Recently in History Category

Today's QOTD is a bit of background on the graphic novel "Roswell, Texas" by L. Neil Smith and Scott Beiser, which has been serialized in webcomic form on the Bighead Press website. It's a kick, and I recommend it highly.

We are born, so to speak, provisionally, it doesn't matter where; it is only gradually that we compose, within ourselves, our true place of origin, so that we may be born there retrospectively.

Rilke, as quoted by Coetzee, as quoted by Donald Ritchie, as collected in "The Japan Journals", as editted by Leza Lowitz
p441

OK, made-up word time: "casinarcology", from "casino" and "arcology". If you've been to Las Vegas, you've seen them, mostly Steve Wynn's properties, e.g. The Bellagio, The Venetian, etc. And unlike Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti (which I've visited), a never-to-be-finished boondoggle staffed by grad students suckered into paying for the experience of "finishing" his vision, a casinarcology works.

As far as I know, I made this word up recently. It's a bit cumbersome, but it's mine.

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way.

John Paul Jones

William Faulkner, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, called upon writers of the future to not write merely "for the glands." Of course, at that moment, Faulkner was being rewarded for being the best writer for the glands this country has ever known. Incest, serial killing, insanity, race war, castration, burial of the dead, biblical flood, hunting bear, rape with a corn cob - Faulkner did it all. The guy played our genome like a xylophone. Faulkner, in a suddenly noble moment, called upon writers... to transcend the endocrinological. He didn't set the best example.

Joe Quirk
Sperm Are from Men, Eggs Are from Women, p118

All of the liability problems of general aviation manufacturers were brought on by their own lawyers. They maintained that they couldn't afford to fight these cases, when in truth they couldn't afford not to. Ford fought their Pinto case to the Supreme Court and had a $125 million judgment against them thrown out of court. Nobody sues Ford capriciously anymore.

Scott Crossfield, aviation legend, who died yesterday at the age of 84 while piloting his Cessna 210
Courtesy of AVweb

"I wish the eagle had not been chosen as the representative of this country. He is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched in some dead tree where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish and is bearing it to his nest for his young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes the fish. With all this injustice, he is never in good case."

Benjamin Franklin

Here's another from my collection, a 1960 Signet Books edition of the 1949 classic of George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four:

Now that I've wrapped up what turned out to be a surprisingly subtle and difficult volunteer Japanese translation job (which I'm very happy to have done, I should note), I'm going to blog a bit more for fun. Combing my bookshelves, I pulled another several titles with interesting cover copy and art. Here's one: "Strike From Space: A Megadeath Mystery" by Phyllis Schlafly and Chester Ward, 1965, Pere Marquette Press:

Yesterday, I scanned the cover of a pocket WWII English-Chinese dictionary published by the U.S. War Department in 1943, at the height of the war. Today, I've scanned the cover of another from my collection, published shortly after V-J Day, in September 1945: TM 30-481, "The Supplementary Japanese-English Dictionary", this one a very large hardcover which I just barely fit on my scanner's flatbed:

This dictionary of 43,000 terms is supplementary to the following six standard Japanese-English dictionaries with which it forms a complete set of seven:

• a technical manual of about 100,000 terms which was in "final editorial stage" at the time;
  
• another technical manual of about 4,000 terms which was claimed in a similar state;
  
• Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Harvard Univ. Press;
  
• Kato's Medical dictionary, 1944, German language edition (!);
  
• "Ozaki's Sea Terms";
  
• "Creswell's Military [Dictionary];
  

I'd love to see a copy of the 100,000 word technical manual... anyone know if this was ever actually published?

In preparing yesterday's "Little Red Book" post, I discovered that my US $99 Canon all-in-one scanner/printer/copier is an excellent proxy for a macro lens on an expensive camera (I have an Olympus E-1 but don't yet have that lens.) Here's another old school example from the many I have in my personal book collection, this one from 1956, "New Worlds of Modern Science":

A few hours ago, I went on a somewhat controlled shopping binge at one of my favorite used book shops, one in Sunnyvale, California. I found this little gem, TM-633, "Chinese Phrase Book" published by the U.S. War Department in 1943:

I had an offer to get some free stick time in a friend's friend's luxury (pressurized cabin, an aisle between the seats, etc.) airplane for a trip he and the other guy were making to CES in Las Vegas, but I'm getting ready for school on Monday, so I declined. I'm taking in some of the show's highlights by way of reportage, and just saw this on one of the gadget/gimmick blogs:

"Radar Scope sees through walls"

Fascinating, and a bit terrifying at the same time. It's a handheld device for detecting people on the other side of a (presumably radiolucent) wall. The display device looks milspec/ruggedized, and the printed matter pitches to military application, but I'm quite sure they're being pitched to police departments too. I wonder, what are the relevant U.S. laws with respect to using this device in warrantless searches? I believe SCOTUS has already ruled that "standoff" search techniques are not covered under the 4th Amendment.

Four weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a Halloween party in Manhattan. I wasn't prepared with a costume, unless you count my normal get-up below as, um, "Visiting Silicon Valley Guy." On the left is Perry Metzger who is, ahem, a eusocialist insect:

FEMA, in fact, is an illegal organization. It's mentioned nowhere in the Constitution (which lists the lawful powers of the government in Article I, Section 8), nor did anybody ever vote about it, neither you nor I, nor even the Congress. It was created out of thin air by Presidential fiat, and given unprecedented power to override, at gunpoint, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law in general.

L. Neil Smith

The idea of a constitution, we’re told, is to limit government power. It’s supposed to bind the government to certain operational procedures that restrict its ability to violate rights. So a constitution cannot grant human rights; it can only spell out what are seen as the proper functions of government, and try to limit its ability to invade rights.

The US constitution came perhaps as close to this ideal as possible, until its meaning was perverted into a complete reversal, from restricting power to enabling it, from binding government to giving government a mandate for a thousand things to do to us.

But here is the problem. Constitutions by necessity leave the government as the primary enforcement agency. It’s like a memo: "Government to Self: don’t become tyrannical." It only works so long as the enforcement agent operates in good faith. If we remember that the worst rise to the top in government, as Hayek noted, we can have no realistic expectation that this good faith will last. Government gains not by adhering to its own restrictions, but by re-rendering them as positive mandates.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"A Constitution for Iraq"

If you can, within principle, take over and adopt whatever name your enemy calls you, do so. It shuts them up very handily.

L. Neil Smith

My teacher Dale Seago sent this reference to "Oppressive Knife Laws" to our dojo's mailing list. This summary dates from 1998, but is a nicely written short piece on the key features of this particular type of prohibitionism.

