August 31, 2004
Quote of the Day
If you only encrypt important things, even without decrypting the message the simple fact it's encrypted means its important. This is information that you have given freely to whomever it is that is watching: "Pay Attention, This One Is Important."
I cannot stop the buggers from knowing everything about me if they decide I'm a target. But I can throw chaff. Encrypt everything.
As PGP's developer Phil Zimmerman said, "PGP is for small secrets."
Curt Howland
August 30, 2004
Oregon Freeze Dry's Mountain House eggs still good after all these years
Just a few minutes ago, I tore open a pouch of Oregon Freeze Dry's Mountain House brand "Freeze Dried ~ Precooked Scrambled Eggs with Real Bacon" I'd purchased over 5 years, to see how they taste. Quite palatable, though the "Real Bacon," even with 8 minutes of steeping in boiling water, still tastes like bacon bits. Of course, 5 years is actually a rather short time to store this type of food. I expect a package of the same food to taste the same 5 or 10 years hence.
Quote of the Day
Q. How can you, an anarchist, be a lawyer?
A. My father was a physician. That doesn't mean he believed in disease.
August 29, 2004
The mundane things we don't appreciate
A few days ago, I finished reading Henry Petroski's "The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are," a breezy exposition on the origins of things most people take for granted, usually considered not worth wondering about. In a similar vein, and coincidentally well-timed, Curt Howland forwarded me yesterday a pointer to an essay lauding one artifact in particular, "In Praise of the Oh-So-Dependable Cardboard Box," by Russell Roberts.
I'm reminded of an essay I read in the summer of 1990, a copy of which was given me by its author, Phil Salin, at a house party in Palo Alto, before leaving for my 1st work assignment in Europe. The essay, "The Ecology of Decisions, or 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Kitchens,'" opened my eyes to what Petroski often refers to as the "artifactual intelligence" encoded in the seemingly mundane, the things we don't consider.
Phil's work, by the way, is maintained on the web by friends who deeply care about him: he succumbed to stomach cancer sometime around 1993, and is presently in cryostasis at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. I didn't have the chance to personally thank Phil for his strong influence on my thinking, but I hope to have that chance someday.
Quote of the Day
Voicing an opinion is costless - anyone can argue that socialism is great, or that the government won’t really inflate a fiat currency. Having a false opinion may be costless if it doesn’t affect your life much, and it can produce a benefit of feeling good. So people may choose an opinion based on how it appeals to their hopes, rather on on what they believe is true.
An example of a more incentive compatible system is gambling. While people often gamble irrationally, gambling still tends to draw out more beliefs and less hope than mere discussion. By placing a wager, you tie your opinion to a personal gain or loss, so you care whether you are correct. Hence “Wanna bet?” really means “Do you actually think that, or are you just saying it?", and its a great way to call the windbag’s bluff. People offer absurd opinions much more often than they make idiotic wagers.
August 28, 2004
A shot I didn't expect
By the title, I mean I didn't expect that my friend Andy would be taking a picture of me at this moment:
It was pretty dark in the shade of the shooting stall, in stark contrast with the sunny range, and no fill flash was used. I managed to extract a bit more information using the GIMP.
Firearm was a full-frame H&K USP in .45ACP, firing on a "hostage rescue" metal silhouette at 15 meters. Hard shot, wouldn't want to have to do that for a living. I would never seek to be in such a horrifying predicament, and certainly wouldn't want to have to use a pistol, at relative long range, unsupported, to try pulling it off. Still, one should always train for the unthinkable.
I'd love to know how & why Gmail does its thing
I mentioned yesterday that Google's Gmail service had given me 6 invitations (they'd originally given me 2) yesterday, and that I was giving them away. I got 3 takers within minutes, leaving 3.
This morning, I notice that I had not 3, but 6, invitations left. I immediately gave away two more.
The thing is, several other people I know have Gmail accounts, but I've been told by some of them that they've only ever been given a grand total of 2 invitations, with no replenishment. I'm not sure why I keep getting more... I wonder what rules Google's automation uses to determine whom to replenish with invitations? I'm guessing that it may be a side effect of the fact that I receive mail from a very busy mailing list to that account. Invitations may be granted in proportion to use. Anyone have insight to share?
By the way - to pre-empt the inevitable request from someone I've never heard from previously - I should add the caveat that I'm only giving these invitations to realspace friends or those of my online acquaintances with whom I'm friendly.
Quote of the Day
You might want to take note of the interconnection between purpose and action in the minimal State. The minimal State does not, for instance, build art museums, because it does not exist to promote art but to enforce agreements and provide mutual defense. In order to build an art museum, the State would need to acquire the resources with which to build it. If people are willing to donate those resources freely, there is no need for the State to build the museum — it could be built privately. If people are not willing to donate the resources freely, then the act of forcibly taking the needed resources turns the purpose of the minimal State on its head — instead of enforcing the decision by the participants to respect each other's lives and property so that their own lives and property will be respected, the State then becomes an agent for some to abscond with the property of others. I may think it is a good idea to build a home for orphans, but if I take your resources against your will to do it, whether I'm an official of the State or a private citizen, I have violated the truce. To obey the truce, I must convince you to voluntarily provide resources for my goals, whether by trading with you or appealing to your charitable instincts.
