::::: : 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.

Seattle Geek Shootout

News, Guns ·Wednesday March 9, 2011 @ 20:27 EST (link)

We went to an event called the "Seattle Geek Shootout" (Facebook event), #3 in a series (our first attendance) on Wednesday at West Coast Armory. It was listed as 6-9pm but didn't start until 6:30. The group—which only ended up being 10-12 people (some there were joking about "event math" and the "Seattle flake factor", which leads to 30-some FB "Yes"es and the same number of Maybes becoming 10-12)—had booked the LE ("Law Enforcement", #3) bay, and the previous group in the LE bay went long. Worries about crowding were completely unwarranted. They put up 5 rectangular tables across the bay 10 yards from the target line, and clipped a bunch of those big zombie targets on a string. The tables were the firing line. There was some brief instruction and then people were shooting, with the folks from GunUp providing one-on-one help for newbs that had rented guns. I wanted to take a look at my first target when they changed them (after someone shot the string) but I wasn't fast enough; they threw out the pile pretty quick.

We left around 7:30—were about shot out, didn't really know anyone (except Mitchell—nice to meet in person), and I didn't see the point. It was more of an "introduce newbs to shooting" event: people blasting away at a bunch of zombie targets with more concern about making noise than accuracy. We left after about an hour of shooting even though the event was scheduled longer. It was nice to have some free zombie targets and shoot our XDMs again (second range trip!), and the .22, but it wasn't nearly as good as shooting with a bunch of MSGun people at a pit, or even working on skill improvement on my own. I appreciated the effort the GunUp and WCA folk went to setting it up, for sure; I guess we just weren't the intended audience. The group was going to eat afterward; we went out to Subway instead on the way home.

Books finished: Spearwielder's Tale.

Additions to the family

News, Guns ·Sunday February 27, 2011 @ 12:02 EST (link)

This weekend we drove down to Puyallup to go to the WAC gun show, with the aim of getting a carry gun for Honey (who just paid the state's shakedown fee and got her non-infringement permit), and possibly one for me too. We ended up getting her a Springfield Armory XDM-9 3.8 (compact), black, and me a standard XDM-9, black slide, OD ("Olive Drab") green receiver. We also got her a concealed carry purse (Rama Leather). We picked up Honey's gun at the gun show, and mine and her purse at a store called Welcher's Gun Shop in Tacoma: since we were going all the way to Puyallup, I found a few other gun stores nearby, some recommended on The High Road, some I knew already. It was the first time we'd stopped in at Welcher's, and The Marksman; we also stopped at Federal Way Discount Guns and Surplus Ammo and Arms (bought 500 rounds of Wolf since I just ran out).

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Guns for Honey

News, Guns ·Saturday February 19, 2011 @ 18:23 EST (link)

We went over to West Coast Armory this evening to rent their guns (all in one caliber, $15), to find a carry gun for Honey, since she recently got her concealed carry permit (yes, we know it's a shakedown; that's a topic for another day). We tried out all 9mms, and mostly XDs (XD-9 subcompact, XD-9 standard, XDM-9) and a Glock 19. I liked them all, and was glad they finally had a 9mm XDM in; pretty sure I'll pick up one soon. Honey also liked the XDs over the Glock (although I think I also want a Glock 19—did great with it too and it's a good companion to the 34), so we'll probably get her an XDM 3.8; perhaps at the WAC gun show next week in Puyallup.

Still having a hard time finding a SCAR-H (17S) that's not overpriced… guess they're still new enough for demand to well outstrip supply. Hopefully things settle a little and I can get one for around $2600. Also now that I had the chance to handle and fire some of Mark's revolvers I'll feel more confident looking at used and new revolvers at the gun show—I have an idea of what I like, such as the Ruger Security Six or S&W 686—so might pick up one too, more for fun than to carry.

The "private education as privilege of wealth" fallacy

Political ·Tuesday February 15, 2011 @ 19:28 EST (link)

Question:

I suppose if one wanted to eliminate public education (which I know you do) and return to the days when education was mostly a privilege of wealth, then allowing "market forces" to dictate teacher pay would be an excellent first step. But I fail to see how reducing the pay and benefits of teachers is supposed to attract better teachers and improve education for most.

