Paul M. Jones

[A]ir conditioning in warm regions uses far less energy than heating in cold regions.

So if you want to help save the planet, move out of Vermont and get yourself to Alabama where people know how to live in harmony with Mother Gaia. Moving out of New England could be the purest form of environmental activism; your selfish, earth destroying choice of living in Massachusetts in killing us all. And as for Canada, Gaia’s message is clear: shut it down, now. The Germans for their part could help the planet by moving to Spain and Greece; this might also help with Europe’s financial woes.

Perhaps the blue model politicians whose tax and spend policies are driving businesses and residents out of their states are smarter than they look. They could be green activists, steadily working to save the earth by driving people out of the northeast. We look forward to green activists introducing legislation in Congress to levy new taxes on those whose choice to live in cold states imposes costs on the more virtuous and eco-friendly inhabitants of Texas and South Carolina.

It only seems fair.

But if you live in cold climates like the northeast, as Via Meadia does, don’t despair: As the climate warms and winters get milder, your houses will start to use less energy too. The worse global warming gets, the better world citizen you become.

via Save the Planet, Get Out Of Vermont | Via Meadia.

Police state.

Imagine you're sitting at home, comfortable on the couch, watching the Food Network, when all of a sudden a heavily armed SWAT team breaks down your door and storms into your living room.

That's what happened to 18-year-old Stephanie Milan, who was watching TV in her family's Evansville, Ind., home last Thursday (June 22), when a team of police officers broke down her storm door -- the front door was already open -- and tossed a flash-bang stun grenade into the room.

"The front door was open," Ira Milan, Stephanie's grandfather and the property owner, told the Evansvile Courier & Press. "To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive."

[Wi-Fi Warping Wallpaper Keeps Hackers Out]

Turns out, however, that the SWAT team had the address wrong.

via Online threat -- but police raid wrong house - Technology & science - Security - msnbc.com.

You can find them on Slideshare here: http://www.slideshare.net/pmjones88/it-was-like-that-when-i-got-here.

Thanks to everyone who attended and rated the talk on Joind.in!

For most Europeans, almost nothing is more prized than their four to six weeks of guaranteed annual vacation leave. But it was not clear just how sacrosanct that time off was until Thursday, when Europe’s highest court ruled that workers who happened to get sick on vacation were legally entitled to take another vacation.

I wonder if that has anything to do with their economic woes. Via Marginal Revolution -- Small steps toward a much better world..

... there’s a very particular story ... embodied since the late nineteenth century in what Tomasi calls High Liberalism.  The High-Liberal political philosophers ... rely, against Kant, on a factual story which they take to be so obvious as to not require defense.  I claim that on the contrary their master narrative is mistaken, as anthropology or economics or history. ...

The story is, in a few brief mottos to stand for a rich intellectual tradition since the 1880s:  Modern life is complicated, and so we need government to regulate.  Government can do so well, and will not be regularly corrupted.  Since markets fail very frequently the government should step in to fix them.  Without a big government ee cannot do certain noble things (Hoover Dam, the Interstates, NASA).  Antitrust works.  Businesses will exploit workers if government regulation and union contracts do not intervene.  Unions got us the 40-hour week.  Poor people are better off chiefly because of big government and unions.  The USA was never laissez faire.  Internal improvements were a good idea, and governmental from the start.  Profit is not a good guide.  Consumers are usually misled.  Advertising is bad.

...

No.  The master narrative of High Liberalism is mistaken factually.  Externalities do not imply that a government can do better.  Publicity does better than inspectors in restraining the alleged desire of businesspeople to poison their customers.  Efficiency is not the chief merit of a market economy: innovation is.  Rules arose in merchant courts and Quaker fixed prices long before governments started enforcing them.

Fantastic article. Read the whole thing. Via Factual Free-Market Fairness | Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

This model promises to offer a more personalized college experience to every student in which students can begin and complete courses at any time. Competency exams can be taken from home or work to ensure flexibility and special computer software can be utilized to ensure academic honesty.

One goal is to offer students smaller course segments or “modules.” Rather than molding coursework around a set timeframe, these modules can be designed to contain only the knowledge required within a specific competency. This could benefit working adults who need to start and pause their studies because of work and personal commitments. It could also benefit highly motivated students who are able to move through course materials at a faster pace.

Courses in this new program will be based on competency, not seat time, so students can move on to the next topic when they have mastered the current material.

via Althouse: Gov. Scott Walker and the University of Wisconsin announce a "self-paced, competency-based" online degree model..

Sometimes you may wish to use Aura as a micro-framework. It’s also possible to assigning anonymous function to controller:

<?php
$map->add("read", "/blog/read/{:id}{:format}", [
    "params" => [
        "id" => "(d+)",
        "format" => "(..+)?",
    ],
    "values" => [
        "controller" => function ($args) {
            $id = (int) $args["id"];
            return "Reading blog ID {$id}";
        },
        "format" => ".html",
    ],
));

When you are using Aura.Router as a micro-framework, the dispatcher will look something similar to the one below:

<?php
$params = $route->values;
$controller = $params["controller"];
unset($params["controller"]);
echo $controller($params);

Via phpmaster | Web Routing in PHP with Aura.Router. The Aura project for PHP 5.4 codebase is here.

Phil Zimmermann and some of the original PGP team have joined up with former US Navy SEALs to build an encrypted communications platform that should be proof against any surveillance.

The company, called Silent Circle, will launch later this year, when $20 a month will buy you encrypted email, text messages, phone calls, and videoconferencing in a package that looks to be strong enough to have the NSA seriously worried. Zimmermann says that surveillance by the state and others has increased vastly over the last few years, and privacy improvement are again needed.

"At the very least I want people, as part of their right in a free society to be able to communicate securely," he said in a promotional video (below). "I should be able to whisper in your ear, even if your ear is a thousand miles away."

via PGP founder, Navy SEALs uncloak encrypted comms biz • The Register.

The TSA should not be streamlined. Administrators should not "review screening procedures." Screeners don't need additional training. The TSA doesn't need to be tweaked. It didn't "go too far" in these specific instances. Its very existence goes too far. The TSA never should have been created in the first place, and it should be abolished now. Immediately. Without hesitation.

...

I am a "customer" of the airlines I fly. The TSA stands between me and the airline with a credible threat that they will not let us conduct business unless I go through a ludicrous song-and-dance routine that involves partially disrobing and then either being subjected to nude imaging or a full-on groping that involves hand-to-genital contact.

via Sunday Reflection: 'Dear TSA: I am not your customer' | Washington Examiner.

The social scientist Dalton Conley wrote a provocative Op-Ed, “A Man’s Right to Choose” in the New York Times on this subject a few years ago. He wrote, “But when men and women engage in sexual relations both parties recognize the potential for creating life. If both parties willingly participate then shouldn’t both have a say in whether to keep a baby that results?”

... I tried to imagine I was having an irresolvable conflict with a man over an accidental pregnancy. I told Conley I just don’t see a compromise: It has to be the woman’s choice.

He said, “Then the man shouldn’t be responsible for the baby.”

via Unexpected pregnancy: Should a man be responsible for supporting a baby he didn’t want? - Slate Magazine.