In short, if the justification of the minimal State is that it exists, at the behest of a collection of sovereign individuals, to enforce a mutually beneficial truce among those who choose to participate in it, and to organize mutual defense against those who choose not to participate by violating the truce, then that justification does not reasonably permit the expropriation of resources for the purpose of projects that are merely laudable.
Note that this view of the minimal State cannot provide a justification for initiating warfare in distant lands which are not a threat its citizens' safety, regardless of how laudable it might be to re-arrange the social structures of those foreign places to suit enlightened tastes. However, by the same token, neither position prevents individuals from engaging in such activities on their own, at their own risk and with their own resources.
August 27, 2004
"New Jaw Grown on Patient's Back"
Perry Metzger reports a fantastic bit of news about the reconstruction of a man's jaw using a fusion of prosthesis and a novel bone re-growth technique.
I have some Gmail invitations... want one?
I have some Gmail invitations. I've been very impressed with the utility of my own Gmail account. Any of you, my friends among my readers, want an invitation to join?
Quote of the Day
There's something for everyone on a Dr. Bronner's [Magic] soap [bottle].
Even for officers and employees of the National Libertarian Party:
"Dilute! Dilute! Ok!"
Curt Howland
August 26, 2004
Quote of the Day
I'll tell you what I'd prefer our government's foreign policy to be, assuming we need to have a State at all. My proposal is pretty simple: Swiss-style armed neutrality. That means no invasions, no military threats, no foreign aid, no "covert operations", no military bases outside the country, no attempts to influence the internal affairs of foreign countries whatsoever.
No one blows up bombs in the streets of Geneva. No one from Switzerland gets kidnaped in third world countries to protest the evils of Swiss foreign policy. Wherever they go, at worst, people think of the Swiss as boring — it is rare that anyone feels the need to buttonhole someone from Zurich or Lugano and tell them off for what their government does.
The Swiss are not pacifists, though. They have a very strong militia for defense, and in times past when Europe was less peaceful, it would have been extremely costly for an attacker to invade them. Even if (in the case of particularly strong enemies) an invasion might have ultimately succeeded, it would have yielded very little of value at an astonishing expense.
August 25, 2004
Quote of the Day
God isn't interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time! Forty three species of parrot! Nipples for men! Slugs! He created slugs! They can't hear! They can't speak! They can't operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic? If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!
August 24, 2004
"Keep Your Jesus off My Penis"
"Keep Your Jesus off My Penis: The Video"... pretty funny stuff, from a guy with an obvious ax to grind.
Quote of the Day
If forced to shoot someone in self defence, you should claim that you were robbing him at gunpoint after discovering him in your home.
That way you get out on probation immediately, can buy a replacement firearm off "the street", and serve no jail time.
Kristopher Barrett
August 23, 2004
Jeffrey L "the Hunter" Jordan is freed
Jeffrey L "the Hunter" Jordan is freed, with a few hundred dollars' fines (and months of expense and a lost job and other anguish,) and even gets to keep his own property. I first posted about this 8 months ago. I'm glad it's (mostly) over, with the exception of his upcoming expected fight with Verizon over their cowardly treatment of him. More news as it happens.
By the way, I did notice the glaring omission of the National Rifle Association in the list of those organizations that assisted Jordan. Figures.
Quote of the Day
Capitalistic competition is also why "child labor" has all but disappeared, despite unionist claims to the contrary. Young people originally left the farms to work in harsh factory conditions because it was a matter of survival for them and their families. But as workers became better paid—thanks to capital investment and subsequent productivity improvements—more and more people could afford to keep their children at home and in school. Union-backed legislation prohibiting child labor came after the decline in child labor had already begun. Moreover, child labor laws have always been protectionist and aimed at depriving young people of the opportunity to work. Since child labor sometimes competes with unionized labor, unions have long sought to use the power of the state to deprive young people of the right to work. In the Third World today, the alternative to "child labor" is all too often begging, prostitution, crime, or starvation. Unions absurdly proclaim to be taking the moral high road by advocating protectionist policies that inevitably lead to these consequences.
August 22, 2004
"Ads by Google": should I?
I'm seeing the "Ads by Google" sidebar on an increasing number of blogs and social networking sites. Should I add one myself? I could certainly use the money... speaking of which, do any of my readers actually make money with it?
Prakash Chandrashekhar reviews "The Probability Broach"
Prakash Chandrashekhar, a libertarian blogger in India, recommends L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach" on AnarCapLib.
Washington Times article on the Free State Project
The Washington Times today has a rather long, neutral article on the Free State Project in New Hampshire.
Quote of the Day
In Colorado, the state where I live, the constitution provides that no new law may be passed unless it is immediately necessary to protect the health and safety of the people of the state. The idea—which went along with discouraging professional politicos (especially lawyers) in the legislature and strictly limiting the number of days that it could be in session—was to keep state laws to an absolute minimum.
The result? The infamous "safety clause" rubber-stamped at the top of every item of new legislation, a standard "boilerplate" asserting—whether a proposed law subsidizes unicorn ranchers or designates an official state intestinal parasite—that the law is immediately necessary (natch) to protect the health and safety of the people of Colorado.
