::::: : 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.

Shuffling partitions on cirith-ungol

News, Technical ·Saturday January 30, 2010 @ 03:05 EST (link)

My 2Tb USB HD (Western Digital MyBook Essential) arrived a few days ago (with a memory upgrade for the same machine); now I can sort out some space issues I've been having with the MythTV box, cirith-ungol. The root partition was sized at 10Gb when I partitioned it originally, which is too small now (building XBMC from SVN pushed it over the limit). Most of that HD (320Gb) and another internal (500Gb) was devoted to an LVM-joined video partition using IBM's JFS (because it seemed optimal for large video files).

Unfortunately, JFS can't be shrunk to regain some space for the root partition, and I figured it would be handy to have videos on a portable drive for watching them in other places. So I moved the video partition to the new disk (keeping the same paths so MythTV wouldn't have a heart attack and crap its database), resized the old partition with GNU parted from a Knoppix Live CD (because parted can't resize a mounted filesystem, although apparently resize2fs can, but it still seems a bit dicey). I mounted the remaining internal 500Gb disk as a spare; I may move it to the server machine or somewhere else, or put it in a USB enclosure.

The first Knoppix CD I burned was some "ADRIANE" build, which I figured was just a codename and I picked it since it had a recent date and was at the top of the list. Turns out it's some sort of speak-'n'-spell accessible version, so I had to delete it and download the correct version (both 6.2 / 2009-11-18).

It's pretty baroque that the best (command-line) way to resize partitions is to use fdisk (parted supposedly can do a partition and filesystem, but it's experimental and looks scary since the way to specify "don't move the start" is to copy the value from the print command, which seems subject to failure due to rounding between megabytes and cylinders, and in this case, didn't work—some "expected to relocate 512" error—although at least it didn't seem to break anything). With fdisk, it's necessary to delete and re-add the partition (with the same start cylinder). At least resize2fs knows to default to the partition size.

Honey got me a nice card for my birthday, and some white chocolate Lindt truffles, which she presented to me right at midnight. Happy 25 to me!

Books finished: Breaking Dawn, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Everyday Anarchy.

DVDs finished: Babylon 5: The Complete First Season: Signs and Portents.

God, government, and liberty

Political, Theology, Law ·Sunday January 24, 2010 @ 17:58 EST (link)

Not too long ago I got a note from a friend regarding her views of Christians and their government, and it coincided with a desire to write up a note on the subject based on aggregated thoughts and conversations over the past few months. She takes what is a not uncommon view that a Christian should unilaterally and cheerfully obey all government edicts; in fact, a step further, as we will see, with an implication that government, being permitted to exist by God, has as such an inherent moral right. We will examine these assumptions herein. Naturally, this note means little to readers that do not hold the Bible as authoritative; this is not written for you; in fact this note is written primarily for myself, as a method of organizing my thoughts, but if anyone else can benefit from it that’s great. The format will be to examine a common set of verses that relate Christians to their government. There are, perhaps, more questions than answers here, although sometimes the questions are rhetorical or the answers implied.

1 Peter 2:13 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;

This is first due to its primacy and fundamentality. Obedience is called for; pay your taxes, obey the police (as, in the following verses, ministers of the sovereign), etc. The word for "submit" is the same word as Ephesians 5:22 and Colossians 3:18 (wives, submit to your husbands) but those say "as unto the Lord" or "as it is fit in the Lord"; this is "for the Lord’s sake" (on his account, for his purpose), possibly in view to a common view of Christians as political agitators at the time. But it is specifically not "as unto the Lord" here; if that was intended it would be so written. Since submission of the Christian to the Lord and wife to husband is because of love, it would be confusing to write it that way anyway—most people do not love their government and to pretend so would be hypocrisy, which would be an unlikely commandment. However, obedience does not require love. (For reflection: What's "every ordinance of man"? If several warlords claim control over a territory—remembering that we have to obey tyrants like Nero, or Mao, or Stalin—does one have to obey them all? If my county declares independence from a former ruler, which do I obey? As a man, is my command as good as anyone's? Etc.)

