We are big fans of the Great Books approach in our homeschooling. The idea behind this approach is that certain works of the human mind are so transcendently great that they provide meaningful knowledge and mental or spiritual growth far out of their own time. For example, any two-dimensional geometry book you can find owes its existence to — indeed, is largely a restatement of — Euclid’s Elements. In fact, Elements was key to the development of logic, mathematics, and science. Should not such a powerful book be read by anyone who seeks to understand any of these domains? In a less technical field, is it possible to truly grok civics without reading Plato’s Republic, comparative religion without reading Augustine’s Confessions, or human conflict without reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War? I think not.

Yet in my chosen field of endeavor, management information systems (a better name than “information technology,” which misses the point of focus), there is no widely accepted canon of work. Certainly, I have been exposed to the great works of computer science only through my own efforts, after I had discovered the great books approach to everything else, and that was well into my career. It was also about that time that I realized how bereft of theory my field is. Take programming, which is considered an art; yet does not an artist go to museums to view da Vinci’s or van Gogh’s work for himself? How else can he place his own creativity in an understandable context? (I suppose, looking at a great deal of what is considered art these days, that that process may have lapsed, however.) A programmer, though, is trained through dry examples, dryer texts, and by instructors who often know little more than their students about how computers actually work. This was not always the case, but today the levels of abstraction between the user and the machine are so sophisticated, so abstruse, that the vast majority of people in my field are functionally incompetent; that is, they can write working code, but it is not elegant code, and is typically bug-laden code, and is so frequently ill-designed that people accept as a matter of course that restarting their computer to fix a problem is going to be frequently required.

This is, quite simply, a disgrace.

This reading list is my attempt at compiling a list of books that everyone involved with computers as a professional endeavor should read, along with an explanation of why. (Some of these books belong on a general great books list, and some of them are in the Britannica list.) More to the point, the more of these that you read, the better you will understand your craft. The fewer of them you read, the less you know what you are attempting to do. If you have additional suggestions, or think that I am in some way off base in including some particular work, please let me know why.

George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought

Boole’s work was an attempt to explain how the human brain functions, how people think in a mechanical sense. It is the source of boolean logic, which underlies all that computers are and do. The foundation of the computer is not the machine, but the logic that it embodies, and that logic owes an incalculable debt to Boole. Though Boole had many works of relevance to mathematicians and scientists, this is the work most relevant to understanding computers.

Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach and Metamagical Themas

These are philosophy, or mathematics, or logic books; you pick. Anyway, both of these books are so fundamentally tied into the logic of problem-solving and the creation of algorithms that they are essential to understanding reasoning. And since reasoning is essential to understanding programming…. Plus, Metamagical Themas (which is actually a collection of essays) in particular is just fun.

Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone

I have found no better work for explaining in layman’s terms why computers are the way they are, how they work at a fundamental level, and what are their true constraints and possibilities.

Marvin Minsky, Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines

Once you’ve read Hillis’ The Pattern on the Stone to get the basic concepts of computers, Minsky’s classic work shows what is possible and what is not possible with computers. Minsky dives deeply into Turing machines, and the concept of the universal computer. The main thing that this book teaches is the limits of the possible, and so this book essentially describes the universe of problems that computers can solve, and those that they cannot.

Donald Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, all four volumes (and hopefully more before he passes)

I won’t lie to you: these books are rough going. But there is simply no better explanation anywhere of the algorithms that underly computer science. It’s one thing to know to use a quicksort, and quite another entirely to know why that is not always the best choice, and which choices might be better in certain cases. It is not necessary to read these books to program, only to understand why programming works the way it does.

John Hennessy and David Patterson, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach

This is the best work in existence on the design of modern computers. It explains in detail what makes systems cost-effective, how they are put together, and how they can be best utilized. This is not just a book for computer designers, but also a book for people who have to make purchase decisions, or architecture decisions on how to interconnect systems. It is a book, in short, of how to think about computer systems hardware.

Harold Abelson and Jay Sussman, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

This books teaches the fundamentals of how to think about programming, as procedure and data. Starting from these first principles, it builds the structure of how to program, and in the process teaches how to think about problem solving, which is at the basis of programming. There is no better way I know to learn how to decompose a problem.

Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, The C Programming Language

Ordinarily, I would avoid books about specific programming languages, but this is not an ordinary book. This book contains the best tie between high-level languages and low-level computer constructs I have ever seen. It shows pointer operations amazingly well, and completely explores the structure of C-like languages (which include Java, C++, Objective-C, C# and a number of others, collectively the most popular languages in use today). Plus, unlike most programming books, this one is very concise, and has no fluff. You learn from this not so much the C language (though you learn that, too), but how to think about high-level languages.

Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike, The UNIX Programming Environment

Like The C Programming Language, this book is deep and broad. It covers the design of an obsolete system, which would seem to be an odd topic to be placed on a great books list. But here’s the deal: not only is this system the basis of a huge number of modern operating systems, so that the system itself still has relevance, this book teaches how operating systems work as a layered construct. After reading this book, you will be able to tackle any operating system as a user, or an administrator, or a manager with significantly more confidence, because you will understand how to think about operating systems. If you haven’t read this book, your odds of passing a systems administrator interview with me are slim.

Alfred Aho, Ravi Sethi and Jeffrey Ullman, Compilers

Once you know how to write in a high-level language, you need to know how it gets translated into terms the computer can understand. This book tells you how that happens, in all its gory detail. It’s a tough book to get through, but if the guys who created Microsoft’s INI file format had read it, maybe they would have learned enough about parsing to avoid that particular travesty.

Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike, The Practice of Programming

There are a lot of books about how to program. This is a book about how to program elegantly, robustly, and efficiently. Frankly, if you have not read this book and understood it, or worked out the ideas for yourself through hard experience, then you probably wouldn’t pass any interview for a programmer that I would give.

Martin Fowler, Refactoring

This is one of those books that creates a new idea, and with it a new term, that then becomes generally accepted without being actually understood. I cannot tell you how many programmers I’ve had to hand this book to point out that it’s not just me talking about how to write good, compact, efficient, maintainable code. The thing is, having read this book, what you really take away is not just how to fix badly-designed code, but how to avoid badly designing code in the first place.

James Rumbaugh, et al, Object-Oriented Modeling and Design

Having toured high-level languages, we enter a new abstraction layer: objects. This book is the one that taught me how to think in terms of self-contained, reusable, bulletproof code. It is still unequalled. Modern GUIs and programming languages (including most infamously Java) depend on thiese concepts, and this book shows how to think about objects.

Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides (the Gang of Four), Design Patterns

When you write object-oriented code, there are certain needs that come up over and over and over again: a class that can only be instantiated once, a structured carrier of data between objects, an abstraction layer to hide the interface from the data, an abstraction layer to hide the data from the details of its physical storage, and so on. This book looks at the most common of these recurrent patterns, and shows how to solve each one correctly, so that you don’t have to work it out from scratch each time. You want to get your programmers writing better, cheaper and more reusable code? Have them read this.

Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson, The Unified Modeling Language User Guide

I must admit at the outset that this is not the book that I wish it was; however, it is the closest approach I’ve yet seen. This book describes a software engineering approach to software design, which includes extensive modeling of objects and their interfaces and interactions. That is good. But it does so by propounding one particular representation (UML) as the only “right” way to do this, and also relies on a software engineering approach I consider fundamentally flawed, the Unified Process. Having seen a derivative of the Unified Process in operation, I assure you that it is the wrong way to design software, analogous to the military strategy of attacking into the teeth of the enemy’s defenses, and just as likely either to fail, or to succeed pyrrhicly. For that reason, I recommend this book not as a methodology to be followed, but for its completeness in describing what must be considered in software design of object-oriented systems, and how to represent that in a universal notation for object interactions.

Alistair Cockburn, Agile Software Development

This book is the Mr. Hyde to the above book’s Mr. Jekyll. It describes a software design and implementation approach that works at the lowest cost to highest effectiveness of any I have seen or used. To the analogy above of the frontal attack, this is the corresponding deep penetration at an unexpected weak point: it is generally effective at very low cost, requires highly skilled practitioners to attempt, and is routinely dismissed by incompetents who generally only understand the right up the middle approach. More specifically, this book describes how to design software iteratively, such that there is very quickly a working version in the hands of users, who then become partners in guiding the developers to a complete realization of the final vision for the project.

Bob Schmidt, Data Modeling for Information Professionals

This book is a great introduction to the theory of data modeling, and gives a sound base for developing logical, rational ways of persisting data. Moreover, this is a book that teaches you how to break down data into self-referential chunks, in the same way that object orientation breaks down process into self-referential chunks, which leads to a better understanding of how to manage data efficiently.