August 21, 2004
Quote of the Day
The same piece of software can be both an application and infrastructure. Apache is an excellent example of this. Apache is really Linux’s “killer app.” It runs on Windows and BSD, but the main point is that it doesn’t require Windows, and many machines are built for the sole purpose of running Apache. Apache is an application when I am setting up a web server, but it’s infrastructure for you when you’re looking at my blog.
August 20, 2004
Monica White's Firefly article in The Atlasphere
Monica White has really gotten the Firefly bug: today, her extended recommendation of the series, "The Ascendance of Firefly,' was published on the Objectivist culture site The Atlasphere. It's particularly interesting to see how a Joss Whedon fan site has reacted to Monica's just-release piece. See also Monica's short announcement of the piece on her own blog, and the interesting speed with which some Whedon fans have engaged her in some image-correcting commentary. I love the Web.
Was that me in that commercial?
I'm answering email just now, with a local Mandarin-language cable TV channel playing in the background (2 years of Mandarin in college, gotta keep it up... besides, I admit to a silly fascination with "Pawnshop No. 8"), when I see an advert for my dentist - a part-time semiretiree who's also a professor at a local dental college - and glanced a white guy with black hair leaning back in The Chair. What the hell? Wonder if that was me... don't remember consenting to filming. I did spend an inordinate number of visits recently getting my dentition reconstructed from the effects of "overlarge crown placement... aiyah!" from a few years ago.
This reminds me... every dentist I've ever had - American, English, Filipino, Persian, Japanese, Taiwanese - seems to have been drilled in The Dark Art of Attempting Dialogue With a Patient Pinned Helpless with Cheek Retractors.
Quote of the Day
Almost wish I could be a Christian: the idea of an angry Jesus dealing with these filthy motherfuckers just delights the hell out of me.
August 19, 2004
Quote of the Day
I always opposed the National Libertarian Party's adoption of the Statue of Liberty as its logo. The idea was typical of the LPUS at the time, and oddly appropriate, both the statue and the LPUS being hollow and devoid of meaningful content. The statue was co-opted by statists so long ago that our using it offered nothing but negative publicity, very nearly as negative, for instance, as having an office in the Watergate.
There were some who greatly preferred the porcupine as a national LP symbol because it's all about defense, although those of us in the west who know it personally, know that the little animal is stupid and destructive.
I, myself, prefer the skunk. It's quick and clever. Predators are even more anxious to avoid its defense system than the porcupine's quills. Some species will simply crouch and spray, but what I wanted was the type that stands on its front paws, throws its back feet into the air, and joyously lets you have it with style and grace. It would have made a hell of a logo, but the Nerfies were too fastidious for that.
August 18, 2004
Cactus Pears: kiwis of the desert
This weekend in Half Moon Bay, I picked up a small bag of an intruiguing fruit I'd seen many times in several deserts, but never taken the time to investigate eating, the "Cactus pear," better known as the "Prickly pear" in the American southwest. I tried the Mexican variety known as Roja Pelona, a deep beet-red fruit the size and rough consistency of kiwifruit, less overbearingly sweet and with larger (edible) seeds than the kiwifruit. Delicious! It's interesting to note that the Israelis grow these too, as per Daniel Rogov in his "Cactus as an Edible Fruit":
With their large flat pads, their thorny fruits, and flowers that blossom annually, the sabra cactus is an inescapable and charming part of the Israeli landscape. Because the sabra cactus, which is a member of the genus Opuntia, grows easily in the sandy and limestone soils of the country and because the direction of its grown is easy to control, these sprawling cacti are planted by farmers as windbreaks and to divide their own fields from those of their neighbors. So well known are the plants that one of the best known regional stereotypes compares the personality of native born Israelis with the fruits of these cacti. According to the image generated by this stereotype, both are tough and thorny on the exterior but sweet and soft inside. Both the fruits and the native born Israelis are known as "Sabras".
Quote of the Day
[The tailend of a dialogue with an idiot I witnessed last night. - REW]
> Windows accomplishes most of what *I* need.
I'm sure it does...
> Why isn't that enough?
It obviously isn't enough for you. Everytime the subject comes up you re-route your anus to your keyboard via your forebrain and go off into I Hate Linux mode. You remind me of one of those women who was betrayed by one man and spends the rest of her life taking it out on everyone around her.
e0ts, on a list I frequent
August 17, 2004
"Scientists Identify Compounds That Mimic Calorie Restriction"
Thanks to Chris Tame for passing along this article: "Scientists Identify Compounds That Mimic Calorie Restriction."
Jeezus fookin' Kee-RIST!
One of the kittens (well, year-old cats) just discovered how to push out the screen on Peggy's second-floor office window! I'm sitting here, wrapped up in my writing, and Peggy comes downstairs asking, "Where's Lucy?" and commenting that her office window's screen was now down on the side carport. We both immediately grabbed one each of the many head-banger Maglite flashlights ("torches" to my UK and Aussie friend-readers) we have sitting in various rooms around the house and ran outside to the back yard. We found her quickly, shivering under a stash of gardening supplies. She was uninjured, but apparently had been outside for a couple of hours, and was a bit dusty.
We brought her in and in a fit of guilt fed her most of a bag of cat treats. Her brother Selmak, uncharacteristically, hissed at her: I'm guessing that's his way of saying, "Goddamn, you smell funky girl!"