Is the command absolute? Prima facie, yes. But there are opposing commandments that could conflict. For example, as if one was necessary, if government orders one person to kill another (stipulating that they knew and even admitted this person was innocent of any crime), that would bring a believer up against the commandment not to murder; and so on regarding commandments not to steal, lie, etc. More about this later, but it’s important to bear in mind that there are superseding edicts.

Government is not held up as by definition "good"; it is just "the system" in place (in some cases, just the biggest gangster or strongest tyrant; there can only be one in ultimate control of a particular region, even with subsidiarity, and always through violence); we are to pray for, but not (hyperbolically) to government (no divine right of kings exists). We are to pray for the wellbeing of governors, that is, individuals with power of force over others, and for their salvation, and for the righteous fruits of that salvation; but not even necessarily for the continuance of their reign if they are unjust. To quote a devout believer, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master"; and also, "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." (This believer was, of course, George Washington, first President of these United States.)

1 Peter 2:16 As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.

In what sense is "free" intended there? Free in Christ, of course, but what is the practical outworking of that freedom? I would suggest freedom to do Christ’s work, whatever it would be for us. Never, of course, for evil, in an "ends justify the means" manner—hence the immediately-following admonition.

1 Peter 2:17 Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.

In what way should all men be honored? Do we honor equally the saint and the pornographer, the murderer and the healer? Or do we honor them as children of God, made in his image? Does it mean we obey every man equally? Of course not; honor where due (flowing from what? a God-honoring life, reasonably).

Romans 13:1-3 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.

Rulers frequently are a terror to good works, or to works that are not evil. What then? Is this all null and void? Was it necessary to follow the tyrants of the time when they commanded evil (or called evil good, or caused evil, or punished non-evil?) It is arguable that they should be paid taxes, but is it necessary to show them where the Jews are because that’s what they or their agents demand if you know said Jews will then be killed? We ought to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). Was the American Revolution and War for Independence (and other independence, such as Canada's, which changed government even though no war was required) evil? The American revolutionaries contained among them many God-fearing men.

Romans 13:4-7 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

When is tribute due? Is it due, for example, to a highwayman in a lawless region (as the most powerful force therein, hence as ruler over it)? Are the dishonorable due honor? Rhetorical questions, of course; the answer is no. When a government does evil, is it due tribute, custom, or honor? This passage appears to indicate not. In a similar vein:

Luke 20:25 And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.

What is Caesar's (government's)? Payment for services might be legitimately claimed (in Jesus' day, the pax Romana, roads, and such things; in our day, similarly national defense, roads again, and other useful services that government provides, at a reasonable rate, that is, as if they were provided on the free market). But there is so much we are mulcted of that is not merely a fair payment for services used; and so, even as the proceeds of the robber do not belong to him, those do not belong to government, but we pay from fear—of further theft, or of violence.

Romans 9:17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

This is tangential to the issue since it does not bless the actions or rule of Pharaoh, just God’s use of him. Cf. "Our God turned the curse into a blessing" (Neh. 13:2), or Corrie Ten Boom’s thankfulness for the lice in their cells that prevented the guards from abusing them. Neither is stating the subject as an unequivocal good.

1Timothy 2:1-2 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

I try to refrain from unwarranted personal attacks against anyone in authority and will continue to do so. This does not mean that it is wrong to speak the truth when they fail. And I pray that my government—and all government—will become a godly government.

Now, how about a verse that applies not just to individuals as subjects or citizens, but also to governments (which are of course composed of individuals). Disobedience would certainly make them unworthy of honor or even tribute, and aiding in these would make one partake of the guilt: Matthew 19:18 … Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. But government, that is, the individuals with the power of legitimized violence, do all these things:

Murder: Consider the killing of innocents, whether through the legal system, sending troops to unnecessary wars, sanctioning of abortion, or "collateral damage" in wars and police misconduct, to just name a few. (I will not extend “taking of life” to the Randian extent of taking away the right to life and all that entails, since only physical murder is implied, although it would be quite legitimate to take it to the “whosoever hateth his brother” level.)