Answer:

Massive benefits and immunity from any sort of metrics, let alone discipline, sure haven't helped. Here's how the market gets you better teachers: the ones that suck get paid less or get fired, or their schools, being unresponsive to parents' demands for better education for their children, get reduced business or none (and the bad teachers then still lose their jobs).

Also your problem with "return to the days when education was a privilege of wealth" is that costs are far less now. Suppose government massively subsidized televisions, and then someone proposed they stop: while there was a time that a television was a "privilege of wealth", that time would not return given the technological developments between then and now. Or, in other words, let the nature of the education market be represented by S_year={s_i}, 0 < i ≤ n; you want to claim that changing s₁₂₉₈ (the data point reflecting that teacher pay is extorted by force) in S₂₀₁₁ ("education in 2011") to s₁₂₉₈ from S₁₅₀₀ ("education in 1500") will make S₂₀₁₁ precisely the same as S₁₅₀₀, disregarding the fact that there have been many other changes and innovations since then. For example, almost any highschool graduate should be competent to teach basic science (public schools are so bad that this isn't always the case), and thus vast supply over the small number of teachers competent to teach what we consider basic science today (much of which wasn't even known then) decreases the cost a great deal. There is also much more in-depth information available practically for free via the Internet. This changes the calculation a great deal.

See also my back of the envelope private school cost breakdown. Continuing to pay public school prices ($10k and up) for poor-quality monopolistic education is ridiculous.

Mount by label

Technical ·Saturday February 12, 2011 @ 15:52 EST (link)

I'm sure this is an old features by now—seems to have been around since 2007 or even earlier—but I finally got around to investigating how to mount my array of /dev/sdXn devices without having to depend on the order they're detected, using, of course, the disk label (set by the appropriate tool for the filesystem, such as e2label or mlabel). Setting LABEL="…" in /etc/fstab works great for VFAT and ext3 drives (which is all I've tried it on) and is much better than having to worry about the particular ordering of labels that the system will produce, even for drives that are fairly permanent (couple of LaCie FireWire 800s, for instance) and especially for devices like cameras.

Lounge shoot at SVRC

News ·Saturday February 12, 2011 @ 15:19 EST (link)

(Drivers') lounge shooting event @ SVRC, 1230-1500 approx. Garrett, Max, and Asif showed up. I shot my AR-15 and then Glock 34 over in the pistol pit, and also got to shoot Max's Steyr Scout (.308). I finished my last four boxes of steel-cased Wolf .223 (80 rounds) and a box of 9mm (50 rounds). And I think it's high time to clean both the AR and the Glock again, as tolerant as both of them are. I used my Caldwell Rock rest today for the first time; it's great. I used the Leupold scope and (Manfrotto) tripod to spot—AR needed zeroing, it was low at 50 yards, but then I was hitting the steel targets at 200 (I think it's really ~180) yards at the far end of the range with no trouble. Max also had a Manfrotto tripod for his scope—a full-size quality tripod does better for stabilization than the little ones they sell with scopes.

Nook test drive

News, Media ·Friday February 11, 2011 @ 23:38 EST (link)

We drove over to the Woodinville Barnes & Noble tonight to try out the Nook—I'd read all about it, and think I prefer it to Kindle for various reasons (seems more supportive of diverse formats, allow reading library e-books, and easier to jailbreak, among others), but I'd never got to play with one. Page turning with the e-ink was a little slow and the XOR-flip is a bit distracting; the Nook color is better in that regard, and isn't hard to read on—I was thinking e-ink would be the way to go, forgetting that I read off LCD screens all the time, and have no issues. $250 each is a bit steep, though, so we'll wait for a price drop. We don't really need them now—library books are convenient enough (and aren't all available as e-books), but it would be nice to transfer many of our books to them (with backups, of course) and sell the hard copies for any eventual move.

Unfortunately "transfer" means "buy again": there's no "new books for old" deal, although since the idea is that one buys a license to use the material (not the physical book, which is only a dollar or two of the price), there should be (or at least owning one form should eliminate the content costs); and note that the first-sale doctrine (and natural property rights) implies an ability to sell e-books that is generally prevented by the DRM with which they are burdened: and as much as possible I will attempt to buy (or produce) DRM-free works, for purposes of format-shifting, cross-file search (with grep even), and so forth. Of course, there are legal excuses against the first-sale doctrine but they're merely purchased violence as usual.