I'm imagining that a Chihuahua, given a similar fall, would not have gotten off uninjured, the way she did.
I'll be looking for bird carcasses in the morning. I'm hoping the yard will be littered with them. If you're going to go through an unscheduled skydive, there should at least be good hunting on the ground after the event.
Orkut sucks, time to move along
A half year ago, I was invited to join the Orkut social networking service by my old friend Perry Metzger. A half year later, I've decided that it's an evolutionary dead end: for a service "affiliated with Google," it's unusually clunky, feature-poor, primitive, and dreadfully unreliable. I've made a few good friends through it, however, and am glad of the experience, which has been useful and informative.
Interestingly, in the last couple of weeks I've gotten email from a few people I know through Orkut, inviting me to the Multiply network, an Orkut competitor which seems vastly superior in its execution. I'd ignored those invitations, being busy with other things, but tonight I took my friend Shannon Kaplan up on her invitation, and am impressed at the sophistication of the interface. I'm not convinced I need all their features - I already have my own self-administered blog, for example - but for the general public, it seems at first approximation to be an incredibly well-integrated suite.
So, if you receive an email entitled "Russell Whitaker invites you to keep in touch on Multiply," don't automatically assume to be spam. Multiply has an interesting feature - apparently driven by Orkut user dissatisfaction - with which Orkut users can export their entire network of contacts over to Multiply in order to generate invitations to the rival service. Better I should use it now, before Orkut programs logic to block that data export.
Of course, if Orkut's programmers had been sufficiently on the ball to quickly develop such program logic, they'd also have been sufficiently agile to develop new features demanded by their users... such as forum threading up to 1990 newsreader standards, perhaps?
Speaking of coffins
Speaking of coffins, Costco is now test marketing them - coffins - in Chicago. Hey, for those into the "stuff the corpse in the box and stick 'em in a hole in the ground" school of funerary practice, it's certainly a better option than the ridiculous prices charged by the funeral home businesses... most of whom are screaming outrage at Costco's competitive offering.
Saferoom... or coffin?
Saw this commented on by someone on a mailing list I frequent: the "Quantum Sleeper: the safest rest you've ever had." It's one of the strangest things I've seen in recent times, a bed cum saferoom, very coffinlike. I'm not sure I like it... why not keep a shotgun by the bed instead?
L. Neil Smith on the "Hollow Woman"
I, like L. Neil Smith, didn't know until recently that the Statue of Liberty had been completely shut down since 11 September 2001, only recently re-opened "following about $7,000,000 worth of police state alterations." In an irony of circumstance that inspired the article's title, "Hollow Woman," the re-opening ceremony was presided over by a real-life hollow woman, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, whom Neil knew from her days in the Colorado Libertarian Party.
About that "price gouging" thing in Florida
I often keep the Fox News Channel playing in the background while I work, and the last couple of days I've heard the occasional newstwit breathlessly report on incidents of "price gouging" during and after the recent hurricane there. I'd been wanting to comment on the idiocy of the whole "price gouging" thing, but have been knee-deep in work. Doug Allen, I think, has said what I wanted to say (thanks Patri) in 'The "G" Word."
Taking a breather to blog
I've had my head buried in a particularly frustrating programming problem, which had kept me up a couple of nights running (one of those in the fog of food poisoning), and I think I may have broken through a problem I was trying to run to ground. So, I'm treating myself to a couple of hours' blogging, before returning to work. Apologies that postings have been so thin of late.
Monica White on "Science Friction"
I really enjoy this woman's writing: "Science Friction," by Monica White.
Relatedly, Monica has informed me that she's working on an extended, adapted version of her Firefly review (of course she loves it too) for The Atlasphere, which I'll pass along when she tells me it's been published.
Quote of the Day
The real difference the media doesn't get is the difference between an anarchist and a "nihilist." Most modern reporters can't even define the word - but it is what they mean when they say "anarchist."
I regret the loss of my language almost as much as the loss of my freedom.
August 16, 2004
Quote of the Day
There have been posters for the movie up around LA for a few weeks now, saying "Alien vs. Predator: Whoever wins, we lose." Remarkably appropriate for an election year..
August 15, 2004
Monica White comments on Neil Smith's "Captain Bligh’s Revenge"
Monica White comments on L. Neil Smith's "Captain Bligh’s Revenge," in which he informs us (I'd not known) that the British government is intent on wrecking the tiny society of Pitcairn Island: stealing their guns and imprisoning those who don't conform to their standards of marriage practice.
Quote of the Day
Most of America's health care is private, so many assume it operates as a free market. In truth, it is dominated by the government, resulting in high costs and stifling bureaucracy.
The federal government effectively socializes 86% of all health spending, a greater share than in 17 other industrialized countries, including Canada (though other features make these systems less free).
By discouraging individual responsibility, the government guarantees irresponsibility. We pay less attention to our health and demand more care — with little regard to the costs we impose on others or the rising prices that result. (Should it surprise us that health insurance is unaffordable for millions?) Those footing the bill — employers, insurers and the government — try to impose responsibility in ways both offensive and harmful (read: managed care).
August 14, 2004
Oh, yes: tip o' the hat to Julia Child
While I'm enthusing about food, I should point out that Julia Child would have been 92 years old today. She died yesterday, however. My maternal grandmother was born 3 months after Child's birth date; I plan to visit her in a few weeks, I'm reminded. I'm also reminded that the women in my family live a long time, though not nearly long enough, my standard being centuries, but that's of purely tangential interest here.
