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Monday, July 25, 2011

Politics: Debt and Destruction

Some seriously perverted stuff going on.

What is "Government Revenue"?

There are a number of definitions of "revenue", but I believe they are misleading when used in the government. Because the government concurrently increase revenue and debt when borrowing (or printing) money, revenues can be grossly inflated (at a rate proportionate to that of the debt). I also don't believe they "earned" that money, as it is all either taxes or loans, but that's subjective (you could argue that taxes, at least, are "earned").

How can you put some "savings" on the books?

From the article: "Boehner ridiculed the $1 trillion in war savings as gimmicky, but in fact, they were contained in the budget the House passed earlier in the year." ..."$1 trillion in war savings", "in the budget"? It's not tangible, for one, and it's money you had already; you can't add it to what you have already, because it IS what you have already. So, tell me again, how did that end up in the budget? Somebody didn't pay attention in math class....

We need to cut spending...period.

No amount of spending (by the government) will reduce the debt (if they continue to borrow in order to perform said spending). If we want to actually reduce the debt, then we'll need to sell more products to other countries, and pay off our debts (to increase the worth of our dollar). In order to do that (make products and sell them), businesses and individuals need money, and that money needs to be worth something. Government taxation isn't helping the former in that regard, and further government loans and money printed by the government isn't helping the latter (and is, thus, counterproductive for the former)

Long story short

There is a simple solution to our problem: Cut spending, cut taxes, increase exports.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Pipes (aka, Pipe Dream), now for Python too!

Ah, the classic game, Pipes. You know, the one where you arrange pipes on a grid and try to reach the goal while creating as long a chain as possible? Yeah, that game.

I've played around with the logic a bit in Python, and came up with this. It's not a complete game yet, obviously, but I've got the flow logic down.

Todo

Stuff needed in order to be considered "complete":

  • Set up input (and a queue of pipes)
  • Move from text to some other rendering method (probably GL, via pygame or some such Looking like Gtk+; Partially complete.)
  • Maybe, convert to multiprocessing (Not as easy as I thought, but done)

Wishlist

Of course, the next step after "completion" is improvement...

  • Implement levels (with larger maps and faster flow rates)
  • Blocks (obstacles) to put a wrench in your design
  • etc. (feel free to make suggestions in the comments)
...but let's not get ahead of ourselves. ;-)