var user_model = [
    // column name , generalized type,   , validation rule,   hidden?
    ['first_name'  , 'text'              , 'name_regex'              ],
    ['last_name'   , 'text'              , 'name_regex'              ],
    ['middle_name' , 'text'              , 'name_regex'              ],
    ['birth_date'  , 'date'              , 'over_18'                 ],
    ['location'    , ['double','double'] , undefined,        ,   true],
    ['addresses',  , 'has_many'          ,                           ]
];

Basically, from a Rails perspective, replace your ruby database migration DSL with code that parses the above JSON (e.g. user_model.json) and creates the appropriate schema. Replace your ActiveRecord validations with the validations from the json model. (Depending on your language, there may be differences in REGEX syntax. Having some well defined common REGEX definitions, such as EMAIL_VALIDATION, might be appropriate.) On the client side, you can display most forms automagically, based on the order defined in the json model (if it is in fact an array.) Furthermore, you can also run client side validations before submission. (If your validations are so weak that sharing them remotely represents a security risk, you are probably doing something wrong.) It might also remove the need for many controllers. A lot of CRUD is so generic that it might be possible to have a single /:model/:action/* controller. Scaffolding is not DRY. Finally, as the lingua franca, sharing model definitions outside your project’s language is simplified.

Any takers?

The following is a reasonably accurate summary of the bill:

The U.S. Government’s fiscal situation is FUBAR. For foreseeable and unforeseeable reasons, the deficit is now a leviathan. For the sake of expediency, it is best to go with the tried-and-true Democratic narrative that places all of the blame squarely on the shoulders of the evil Wall Street fat cats. (This narrative is mostly a pastiche of Scrooge McDuck. The government has an odd tendency to use cartoon ducks to sway popular opinion.) Since Main Street’s unemployment has persisted while Wall Street’s profits have returned, the best course of action is to use fervid populist opinion, to take money from the ostensibly stable and wealthy Wall Street firms and redistribute it to the unstable industries that would obviously be irreparably damaged if not for the infusion of money.

Since the political actors are perennial fans of war analogies, I’ll make one of my own: H.R. 4191 is similar to a situation in which there are 5 wounded soldiers and one unharmed soldier left on a battlefield. Upon reviewing the situation, the feckless medic who has just entered the fray realizes that these soldiers will need blood transfusions. The medic proceeds to shoot the unharmed shoulder in the thigh, allowing the blood to messily drain into a pan to be given to his comrades. This is hyperbole; it is also not far from the truth.

Irrespective of the fact that the Wall Street firms are far from healthy — they may be making large profits but they are still exposed to some terrific risks — a cursory glance at the numbers using basic arithmetic, would suggest that Wall Street is not likely to be the one bearing the costs of such a tax raise. (Basic arithmetic is probably above the botox battered brain of Nancy Pelosi.) I am not talking about the pedestrian argument that suggests the tax would be passed on to consumers. I am referring to a more damning flaw: no market maker could pay this tax.

Take, for example, the 25 basis point tax on plain old stock transactions. Looking at Yahoo Finance right now, I see the bid-ask on SPY is 111.20/111.21. Market makers looking to make a few pennies on every transaction might have difficulty staying in the black with a 25 basis point tax per transaction. (I was unable to ascertain whether the tax is levied once per side or once per round-trip; For a conservative estimate, I’ll assume it is only levied once per round-trip). This would mean the market maker could only profit on swings of at least 28 cents if he was hoping to avoid bankruptcy.

(Ironically, some of the proponents of this bill were touting it as a structural method of reducing volatility! They argue that with a tax, there are incentives to hold positions longer. That may be true for marginal day traders. However, market makers would have to significantly widen spreads in order to survive. Wide spreads translate into higher volatility.)

Since market makers are integral elements of markets, it seems likely that they would be exempt from this tax. While the tea-party crowd loves to shout that the “Progressives” are socialist wolves in sheep’s garb who are looking for any and every way to demolish capitalism, I’m not so conspiracy-minded. Progressive Congressmen and Congresswomen would be forced to exempt market makers in order to maintain market integrity. At which point the absurdity of the bill comes into sharp focus: the bill that would force Wall Street to “contribute” to the economic recovery would…EXEMPT WALL STREET?!

