(I think I need to get my hands on some frontend code before I go insane.)

But, well, in the spirit of posting something here, the past two months have at least been fun. Work has been a bit on the crazy side lately as I’ve been getting the company ready to make an appearance at a couple of trade shows, gathering price quotes on cell phones, and doing all of the various other stuff that I do on a daily basis. Three cheers for small business; it’s never a dull moment.

Speaking of small business, the past week has seen me win a new web development job. It’s a small job in the grand scheme of things, but it’s been a long time coming with a company that I think I can help not only with their website, but with their marketing efforts more in general. Not, of course, that I ever wanted to get into marketing. But, hey, I guess it’s better than nothing. It certainly passes the time.

To set out a bit of context, this was all happening at a mega-church a few miles away from where I live. Apparently, this church puts on a baptism ceremony once every month or two. It was all rather different than the baptism ceremonies I’m more familiar with, where you basically have a family or two holding their infant while the minister drips a bit of water on the kid’s head. This one was full immersion, families watched from the audience (or joined in), and the entire event must have had more than a hundred people. In the background, music played the entire time, people were singing, and anyone who didn’t know what was going could easily have been forgiven for thinking they’d stepped into a Christian rock concert rather than a church. But back to the girl.

I showed up at the church a few minutes early and wandered around a little bit to see if there was anything interesting there to see. I had driven past this place a number of times on the expressway, but had never been inside. It didn’t take long to discover that the only really interesting thing about the church was its central auditorium, which is where I would be sitting anyway. I found my way to where the girl’s mother had reserved some seats and joined the other people who had come to see her baptism. I think I was the only one who wasn’t a member of the church.

The ceremony itself was a rather long affair, as each of the 100+ people were individually set back into the water. I was a bit surprised by the ages of the people being baptized, which ranged from senior citizens all the way to the six-year-old I had come to see, with an average probably somewhere in the late 20s. The water level in the pool was set to come to about the adult hip, which put it right around the girl’s neck. It was rather fun watching the guy doing the immersion pick her up and turn her upside-down. It was a good way to wrap things up, though; she was right around third from the end.

I was glad that she seemed to like the little present I gave her; a bracelet with a heart engraved with her name. She opened it up and showed it around to everyone in her little group. I apparently gave her the same card as her school teacher, but she didn’t really seem to mind. Both she and her mom seemed thrilled enough that I even bothered to show up at all.

And, while the whole event was a whole lot more than I’d ever imagined, I’m glad that I went too.

I’m also pretty happy about the company’s direction for the new year. My boss closed off 2008 trying to get a lot of the business practices formalized as a way to give the company and its people some focus. From what I can tell, he’s already on solid footing in that regard, both in terms of what he’s doing and what knows he still needs to do. His goals for the company also feel about right, they’ll definitely stretch us but I feel they should be attainable.

So, while this still isn’t the job I thought I’d be doing or the industry I thought I’d be doing it in, it is nice that positive things are happening in my current job.

2008 came and went on my blog in about the same way as ever. I told myself I’d say a lot, but ended up not saying a whole lot at all. What I did say was mostly political, which is really not the point of this blog. Sometimes I fell into the trap of not wanting to write because of how little I had written. Usually, it just didn’t occur to me to write.

The resolution this year is a little bit different because things this year are a little bit different. I’m still going to resolve to write more, and I still expect that I will most likely fail. I have a different outlet for my politically oriented posts thanks to some friends, which leaves this blog free to focus, as it should, on my life. Now that I’m not at college anymore I hope to use blogging as a way to continue practicing writing in the absence of papers and reports for school. If I can really get into the zen of this, I might even find a way to write shorter posts.

So there it is, my internet resolution for 2009. Guess we’ll see how it goes.

So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.

Thinking about the election tomorrow, this quote jumped into my head and won’t go away. From where things stand right now, it seems almost a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States. His election is bound to be greeted by cheers from his supporters, likely more than any President in recent memory, and certainly far more than John McCain would earn were he to win the day. And yet with Obama, I find myself convinced that his Presidency will be the end of whatever lingering understanding there may still be that our Federal government is a limited government, the end of a great deal of individual choice, and the death of meaningful democracy.

