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	<title>Spinning Yarns</title>
	<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog</link>
	<description>The skein of thought, knit into words</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:59:31 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>The Myth of Portability</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For many open-source software projects, C is the programming language of choice. While there are occasionally good reasons for choosing C over another, higher-level programming language, many projects seem to use C because it is supposedly more &#8220;portable&#8221; than other programming languages. The portability of C programs is often cited as one of its virtues [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=451</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Games with Names</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Suppose you wanted to inject a new function into a Python module, based on the value of an existing variable in that module. If that statement made no sense to you, or if you can imagine no reason why you might want to do such a thing, then you can safely skip the remainder of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=440</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Executive Privilege</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There has been a lot of foofaraw in the news lately, because U. S. President Obama has expressed his wish to broadcast a televised address to our nation&#8217;s schoolchildren.  Apparently, some parents have objected most vehemently to having their school districts showing this address to their children, and apparently some school administrators have said [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=423</link>
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	<item>
		<title>A Forgotten Truth</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here is a bit of wisdom I feel has been left behind in the legislative and legal debates over the status of copyright in the past two decades.
&#8220;There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=414</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Hidden Truths</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have always loved this quotation:
&#8220;[P]rogramming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process. You can learn a lot about an individual [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=407</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Hypothetical Bread and Butter</title>
		<description><![CDATA[(ring, ring)

Me:
Good afternoon, Michael&#8217;s Bakery, this is Michael speaking.  How may I help you today?
Customer:
Yeah, hi, I&#8217;m having some trouble with your bread.
Me:
I&#8217;m very sorry to hear that, sir; what seems to be the problem?
Customer:
Well, I bought a loaf of your bread the other day, and my girlfriend made me a sandwich with it, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=396</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Bailout Blues</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You simply must read this letter, from the talented pen of Cosmo Catalano.  An excerpt, to get you started:
Dear America,
I know a lot of you are anti-bailout. And I can understand why— those are my tax dollars, too. But as a line worker at GM, I’ll be the first to feel the effects of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=388</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>An Open Letter to the Charities</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It started out so simply.
A couple of months after we moved to Cambridge, we gave a little money to a local medical charity&#8212;sent them a cheque, and got a brief letter of fulsome thanks.  The cause was good, and we felt glad to have contributed.  If only we had known then, what your [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=373</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Great!  Now Fetch Me a Beer.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Eventually, I concluded that my recent experiment with switching to Mail.app was a failure.  So, I installed a local copy of Mutt to read with, Fetchmail to keep my in-box populated, and Maildrop to help filter out the spam.  Thanks to the magic of MacPorts, this was all fairly simple to do&#8212;however, there [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=285</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>It Couldn&#8217;t Be Simple</title>
		<description><![CDATA[E-mail comprises an enormous fraction of my daily communication with others.  For some situations, that turns out to be a blessing, but generally speaking it&#8217;s just one of those compromises I have to live with since I can&#8217;t be everywhere at once.  As a result, however, I am somewhat picky about the tools [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://spinning-yarns.org/blog/?p=253</link>
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