I don't understand why you think the Ruby code has better SNR. The python code is two lines shorter. In python, you have to type the (), but that's not really "noise". I do hat the : at the end of python control statements. I always forget them, and it seems like the parser could do it's job just as well without them.
The article's pretty short on analyzing what game best models the current debates. My vote would be for the ultimatum game, but that ignores the element of time in their decisions. Time is a huge factor in this game, so it probably isn't even that great of a model.
There's no time axis as this isn't particularly a time-based graph
The graph pretends to be a time-based graph, though, by highlighting the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations. It's not like it would take any more work or space to lay the information out horizontally. I'm sure I've seen it done before, but this is the closest I can find: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent...
It's hard to tell what exactly I'm supposed to learn from the graph. Normally, graphs like this would include a time axis, but this one does not. This makes it non-obvious that the Obama debt is over a shorter period than the Bush debt. If you normalize for time in office and discount the military spending (arguing that any president would have done similar after 9/11), then both administration's debts seem very equal.
Is there any benefit to dropping the time axis without providing an alternative?
Someone should make a website linking all the little improvements like this people have made to HN.
EDIT: When I'm on page 2 ordered by date, then click on order by points, it takes me to page to ordered by points. It should take me to the start.