I am currently staying in a Holiday Inn. You would expect some level of clue from such a brand, but you would be disappointed. They are using LodgeNet to provide television in their rooms. LodgeNet sucks no matter how you slice it. It is horribly slow – I mean, it really shouldn’t take three or four seconds to change between analog channels. There is no decode necessary to display an analog stream so there is no need to wait for a key frame like there is with a digital stream. But if that was the only problem, I could put up with it.

In this case, I bypassed the usual “buy premium services!!!!” screen and went to the regular TV channels. Instant fail. They were all being displayed stretched. That is, the TV is 16:9 but the 4:3 analog signals are being stretched to 16:9. This is never correct, no matter what you might think. Let me repeat that. Stretching a picture to fill a screen that does not match its aspect ratio is absolutely never, under any circumstances, even if you will die if you don’t, the correct thing to do. Period. Don’t do it. No. That’s not a good reason either. Neither is that one. No, not that one either. And no, avoiding guest complaints about the TV picture being smaller than the screen is not valid either. If people would bother to explain what is going on instead of trying to make that task go away, maybe TV manufacturers would stop defaulting to enabling the stretching shit.

Now, it turns out the buttons on the side of the TV (standard LG model) allowed me to access the menu and put the aspect ratio setting to “set by program”. Now the “free TV” stuff is at least displayed correctly. But this does illustrate that the hotel has not updated their internal infrastructure to actually have wide screen or high definition signals. (The “Analog” sign upon changing channels is a dead give away there.) Still, displaying the crappy analog signals on a modern flat screen TV is still an improvement over the truly craptastic picture tube job they had the last time I was here which looked like it could support exactly 1/8 of the actual resolution of the analog signals.

I have not investigated whether the premium content displays correctly because I have no interest in purchasing any of it. There are two possibilities I can think of that happened. The first is that they replaced one or more TVs in the hotel without replacing the rest of the infrastructure and they left them all set at factor default settings. I think this is the most likely because it assumes no active actions on anyone’s part. The other is that they have the TVs configured this way at LodgeNet’s direction. Sadly, some of the documentation I’ve found on the ‘net suggests this is all too possible. Either way, it is clear the hotel has not bothered to upgrade its internal infrastructure to drive wide screen TVs correctly which is an epic fail of truly epic proportions. I mean, if you’re going to have a set top box anyway, run the entire TV system through it full time and let the box decode the signals at the correct aspect ratio, pillarboxing or letterboxing as needed, and use a high definition input to the TV for the display (you know, like HDMI).

I mean, seriously. Even the set top box from my home cable provider gets it right, once you turn on the hidden “auto pillarbox” setting at least. LodgeNet has no excuse for getting this wrong. And it is not like aspect ratios are particularly mysterious if all you’re trying to do is display a picture with the correct one.

First, consider where the cash in your pocket came from. Yes, that’s right. Someone had to print it. For the sake of this discussion, I will use the term “printing money” to refer to all processes that bring new money into circulation including minting coins and printing paper currency. A more accurate term (with less ZOMG! attached to it) would be “creating money” but I’m specifically aiming for the impact of “printing money”.

I will not go into where money actually comes from in the modern economic system in any detail. This is adequately explained elsewhere. Suffice to say that a very small percentage of the money in circulation is directly created by governments or agencies operating on their behalf. The vast majority is created through the fractional reserve lending system. Current wisdom says that the best way for a government to increase the money supply is to borrow money by issuing bonds which are then purchased by central banks, rich investors, commercial banks, and so on. Thus, paying down a national debt (or any debt for that matter) reduces the money supply which, by the mechanism of supply and demand then increases the value of the remaining money which potentially leads to deflation. Borrowing money increases the money supply by the same supply and demand mechanism means all money becomes less valuable leading to inflation. Thus inflation is a symptom of the value of money eroding and deflation is a symptom of the value of money increasing. There are varying schools of thought on exactly what is a healthy target for inflation but it is generally agreed upon that any significant deflation or inflation is deleterious to the long term health of an economy.

Now let me examine the notion of printing money. This is, by nature, an increase in the money supply and can be reasonably expected to increase inflation. The more money printed, the more inflation occurs. The same effect is observed when money is borrowed under fractional reserve. The difference between the two is that borrowing money comes at a cost (the interest) which must be paid over time which then leads to a drain on the liquidity of the economy as money that would otherwise be used for productive purposes goes to pay the interest on bonds and loans. Still, both lead to an increase in the money supply. Why, then, has inflation stayed relatively stable even in the face of massive sovereign borrowing over the past few years?

Let me define economic activity as the transfer of assets where an asset is anything currently regarded as valuable. This could be anything from cash to fertilizer. There need not be the same amount of currency in circulation as there is total assets (and in fact there cannot be as long as currency itself is regarded as valuable!). In reality, currency is only used as a score keeper in the game of economics. There only needs to be sufficient currency in circulation to allow all necessary scores to be kept. If the rate of transfer of assets increases, then on average more currency is required to keep the score. If the rate of transfer decreases, less currency is required. Thus, to maintain a perfect state of neither inflation nor deflation, the amount of currency must be precisely calibrated to reflect the score keeping needs of the economy. While this is obviously not possible in reality, an approximation is.

In short, if the amount of currency increases above that needed to maintain current economic activity, inflation occurs. If the amount of economic activity increases above that sustainable by the currency supply, deflation occurs.

But what does all this have to do with printing money? Everything. As long as the total amount of new money (from all sources) is close to what is required to maintain economic activity, inflation will not increase, no matter how that money came into existence. Thus if an economy needs $1 billion added to it annually, then whether that money is printed or borrowed into existence, it will not cause inflation by virtual of its existence. In fact, it may be serving to prevent deflation.

