ctrl.altered.mind

In Issue 134 of The Embedded Muse, editor Jack Ganssle writes:

I have a beef with many college computer science departments. If one
wanted to be a great novelist the English Department would require
that this person knew how to read, and would have insured he’d read
many great novels before starting one of his own. The Music
Department would assume an aspiring composer had listened to lots and
lots of music, and read many scores. Yet CS Departments take a
different tack: Here’s how a for loop works. Your assignment: write
some code. As a result most graduates are forced to invent their own
styles and adopt some half-baked (if any) process.

Programming students should read great code. A lot of it.
Professional developers should read great code. A lot of it. We can
and must be constantly learning.

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A letter from Ryan Bodanyi, Coordinator, Students for Bhopal :

Some of you may have heard of Dow’s “Hu” or “Human Element” campaign; some of you may not. It’s a $30 million effort to make people believe that Dow cares deeply about the people that it’s killing. You can see it for yourself, if you haven’t already in the pages of Time or National Geographic. Thanks to YouTube, you can also watch it for yourself – Dow produced an extravagant 90-second commercial (most commercials are 30 seconds) to promote its new public relations campaign.

Is Dow having trouble coming to terms with its identity? Absolutely not – it’s been a cold-blooded killer for years, all over the world. Instead, this ad campaign is the cold and calculating product of Dow’s effort to continue killing without consequence. Killing with consequence is far less profitable, and Dow is nothing if not profitable. In 2005, Dow enjoyed revenues of $46 billion and profits – profits alone, mind you – of $4.5 billion. $30 million seems a small price to pay to hide the bodies.

Yet the bodies continue to accumulate in Bhopal and elsewhere, as Dow steadfastly refuses to spend anything to clean up its killing fields. $30 million to make you forget the lives Dow isn’t saving with those same dollars.
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Paul Dolton promises the most exotic carwash in the world, which will run up a tab to the tune of $10,000. Small change, if you’ve just bought yourself a new set of wheels from this list. The materials for the wash don’t come cheap either, with a tub of carnauba car wax costing about $12,000 (there are just two of these in Britain).

Link to Google Video

.. and to think I have to keep myself from running out of quarters for my carwash.

(via Autoblog)