The modern crop of food divas and divos (the humorless Martha Stewarts and the gimicky "Bam!" Emerils) owe a debt of gratitude to Child, an eccentric of the first order (anyone else remember the Dan Ackroyd parodies?) She was a woman with a very interesting personal history (reminding me of Martha Raye, "actress and denture wearer," the only civilian buried at the U.S. Special Forces cemetary at Fort Bragg), which includes having been an OSS officer during WWII.
Child is quoted as having said in an AP interview in 1989:
"What's dangerous and discouraging about this era is that people really are afraid of their food... sitting down to dinner is a trap, not something to enjoy. People should take their food more seriously. Learn what you can eat and enjoy it thoroughly."
Sounds like someone who lived her life fully. Too bad she couldn't have stuck around a few more centuries to enjoy it even more thoroughly.
By the way, Child's original TV set kitchen is preserved at the Smithsonian.
Our day of oysters
Peggy and I visited Pescadero (south of Half Moon Bay) today, eating at a local place, Duarte's Tavern, which has been around since 1894. As an appetizer, we took some Hog Island oysters, which were quite good, though not as fresh as from the Hog Island restaurant at San Francisco's Ferry Building which we visited a couple of weekends ago. Later, heading back inland - and into warmer weather - we stopped off in Mountain View and happened upon this year's Small Brewers Festival. Next to the big top tent, an acoustically raucous place, is an alley with some fine lusty fare on offer. One of the food vendors was a group of Mexicans selling - among other things - barbequed oysters. We paid $6.50 for 3 huge oysters fresh from the grill, soaked in a fantastic garlic butter, and were blown away by the sensation... we'd had nothing like it, ever.
So, what do we do? We head home, where I fire up the barbeque and she headed to the market to pick up some oysters, to see if we could replicate the oyster recipe. One bottle of Chardonnay later, we think we need to head back to the festival tomorrow (after a morning at the shooting range) to research the recipe again. It was good, but something's different... some rice wine vinegar, maybe?
Stayed tuned.
Quote of the Day
Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support for a lifetime.
Unknown
August 13, 2004
Not sure what's up with the Google IPO
Looks like that Google IPO I mentioned yesterday is actually happening today or early next week... I can't really understand their conflicting press releases listed here.
Quote of the Day
This jackass needs to have the first amendment tattooed on his scrotum. Then he needs to be beaten like a red-headed stepchild and put in stocks on the ferry ramp for about 3 weekdays.
Then we need to get rid of all these brownshirt "security screeners" before we find ourselves living in Nazi Germany.
Frank Ney, referring to an incident involving a Port Authority thug (Hoboken Ferry) 2 days ago
August 12, 2004
Google goes IPO, auction-style, in 4 hours
Google will be opening auction bidding for its 25.7 million IPO shares in less than 4 hours. This will be an interesting event.
Quote of the Day
Like every partnership, marriage should fit the individuals it unites, rather than be a "one-size-fits all" proposition defined by those outside the relationship. Each marriage should be what the partners want it to be—no more, no less. Ideally, the terms of marriage should be defined ahead of time with procedures to modify them as necessary.
Just as anyone can engage in a business relationship, any individuals should be able to enter into a marriage. Government's role in a business partnership is to simply enforce, not dictate, its terms. Government's role in marriage should be the same.
August 11, 2004
Nifty little spam filter for Postfix configurations
Perry Metzger has whipped up an excellent little Postfix one-liner good for filtering against mail with potential viral payloads. As he puts it, "Who would want to legitimately mail someone a .pif or .lnk file?"
Cartoon mocking "smart guns"
Anton Sherwood informs me of this funny little cartoon rant against "smart guns"; the lead character reminds me very vaguely of Cerebus the Aardvark.
Quote of the Day
As Congressman Ron Paul has said, "To many politicians the American government is America and patriotism means working for the benefit of the state." Thus, on a crude level, the draft appeals to patriotic fervor. This, according to Congressman Paul, is why the idea of compulsory national service, whether in the form of military conscription or make-work programs like AmeriCorps, still sells on Capitol Hill. Conscription is wrongly associated with patriotism, when it really represents collectivism and involuntary servitude.
Ronald Reagan said it best: "The most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral." He understood that conscription assumes our nation's young people belong to the state. Yet America was founded on the opposite principle; that the state exists to serve the individual. The notion of involuntary servitude, in whatever form, is simply incompatible with a free society.
August 08, 2004
Quote of the Day
I have to admit that I don't understand luddites well. Human welfare has been radically improved by technology. The progress we've made towards reducing poverty and human misery has been nothing short of breathtaking. Even Marx seemed to understand this pretty well. I get the feeling that the people who used to embrace communism now have switched to technophobia.
As a postscript, let me note that even the most radical anti-technology activists out there like the Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski, seem to make use of at least some technology in their lives. I doubt Kaczynski could have survived through the winter in his cabin without steel implements and an iron stove for heat. No one would know of Kaczynski's ideas but for his willingness to use of technology to write them down (even paper and pencils require pretty significant ingenuity and effort to produce). Even written down, high technology, including computers, has been the primary means by which his ideas have been disseminated. Some such people argue that they are merely using technology temporarily to try to fight technology, or that they do not oppose "appropriate" technologies like wood stoves. (Kaczynski doesn't seem to make any such arguments, though, or at least, none that I can see.) Even so, there is tremendous irony in anti-technologists making use of even primitive technologies, and further irony in their communicating by any method other than speech. I suspect, however, that the irony is lost on them.