Adultery: More difficult, but in the same sphere (sexual crimes) we can certainly point to government’s tacit consent to prison rape, and lay the guilt for it at their feet (e.g., under James 4:17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.).

Steal: Any time an agent of government takes anything, a liberty, property, time, involuntarily, it is theft (or more accurately robbery, if done by violence or threat of violence as it always is).

False witness: Government cover-ups and lies are legendary.

There are many verses that condemn bad government, and many that praise or demand good government, such as Deuteronomy 25:15 But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. In the Bible, judges are called "unjust"; kings do "that which was evil in the sight of the Lord"; is that criticism? Is it wrong? We are commanded to not bear false witness; sometimes speaking truth will result in criticism of government. God clearly does not approve of all government. (It seems the idea of government in the Bible is simply "Whoever has the most power in a region"; regardless of how legitimately acquired; it is a fait accompli. Does this mean we should not try to do better? Of course not! And we can do that while paying taxes and obeying the just laws.)

God is far more concerned with individuals than groups or societies. Individuals are to resist evil and do good, speak truth, eschew violence, etc. (cf. OT and NT commandments). "Government" as a group cannot be saved; rulers as individuals can be. Government is background noise to most (being inured to it by indoctrination from birth), or repression to be borne stoically, but some few are called to resist evil in it, or reform it, or even to establish new more righteous governments.

My friend wrote "you obviously feel very strongly about political things." I do, because politics is not some theoretical science; it is ultimately individual—the smallest minority and the most neglected. Must the future be "a boot stamping on a human face—forever"? Perish the thought! Politics is about rights, and a government that violates them can be no minister of God for good. In the same way, a Christian that supports, aids, or silently condones such violations can be no representative of Christ.

A couple of other good Christian commentaries on Romans 13 and government: preacher and Constitution Party 2008 presidential nominee Chuck Baldwin's Romans Chapter 13 Revisited, and Greg A. Dixon's Rethinking Romans 13.

Books finished: The Virtue of Selfishness.

DVDs finished: Gone in 60 Seconds.

Lively politics lively luncheon

News, Political, Work ·Friday January 22, 2010 @ 22:04 EST (link)


(Not from the Tap House) Today was the "Lively Politics Discussion Forum" (short name in the internal AutoGroup list manager tool: "politics") luncheon—the second one—also at the Tap House Grill in Bellevue (near 106th and 8th); they make a pretty good BBQ burger (and they offer a Prime Card discount: second entree is free). It went about 1230-1430.

And like last time, only four people showed up. We had others interested but unable to come due to meetings. And it's possible that some of the liberals were scared that if the discussion got heated the gun rights folks would turn the place into the O.K. Corral, or something. I gave Paul (founder of the group) a ride since he'd ridden the connector in, and Brian and Tony showed up. Brian had been at the last one; Tony I hadn't met before. I'd say Paul's a moderate conservative (Republican), Brian a moderate liberal (Democrat), and Tony and I hold more libertarian views (with me moving toward anarchism due in part to Stefan Molyneux's persuasive arguments; recommended reading: his book Practical Anarchy).

The discussion was animated but not heated. In fact, as much as I'd like to see more people attend, I think four people is a good number for a conversation; when a group gets too much bigger people are left out or splinter off multiple discussions. Let's see… some of the topics: Sarah Palin (too bad Kevin missed it), property rights, the military and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brown, the administration, etc.

It's great to be able to put faces to names, and to know the kinds of people one is "talking" with in the forum (especially in regards to "not sure if serious" wonders, which are easier to resolve after meeting someone).

Books finished: Eclipse, A Farewell To Alms, The Dream Catcher, Rogue, Going Rogue.

Upgrading memory and skill

News, Technical, Guns ·Saturday January 16, 2010 @ 03:17 EST (link)

Doubled the RAM of minas-tirith today (1G → 2G). It's fairly old; it takes DDR2 667MHz memory ("PC-5300"); cirith-ungol also needs an upgrade; it's is even older (takes DDR 333MHz "PC-2700"). I was worried it required all the chips to be the same, but it eventually booted with the existing 2 x 512M in slots B1 and B2 and a new 1G chip in slot A1 (earlier they weren't seated properly, resulting in angry beeps from the motherboard's POST, Power-On Self Test). I also ran into some trouble with the second network connection (the on-board network connects to the internal switch; the other, a Realtek 8139 card, connects to the cable modem, insulating vulnerable Windows machines from the big bad Internet). It was mounting huge numbers of receive errors, but taking out the card and blowing the dust of fixed it.

