::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Javascript splitter pane

Technical ·Saturday March 14, 2009 @ 01:13 EDT (link)

Regarding my CSS splitter pane issues: I posted two questions to stackoverflow.com; one helped a little, and the other netted a suggestion to use a table, which sort of worked, but when the splitter moved too far to the right, whatever calculations were being done blew up and the thumbnail pane jumped below the main page (as in, below the viewport, causing a new top-level scrollbar to appear; the scrollbar's not the problem: overflow: hidden would get rid of it, but it'd also get rid of my content ). What I need is to be able to set width: 100% - 3px, and I finally had to go with a Javascript hack to calculate it (I also tried calcualting a percentage width, but like the tables, when the splitter was moved over too far it broke down). Setting the width in pixels rather than as a percentage (I had been using a width: 99.5% hack) meant that I had to update it when the splitter bar moves. I hope CSS 3 has better solutions to this problem.

CLAMS meet at Red Robin

News ·Friday March 13, 2009 @ 20:45 EDT (link)

Count me among those that don't like the new Facebook (I miss Live Feed, although getting rid of it probably helped their server load).

Met with CLAMS (Conservatives and Libertarians at Microsoft) at Red Robin for lunch today. No photos, since I didn't really like how they came out. A crowded restaurant with a full table is no place to take candids, anyway.

Also watched Glenn Beck's "We Surround Them" show; see The 9.12 Project (servers currently overloaded).

Educational choice and freedom

News ·Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 23:47 EDT (link)

This chapter of Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman, University of Chicago Press, 1962) presents four key points which I've excerpted below:
denationalizing schooling would improve choice and lower costs;

a voucher system would promote competition, variety, and flexibility (and stop making people that want to send their children to private schools pay double);

merit pay for teachers should be introduced; and

taxes should only be levied for basic education (not vocational or professional schooling, extracurricular activities best traded privately, etc.).
The last point comes close to addressing the problem of non-users paying for the system. Similarly, he does not thing that state higher education should be subsidized (since neighborhood effects are gone), or if it must be, an equivalent should be provided for private schools (i.e. vouchers again). Text in [square brackets] is mine, to clarify remarks extracted from a larger context.

In terms of effects, denationalizing schooling would widen the range of choice available to parents. If, as at present, parents can send their children to public schools without special payment, very few can or will send them to other schools unless they too are subsidized. Parochial schools are at a disadvantage in not getting any of the public funds devoted to schooling, but they have the compensating advantage of being run by institutions that are willing to subsidize them and can raise funds to do so. There are few other sources of subsidies for private schools. If present public expenditures on schooling were made available to parents regardless of where they send their children, a wide variety of schools would spring up to meet the demand. Parents could express their views about schools directly by withdrawing their children from one school and sending them to another, to a much greater extent than is now possible. In general, they can now take this step only at considerable cost—by sending their children to a private school or by changing their residence. For the rest, they can express their views only through cumbrous political channels. Perhaps a somewhat greater freedom to choose schools could be made available in a governmentally administered system, but it would be difficult to carry this freedom very far in view of the obligation to provide every child with a place. Here, as in other fields, competitive enterprise is likely to be far more efficient in meeting consumer demand than either nationalized enterprises or enterprises run to serve other purposes. The final result may therefore be that parochial schools would decline rather than grow in importance.

The arrangement that perhaps comes closest to being justified by these considerations [neighborhood effects, stratification, and technical monopoly]—at least for primary and secondary education—is a combination of public and private schools. Parents who choose to send their children to private schools would be paid a sum equal to the estimated cost of educating a child in a public school, provided that at least this sum was spent on education in an approved school. This arrangement would meet the valid features of the "technical monopoly" argument. It would meet the just complaints of parents that if they send their children to private non-subsidized schools they are required to pay twice for education—once in the form of general taxes and once directly. It would permit competition to develop. The development and improvement of all schools would thus be stimulated. The injection of competition would do much to promote a healthy variety of schools. It would do much, also to introduce flexibility into schools systems. Not least of its benefits would be to make the salaries of school teachers responsive to market forces. It would thereby give public authorities an independent standard against which to judge salary scales and promote a more rapid adjustment to changes in conditions of demand and supply.