P.S. I appologize for the discordant feel to this post. I am a bit peeved by this bill and could not proceed stoically. I have spent the past 9 years of my life learning about markets so that I could be a competitive trader. This bill would render 9 years of sacrifice (lower grades in college; no traditional forms of employment to build my credentials; less time with friends and family) wasted for arbitrary reasons. I suppose this is true for most congressional edicts.

Most not-for-profits favor development over the solicitation of small donations. This preference was probably justified in the past but now exists as a historical artifact — a philanthropic appendix.² The cost of building and maintaining a motivated army of constituents was much higher twenty years ago than it is now. However, with the advent of internet-based communications, it can now be practically free in terms of time and money. This preference may now persist due to certain cognitive biases. It may appear as though finding one large donation is more likely than finding N small donations of equal aggregate value.

For small highly-focused organizations, I believe this nearly ubiquitous preference is sub-optimal. The constituent beneficiaries also have networks of contacts: their friends and family. The relationships between the constituents and their friends and family are likely to be far stronger than anything a development professional could build. I have been impressed by the generosity of my own family and friends in supporting my cause. I was also impressed by the initial strong push made by the Chordoma community in general after I offered them a fund-raising tool. Unfortunately, the initial success of community fund-raising was soon marred by swift appearance of fund-raising fatigue. Ignoring the poor quality of the first implementation, I completely missed a very important feature set: feedback. I believe that novelty combined the promise of proactivity resulted in a strong drive at first. However, after funds had been collected, there was a post-endeavor funk. Money had been raised, but there was no obvious coincident progress made on the non-monetary front. (Such an expectation is not rational nor was it encouraged, but I assume it was a quietly held assumption nonetheless.)

I believe feedback mechanisms could alleviate this problem in the same way that repetition in marketing leads to consumer interest. Early on it was decided that coaching mechanisms — nagging reminders, occasional notifications of non-monetary progress, and reports on historical donors that have not given recently — would be beneficial. Unfortunately, life intervened and I never implemented those features. This is unfortunate as I subsequently concluded that such mechanisms are crucial. (I think MoveOn.org’s email campaigns are a paragon of good feedback mechanisms in fund-raising. Ignoring the accompanying inane commentary, they are brutally effective.)

I should also note that in favoring beneficiary empowerment, the organization does not preclude the possibility of receiving large donations. Again, exploiting the social connections of your constituents gives you a far deeper social reach than that offered by development professionals. For causes that affect people randomly across socio-economic parameters, you’re going to find some potentially wealthy individuals. The constituents are engaging in the search for wealthy donors at no expense, in time or money, to the organization. If they tease out a potential large donor, why should they then be referred to a development professional? The potential donors interest is already piqued. Now they need to be convinced that their money will not be given in vain. They need to be sold on the efficacy of the organization. The development professional could (and basically does) play this role. However, since it has already been established that the donor is a strong lead, this role could also be played by someone intimately involved in the actual decision making of the organization.

Obviously, I have made a lot of assumptions in asserting the superiority to community-style fund-raising over top-down development work. Some of these assumptions are known to me, but I am probably ignorant of others. I encourage the reader to leave comments to help guide me while building Fundify, which will act as a test of my fund-raising hypothesis.³ Expect to see an alpha with active deployment sometime in late December / early January.

Notes:

1. I strongly dislike the term development in this context, but it’s part of the industry nomenclature. In the non-profit world, development means a combination of marketing and one-on-one salesmanship.
2. Medical g33ks: I understand this might not be strictly true. Please refrain from commenting that this not a perfect analogy.
3. Actually, Fundify is being built to raise money for Chordoma research, a rare type of cancer. I have Chordoma. I would like to not have to worry about Chordoma. That being said, focusing on testing my hypothesis is a better motivational tactic. Intellectual curiosity is a robust motivator; Terror inspired by mortality is a persistent drain.

Chordoma Sucks

This is a test to see if/how Google unmunges email addresses.

spam[@]gmail[.]com
spam[at]gmail[dot]com
spam at gmail
spam at gmail dot com
spam [at] gmail [dot] com

Edit: Nope. Apparently, this translation does not happen. They just must have changed the page.