My friends Chris, Sean, and Tom, in London, are safe and accounted for after today's murder bombings. Chris lives near Russell Square, where I too lived a number of years ago.

Year by year, a third of the [American] labor pool emerges with a college degree. Most of these degrees are in the humanities and social sciences.

Meanwhile, China produces over 450,000 college graduates a year in science and engineering – as many scientists and engineers as the United States has, total. Then, next year, China will do it again.

Gary North

I think it was one of the Jeffersons who said history was a nightmare from which mankind was trying to wake. We're moving deeper, it seems, into REM.

Dr. Sean Gabb

A couple of years ago, I posted a short entry about an auction titled "Rare Mid to Late 19th Vampire Killing Kit" on eBay. Today, a fellow posting as "Michael de Winter," whose IP address indicates he's writing from Gibraltar, has posted a rather long and interesting commentary claiming the phenomenon as originating from a hoax he perpetrated in 1972. I have no way of knowing whether the guy is for real, but he spins an interesting yarn nonetheless, so I'll mention it here in this separate entry.

I should do this more often for those blog entries that surprise me by taking on lives of their own. Undead threads, anyone?

My friend L. Neil Smith emailed this today:

"Russell --

I thought you and Dale [Seago] might enjoy seeing a project I put together a long time ago, possibly before you came to Fort Collins the first time. As you can see, it's a Camillus Marine Corps knife wedded to a bayonet. It fits my M1 Carbine, the standard issue bayonet for which is a disgrace.

Note the serrated portion at the base of the blade. That was done with a
checkering file. Ahead of my time, I guess."

Here's another:

My Bujinkan teacher Dale followed up:

"Very sweet piece of work -- nicely done!!

BTW, the Marine Corps has adopted a new official-issue bayonet which largely retains the look of the old Ka-bar, but with a longer blade (8" instead of 7"). It's an issue item for Marines, but available commercially for private purchase as well."

This is the new Marine issue item, the "ON3S ONTARIO Marine Bayonet Khaki Brown Handle And Sheath 8" Blade":

Thanks to Anton Sherwood for pointing this out a few minutes ago on a mailing list:

In Sunday's "Beetle Bailey" strip (linked today by FFF), Pvt Plato writes a minarchist screed on walls, even supporting selfishness.

For non-American readers, Beetle Bailey is a very well known American icon, syndicated in newspapers for decades.

I just got back from a meeting of an organization of which I'm a member, and was talking with a Polish acquaintance at the potluck which followed. We were discussing the until-recent history of Russian occupation of his country, and he told me that some Poles he knew had during that time advocated "Layered Communism":

"Layer of Communists, layer of sand, layer of Communists, layer of sand..."

I'm a big believer in getting out of town on spring break:

Speaking of good martial arts training, which I just mentioned I undertook last weekend with Don Angier (and the weekend before with great teachers from my own art), I just stumbled across this Jan 2005 article by Peter Boylan, "The Costs of Training with the Best" author of "Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons From The Tokyo Riot Police" (which I've read and recommend).

Boylan has some good points to make, and some sad observations to share.

How much time have you spent in the Western US?

Have you ever tried to buy a semi-automatic rifle in Canada?

Have you ever tried to order an "unapproved" video from Loompanics in Canada?

Have you ever tried to tell a Mountie to "Get a Warrant"?

None of these things work very well in Canada.

When Canada is as free as, say Montana, where a man stopped by a state traffic cop for driving 80 mph, with a beer in one hand, and pistol on his hip, can ask the cop "What the hell do you want?", and have the cop eventually just give up and walk off, then you can discuss with us how "free" Canada is.

As for the "we're doomed" crowd here ... The US is the healthiest patient in the World's tyranny cancer ward. If we don't win here, things are going to get very ugly.

Kristopher Barrett

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give 'em ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and, what the hell, we're not using it anymore.

Tom Skinner

This is rather funny.

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity

James Fenimore Cooper

This just in from my distant friend James Bennett: his announcement today of the website supporting his new book "The Anglosphere Challenge." This seems like a very enticing book, and I plan to read it during winter school break.

The enemy was repelled. But victory was not won. The war dragged on for a year and there was no decision. Gold grew scarce, and again the Government was in despair.

"I easily relieved them. 'Write,' I said, 'promises on paper to be repaid in gold.' They did as I advised, paying me (at my request) a trifle of half a million for the advice. I handled the affair on a merely nominal profit. I punctually met for another year every note that was paid in. But too many were presented, for the war seemed unending and entered a third year."

"Then did I conceive yet another stupendous thing. 'Bid them,' said I to the Sultan, 'take the notes as money. Cease to repay. Write, not 'I will on delivery of this paper pay a piece of gold,' but, 'this is a piece of gold.'"

"He did as I told him. The next day the Vizier came to me with the story of an insolent fellow to whom fifty such notes had been offered as payment for a camel for the war and who had sent back, not a camel, but another piece of paper on which was written 'This is a camel.'"

"'Cut off his head!' said I."

"It was done, and the warning sufficed. The paper was taken and the war proceeded."

Hilaire Belloc
The Mercy of Allah, 1922

A college student challenged a senior citizen, saying it was impossible for their generation to understand his. "You grew up in a different world," the student said. "Today we have television, jet planes, space travel, nuclear energy, computers..." Taking advantage of a pause in the student's litany, the geezer said, "You're right. We didn't have those things when we were young. So we invented them."

Unattributed, sent to me by email from Terry Egan

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

Hilaire Belloc
"Epitaph on the Politician"

These things escalate because everyone always tends to focus on the differences in ideology rather than working on the more abundant commonalities. My homeland has of course taken this to the extreme. Only in Northern Ireland can two people have been brought up in the same street, go to the same school, have the same colour skin, and the same religion (christianity) and still have their marriage considered 'mixed' (i.e. protestant & catholic).

Stephen Ewart

Most of us are familiar with the events marking the Ansari X Prize winning flights of SpaceDev's SpaceShip One recently. Far fewer, however, know of the story of the American Rocket Company (AMROC), the pioneering company whose intellectual property lives on in that prize-winning ship: the revolutionary hybrid rocket engine that sent it to the edge of space, twice. Read on...

