::::: : 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.

A fan of God on Facebook

News, Theology ·Thursday April 9, 2009 @ 20:20 EDT (link)

Bad driver (observed by Honey, around 3pm): WA 341 XEK silver Saturn SUV pulled out in front of her on Novelty Hill Road at Redmond Ridge.

Being a fan of God on Facebook strikes me as a bit sacrilegious.

I set that as my status, and Tim Whitson said he didnÂt understand. I asked, "Which part? Being a fan of God or that it seems sacrilegious (it seems to trivialize God)?"

TS: And people are talking to "him" through posts on his wall… I guess prayer is so web 1.0.

TW: The link explained it all and I agree.

KA: Um, "God joined Facebook" strikes me a little weird. I think I'm with you on this one.

Books finished: Real Education, Starship Troopers.

Random musings about elementary school

School ·Tuesday April 7, 2009 @ 02:18 EDT (link)

On reading Murray's Real Education, the topic of influential teachers came up. A few came to mind for me: of course my father was always supportive, but neither one of us were great communicators (we've definitely both improved), and he frequently didn't understand what school was like for me, what my (largely self-taught) learning goals were.

In second form in England, Miss Williams was understanding, although I don't remember much that far back. I was only in that class a half year, and then we moved to Canada. My first teacher in Canada (grade five, skipping a grade in the move) was Mrs. Ozog, who let me pick my own spelling words since the ones from the book were too easy. Moved to gifted class in grade six, I know I acted out a lot in Mrs. Rashleigh's (she was some other R. before that; she got married during the year) class (I cut some girl's hair once—only a very little—Shelly D. was her name, and I've no idea why I did it, but it didn't go over well. I learned that girls value their hair much more than boys do). I also think I did some things (chucking a binder, telling the teacher I'd take a zero for an assignment because something didn't go the way I wanted) for effect, too. It was a good class, though; I made some good friends there.

In seventh and eighth grade I was in Mr. Sinclair's class (and he was also on my paper route, and I learned the meaning of not mixing business and pleasure when I ignorantly tried to collect the weekly subscription in class one day). He was a good teacher; he kept things challenging (I remember his A(rithmetic?) and P(problem) sets he gave us at the beginning of class). I sometimes see him walking his dog past my parents' house when I'm visiting.

High school was more of the same. Grade nine was miserable; I suppose this is expected. Several teachers had no control of their classes (The names Kemp and Simpson—Yoda—come to mind). I do remember Mrs. Lazowski (technically, as she told us, it was the feminine form Lazowska), a tough but fair old lady who taught typing and could easily be coaxed to stop the lesson and hold forth on various hot-button issues such as abortion. (I think it was she that first noticed that I needed glasses, since I had trouble seeing the board.) In later years, especially in the advanced track (which wasn't all that advanced, really—when picking classes in grade eight I had selected the general (out of basic, general, and advanced) geography class because geography wasn't my strong suit, but whatever teacher was overseeing it told me to check advanced).

As now, I read voraciously (usually in math class, although I once got kicked out of class by an exchange teacher from New Mexico for reading in English class), taught myself computer programming and to some extent computer science, and although was pretty small, didn't put up with crap from anybody (not wanting to get killed, though, I usually left class rather than starting fights: if the teacher couldn't keep order, I felt morally justified to go to my locker and read). It wasn't my fault that I fell asleep in Mr. Chambers'—grade 11?—computer science class: it was mind-numbing since I'd taught myself the day's lesson at a single-digit age; he sent me to the office and then had the gall to check that I made it there: I hadn't (I went to read by my locker), so the principal had me paged. There he (Willard Thorne) attempted to browbeat me into confessing that I didn't know the topic and should have been paying attention, except I did know the topic pretty thoroughly (it was still rude to fall asleep, but I was a kid; give me a break, plus I'd probably been up late in BBS land).