In other words, printing money itself is not evil. Instead, printing too much money is. But so is borrowing too much money. Which then raises the question of why governments do not just print money instead of borrowing it. Apparently because people such at understanding exponential functions and are terrified of the spectre of hyperinflation. But really, a strictly mathematical analysis of the two situations suggests that printing money is, by far, the better choice because it does not leave a government with escalating borrowing costs that must be paid by leeching money from the economy in the form of taxes. (Think through that feedback loop for a bit and see why sovereign debt as a money creation system is dumb. The same applies to fractional reserve lending in general. Our current economic system requires perpetually increasing growth in resource exploitation just to cover the interest on our money.)

Last week, August played up being Baelfire well enough to at least confuse Mr. Gold. It is interesting that Mr. Gold fell for it as easily as Emma fell for Glass’s act previously. Clearly both characters have significant capacities for self delusion. However, it was revealed clearly that August is not Baelfire. Indeed, this week revealed him to be Pinocchio, which makes more sense, and as August pointed out backhandedly to Mr. Gold, he look much like Baelfire anyway. We do not know how August was able to play the part of Baelfire so convincingly.

What we do know, however, is that Baelfire escaped from fairy tale land long before Rumpelstiltskin created the curse. What that means depends on the relationship between the fairy tale land and the real world. If time flows the same in both worlds, then Baelfire would be very old or even dead in the real world by now. If time flows differently, Baelfire could be any age. We do know, however, by virtue of Emma’s and August’s stories that 28 years has passed in the real world since the curse was enacted so Baelfire must be at least 28 years older than he was when he left fairy tale land, unless the magic bean allowed for time travel as well.

Let’s consider the case where time flows the same between the two worlds. Let’s assume a year in fairy tale land is a year in the real world. We do not know how many years passed between Baelfire’s departure through the vortex and Regina enacting the curse, but it is certain that it is a long time, probably on the order of decades., because we know Rumpelstiltskin spent a lot of time amassing his collection of magic in order to follow his son. As a result of this, it is likely that Baelfire is long since deceased, but that does not mean he has no influence on the real world. He would likely have had children of his own who have grown and had their own children. Imagine if one of them turns out to be Henry’s father?

If, however, time flows differently, Baelfire could well be young. If he arrived in the real world only a short time before the curse was enacted, he would still be alive and could easily turn up to throw a monkey wrench into his father’s plans (or everyone else’s for that matter). But 28 years would still have passed and it is not unlikely that he had children, one of whom grew up to become Henry’s father.

It seems more likely that time flows differently, however. After all, Rumpelstiltskin would have spent a great deal of effort to ensure he arrived in the real world in temporal proximity to his son, if it is at all possible to do so. We have very little information on exactly how his magic functions, especially considering what he has amassed over the years. Still, the producers have shown no aversion to having the real situation take a tragic turn and time flowing the same and being irreversible would be the ultimate way to create such a tragedy.

Unless the producers pull a massive reveal in the next two episodes, it is likely that Baelfire’s story will be explored in more detail next season. I fully expect a relationship between Baelfire and August to be revealed.

August, on the other hand, has been well revealed now. He is apparently a writer and there is the implication that he wrote the fairy tale book. However, if he did write that book, how could be possible know the details of all that went on? After all, there is no way he could have been witness to all of it and certainly not to the final few minutes before the curse completed – after all, he had already left fairy tale land at that point! By the same logic, it is even less likely to have been Baelfire. Regina would have no reason to write it and the Mad Hatter seems an unlikely candidate for various reasons. So who wrote it and why? Apparently that question is for the next season as well. But with all that said, we do know that August added the beginning of the Pinocchio tale to the book and that raises even more questions. August must have an accomplice but who could that be? There was, after all, his mysterious phone conversation about moving the plan up. Some think he was talking to Henry but I’m not so sure.

I’ll finish by saying that the show is by no means perfect, but it does an excellent job of remaining interesting and entertaining. There are so many plot threads that have been seeded that even if the curse is lifted (and how that might happen could be interesting), there is story fodder for a dozen seasons. And if the production stays at its current callibre, I look forward to seeing them.

There was a lot of credible talk about a Wildrose victory (minority probably) or even knocking the PCs back to a minority. I don’t think a Wildrose victory would have been necessarily a good result (full disclosure: I did vote for Wildrose). I don’t think they’ve had enough experience in the legislature.  At least with the PCs, whatever you think of Redford, they have experienced MLAs.  There is, after all, a great deal more to governing than passing laws. A great deal more goes on than what the public sees.

What we will have this time is a Wildrose opposition. That will give the party and their leader experience because it will give them the spotlight. Further, the results which show substantial support for Wildrose, should give the PCs pause. After all, it wouldn’t take much come the next election to have the results flip flop.

Now, why did the result go the way they did? Some probably voted PC “because their vote wouldn’t count” otherwise. Others might have voted “strategically”. Those two actions are the two worst things one can do next to casting an uninformed vote. If you do not vote true, the results are skewed and if enough people do that, change doesn’t happen! But I think the majority of the issue is that of all the calls I received during the election, 95% of them were from or on behalf of the Wildrose. Quite frankly, it pisses me off when any political party or candidate calls to drum up my support. I did not let it sway my vote but most people would. I think this, more than even biased news coverage swayed the results. So, political types, take this to heart: if it pissed me off and I’m whining about it, you can be sure you’re pissing off a great many more people with your annoying and intrusive telephone calls.

To sum up, I’m not complaining about the result. I might have preferred a different one but I will take the PCs over the Liberals or NDP any day. The latter two have consistently shown, at varying times, a complete disconnect with reality or at least a disconnect with the people of Alberta. Whatever you want to say, Wildrose is a conservative party and these results basically show that Alberta is still overwhelmingly conservative. Today we just chose which particular flavour of the conservative koolaid we wanted to drink for the next four years or so.

On a recent project, I encountered some of the most shockingly bad PHP code I have ever seen. This is much worse than the typical reliance on “register_globals” or various other trivial errors made by novices and inattentive copy-pasters. No, this was shockingly bad because it was trying to be clever, and failed miserably.