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Stephen Jay Gould

The New York Times is pushing hard on campus to pick up new student subscriptions for the paper edition: for the last few weeks, they've been giving away free copies, many of which end up as seat blotters on rainy benches. I picked up a copy last Thursday, and glanced through a fascinating and typically snide review of the Disney/Pixar flick "The Incredibles" which opened this last weekend. One of the reviewer's complaints was that the film apparently expressed, under the veil of comedy, an unrepentent disdain for mediocrity. The reviewer speculated that Ayn Rand was a likely influence on the filmmakers. Intruiging!

This morning, the first thing my o-chem professor asked me in lab was, "Have you seen 'The Incredibles'?" He was raving about it. I guess I should check this film out. Anyone seen it yet?

A discovery is like falling in love and reaching the top of a mountain after a hard climb all in one, an ecstasy induced not by drugs but by the revelation of a face of nature that no one has seen before.

Max F. Perutz

The other way makers learn is from examples. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. For hundreds of years it has been part of the traditional education of painters to copy the works of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made.

Writers do this too. Benjamin Franklin learned to write by summarizing the points in the essays of Addison and Steele and then trying to reproduce them. Raymond Chandler did the same thing with detective stories.

Hackers, likewise, can learn to program by looking at good programs-- not just at what they do, but the source code too. One of the less publicized benefits of the open-source movement is that it has made it easier to learn to program. When I learned to program, we had to rely mostly on examples in books. The one big chunk of code available then was Unix, but even this was not open source. Most of the people who read the source read it in illicit photocopies of John Lions' book, which though written in 1977 was not allowed to be published until 1996.

Paul Graham, in "Hackers and Painters"

Thanks to David Purves for the pointer to an entertaining article published yesterday, "The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell II (sic)," which I've discovered is also today the subject of intense discussion on Slashdot.

As [Charles] Adams writes, the Lincoln Cult is terrified that this truth will become public knowledge, for it if does, it means that Lincoln "destroyed the separation of powers; destroyed the place of the Supreme Court in the Constitutional scheme of government. It would have made the executive power supreme, over all others, and put the president, the military, and the executive branch of government, in total control of American society. The Constitution would have been at an end."

Exactly right.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"Lincoln’s 'Great Crime': The Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice"

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.

Perry Metzger, in "What is the Role of the State?" today

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.

Perry Metzger

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.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

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.

L. Neil Smith

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.

L. Neil Smith

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.

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.

Kathryn A. Graham

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.

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.

Michael Badnarik

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.

Peter King, on "Fighting"

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.

H.A. Scott Trask

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.

Perry Metzger

Perry Metzger recommends the open source encyclopedia Wikipedia, and I concur. I've found myself referring here to entries there on occasion the last couple of years, and have been impressed at the tendancy to improvement of the content over time. You see, at one time I hadn't been sure that allowing (pretty much) anyone to edit entries would result in better content, but it has.

I only very recently actually registered as an editorial user with the service, after having been a consumer of it. Registration gives you a number of benefits, such as the privilege of watchlists, where if interesting entries are modified by others, you're notified of those changes. Also, since the history of all entries is maintained in CVS-like changelogs (preserving history) and is recorded against some evidence of identity (discouraging vandalism), registration means that your chosen name is made public rather than your IP address. This is a good thing, if you don't already know. Check it out.

Perry Metzger reports that Francis Crick has died. He will be missed.

Robert LeFevre taught us that capitalism is simply the postponment of consumption today, so that resources may accumulate, allowing us to much greater things in the future.

I think he quoted von Mises, who pointed out that taking the time and making the effort to prepare a stick so that you can knock down fruit that's higher up on the tree, instead of simply plucking and eating the fruit you can reach by hand, is the fundamental act of capitalism.

That being the case, in any conflict that ever existed between capitalism and anything else, capitalism won several hundred years ago. The real struggle is whether we will practice private capitalism, or some other form that will seize your stick for the community, or "merely" license it, and either claim your future fruit production for "all mankind" or limit how much you can take at any given moment, idiotically "saving" it for future generations (by which time it shall have rotted or be eaten by birds).

Me, I'm a private capitalist, as much as I can be in this nation of fourflushers and cheeseheads.

L. Neil Smith

If you're using a unix-like system, open a shell and type this command:

cal 1752

Hint: pay particular attention to September.

A few weeks ago, on a mailing list I run, it was reported to me by a good friend that the present management of the Extropy Institute disavows free-market libertarianism as its politico-economic root. As a matter of fact, we're told, extropianism was never about liberty and its deepest ramifications. To those people, I have a large number of examples from the early history of the extropian movement which contradict that claim, such as this reprint of a short declaration by law professor Tom Bell, writing in 1988 as "T.O. Morrow," a piece called "Economics and Politics" (words in brackets below added by me for clarification):

As information processing systems, good economic and political systems must meet the same standards that apply to any of their kind; they must achieve their ends efficiently. Researchers such as Friedrich Hayek have demonstrated that the most efficient economic and political systems are those that exert a minimum of control, allowing spontaneous orders to flourish. Economic and political systems must furthermore advance (trans)human ends. Extropy [magazine] takes the [editorial] point of view that these two qualifications are entirely compatible; the most efficient economic and political systems are those that maximize human liberty. Thus the best economic systems are free market, and the best political systems libertarian. (Libertarians assert that the state, if one is neccessary, should permit all acts except assault, theft and fraud.) Extropy [magazine] will pursue such free market and libertarian analyses of economic and political systems, working toward the day when economic and political systems serve us, rather than we them.

(T.0. Morrow, '88-'98. All Rights Reserved. Please attach this paragraph to all copies. Fully attributed noncommercial use of this document hereby permitted.)

This was, as mentioned, published in the paper version of Extropy magazine (a copy of which I own), and is notated "online version, edited Nov. '96." I plan to publish many more such examples as I run across them, at my convenience. Why? Well, while I do acknowledge that the term "extropian" has been diluted to the extent it's indistinguishable from standard socialist transhumanism - and this is a tragic thing - I will not stand for the historical revisionism being pushed by some of those in the existing "extropian" movement... especially since I've been around that movement from the very beginning, and will not drink the Kool-Aid.

Chris Goodwin passes on this fascinating account of the Oklo natural nuclear reactors in Gabon, equatorial Africa:

In 1972 the very well preserved remains of several ancient natural nuclear reactors were discovered in the middle of the Oklo Uranium ore deposit.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Isaac Asimov

So, there are folks in Washington who must go in to the office every day and think they are involved with keeping our networks secure, when in fact nothing they do has any impact on the problem at all. This kind of thing appears to be a common feature of large bureaucracies. I've been struggling to come up with a pithy word or metaphor for it without much success. The only thing that pops into mind for me today is the Aztec priesthood. Those where the folks who thought that if they didn't cut out someone's heart every day, the sun would stop rising.