Paul McCormick was an influence in grade 12: he taught physics. Unfortunately he came down with cancer that year and did not survive; the class was finished by a substitute. He gave me (and another girl in the class that did well) a book: Hawking's Black Holes and Baby Universes, which I still have (I keep it with my textbooks), and in which he inscribed the following:

January, 1995
David:

Congratulations on your oustanding achievement in SPH 4A0.

I trust you will find, as I continue to do, something new and wonderful in this book every time you read it.

Best wishes for success in whatever you choose to do with your abilities.

Sincerely,
Paul McCormick

I think I'll read the book a while again now…

I was never more than about halfway up the class. (It was a very bright class.) My classwork was very untidy, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better. When I was twelve, one of my friends bet another friend a bag of sweets that I would never come to anything. I don't know if this bet was ever settled and, if so, which way it was decided.

…

When it came to the last two years of school, I wanted to specialize in mathematics and physics. There was an inspirational maths teacher, Mr. Tahta, and the school had just built a new maths room, which the maths set had as their classroom. But my father was very much against it. He thought there wouldn't be any jobs for mathematicians except as teachers. He would really have liked me to do medicine, but I showed no interest in biology, which seemed to me to be too descriptive and not sufficiently fundamental.

Ah, the English, what a talent for understatement and wondrous dry humor we have. (My handwriting was never that great either; the computer printer was a godsend. And right there with you on biology, old boy—too squishy. "Oh, hey, I didn't see you guys all the way over there.")

Officer 444

School ·Monday April 6, 2009 @ 19:36 EDT (link)

Officer 444 on IMDb is "Up 70% in popularity this week." I don't need to get IMDb Pro (as they so kindly offer) to see why: it's one of the movies in our homework. Granted this isn't a huge class, but several of us probably looked it up to verify an answer and for a 1926 movie, that's easily a 70% increase in interest!

Books finished: What It Means To Be a Libertarian.

PSCU book club

News, Political ·Sunday April 5, 2009 @ 20:55 EDT (link)

Went to initial Puget Sound Conservative Underground book club meetup at Jersey's in Shoreline (1630 to 1700 to pick up our books, for those that didn't already have them, and arrange future meetings: bi-weekly, starting April 19). We're studying The 5000 Year Leap. It's my first book club (not counting an abortive attempt at a Word book club reading The Sun Also Rises), so we'll see how it goes. Afterwards I stayed to watch Media Malpractice ("How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted"): not bad, but I'd probably seen all the individual clips before during the election coverage.

Books finished: Keys To Investing In Options and Futures.

Second Amendment Day #2

News, Guns ·Saturday April 4, 2009 @ 19:08 EDT (link)

It was a beautiful sunny day for shooting with the Microsoft gun group (not the Gun Club, just a group organized via an internal e-mail list about guns). This was our second "Second Amendment Day" celebration. A good time was had by all, everyone was safe, and plenty of ammunition was expended and targets destroyed.

We left around 1130, got to the pit in Sultan at around noon, firing lines were set up (with bright orange tape), targets placed, ear protection installed, and firing commenced. Had a great time; got to meet some people in person that I'd only communicated with via the mailing list. Two other people from Word were there (developer SI and tester DP… no representative from program management). Note that this was around tax time and we'd just finished our taxes, so I brought the 1040 instruction booklet for some catharsis (middle, top).

This is only the second time I had the AR-15 out (Honey is shooting it in the bottom of the first set of photos, I'm shooting it in the last photo—thanks Stoyan for taking the picture—and Stoyan is shooting it above me; Drew also shot with it, but in the photo he's shooting a different rifle). It was a lot of fun to shoot, and it eats cheap Wolf ammo just fine (of course I cleaned it afterward). DM's video of the "all-out assault" at the end.

