Born in Virginia, raised in Kentucky. Sporadic education due to take of school on frontier. Made a name for himself in military. Nicknamed “Old Rough and Ready”. Lead a series of mostly successful battles during the Mexican War. Not much of a planner, but good at improvising.
Ran for president – reluctantly – as a Whig. He would be the last Whig to be elected president. Died just a few months into his term, perhaps due to food poisoning.
Best tech book I’ve ever read. Starts from the beginning, doesn’t skip steps. Admittedly, it does make it a chore to wade thru all the detail,some of which is already known. However, I’d rather be a little bored than totally baffled.
Saw Hidden Figures yesterday.
The history was interesting. A group of black women working at NASA in the “computing” department. One in particular, Katherine Jackson, played a significant role in solving the mathematical problems associated with the project.
The movie itself though is not so great. Boring script, very predictable plot, cliche-ridden, and teeth-grinding bad acting.
Good movie about the Catholic Church child abuse scandal. Centers around the investigation of the Boston Globe which to exposed the church. Watched it, ironically, on the day our esteemed president declared that “the press is the enemy of the American people”.
by Carl Sandburg
Berkun’s discusses his year working at Automattic, leading teams designing enhancements to WordPress.com. He describes the unique culture of Automattic, the company behind the most popular by far content management system in the world.
In (very) short, he believes the very non-hierarchical, remote-centric, small team, informal culture at Automattic is the general model of the future work office environment.
Directed and written by Hannes Holm. Swedish.
I liked it. Sort of the non-violent swedish version of Clint Eastwood’s Grand Torino. The movie is full of cliches, and the heart-warming ending can be seen coming from the very beginning. Still, the movie is highly enjoyable. The characters are believable, and their relationships feel right. It also has more than it’s share of laughs.
A lot of shit happened during Polk’s four years in office.
A Democrat, Polk was a disciple of Andrew Jackson. He promised to serve only one-term in order to placate rivals that he knew coveted the presidency. Not a strong leader and lacking charisma, he nevertheless succeeded in bringing about all four of the main items on his agenda:
He may not have done it exactly to plan – instead starting a war with Mexico – but he did it.
Poor guy died four months after leaving office.