Let me start with the most obvious problem. Anyone old enough to remember Basic on the old micros will remember line numbers and the old GOSUB command. Now GOSUB was wonderful for many purposes. But the only way to pass parameters to a subroutine (or get a value out) was using global variables. That is because the old Basic dialects did not have local variables and they did not have the notion of functions in the sense that modern (or even not-so-modern) languages have them. For the C types reading, it is the equivalent of having every function declared as “void foo(void)”. Now PHP is a modern language (say what you will about it, it is modern) so it has proper functions with local variables.

How does all of that relate to this egregious code? Consider the following:

if ($condition)
{
    require('foo.php');
}
else
{
    require('bar.php');
    $oldval = $val;
    require('foo.php');
}

That is the basic structure of code I encountered all over this one project. The project is littered with similar examples. Within a single source file, it is not uncommon to find a handful of require statements referencing the same source file. In other words, the PHP require keyword is being used in the same manner as the Basic GOSUB statement.

This is bad for more than the obvious reason of global variables being required to use these subroutines properly. For one, it can significantly increase the parsing and compilation overhead at the start of each script, though this is hardly noticeable on modern servers unless the site using this technique is very busy. More importantly, it prevents recursion and makes identifying what would be a safe variable name to use difficult. And finally, it makes tracing the code extremely difficult if you need to figure out how it works, a problem I encountered immediately. Until I figured out that the require statement was being used like GOSUB, I found it difficult to comprehend.

This same code was attempting to be a general purpose data entry/editing system driven by configuration files. It succeeded at that goal, to a degree. It was structured so that each table in the database would have its own configuration file which would be loaded by the body of the code as needed. What I found in a configuration file looked something like this:

$i = 0;
$attrib1[$i] = 'val1';
$attrib2[$i] = 'val2';
$attrib3[$i] = 4;
$i++;
$attrib1[$i] = 'anotherval';
$attrib2[$i] = 'anotherval2';
$attrib3[$i] = 42;
$i++;
$numobjects = $i

That’s another interesting structure. It is also reminiscent of the old Basic days. Basic lacked any data structure support, and also lacked arrays indexed by strings. This was largely due to resource limitations of the computers those early Basic interpreters ran on. It was not uncommon to see a data structure constructed similarly to the above example.

Now there are two interesting problems with the above example. The first is obvious. It would be better structured as a multi-level array which would eliminate the need for both the $i counter and the $numobjects value at the end. The other problem is that it is a configuration file but it is also PHP code. While this is not necessarily an problem, it does, again, mean that anything including that file must take steps to avoid having its own variables clobbered.

The above does work well as long as you only ever need to have one configuration loaded at any given time. But what happens if you need to operate on multiple configurations at the same time? What if you wish to process the configurations recursively for some reason? With the global variable configuration using the same variable name(s) in each different table configuration, such operation is nearly impossible, and is certainly inconvenient. Combine that with the require-as-gosub technique and it becomes impossibly complicated.

The code does a number of other things that naïve programmers often do, such as using an input value from the browser directly in a file inclusion decision.  It attempts to prevent exploitation of this by appending this value to a directory name and checking if the resulting file exists, and if not it throws a cryptic error. However, it does nothing to project against directory separators or the “..” parent directory name in the referenced string. That means, someone with sufficient cleverness could convince the scripts to dump out the contents of, say, /etc/passwd on a unix system, since that file exists and thus will not trigger the cryptic error message. That is trivially corrected by checking for both “/” and “.” in the passed value as well as whether the file exists. But the code does not check this in just one place! There are at least two dozen separate cases that duplicate the “does the file exist” check!

Most of the rest of the nastiness in this particular project stems from the require-as-gosub and configuration file patterns described above. In most cases, the require statements could be replaced with a single library file that is included at the start of each source file. Then each separate file in the existing scheme could be replaced with a function in the global library file. This would eliminate the global variable problem, even if the configuration files were not changed since including the configuration file within a function would set the configuration values in the local namespace of the function rather than the global one.

There is one use of the require-as-gosub pattern that is more difficult to eliminate, however. It is being used as an iterator over the configuration values. This could be solved by having a generic iteration function in the global library that takes as a parameter a callback function to perform actions on each item. There are other options, as well, depending how much of the configuration file structure one wishes to hide.

By eliminating the require-as-gosub pattern entirely, the proliferation of cryptic variable names can disappear. Additionally, the need to scan through as many as a dozen files to figure out what is going on with any given piece of code can be substantially reduced to include the global library file and the file being examined. It even becomes reasonable to split the global library into bits that are not necessarily always all needed. Even this way, it becomes clearer because those bits needed will be referenced in exactly one place in the code referencing them instead of potentially dozens.

Most of the rest of the complexity comes from the fact that the code is attempting to be a general purpose data entry/editing framework. But by using proper functions instead of require-as-gosub, the actual logic of the framework would be clearer and it would be much more flexible, and, as a consequence, much more maintainable.

Let me start with the naïve definition of reality: reality is the stuff around me. This definition works for life in general because the environment in which I live is clearly important to my survival. In fact, it is probably the single most accurate definition of reality. The problem with it is how do we define “the stuff around me”, or even the term “me” itself. Clearly, if we cannot define those terms adequately, our definition of reality, while accurate, is not terribly useful to us.

Now let me examine the term “me”. It turns out that it is not necessary for me to be self aware or even able to think (the two are orthogonal concepts) in order to have a reality so let us leave aside the debate about what makes a person and all that complication. In fact, I need not even be able to perceive the things around me for them to exist. Instead, let us consider the term “me” in the definition to simply be the object or creature whose reality we wish to define. Then we can consider the “stuff around me” phrase to refer to every aspect of the environment in which I find myself. For instance, if a hypothetical being called Fred builds a robot and puts it in a box that is one mile in each of three dimensions and fills that box with a mount of dirt and an atmosphere, we can say that reality for that robot is the contents of the box and the inner surface of the box itself. We can also argue that Fred’s reality is also part of the robot’s reality, and then anything Fred’s reality is contained in. Pretty soon, it’s turtles all the way down. In order for this regression process to stop, there has to be on objective reality that is not contained within any other reality. And here, we run into the problem with defining reality objectively. While there may, in fact, be such an objective reality, we have no way of observing it because we are, ourselves, part of a reality.