Douglas Comer, et al, Internetworking with TCP/IP (there are three volumes; this is the first)

You want to know how networks function, you come here. This is a three-volume set, and it is indispensable for a network professional or a systems architect.

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked

This book is an examination of networks. Not computer networks, per se, though those are covered, but all networks of any kind. There are several books about complexity theory (including Chaos, Wolfram’s book (Towards a new Science?), Tipping Point) that are useful to an understanding of the emergent behavior of networked systems, but Barabasi’s is the one most relevant to computer people. In particular, he covers the implications of networks on security (physical as well as electronic), employee retention and other immediately-applicable domains. If you are looking, for example, to craft an organization which is agile, responsive, and powerful, you have to be willing to give up central control. This book explains why the two are incompatible.

Eric Raymond, The Complete Hacker’s Dictionary

This is a book from which just about any computer person can benefit, because it explains why you see a lot of the terms you do (like why variables are often named “foo”). While it’s in the form of a jargon dictionary, I tend to think of it as an insight into the mind of a master computer wrangler. Plus, it’s a lot of fun.

Steven Levy, Hackers

A question I am often asked is, “How do I hire people like you?” My usual answer is to first hire a person like me. The problem is one of recursion: it takes a good computer person to recognize a computer person, and good computer people want to be surrounded by good computer people, so they’ll find and retain them. All that said, if you don’t know how to recognize a good computer person, read this book. It tells you the mindset and habits that make good computer people good, and will at least help you to tell the MCSE who thinks he knows what he’s doing when in fact he knows only the magic incantations for a few neat tricks from someone with a chance at being great.

Cliff Stoll, The Cuckoo’s Egg

This engaging story of tracking down crackers who broke into Stoll’s network is a must-read for system administrators. It gets you inside a master’s head, and teaches you how to think about security in a practical way.

Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning was the Command Line

I don’t know whether to describe this as an allegory of computer systems, a defense of the CLI, a history of operating systems, a cultural critique (particularly of multiculturalism), or a theoretical examination of metaphor, or an essay on the psychology of choice. In any case, read it, even if it sounds a little outdated, given the emphasis on the now long-defunct BeOS.

Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

Brooks very thoroughly proves that throwing money and people at a problem makes it worse, not better. This is really an argument for competence in management as well as systems people.

Tom DeMarco, Peopleware

Something like 90% of large software projects fail; this is another book that explains why that is: it’s all about the people, what they can do and what they are allowed to do.

Strunk and White, The Elements of Style

Yes, I’m serious! Look, a computer program, or a programming project, or an integration project, or anything else in IT is dependent upon the ability to clearly describe what you want to happen, or what you have done, or how you plan to do something. Computer programming is an expressive act. This is a book about how to express yourself well. In fact, it’s the book on how to express yourself well, and is very similar to K&R’s The C Programming Language in a lot of ways.

Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

This is to metrics, presentations and graphics in general what Strunk and White is to language: a guide to clearly and concisely expressing yourself. If you loathe watching a Powerpoint presentation, it’s probably because the creator has never read this book.

Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar

This essay is, in many ways, a manifesto. And it’s a manifesto of a thought process that I don’t always agree with; in particular, I think that there is a place for non-free software (though I also think that place should be much smaller than it currently is). There is no better explanation of the idea of open source, no better advocacy of the position that software wants to be free.

Edward Yourdon, Death March

Yet another excellent book on why software projects and integration projects fail. In any organization where more than 10% of the projects fail, or where employee turnover exceeds 20%, this is a good place to start fixing the problems in the organization.

We have moved up the hierarchy from the ideas that underlie computing, to the machine, the concept of programming, the operating system, and then high-level program design. We then jumped over into databases, networking, systems integration and administration, and systems architecture. Finally, we looked at systems management. I think that this presents a fairly comprehensive treatment of all phases of information systems, and I certainly hope that it will prove of use. Note that I was following a particular progression here, and I think that it’s incomplete (particularly in the sense of underlying concepts of mathematics and history). For that reason, I strongly recommend that the reader also examine the books noted in Eisenberg’s Creating a Computer Science Cannon, which is particularly strong in those areas.

And now a final word of practical advice, if you are going to hire someone for an IT position, and they haven’t read at least a few of these, reconsider. ]]> Preserving the comments:

1. Excellent list! I can’t disagree with a single one of those books.

   Here’s a few that I have liked. They mostly cover the same material as other books on your list, just from a different angle.