It is sort of the inverse of a "Cargo Cult." Instead of your actions bringing about no results even though you think you're doing everything right, the results you want keep happening even though your actions have nothing to do with it at all, and you are convinced you are the cause.

Perry Metzger

Just a few short days after the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's historic moonwalk, we learn the unalloyed truth about what he really said on that occasion:

In 1969, Neil Armstrong made history by becoming the first man to walk on the moon, uttering the immortal phrase, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Or did he? Previously suppressed footage discovered by blogjam shows that Armstrong's reaction was a great deal more uninhibited than history suggests, and that a hasty editing job was needed to prepare the astronaut's moment of glory for broadcast.

Personally, while I like [L.] Neil [Smith]'s idea in Hope of a "Bill of Rights Party", I think a better idea would be a "Mind your own damned business party":

Don't like guns? Don't own one, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like homosexuals? Don't associate with them, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like pagans? Don't associate with them, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like nuclear power? Don't use it, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like hunting? Don't hunt, and mind your own damned business!

See how easy it is? All the individual has to do is live and let live, follow the basic precepts of ALL major religions, as far as love, tolerance and respect, and mind their own damned business!

Ron Beatty

There is, however, one advantage to government: it keeps society's worst criminals out in the open where we know where they are and what they're doing. That they manage to fool some people into thinking they're saints instead of devils is simply a learning experience for those fools.

Bill St. Clair

Walking through the city in a skirt so short that it’s possible to see what you’ve had for breakfast may be asking for a couple of raised eyebrows, but certainly doesn’t sanction assault or rape. If another human decides to harm you in some way, it was still an independent decision, irrespective of the triggering events.

Another I’ve heard is that women choose to wear the hijab in order to prevent objectification in a sexist world. This implies to me that the male form is the norm - the standard to which women must aspire - and the only way to do that is to completely hide any physical differentiation with the aid of several yards of material. I completely reject the idea that one gender should hide its attributes from another in the attempt to receive equal rights.

Monica White

Duncan Frissell just today posted a jaw-dropping bit of what he claims is history, the 1953 testing of an atomic cannon, "Shot Grable 10" at Frenchman's Flat, Nevada:

When I was looking for a nuclear weapons photo for a previous post, I immediately thought of the only live firing of an atomic cannon (in the US, that is). So I hunted up the famous photo of Shot Grable 10 (isn't the Net convenient?) and found that most of the images were poor scans. Finally I "borrowed" a good one and thought I'd actually post so you don't have to follow a link to see it. This is an actual photo of an actual atomic cannon firing an actual atomic shell. No editing or fakery involved.

Whoa. There's more here and also here.

Jackie D at Samizdata reprints a recent article by Hollywood screenwriter Robert J. Avrech, "Jews and Guns":

Ariel [Avrech's recently deceased son] was always amazed at how many Jews - Shomer Shabbos Jews - aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens. During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Karen and I, Ariel and Leda were inside a film theatre. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Leda in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen held Ariel's hand.

"Don't worry," I said with false confidence, "the police will be here soon."

But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson and widespread looting. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.

A few days later, I bought a gun.

I bought a gun because I realized that the day might come again when the people who were sworn to protect us would once again choose not to.

...the first highways were in fact privately funded, and, it can be argued that Xerox's networking protocols were better than TCP/IP at the time, but that's all another story. The general point is, sure the government does some good sometimes, just as even that crazy neighbor who no one suspected would go off and kill 50 peoples always seemed so quiet and did great things for the community playground project. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I can
point at dozens of things the government has done reasonably well, but there is no feedback mechanism that rewards the bureaucrats who did the good things and punishes the idiots who run the DMV for doing bad things, so there is no likelihood those seeds will sprout into oaks.

Meanwhile, though, dumb companies that piss off customers go under all the time, and good ones make people rich. It isn't that the same sort of idiots who run government agencies can't get their hands on companies for a while -- it is that they can't keep running things that way for long before the well runs dry.

Perry Metzger

We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased, frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion.

Baron Richard von Kraft-Ebing

Thanks to my London friend Monica White for alerting me to the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery in Burlingame, California, a haven for (apparently very good) representionalist art, which is billed as "Contemporary Romantic Realism." I suspect very much that Quent Cordair was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's "Romantic Manifesto":

Romantic Realism, the movement which renews the high esthetic standards and techniques of pre-20th century ateliers, brings a rebirth of comprehensibility, beauty, romanticism and stylization to contemporary subject matter. The gallery's collection emphasizes themes which celebrate the moments of happiness, joy and success possible to Man on earth.

Now, I am no climate scientist, but I harbor a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, one factor impacting on the Earth's climate just might be - now, I'm just throwing this out - the sun. I find discussion of the sun's impact on global weather to be oddly absent from the reams of paper speculating on how minute variations in various gases here on earth may affect climate, rather like speculating on how adjusting the air pressure in your tires a few ounces might affect fuel efficiency without ever considering the, well, fuel you are putting in the tank.

Robert Clayton Dean

A few days ago, I found a copy of the 1959 translation (published by Philosophical Library) of Karl Marx's "A World Without Jews," which should be a profoundly embarrassing tract to modern leftists. Contained within are little "gems" such as this "The law of the Jew, lacking all solid foundation, is only a religious caricature of morality and of law in general, but it provides the formal rites in which the world of property clothes its transactions."

Anders Monsen informs us of the publication by Brad Linaweaver and J. Kent Hastings of "ANARQUÍA: An Alternate History of the Spanish Civil War," which sounds like a great deal of fun in the vein of L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach." I'm a fan of Linaweaver's work, such as his excellent "Moon of Ice," which comes to market far too rarely.

Bob Tipton has written a brilliant little piece I recommend.

Bear in mind this was written in the 1930's, a time when the role of medicine was far more profoundly focussed on service to the individual, rather than as a tool of social engineering (a path we've been headed down for a few decades):

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. The whole hygienic art, indeed, resolves itself into an ethical exhortation. This brings it, in the end, into diametrical conflict with medicine proper. The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous, it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.

H. L. Mencken

A few days ago I picked up a pristine copy of the book "Letters of Ayn Rand" which is a fascinating comilation of Rand's personal and business correspondance over a span of decades. The book seems to be selling everywhere at remainder prices, about US $6.

Bill St. Clair passes along this SpaceShipOne flight coverage with video (you'll need to enable pop-ups in your browser).

