Paul M. Jones

When someone drops out of high school, overeats, or fails to exercise, you tell us that their behavior is only "human."  But if a conservative or libertarian objects to paying taxes to help people who make these choices, you get angry.  Question: Why are you so forgiving of people with irresponsible lifestyles, but so outraged by people who don't want to pay taxes to help people with irresponsible lifestyles?  This seems morally perverse.

via Krugman, Human Weakness, and Desert, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

I've been invited to speak at the Dallas PHP meeting on Tue 21 Feb. The topic will be Solving the N+1 Problem. If you're in the area, be sure to come by!

UPDATE: Originally I had 28 Feb, but it's really 21 Feb. My bad.

UPDATE: The slides for the presentation are here. Please rate the talk. Thanks to all who attended!

(The Aura Project is a library of independent component packages for PHP 5.4.)

Yesterday, we released 1.0.0-beta2 versions of all Aura component libraries:

• Aura.Autoload, a PSR-0 compliant autoloader

• Aura.Cli for command-line tooling

• Aura.Di, a dependency injection container

• Aura.Http, for generating HTTP response objects

• Aura.Marshal, for marshaling data sets into domain objects

• Aura.Router, a web routing package

• Aura.Signal, a signal slots implementation

• Aura.Sql for working with MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and SQL Server

• Aura.View, a PHP-based template system

• Aura.Web, a bare-bones page controller package

(HariKT blogged about the release here.)

In addition, we released a full-stack framework composed of the above independent packages. You can download the system tarball here.

The Aura project caters to developers who just want a library or two (or more!) to integrate into their existing projects, and to developers who need a full stack framework. Such are the joys of a component-based system.

Please join the mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/auraphp or chime in at #auraphp on Freenode IRC.

I am going to declare February 14th Starbucks Appreciation Day, by encouraging gun owners to head to Starbucks to buy some of their fine coffee and pastry products.

Apparently some anti-gun nuts are boycotting Starbucks today because the company does not post "no guns allowed" signs on their stores. If you carry, go to Starbucks today and tell them you appreciate their pro civil rights stance. (Yes, being able to keep and bear arms is a civil rights issue.) I'm going.

via Starbucks Appreciation Day | Shall Not Be Questioned.

Words I am rarely heard to say. This is your chance to gloat. Warning: NSFW language, but lots of exploding coolness.

I have been hired as an Architect for parchment.com, starting 27 Feb. These guys have a great mission, and I'm really looking forward to working with them.

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Looks like it's the sun, not CO2. Via Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again) | Mail Online.

The value is not in the object, it is in your mind. Short, sweet, and genius:

Via 'That's the mistake that Karl Marx made' | Samizdata.net.

How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (13) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

I submit that had Palin or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice or Jeb Bush or John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney proposed doing even half of those things in 2008, you'd have declared them unfit for the presidency and expressed alarm at the prospect of America doubling down on the excesses of the post-September 11 era. You'd have championed an alternative candidate who avowed that America doesn't have to choose between our values and our safety.

Yet President Obama has done all of the aforementioned things.

via Dear Andrew Sullivan: Why Focus On Obama's Dumbest Critics? - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic.

Physicians in India have identified a form of incurable tuberculosis there, raising further concerns over increasing drug resistance to the disease1. Although reports call this latest form a “new entity”, researchers suggest that it is instead another development in a long-standing problem.

...

“The cases are a story of mismanagement,” says Migliori. “Resistance is man-made, caused by exposure to the wrong treatment, the wrong regimen, the wrong treatment duration.”

via Totally drug-resistant TB emerges in India : Nature News & Comment.