So if we cannot divine the existence of an objective reality, the naïve definition of reality cannot be useful when extended to its logical extremes. Instead, let us consider the notion of subjective reality. That is the idea that my reality depends on how I perceive it. Regardless of your beliefs, you will probably agree that we all have several senses including sight, hearing, and touch. You may believe in the psi arts or you may not, or you may believe in telepathy, or not. But you will agree that we all have senses which we use to perceive the world. The precise nature of these senses affects what we perceive. For instance, if our eyes are set up to observe a particular set of electromagnetic wavelengths by focusing them on a mostly flat surface (as they are generally accepted to do), our perception of electromagnetic radiation is limited to those frequencies and to a two dimensional projection of the visible radiation from the direction the eye is pointed. In our case, we do not see radio waves so radio waves are not part of our reality. (Yes, I know. I will get to that in a moment.) A similar thing can be said for hearing, or touch, or telepathy, or whatever other sense you might imagine.

In other words, my subjective reality is everything I can perceive with my senses. Again, self awareness and thought are not required for this. An inanimate object orbiting a star will “feel” the radiation of the star, for instance, and that would be part of its subjective reality. However, something which happens so far away that the light from that event has not yet reached the object is not part of its subjective reality (thought it might be considered part of the objects objective reality).

Now let’s consider the nature of “me” again. We must assume that there is such a being as “me” for this discussion. I will assume that “me” is rooted in my brain, but the argument is the essentially same if you assume “me” is rooted in some amorphous soul or some other thing. So the collection of squishy stuff in my skull is what allows me to think, be aware of my existence, and so on. But how do I know that? That collection of squishy stuff cannot perceive directly its own existence. It must rely on the sensor package that is part of its support system (my body). Even then, I cannot, using my own senses, directly perceive my own brain, and even if I could, I would not be able to directly perceive how it does what it does, so I still cannot perceive myself directly. I can perceive my body, to various degrees, however, such as looking at my hands as I type this, or feeling the ache in my knees or the fact that I am neither cold nor hot. Using my senses, I can see the display screen and the various clutter on my work table. I can see the walls of my office, and if I relocate, I can look out at my back yard.

What I have just described is what most people would call “the stuff around me”. In other words, our original naïve definition of reality can just as easily be interpreted as a subjective definition as it can an objective one. So I can rephrase it as “my reality is the sum of everything I perceive through my senses”. But that is not yet complete for it fails to take into account my capacity to remember, to learn, to believe, and to imagine.

This is where most disagreements about the nature of reality really begin. For instance, I believe, for whatever reason, that my consciousness vests in the squishy stuff that exists inside my skull while someone else might imagine that their consciousness exists independently of the squishy stuff in their skull. I believe what I do partly because I have been told that is the case by people who I perceive to be trustworthy and partly based on some evidence I have collected on my own. The other person mentioned believes as he does for similar reasons. The two of us may even disagree on the meaning of specific evidence or even what constitutes evidence, or it may even be a simple matter of faith (belief without necessarily having evidence or reason).

Remember my comment that radio waves are not part of my reality because I cannot perceive them? Once you bring memory, learning, belief, and imagination into the mix, radio waves easily become part of my reality. This is because I have chosen to believe they exist for much the same reason I believe in the squishy stuff in my skull. I have seen evidence that something behaving a great deal like how radio waves are supposed to behave seems to exist, allowing such wonders as cellular telephones and AM talk radio. In other words, I have indirectly perceived the existence of radio waves and I remember having done so. This has allowed me to believe in their existence. Thus, my reality consists also of those things I can indirectly perceive.

Finally, I can imagine things. Essentially, this is pretending something is the case for whatever reason (entertainment, discovery, etc.). For instance, I imagine my words to be worthy of your time to read, and thus I take my time to write them. I can equally imagine that a Time Lord calling himself The Doctor wanders around time and space in a dimensionally transcendental blue box. These things, too, become part of my reality, though I am capable of differentiating between those things that are “real” and those things that are imaginary. Real things are those which other apparent inhabitants of my reality agree is real. Thus, the Time Lord is imaginary though the collection of stories in which he features are real.

Now to the point of talking about imagination. Suppose I am incapable of interpreting the Time Lord stories as fiction? Suppose I am incapable of separating reality from imagination? What, then, does that mean of my reality? Why, it means that my reality would include also those things that other apparent inhabitants of said reality deem to be fiction. This is often referred to as a delusions. Thus, my reality is also formed from my delusions.

It is useful here to define two terms. Internal reality is that component of subjective reality that is internal to me, that does not depend on my senses. This is my memories, my imagination, my beliefs. External reality everything I perceive through my senses. There is some overlap here, in the case where I believe I perceived something with my senses but it turns out to be a delusion, a belief if you will. There is also a feedback between the two for what I know and remember affects how external reality is perceived and external reality will tend to affect internal reality as memories form or I learn new things from it.

Finally, here is the mind blower. What if everything I perceive to be my reality is all a fiction? What if I am that robot in a large box? Indeed, what if I am that robot’s brain and it is only being fed the idea that it is in a large box? What if all of my external reality is being synthesized by Fred and fed into my brain directly, with no sensory apparatus at all? What if everything I feel, see, touch, smell, hear, and taste is all simulated by Fred? Does that change my subjective reality? Not really. After all, I can only perceive the world around me through my senses and if they are being manipulated by Fred, I have no way of knowing that.