Cirith-ungol (the MythTV/XBMC box) also needs more disk; the root partition is only 10G (with the rest dedicated to an LVM partition for recorded video files). Unfortunately the video partition is JFS, which can't be shrunk, so I'm going to have to copy the entire video partition somewhere, delete the old one, and then increase the size of the root partition. I plan to get a 2Tb Western Digital "MyBook Essential" for that, probably from newegg.com.

I've been going to the new WCA range (we have a silver annual membership) on Tuesdays and a few weekends, and my targets are looking better each time—better accuracy and better precision. We may go later this weekend, perhaps taking the Ruger 10/22 instead of the Glock 34. I also plan to go to the WAC show to pick up some brass-cased .223 ammo, since WCA does not allow shooting steel-cased, which is what I have now. I re-upped my membership at SVRC too, since there's nowhere else close to shoot steel (the Sultan pit is about twice as far away and SVRC is only $75 annual). WCA also doesn't allow anything higher than 7.62x39 (typical AK-47 round), so the Mosin Nagant is out (even though at the walkthrough I was told it was fine) and I needed somewhere else to shoot it too.

Books finished: End the Fed, Practical Anarchy, Devil On My Back.

The fighting "we"

Political ·Monday January 11, 2010 @ 23:30 EST (link)

How many wars as the US fought in where it was attacked first? I can only find a handful: This is less than half of all the conflicts the US has been involved in (source); in the rest, the US were the aggressors.

For what purpose are we killing our people and wasting our resources on wars when we are not endangered? Molyneux notes:

The fact of the matter is that we do not face threats to our lives and property from foreign governments, but rather from our own. The State will tell us that it must exist, at the very least, to protect us from foreign governments, but that is morally equivalent to the local Mafia don telling us that we have to pay him 50% of our income so that he can protect us from the Mafia in Paraguay. Are we given the choice to buy a gun and defend ourselves? Of course not. Who endangers us more—the local Mafia guy, or some guy in Paraguay we have never met that our local Mafia guy says just might want a piece of us? I know which chance I would take.

… Even if we do not count the physical casualties of the war, given the massive national debt being run up to pay for the Iraq war, how well is the property of American citizens being protected? How much power would Bush [or Obama] have to wage war if he did not have the power to steal almost half the wealth of the entire country? The government does not need taxes in order to wage war; it wages war because it already has the power of taxation - and it uses the war to raise taxes, either on the current citizens through increases and inflation, or on future citizens through deficits.

This simple fact helps explain why there were almost no wars in Western Europe from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the start of World War One in 1914. This was largely because governments could not afford wars - but then they all got their very own Central Banks and were able to pave the bloody path to the Great War with printed money and deficit financing. World War One resulted from an increase in State power - and in turn swelled State power, and set the stage for the next war. Thus, the idea that we need to give governments the power to tax us in order to protect us is ludicrous—because it is taxation that gives governments the power to wage war.

For pacifist countries, this "war" may be a war on poverty, or illiteracy, or drugs, or for universal health care, or whatever. It does not matter. The moment a government takes the power—and moral "right"—to forcibly take money from citizens, the stage is set for the ever-growing power of the State.

One of the biggest propaganda* "articles of faith" of our government is that it is "we" who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan (and it was "we" in Korea and Viet Nam). It's second only to the "fighting to make the world safe for democracy" canard started with (Democratic president) Wilson as justification to enter World War I. If they want democracy - or better still, a constitutional democracy with an iron rule of non-aggression overriding all - let them show it, and let volunteers aid them at their own expense.