August 06, 2004
Quote of the Day
Roxanne,
How are things in Seattle? Quieter, I hope. I had a close call today, I tracked a goblin in on my shoe. Actually, to be precise, my boot, since I was luckily wearing my black leather western-style riding boots. At first, I thought it was a chunk of mud and hay from the pasture out back. Its arms and legs looked like twigs and were covered up by the real pieces of hay and grass and dead vegetation that had been captured by its evil stickiness. I didn't realize what it was until I had pried it off my boot with my Buck Knife. Something about the way it hit the carpet just wasn't right for a mud-clod. That attracted my scrutiny and allowed me to see past the camouflage, that and the smell. The goblins here don't smell very strong, unless they're in rut and mark at you, but even during the dry season they have a putrid wrenching metallic stench that isn't any more pleasant for being subtle.
It had obviously been a typically ugly little abomination, even before I accidentally smashed it with my boot: all head and spindly appendages, like a cross between Humpty-Dumpty and a daddy-longlegs, but with a gross parody of a human face with a gaping slash of a snaggle-toothed mouth across its belly and rank greasy black hair everywhere but the face. The head-body was about two inches in diameter and the arms and legs were around six to eight inches long. I don't doubt that the thing that had saved me from its toxic bite was the sterling silver decorations you sent me for my boots, the toe-tips and faux spurs, one of which still held a nasty little gobbet of goblin-stuff on its point. The eyes had burst under the pressure and still leaked rancid jelly onto my carpet. I was pretty sure it was really dead, since I'd never seen one reanimate with its eyes busted. Still, you can't be too careful, so I got out the tongs and brought it over to the fireplace receptacle and flash-burned it into grey ash and a puff of grey-green smoke that vanished up the vent. Then I popped a beer from the fridge and congratulated myself on a job well done. Thanks again for the silver
boot decorations.
Harley, down the road, has a suggestion for the Troll in your culvert out at the country place. He says the red-orangey ones with big green teeth, like you have, are resistant to the Black Flag Troll-Away and the Raid Trollacide, too, which would explain why those didn't work for you. He says the only way to get rid of this kind is to immobilize them with liquid nitrogen and throw them into a volcano, which would be very expensive. He also says you could wait until a really cold night, fifteen below or colder, and very carefully toss a loop of rope onto it while it's sluggish and just drag it twenty or thirty miles away and leave it by the culvert or bridge of some rich S. O. B. who could afford to have it frozen and transported to Hawaii. I assume you know this is illegal as well as dangerous. Until you figure out what to do about this, I guess you'll just have to keep using the back road into your place.
Your suggestion about the deal with the cookies has solved my brownie problem; I haven't seen a single one for over a month and the cows have been undisturbed. Now, if I could just figure out an easy way to clean the fairies off the windshield of my pickup...
Sincerely Yours,
Rocky Frisco
"Varmints"
August 05, 2004
"Immunotherapy Halts Alzheimer's in Mice"
Perry Metzger reports in "Immunotherapy Halts Alzheimer's in Mice" that:
...the injection of antibodies targeting the beta amyloid plaques into the brains of mice with a close analog of Alzheimer's disease managed to trigger a response in which the immune system cleared the plaques. Neurofibrillary tangles associated with the disease cleared spontaneously shortly after the amyloid plaques vanished.
Monica White's own "Firefly" recommendation
Monica White also recommends the Firefly series in her own article appropriately entitled, er, "Firefly" (scroll down, after the article entitled "Bugged.")
Claire Wolfe on Firefly: "Hardyville in Space"
Claire Wolfe recommends the Firefly series in this article, "Hardyville in Space."
Quote of the Day (thanks Thomas Knapp and Mary Lou Seymour)
If we have learned anything over the past 18 months it is this: that the first rule of politics - power must never be trusted - still applies. The government will neither regulate itself nor be regulated by the institutions which surround it. Parliament chose to believe a string of obvious lies. The media repeated them, the civil service let them pass, the judiciary endorsed them. The answer to the age-old political question - who guards the guards? - remains unchanged. Only the people will hold the government to account.
They have two means of doing so. The first is to throw it out of office at the next election. This works only when we are permitted to choose an alternative set of policies. But in almost every nation, a new contract has now been struck between the main political parties: they have chosen to agree on almost all significant areas of policy. This leaves the people disenfranchised: they can vote out the monkeys but not the organ-grinder.
August 04, 2004
Jack Vettriano at the Portland Gallery, London
A few days ago, Monica White pointed me in the direction of the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery in my own neighborhood. Today, I find out about an exhibition in the neighboorhood of St. James Wood in London (which many years ago was my neighborhood too): Jack Vettriano, at the Portland Gallery. Sounds very interesting indeed... too bad I can't see it in person anytime soon. Of course, some of Vettriano's work seems like the type of thing that the Cordair Gallery might carry someday. Hmm....
