On having your own ball.

Look at Stack Overflow Analytics here. Looks like it brings all sorts, except the sort from China. Given the number of Chinese programmers around, that's surprising. The Mandarin knock-off they came up with must be doing a hell of a business.

I am fairly sure it's not good for China as a programming power, but it may feel good for a while.

Hard book

 I am reading "Bloodlands". The book is really nothing new - I' ve known most of the facts  and numbers they present for years. However, all this pain and suffering, all in one place, for hundreds of pages - it's hard to take.

The worst possible thing that may happen to you is to fall into hands of people for whom you' re not a person. No natural disaster can be so cruel - it takes people to bring the real evil into the world.

Slow going

After being around for 17 years, watching the democracy at work, I can say now that the defining characteristic of a well developed democracy is its slowness.

Nothing happens fast, and if something does, chances are it will be redone later, when the slow grind had its chance. Things change on the scale of years. Even relatively fast events, like cleaning up the state Capitol in Wisconsin take weeks here - events that would be over in hours oin any normal dictatorship.