Percentage taxes are already unfair

Political ·Saturday April 4, 2009 @ 01:30 EDT (link)

So-called "progressive" taxes (higher percentage rates for higher incomes, not just a larger total) are immoral and unfair: why should those that make more be taxed at a higher rate? But (again, so-called—not my labels, the liberals won this naming round) "regressive" taxation (taxing everybody at the same rate) are also immoral and unfair. The argument usually goes that if you make more, then you're using more government services, so you should pay more (as a sum), but that really doesn't hold much water. Many things are already pay for play (also known as "pay as you go"): for example, people that don't drive don't (directly) pay gas taxes. But there are still plenty of things that people are taxed for yet do not use (schools for the childfree, unemployment or welfare for the continuously employed, etc.). I doubt very much that the government services people use are proportional to their income.

The libertarian ideal is "pay as you go"; but a fairer way than now would be to take the cost of government and government services, divide it among all adults, and assess them an equal portion. Presumably this would be fairly high, probably in the tens of thousands, due to the current mulcting of the "evil" rich. For those that did not pay, it would be counted as a debt like any other, subject to garnishment etc. If that were done, several good things would come out of it. Politicians would find incentive to reduce cost of government (and as a side benefit, most likely make it smaller). Expenditures would directly relate to every person's bottom line (versus selling the country to China), and politicians would also have incentive to start cutting back or making programs opt-in.

Coke vs. Pepsi blind taste test

News ·Friday April 3, 2009 @ 20:02 EDT (link)

Honey got 4/6 in a blind taste test of Coke vs. Pepsi (with inflamed allergies). We used the shot glasses we'd got from a wedding a while back (we'd managed to snag 6).

Books finished: The Inefficient Stock Market.

Fifty dollars

Political ·Thursday April 2, 2009 @ 23:30 EDT (link)

I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."

Her parents beamed.

"Wow! What a worthy goal." I told her, "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

Goodreads API randomly failing

Technical ·Thursday April 2, 2009 @ 21:44 EDT (link)

Strange—the goodreads API is randomly failing (401 Unauthorized with content Invalid OAuth Request); the same code run again will succeed, so the access and consumer keys are certainly valid and unexpired. Perhaps it doesn't like the nonce? It seems fairly certain the signature is being calculated correctly.

Went to the library to return books and pick up holds.

Books finished: Pillars of Prosperity.

I encourage my fellow patriots to trust their government

Political ·Wednesday April 1, 2009 @ 11:59 EDT (link)

Note the original post date (and apologies to KA, who didn't, at first).

I was thinking last night while curled up with my copy of Capital that perhaps this libertarianism stuff is a bit extreme. Sure, people have rights, but they exercise those rights by voting in rulers that know better than they how to control the country. After all, these rulers have studied government and law at our finest educational institutions, and always have the nation's best interests in mind. Perhaps we should not complain when asked to give up some liberties, because the trade-off is less anxiety about the future, a future that is safe in the hands of our duly elected officials such as President Obama. Leaders such as he, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Al Gore have been given a mandate from the people and it ill behooves us to tie their hands by constantly protesting and complaining.

I haven't studied finance, and nor have most of you, I'm sure. If the experts in our government think that bailouts are necessary, that these titans of industry that they're saving for the sake of our nation are essential and too big to fail, I'm sure they're right, and I applaud them for doing what's necessary to ensure these American institutions remain and can hold forth as beacons of American ingenuity, independence, and self-sufficiency by giving them the resources they need to succeed-and taking temporary ownership to help undo bad corporate decisions of the past. A trillion seems like a lot of money to you or I, but we don't own a printing press and don't understand that some loans are necessary to help people get on their feet. Suggestions like a stable currency or return to a gold standard would unfairly hamper our government and Federal Reserve in their efforts to fine-tune the economy in times like these. Speaking of loans, how would you feel if you were a high-school dropout and couldn't get a house of your own? Wouldn't that be fundamentally unfair? I love that we have a government compassionate enough to ensure that everybody, big or small, can get the money that they need.

So in conclusion, I would like to encourage my fellow patriots to trust their government. To paraphrase Vice-President Joe Biden: sometimes the things the administration is doing will seem strange, and you may begin to question, but trust them: they have your interests at heart. Give the government the benefit of any doubts you may have, and they will exercise their vast powers for good.