waiting

Posted December 3, 2010 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Encoding
Tags:

noun

    the action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens.

—-
On the Yahoo! TDD group Kent Beck observed the following in the thread “TDD is Kanban for Code”:

“I disagree that “relentless refactoring” is an implication of TDD is kanban for code.

I find that waiting is one of my most valuable design skills. When I don’t know quite how to resolve an ugly design, I’m better off waiting until either I have an insight or the situation gets enough worse that insight is forced on me.

That was one of my takeaways from the analogy, that maybe I’ve been refactoring too soon.

Note I didn’t say too much, just too soon. What would happen if I made more of a habit of waiting? My code would be messier just sitting there, but I wouldn’t prematurely commit to a design that I later had to unwind before making progress.”

I often tell myself as I code to just let some duplication and/or “smell” live there for a bit. Don’t feel like you have to fix everything immediately, but rather wait until I can clearly see the commonality, thus resisting the urge to “jump to the framework” and instead just let it emerge.

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goal

Posted August 7, 2010 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Economics

noun
the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result

—-

I bring up these points to note that full employment in itself is NOT an appropriate “goal” for an economy. Furthermore, I would say that “economies” do not have “goals.” Instead, individuals have goals. An economy is a mechanism by which individuals produce and distribute things that help to meet their needs, in which individuals participate as part of their own means-ends frameworks.

The question we should ask is this: Why are there impediments to individuals being able to engage in those things which help us to meet our goals? If you are wondering why this is so, try starting your own business to make goods or provide services that others might want, and you will find that government provides a large number of barriers.

An excerpt from “Bob Murphy Takes on Krugman’s History and Krugman’s Curious Definition of Prosperity” by William L. Anderson.

This is an excellent blog in which the author consistently and quite specifically counters all the Keynesian rubbish being spewed from the ruling classes’ official orifice, Paul Krugman.

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freedom

Posted May 4, 2010 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Politics
Tags:

n. the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint

—-

“The most important part of our freedom, inner freedom, is always subject to our will. If we surrender it to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human.”

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.”

– G. K. Chesterton

Both from another nice UR Post.

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unfair

Posted April 10, 2010 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Expositions
Tags:

adj.
not based on or behaving according to the principles of equality and justice

—-

Recently, the company which makes the Twitter client software Tweetie was acquired by Twitter.

Apparently, Twitter announced that they were going to make the client available for free, because I stumbled on to an online forum where a bunch of morons were complaining that they had previously paid for Tweetie and now it was “unfair” that it was going to be available for free. Unbelievable.

Here was what I posted:

It is depressing to see how economically illiterate people are these days. When you buy anything. *ANYTHING* It may be made available *in the future* for 1) the same price, 2) a higher price, 3) a lower price. You are free to incorporate your expectation of the price movement into your decision, but when you pay X for Y at time T you are saying, “at this *moment*, I value Y at X and I would rather have Y than X for potential future spending on some Z.” End of story.

I purchased an Apple ][ in 1978 for ~ $2,000. I purchased a 17″ MBP (refurb) last year for ~ $2,000. Should I be crying and whining “I’ll never buy another Apple product! How dare they, in the future, create a product that is at least a billion times more powerful and functional and sell if for the same price! They should charge at least $20,000 for it, the bastards!”

The idea prices always go up over time is false. It only appears to happen because the USG steadily (though rapidly now) prints money and thus creates inflation. It is *not* natural and the fact that everyone just assumes that it happens doesn’t make it so. (there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, see above)

If the USG stopped printing money (sound money) prices would actually generally decrease over time as innovation and productivity made companies able to provide better products and services at lower prices. You can see this in competitive markets like tech. There would, of course, be price spikes in periods of high demand and low supply, but that’s *good* because it helps balance the people who most desire something with its supply.

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dupe

Posted March 24, 2010 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Politics

n. a victim of deception.
—-
If you believe politicians (of any party), you are a dupe and a fool.

Exhibit A:

On many, many, many, occasions, the most recent being March 19th (only 2 days before the bill was passed) Mr Obama stated “If you like your plan, keep your plan.”

Except let’s look at the supporting information sent by the Democrat Party leadership to the CBO to help them “score” the bill. It contains the assumption that “15 million people who get coverage through their employer would no longer do so”.

Hmmm. Strange. How can both of those statements be true?