The success of SpaceShipOne feels like a reward for my faith. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised – relief is more the word. If I were anywhere near the Mojave desert instead of freezing through a London summer, I would have travelled myself to witness it.

It’s a shining example of what like-minded people would say is the ultimate freedom – the freedom to create, to produce, to take risk, to try and also to fail. The freedom that can only fully be realized where our money (our very lives) isn’t taxed away for a variety of hare-brained political schemes and our lives aren’t regulated to the point of absurdity.

Most Americans reading this would have paid for NASA through their taxes – where’s your return on investment? I’m willing to bet that the VCs who stumped up for SpaceShipOne are looking forward to some long term return on their money.

I hope that those who advocate the big-government nanny state for various reasons sit up and take notice this week. This is what we humans are capable of – without the interference, guidance or regulation of beaurocracy.

Monica White

Bill of Rights Nullification by the US Supreme Court:

They have nullified the first: you have to be a politician to criticise a politician on TV or radio before an election.

They have nullified the second, repeatedly, since 1934.

They have nullified the third: we are now serfs, via taxation. We don't directly quarter the troops... they wouldn't lower themselves to live in our hovels.

They have nullified the fourth: there is no such thing as an illegal search anymore.

They have nullified the fifth: remaining silent is now unlawful.

They have nullified the sixth: you only get a speedy trial if the Supreme Court decides you deserve one, jurors are subordinated to the judges, and you can be tried secretly or get no trial at all if you are declared a "terrorist."

They have nullified the seventh: unless your civil case involves the exchange of 21 antique silver dollars, you have no right to a jury trial.

They have nullified the eighth: if you are declared a terrorist, it's torture and Gitmo time for you.

They have nullified the ninth: apparently the commerce clause and vague language about the common good cannot be contradicted by a later AMENDMENT.

They have nullified the tenth: no Supreme Court judge since the 1803 Marbury decision has obeyed that one.

The United States Supreme Court has finally nullified every one of the Bill of Rights amendments through judicial fiat. The destruction of rule of law in the U.S. is now complete.

Kristopher Barrett

This is the in-flight face of the first non-government, privately-financed test pilot to earn American astronaut's wings:

When the war finally came to an end, I was at a loss as to what to do... I took stock of my qualifications. A not-very-good degree, redeemed somewhat by my achievements at the Admiralty. A knowledge of certain restricted parts of magnetism and hydrodynamics, neither of them subjects for which I felt the least bit of enthusiasm. No published papers at all... Only gradually did I realize that this lack of qualification could be an advantage. By the time most scientists have reached age thirty they are trapped by their own expertise. They have invested so much effort in one particular field that it is often extremely difficult, at that time in their careers, to make a radical change. I, on the other hand, knew nothing, except for a basic training in somewhat old-fashioned physics and mathematics and an ability to turn my hand to new things... Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice...

Francis Crick
What Mad Pursuit, Basic Books, New York, 1988, pp 15-16.

Steve Pegram passes this on:

Note the name of the castle first build specifically to protect against firearms.

The first castle in Britain to be designed specifically for defense by guns was Ravenscraig Castle located in Scotland. Built in 1460.

If we assume that the individual has an indisputable right to life, we must concede that he has a similar right to the enjoyment of the products of his labor. This we call a property right. The absolute right to property follows from the original right to life because one without the other is meaningless; the means to life must be identified with life itself. If the State has a prior right to the products of one's labor, his right to existence is qualified. Aside from the fact that no such prior right can be established, except by declaring the State the author of all rights, our inclination (as shown in the effort to avoid paying taxes) is to reject this concept of priority. Our instinct is against it. We object to the taking of our property by organized society just as we do when a single unit of society commits the act. In the latter case we unhesitatingly call the act robbery, a malum in se. It is not the law which in the first instance defines robbery, it is an ethical principle, and this the law may violate but not supersede. If by the necessity of living we acquiesce to the force of law, if by long custom we lose sight of the immorality, has the principle been obliterated? Robbery is robbery, and no amount of words can make it anything else.

Frank Chodorov
Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962)

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Ronald Reagan

You did hear that the Boston transit system now has the authority to stop you and demand ID, your itinerary, and your reason for travel, didn't you? Failure to produce all three will result in your expulsion from the transit system and probable arrest on suspicion.

Folks that can't see the similarities between this nation now and the Germany of the 1930's are both blind and stupid.

Frank Ney

Today's the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I'm reminded that a couple of weeks ago, a couple of friends of mine and I went shooting at a rifle range in northern California, taking a number of weapons including an M1 Garand rifle which probably saw action in WWII. Here, my friend Andy Chen, a brand new shooter (and 18 y/o college classmate), fires my other friend's Garand:

This was Andy's first time out shooting... and on steel reactive targets set out at 100 meters - after having been briefed on safety and weapon operation - he kept up with us two trained, experienced shooters, at least on the sandbag rests. He's spent his high school years reading military history, and knows an incredible amount of factual data on weapons history. He's also used to playing first-person shooter games - in which I've never been interested, thinking them useless for training - causing me to start to re-think my opinions of twitch games.

An older gentleman at an adjacent shooting stall took some time to discuss the Garand with Andy, pointing out that he had ordered his own Garand (which he was also shooting) from the U.S. federal government's Civilian Marksmanship Program, which I've heard about over the years, though I'd bought my own past two Garands from commercial sources.

I'm encouraging Andy to join a local CMP-affiliated club and shoot a match this summer, so that he can be eligible to buy at least a "rack grade" rifle for as low as $350... shipped Fedex directly to his door (yes, they do that)! I don't see Garands selling at gun shows for less than around $800 nowadays. Here's a very detailed and interesting account, with photos, of the experiences of two CMP participants in the purchase and shooting of their own CMP Garands.

It's especially worth noting, for California residents, that a Garand is "Kalifornia legal", making it an excellent rifle to keep locked in the trunk of one's car... just in case. Also note that a number of companies (such as Smith Enterprises) do "tanker conversions" to shorten the overall length, and one can convert the weapon to .308 caliber.

Curt Howland passes on this very interesting piece on the Abu Ghraib incident by John Ross, author of Unintended Consequences:

Those pictures said volumes. They said "We're your worst fucking nightmare: We're Americans. Our women are stronger than your men. Our littlest women will strip naked the strongest men you can muster, and make fun of their puny cocks while enjoying a cigarette. Our women love to get naked, love sex, and revel in the sexual prowess of their American male partners. They'll put impotent "men" like you naked on leashes whenever they want. America is the most powerful country in the world, and guess what? Women control 70% of its money and 100% of its pussy. What are you going to do about it? Behead some Jewish "contractor"? Fat lot of good that's going to do. We'll put on some hearings for show, but you know the truth: we'll do whatever we want whenever we want, and we'll have our women do it. Just for fun. Think we're kidding? Wait 'til you see our beer ads."