If one were to seek deliberately to devise a system of recruiting and paying teachers calculated to repel the imaginative and daring and self-confident and to attract the dull and mediocre and uninspiring, he could hardly do better than imitate the system of requiring teaching certificates and enforcing standard salary structures that has developed in the larger city and state-wide systems. It is perhaps surprising that the level of stability in elementary and secondary school teaching is as high as it is under these circumstances. The alternate system would resolve these problems and permit competition to be effective in rewarding merit and attracting ability to teaching.

If the financial burden imposed by such a schooling requirement [minimum literacy, knowledge, and common values] could readily be met by the great bulk of the families in a community, it might still be both feasible and desirable to require the parent to meet the cost directly. Extreme cases could be handled by special subsidy provisions for needy families. There are many areas in the United States today where these conditions are satisfied. In these areas, it would be highly desirable to impose the costs directly on the parents. This would eliminate the governmental machinery now required to collect tax funds from all residents during the whole of their lives and then pay it back mostly to the same people during the period when their children are in school. It would reduce the likelihood that governments would also administer schools, a matter discussed further below. It would increase the likelihood that the subsidy component of school expenditures would decline as the need for subsidies declined with increasing general levels of income. If, as now, the government pays for all or most schooling, a rise in income simply leads to a still larger circular flow of funds through the tax mechanism, and an expansion of the role of the government. Finally, but by no means least, imposing the costs on the parents would tend to equalize the social and private costs of having children and so promote a better distribution of families by size.

A major reason for this kind [luxurious grounds, extracurricular programs] of public money is the present system of combining the administration of schools with their financing. The parent who would prefer to see money used for better teachers and texts rather than coaches and corridors has no way of expressing this preference except by persuading a majority to change the mixture for all. This is a special case of the general principle that a market permits each to satisfy his own taste—effective proportional representation; whereas the political process imposes conformity. In addition, the parent who would like to spend some extra money on his child's education is greatly limited. He cannot add something to the amount now being spent to school his child and transfer his child to a correspondingly more costly school. If he does transfer his child, he must pay the whole cost and not just the additional cost. He can only spend extra money easily on extra-curricular activities—dancing lessons, music lessons, etc. Since the private outlets for spending more money on schooling are so blocked, the pressure to spend more on the education of children manifests itself in ever higher public expenditures on items ever more tenuously related to the basic justification for governmental intervention into schooling.

Capitalism and freedom

News ·Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 23:01 EDT (link)

Some representative quotes from a book I'm reading, Capitalism and Freedom (Milton Friedman, University of Chicago Press, 1962) (emphasis mine):

The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated - a system of checks and balances. By removing the organization of economic activity from the control of political authority, the market eliminates the source of coercive power. It enables economic strength to be a check to political power rather than a reinforcement.

Comment: O that the organization of economic activity was removed from the control of political authority: not only would we be better off in this crisis, we'd never have gotten into it in the first place!

A society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child - such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist. Yet it is also true that such a government would have clearly limited functions and would refrain from a host of activities that are now undertaken by the federal and state governments in the United States, and their counterparts in other Western countries.

Comment. By liberal above he means in the classical sense; probably what would be called libertarian today.

A few related quotes from CLAMS members:

Every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general popular acceptance. In short, the bulk of the people themselves, for whatever reason, acquiesce in their own subjection. The central problem of political theory: why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement? The mystery of civil obedience: why do people, in all times and places, obey the commands of government, which always constitutes a small minority of the society?

—Murray N. Rothbard

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

—Attributed to Alexander Tytler

Workaholics, Facebook chat emoticons

News, Technical ·Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 22:03 EDT (link)

It's Workaholics' Wednesday, but I didn't like the food (Italian, mostly heavy cheese lasagna-type stuff), so I only stayed until a little after 2000.

This guy reverse engineered Facebook chat and found all the emoticons. Don't abuse them.

