Universal Scripting Language
Russell Beattie posted today on Server Side JavaScript and the Universal Scripting Language. If I'm not mistaken, the original Netscape enterprise server used LiveScript, which was a server-side JavaScript. JavaScript was also an option in classic ASP. More recently, Lazlo is certainly a step in this direction, though it doesn't seem to have gotten much traction. JavaScript seems flexible enough to act as a server side script, though I expect that someone will have to figure out how to do package management. I may be wrong though, PHP seems to have terrible package management and has done just fine.
I have to agree with Russ on PHP. Given the P in LAMP, I can't understand the attraction of PHP next to Python and Perl. Perl certainly has some ugliness and tends to be a write-only syntax, but it has tons of native libraries and a good package manager. Python's syntax feels comfortable to me, the packaging situation isn't as nice, but it works OK. PHP though... it's a taste I can't acquire. My every interaction with it gives me the same reaction as languages like Cold Fusion - let me out of here! It seems to have minimal code organization features, some kind of magical ability to mark up output, and encourages developers into a zero abstraction design - read and write directly to the database. It feels much like classic ASP, IMO. Maybe that's why it's so successful. There's something to be said for a tool that produces output quickly.
— Gordon Weakliem at permanent link
Irrationally Exuberant Ethanol
Brad Feld wrote a bit on Irrationally Exuberant Ethanol today. He points to a couple of interesting articles which point out not-so-obvious problems with ethanol.
There was also extensive coverage of worldwide use of ethanol in National Geographic recently, which highlighted the case of Brazil, where ethanol has been a big part of their energy policy. The difference is that they use sugar cane, which is much more efficient to convert to ethanol. Corn has to be converted to sugar, while sugar cane is, well, already sugar. The thing is that the US doesn't produce sugarcane in any real quantity and the political clout of the corn-producing regions is strong, so the US is doing its best to prohibit the use of imported ethanol (from, say, Brazil) and trying instead to make energy efficiency out of inherently inefficient process. Most of the sugar produced in the US comes from beets, and you'd think that would be a reasonable alternative - while not as efficient as sugar cane, it's certainly cheaper to get sugar from beets than corn, but it would seem that the ethanol lobby would rather do things the hard way.