Books finished: Lincoln Unmasked, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.

Where is the United States' Hong Kong?

Political, Law, Economics ·Wednesday February 9, 2011 @ 00:05 EST (link)

Hong Kong was a city-state - a colony of the British Empire - on China's south coast. In area, it was tiny: a mere 426 square miles (1104 square kilometers). Yet because of its general adoption of free-market principles, it was extremely prosperous, especially compared to its elephantine neighbor. Being pragmatic communists, when China regained control over Hong Kong they designated it a "Special Administrative Region" and, for the most part, left well alone ("one country, two systems"). Hong Kong has separate visa requirements from China, and while it is relatively easy for foreign visitors to enter, mainland China residents need to go through a "rigorous approval system". (And if you're familiar with L. Neil Smith's works, recall the cloned American towns the Chinese set up to try to duplicate the successes of the free market, copying everything since they weren't sure what the magic ingredients were - even as the US itself fell to communism.)

Where is the US's Hong Kong? Has independence been beaten out of people since the War Between the States? Granted, all the best land - and forget obtaining a port of any kind - has already been claimed. But unincorporated small towns exist all over the place, and surely one or more would have, by now, been founded by people dedicated to liberty: setting up no controlling councils, founded on ultimate respect of individual rights and personal property, deciding that extortion was unnecessary? Of course, there is still state and federal taxation: and not for a moment am I claiming that an unincorporated small town declare its independence as a defensive military act. Nor has the free state project gained much traction. So, what then?

China permits Hong Kong self-rule for the most part, and an economic system entirely different from the mainland. If libertarian town or towns were founded, might it not be possible to persuade the county, state (as in US geographical region) and federal governments to, as an experiment, leave this particular enclave alone - no fees and no benefits? Alright, probably not, since there's profit to be made off of every citizen and the wealthy would flock to such a place (or not - the very wealthy already have a bag of tricks and tend towards brainless socialism anyway). But even floating the idea in public - "Feds Out Of SmallPeacefulLibertarianEnclave!" etc. - might start something, and the fact that they would refuse would speak volumes towards the knowledge that they're not providing more value than they collect.

Such an enclave could function in many ways like an Indian reservation in terms of sovereignty, but without the dependency-creating federal handouts. Since this would be a co-operative measure rather than an attempt at independence, people from the town would be able to travel back and forth (paying gas taxes when they used the roads, and other use taxes), trade (paying sales taxes if buying from states having it, but with no unconstitutional interstate tariffs), and so forth. It could very much be a start to a much freer nation (until the US shut it down like they did the South when it threatened free trade with the world, and made internal improvements (subsidies) unconstitutional). If enough land was available it could grow, or even disconnected areas across the country could become legally part of the same free-trade zone.

There would be a few externalities that would still need to be paid, national defense being the big (only?) one. Ideally a share of the cost of actual defense (not foreign adventure) could be negotiated, but more likely the best possible result would be to just apportion fees according to adult population and the total taxes collected for "defense" (i.e., the department of war). That's about it. Whatever spills over the interface (e.g., pollution) gets handled by the laws and police of that side. If such an enclave could obtain limited sovereignty, they could make their own individual arrangements about trading with other nations - practically, since US shipping would likely be employed, that would be limited to nations that the US was on good terms with.

The trouble is, of course, selling it to the politicians.

Books finished: The Real Lincoln.

Back to emacs

News, Technical, Work ·Saturday February 5, 2011 @ 16:59 EST (link)

After frustration with the limited programmability of my work editor (Source Insight) and its custom macro language (read: wheel reinvention with a square wheel, and what's now a dead language; they don't seem to be updating the editor any more), and dissatisfaction with vi as insufficiently GUI-integrated and powerful, I went through the basic Emacs tutorial (C-h t) and then through the online help built the macro I wanted to covert a reference (or local) variable to a pointer, binding it to a key:

(require 'cl)  ; for flet

(defun replace-region (match replace)
  (beginning-of-buffer)
  (while (re-search-forward match nil t)
    (replace-match replace nil nil))
)

(defun ref-to-pointer (beg end) (interactive "r")
  (let ((old-var (read-string "Reference to replace? " "rt" nil "rt")))
    (save-excursion
      (undo-boundary)
      (flet ((undo-boundary () nil))
        (narrow-to-region beg end)
        (replace-region (concat "\\b" old-var "\\.") (concat "p" old-var "->"))
        (replace-region (concat "\\b" old-var "\\b") (concat "*p" old-var))
        (widen)
      )
    )
    (undo-boundary)
  )
)

(global-set-key (kbd "<f11>") 'ref-to-pointer)

I originally used replace-regexp rather than the loop in replace-region, but the help for replace-regexp itself suggested the new method. Out of the box, Emacs (EmacsW32) has source code highlighting, which remains perhaps to customize, and tagging seems fairly simple to set up (and EmacsW32 comes with etags). One feature I do like from Source Insight is that files added to the current project are automatically prefix-matched on open, and functions can be tagged by Hungarian "syllable" (e.g., Foo can be found not only in FooFromBar but also ). But I suspect these can be overcome. Another command I'd like to write is one that reads an error output line and jumps to the location in the file (maybe even with next/previous commands). I suspect this already exists and just needs some tweaking to work in .err files.

Other notes: after a replace, the mark deactivates which hides the highlight (apparently the only way to bring it back is to do an exchange-point-and-mark) but it's still there, and it does get adjusted if text is inserted before it. The business with flet and undo-boundary make the action atomic for purposes of undo. Narrowing ensure that changes only occur within our region of interest (which is why beginning-of-buffer is safe, and it's helpful for regions defined by point being after mark: although beg is always ≤ end, it doesn't actually move point for the purposes of re-search-forward).

Books finished: The Woods Out Back, A People'S History of the United States, Passage To Dawn.

How would opt-in government work?

Political, Economics ·Sunday January 30, 2011 @ 15:22 EST (link)

If people could decide what government services they wanted to buy (and what they wished to forgo, up to all of it and never dealing with the state except possibly when they deal with others that do so), how would it work?

You would need two passes: first you need to figure out how much people will pay for a given service. In pass one, you need to present the service and find out which people in the area of interest will pay and how much. In the second, you need to find a price point at which you will provide the service: anyone willing to pay less doesn't get it; they can possibly offer to pay the price point, wait until the next offering, do without, or buy it elsewhere. Those that are willing to pay at least the price point pay that point, and get the service. Why don't you need two passes with current private service providers? Two reasons: because they grow organically (starting with little capital and clientele) and/or because they know in advance (based on similar demographics from other areas) what their customer base will be, so can plan their services along those lines. But switching to opt-in requires doing quickly what businesses do over time. Another solution of course would just to auction everything (building and supplies) off and start from scratch, but this seems like a more painful transition.

However, this plan has a few implicit assumptions which effectively has already reduced the system to anarchy (in the sense of statelessness, not chaos), following Roy A. Childs' argument in his open letter to Ayn Rand. That is, we have assumed that (1) the state can no longer violently exclude competition—there are no more forced monopolies; you can buy police service from whomever you want. (2) Taxation—forced taking—is no longer used to fund anything. These two requirements are the same as that which Childs latched on to in his letter: if you don't forcefully exclude competition, and you don't force payment, then you don't have a state. Effectively, all the "government services" people would be buying into would just be the legacy providers, competing against a host of businesses that, no longer excluded by force and competing against subsidies extracted by force, can go head to head on merit. (Do brick-and-mortar libraries need to exist? Perhaps not when they're unsubsidized and e-versions are much cheaper.)

The "margins" are interesting too just because of the implications. Can a government cop from a department that you don't contract with pull you over for speeding? No, because you've caused no harm and not consented. Can they arrest you for murder? It depends. Acting as an agent of the victim or their heirs, they could, but if wrong any violent acts they did to bring you in would be initiatory rather than "postponed defensive" (restorational) violence and they would be liable for it just like any assault or battery.

So if anyone agrees with an opt-in state, congratulations: you're a fan of the stateless society. Welcome to voluntaryism!