Head Above The Clouds

The Loss of the Human Self in 21st Century America. What is better...to have free will in a controlled world or to be controlled in a free world? To most of us this will sound like a false dichotomy. Nobody is controlling me you say. And the world is too large and complex to be controlled anyways. I really wished both notions were true. But I see mounting evidence to the contrary. Not only this evidence is piling up, it is intensifying. Oh, I can smell a conspiracy theory coming up you say. And your reticence will be taken as entirely appropriate skepticism since the mere mention of a conspiracy theory will dissipate any suspicions that it might actually exist. Funny how this works. It is an unexamined statement that effectively discourages examination. It is a double wham for the near irrational. But why is it so effective? Have you yourself never "conspired" with anyone to make something happen? It could have been something that you and ...

...LIVE EVERY MINUTE MORE INTENTIONALLY . Note that I am not saying more intensely. That is not realistic, at least for most of us. Intentions are more within our continuous grasp than intensity. And what do I mean exactly by more intentionally? Consider more carefully what you are saying and particularly what you are doing. And if at all possible, do a lot of listening. And not just to the people you deem worthy. Even big fools do things which make sense to them. Sometimes understanding the sense behind it can prove instructive when interacting with lesser fools. ...KEEP IN MIND THAT ELOQUENCE AND TRUTH ARE NOT THE SAME . This is much harder to do than one thinks. Much harder...particularly when you are in the midst of a situation when someone is being very eloquent and has already persuaded most of the people around you. And if EVERYONE around you becomes persuaded, it gets nearly impossible. But you must withstand your ground, particularly if sai...

Dylan O'Brien in "American Assassin" I Didn't Know Anything About Dylan O'Brien... Before watching  American Assassin (2017)  in March of 2020, I had had no exposure to actor  Dylan O'Brien .  I wasn't aware of the  Teen Wolf  TV series or the  Maze Runner  movie trilogy. And I did not know that Mitch Rapp, the counter-terrorism CIA operative that Dylan plays in American Assassin, was a strong departure from his previous roles. This actually came as a big surprise to his fans. One fan in the net put it like this: "No one saw this coming! We still remember when the first photos were released. It was truly a day to remember". Mitch Rapp by Dylan O'Brien As I watched Dylan play Mitch Rapp, I soon became ...

This is an example of a class in IronPython that can upload a file to a web site. This is a port from the example given in http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/uploadfileex.aspx , except that I did not consider the use of cookies...but the addition should be trivial. Points to note are: the parameter query_string is of type NameValueCollection the parameter url must be a valid URI (e.g. www.somewebsite.com/somepage ) the parameter content_type can be 'multipart/form-data'. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 import System from System import * from System.Text import * from System.IO import * import clr clr . AddReference( "System.Xml" ) from System.Xml import * clr . AddReference( "System.Web" ) from System.Web import * clr . AddReference( ...

This is an IronPython example of using .NET classes to load a XML document, query it with a simple XPath expression, and then using the results to transfer data from an Oracle to a SQL Server database. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 import clr clr . AddReference( 'System.data' ) from System.Data.SqlClient import * clr . AddReference( 'System.data.OracleClient' ) from System.Data.OracleClient import * clr . AddReference( "System.Xml" ) from System.Xml import * import sys try : # connecting to Oracle con_oracle = OracleConnection( 'Data Source=...;User ID=...;Password=...' ) con_oracle . Open() # connecing to SQL Server con_sql = SqlConnection( 'Data Source=...;Initial Catalog=...;User ID=...;Password=...' ) con_sql . Open() # loading XML doc = XmlDocument() doc ....