Let me sum things up. There must certainly be an objective reality somewhere in which I exist. It’s possible that nobody else does exist (though you will no doubt turn that around and cast yourself as “I”). However, because I can only know my subjective reality, there is no possible way I can know what that objective reality truly looks like. It may even be the external reality I perceive with my senses! However, the precise nature of my external reality cannot be known by me because I can only perceive it through my own senses and those senses could just as easily be manipulated as accurate.

The real question that should be answered is this: Does it matter if I am just a brain in a box experiencing a world synthesized by Fred? My contention is that it does not matter to me for I have no way of knowing that is happening! The concept merely serves as an interesting mental exercise. (If you think about it, you will see that the same argument can apply to the idea that the Earth is only 6000 years old; supposing that to be true, it is obvious that when it was created, it was designed to look over 4 billion years old and we have not yet found an error in that design. It can also be applied to a great many other philosophical or theological debates. In other words, it’s turtles all the way down.)

My overall point of this ramble is that whether reality is real, or even what reality actually is, is fundamentally unknowable by us. Thus, any attempt to argue from authority based on something being “real” is simply doomed to be logically unsound. One must always assume some sort of reality (axiomatic system) in which to ground ones logic, whether that be the particular consensus reality of science or that of a particular religion, or even that of an imaginary world, does not matter. What matters is that all participants in a logical debate must agree on the same basic axioms of reality. Without that agreement, no true debate is possible.

Let me frame my commentary in the context of a concrete example. I recently had occasion to modify an existing web site to add some additional functionality. The requested functionality was a perfectly logical addition to the existing site, and while not trivial to add, should have been relatively straight forward. It turned out to be far more difficult than it should have been, and, though it was possible, the resulting interface was considerably less than ideal. The precise problem was that I needed to add a data field to one of the objects (I use the term to refer to a logically related collection of data describing a single item, such as a person) which happened to have a “zero to infinity” cardinality. That is, it was optional but there could also be an arbitrary number of instances of the information for a given instance of the parent object. The ideal interface would have been for some sort of ajax-y thing that handled those objects on the same page as the rest of the data for the object but I could not make that happen for various reasons.

The site in question was originally built by someone else using a framework. This framework attempted to be a general purpose system for handling random data entry for arbitrary data structures. It does this using a series of configuration files which describe the database tables. It turns out, however, that this framework has no ability to model the semantic relationships between and within the objects. While this is not necessarily a problematic limitation in general, in this particular case it is.

While the framework used by the original programmer would have been brilliantly useful for a simple data structure with one or more largely independent object types which nothing more than drop down lists for subordinate arbitrary cardinality data, it turns out that it fails miserably at handling arbitrary structures as subordinate data. Being a somewhat competent programmer, I did what any decent programmer with a bit of time would do – I cranked up my mad skillz and set about figuring out how to modify the framework. Several hours later, it became clear that such a modification was not practicable due to various factors including the dreadful state of the code (which I will comment on in another post).

So where did this leave me? It left me with having to use a data entry scheme that did fit into the existing framework, and one which was not ideal. The framework prevented me from using modern ajax techniques to make the interface convenient. Instead, I was relegated to using an interface reminiscent of the previous century. But you might be wondering if this task would have proved any more tractable with a different framework. It might have, but I did not have that option. I had to work within the existing code. I did not have the time budget to redo the entire system.

Had the site been purpose coded for the actual data structures in use and their semantics, there would have been no problem adding a new special set of sub data to one object. I would have had to write some relatively complicated code but it would have been restricted to only those portions of the system that had to deal with the new subordinate data, and that did not even include every place that dealt with the parent object. Even if the purpose built code had not anticipated such a modification, I would still have been able to make it without completely ripping out the guts of the site. Note that this assumes that the purpose built code was not structured as a framework!

I learned something else about the framework used while investigating this particular modification. Even the original programmer had run into limitations of the framework. Not only were there special cases in the configuration files, which is possibly excusable, but there were special cases all over the “library” files of the framework! Even leaving aside the dreadful code mentioned above, a fact that accounted for a very small fraction of the special case stuff, this should have made it abundantly clear to the original programmer that the framework in use could not cope with the specific task at hand. So not only was I battling a framework which did not quite fit the semantics of the site, but I was battling one that had been patched, hacked, and lashed together with bailing wire in order to function at all!

So what does this specific example say about frameworks in general? Nothing, really. What it does is serve as an object lesson. Frameworks do not necessarily always make things easier. This is an important fact to remember when considering a framework for a project. While it may seem, on the surface, to be the solution for all your needs, you need to consider carefully. Does it solve the entire problem or only 90% of it? Is that remaining 10% critical if it doesn’t quite fit into the framework’s notion of how the world works? Think hard about how much work the remaining 10% will be to implement using the framework. Will it be possible? Will it require modifications to the framework itself? Will the time saved on the first 90% more than make up for the time spent on the remaining 10%? In this particular example, the answer to that is a resounding “No!”. The framework did not handle even the original problem specification, and any time saved using the framework was clearly used up  and then some by the brutal patching and customization to simply get it to the 90% state, let alone making my later modification suboptimal.

Would a different framework have presented a better solution? Certainly. A framework that supported arbitrary subordinate objects would certainly have helped a lot, and it would have moved the bar for how much was supported trivially by the framework somewhat higher. However, it would not have helped with the semantics of the site, a problem which led to a lot of patching in the original framework and might have done so in another as well.

In short, when considering a framework for a project, do not choose one based on a set of features on a comparison chart. Do not choose one because you are familiar with it.  And most certainly do not choose one because your organization has a fetish for it. Instead, consider the specific project at hand and consider which points of the project will benefit from the framework and which ones will suffer. Consider those points brutally objectively. If, after such brutal honest consideration, you still believe the framework to be beneficial, by all means use it, but be wary of any pitfalls. However, if you are not convinced that all aspects of the project will be adequately served by the framework, it is worth reconsidering the idea to use a framework at all. It may prove, paradoxically, that scratch coding takes less time!