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tool

Posted September 26, 2009 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Politics
Tags:

n.
1. a device or implement, esp. one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function

2. a person used or exploited by another
—-

In 2009, Krugman stated that “deficits saved the world.” However, in 2003, when Alan Greenspan and the Bush administration were destroying this country’s balance sheet, Krugman was scared to death about inflation.

Benjamin Lee posted an excellent article, “Paul Kruman’s Identity Crisis”, on Mises yesterday demonstrating beyond contradiction what a political tool looks like.

Using entirely Mr Krugman’s own words, Mr Lee shows how the Media-Educational Complex [my formulation, not Mr Lee's] uses slick words and constantly shifting positions to keep the majority of people in this country enslaved through their own ignorance of economics.

When the next crash occurs we will again be told that what we need is just a bit more government. Its all the “greedy capitalists” fault after all. Trust your “public servants”

But ask yourself the following:

  • Why are those “greedy capitalists” so cozy with them?
  • Who pays all the “public servants” campaign expenses?
  • Why do you ever think that you would have any influence with a “public servant” when you can give them nothing compared to those “greedy capitalists”?
  • Why, every time they fail, do they get more power?
  • Why do all those “public servants” end up so rich? We don’t pay them that much.

Every thoughtful person should be able to answer those questions or to at least have asked them of themselves.

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democracy

Posted September 25, 2009 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Excogitations, Politics

n.

a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives

—-

“Democracy itself encodes the threat of mob violence in the voting process. The State, as always, belongs to the strongest. Democracy models the process of mob violence, guesses who will win by counting heads, awards the state to the probable winner and skips the actual rioting.”

from “Seasteading, without that warm glow” by Mencius Moldbug on Unqualified Reservations.

This is an outstanding article, ostensibly about seasteading, but which also contains some excellent observations on the current tea party movement and whether or not it can actually affect change in our sclerotic system.

UR is one of the best weblogs extant. Read it.

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coerce

Posted September 7, 2009 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Expositions

verb
persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats.
—-

“A person who maintains that the State should solve, by necessarily coercive methods, any problem that individuals are capable of solving voluntarily, is…the very opposite of a liberal. The essence of tyranny is reliance on external, as opposed to internal, compulsion.”

– Felix Morley, “The Power of the People” (1949)

Timeless words, still applicable today. If only the people so intent on “fixing” everything in sight would heed it.

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reform

Posted August 12, 2009 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Politics
Tags:

verb
make changes in (something, typically a social, political, or economic institution or practice) in order to improve it
—-

Another excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal. This time from the CEO of Whole Foods, describing an outline of what an honest discussion of Health Care reform would look like.

“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.”

The easiest way to tell that all the bluster going on about “reform” in the media right now is totally phony is when he gets to his fifth bullet point:

“Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.”

The fact that this point has been *completely* ignored shows how fundamentally dishonest this entire debate has been.

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cronyism

Posted August 6, 2009 by N. G. Zax
Categories: Politics
Tags: , , ,

noun
the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.
—-

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

CHICAGO — Two University of Illinois trustees have resigned and a commission appointed by Gov. Patrick Quinn is expected Thursday to recommend that the remaining seven step down following charges that trustees eased admissions for hundreds of politically connected students.

University of Illinois trustee Lawrence Eppley testifies before a state commission investigating school admissions July 14 in Chicago.
Following a six-week inquiry, the Illinois Admissions Review Commission found that trustees created separate admissions criteria for applicants sponsored by elected officials, trustees and donors.

“It became a formal, underground, parallel admissions process that had a structure of its own,” review commission member Zaldwaynaka Scott said at a meeting last week. “It was a completely independent system that operated without regard to academic records, academic potential.”

This is hardly surprising. As the scope and power of our governmental rulers continues to relentlessly expand, politics oozes into every aspect of society. Admission into and continuance of study in the University was one of the many carrot-sticks wielded by the former “citizen tsar” rulers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

This phenomena permeates all political parties. As Katrina shouted at us: Mr Bush was a master.

Unfortunately, as our current president seems particularly enamored with such cronyism, appointing new Tsars faster than you can type out their lengthy titles, I would suspect further similar revelations in our future.

Note to the mainstream press: that tingling in your leg might be your “spider sense” that something is amiss. ;)

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