Snow falls, Outlook Web Access goes down

News ·Tuesday March 10, 2009 @ 18:55 EDT (link)

Worked from home (snow). Broadstripe just had a ~10 minute outage, and Outlook Web Access is down for (at least) the second day in a row.

Homosexual marriage debate: derail the money train

Political ·Tuesday March 10, 2009 @ 01:25 EDT (link)

This is a summary, with some removal of extraneous material, of a discussion in a certain "lively political forum." It started with criticism of Obama's choice of Rick Warren to pray at the inauguration (even though he sprinkled in a few nuttier choices too). As usual, names reduced to initials to protect the privacy of the participants.

PM: If [Warren] said the same things he does but about people of another race or religion, would you still say he's not a bigot? No, you'd be appalled that he called for denying equal citizenship to someone for being black, or Christian, or a woman. So how is it suddenly not bigotry because he says it about gay people?

CH: Here's the bottom line. Rick Warren claims to be a Christian. For most Christians, that means believing that the Bible is inerrant. Part of that inerrancy is that homosexuality is a sin, and not part of God's design for humanity. If we believe in free speech, and freedom of religion, does he not have the right to believe as he chooses?

PM: He can believe what he wants. … What he cannot do is claim that actively campaigning to deny a group of people equal protection under the law is anything but bigoted, and he cannot claim that his religion has any standing to take away the legal rights of an group of people just because he and his followers don't like them.

DR: Homosexual people have the same right as anyone else to marry someone of the opposite sex. The best way to get equality for all citizens would be to vote in a libertarian government. Then the government wouldn't be concerned about marriage.

PM: So you should have the right to marry someone you love because she happens to be of a different sex, but my brother shouldn't be allowed to marry the person he loves; he should just find a girl if he wants to get married?

DR: No, if he just cares about being married in the eyes of his friends and relatives: in that case he can find a church/coven/temple/whatever that will perform the ceremony. Religious marriage does not require the assent of government, although frequently they're combined.

Yes, if he wants to be married for purposes of government benefits, laws, etc. Then he runs against a specific legal definition, which does not include homosexual pairings.

Does he want to get "married" for the relationship, or for the government benefits? The people have decided against giving him the latter, but in a free country, nobody can stop the former. Many of the benefits (e.g. hospital visitation rights) can be arranged without marriage. As for tax benefits, the people have decided to rob the rest of us in many ways too, and it's frustrating, so I understand if he wants to be angry about it.

PM: But you don't have to make those special arrangement, why should he? Why should you get those government rights when he and his partner cannot? What makes you so much better than him that you should be allowed protections denied to him and his partner? I'd really like to know.

DR: Just like the government has decided that I should pay property taxes to support schools that I don't use, it has decided that homosexual couples (and other groups, friends, roommates, siblings, etc.) have to spend more money (time is money too) to get the benefits that heterosexual couples get (you could say it has decided to rob the public treasury and distribute largess to heterosexual couples, if you'd prefer). Every human being is eligible. The government has not decided to allow my best friend or my grandfather hospital visitation, either, or for me to sponsor them for a green card; is that offensive too? The "why" is that the people have decided. Perhaps it isn't fair, but the government has SWAT teams, tanks, and attack helicopters, so nobody's going to get "fair" until dawn breaks on Libertopia, and even then some people will complain. There's no "better" in either case of subsidy; they should both go away.

The legal definition is not all that matters. The religious and spiritual dimension is very important. If the government struck down all laws, regulations, and benefits mentioning marriage, would that estrange or separate those currently married? Of course not. The heart of marriage is the decision to love and honor and spend one's life with another person: government cannot add or subtract from that, although it can subsidize some of the costs.

PM: The religious and spiritual dimension may be important to you, but it's certainly not baked into the legal definition of marriage, otherwise atheists like my husband and me would not be allowed to marry. … The legal definition is all that matters. Churches can discriminate all they want; they have that right under the constitution. But the government does not have the right to deny certain classes of people rights that the rest get.