   “Operating System Concepts” by Abraham Silberschatz.

   “Implementing Lean Software Development” by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck.

   “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture” by Martin Fowler.

   “The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master” by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas.

   Also, C will show you how a computer works, SICP will show how you computation works.

   Posted by Russell  on  03/10/2008  at  01:46 PM

2. Learning C is akin to learning to play the piano. Except that instead of simply mastering scales and chords on a keyboard, you hit a series of objects in the room which then, as a side effect, bounce off one of the walls (or the ceiling, or the floor, or the vase sitting by the window) and onto the correct keys for you.

   

   Posted by IB Bill  on  03/10/2008  at  03:02 PM

3. Bah! Real men don’t fiddle around in any of those namby-pamby “higher level” languages; they work right down on the bare metal. They write microcode—and they don’t comment it!

   Posted by Francis W. Porretto  on  03/10/2008  at  04:35 PM

4. Heh. My first language was BASIC. My second was Assember for the 68B09E. I had been programming Assembler for some four years before I learned FORTRAN, and it was another year before I learned Pascal. Since then, everything I’ve written has been Perl, C or a C derivative, or Java (blech).

   Russell, I have heard good things about The Pragmatic Programmer, but I specifically wanted to exclude books I haven’t read, or at least tried to work through, since I’m not really qualified to comment on them.

   Posted by Jeff Medcalf  on  03/10/2008  at  04:48 PM

5. For a second there, I thought you were going to leave Brooks out. If you had, I would have had to completely discount everything you said

   Posted by Chris Byrne  on  03/10/2008  at  10:24 PM

6. A question relating to nothing in particular: as a Libertarian, do you believe the Fed should be manipulating the interest and bond rates to try to stave off furthering the recession or should we just let the maket take care of itself?

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/14/2008  at  03:15 PM

7. I always hate questions in the form of “as a member of [group X], do you believe [A, B and C]?” To the extent that I am a member of a group, it is because I believe A, B and C that I am a member. So I cannot tell you what I think as a member of some group, only what I think as me. If that causes you (or for that matter me) to stick on a label of some group membership, so be it. In either case, it’s not primary.

   Now to answer the question. I think that the government should minimize interference in markets to the largest extent that they can. But remember that currency and bonds are not really a free market: their only supplier is the government. So to the extent that the government controls the “market” anyway, it should act responsibly to prevent fluctuations in that market from having bad effects. And to the extent that the government is interfering in true markets (such as home mortgages and the like), it should cut it out. Not just the latest interference, but all the interference, up to and including the granting or guaranteeing of loans in the first place, the regulation of building standards and lending standards and so forth. (Note that by “government” I mean the Federal government.) A market with fewer distortions would behave in a more healthy manner. The problem is that it’s so hard to unpack one little distortion being considered now from a whole raft of larger distortions already created that the question is nearly meaningless as a philosophical matter, as opposed to as a matter of practical policy.

   Posted by Jeff Medcalf  on  03/14/2008  at  04:39 PM

If we repealed Marbury v. Madison, that would get rid of Roe v. Wade and Citizen's United. Cool! Your thoughts?

OK, there are actually several things buried in there that I want to talk about:

1. Would the undoing of Marbury v. Madison also undo all the precedents set by rulings assuming its validity?
2. Should we even be using precedent in deciding legal matters? What about nullification?
3. Should Marbury v. Madison be undone?
4. Should there be a final arbiter of the Constitution's meaning, and if so who or what should be that final arbiter?

When people reference Marbury v. Madison, what they really are referring to is the power of judicial review that it established: the Supreme Court has the power to nullify laws passed by the Congress on the grounds that those laws violate the US Constitution. In other words, the Supreme Court asserted the power (a power not given in the Constitution to any office or body) to be the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution, and by extension of the meaning of a law. [Don't write letters; I recognize that I'm simplifying.] In the 208 years since this decision, a great many Court decisions have been predicated on it, at least in part, including the two mentioned in Edward John Gallardo's question. Because our system is theoretically based on common law (about which more later), and in particular because we use the doctrine of stare decisis to avoid continuously relitigating cases, such a decision would apply not merely in the specific case being decided, but in any matter whether or not brought before the Court, until such time as a later Court might revisit the issue. That's a huge assumption of power, and we'll deal with that later. But for now, the relevant issue is that the combination of doctrines that we use for our legal system and the assumption of power from Marbury v. Madison essentially mean that once the Court decides on the meaning of some part of the Constitution, that meaning sticks indefinitely.

