The Draft is Slavery

Daniel Webster, in a speech in 1814, put it best.

Conscription is chosen as the most promising instrument, both of overcoming reluctance to the Service, and of subduing the difficulties which arise from the deficiencies of the Exchequer. The administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion. ... Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a free Government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, Sir, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Charta to be slaves. Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will show me any constitutional injunction, which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender every thing valuable in life, and even life itself, not when the safety of their country and its liberties may demand the sacrifice, but whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous Government may require it?

Oh, yeah.

Freedom of Information?

The feds want "to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library."

Hmmm ... When things don't make sense that usually means there is a back-story we don't know much about. Could it be that the feds are going after this guy because he made them look bad in the past, and they need a pretense now to offer him up some official retribution?

"D.C. Taxi Heist: How a new law would screw drivers and riders"

Yet another case of politically connected businesses using rogue government officials to shakedown and control their competition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T2912EqJ0U

Check out the illegal arrest at the end. More info here: http://homesdc.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-was-arrested-yesterday-at-dc-taxi.html

People Arrested For Dancing

Our government shows no shame that they are turning into SS- or Taliban-like thugs, by assaulting, battering, and arresting people for -- get this -- DANCING at the Jefferson Memorial. The most brutal treatment captured on the video was that of an officer body-slamming a distinguished Marine veteran of Iraq. This is how they treat vets on Memorial weekend! (BTW, the Marine is going to go back and dance again; semper fi!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UyiaR1PDhQ

Nom de boucanier

Following my friend's (aka Dirty John Rackham's) lead, I took the Pirate Quiz, and here is my piratical name:

My pirate name is:

Red Jack Cash

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. You're musical, and you've got a certain style if not flair. You'll do just fine. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Permutations of a Multiset

A little over a year ago, my friend John Warren and I developed an algorithm which computes the k-permutations of a multiset (k is at most the size of the multiset). John does not program in Lisp, but I do and the algorithm can be clearly and concisely expressed in Lisp. Here it is:

(defun make-k-permutations (k multiset)
 (let ((pivots (remove-duplicates multiset)))
   (if (= k 1)
       (mapcar #'list pivots)
     (let ((acc '()))
       (dolist (p pivots acc)
         (let ((sub-multiset (remove p multiset :count 1)))
           (dolist (sub-perm
                    (make-k-permutations (1- k) sub-multiset))
             (push (cons p sub-perm) acc))))))))

How this works is you first make a list of pivots which are just the unique entries in the given multiset. For each pivot p, remove p from the original multiset, yielding a multiset like the original except minus one occurrence of p. Then recursively, compute the (k-1)-permutations of this new multiset. Now, cons the pivot p onto each of these (k-1)-permutations, accumulating them in acc. After you do this for every pivot p, you have the answer!

Here it is in action:

> (setq M1 '(93 4 42 93 5 7 8 10 8 8 10 42 4))
(93 4 42 93 5 7 8 10 8 8 10 42 4)
> (make-k-permutations 2 M1)
((4 4) (4 42) (4 10) (4 8) (4 7) (4 5) (4 93) (42 4) (42 42)
(42 10) (42 8) (42 7) (42 5) (42 93) (10 4) (10 42) (10 10)
(10 8) (10 7) (10 5) (10 93) (8 4) (8 42) (8 10) (8 8) (8 7)
(8 5) (8 93) (7 4) (7 42) (7 10) (7 8) (7 5) (7 93) (5 4) (5 42)
(5 10) (5 8) (5 7) (5 93) (93 4) (93 42) (93 10) (93 8) (93 7)
(93 5) (93 93))

Here’s a version of the same function in newlisp (followed by the necessary helper function remove1).

(define (make-k-permutations k multiset)
 (let ((pivots (unique multiset)))
   (if (= k 1)
       (map list pivots)
     (let ((acc '()))
       (dolist (p pivots)
         (let ((sub-multiset (remove1 p multiset)))
           (dolist (sub-perm
                    (make-k-permutations (- k 1) sub-multiset))
             (push (cons p sub-perm) acc))))
       acc))))

(define (remove1 elt lst)
 (let ((elt-pos (find elt lst)))
   (if elt-pos (pop lst elt-pos))
   lst))