sethg

103 ms·

841.
by sethg 17y ago
Lisp In Small Pieces ( http://pagesperso-systeme.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiS... ) is sort of intermediate between SICP and the Peyton-Jones stuff; it still focuses on Lisp dialects that use dynamic typing and applicative-order eval
842.
by sethg 17y ago
I think most people who say that "abortion is murder" are actually speaking hyperbolically; if you ask them "so does that mean that every woman who has had an abortion ought to be doing twenty-to-life for infanticide?" most will start hemmi
843.
by sethg 17y ago
Dunno. Or maybe Obama is so strongly associated with being pro-choice that a bunch of moderates are calling themselves "pro-life" in reaction.
844.
by sethg 17y ago
Yes, but is the defection rate in both directions equal? If conservative parents have been having more children than liberal parents for the past few decades, then why hasn't the voting population become more conservative since Reagan was p
845.
by sethg 17y ago
I'm wondering what would happen if you took surveys that asked questions about specific cases : "should a woman have the legal right to an abortion if she doesn't think she can afford to raise the child? ...if she doesn't feel psychologica
846.
by sethg 17y ago
The graph accompanying the article doesn't show a gradual change in the pro-life direction. The proportion calling themselves "pro-life" stayed in the mid-forties through 2001-2008 and then spiked this year. And your model of different rep
847.
by sethg 17y ago
Exactly. Fantasizing about what it would like to have already finished my Great American Novel/Web Site/Open Source App gives me such a warm and comfortable glow that I am reluctant to spoil it by taking two steps into the project and loo
848.
by sethg 17y ago
Good point. Also, the income of a service company is mostly going into the pockets of the service providers, and if those service providers are well-paid then they're more likely to save their marginal dollar instead of spending it. So fro
849.
by sethg 17y ago
People further down the income scale are going to save less of their marginal income. If someone is working but for so little money that they're constantly thinking "this week, should I buy food, or try to catch up with the rent?", and t
850.
by sethg 17y ago
If I read the article correctly, you can issue new stock and sell it to investors, and those investors would get the benefit of the new law.
851.
by sethg 17y ago
One thing I've occasionally done to tame large functions is this: def frobWidget(widget): def frobCog(cog): ## stuff involving both cog and widget ## stuff involving widget frobbedCogs = [frobCog(cog) for cog
852.
by sethg 17y ago
Indeed, I think one very useful rule for naming variables is "the length of the name should be proportional to the scope". If you're iterating through a list of objects representing unfilled orders, it's OK to do this: for uo in unfill
853.
by sethg 17y ago
If they hadn't gotten such good retirement benefits, they would have gotten even more money up front. Before the Japanese arrived on the scene, these contracts made perfect sense from the management's point of view, because American car c
854.
by sethg 17y ago
I'm pretty sure that my 401(k) is sufficiently diversified that even if its GM and Chrysler bonds turn to kindling, it won't affect my retirement. (The Vanguard Long-Term Bond Index Fund, for example, out of $2.7 billion net assets, appear
855.
by sethg 17y ago
John Scalzi once quipped that in a socialist country, the government nationalizes successful businesses.
856.
by sethg 17y ago
The article leads with: NO ONE who lent money to General Motors (GM) or Chrysler can have been unaware of their dire finances. Nor can workers have failed to notice their employers’ precarious futures. These were firms that barely stayed a
857.
by sethg 17y ago
According to the statistics provided in the article, (a) the number of AP tests taken per capita is going up, and (b) the proportion of AP test-takers who get a 4 or 5 is remaining constant. So there are students who took the AP test and g
858.
by sethg 17y ago
How are water rights distributed in the Western states? I'm wondering if this is analogous to a few large plantation owners locking up great swaths of arable land (which their ancestors acquired in good Lockean fashion after killing off th
859.
by sethg 17y ago
But in this case, it appears that the resource rights don't correspond to actual resources; if the author of the article is correct, only a minute fraction of the rainwater that falls on Holstrom's property would ever actually benefit the s
860.
by sethg 17y ago
IIRC (this was discussed on the "free software business" email list a number of years back), Microsoft and possibly Autodesk are the only major software companies that actually get the vast majority of their revenue from selling, well, so
861.
by sethg 17y ago
It's not useless, because it's enough to make the author's point, which is that a piece of software that lots of people want to pay for isn't a license to print money.
862.
by sethg 17y ago
A corporation has legal "personhood" independent of its managers and stockholders, in the sense that if the corporation becomes insolvent, its creditors can only get at the assets of the corporation itself. You can't get this kind of prote
863.
by sethg 17y ago
I think this problem is connected to the "teacher-proof curriculum". School administrators don't trust teachers to actually make judgements based on their professional training and what's going on in their own classrooms, so they just hand
864.
by sethg 17y ago
I'm not understanding how this metric is useful. If I start a business and it goes bust within three months, and then I start another one, do I get counted twice?
865.
by sethg 17y ago
But this is one of the necessary differences between science and politics. Politics requires making decisions, and acting on them, based on imperfect information. There's nothing wrong with saying "I know we don't have 100% certainty on
866.
by sethg 17y ago
Collins' point appears to be that we have no way of distinguishing between a situation of purely random chance and a situation where God loaded the dice of the Universe, so to speak. I agree, but this is not so much an "argument for God" a
867.
by sethg 17y ago
During Daylight Savings Time, noon is at 1:00 pm.
868.
by sethg 17y ago
Ezra Klein points out that even though the author of "Going Dutch" describes "a cultural tendency not to stand out or excel...the very antithesis of the American ideal of upward mobility", if you compare actual statistics, the US has less e
869.
by sethg 17y ago
Agreed. My point is that a store owner cannot assume that a Hasidic employee, even one who is constantly in the presence of other Hasidim, can automatically be trusted not to steal.
870.
by sethg 17y ago
I wouldn't, but I can't speak for everyone else. Sex outside of marriage is much more frowned-upon in the Hasidic community than petty theft, and yet there are Hasidim who have been caught soliciting prostitutes.

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