The world's first seedless Chihuahua
Thanks to Monica for passing this on: Rory Blyth on his Chihuahua Power Source Conversion Project.
I was another one who couldn't help myself: I too downloaded thingy.
Quote of the Day
Among the most gruesome consequences of fiat money, and of paper money in particular, is its ability to extend the length of wars. The destructions of war have the healthy effect of cooling down initial war frenzies. The more protracted and destructive a war becomes, therefore, the less is the population inclined to support it financially through taxes and the purchase of public bonds. Fiat inflation allows the government to ignore the fiscal resistance of its citizens and to maintain the war effort on its present level, or even to increase that level. The government just prints the notes it needs to buy cannons and boots.
August 03, 2004
My visit to the Quent Cordair Gallery on Saturday
About three weeks ago, I wrote that my friend Monica White had indirectly informed me (through her blogroll) of the existence of the Quent Cordair Fine Art Gallery in Burlingame, California, about a mile from San Francisco International Airport.
Well, on Saturday - on a whim - I suggested to Peggy that we head up to the gallery for the short remainder of the afternoon. We arrived about two hours before closing... and left about an hour after closing.
I'd called ahead to confirm that the gallery was, as indicated on their website, indeed open for the afternoon. When we arrived, a friendly lady greeted us and, upon hearing my voice, recognized me from my call-ahead. When I mentioned my name, she remarked that it sounded familiar, and that she'd actually - somehow - come across my blog recently and had even recommended that a friend of hers named "Carter" (whose contact I welcome) contact me about gun-related issues! I was happily astounded. I quickly found out that this friendly - and sharp - lady is Linda Zimmerman, the director of the gallery.
Linda spent the better part of three hours talking with me about the purpose of the gallery, the only one of its kind in the world, specializing strictly in high-quality painting and sculpture of the Romantic Realist variety (see Ayn Rand's "Romantic Manifesto" for an in-depth introduction to the genre.) I was deeply impressed at the operation, the selection, and the director. The storefront has had 8 years of profitable operation, but its recent years of online operation alone keep it sufficiently profitable that it can continue in business, without diluting its collection with low-quality pieces which would otherwise meet "school of art" requirements or with technically high-quality pieces which are outside those stated requirements.
The gallery itself has on display about one-third its total collection, the other two-thirds of which is in storage, but pieces of which can be viewed by the seriously interested. The walls are arrayed with paintings, as would be expected, and a number of bronzes are also on display. Linda encourages a healthy, tactile approach to the sculptures: touch them. At one point in our long, animated chat, she took my right hand and placed it on the hip of this statue, "Gratitude" by Danielle Anjou:
This is a lovely piece, and was strangely reminincent of the 1987 Boris Vallejo cover art for the Robert A. Heinlein novel "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," itself a triumphalist riff on Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus." I love it, probably as much as Monica White loves Bill Mack's alto-relief sculpture "Forever," which was not on display the day I visited... but which I hope Monica can eventually acquire.
Linda and I talked each other's ears off, happily, while Peggy enjoyed one of the overstuffed leather couches near the front of the gallery. We talked about the business of art, and the multifarious ways the gallery has connected Romantic Realist artists, including the recently immigrated Chinese master Han Wu Shen, with deeply appreciative customers, including passionate-but-temporarily-impecunious college students who've arranged payment plans for their "must have" pieces. We talked about a great many other things, with most of the conversation led by Linda cheerily educating me in the business of her gallery, and with me responding with semi-articulate "Wows!" and "Cool!"
I do plan to spend quite a bit more time in the gallery, and may even hold a party of friends there in the near future. Yes, I did say "party"... anyone interested? It would be a great excuse to gather a few dozen of my closest friends and acquaintances in a fantastic setting near the near San Francisco. This is a very real possibility, since Linda did say that the gallery encourages people to hold their parties there. I'm thinking sometime in September, when my good friend Tom Burroughes is in town visiting from London with his girlfriend: first a morning sailing on the Bay (Tom's a qualified yachtsman), then shooting at the range, then a catered affair that night - after cleaning up - at the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery... sounds like good living to me.
Quote of the Day
I do not believe that fighting is the primary goal of martial arts in contemporary times. I believe that it has far greater potential. Hatsumi Sensei [says] that it is to produce higher human beings and create peace. Although these may sound like lofty ideals, we have all witnessed the personal evolution of practitioners and seen the spirit of friendship flourish between countries. In many cases, the Bujinkan has created friendships between students even when their home countries were still hostile.
Martial arts provide a model of life. They teach us to be positive and resolved in the face of adversity. They teach us to seek truth (albeit at first through technique), they teach us to seek harmony rather than accord, they teach us cooperation (which is necessary during practice) and they teach us the humility to know that we must act as part of nature not contrary to it. If we must fight, then we should do so with a pure heart. To harm an opponent more than is necessary is savagery and is unbecoming of an artist. It is better that we are judged on our dignity and humanity, rather than by how fearsome we are.