So let's assume that some case were to come along based on Griswold v. Connecticut, which I believe was the first Supreme Court decision to find a constitutional right to privacy, and in deciding this case, the Supreme Court were to strike down Griswold. In that event, the right to privacy protection would be struck down as well, and then cases based on that decision, such as Roe v. Wade, would also potentially be in jeopardy. The idea there is that if the Court were to revisit the issue of abortion without Griswold's precedent to rely upon, it might reach a different decision regarding Roe. But note all the conditionals: merely having undone Griswold would not itself undo Roe, because the cases decided different issues. The right to privacy asserted in Roe and based on Griswold might still exist in Roe that are not addressed in the decision that undid Griswold. In other words, merely undoing a Supreme Court decision does not mean that all of the Court's decisions that reference the decision that was nullified would themselves be undone. Presumably, the Court would have to hear other cases that would be brought asserting the claim that this or that case was now also invalid, and over time a new jurisprudence would arise that would clarify those issues.

So no, undoing Marbury v. Madison would not ipso facto undo either Roe or Citizens United.

Part of the problem, though, is that our legal system is hopelessly muddled. We use precedent as if we were a common law country (as, indeed, the Constitution says we should be), but we give supremacy to laws passed by legislatures over common law "even against common right and reason". In fact, it was Marbury v. Madison itself that made statute law take precedence over common law in the US. We allow nullification for the Court generally nullifying laws (again, Marbury v. Madison is responsible for that, or at least for cementing in place what was prior to that a scattered practice) but not for juries nullifying laws in a particular case. We almost seem to have designed for ourselves a system that takes the worst elements of common law and the worst elements of statute law and makes that the universal practice. If we are to truly be a common law nation, then that law which governs the fewest people or the smallest area should take precedence over that law which governs the most and the widest, and Constitutions/charters should flow in the other direction. That's essentially a states' rights position, by the way. It also means though that we have to take into account human nature and a broad conception of rights granted against the powers of government, which inherently limits government and expands freedom. If, alternately, we are to be a statute law nation, then we must have all laws explicitly written, and interpreted according to the plain meaning of the words rather than inventing new meanings out of whole cloth. By trying to have it both ways, we have utterly thrown away any conception of a nation based on law, rather than man.

I should explain here that the idea of rule of law is commonly and horribly misinterpreted. Rule of law does not mean having a lot of laws, or even compelling obedience strictly to the law. Rather, it means that the laws must be knowable (few enough to learn, and clear enough for a common person to interpret, and published widely enough for anyone to access), and that all people regardless of station or position must alike be subject to the law. The alternative is the rule of man, where the arbitrary whims of those in power determine whether or not you are to be punished for any given act, and the written law (if there even is one) is no defense. The United States is not a nation of laws. If you need evidence of this, consider that recent Supreme Court decisions — settled law of the land and trumping all else — have held that non-commercial actions happening entirely within one person's domicile constitute "interstate commerce;" that the protections against the seizure of one's property by the government does not hold if the government really, really wants your property, even if it's just to give it to someone else in a corrupt land for campaign cash deal; and so on. Or consider that we are now being asked to believe that not engaging in commerce means that you are engaging in commerce, and in the process to allow Congress to dictate — and I use that word deliberately — anything at all that it wants, to compel you to do or not do as it suits them and them alone. Or consider prosecutorial discretion, which routinely holds the favored few to no account, while bringing horrific punishments on the common many. And all of this is in no small part due to the confusions introduced by Marbury v. Madison, though of course there are other factors in play as well.

So the next question is, should Marbury be undone? The easy answer is yes, but that's a problematic answer. Fundamentally, the legitimacy of an institution or a system really comes down to whether or not people accept it as legitimate. Authority is granted by acceptance. If Americans as a rule believed the Court to be institutionally illegitimate because of their arrogation of the power to have the final say on the meaning of the Constitution, then overturning Marbury would be a no brainer. But really, people don't. In fact, I'd say that Americans as a whole likely see Court review of laws as a fundamental cornerstone of our Constitutional system. You can argue about whether they are right to do so, but that doesn't matter in the end. Legitimacy flows from acceptance, and the American people accept that the Court not only does have this power, but should have this power. And in practice, that means that the Court will have this power until we fundamentally change our system.

