John Barlow in Toronto
Saturday February 15, 2003
Writers Against War had an incredibly fine day down at the city rounds today.
Assembling in frigid air which glittered with inhuman aspiration, the dauntless heroes, beloved for their thoughtful styles and inspiring talents, added a supplement of peace and friendliness to the event, which drew 50,000 overall, smiling with love and intermutual discovery.
In London England, the peace march was the largest of any kind ever, and one million hit the streets of Italy, while franticly enthusiastic groups shone in Australia, and in Tel Aviv, Israelis and Palestians marched together against war in Iraq ... but our little group with its one banner probably carried the most jam, for saying NO ~ NO to a no-hope war in Iraq, or anywhere else.
Simply bombing complex situations is the thinking of the dangerous. The problems faced by humanity and other life forms, worldwide, are only made worse by bombs. What global postmodernism means is that nations are not intact, not homogenous, not identities which can be made to represent; rather, it is individuals, of all ages and thinkings, whom live everywhere. And it is never a good idea to blow them up.
Even as I note this latter point, I point out that these too are my individuated thoughts. Bollocks to collective identity. This world could well learn from the differentiations and diversity of the writing world. If there were any down notes to the occassion (besides the fact that the militarists disregard all but militarists' opinion, likewise the jingoists) it is that our group did lose one another quite a bit toward the end, once we were in the city hall courtyard's windtunnels, barely able to hear the speeches.
But I was awfully pleased to hear what I think was Cathy Crowe speaking passionately on behalf of John Clarke, Gaeten Heroux and Stefan Pilipa, having their time wasted in a courtroom, over the June 15 2000 anti-Harris demonstration. Having done so much to help liberate Ontario from Mike Harris, and having done so much to help victims of Harris's ilk, and being such productive individuals, it is heartbreaking that a Law & Order system so bitterly classistly failing people must eat up their time during these troubling months.
Also: that peace marches were banned in New York because of the hoax-engendered terror-alert this week; and that no media coverage I saw mentioned if any resistance to the ban had been attempted. Shame!
Posted by Darren Wershler-Henry at February 18, 2003 11:20 AMEarlier I mentioned that variables can live in two different places. We're going to examine these two places one at a time, and we're going to start on the more familiar ground, which is called the Stack. Understanding the stack helps us understand the way programs run, and also helps us understand scope a little better.
Posted by: Gabriel on January 18, 2004 11:36 PMThis variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.
Posted by: Wymond on January 18, 2004 11:36 PMOur next line looks familiar, except it starts with an asterisk. Again, we're using the star operator, and noting that this variable we're working with is a pointer. If we didn't, the computer would try to put the results of the right hand side of this statement (which evaluates to 6) into the pointer, overriding the value we need in the pointer, which is an address. This way, the computer knows to put the data not in the pointer, but into the place the pointer points to, which is in the Heap. So after this line, our int is living happily in the Heap, storing a value of 6, and our pointer tells us where that data is living.
Posted by: Timothy on January 18, 2004 11:37 PMLet's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.
Posted by: Silvester on January 18, 2004 11:37 PMThis code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Laura on January 18, 2004 11:38 PM