In Japanese martial arts, there is a saying, ‘The sword that kills and the sword that spares’. This is usually taken to mean that the swordsman would have such skill that he could choose whether to kill or spare an opponent. Hatsumi Sensei said that there is another meaning, that one action may have included both. An example of this may have been when faced with no other choice, a samurai would have killed an attacker to prevent him from taking innocent lives. Although regretting the taking of life, his one sword cut would have killed and spared life at the same time. To make such a judgement for the correct reasons, the swordsman needed to have had a highly developed sense of humanity and justice. Taking life cannot be compared with giving life. Hurting cannot be compared to healing and destruction cannot be compared to creativity. We are not just martial practitioners, we are martial artists and we should create beauty through the movements of our bodies and hearts.
August 02, 2004
One Maritime Plaza building, San Francisco
Last weekend, walking the very walkable streets of San Francisco with Peggy, I couldn't resist this shot of One Maritime Plaza (formerly known the Alcoa Building):
Yet another reason I keep a very small digital camera in my pocket whenever I leave the house. Hmm... I'm wondering if my good friend and New Yorker Perry Metzger does the same? I'd certainly love to see the occasional building or street shot from New York City on his blog.
"Fighting," by Peter King
On our dojo mailing list today, sometimes-training-buddy (and all around good guy) Irishman Stephen Ewart forwards this excellent essay, "Fighting," written by the U.K's Peter King, a superb Bujinkan practicioner and teacher with whom my friend Monica White has the privilege of training in London. An excerpt:
Hatsumi Sensei criticised martial artists who act like they are dangerous animals. He said that man has been able to use his intelligence to be able to kill dangerous animals in the world. Such people will be defeated – in a way that they had not expected, because they were outwitted by brain and not muscle. When Takamatsu Sensei was in China he was known as the Mongolian Tiger because of his martial prowess. However on his return to Japan, a friend said that he was more like a Japanese cat. Takamatsu Sensei was happy to agree. He said that, in China, it was necessary for him to be fierce like a tiger, but that now that he was back in Japan it was not. He added that women like cats and would often stroke them. Although said in humour, it illustrates the need to be hard only when needed, and then be able to return to gentleness.
Time to prune down the blogroll
I've started tonight on the job of cleaning up the over-long blogroll on the right side of this blog's main page. I'm taking the example of Monica White and moving toward a shorter, annotated blogroll. If you're a friend of mine, and your name has disappeared from the main page, it's only because I'm now choosing to include links to friends a.) with blogs that are b.) actively maintained. More pruning later, along with some annotation.
Quote of the Day
A second fallacy is the idea of war as an engine of prosperity. Students are taught that World War II ended the Depression; many Americans seem to believe that tax revenues spent on defense contractors (creating jobs) are no loss to the productive economy; and our political leaders continue to believe that expanded government spending is an effective way of bringing an end to a recession and reviving the economy.
The truth is that war, and the preparation for it, is economically wasteful and destructive. Apart from the spoils gained by winning (if it is won) war and defense spending squander labor, resources, and wealth, leaving the country poorer in the end than if these things had been devoted to peaceful endeavors.
August 01, 2004
"Guns Are Good For You," by Chris Claypoole
Chris Claypoole has some interesting commentary today inspired by his recent reading of Eric Raymond's essay "Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun."
I had already known that disarming the public was a standard tactic of repressive governments. I have always been a "no compromise" supporter of the right to bear arms, but from the perspective of the right to self-defense. I had not made the connection between bearing arms (not merely gun ownership, but carrying as a normal part of life) and development of a responsible adult. The kind of person that will take responsibility for his/her actions, regardless of the consequences, motives, or lack of full information. Which means that this kind of person tends to think before acting when possible, and act decisively from a sound set of ethical principles when necessary.
This brings me to the tangential epiphany: When Robert A. Heinlein wrote that "An armed society is a polite society," I had always thought he meant that people tend not to act like an asshole if it might get them ventilated. Now I believe that what was also, and more importantly, meant was that people in an armed society grow up polite because they are armed! Knowing that a careless act or moment of unguarded anger could ruin your life and end someone else's will make the vast majority of people act more responsibly.
Happy 50th Birthday, Michael Badnarik
Orkut.com and Chris Claypoole both inform me that Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik hits the half-century mark today. Congrulations on your continued survival!
Winchester '73 (1950)
Someone, some months ago, recommended to me that I rent and view the 1950 Jimmy Stewart western flick " Winchester '73." I did rent it, and watched it tonight, courtesy of Netflix. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were a number of interesting surprises, not the least of which was a young Rock Hudson in a minor role, the plains Indian chief "Young Bull."
Quote of the Day
The government doesn't produce any wealth. Factories, software companies, farmers, and others are the ones producing wealth. All the government can do is make it harder for people to produce wealth or take wealth from one person and hand it to another. It can't actually make the pie larger on its own, but it can manage to drastically reduce the size of the pie by interfering. Only the people actually doing productive work can increase the size of the pie.
We see extreme cases of this in the third world. The reason people in Africa live in shacks and have to wear our cast-off clothing is not because we're mean and keep them from having all the wealth we've stolen from them. They have little wealth to steal in the first place. They are poor because their governments are run in a way that makes the creation and retention of wealth impossible. Unlike the booming Asian economies, where foreign factories are welcomed, few foreign companies "exploit" the poor of Africa, because the African governments have made running factories and businesses nearly impossible. Even indigenous entrepreneurs are regulated, shaken down and taxed into oblivion. If you want to make the poor wealthier, you have to stay out of the way of people who want to produce wealth. The more you get in the way, the poorer people will be.