But it is not "we"; it is "them": a few powerful people at the top who were elected to pay off special interests (if you're on the left, think of your vitriol toward Bush; if you're on the right, think of Obama's broken promises to extricate "us" from Iraq) and soldiers who have voluntarily sworn blind obedience to their superiors (see note, "Will Americans kill Americans?"). I am even questioning my stance of "Oppose the war, but support the troops" on the twin grounds that (1) it makes little sense to oppose the crime and support the criminals, and (2) they intentionally signed up to use deadly force in blind obedience to whoever is put over them, knowing full well about past aggressive and failed wars such as Korea and Viet Nam. (Of course, it availed little to have signed up for, say, the National Guard—with the goal of protecting our shores—instead of the Army; you were still subject to being sent overseas, but they evoke more sympathy since defense of the nation was why they signed up, not pounding sand in the world's biggest powder-keg.)

Why do "we" fight these wars of aggression? Is it just bread and circuses - warriors we can cheer in a distant sandy arena?—is it government Soma to make us forget about the individual rights they erode daily? Is it because central banks allow for an infinite money spigot, so powerful people will send "us" to war at the slightest insult (and so, will ending the Federal Reserve turn off the spigot and make us sensible non-interventionists again)? Somebody explain it to me, please.

(Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio is an anarchist writer with several books online. I first heard of him when I saw his video "The Social Contract: Defined and Destroyed in Under Five Minutes. His arguments are well thought out and worth reading; Practical Anarchy seems like a good place to start. Among other things, it contains thorough rebuttals to many knee-jerk reactions to the idea of a stateless society, e.g., "What about the roads?", "Will the poor be educated?", "What about crime?".)

* Advertising appeals to choice and self-interest; propaganda uses rhetoric to morally justify the absence of choice and self-interest. Advertising can only stimulate a one-time demand; propaganda permanently suppresses rationality. Advertising generally uses the argument from effect (you will be better off); propaganda always uses the argument from morality (you are evil for doubting).

DVDs finished: Double Jeopardy.

Criticism of Evidently Not book

Political, Media ·Sunday January 10, 2010 @ 22:27 EST (link)

I find some inconsistencies in the arguments in the viewable excerpts of the book Evidently Not that I feel obliged to point out.

In Why Government?, "Men are not angels" is not an argument and is entirely insufficient to declare a stateless society ("anarchy") impossible (e.g., see Stefan Molyneux's arguments on Freedomain Radio). If government has no rights except those delegated, then how is it funded? It must be funded entirely through donations if the author is to remain true to the rights claimed.

Why a Republic? - Mob rule is still entirely possible (and common) with representative democracy. It may filter out a few hotheaded votes, but replaces them with the backroom deals and pork of a congress. They are not held accountable now, because they can pay everyone off with other people's money and people overlook the other special interest groups as long as theirs is funded. There is almost no degree of anger due to bad law or regulation that cannot be bought off by throwing money at special interest groups: this is the biggest problem of representative government.

It is no more or less possible to vote a minority into slavery in pure democracy than a republic (it already happened here), and a constitution that protected individual rights would restrain both equally.

Typo: "they are more interested in remaining in power, THAT governing rightly" (than?).

Why Conservatism? The writer has now accepted taxation as necessary despite the earlier clamor about rights—that government only possesses those rights delegated to it by individuals. After that, how much taxation is conservative is skipped entirely. Both major parties claim they're trying to spend less; yet they both consistently fail. In many ways they are indistinguishable, and work together to infringe and circumvent individual rights.

All of the above excerpts are from chapter one; excerpts from the rest of the book are much sparser (the rest is unavailable online) and they continue with some unfortunately rather poor arguments and criticisms of local and recent politics which will not stand the test of time well. Local events are used well to illustrate principles, but poorly as a target of ad-hoc rants. Conservatives must establish clear principles, such as the non-aggression principle, and evaluate events in light of those principles, objectively, not emotionally.

Will Americans kill Americans?