Just heard on our dojo mailing list that Discovery Channel will air "Ninjas" tonight twice, at 1800 and 2100 PST. I've heard Stephen Hayes will put in an appearance. I have no idea whether this show will suck or not, but I'll be recording it regardless.

I had the pleasure of first meeting Barbara Branden very briefly at the November 1987 Future of Freedom Conference (FoFCon) in Culver City, California, but didn't engage her in conversation, since she was on her way to a talk at that convention centered around "The Passion of Ayn Rand," her biography of novelist Ayn Rand, with whom she had been associated professionally and personally for a number of decades. Her book had been published the year before, and I'd bought my own copy as soon as it hit the bookstores (this was the pre-Amazon era).

At the end of March this year, a few weeks ago, I finally got the chance to chat with Barbara in a comfortable venue where she was wasn't being shuttled around to talks, in the course of other business: her apartment in southern California. What a lovely, intelligent, funny and benevolent lady she is! I must once again thank my friend Glenn Cripe, who had business to conduct with her that afternoon, for allowing me to tag along with his crew, and of course to Barbara for her warm hospitality... and for autographing that book I bought 18 years ago.

I don't normally post more than one formal "quote of the day", but this one from Adam Michnik (I don't know who that is) coming via Chris Claypoole deserves immediate posting:

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.

I just saw the word "creationist" alternately spelled "cretinist", on a list I frequent. I find, upon Googling, that it's a widespread meme.

[Re: the recent "Jesus Is My Homeboy" fashion fad - Russell]:

Jesus was just one of a handful of guys wandering around ranting whatever the hell happened to pop into their coupla-crayons-short-of-a-box skulls. Nothing cool about him, unless begging is suddenly the 'new black'.

Monica White

Ah, yes, the benevolent Swedish model of democratic socialism. Here's an interesting piece, "Sweden and the Myth of Benevolent Socialism"; an excerpt from a Washington Post article of 1997 is included in the piece:

From 1934 to 1974, 62,000 Swedes were sterilized as part of a national program grounded in the science of racial biology and carried out by officials who believed they were helping to build a progressive, enlightened welfare state...In some cases, couples judged to be inferior parents were sterilized, as were their children when they became teenagers.

Margot Wallstrom, the Swedish Minister of Health and Social Affairs, told the Post that "there was nothing secret about the sterilization program. It was carried out in the light of public debate at a time when Swedes believed they were creating a society that would be the envy of the world." The Swedish Institute for Racial Biology, founded in 1922, was the first national institute of the kind. The Swedes were also the first to sterilize the mentally ill, beginning in 1934.

Between 1934 and 1976, when the Sterilisation Act was finally repealed, 62,000 people, 90 percent of them women, were sterilised. 15-year-old teenagers were sterilised for "crimes" such as going to dance halls. One woman was sterilised in 1960 for being in a motorcycle gang. Orphans were sterilised as a condition of their release from children's homes. Others were pinpointed on the basis of local neighbourhood gossip and personal grudges. Some were targeted because of their "low intelligence", being of mixed race, being gypsies, or for physical defects.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

William Pitt (1759-1806)

I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.

J. Edgar Hoover

I mentioned to Andy Chen this morning, when I saw him in front of our cancelled chemistry lecture, that I'd actually seen Géricault's The Raft of the `Medusa' on a visit to the Louvre in 1990. Hell, you can't miss it: it's gargantuan. Andy had mentioned yesterday on his blog that his biology teacher had discussed the work in class as a lead-in to a discussion of the urinary tract.

I'd read a bit of the sordid backstory of the tragedy of the Medusa, but never in depth. I just found a fascinating and tragicomic account of the wicked mess of blundering incompetence that inspired this monsterpiece of Romantic painting, an article on History House:

In 1819, when French painter Theodore Ge'ricault first exhibited his dramatic masterpiece, "Scene of Shipwreck" to Paris society, he could little imagine the reaction the painting would receive. Onlookers were fascinated and horrified, rather the way they'd react if they saw a particularly large and hairy spider. The painting is enormous. Sixteen feet high, twenty three feet, six inches wide (about 5x7 m), it depicts a group of desperate men floating on a few planks of wood, trying to get the attention of a tiny little ship on the horizon by waving their shirts around. There was a sordid, true tale behind this raft, and everyone knew what it was. It had taken place three years prior. It involved desperate men, howling stupidity, and cannibalism. And, with the painting looming over them, everyone was talking about it.

This is pretty cool: scans of Linus Pauling's Research Notebooks taken from 1922 to 1994 (he lived 1901-1994).

As with many scientists, Linus Pauling utilized bound notebooks to keep track of the details of his research as it unfolded. A testament to the remarkable length and diversity of Dr. Pauling's career, the Pauling Papers holdings include forty-six research notebooks spanning the years of 1922 to 1994 and covering any number of the scientific fields in which Dr. Pauling involved himself. In this regard, the notebooks contain many of Pauling's laboratory calculations and experimental data, as well as scientific conclusions, ideas for further research and numerous autobiographical musings.

IMHO firefighters are the only true heroes in this country. They sustain a far higher risk of injury and death than any cop or military person, they frequently do it as volunteers, and they don't get nice fancy medals like purple hearts or congressional medals of honor for the lives and property they save.

That being said, private fire fighting is how the practice started, and non-profit private organizations is how I think it should be run. The ONLY advantage that public fire departments have is that their very expensive equipment can be purchased with borrowing at much lower rates of interest because the government has the power to tax.

Mike Lorrey

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

George Bernard Shaw

My Dad used to tell stories about air-baggers back in the 1920's; these were people who strapped bags full of hydrogen to harnesses they wore, setting the contents to near-neutral buoyancy. He described their activities as jumps that could take them 50 feet in the air or higher, with the main danger being getting caught in trees and electrical wires.

Rocky Frisco

There is a central myth about British science and economic growth, and it goes like this: science breeds wealth, Britain is in economic decline, therefore Britain has not done enough science. Actually, it is easy to show that a key cause of Britain's economic decline has been that the government has funded too much science...

