Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at February 17th, 2004

With thanks to the BBC, I link to the following story about the U.S. presidential campaign so far.

As people always seem to be bemoaning the state of the present, I find that a good dose of history tends to give a person a more realistic perspective.

Posted by Jim at February 15th, 2004

I’m already on record as saying that I don’t think cloning is automatically wrong. I just think that it’s impractical and unwise at the moment.

Basically, as I understand it, the number of tries to get a normal clone of an animal is fairly large. I don’t think that it would be responsible to experiment on human beings. A person would have to live for their whole lives with the results of a mistake during their creation.

That being said, I think cloning humans is an inevitability if its possible. Once we get better at cloning animals, people will probably clone monkeys and chimpanzees, some of which are near extinction. Cloning might help save some animals at the expense of some genetic diversity (though with effective use of the techniuque, it might actually encourage genetic diversity). Bearing in mind the relatively small genetic difference between chimps and humans, it seems likely that a good understanding of one will help with the other.

Even beyond animal cloning, the benefits of stem cell research will likely continue to enourage the development of human cloning techniques–and probably more quickly. The possibility of slowing or even stopping Multiple Schlerosis among other genetic problems motivates people strongly.

As such, I think that we’re marching inevitably toward cloning. Not all countries will ban it. Beyond that, it seems possible that banning it in some countries will encourage it in countries with less restrictive laws.

As such, I suspect that banning cloning either for stem cells or reproduction is useless. Better to educate people about it so that it can be used responsibly.

As for exactly what a responsible use of cloning is… Well… I don’t have all the details on that.

I need to be educated too.

Posted by Jim at February 14th, 2004

Kristen cuts bread for herself in the kitchen. I, meanwhile, am beginning to make pancakes for myself and our children.

“Oww!” she says.

“What happened?”

“I cut myself with the knife.”

I survey the scene. She is still holding both the knife and the bread. The cut isn’t bad.

“I’ve done that myself,” I say. “Don’t bleed on the bread.”

Posted by Jim at February 12th, 2004

As I understand it, a scientist has recently cloned a human embryo.

It brings up a lot of issues. The scientist hopes the knowlege won’t be used for human cloning but seems perfectly happy with the idea that the embryo might be harvested for its stem cells.

Personally I find the idea of cloning a person less problematic than I find creating a human embryo to use as stem cells. Granted, cloning a person isn’t practical or moral at the moment owing to the potential for permanent damage and the very low likelihood of success. A clone, however, is basically a twin.

Theraputic cloning opens more disturbing issues for me. It uses human embryos as material for healing people. As such, one might argue that harvesting embryos for stem cells is comparable to creating human beings for parts.

The possibilities that stem cell research opens up sound wonderful and I’d like to see them pursued somehow, but at a gut level, I don’t like the idea of using embryos to do it.

Posted by Jim at February 12th, 2004

Owing to the fact that XML is constantly used in distributed computing, I should probably be more interested in XML than I am.

Ed directed people to an article that seems to seems to indicate that RSS doesn’t always adhere to the standards of XML and there’s some risk that this may become a de facto standard due to use.

I should probably have understood more of the article than I did. I’ve recently survived 2 three hour lectures on XML. That being said, I haven’t used it very much.

All I can say is that I hope RSS adheres to the real standard. The less confusion the better.

Posted by Jim at February 11th, 2004

So anyway, I’m working on the form for Summit on Racism registration.

While I’m working on the form, I have an idea. This is not unusual because I am constantly having ideas. What is unusual is that in this case, it directly related to the project I was working on.

Here’s the observation:
1. The form that we’ve created allows one person to register at a time
2. The form requires a person to register for Summit by means of a credit card.
3. We always get say 10 or so registrations from certain places that are clearly all filled out by the same person. Plus, that person may not be allowed to register by credit card. Company policy may require a check.

So, I mention this to people in charge, thinking that I might be over-analyzing things.

They don’t think I’m overanalyzing things. Instead, they agree with me. Worse, they agree with my solution–creating a new form/script that allows a person to register multiple people for the same address, allowing large groups to do write a check instead of using a credit card.

Can I work extra hours to finish this by Monday at noon? The weekend if necessary?

Ack.

I sure hope it isn’t necessary. If it is, Kristen will be rightfully cranky. Happy Valentine’s day… Have fun at the restaurant… alone.

Posted by Jim at February 10th, 2004

Despite my better judgement, I kind of like PHP and Mysql for building small web applications. Not sure what I’ll think if I ever have to build a large one, but for small apps, it works pretty well.

I really don’t know PHP. At the moment, I’m relying on general knowlege of programming to get me through. Basically, if you know how to program in one language, you can program in almost anything due to the fact that certain things are pretty common (loops, recursion, data structures).

I’m currently working on a small database that supports a conference registration form for work.

With only a few hours effort (and little PHP experience), I’ve been able to set up a database for registration information and I’m fairly far into figuring out how to pass user information to Paypal so that someone doesn’t have to type their name and address twice.

I like the integration between PHP and Mysql that makes dumping sql into the midst of things fairly easy–not to mention handling sessions.

Anyway, I know there are problems with PHP, but they don’t show up in the small amount of work that I’ve done with it. That being said, I may be singing a different tune if I accidentally use register globals and broadcast everyone’s information to the world.

Posted by Jim at February 10th, 2004

Here’s what happens when I don’t enter anything for a day or two… I get mentioned in Nate’s blog.

Thanks, Nate!

Posted by Jim at February 8th, 2004

One thing that randomly irks me about Java is the naming conventions. For example: Swing is the newer version of Java’s user interface library. The older version didn’t go away. It’s just not used as much even though it still serves as the basis for much of the newer stuff.

Thus, the applet class in the old version becomes JApplet in the new. Frame becomes JFrame. Panel becomes JPanel. If you’re familiar with the old name you can get the new name just by adding a “J” to it.

While sensible, it irritates me and grows monotonous very quickly.

I keep on wondering how the person who decided to use this particular convention writes in real life.

I imagine him emailing his girlfriend/wife things like “I JLong to JTouch your JBody.”

P.S. If it somehow happens that this blog entry finds the person who came up with that naming convention, well… I have only one thing to say: No, I do not have a better idea.

Posted by Jim at February 8th, 2004

If your toddler has just figured out how locks work, you should always take your keys along whenever you’re going outside–no matter how short the time you plan to be out there.

Especially when it’s 13 degrees Fahrenheit.

Trust me on this one.