Hey Northern Virginia Drivers...

...stop yielding the right-of-way, you mouth-breathing sub-morons. If you're too stupid to know when you have the right-of-way and/or too stupid to realize that you're not doing anyone any favors and that you're just slowing everyone down, then just stay off of my roads.

That is all.

Tweethics

Suppose there is a button within your convenient reach, and if you fail to press this button, Twitter will be destroyed, but if you do press it, Twitter will be preserved. You believe that no other adverse consequences will result from pressing the button. Is it morally permissible not to press it?

I say yes. I'm of the school that distinguishes between harming through action and allowing to come to harm through inaction, and assigns no moral fault to the latter.

Then, what if instead of a button there is, say, some kind of a pressure plate in the road which acts in the same way as the button - if you fail to drive over it, Twitter will be destroyed, etc. Let's also say that if you turn right on Oak St. to take the most convenient route to the farmer's market you'll cross the pressure plate, but if you turn left to take the longer route you won't. You want to go to the farmer's market, and - all else being equal - you'd like to take the most convenient route. Is it morally permissible to turn left?

I think the answer is still yes. Even though in some sense you are going out of your way to take an action that results in Twitter being destroyed, I think it's more accurate to say that you're declining to take some positive action to prevent that destruction. And in general there is no obligation to take positive actions, only to refrain from those which directly cause harm.

OK then, what if there is an additional pressure plate to your left on Oak St., and if you cross this pressure plate, a bomb will go off, killing three moon-eyed Laotian orphans? Now is it permissible to turn left?

I think now you have to turn right and save Twitter, no matter how much you'll regret it later.

But, suppose the bomb is on a timer, and no longer connected to the pressure plate. Also, there is a good Samaritan approaching to save the orphans, but if you cross the pressure plate, you'll cause an electrochemical reaction in the brain of the good Samaritan which will cause him to value his own safety more than saving the orphans, so he'll wuss out and the orphans will be blown to bits. Now may you turn left?

I still have to say no. Your action can be construed as harming the good Samaritan, since he may not wish to have his value hierarchy re-arranged in such a way. So you'd be taking a positive action which directly caused harm, which is a moral wrong.

But, what if the good Samaritan had told you in advance that he had no preference for his current value hierarchy over any other, and had no objection to his brain chemistry being altered? I'd say that then you're not causing any direct harm. Even though in some sense you are taking an action which will result in the deaths of the orphans, the good Samaritan has no positive obligation to save them, and you have no obligation to refrain from acts that cause no direct harm to either party, So you're cool to turn left.

However, suppose the pressure plate does not switch the good Samaritan's brain from "save" to "don't save", but rather if you don't cross the plate the Samaritan will save the three moon-eyed Laotian orphans from the bomb, but if you do cross the plate, the Samaritan will notice two tow-headed Swedish orphans drowning in a lake before he gets to the bomb. He'll then save the tow-heads, but be too late to save the moon-eyed tots. Furthermore, suppose that, if she lives, one of the Laotian orphans will one day come upon a runaway railroad car hurtling towards three researchers who have discovered, but not yet published, a cure for cancer. She will be able to divert the car, but if she does it will strike and kill a brilliant young neurosurgeon, who, had he lived, would eventually invent a procedure for transplanting brains in vats into cloned human bodies. Of the brains he would restore, most will go on to lead fulfilling, productive lives; one will invent a faster-than-light drive and enable humans to colonize other planets; and one will become the worst mass-murderer the world has ever known.

Now what do you do?

The answer is easy: you turn left and let Twitter die, because Twitter is just fucking stupid.

Morons shocked at lack of free lunch . . .

. . . but already queued up for promised free lunch tomorrow.

Rematch Win

Rematch WIN:



Let me tell you: if you ride a bicycle a hundred miles, you really start to feel it in that taint.

The image kind of sucks, but the bottom number is the total distance, and the middle number is my sluglike total time.

What I learned today

Today I learned that if you tell people you have a hole in the crotch of your pants, they won't be able to help but look. The best exchange of the day:

Me: Aww, dude, I have a rip in the crotch of my pants.
Coworker: <looks>
M: Uhh, why are you looking...?
CW: I don't know, I guess I wanted to see how big it is...
M: ...!
CW: The rip! I meant the rip!

