Paul M. Jones

[Civilisation] is not likely to advance much further, under a government that takes over the direction of daily affairs from its citizens. It would seem that no advanced civilisation has yet developed without a government which saw its chief aim in the protection of private property, but that again and again the further evolution and growth to which this gave rise was halted by a "strong" government. Governments strong enough to protect individuals against the violence of their fellows make possible the evolution of an increasingly complex order of spontaneous and voluntary cooperation. Sooner or later, however, they tend to abuse that power and to suppress the freedom they had earlier secured in order to enforce their own perpetually greater wisdom ...

F. A. Hayek, “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors Of Socialism”

File under "it's not enough to be smart; you have to actually know things."

Reason is an excellent tool for generating hypotheses. But it is in the world of hard, gritty practicality that honest folks test their favorite ideas, modify them under the helpful heat of criticism, carve away errors, and join others in developing systems that work.

David Brin, The Transparent Society

No matter what your hypothesis says, no matter how elegant your theory, no matter how reasonable, common-sense, and obviously true it may seem, real-world observations and measurements trump everything else. If the observations do not match the theory, if the measurable predictions of the hypothesis are not borne out, then it is not the observations and measurements that are wrong.

Consider, if you will, the two following quotes:

• "Everybody wants to save the world but nobody wants to help mom with the dishes." P. J. O'Rourke

• "Familiarity breeds contempt." Wiktionary

It occurs to me that the two sayings are related.

You want to do big things, to be part of something worldwide, to make sure your efforts are employed in something that will have the greatest possible impact. But those are the things that you are least likely to have a real effect on, and even if you do, the extent of your effectiveness is almost impossible to measure.

How much better would it be to concentrate your efforts on smaller goals, closer to home, where your aid is instantly recognized and immediately useful? Certainly the rewards for such things are more measurable. But you don't want to do those things, like helping mom with the dishes. You are familiar with those problems; they are contemptible for their familiarity and smallness.

It is the problems you're not familiar with that are so sexy. You may think you know a lot about your particular world-saving issue, but compared to the problems closest to you, your knowledge is infinitesmal. It is the fact that you know so little about the big problems that makes them attractive; it is so easy to conflate your desire to help with your actual ability to do so. You congratulate yourself on having the right sentiments about the most popular "big" problems, even if your actions don't have any measurable effect.

(P.S.: This is an old post I've had on file for a long time, and since it appears I will never "finish" it, I'm publishing it as-is.)

Back in 2009, President Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program was supposed to be a boon for the environment and the economy. During a limited time, consumers could trade in an old gas-guzzling used car for up to $4,500 cash back towards the purchase of a fuel-efficient new car. It seemed like a win for everyone: the environment, the gasping auto industry and cash-strapped consumers.

Though almost a million people poured into car dealerships eager to exchange their old jalopies for something shiny and new, recent reports indicate the entire program may have actually hurt the environment far more than it helped.

According to E Magazine, the “Clunkers” program, which is officially known as the Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), produced tons of unnecessary waste while doing little to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

via Whoops--'Cash for Clunkers' Actually Hurt the Environment - Yahoo! News.

If you fear genetically modified food, you may have Mark Lynas to thank. By his own reckoning, British environmentalist helped spur the anti-GMO movement in the mid-‘90s, arguing as recently at 2008 that big corporations’ selfish greed would threaten the health of both people and the Earth. Thanks to the efforts of Lynas and people like him, governments around the world--especially in Western Europe, Asia, and Africa--have hobbled GM research, and NGOs like Greenpeace have spurned donations of genetically modified foods.

But Lynas has changed his mind--and he’s not being quiet about it. On Thursday at the Oxford Farming Conference, Lynas delivered a blunt address: He got GMOs wrong.

via Mark Lynas, environmentalist who opposed GMOs, admits he was wrong..

The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar.

But the man eventually found the family.

"The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he's staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver," Chapman told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh.

The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ran out of bullets but threatened to shoot the intruder if he moved.

4 or 5 or 6 rounds may not be enough to stop one bad guy. If there are two or more guys, you might need a *lot* of rounds. Bans on high-capacity magazines are bans on women being able to defend themselves effectively. Via Woman hiding with kids shoots intruder | www.wsbtv.com.

Previously, on decoupling and dependencies, I said: "Some [Symfony] commenters were dissatsifed with my use of unit testing requirements to discover what a package really depends on, as opposed to what its composer.json file states."

I'm willing to allow that the Symfony commenters here might be right. Let's try looking at Symfony's claims and see how they stack up. Regarding the decoupling of their components, the Symfony website states:

Beside being a full-stack framework, Symfony is also a set of decoupled and standalone components.

What is a Component?

Symfony Components implement common features needed to develop websites. They are the foundation of the Symfony full-stack framework, but they can also be used standalone even if you don't use the framework as they don't have any mandatory dependencies.