In freshman year of high school, I made a lot of money spamming. Some of this success can be attributed to being lucky and being a teenage boy. Teenage boys basically have an option on life. If they do something really risky and it pays off, they get the rewards. If they do something really risky and it ends very badly — well, boys will be boys. It’s a pleasant asymmetry (for the teenage boy.) However, a significant portion of my success as a spammer can be attributed to a simple fact: writing a spammer was very interesting. It was challenging. It was a perpetual game of cat and mouse. Money was more of a collateral benefit than a primary motivation. Majorska vodka is not expensive.

Immediately after college, I had a minor existential crisis. This is not uncommon. College was great. College afforded me a ridiculous amount of free time to pursue my intellectual interests. This is not because college was rigorous; this was because college was not rigorous. I learn best independently. Going to college on my parent’s dime allowed me to spend practically all my time playing in areas that I found fascinating. The conclusion of my undergraduate career brought with it the termination of my favored learning style.

I was not happy. In order to reacquire my intellectual freedom, I did what any irrational, over-confident fool would do: I tried starting an online dating website. I wanted enough money so that I could sit in front of my computer and in my reading chair for a few years. I wanted to continue exploring. Writing an online dating website was not interesting. It was not challenging. It was not a game. My motivations were purely monetary. It was a project for cash — a means to an end. The result? It did not solve any of my problems. When I finally realized that the project was a bad idea, I sold it for about $35,000 on nine months of work. Considering the project’s purpose: FAIL!

Presently, I will be undertaking yet another web development project titled Fundify. My motivations for Fundify are not financial (at least, not in the typical sense.)  This project must be done and I am capable of doing it. The reward for me: it may help save my life. This is a (perhaps too) strong motivation. Since I have not yet left my job (another week probably), I have not been coding it yet; I dislike the after 9-5 job context switching. Instead, I have been planning the project to a degree that is unusual for me. Running a project Monte-Carlo simulator in my head for two weeks is a new experience.

My initial instinct was to release Fundify as an open-source application. It is a product for empowering the fund-raising arm of small-medium size non-profit organizations — specifically a small non-profit that has the potential to greatly benefit me. (I really like me.) An open-source project seemed like a particularly good fit. However, the simulator that is my brain was quick to point out that charging a nominal fee for hosting and maintaining this product would be just as beneficial to the non-profit organizations as an open-source product…while making me money. Finding a developer to install the software, set up an SSL certificate, and create a merchant account all take time. The goal of Fundify is to minimize time spent fund-raising by non-profit organizations. They have better things to do. Paying, say, $50 a month might actually be cheaper than spending time finding a volunteer developer.

Given this conclusion, I started to enumerate all of the responsibilities associated with running a business around this product. My motivation depleted — quickly. This is roughly the time I finally learned my lesson: money isn’t everything. If I were to build a business around Fundify, the set of mundane tasks would (significantly) overwhelm the set of interesting problems to solve. For me, costs({Legal Issues, Client Obligations, Heightened Security Concerns, Banking Issues}) > benefits({Money Earned, Testing my Fund-raising Hypothesis, Raising Funds for My Cause}). I’d rather burn through my savings building Fundify while dealing with the interesting bits than earn money for my labors while adding mundane responsibilities. Money isn’t everything. (I wonder what else my mother was right about.)

To be clear, I still want a bank-vault sized pile of money but I have accurately recognized why I want it. I don’t really care about a big house and a fancy car. I might someday; I don’t right now. My cramped apartment is sufficient. What I really want is the financial freedom to sit in a quiet room by myself and explore my ideas. Money provides this opportunity more than an academic career. The latter still imposes constraints that I am unwilling to bear. Maybe it’s a symptom of Peter Pan syndrome. (Although, if it is, I am sure it is very common amongst g33ks.) I prefer to think that being unconstrained can allow for long jumps versus incremental improvements while searching for novel solutions to problems I find interesting. An equally plausible explanation: I prefer no responsibilities. That does sound like Peter Pan syndrome.

Obama is Marketable

I saw this ad while browsing Facebook. I am both amused and disturbed.

