroying it. But his energy was
very positive — motivational and inspiring. And he did say some
things I agreed with, even philosophically.

Maude

My dog Maude (who is kind of stealthily famous, if that isn’t an
outright contradiction) got in a fight the other day. She got bit and
had to have some surgery. Right now she has some tubes sticking out
of her to let the wounds drain. “Frankendog” is the term that fits
best, she has a pretty disturbing appearance.