My list of reliably entertaining fiction authors has become too short, so I've been spending a lot of time lately poking through the Amazon Prime discount bin trying to find new authors to read. Lately, I'm looking for military sci-fi or space opera. After a batch of disappointing starts -- some books are free to read from Amazon for a reason -- I decided to check out a … [Read more...] about A Libertarian Meets the Honorverse
Model Justice — Stalled On the Learning Curve
The "Model Justice" series of posts (starting here) is chronicling my attempts to build a software model of certain aspects of the criminal justice system. As I explained in the most recent post, my first attempt at building a model ran into a dead end, so now I'm figuring out what to do for my next attempt.I've identified several possible ways the model could be improved, … [Read more...] about Model Justice — Stalled On the Learning Curve
How To Save Yourself From the New WordPress Editor
Oh my God, I ran automated updates on the blog Friday afternoon without realizing that it was also going to update Wordpress to version 5.0. So when I started to write a post that evening, I was met with this monstrosity:Wordpress has been threatening us with their new Gutenberg editor for months now, and I guess it's finally arrived, despite the fact that the trial … [Read more...] about How To Save Yourself From the New WordPress Editor
#ThotAudit Is Really About Ethics in Tax Collection
Oh dear God. I saw a tweet from Mistress Matisse, wondered what the heck she was talking about, and made the mistake of clicking on the tag, and now I've discovered a whole new world of idiocy in something called #ThotAudit.First of all, I had to learn a new word: "thot." Apparently, it means something like "slut" or "whore," but it's a relatively new word that showed up … [Read more...] about #ThotAudit Is Really About Ethics in Tax Collection
Model Justice – Plea Bargaining Blues
As I explained in the first post of this series, I'm trying to build a computer model of certain aspects of the criminal justice system. This week, it's not going well.My goal is to build a model of how our justice system handles plea bargains, with an eye toward understanding (1) why a system built around the highly formalized decision-making mechanism of the trial doesn't … [Read more...] about Model Justice – Plea Bargaining Blues