At the time, (as a result of well-hidden bug,) I believed I would soon have access to a lot of money. Consequently, I formed the Chordoma Research Foundation as a funnel through which I could increase my donor potential (i.e. receive tax deductions.) I was largely uninterested in developing a proper full-fledged not-for-profit effort. I understood how research worked; the need for interdisciplinary facilitation; and the importance of starting projects sooner rather than later. I just wasn’t motivated. If my big payday came, I could buy research. Money opens doors. If I could spend my time doing what I had a passion for while being able to pay for research myself, it would have been ideal. My big payday did not come (and has not come – yet.)

Happily, pure dumb luck intervened. My parents, fueled by desperation coupled with a bit of good old fashioned common sense, decided to send a letter to our family and friends explaining our compelling need for research. The concise version:  please give us money so our son has a chance of not dying before his thirtieth birthday. It raised tens of thousands of dollars – quickly.

Inspired by the success of this campaign, I envisioned a web-app that could replicate this success across many people affected by Chordoma. Unfortunately, it was a pretty uninteresting project. Web development is not intellectually stimulating. My potential big payday project was (enjoyably) intellectually exhausting. The brief inspiration and motivation I experienced after my parent’s campaign was insufficient. Instead of building my web application, I only designed a simple website explaining the cause to other people with Chordoma.

Serendipity intervened — again. By this point, my small website for a very rare disease was receiving about three phone calls per day – a not insignificant amount. Initially, this produced mostly friendships (shout out to Bill Dorland, Michael Torrey, and a collection of other friends who do not have URL end-points.)  Soon, it yielded more tangible rewards. One day in August, while stuck in traffic heading to a Counting Crows concert, Simone Sommer called me. Her son, Josh, had gone through roughly the same experience as me and she also found the current state of research to be unacceptable. She wanted to be involved. To be precise Dr. Simone Sommer – a credential that, shockingly, opens doors in the medical community – wanted to be very involved.

Over the next few months and after many extended phone calls with both Josh and Simone, it became clear that they were willing to do all the things I knew had to be done but was uninterested in doing. More than that, Simone’s M.D. and Josh’s proximity to Duke – which housed one of the few researchers who was making headway into Chodoma research – meant they could do it better than I could. I (happily) passed the torch to them while I pursued my big payday (which is still, as of 2009, yet to arrive). They established the Chordoma Foundation. I dissolved my foundation and folded my assets into theirs.

For a while, I played a minimal ongoing role in Chordoma community. I continued to speak with a lot of patients, but only because I had already established relationships with them. I continued to follow papers on Chordoma – and discuss them at length with Josh – but that was mostly to satisfy my perpetual curiosity. (I am a if the plane is about to crash, I want to be in the cockpit type guy.) My father sits on the Chordoma Foundation’s board. I do not. My mother coordinates community outreach. I do not. However, late last fall, it became clear that they had reached the point at which money was the primary bottleneck. Earlier, the Chordoma Foundation had hosted a fantastically successful international, inter-disciplinary research conference. Cross-pollination of ideas occurred. Research was proposed…and, undertaken. Interest was piqued. Now, the low hanging fruits were gone. Now, there were calls for money. I was compelled to develop a prototype.

Initially, it worked well, although I am not convinced it raised money above what would have been raised anyway. It did help by connecting many people to each other, acting as an ad-hoc, emergent support group. This might not have translated directly into money, but it obviously was beneficial to the community.

Why didn’t it work as well as I expected? It was a sh*tty implementation! I hacked it together in four weeks in anticipation of the Thanksgiving fundraising season. We even launched it two days prior to Thanksgiving. It’s not really shocking that an idea only half-conceived was not fully-successful. Fundraising was not attributed in real-time; was not always accurate; and the feedback mechanisms employed were noisy. Additionally, one of the most important features, coaching (i.e. nudging) was never included. Unfortunately, disinterest asserted itself…again. I halted further development and took an internship in DC. Fundify was not yet to be.

Fast forward one year – present day. I just quit my job in order to properly build Fundify. This time, I am motivated. The project has not become interesting. It merely ceased to be something I can push off any longer. All paths are now dependent on larger grants being awarded. Larger grants require money. Enter, Fundify.

Stay tuned.