So are frameworks a problem or a solution? Yes, they are. Every framework has strengths and weaknesses. Consider a framework the same way you would consider any other technology for building a project. Do the strengths complement your project? Do the weaknesses significantly impair it? Like so many other things, it comes down to the relative costs and benefits of the available options.

Let me make it clear before I proceed that I do not believe that Lost Girl is perfect. It has issues. In fact, some of the issues I discount here are not completely absent. Rather, I am pointing out that they are not necessarily as egregious as people like to think they are.

First, let me address a general complaint I see regularly. The first is that Bo is supposed to be a bad-ass succubus with mad fighting skills so why does she always seem to need rescuing? Well, consider, most of the time she’s going up against fae who can match her enhanced strength with their own, or she’s going up against someone she really doesn’t want to seriously hurt. You can see why she might not want to employ her maximum potential. The same goes for her succubus power, and that is not counting the guilt she carries from her years on the run before the series starts. Also consider that she knows next to nothing, comparatively, about the fae world so there is a level of confusion dogging her actions too.

As far as Bo always needing rescuing, if you watch carefully in a lot of those rescue situations, you’ll see that the rescuer has barged in before Bo has had a chance to even figure out what the blazes is going on and get out of the predicament. Just because she has been rescued, it doesn’t mean she would have been doomed without the rescue. And it doesn’t mean she can’t be grateful nor does it mean the rescue didn’t have a net beneficial effect (less injury, etc.). In other cases, when the rescue is needed, there is usually something bigger at play – a broken genie trap, mind altering juju, or something Bo hasn’t the experience to know how to fight. You can be smart, strong, and skilled and still be in a pickle because you don’t know what you’re up against.

Now on to recent episodes. Last week’s episode felt rushed and choppy. But when you dive into it, it was about hard choices and the cost of the upcoming battle. If there is one thing about Lost Girl that sets it apart, it is that rarely is everything all unicorns and rainbows. The bigger the pay off, the bigger the risk and the bigger the cost. Also, Nadia’s death is commonly viewed as an easy out because the writers didn’t know what to do with Nadia. That is really not the case. The point of the scene was not Nadia’s death. The point was that neither Bo nor Lauren wanted to harm Nadia. It was Nadia that killed Nadia. Bo had her knife out but it was Nadia’s actions that brought it fully into play. Given a few more moments, Bo herself might have taken the action more directly (and probably would have). The point was the emotional cost of doing so, a cost paid by both Lauren and Bo. I do have to agree with a lot of commentators that the Kenzi/Nate story line overshadowed Bo’s story line but I think that is only because it was emphasized more. It sets Kenzi up as much more than a sidekick (not that she ever was). It sets her up as a rock of constance in the brewing chaos.

On to this week’s episode and we have chaos brewing. The Garuda is coming! No, wait, the Garuda is here! Everything is going weird. Lachlan is acting weird. Dyson appears and acts all self-important on account of he spoke to the wolf spirit. Trick is rude. Ciara reappears for the fight. Bo checks her brains at the door. And Kenzi follows along with Bo out of loyalty. The final battle is here and by the end of the episode, it seems to be lost. But in the end it turns out not to have been the final battle after all. Now, the episode, if watched superficially, seems like things do not make sense, but a deeper analysis suggests otherwise.

Let’s consider Lachlan now. He behaves rather oddly at the start, attempting to force Trick into using his blood magic to end the conflict, only being stopped by Bo and Dyson when Bo connects the weirdness with snakes to Lachlan being the naga. Lachlan evidently works out that Dyson and the others are headed into a trap for he prepares for that eventuality by having Lauren extract his venom for use after his death. This may just be an example of being crazy prepared or paranoid prepared, of course. He’s been down this road four times before after all. So Lachlan ends up dead while the others step into the trap.

As for the others falling into the trap, the have Dyson claiming communion with the wolf spirit whom even Trick respects. But we have seen that even powerful fae are swayed by the Garuda (see the Glaive for instance). There is no reason to believe that the wolf spirit would be impervious to manipulation. And what is to say that Dyson actually heard the wolf spirit and not the Garuda in disguise? So we know that fae can be influenced directly or indirectly by the Garuda so there is no reason to suspect that our heroes were acting fully rationally when they chose to enter the trap. And that isn’t counting emotional interference with reasoning. As for expecting Trick to recognize the trap, remember his judgement was probably compromised by anger.

Now let’s consider Dyson. We know he has been less than reliable of late. He has clearly not been thinking clearly and it is entirely likely he has misinterpreted what he heard during his communion with the wolf spirit. It is also not inconceivable that he could be fooled into believing that he was speaking to the wolf spirit even if it were the Garuda in disguise, but let’s assume the wolf spirit was real. What we saw in the flashback was not particularly specific. Instead, it merely tells us that Dyson will regain what he is missing as a result of the fight and that the Garuda can only be defeated when he believes he has already won. It may be that in the end the one who actually kills the Garuda will be Dyson but it clearly is not as easy as it seems. Of course, the scooby gang charges off into danger without thinking things through, to the point of taking Kenzi along without a second thought. That, alone, should be a clue that people were not thinking clearly – there wasn’t even a token effort to dissuade her from coming.

Now consider Bo. She gets caught up in events as she is wont to do. She is, after all, passion embodied. By her own admission, she wanted Dyson to be the champion which also led her to play along. It took Ciara’s death to snap her back to reality. Then, she arrives too late to save Lachlan, who also sacrifices his life. Then, later, in perhaps the most emotional scene of the whole episode, we have the “of course, you know this means war” moment when Bo finally commits to the battle, when she sees Kenzi wheeling a badly beaten Dyson through the darkness. This may seem like a redundant episode but consider all along that Bo has been a reluctant hero at best, fighting when forced to but always looking for a way out.  Here she comes face to face with the brutal reality of her indecision and it galvanizes her.

