Progress has been slow. I’ve been laboring far too long with login and user registration than I should, and haven’t been making much real progress in functionality or anything eminently usable. I feel like I work faster on software projects if I can see things taking shape. I tend to play around with PHPInteractive or making little test pages to try Javascript and database calls.

From his recent NPR interview.

My desire in doing this is two-fold: first, to catalog my own experience and discoveries and leave markers along the path so I can see where I’ve been and where I’ve grown; second, that it may help someone discover some truth. I don’t claim to know all truth, but I believe in Truth, that there is one Truth and a way to this Truth that leads to life and freedom.

What to expect? My writing will probably be rife with quotes from Scripture, because I believe it is absolutely the most important book of all time, for all peoples. This is not something I accept blindly, and I hope to adequately lay out the reasons for faith. In addition, I plan to share some of my questions, doubts, and struggles. I hope that for the most part my train of thought will be consistent, but I admit that’s not always how my mind operates, so there may be some wandering and interjection of related smaller topics. I’ll probably spin some of those off into their own posts.

This is something I really look forward to doing, though the daunting part at the moment is methodically collecting my thoughts and consistently adding resources as I come upon them. If you read any of these posts, or even attempt to follow them as they come, I hope you’ll let me know, as it would be a great incentive for me to concentrate efforts on this endeavor.

By the way, these will be filed under the “Big Questions” category.

China appears on track to forge a modern military by 2020, a rapid buildup that could be potentially destabilising to the Asia-Pacific region, the Pentagon has said.

So let me get this straight: a country that’s almost a decade away from being even “modern” is according to many already a threat to our national security; and competition (from our biggest trading partner, no less) to absolute U.S. dominance in far-flung seas is “destabilizing”.

I find it interesting that the U.S. government’s encroachment into foreign affairs, from France to Japan and Mexico to Chile, preceded its expansion into private, domestic matters. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson really started us down the path of global military dominance, even if their intentions were not so ignoble as the outcome. Yet it was not until a generation later that the federal government took more interest in domestic affairs that had until that point been left to local and state governments or – just imagine! – didn’t involve a government at all – things like business regulations and care for the elderly.

If we want the government out of our lives, we should start by stripping away our national leaders’ influence over world affairs. After all, how can a government that sees itself as the leader (or perhaps ruler) of the free world not feel it has the wisdom to direct our day-to-day lives?

Unfortunately, the industry is pretending that it has everything to do with that. What they’re really looking for are laws not to build back up the gate of copyright — but to take us back into history, whereby the walls of limitations are back up and people have to go through the gates. That era is over. But what’s truly amazing is that we still think the gatekeepers matter here. They don’t.

Made me think of this video

People can consume only what has been produced. The great problem of our age is precisely this: Who should determine what is to be produced and consumed, the people or the state, the consumers themselves or a paternal government? If one decides in favor of the consumers, one chooses the market economy. If one decides in favor of the government, one chooses socialism. There is no third solution. The determination of the purpose for which each unit of the various factors of production is to be employed cannot be divided….

There is no use in fooling ourselves. Our present taxation policy is headed toward a complete equalization of wealth and incomes and thereby toward socialism. This trend can be reversed only by the cognition of the role that profit and loss and the resulting inequality of wealth and incomes play in the operation of the market economy. People must learn that the accumulation of wealth by the successful conduct of business is the corollary of the improvement of their own standard of living and vice versa. They must realize that bigness in business is not an evil, but both the cause and effect of the fact that they themselves enjoy all those amenities whose enjoyment is called the “American way of life.”

The whole article is not very long. I’d urge reading it. It is as relevant today as it was 56 years ago.

The freedom of individual pursuit — as long as one stays away from politics — is one undoubted achievement of Russia’s post-communist development. Putin’s government reinstated the Soviet-style political monopoly and uncontested governance but did not encroach on individual rights. The constraints that existed in the USSR on entrepreneurship, artistic or academic self-fulfillment and lifestyle were not brought back. If one views the events of August 1991 as people rising in defense of freedom against a communist comeback, today’s individual freedoms should be seen as a goal fulfilled.

Another post-communist achievement is the rise of a consumer society. Although a sizable number of Russians still have low incomes, never has the proportion of those who enjoy reasonable wealth and comfort been so high. During Soviet times, frustrated consumers faced chronic shortages and ubiquitous lines; after August 1991 and the adoption of a market economy, this cause of discontent was eliminated.