Paul M. Jones

The Progressives had their way for much of the 20th century. But it became apparent that centralized experts weren't disinterested, but always sought to expand their power. And it became clear that central planners can never have the kind of information that is transmitted instantly, as Friedrich von Hayek observed, by price signals in free markets.

It turned out that centralized experts are not as wise and ordinary Americans are not as helpless as the Progressives thought. By passing the stimulus package and the health care bills the Democrats produced expansion of government. But voters seem to prefer expansion of liberty.

via Tea partiers embrace liberty not big government | Washington Examiner.

For much the same reason that Starbucks specializes in retailing coffee, government specializes in enforcing law. And just as Starbucks responds to prevailing consumer demands--just as Starbucks is not in business to tell consumers what they want and don’t want, but instead is in business to serve consumers according to their specific tastes for coffee and pastries--a genuinely classical-liberal government is not in business to foist its demands and dictates on citizens, but instead to serve citizens by enforcing laws that exist independently of government.

via On the Rule of Law | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty.

People, as in the People, have every right to be angry, furious, shocked, appalled and disgusted by what Congress and our ambitious young prince have done. And bringing the FBI into it? Oh, the FBI is watching! Everybody be careful that they not get too angry! Or else who knows who might come knocking at 3 in the morning! It sure looks like a disgraceful attempt to intimidate those of us who don't like what the Dems have wrought, who hate it in fact, into silence. Ironic, of course. Somebody yelled at me! Me! Call the FBI!

via The Right Coast: Good for Professor Althouse Tom Smith.

Health insurers -- once private companies -- are now organs of the federal government. Every citizen is a ward of the state, which can now compel you to have insurance, punish you if you don't; determine if your insurance is acceptable, punish you if it isn't. Thousands of new federal bureaucrats will soon spill from the D.C. Beltway and flood the country, scrutinizing our finances to verify compliance with this new law.

A government that grants itself this kind of power over us can conceivably do anything to us. For our own good, of course. Such a country is in no meaningful sense "free."

And this is only the beginning.

via American Thinker: Where Were You When the Republic Died?.

After having sold some (the last?) of their constituents' precious liberty, Democrat politicians are afraid of violence when they return to their home districts. Republican John Boehner says:

“I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” Boehner said. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way.”

Bullshit, Mr. Boehner. Tar and feathers are fully in keeping with American tradition.

via Steny Hoyer: Members are at risk - Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com.

Simply, you have nationalized healthcare by proxy. Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington! They will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when healthcare costs rise -- and they will -- Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame and out from this Obamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.

via The reality of Obamacare - latimes.com.

I'm on vacation in San Miguel de Allende from 19 Mar to 19 Apr. What with the conference trip to Canada a couple of weeks ago, this looks a lot like "NAFTA Tour 2010". ;-)

My good friend Ben Carter is watching the house and my girls while I'm away. I see he's gotten a Facebook post out of it already. Have an extra glass for me, pal.

I arrived yesterday; the flight was uneventful, but I've been fighting off either a cold or spring allergies, and the sniffles/stuffiness/redeye became unbearable the moment the hatch opened at MEX. The poor folks in the cab with me from MEX to SMA had to deal with my nose-blowing and eye-wiping for four hours. (Sorry, folks.) But today things are much better.

Last night I went out for dinner with Frank Gardner, his lovely wife Julissa, and their adorable daughter Erin. Frank's an artist of no small renown; you can see some of his work here. I capped off the evening with some Nyquil-D.

This morning was breakfast by the Jardin, a whole day of sleep, and a big comida at La Terrazza. I just now got back from the Mega (think "Wal-Mart") with all my breakfast fixings, so I can eat first thing every morning instead of having to shower and dress and walk to a restaurant each day. (This is part of my OCD; that, and it's cheaper. ;-)

I'm staying at my friend Anthony Gentile's place until he returns. When he does, I'm going to find a place of my own for the remaining three weeks.

I have no special plans; I just want to "be" here, not "do stuff" here. Even so, I'm no good if I don't have work of some sort, so I expect I'll be doing some Solar stuff (like documentation) off and on.

And now, up to the open-air terrace to finish the day with some Jameson's Irish Whiskey, and maybe a read a bit, then sleep.

I just released version 1.0.1 (stable) of the Solar Framework for PHP 5. You can get it from the usual places. The change notes are here.

The most significant change is a bugfix to eager fetches in the model system. When eager conditions are present, and no join type is specified, eager fetches will use an 'inner' join by default. This means that the eager conditions now have the proper effect when using count_pages.

(Cross-posted from the Solar blog.)

Many thanks to the organizers and hosts of ConFoo 2010 in Montréal! It was great meeting everybody there. I always say my favorite part is talking to the attendees; that’s where most of the interesting stuff is.

I gave two talks this time around. The first was the venerable “How To Organize you PHP Project”, which I still love to give, and which I think is really valuable both to new and to experienced developers. The slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/pmjones88/organizing-your-php-projects-2010-confoo; if you attended, please rate it at http://joind.in/1289.

I was really happy about the “Organizing” talk this time around; I was able to add comments on the new PHP 5.3 namespaces, and show how The One Lesson works in practice with existing projects. Attendance was high; great audience, lots of good questions throughout, and a few people were even figuring out in advance where we were going before we got there (it’s always nice when an audience question is addressed in a later slide). There was one guy who saw this presentation the first time I gave it years ago, and he noted that it was much more polished this time around; it’s good to know that there has been visible improvement in the talk.

The second presentation was on “The Solar Framework for PHP5”. The slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/pmjones88/the-solar-framework-for-php-5-2010-confoo, and if you attended, please rate it at http://joind.in/1350.

I was happy about the “Solar” talk, too, but it ran a bit long. When I practiced it, I went for almost 90 minutes, but we’re only allotted an hour, so I had to flip past some good stuff toward the end. Even so, I still went five minutes over time. Attendance was reasonable; Nate and Joël from Lithium showed up, as did Fabien from Symfony. More good questions from the audience, and some discussion of language features available in Python and Ruby that have to be emulated in PHP (I’m looking at you, named keyword arguments).

Thanks to everyone who came to my talks; I hope you found them useful, informative, and entertaining.

I just added wp-super-cache to this WordPress blog. With any luck that will keep future Slashdot traffic from reducing the site responsiveness too dramatically.