Political, Guns ·Sunday January 10, 2010 @ 03:09 EST (link)

To clarify, I do not refer to criminals, but American soldiers and police (or draftees, if it comes to that). I've started reading Russell Longcore's excellent DumpDC site (start with Secession: The Hope for Humanity), and considering (quite hypothetically) writing a novel on same; and a rather long thread developed when I asked on Facebook about existing (modern) books on the subject. (I ended up with one off-thread suggestion and offer to lend Boston T. Party's book Molon Labe!, which was much appreciated. Perhaps "the book" has already been written.)

As to the title question, I think the answer is, unfortunately, "Yes." Americans killed Americans in the War for Southern Independence—and one would think perhaps it was for the noble reason of freeing the slaves, but in fact, most of the white soldiers at the time would have refused to fight if that had been the war's purpose. No, they fought merely to restore a union, to bring back states that wanted to leave a covenant of equals so that their territory and revenue might be seized. It is impossible not to conclude that they will do so again.

More recently, in WWII Americans marched their fellow Americans of Japanese descent, into what amounted to concentration camps, depriving many of life and all of liberty and property. Police forces will usually honor orders rather than individual rights to life, liberty, and property—especially the foreign troops that are being allowed onto our soil.

My Uncle John gave me a book when we were there on New Year's, Lt. Col Dave Grossman's On Killing, which I think would be an effective source for learning and thus writing about what would make not only one person kill another against which he has no personal quarrel in war, equally foreigners and any fellow citizen deemed a target (at least, so the cover and reviews indicate). We also finished watching Outbreak, containing scenes when American troops were called on to follow orders and murder all inhabitants of a California town, which will provide dramatic inspiration and gives much to think on.

Consider also why the military usually transfers people out of their home state and around the country: it is to break or render void any allegiance to one's home town, county, or state; in short, to make it easier for United States troops stationed in newly independent states to murder their own "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another."

What can be done to stop such fratricide if a state, or any geographic region, from a town, county, on up, declares independence and the United States again decides to murder those that would "assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them"? I think education is the only way to offset the desensitization to death and the installation of unquestioning obedience in our military: in particular, of our own history, of world history, of economics and philosophy and the rights of man. What would be so bad about troops that could think for themselves? Certainly devolution to a rabble would never be desirable, but all ranks should be aware of and feel able to refuse an unconscionable order, facing the necessary consequences if the refusal is for any light reason.

It is reasonable to take up arms against the infringement of rights, but not in suppression of them. Will the President have the wisdom to extend the hand of friendship and open trade with the new nation, or will he follow the tyrant Lincoln and (without the excuse of slavery this time) continue to destroy freedom? If not, the tree of liberty may again be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants alike.

DVDs finished: Outbreak.

The nature of reality

Technical, Theology ·Saturday January 9, 2010 @ 23:36 EST (link)

My wife's in a philosophy class this quarter, and I've been reading various philosophers (mostly in regard to politics, but politics doesn't exist in a vacuum; Peikoff reasonably claims it is a subset of ethics) fairly continuously anyway. Today I was helping her with a philosophy reading and we diverged a bit into the nature of reality. Her text touched on mentalism and phenomenalism (the idea that everything exist solely in the mind, as, perhaps, a shared hallucinatory experience).

I argued that it doesn't matter if we're in a shared hallucination, an extremely good Holodeck, or a "real" physical world, if we can't tell the difference. One might as well presume whatever's easiest to work with (for convenience) and employ Occam's razor in seeking the simplest explanation: we are physical, and physical things exist. Solipsism is similarly unimportant: we might as well act as if other people exist, because either they do or they're sufficiently good imitations (and there may be unpleasant consequences to assuming people aren't real; of course you may not mind if convinced those are all in your head too).

Furthermore (avert your eyes if "God" confuses you), there is no difference and perhaps no distinction between the existence of a physical universe and us solely existing in God's mind (conception) and partaking in a shared experience. No difference, since we can't detect one; no distinction because the idea of matter itself must be God's creation; it cannot exist independently of him, and he is not bound by it; what does it even mean to say there "is" a physical world (it depends on what the meaning of "is" is)? This does not serve to reduce God in the slightest; in fact it illustrates that not only must he create things, but metaphysically the very concept of matter. Whether gravity, for example, "exists" anywhere or we share a perception of consistent gravitational forces acting on matter is indistinguishable and irrelevant. It's not as if God was standing around in empty space (there was no space to stand around in) and "just" created a few objects within it; he created the space too, and everything that allows us to think and reason about it.