Finally, we have Kenzi. Kenzi has consistently shown a strength of spirit that puts the others to shame, even from the very first moment when she and Bo meet. It is Kenzi above all that finally grounded Bo and it is Kenzi who time and again acts as a rudder as Bo navigates the tempestuous seas of fae society. Repeatedly we hear how some of the strongest fae, at least those not prejudiced against humans, who come to know her are amazed at her strength. It is clearly not physical strength nor weapon prowess to which they refer. Rather it is her indomitable spirit in the face of impossible odds that they all admire. She has, more than once, achieved goals when stronger, older, and wiser fae have failed. During the body switch episode, even Dyson came to appreciate Kenzi’s inner strength. It may come to pass that Kenzi’s presence will turn the tide of the fight in the end even if she does nothing other than be there. (I can see this happening given the strong anti-prejudice themes in the season so far.)

To sum up, a great deal actually happened in the most recent episode. Much of it is overshadowed by two very prominent deaths at the hands of the Garuda. However, there is much more going on beneath the surface. While this is one of the show’s greatest strengths, it is also the very thing that causes much of the criticism. People simply do not see the subtexts but instead focus on the overt things. In so doing, they miss the truly brilliant plot points. Yet these same people, if they had the same information revealed to them with overt dialogue and actions would call the plot contrived. It’s the subtlety that makes the show so good. Instead of complaining about this inconsistency or that “writer cop out”, try looking for a reason for it. Distance yourself from your initial gut reaction and actually analyze the scenes objectively. You may be surprised to find that it makes a great deal more sense than the first reaction suggests. (That’s not to say everything is a brilliant action by the producers. Even some of the brilliant points may be accidental. But don’t jump to the default “producers screwed up” mode before trying hard to prove that they did know what they were doing.)

Let me finish with a couple of predictions. All the prophecies will come true. Every single one. They will happen exactly as we have been shown. There is a precedent for this. That means Bo will at the very least start to kill Trick, or someone that looks like Trick. I predict that Kenzi will prove to be the chaotic factor that compromises the Garuda’s plans. I further predict that scary über succubus Bo will reappear – after all, that Chekhov’s gun was loaded quite a few episodes ago now. I suspect that Bo’s blood magic will also turn out to play an important role. (Wait, Bo doesn’t have blood magic you say? That was the point of the wedding episode. Go ahead, watch it again. I’ll wait.)

And one final guess. The Morrigan will not call in her favour from Kenzi during this fight. Instead, she will wait until a most inopportune moment after the fighting is done, when Bo is at her weakest and Kenzi will be put in a difficult spot – defy the Morrigan (at what consequence?) or betray Bo. This will probably occur in Season 3.

So, if you are reading this on or after April 1, do feel free to post comments mocking my horrible predictions, or, alternatively if I get things right, accusing me of having an inside source.

First, let me examine the reasoning behind common law. At the most basic level, the theory is that any particular set of facts should be treated the same whenever circumstances are the substantially similar. Thus, the presence of duly executed deeds must be accounted for the same way in any land ownership dispute. Also, in the case of a contract dispute, like wording should be treated the same regardless of the parties or specific contract involved. This is, at its heart, a fairness doctrine.

There is also an advantage to the common law system in that neither the legislative nor executive branches of government need be concerned about minor matters. Instead, a collection of precedents is built up over time based on actual disputes. Situations that never give rise to disputes never require intervention at all and there is no need for any branch of the government to attempt to anticipate such cases for when a dispute occurs, a precedent will be set.

The primary disadvantage of the common law system is not immediately obvious. However, by examining actual common law legal systems in use today, the disadvantage becomes clear. As time passes, the number of precedents that must be considered increases. For instance, in Canada, it is not unheard of for a case decided in England a century before Canada existed to be considered as a precedent. Even seemingly simple disputes can involve extended wrangling over just which precedents are relevant. This leads to an ever increasing cost to employ legal advice in a great many circumstances, thus taking legal recourse out of reach of an increasing number of citizens. It also increases the likelihood that errors will be discovered on appeal or that inconsistencies must be reconciled.

Common law systems also commonly suffer from jurisdictional interactions. A decision made by a court in one jurisdiction is often not binding on courts in other jurisdictions, even within the same legislative domain. This complication is particularly noticeable in the United States with its proliferation of courts at different levels of the authority hierarchy.

Essentially, a common law system, while appearing inherently fair by nature, yields an increasingly complex code of laws (the “common law”) over time. As the complexity increases, the ability of the regular citizen to understand it, and consequently to comply with it. Without some mechanism for removing precedents from the common law, there is no way to fix the problem.

So far, I have discussed the common law as though it exists in a vacuum. Indeed, it can do just that. An entire legal code for an entire country could start from a series of decisions made by judges who have no guidance whatsoever from any higher authority. This is, however, unlikely. Most nations have some sort of constitution that serves as an ultimate authority on all legal matters. Those that don’t usually have a collection of royal decrees or other laws set by legislative or executive branches of government. Further, legislation is often introduced to clarify or otherwise countermand precedents from the common law. Basically, it is unlikely to encounter a purely common law system.

So what is the alternative to common law? Basically, courts are required to make determinations based on actual laws passed by the legislature or enacted by the executive branch. When there is no guidance from such laws, the court will make a determination for that case based on whatever reasoning it chooses but that decision will not affect any future decision. There is no such thing as a precedent in such a system. Thus, the legal code only gains complexity through legislative or executive action. Obviously, this can lead to different courts making different (but legal) decisions based on the same facts. This can be regarded as inherent unfairness. However, such a system also means that the code of laws in force tends to remain much smaller. Additionally, such a system does not preclude the existence of a constitution or similar supreme authority.

A case can be made for either of the extremes and also for any number of balances between the two approaches. It is not clear that any one approach is necessarily better than any other. On the one hand, common law would seem to be fairer by nature but on the other hand, statutory and regulatory law (law created by the legislature or executive branch respectively) would seem to reduce the complexity of the legal code in the long term. Which is better depends on which of those two results is more desirable.