It doesn’t take long when looking through Obama’s website to see how little respect he has for the concept of limited government. From the economy to healthcare to just about anything else, Obama’s site is filled with promises of things that his federal government would do for us. The government run “public-private business incubators,” the creation of a government operated healthcare plan, the promise to “Weatherize one million homes annually,” and so many other of his proposed policies are all put forward without so much as a second thought whether or not the federal government has the authority to do these things, regardless of whether or not any of them are good ideas. Perhaps fueled by Americans’ poor understanding of what powers actually belong to the federal government, Obama has never, to my recollection, even bothered to ask the question. At a time when people are harping on President Bush and his alleged failure to abide by the restrictions put forth in the Constitution, we prepare to celebrate a new President who spoke with a bit of remorse at the fact that the Warren Court “didn’t break free from the essential constraints … in the Constitution.”

Embodied among those “essential constraints” are the limits which give rise to liberty in the first place. Freedom, at its core, is all about choice; choices Obama appears to not want us to have. Obama proposes a sort of “Use It or Lose It” plan to force oil companies to drill on particular oil fields; figuring out why he knows better than the oil companies which fields to drill when, and exactly what his mechanism is for making the oil companies “Lose It” are apparently left as exercises to the reader. And that was just the most obvious example. By taxing “the rich” to fund Obama’s pet projects, Obama does as most Democrats do in believing that they know better than I do what is and isn’t the right thing for me to buy.

But in the end, the thing that has been and remains the most frightening thing to me about Obama is his view on the courts. Repeatedly throughout his campaign, when asked what qualities he believes are important in a judge, his answers have never included such critical things as knowledge of or adherence to the law. Obama seeks judges with compassion, who will stand up for civil rights and the disadvantaged. While these are certainly nice qualities to look for, the proper role of the courts as the “least dangerous branch” requires that such considerations be trumped a thousand times over by the need for judges to remain within the law. Through his votes in the Senate, his statements on the campaign trail, his seven year old attempt to describe the Warren court as somehow being not “that radical,” it is apparent that Obama’s belief in the role of the courts is that America should — in eight years time — be turned over to absolute governance by the judiciary.

Rule by unelected elites is hardly my idea of democracy. The curtailment of free choice is certainly not my idea of liberty. And yet, the nation is sure to celebrate the rise of President Obama just the same. But perhaps if we’re lucky, the 1960s will come calling, to ask us to give them their failed policies back.

From my perspective, The Looming Tower worked some fairly substantial changes to what had been my understanding of radical Islamic jihad. The book touched on everything from the organization of al-Qaeda to the mentality of the people involved. The book also told the story of the American response to the activities of al-Qaeda, giving vivid effect to the now well known failure of the US government to communicate with itself.

The same vivid narrative did a wonderful job of presenting the mentality of the people involved in radical Islamic jihad. While most of what I read was familiar, there were a couple of things which were different from what I had previously believed. The biggest difference that I noticed is how little most of the people involved seem to hate America; there is, no doubt, a lot of hate, but most of it seems to be general purpose hate that only touches the United States because bin Laden directs it here. Qtub certainly hated America. bin Laden, it seems, simply hates any superpower, also hates materialism, and views America as a materialist superpower; in other words, he hates America, but it’s nothing personal. Any of the other powerful figures seemed to have agendas which had very little to do with the US, focusing instead on internal power struggles, Egypt, Syria, and the whole of the Middle East.

Surprising to me in all of the motivations for jihad was the lack of any mention of Israel. It had always been my understanding that a lot of the hatred coming toward America from terrorists was directly related to our support of Israel against invasion from the Muslim world. While Israel did receive some mention, it sort of came in passing, and struck me as more of an additional justification than as a fundamental driving force.