More compilers from last quarter's class

Technical, School ·Saturday January 9, 2010 @ 18:53 EST (link)

I thought I'd mention and link to Mark McWiggins' "higher level software" page here; he took the CSEP 501 compilers class at the same time I did, and wrote his compiler in Python, which I thought was interesting and probably saved him some time and effort over my C++ offering (which he linked to, and also has a link to a Java offering with perhaps more to come).

Mark's (Python source) archive appears to have all of the hand-written code in two Python files, parser.py and opt.py (there are other files but they appear to be small either external modules, e.g. for multimethod support, or generated code) with very little whitespace or comments—i.e., almost as if it was written to minimize line count. His final report indicates he was not able to compile all the "standard" sample MiniJava programs, one reason being that he couldn't compile calls with more than three parameters (as he said, easily surmountable; presumably time was a factor). His optimizations consist of a few peephole optimizations and the level of abstraction is far less than my compiler's pipeline (see my writeup and final report).

So a straight line count comparison (1800 for his Python code, 8000 for my C++) would certainly not seem to be in order. It's easily possible that the commenting, whitespace, separation of classes into files and code into classes (I had I think around 20 files and possibly 80 classes), plus the increased correctness and number and type of optimizations would easily account for the difference. Use of the STL, while not as convenient as a higher-level language, would probably be comparable to using the built-in dictionaries, etc. in Python. So this project alone is a poor example of "demonstrating the usefulness of [higher level] languages" (but I'd still agree with the claim that HLLs are more efficient; experience and other writing—Frederick Brooks, Paul Graham, to name a few—is persuasive in that regard).

A standard optimizing C++ compiler should have my compiler running faster than most HLLs (algorithms being equal, and we both used well-tuned libraries), and increased optimization should generate smaller and faster programs (a direct comparison is not possible since Mark opted to output MIPS code for the SPIM emulator but I stayed with the default x86 output, although it may be instructive to compare percent lines of code reduction via optimizations for programs that will compile on both). In a high-volume compiler, object code optimizations would win out over compiler speed fairly quickly. (The "standard" as much as there was one, for writing the compiler, was, not unexpectedly, Java, so we both strayed from the beaten path in language choice, getting permission of the instructor to deviate.) It would also be interesting to see if development/test time (all other things being equal) were influenced by language choice (I would believe that HLLs do better, but it would be hard to demonstrate from this sample due to differences in completion, optimizing, and breadth and extent of tests).

Books finished: Twilight, New Moon.

DVDs finished: ER: The Complete 10th Season, 12 Monkeys.

New Year's 2010 at the Sutherlands

News ·Friday January 1, 2010 @ 23:08 EST (link)

I'm very late in writing this up; I do apologize, since I'd promised pictures.

John and Sharon invited us and other family to their condo in Abbotsford for New Year's; we arrived at about 1300 and I think were the first to arrive. They had planned on ending the evening early because Chris and Vanessa would need to get their kids to bed and we'd need to drive back. Drive took about 2½ hours, as expected; border crossing (Lynden/Aldergrove) didn't take long at all (nor going back, via Abbotsford/Sumas). Chris and Vanessa and their kids (Daniel and Joshua), and their parents Graham and Wendy arrived soon after, and Murray, who was in from Toronto and staying in the building's guest suite.


There was a great spread set before us—tortiere, ham, lasagna, cabbage rolls, and more; and then a variety of baked goods which I had so missed from Christmas at home, such as Nanaimo bars; I think Wendy brought those. We were encouraged to take some home; in fact, they doubled and redoubled what I took at first, and gave us some tiramisu besides. I made them last as long as I could in the days that followed and we really appreciated their kindness to usward. While there we taught Euchre to Graham and Murray (when you explain it, the rules, e.g., about the bowers, do seem a bit baroque).

Books finished: Billions and Billions, Capitalism.

DVDs finished: Meet Joe Black.

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