But at this point, I would argue that we need to fundamentally change our system. If we are to be a nation of laws, those laws have to have meaning. And the supreme law of the land is the Constitution. It is no longer possible to read the Constitution and, from that reading, understand anything other than the basic structure of the Federal government. In particular, you cannot read phrases like "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" (4th Amendment) and actually know what it means, because if this were actually legally binding, how would no knock warrants be possible? In fact, what you can start with is the annotated Constitution (don't forget the three supplements released later), thousands of pages of text and footnotes explaining how the Court has actually interpreted the Constitution, frequently to mean the exact opposite of what is meant by the plain meaning of the words. So the real Constitution is, in a fundamental sense, unknowable to the average person, and in fact largely hidden from the average person. Moreover, because what is taught to people as the Constitution is the original, written form, people routinely see the Constitution (not to mention other laws) violated by the government and treated as being as meaningless. Contempt for the law from the government breeds contempt for the law from the people; why should anyone think about the meaning of the Constitution when the Speaker of the House, on being asked whether a proposed law granting the government sweeping new powers is constitutionally valid, responds with "Are you joking?"

If we are to be a nation of laws, and not of men, then the law — including the Constitution — must be seen to be binding, knowable, and uniformly enforced. That means that what the law is also needs to comport with the beliefs of the great majority of what the people believe the law should be. And that in turn means that the Constitution, as written, is illegitimate, because it does not conform to what the majority think it should be. There are three ways around this. The first would be to call a Constitutional Convention, and write a new Constitution that actually says what we think it should. I encounter a lot of resistance to this idea on the grounds that a Constitution written with current beliefs is unlikely to protect things like freedom of speech, or of religion, or whatever. To which my answer is this: it already does not provide any such protection in practice. The second would be to amend the Constitution to make Social Security constitutionally valid, for example, and to actually give the Supreme Court a written grant of authority to be the final arbiter of the document's meaning, and so forth. The problem with that is this: if you propose, and pass the Congress, an amendment to make Social Security valid, and then it fails to be ratified by the States, is Social Security then invalid? No, under the way that we interpret the Constitution. And so the amendments would potentially further alienate the legitimacy of the Constitution, rather than restore it. The third way is to do what we have done: consent to being ruled by the whims of men, and live in fear that our government might be ruled by people who will force their religion on us and ban abortion (on the one side), or take our guns and ban religion (on the other). Federalism and subsidiarity, the idea that we should be mostly governed locally and the Federal government should have very strictly limited powers, seems to be a dead letter in the American mind, even though it would resolve even some of the thorniest of our issues were we to practice it.

So yes, Marbury should be undone, but the only way to undo it is to fashion a new system, and that would require a very great leap of faith, and consequently a strong non-partisan or bi-partisan leadership to allow that leap of faith. I don't see it happening in practice, but in theory it's way overdue.

But let's say that we do decide to rewrite or amend the Constitution back into a meaningful document. Then should there be a final arbiter of its meaning, and if so, whom or what kind of body should that be? If it were up to me, I'd say that we should not have a final arbiter. The reason is that it actually requires more different people and groups to violate the Constitution without a final arbiter than with one.

Let me give an example. Let's say that the Court had the ability to apply judicial review only to a particular case, and not to broadly strike down laws. Then to violate the Constitution, the Congress would have to pass a law in violation of the Constitution. The President would have to enforce that law in violation of the Constitution. The Court would have to allow that enforcement to stand in each case brought before it — and each case could be brought before it because lower Courts wouldn't automatically dismiss them as unconstitutional. So if the Congress passes an unconstitutional law, the President could simply determine that the law was unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it. Judges could determine that the law was unconstitutional and refuse to try. Juries could determine that the law was unconstitutional and refuse to convict. In other words, a ton of people would have to concur that the law was constitutuionally valid in order to enforce it, while only a few people would have to concur that the law was unconstitutional in order to prevent its enforcement. This is undeniably a situation that furthers individual liberty.

But as I noted before, the idea of a final arbiter has broad legitimacy, and changing that impression — if it is at all possible — would not be easy or quick. So let's assume for the moment that we want to have some person or body with the final authority to interpret the Constitution's meaning. Whom or what should that be? What characteristics would we want to have for whomever has that power?

