How It Started

Roborant started as a blog in 2004. As with most blogs, it started out wretched and then improved somewhat as I found out what it was about. In its second incarnation, it became a tool for me to chronicle my attempts to become "well educated". A lot of that material remains in the new version of the site, but that is no longer the mission statement.

What I found, as I blogged my self-education, was that I am not a blogger, at least not in the conventional sense. I don't like to feel the pressure of daily updates. I suck at it. I found, after a while, that most of my traffic was from search engines. People were finding my essays, but no one was waiting breathlessly for my daily drivel.

I was also using a blogging tool that I didn't like. It was created around the idea of a group blog and I am not a group. It was cranky and had memory leaks. It wouldn't do a lot of things I wanted to do.

The New Direction: This is not a blog!

So, I ditched my old tool and wrote my own blogging application from scratch, using the standard J2EE tools: tomcat, eclipse, struts, tiles and so on. I am now the master of my domain and any bugs you experience here are totally my fault. (If you are interested, by the way, I would be happy to share the source code, just drop me an email. There is a whole page about the Roborant Publishing System)

I've also changed my philosophy. While I am still on a life-long mission to become well educated, I'm no longer blogging my daily progress. Too many steps along the road to enlightenment take a lot more than a day to complete. I've spent nearly ten days reading a history of Vietnam and it will take me several days after that to collect my thoughts and write a review of the book. In the mean time, I don't have much to say about it.

Much of the content of the old blog has been carried forward, however. Any entries in the old blog that were worthwhile were ported to the new database and new format.

Evolved Again!

I left the code base alone for about six years. It worked fine and I saw no reason to fool with it. However, along came Google App Engine. For stuff I was doing at work, I needed to investigate Google's Cloud Computing offering. I thought, "Why not put some skin in the game and re-write the website as a cloud application?" And so, here we are, fully clouded as of March 2011.

Some Things I Believe

More than any other single principle, I believe the individual is superior to the group. While the apparently unlimited power of human intelligence makes some people nervous, I exalt in it. Oh, I know there plenty of ignorant and stupid people (two overlapping groups), but there seem to be enough smart ones to keep the ball rolling.

I believe in science and I'm an enemy of superstition wherever I find it. I'm also an atheist. Completely and without doubt. It would take a personal visit from Jesus to change my mind and, so far, he has not returned my calls. Unlike many, however, I generally find religious people to be tolerant and pleasant and I would never try to change their mind about their religion. It is absolutely none of my business.

A whole lot of things are none of my business, such as what women chose to do with their unborn babies and who has what kind of sex with whom behind closed doors. I don't want to see marriage redefined, but I'm fine with civil unions or some other scheme that gives gay couples the same rights as married couples (and the same burdens).

I believe that peace requires strength. Evil people and organizations naturally try to exploit the weak, not the strong. Show me a dictator and I'll show you how he rules over a weakened nation (and show me a democratically elected government official and I'll show you his hand in my pocket, but that's another story). It takes freedom to dream of new things and nations that afford freedom to their people reap a reward from their spirit and creativity that can't be matched by oppressed nations.

Politically, I'm Libertarian (but I find the Libertarian party disgusting) and Conservative (but there are places where I don't see eye to eye with Republicans). I think the Constitution of the United States is a clever and shrewd document that should be messed with as little as possible. I'm a Federalist and think more rights should be reserved to the states (you want a giant government health care plan? Fine, have some state try it out and let's see how it goes before we jump in over our heads). I believe legislators are elected to make law, not judges. I would like for government in general and the Federal government in particular, to be as small as possible. I'm a meliorist, but I think governments often accidentally do harm when they try to help people. Much better to let the people help each other directly. I think government programs that give people a temporary helping hand to get through a rough spot are generally very good and programs that invite people to become dependent on the government are generally very bad.

As an individualist, I'm a strong supporter of capitalism. Power to the people! The mightiest corporation in the world can turn to dust in the blink of an eye if people no longer want its products. I believe in free trade, even when it takes away an American job or hurts the bottom line of an American company. All of those other people in the world deserve a shot at prosperity as much as Americans do. I believe that the role of government in a capitalist society is to set standards, enforce the rule of law and stay the hell out of everyone's way.

I'm optimistic by nature, but fully aware that nature is a bitch and you have to keep your guard up. I'm thrilled by scenes of personal courage that I see around me every day and chagrined by the approximately equal number of scenes of willful ignorance, pitiful stupidity and craven indifference that I also see around me every day.

As for the website, I only have a couple of policies. You can say anything you want in the comments, but I take no responsibility for the nutty things people might say. I'm not any kind of journalist, so I reserve the right to change, edit or ammend my text at any time. The fiction may change as I get ideas; the essays may get corrected or extended as I learn new information.

I have a degree in Aerospace Engineering, but I've spent most of my career writing software.

I was born in 1957, but without tail fins.