Post-war British science policy illustrates the folly of wasting money on research. The government decided, as it surveyed the ruins of war-torn Europe in 1945, that the future lay in computers, nuclear power and jet aircraft, so successive administrations poured money into these projects--to vast technical success. The world's first commercial mainframe computer was British, sold by Ferrranti in 1951; the world's first commercial jet aircraft was British, the Comet, in service in 1952; the first nuclear power station was British, Calder Hall, commissioned in 1956; and the world's first and only supersonic commercial jet aircraft was Anglo-French, Concorde, in service in 1976.

Yet these technical advances crippled us economically, because they were so uncommercial. The nuclear generation of electricity, for example, had lost 2.1 billion pounds by 1975 (2.1 billion pounds was a lot then); Concord had lost us, alone, 2.3 billion pounds by 1976; the Comet crashed and America now dominates computers. Had these vast sums of money not been wasted on research, we would now be a significantly richer country.

Terence Kealey
Wasting Billions, the Scientific Way
The Sunday Times, October 13, 1996

I do not know what you mean when you say you do not agree with me on the VN war. Are you referring to opinions expressed by Oscar of GLORY ROAD? If so, be assured that my fictional characters speak for themselves, not for me--and, in any case, that book was written six years ago. My private opinion of the situation in 1968 I have never expressed publicly.

Robert A. Heinlein in a personal communication (letter)

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?

Mark Twain (1835-1910) in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A few days ago, in my physical anthropology class, our instructor told us that Carolus Linnaeus' original taxa included Primates (us and our proximate cousins), Secundates (other mammals), and Tertiates (all other animals)! I can't find independent verification of this (I Googled hard for it)... anyone heard of this and can supply references?

I was helping one of my chemistry classmates study after class this morning. Our topic of conversation was electrochemistry. My classmate's confusion was over the terminology used in voltaic cells, e.g. oxidation, reduction, cathode, anode, cation, anion, etc. It occurred to me in the course of discussion that her confusion was due to the use of the term "reduction", which simply means "a reduction in oxidation state by electron donation"; it's a useful numerical indication of that state, not of the physical configuration of the element being "reduced". I'd long ago internalized the actual meaning, so it had slipped me that to a very bright but non-native speaker of English, "reduction" would seem to indicate a physical reduction of some dimension of the affected chemical species!

I had one of those "aha" moments and drew her a diagram of what actually happens with an example species being reduced, in this case a bare proton (a hydrogen ion, H+): H+ has an oxidation state of +1, which can be reduced by an electron donor to 0. The atomic diameter of the ion is as small as a species can get, effectively equal to the proton's diameter; the addition of an electron ("reduction") drastically increases, in a relative sense, the effective atomic diameter of the neutral hydrogen (disregarding the issue of likelihood of a monatomic non-ionic hydrogen), which is "a bigger dimension", not "a reduced dimension".

Chemistry - and most of science - is full of such interesting and sometimes annoying little ambiguities which are the legacy of discovery and provisional definition. Don't even get me started on all the different symbols used to denote "energy"...

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Hippocrates, in "Law"

The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.

Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter, English surgeon (1872-1939)

Current feminism is the idea that men are the evil to be dealt with through the medium of a lawsuit or a mallet. I guess that's the kneejerk reaction of undateable women when they hear guff about not being the 'logical' sex.

...considering the fact that women have comparatively (to human history) recently come into the workforce, you can't expect half of all boards & CEOs to suddenly be wearing skirts. The lead time for someone to study the right subjects in school to get into the right university course to get into a good company to work their way up the career ladder can be over 30 years. It'll take time.

Monica White

My friend Dave sent me a pointer to an updated version of the "Have Geiger Counter, will travel" site maintained by Elena, the Ukrainian biker (see my original post of 2 days ago).

Curt Howland passed on to me this chilling travelogue of Chernobyl from a Ukrainian motorcyclist named Elena.

I always go for rides alone, because I do not want anyone to raise dust in front of me. I have never had problems with the dosimeter guys, who man the checkpoints. They are experts, and if they find radiation on you vehicle, they give it a chemical shower, and this eat ya bike. I don't count those couple of times when "experts" tried to invent an excuse to give me a shower, because those had a lot more to do with physical biology than biological physics...

Certainly it is a great unhappiness to be poor, but it is an even greater unhappiness to be surrounded by people as poor as oneself. Lacking wealth oneself, one must wish wealth for others: an indigent has infinitely greater possibilities for earning his living and becoming well-off if he lives among a rich population, than if he is surrounded by poor people lilke himself. And note here that the hope of the poor is not founded upon the charity of the rich, but upon the interest of the rich. It is in his own interest that the rich man supplies the poor man with land to cultivate, tools, fertilizer, and seeds, and with food on which to live until the harvest.

Jean-Baptiste Say

When the Governor-General requested that the Miao be prevented from having weapons, and that Chinese merchants be forbidden to trade with them in such items as lead, saltpeter, and sulfur, I did not grant his request. It was not only that the Miao depend for their livelihood on the game they could kill by hunting with crossbow and fouling piece -- it was also that effective control of them had to depend on the sensitivity of the local officials. Besides which, of course, there was the question of how you can get the common people to hand over their weapons to the government officials at all -- as I pointed out to the Board of Works vice-president Muhelun when he presented his crazy scheme of disarming the people of Shantung province.

K'ang-hsi, Emperor of China from 1661 to 1722, quoted from page 35 of
"Emperor of China: Self-portrait of K'ang-hsi", compiled by Johnathan D. Spence, 1974

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when a baby gets hold of a hammer.

Will Rogers

Show me a man over 40 who is not responsible for his face.

Abraham Lincoln

Big-game hunting could indeed be dangerous, but generally for the professional, not the client. It was the white hunter who went into the long grass and finished the job. Losing a client was unheard of, even injuries were rare. It was the code of the Alpine guide: if only one man comes down the mountain, it must be the client. The best client did not just pay his bills, however. He was the one who hunted cleanly, understood the ethic, respected the Africans, was courageous but not foolish, and slept with the right woman.

Bartle Bull
Safari, 1988

Another excellent flick to add to your Netflix rental queue: Millenium Actress AKA "Sennen joyu" (2001). If you enjoy epic Japanese animation such as Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli's "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi"), and film in the style of Kurosawa-style chanbara, you'll really enjoy this labor of love from Satoshi Kon, the director of the 1997 psychological thriller Perfect Blue.