First, I think that we would want this to not be a single person, because (a) a single person can be corrupted, and (b) that's a lot of power to put in one person's hands. What if that person turns out to think that beheading is an appropriate punishment for shoplifting? What if he thinks that's the only appropriate punishment for shoplifting? By the nature of being a final arbiter, that power is plenary — there is no appeal. So if it's to be an organization, what kind of organization should it be?

Well, we'd want it to be fast. This rules out the first thing that comes to mind: periodic Constitutional conventions. When court cases are pending, it's not exactly conducive to a speedy trial to have to wait a decade or more for the next convention. It would be possible to do periodic conventions combined with court review in the interim periods, but that would lead to an unstable base of law (and thus essentially to an unknowable base of law) as decisions get made and then overturned and so forth. For the same reason, we'd want whatever kind of organization has this power to be permanent, at least to the point of having a common body of rules that change slowly over time, including the rules for how many people are in the body and how they are chosen.

At the same time, you wouldn't want the body to be schlerotic. It is good to have the basis of law change slowly, but it is also good to have an ability to change bad decisions without waiting decades or suffering disastrous consequences. Recall that the appeal for the Dred Scott case was the Civil War. For that reason, you want the body's membership to change over time, and you want the body to meet regularly.

So far, that gives us a permanent institution that meets regularly and changes its membership regularly. What powers should it have? I would argue that it should have exactly two powers: it should be able resolve constitutional questions posed by the courts, legislatures, executives and even common citizens; and it should be able to recommend changes to the Constitution, either to Congress as Amendments, or directly to the States as amendments or a call for a Constitutional Convention. That way, the body would have the power to say what the Constitution means, and to recommend changes where that meaning is at odds with current sentiments. I'd be willing to give it the power to amend, and take that away from Congress, depending on how the membership is chosen and a host of other details.

As far as membership, though, you'd want to have that selected by more than one means. The reason is that this body would be the governing body over the interpretation of the Constitution, and a large purpose of that document, and thus of this body, is to make sure we are all represented and all protected. So you'd want some people appointed by various legislatures or executives, but you'd also want people who were elected by various subgroups (ethnic, gender, urban/rural, by trade/profession, income level, owners/renters, etc) with diverse interests, and you'd want some people who were chosen by lot from the jury pool. The idea is to ensure that the body is both large enough and diverse enough in its interests and needs to ensure that any change to the Constitution, or any interpretation of the Constitution, protects and serves the whole society, rather than just narrow interests. (That, by the way, was the purpose of the original geographic breakdown of the House of Representatives. If we wanted to preserve that idea today, we'd probably go to partisan proportional representation.)

I don't want to go too far off topic by getting into all kinds of other features of such a body, but it's pretty clear to me that if there is to be a power vested somewhere to interpret the Constitution for everyone else, the Supreme Court is not the place to vest it. The membership changes too slowly, is too small, is too unrepresentative of the population, and is appointed in exactly one manner.

You cannot restart the server once you enable the mod_dav_svn module, until you have at least one site configured to allow WebDAV (under the Options pane in the site config on Server Admin). You might also have to allow folder listing; I don't recall if that was a problem or not.

You have to edit the sites file to do more than put in the DAV and SVNParentPath directives, because the file is not written correctly.

You MUST MUST MUST comment out the ErrorDocument line in the site configuration, or you will get an error like:

Error: 2 (No such file or directory) Description: PROPFIND request failed on 'your project'

(and another that the SVN directory could not be opened)

There's a good two hours gone, almost all on that last part.

What? You think that the company that admitted to reporting Saddam Hussein's propaganda as news for a decade would be above rigging a debate for their chosen candidate?

Oh, and a happy Thanksgiving to all.

I've been working on math with Connor (more on Steph's blog, where I have lessons as they come up), but am probably not going to be able to do that this week due to Lego League.

Speaking of which, the qualifying tournament for us is next Saturday. We have to finish the robot and programming this week, complete with finding out that our entire strategy is bunk: we can only use one robot, not one robot at a time. That means that our "one dropper, one pusher" plan is out, and since they were built on different platforms, we don't have time to adapt. We'll keep the pusher, which does more missions, and not finish the dropper (which is what Connor and Aidan were responsible for most of). We also have to do our presentation, which is a big deal and which we haven't completed the props for nor practiced yet. It's going to be a very, very busy week.