Also surprising to me was the organization structure of al-Qaeda; or, more to the point, the lack of one. As mentioned above, radical Islamic jihad runs on the strength of a lot of unfocused hate. As Osama controls the purse strings, he is occasionally able to get people working together enough to pull off a trick like 9/11, but for the most part, al-Qaeda is just a bunch of people who want to go blow things up. To the degree that there is a command structure at all, it is so decentralized that occasionally one team of terrorists inadvertently sabotages an operation being conducted by a different team. Osama, who I once thought of as being at least a passable tactician and leader, now looks a lot more like a bungling idiot whose only power comes from the money he inherited from his father.

Whatever the power structure, the book makes clear that the people involved in terror are devout in their adherence to a stunningly warped version of the Quran. In this vein, one anecdote resonated with me more than most. Apparently, the Quran says that true believers should not commit suicide. Yet, as we all know, suicide attacks are the modus operandi for much of global terror. To get around this problem required not simply ignoring the Quran on that point, but actually caused one of the spiritual leaders to issue a statement which held the Quran to mean the exact opposite of what it says. His logic essentially went like this: If your choice is to kill yourself or to be killed with someone else, then killing yourself isn’t suicide; therefore, if you put yourself in a position where you’re likely to die, then you might as well blow yourself up first.

In all, after reading The Looming Tower, radical Islamic jihad seems a lot less scary than it used to. With the organization so disorganized, the ability for terrorists to conduct complex operations is pretty low. At the same time, I am more convinced than ever that negotiating with these people would be a waste of time. There simply isn’t a whole lot of room to compromise with people who fundamentally believe that you do not have a right to exist.

But of course, those conclusions are my own. The Looming Tower does well at simply presenting the story and allowing the reader to draw conclusions. Both readable and informative, this book should definitely be on any reading list for anyone interested in the modern age of global terror.

Unfortunately for people who are interested to see if allowing teachers to carry guns will be a good policy for reducing school violence, Harrold is probably not a very good test case. Harrold, a town of less than 300 people, is apparently not exactly an area filled with violent crime. The biggest threat appears to come from drifters who have no particular affiliation with the town. As history teaches, though, it’s usually disgruntled students, not random strangers, who go on shooting sprees.

Still, as an experiment in public attitude, Harrold should certainly not disappoint. There are already charges that the policy is illegal which, if it is, could spark a healthy debate on whether or not to change the law. Given that all of this is happening in Texas, the overall culture is certainly right for taking a look at finding ways to ease gun regulations. It could be interesting to see how all of this works out.

Of course, I was greatly impressed with the US showing at the games this year. The team did excellent in the medal count, earning the greatest number of medals overall and coming in second only to China in the amount of gold taken home. America was impressive as always in team sports and the outstanding individual performances of Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, and Shawn Johnson certainly helped keep the games exciting. Outside the arena of competition, I liked the antics of Béla Károlyi offering up commentary on the women’s gymnastics. The opening ceremony was also amazing; the extreme level of synchronization and precision shown by the Chinese performers was a sight to behold and, as near as I could tell, they pulled it all off perfectly.

For as great as the Olympics were, though, there were some aspects which I think could have been better. I spent most of gymnastics feeling annoyed at the judges for what felt like a tangible pro-China bias, not helped by the strong allegation that the Chinese gymnasts shouldn’t even have been there, but cut only by the pleasure I took in seeing Shawn and Nastia win competitions despite the seemingly preordained result. Diving and swimming were both a bit boring as these sports also seemed to have predetermined conclusions, although this time due to the predictable dominance of the winning athletes. NBC also irritated me with their fawning over Phelps in the pool as they seemed to forget that there were other Americans who were also being amazing, and who were being amazing for reasons other than just to make Phelps look good.

From well before the beginning of the Olympics, it seemed as though we were poised for a massive and ongoing discussion over the political climate of China. As someone who firmly believes that the Olympics and politics ought never mix, I’m pleased that for the most part they never did. The focus remained consistently right where it belonged: With the athletes who went to Beijing to be the best they could possibly be.

And now I wait for London.