I should note that the concepts of common, statutory, and regulator law are completely orthogonal to other concepts, such as presumption of innocence or presumption of guilt.

First, the current focus is on emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). The theory is that as the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere increases, the proportion of energy radiated by the Earth that gets reflected back to the Earth increases. This effect is real and has been adequately demonstrated many times in laboratory conditions. GHGs includes such things as carbon dioxide but it also includes water. Yes, good old garden variety water is a GHG.

There are two good reasons for the fixation on GHGs. The first is that it is easy to get people on board for measures to “reduce emissions”. After all, many GHGs are also toxic for other reasons and who wouldn’t want to reduce pollution? The second reason is that the average person can see how we can do something about GHGs in the short term.

Fixating on GHGs, however, is focusing on exactly half of the equation. Consider that at its simplest, a change in temperature is simply a change in thermal energy. Thus, if thermal energy input is greater than thermal energy output, you have an increase in temperature and if it is less, you have a decrease. The actual details are quite a lot more complicated. In this discussion, we will consider the energy contained in the atmosphere since that is the quantity that affects climate.

Now let us define a couple of terms. There are sources of thermal energy which simply add thermal energy to the system. There are also thermal energy sinks which remove energy from the system. I will refer to these simply as sources and sinks.

There are several sinks at work. One is heating up objects such as the ground or melting ice. The ability for objects or ice to serve as sinks diminishes as their overall temperature approaches the temperature of the atmosphere and, thus, are not a viable long term energy sink. Another sink is simply radiating energy into space. This process is constantly occurring. It is this process that GHGs impact. Higher concentrations of GHGs reduce the radiation ability.

The idea behind controlling GHGs is that by reducing GHGs, the sink rate of radiation into space increases, and thus the rate of warming is reduced. It is interesting to note that this is something of a balancing act since if GHG concentration is too low, radiation to space would actually be sufficient to cause global cooling which, if unchecked, would also be disastrous. Global cooling, however, would be easier to combat.

As mentioned previously, however, there is another side to the equation. We must also consider the sources. After all, if you reduce the energy input, you also reduce the rate of increase. So let us consider some sources.

One obvious source is the sun. Its output varies over time which does have some impact on the atmosphere. Additionally, the amount of solar energy that gets collected depends somewhat on cloud cover, too. Another source is objects radiating heat into the atmosphere, water freezing, and so on. Often these objects get heated up above atmospheric temperature by absorbing solar energy. Thus, the composition of the Earth’s surface impacts solar absorption by the atmosphere too. Energy from molten rock from inside the Earth also ends up in the atmosphere.

There is, however, another source of heat that goes into the atmosphere. This is the result of energy use in one form or another. This might be in the form of biological processes (metabolism), for instance. Or it might be in the form of burning wood or coal for heat. But it also comes from electricity generation, electricity use, internal combustion engines, external combustion engines, windmills, waterwheels, and so on. In other words, much of the activity of a high technology civilization is a heat source.

You might argue that using energy sources already on the Earth cannot release more heat than is already here, but remember that all energy sources are converting a stored potential energy into usable energy and waste heat. The net total energy of the entire Earth and atmosphere does not change, but the net energy in the atmosphere goes up by the same amount the stored energy in the Earth goes down.  Because the atmosphere has a great deal less mass compared to the Earth, the overall impact on it is much more dramatic. And remember, we’re considering the atmosphere on its own here, not the whole system including the Earth itself.

Now here is the interesting part. Assuming a constant population with a constant life style (which is absurd, by the way), most methods of reducing GHGs will also have some impact on the total heat emission from technology. For instance, walking instead of driving both reduces waste heat emission and GHG emission, thus improving both sides of the temperature increase equation. (It has other benefits as well making it a net win where practicable.)

So, let us now assume that AGW is a problem (it probably is but if you disagree, just pretend it is). We want to reduce the rate of temperature increase to as close to equilibrium as we can. We can try to do this by reducing GHGs alone, but this is difficult and has  a fair lag time before impacts can be noticeable. (The atmosphere is big.) What we can also do is reduce energy usage altogether. This would have the beneficial effect of reducing waste heat. But it would also, in many cases, directly reduce GHG emissions, too, because demand on “dirty” energy sources would be reduced. And it would also buy us more time to find alternative energy sources.

The only problem with this proposition is that everyone wants a high standard of living and the term “standard of living” has become conflated with “consuming lots and lots and lots of stuff at an alarming rate”. Furthermore, the vast majority of the world population is well below this standard of living and wants to get there. To further complicate it, the total population is increasing. All of these factors tend to increase total energy consumption and thus increase both energy consumption (heat output) and GHG output.

Thus we have a problem. Even if, by some magic, we were to eliminate totally our GHG emissions (which is impossible – our own metabolism contributes some at the very least), our energy consumption is going to continue to increase as population increases and standards of living increase. This means the total heat output into the atmosphere from human sources is going to continue to increase. Assuming no change in radiation to space, and even if AGW is not a problem now (which it probably is), if we continue on our current trajectory, AGW will necessarily occur in the future.

So what do I suggest? We of the so called first world drastically reduce our reliance on energy. In particular, places like North America which have been designed around the idea of wasting energy on transportation (sprawl) need to smarten up and stop designing for automobiles. But we also need to reduce our dependence on energy hunger stuff like those eleventy badillion watt entertainment systems, computers, and so on. Go back to washing dishes by hand. Don’t turn on four dozen lights when one will do. All sorts of things like that. And buy less stuff. Buying less stuff will reduce industrial consumption since that stuff that is not bought will not need to be made. Folks in the developing world should upward to the same goal the first world aims downward for. And finally, we need to stop population growth, which is a hard problem.

The astute among you will have realized that the solution above is also a recipe for economic collapse under our current system which requires perpetually increasing growth. Obviously our economic system must be replaced with one that does not require perpetual growth to attain some level of stability. That, however, is a topic for another rant.