Not to mention Scouts, with which we are in the middle of Scouting for Food, where we collect canned goods for a local charity. We had a Halloween Hayride that went pretty well. Our November meeting will feature turkey bowling and other games, and should be a lot of fun.

But here's where the other plans get thrown out and life comes into it. I had worked out an arrangement for a contract in North Virginia. This would have been a significant money increase (enough to make up for working under my normal rates for the last 2 years, given time), and a lot of fun. More, it was with the Army, so it would have been helping out the military, a subject on which I'm quite passionate. Unfortunately, the contracting company I was working with utterly messed up when I could start, and the Army couldn't (or wouldn't) adjust its plans for when I could actually start, not even by two days. There's only so much I can do: as a contractor, my reputation for professionalism is half of my ability to make a living. (The rest is my skill set, technical and business both.) I was not going to leave my current client (much as I loathe going in to work by now) with so little notice, and without completing my currently-urgent assignments. So now I'm going to be leaving my job as of November 16, and I don't have a follow-on job. I have a bit of money in the bank, and don't expect to have a problem finding work, but it's annoying on many levels. Perhaps the worst of it is that our living arrangements are very uncertain now, with Christmas approaching. Where we'll be living in January, and whether I'll be traveling between now and then, are both quite up in the air.

Which, I need hardly say, wreaks havoc with the aforementioned activities.

Ah, well, we persevere, and thrive despite adversity.

I hope.

In the meantime, if you see a black, domestic long-hair cat in the Parkside Preserve neighborhood of Waterford, MI, let me know.

When we hadn't lived in Dallas for very long, and had just gotten our first apartment together, Stephanie and I would walk around our apartment complex at night for exercise. This young black tomcat would follow us, deigning to wrestle with us or let us pet him from time to time. Eventually, we took him in, and started posting ads for his owner. When the office staff told us he was a stray that everyone sorta kinda looked after, well, he was ours from then on.

That was 15 years ago, and Merlin was already a year or so old at that point, so it's possible his time was just up, and that he is simply dead. Merlin was a very old cat, and cats sometimes just find a place to hide and die alone when their time comes. I certainly hope that's not the case, and we'll keep looking. If he is dead, I will be — well, words fail me. Merlin was my first cat, ever. (I'm actually a dog person.) In fact, Merlin was also my first pet that was mine, rather than my father's.

Here, kitty kitty kitty.

UPDATE: After 5 days, we found our missing cat. He was at a house some 1000' away, but had gotten lost in the rain. The person who owns the house where Merlin had taken refuge (under their deck) saw our sign and called us, for which we are eternally grateful.

By the way, if you find a stray or strayed adult cat, giving it milk is a bad idea: cow milk is not (despite the popular image) actually good for cats. Though again, we are glad they at least fed Merlin something, because five days would be a long time to go without, and Merlin will hunt, but he's not used to depending on his hunting.

All right. That's it. It's not legal to shoot idiots in the street. It's arguably not even moral. So since these idiots insist on beclowning themselves in public, I propose that we follow suit. Here's the deal: if enough people (say, ten) are seriously interested in, and will commit to, showing up in Nashville, in front of the administration building, on July 2 at 4pm local time, in clown suits and carrying squirt guns, then I and my family will also show up, in clown suits and carrying squirt guns, and we will join together in soaking the front of the administration building.

The madness must stop! The idiots must be opposed! Those who insist on beclowning themselves must face the wrath of clowns!

Who's with me?

(Cross-posted at Eternity Road)

It's actually a part of a piece I've been thinking on for some time: why it is that non-IT staff produce far more projects that work for end users than IT staff can produce.

By the way, I'll be writing over at Eternity Road as well, per Fran Porretto's gracious invitation. I haven't figured out which stuff I do will go where, except that the political stuff will probably go over there, and the IT stuff will probably be here or cross-posted, depending on depth.

Wonder why so many of the news articles you read, or steam over, are lacking essential information or perspective? Wonder no longer. Knowledge and experience of the subject is only a “plus.” Would the AP advertise for a sports reporter for whom knowledge and experience with baseball, basketball, football, soccer, hockey, tennis, and so forth is only a “plus,” rather than essential and primary?

So, why should the AP believe that knowledge and experience of intelligence, or medicine, or any other important and technical subject only requires a “plus”?

Maybe because the reporter was schooled in a system where subject matter expertise is not required for a teacher of a hard subject, but the ability to "[d]emonstrate[] an understanding and acceptance of diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, special needs and religious groups" is?