Century FAIL

[Revised and expanded from some other site that doesn't even let you write a carriage return.]

Century FAIL.

I thought I had a pretty good shot at it, but my legs started threatening mutiny a little past mile 60 and I wound up at just around 64.25. On the other hand, that's more than 100 km, so, metric century win.

The rest of the ledger looks like this:

• Passed at least 10 times more people than passed me, and the latter were, to a man, decked out in full douchebag cyclist regalia, so most likely they've been training (+).


• "Turtled" once early on when I clipped out of the wrong pedal(!) before stopping and went down like a $5 whore on rent day (-).


• Beat my goal for average speed (by 0.005 MPH[!] - the issue was in doubt up to the very end; really had to find out who I was in the last quarter mile) (+).


• Lost my favorite cap (----).

So in the aggregate I'd say the balance hangs moderately sinister. Still, I can see decent progress from my earliest outing, and have hope for continued improvement.

I blame the heat. And also, I shouldn't have tried to take route 7 to Winchester. Colossal, hulking hills and narrow shoulders. Maybe I'll give it another go in early autumn.

No one but me will think this is funny...

...but I don't care.

If your name is "burrito", shouldn't you think twice before taking on somebody named "tabemasu"? I mean, just step back and think about this for a second.

guild follies

I'm in a guild.

Well, not really in a guild, but represented by one. The non-management employees of the company I work for are covered under the terms of the company's contract with the Greater Frobozzia Tachyonic Ansible Guild*, even if they are not members and even if they pay no dues.

The benefits package is attractive - retirement pay, 100% of family health insurance premiums paid by the employer, including vision and dental, sabbaticals, generous severance packages, and much more.

The main dude of our branch of the guild just walked by and dropped a "guild contract survey" on my desk. It asks for feedback on benefits that are important to me, what additional benefits I'd like to have, etc. There doesn't seem to be a space for listing benefits I'd like to see eliminated.

Wha' huh? Eliminated? What manner of treason is this? Am I nuts? Am I some kind of masochist? Have my libertarian tendencies blinded me to my own best interest?

Not likely.

It's very simple: suppose my value to my company is, to pick a round figure, $100,000/year. Then I won't be hired if the cost to employ me is more than that figure. The total cost C to employ me is roughly S + B + E + I, where:

S = my salary
B = the dollar cost of my benefits (insurance premiums, actuarial value of pension payments, etc.)
E = employer's portion of FICA
I = intangibles (expected loss if I initiate a lawsuit, cost of severance if I don't leave voluntarily, probabilistic cost of me going nuts and shooting the place up, etc.)

There's also some marginal cost associated with one additional record to be tracked by HR, payroll, etc.

For simplicity, we'll just say C = S + B. Then from the employer's point of view it doesn't matter if my $100k cost breaks down as $90k salary and $10k benefits, or $65k salary and $35k benefits; the only number they care about is C. So when the guild pushes for additional benefits, what I see is downward pressure on my salary. The company won't pay me more than I'm worth to them - at least not past the very short term - so any increase to B has to be balanced by a decrease in S.

As someone who makes very little use of our benefits package, I'd much prefer having benefits cut to the bone and the difference applied to a fatter salary. Since money is fungible, that would seem to be the method which gives the greatest freedom to the greatest number of people. Some could use that additional income to purchase the services previously provided by the benefits package, perhaps with the company negotiating group rates for insurance and the like, and others could blow their increase on booze and floozies. Or invest it, whatever.

Unions are anti-choice.

*Not its real name

Why we are doomed

In a recent Usenet discussion (yes, it's still around; no, I don't participate) dealing in part with the recent "stimulus" package, some moron said this:

I too have some concern about the spending, but I cannot imagine how jobs could be created without it.

I just. Can't. Imagine.

Dude.

Truth

Accidentally get a healthy dose of "Maximum Strength" Ben-Gay on your nuts and you'll have a whole new perspective on life.


Word.

There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lawn
(An Economic Fallacy in Four Acts)

Day 1

"'S'up, Mr. O?"

"Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh."

"You're in a good mood."

"Bad drought this year. Worst drought since WWII."

"And this amuses you?"

"No, son, what amuses me is my brilliant solution to it. Going to have the greenest lawn on the block."

"..."

"Heh heh heh heh."

"Does it have something to do with this hose running out of your window here?"

"That's right, my friend. Indeed it does. The well's nearly dry, been running sluggish. Got this hose here hooked up to an adapter on the utility sink downstairs. Going to crank that sucker on full blast."

"Please tell me the other end isn't running into your well."

"Don't be absurd, son. I've got the other end hooked up to that sprinkler out there. Going to use this to supplement what's coming out of the well. Green things right up."

"But all the water flowing into your house comes from the well. Plus, that hose is all leaky and decrepit; you're losing a good deal of water before it even gets out of your house. Not to mention your underground sprinkler system is already set up to deliver water where it does the most good - that sputtery, dribbly sprinkler you're running the hose to barely reaches past your front porch."

"..."

Day 2

"'S'up, Mr. O?"

"Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh heh."

"Got the kinks worked out of your system?"

"That's right. It's science. Science never fails."

"Something to do with these wires running into the ground next to your well?"

"Oh, you mean the wires running to the 10 kilowatt heating element I attached to the well this morning? Those wires?"

"..."

"It's basic physics, son. Volume varies directly with temperature, as every physicist agrees. More volume means more water. More water means more green in the grass, everyone's a winner."

"...but it's not more water - it's the same amount of water, just taking up more space. You've got the same number of H₂O molecules running through your hose; all you've done is reduce the greening power of the water per unit volume. Not to mention the energy you're wasting running that heater."

"..."

Day 3

"'S'up, Mr. O?"

"Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh."

"I can already see the rolling fields of verdant green."

"You mock what you don't understand, boy. This time it's foolproof."

"Something to do with this anvil-shaped contraption in your driveway?"

"Son, you're off your nut. That there Acme Quantum Water Cadger looks nothing like an anvil."

"Acme Quantum..."

"Water Cadger. Arrived this morning. It borrows water against future supplies, allowing me to green up my lawn on a water deficit."

"...against future supplies..."

"Sure. Science, remember? There's some sort of hyperhydric chamber in there..."

"...hyperhydric chamber..."

"...that - that's right, hyperhydric chamber - that collapses the waveform for..."

"Come on!"

"...the waveform for...well, anyway, it borrows water. And at a very low interest rate!"

"So this feeds into your well?"

"Well, no, it needs a source to borrow from, of course."

"Of course."

"So it draws from the well and feeds out..."

"To that same old dribbly sprinkler..."

"...to that, well, yes, but it can draw more water than what actually is coming from the well."

"But you're still diverting resources from a more efficient water delivery system to a less efficient one, and paying interest for the privilege - all you're doing is translating your drought forward in time and worsening its effects when the bill finally comes due."

"..."

Day 4

"'S'up, Mr. O? Any rain yet?"

"..."

"..."

"Man, fuck you."

<Fin>

Interregnum

I've had this on my mind today. I think I know why.

I reckon I'm going to spend some time offline. Might be back here to post TGD updates, but probably not soon or often. Might update PotD if there's reason to.

Later, fools.

TGD Week 12

[Edit: oops, jumped the gun - we're not up to a quarter year quite yet].

Wednesday 10/29 - John Varley, The Ophiuchi Hotline is now the property of the PWC library.

Thursday 10/30 - Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes, The Barsoom Project, ditto.

Friday 10/31 - Bruce Sterling, Crystal Express, ditto.

Saturday 11/1 - Tossed out were a pair of underwear with worn out elastic and a book of Maleska-edited NY Times Saturday crosswords, obscure and unfinished.

Sunday 11/2 - Two very nice shirts which were nonetheless too uncomfortable to wear were donated to some charity which is probably a scam.

Monday 11/3 - A pair of gloves with worn-out fingers

Tuesday 11/4 - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Oath of Fealty, "donated".

Then and Now

America, circa 1776

Circa 1942

Circa 2008

Doing my civic duty

Like the good citizen I am: