Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself, especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly to the counsel of the years gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be; and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Copyright © 1927 Max Ehrmann

A new survey of economists New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity finds 94% believe the U.S. should join climate agreements to limit global warming. The Institute’s Michael Livermore commented that “we found that economists really see climate change poses a lot of risk to the economy.” According to the survey, most economists accept the consensus from natural scientists that the planet is warming and humans are to blame. Also, the survey found:

• 91.6% wanted a tax or “cap and trade” system, where polluters buy and sell emission permits, instead of regulation, to cut greenhouse gases.
• 84% agreed the effects of global warming “create significant risks” to the economy, particularly to agriculture, fishing, insurance and health.
• Of the 94.3% who favor the U.S. joining climate agreements to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, 57% say greenhouse-gas cuts should come “regardless of the actions of other countries.”

Even more interesting, yesterday Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said:

”The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money.“

The take-away from this is that whether or not you ”believe in“ global warming, the rest of the civilized world does. And they are rapidly investing in the green economy. So our opinion about the reality or causes of global climate change are irrelevant… unless we want to ”follow“ the rest of the world, we need to get going green! From a competitive standpoint, not doing so would be disastrous to the US economy and ultimately, its strength and security.

Today I released Version 2.1 of DeliciousSQLExport. Nothing earth-shattering, just a couple of bug fixes related to dates and some minor user interface improvements.

President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.
The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”
The committee said it attached special importance to Obama’s vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.
“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play,” the committee said.
Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change.
The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year’s prize.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel’s death.
The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel’s guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize : NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113649365

Today Filemaker, Inc. released Bento 3. One of the major new features is database sharing. For details, see the new features page.

I created my freeware application, Shokado Web Sharing for Bento, precisely because of the lack of sharing capabilities in Bento. Now that Bento has sharing, Shokado may be unnecessary. On the other hand, since Bento sharing is limited to 5 computers, each running Bento, some people might still want a read-only, web sharing solution.

Let me know what you think.

I received the following e-mail from 10 Downing Street today, in response to the petition I signed asking the PM for an apology to Alan Turing, one of Britain’s greatest mathematicians.

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

Comment by “Bronxdude“ posted on http://www.huffingtonpost.com

The average American refuses to accept that the Republican Nation is at war with the working-class, which is why republicans support the status quo and vehemently oppose single-payor healthcare, public education, government oversight, minimum wage hikes, worker rights, access to higher education, middleclass tax relief, and, in general, any legislation that would jeopardize the continuation of a credit-dependent, employer exploited, unhealthy, downtrodden, underpaid, debt-laden, undereducated and permanent class of laborers. Similar to exploited sharecroppers, it’s in the best interest of republicans to keep the working-class hopeless, oppressed, unhealthy, undereducated and debt-laden. Republicans staunchly supported the bailout of Wall Street to protect their own assets, but opposed the bailout out the automobile industry, which employs thousands of middleclass Americans. The republican aristocracy opposes any kind of governmental oversight that will interfere with their pursuit of exploitive capitalism; republicans would like to abolish the Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Interior, Education and The Food and Drug Administration, because these agencies advocate for workers. Just like feudal lords, the Republican Nation requires a formidable army to protect their financial interests, which is why republicans defend unrestrained military spending. According to the CBO, the Iraq War will cost $2.6 trillion over 10 years; health insurance for every American would cost $1.2 trillion over the same period. Republicans want to keep America angrily divided by class and race. Universal health insurance provides hope and would elevate the standard of living for every American, something republicans don’t want.

Well said, bronxdue. I couldn’t agree more.

Good News!

“Missouri ranks third in the nation for new wind power generating capacity, an industry report says.

The state doubled its wind capacity in the second quarter, adding 146 megawatts for a total of 300 megawatts, according to a report released Tuesday by the American Wind Energy Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group.

Texas ranked first.

Missouri topped the list at No. 1 for the state posting the fastest growth in the second quarter, with wind power installations expanded by 90 percent.”

St. Louis Business Journal
Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 4:18pm CDT

Today on C-Span’s Washington Journal, a caller told a story of how he was forced to see numerous doctors at different hospitals in the area in where he lives, some as far as 100 miles away, to get a diagnosis. The caller then faulted health insurance companies for preventing the practice of having “diagnostic tests done under one roof.” “So in essence,” the caller noted, “the insurance companies are the ones controlling what tests you can get, when you get them, how you get them and if they’re accepted or not.”

In a remarkable moment of candor, C-Span’s guest — Republican Congressman Tim Murphy (PA) — agreed:
MURPHY: Yeah and that brings up the point here that with regard to one of our big frustrations with insurance companies is they control the market place, they control what’s done, a lot of times doctors not making the decisions here. And you recognize the frustration.

Watch here:

From ThinkProgress.org

According to this Information Week article (full text below), IT jobs are down, but the unemployment rate is much lower that the overall national rate whoch last week was said to be 9.5%. Good news and bad, I suppose.

The job picture shows IT jobs suffering along with the rest of the economy, but the hemorrhaging appears to have stopped in 2Q.

By Chris Murphy
InformationWeek
July 6, 2009 08:07 AM

The hemorrhaging of IT jobs stopped in the second quarter, as the IT sector added about 44,000 jobs amid a moribund white-collar job market, the latest government surveys show. However, the IT unemployment rate, at 5.5%, remains at its worst mark in five years.
The economy employs about 8% fewer IT professionals than one year ago, a 343,000 job decline, with just under 3.8 million employed today. The analysis is based on Bureau of Labor Statistics household surveys, in which people classify themselves into job types. The BLS recognizes eight IT job categories.

The IT unemployment rate continued to rise, reaching 5.5%, even as the sector added jobs because more people entered the IT workforce, which includes both the employed and the unemployed.

The IT workforce is just over 4 million, including 221,000 unemployed. For management and professional occupations, the unemployment rate is 4.4%. For the economy overall, unemployment rose to 9.5% last month.

IT employment had held up well for the first half of 2008 as the recession began, holding above 4 million jobs, but then starting losing jobs in the third quarter of last year before sinking 6% in the fourth quarter.

The job segments with the biggest second quarter declines compared with a year ago are the two largest IT job segments, computer scientists and system analysts (down 17% from a year ago), and software engineers (down 12%). Programmer jobs are down 5%, and IT managers down 3%.
Broadly, the employment picture suggests IT jobs are suffering along with the rest of the economy, but there doesn’t appear to be the kind of fundamental restructuring that happened in the last recession, when a number of factors including the growth of offshore outsourcing led to the U.S. losing a quarter of programmer jobs.