DR: Suppose the people (or at least their government, which ought to be the same thing) decided to force banks to give loans to minorities that shouldn't normally qualify (by various regulatory shenanigans including withholding consent for mergers). Is that racist or discriminatory?

PV: They did force banks, started with CRA and ACORN! A big part to the subprime financial mess and economic collapse. Way to go government!

DR: Yes. That comment was a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

Either it's wrong for government to discriminate economically for classes of people or it isn't. I say it is wrong: government should be out of the business of marriage (i.e. providing benefits for same) and of telling banks who they can loan money to and of taking money for schools from people without children in those schools and of collecting money and returning it to people of a certain age, and whole host of other things.

Individuals and private organizations are welcome to start groups to promote whatever they want: they can call their group "The Race" (meaning people like them) or "National Association for Advancement of People of My Skin Color" or "Stormfront" or "Gay Alliance"; and give money earned or donated to them to support whatever causes they want, including, say, giving $1000 to every homosexual couple that gets married if they so choose.

It's wrong for government to hand out money to classes of people is because it's theft (why should I as a married person be in any way subsidized by people who are not married?), not because it's undemocratic (see the "vote themselves largess from the public treasury" quote). If it's legitimate for private groups to hand out money to people of a certain skin color, why is it not legitimate for government to do the same? It's because the first is funded voluntarily, but the second is not. I understand that homosexual couples want to get on the government's handing-out-money train, but they need to get in line, or, better still, agitate for derailment of said train.

Sudden blizzard

News ·Monday March 9, 2009 @ 21:45 EDT (link)

I left work a little after 1400 due to snow (it was just pouring down in Redmond… out of a metaphorically clear blue sky). Honey called and was worried, but I'd planned to leave anyway, after AH (co-worker who lives in Woodinville) mentioned it (funny thing: he had planned to work from home due to snow, then came in after it cleared up, then left again around when I did). The snow started sticking on the way home; things got unusually slow on Novelty Hill (about 30 mph in a 40 zone, when the usual speed is around 45); actually going down the hill things slowed to a crawl, for good reason. It was extremely slippery, and totally untreated.

Canadian (or North Dakotan) readers may scoff, but the line of cars included minivans and other 2WD vehicles like my Solara, the hill is extremely steep, and as I said, no sand, salt, snow tires, or chains. I got home around 1445, but got stuck at the end of the next street from ours, climbing a tiny hill off the main road (275th leaving Stephens, for those that know the area). I was in the middle of the road and stuck; going back could mean sliding into a ditch and I couldn't go forward (need more power). So I walked the rest of the way home (equivalent of just a few blocks) with a box with my work notebook, books, and camera in it; it was freezing. I called AAA to get a tow truck, and the local police to let them know, but fortunately it thawed enough to get it out at around 1615 (and thankfully nobody had hit my car, probably because they used a nearby turning circle to go around it—if I could have gotten to it to park in it, I would have).

Added created column to pH.journal table, since so frequently entries are added at times different from their date of occurrence.

We Surround Them

News, Technical ·Sunday March 8, 2009 @ 20:25 EDT (link)

"We Surround Them" (Glenn Beck's attempt to bring together people with conservative values): meetups for Washington; Edmunds meetup group (the other one about equally close is in Seattle; I'd much rather drive to Edmonds). Main and Seattle Facebook groups.

WeRead changed their site a little; what was an <a> tag became a <span> tag. Required a minor fix to pH::Scan::WeRead, my automation module. I'm looking forward to them having an API (they say one is coming); I don't like playing catchup with site changes.

Books finished: Capitalism and Freedom.

Exporting a message to a file in Mutt

Technical ·Saturday March 7, 2009 @ 20:47 EST (link)

I was trying to save a message to a file in Mutt (console mail reader); first, it turns out that s (save-file) actually is more like move (it marks the original message deleted) and what I wanted was C (copy-file). Second, when I told it to save to ~/something, it actually created a Maildir folder and put a copy of the message in it. I had set mbox_type=maildir in the configuration; turns out it was only for creating new folders, so I commented it out (setting it back to the default of mbox), which caused copy-file to write a regular file.