That page then lists the following as their "decoupled" "standalone" components that "don't have any mandatory depedencies":

- BrowserKit             ~ EventDispatcher    ~ Routing
+ ClassLoader            + Finder             - Security
+ Config                 - Form               + Serializer
+ Console                + HttpFoundation     + Templating
+ CssSelector            - HttpKernel         ~ Translation
~ DependencyInjection    + Locale             ~ Validator
~ DomCrawler             + Process            + Yaml

After reviewing the master Github branches for the components' composer.json files, and in some cases the code itself, I conclude that Symfony's claim of "decoupled" "standalone" components is clearly true for 11 of those packages (marked with a + above) and clearly false for 4 of them (marked with a -). I think the claim is debatable for the remaining 6 components (marked with a ~) and I may take up that debate at some later time.

The 11 components for which Symfony's claim is clearly true are: ClassLoader, Config, Console, CssSelector, Finder, HttpFoundation, Locale, Process, Serializer, Templating, Yaml. These composer.json for these components has no "require" for another Symfony component, and my brief review of the codebase did not reveal any hidden dependencies.

The 4 components for which Symfony's claim is clearly false (i.e., composer.json notes at least one "require" for another Symfony component) are:

• BrowserKit (requires DomCrawler)
• Form (requires EventDispatcher, Locale, and OptionsReslover [which is not listed in the components])
• HttpKernel (requires EventDispatcher and HttpFoundation)
• Security (requires EventDispatcher, HttpFoundation, and HttpKernel)

As such, I think it is clearly false that all Symfony components are standalone and decoupled with no mandatory dependencies. Does having mandatory dependencies make it a bad project? Not at all. It just means their statement of "no mandatory dependencies" (and related statements) is not true for all the components listed.

Now, it may be that the Symfony folk have a different idea of what "decoupled" and "standalone" mean. Are they decoupled from the framework? Sure. But are they decoupled from each other? The answer appears to be "not always."

In comparison, all Aura packages (aside from the Framework package as previously noted) are fully decoupled from the framework composed of them, and also from each other. There no mandatory dependencies, and there are no suggested/optional/sometimes/maybe dependencies. Does that alone make it a good project? Not at all. It just means my claim about decoupled packages in Aura is completely true.

When President Obama talks about taxing the rich, he means the top 2 percent of Americans. John A. Boehner, the House speaker, talks about an even thinner slice. But the current and future fiscal imbalances are too large to exempt 98 percent or more of the public from being part of the solution.

Ultimately, unless we scale back entitlement programs far more than anyone in Washington is now seriously considering, we will have no choice but to increase taxes on a vast majority of Americans. This could involve higher tax rates or an elimination of popular deductions. Or it could mean an entirely new tax, such as a value-added tax or a carbon tax.

To be sure, the path ahead is not easy. No politician who wants to be re-elected is eager to entertain the possibility of higher taxes on the middle class. But fiscal negotiations might become a bit easier if everyone started by agreeing that the policies we choose must be constrained by the laws of arithmetic.

Emphasis mine. Via Too Much Wishful Thinking on Middle-Class Tax Rates - NYTimes.com.

How can we expect people to care about the growth of government if it doesn’t cost them anything?

Instead of paying for the current miasma of spending, we’ve been borrowing the money from our children and grandchildren. The national debt has grown by nearly $6?trillion in the four years since Obama took office. That generational theft cannot continue. We must not keep financing big government by passing the bills on to the next generation. Ideally, we would stop the spending binge and live within our means. But if the nation is not up to that, then we should all pitch in and pay for it -- all of us.

Sorry, taxing the rich won’t solve our problems -- that’s nothing but fiscal snake oil the president has been selling. He is demanding $1.3 trillion in higher taxes on the wealthy over 10 years. Imagine he got it. We are adding nearly that much to the national debt every single year. Taxing the rich would not put even a minor dent in our debt. It would pay for less than three weeks of federal spending every year. The only way to pay for the current expansion of government is to raise taxes on the middle class.

So let’s do it. Let’s all of us experience the true cost of big government in the form of a bigger tax bill.

via Marc Thiessen: Why not let taxes rise on the middle class? - The Washington Post.

Someone has to do the dishes and this is an opportunity at which you should leap.  First of all, your tackling clean-up lets a woman kick back and actually enjoy the meal she's prepared with everyone, without feeling the burden of clean-up looming over her shoulder.  Having gone to the effort to provide such a feast, shouldn't she be able to enjoy it in peace?  Second, it permits you to politely escape the postprandial conversation that, unlike most conversations of the holiday season, necessarily involves the "participation" of both sexes seated at the table, which in practice usually involves the women repeatedly interrupting each other while the men sit in silence wondering when they can escape the performance art and turn on the game.

...

This is a device I learned from that man among men, the Marine's Marine, my grandfather.  I used to marvel at his selfless generosity, and the way after every holiday meal, he would quietly excuse himself and disappear into the kitchen.  By the time everyone had left the table, the dishwasher would be running, the kitchen would be spotless, and everyone was happy and well-loaded with alcohol.  Including, of course, my grandfather.  When I asked him why he felt he needed to do the dishes, when at his age he deserved to take it easy, he laughed and pointed out that while he'd been happily cleaning up, watching the football game, and polishing off the rum, I'd been sitting there for 20 minutes, nursing my wine glass, staring into space, and listening to people ramble on about other people I couldn't identify if my life depended on it.

via Alpha Game: Holidays: postprandial labor.