Of course, I do have a lot of Japanese cinema and history under my belt, which I think might be a requisite to truly enjoying this piece, which does very heavily rely for its humor and grandeur on that cultural grounding. Still, I think even the uninitiated can thoroughly enjoy this film for its spectacular sweep and touchingly benevolent sense of life. As a reviewer on one fan site puts it:

Millennium Actress has the stylistic sophistication of Perfect Blue with the empathy, warmth and truth of a Ghibli movie!

If this film had been done with live actors & live action you'd be seeing it awarded on Oscar night. It's that good. The editing is superb. Likewise the animation. As for the "confusing" flashbacks, my daughters (8 & 9) watched this and after explaining that the old actress is telling her life story by using the films she starred in as parts of her actual life, they had no problem following the story. I didn't find the story to be depressing although it is bittersweet. The characters are so strongly drawn that halfway through I found myself forgetting they weren't real people! Strong, gentle story, superb visuals, pacing & editing make up one of the best anime movies ever! In fact, forget anime, this belongs in the top 100 films period.

Precision, like justice, flows from the mind. The precise mind does not imagine a vast, shadowy collectivity like "the Jews" as the architect of its sorrows. The precise mind does not contemplate the destruction of hundreds or thousands of innocents in the attempt to make justice, however conceived. Those are the paths traveled by the savage mind, the mind consumed by formless fear and undirected hatred. The precise mind uses courts, and laws, and clear, specific, carefully negotiated agreements, and only when those have been exhausted, rifles.

Francis W. Porretto

Brian Micklethwait today on Samizdata comments on the myth of the "Wild West" that some of us have for years known as a myth:

One of the most potent anti-liberty memes has been that simple phrase, the "Wild West". Wild as in lawless, violent, murderous. And one of the most potent pro-liberty memes is therefore, if only because it negates the first meme, the fact that the Wild West was, in the words of a famous Journal of Libertarian Studies article by Terry Anderson, the Not So Wild Wild West.

This anti-"Wild West" meme deserves wider propagation.

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

Sir William Osler

Yes, we managed to conquer the whole of Mesopotamia with relative ease. But successfully occupying it and getting the populace to be our bitch when a sigificant percentage views us as unwelcome interlopers is a whole different ballgame.

We are not fighting a monolithic enemy in the form of another state's military. We are being drawn into a war of attrition against a myriad of Fourth Generation Forces (read: nonstate) with different motives and objectives and most likely operating wholly independent of one another.
These forces realize that they do not have either the mass or the firepower to openly engage us in anything resembling a pitched battle so they will utilize superior intelligence, concealment, and deception to deliver strikes from seemingly out of the unknown.

Yes, our casualties have been light. So far (of course, if we stick around long enough and the insurgents might just find an opening or get lucky and give us a replay of Beirut). But they need not inflict heavy casualties to win. They only have to CONTINUE inflicting casualties - and survive - in order to win.

We, on the other hand, cannot even dream of declaring victory with any kind of credibility until the entire nation of Iraq is pacified and all the Sunnis and Shiites and Arabs and Kurds and Turkmens are holding hands in the spirit of tolerance and diversity - enforced at the point of our bayonets - while being ruled over by the junta of our choosing.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Mark Quon

J. Neil Schulman's two nonfiction books on Second Amendment matters cover the territory [a reader] describe(s) pretty well. For what it's worth, you're wrong, too, about the 18th century meaning of "regulated". Back then, it meant "adequately provided for" and even later, regulation meant "facilitation", not "interference" as it does today.

He makes an even more important point by consulting two well-thought-of grammarians. The phrase containing the words "regulated" and "militia" do not condition the rest of the article in any way. In fact, as you'll read, it actually works the other way. This may be the best argument ever, as people like Madison (who wrote the amendment) and Jefferson (for whom, essentially, it was written) were very careful with their words.

There were two types of militia back then: a government-sponsored "organized" militia into which men were often conscripted - the 15,000 troops that marched on Pittsburgh in 1794 were of this sort - and volunteer "unorganized" militia. Unfortunately, the general incompetence of the former has rubbed off historically to some extent on the latter, which actually had an excellent record. The best source on this is Jeffrey Rogers Hummell.

L. Neil Smith

My good, longtime friend Romana Machado Reynolds has aroused my envy by taking a long trip to the Galapagos Islands:

The guy on the ground is Raj Apte, brother of Arun Apte (whom I've met). According to Romana: "[The] only way you can get close to the big turtles is by creeping toward them at their level, or from behind."

That's so cool. I had my childhood fascination with the Galapagos re-kindled last year when I read a couple of Darwin biographies, and really stoked a couple of months ago when Hollywood made history by filming the fantastic and epic Master and Commander in the Islands. I'll be hitting up Romana for many more vacation photos in the near future.

Whilst on board the Beagle (October 1836-January 1839) I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament; from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.

Charles Darwin
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin with original omissions restored. New York, Norton, 1969, p85

I have the TV playing in the background in "white noise" mode while I'm working. Just now, that populist windbag Bill O'Reilly had on as a guest an actress on whom I had a crush in my pre-teens (late 70's): Adrienne Barbeau. She's pushing 60, and she still looks hot. Genetics, money, and healthy living, I suppose. I've been happy in the last couple of years to see that Farrah Fawcett and Bo Derek are also still American Foxes. Yes, when I was 11 I had one of those "Farah swimsuit" posters.

We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.

Mark Twain

Any standing military force aside from the Navy is unconstitutional. The Constitution provides for funding of armies only two years at a time – even the typical four-year commitment for ROTC cadets and new enlistees is thus illegal, as presumably it could not be known four years in advance that there would still be a standing Army or Air Force. Many things the federal government does today are unconstitutional, but this is no reason not to continue to consider the Constitution an authoritative document.

Brad Edmonds

It is no paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

Alfred North Whitehead

Wealth may provoke envy, but it seldom provokes the truly venomous levels of resentment provoked by achievement. There is no surer way for a minority group to become hated than to enter a country as destitute immigrants and then, through long hours of hard work, rise to a level of prosperity above that of the indigenous population.

Thomas Sowell

In the post-reconstruction period, when the pendulum swung back to overt racism, Taney's philosophy resurfaced as "the return-of-the-repressed" -- the American trauma, It was during this period that the most rabid anti-gun legislations, designed to keep guns out of the hands of black men, were enacted. This racial paranoia about black men with guns, which was at first southern, eventually spread to the north. This paranoia was potent enough to cause the infringement on a basic right: "the right... to keep and bear arms." To allow this to happen, two basic American tenets had to be ignored: one grounded in constitutional law and the other based on natural law.

Roy Innis, speaking in 1991
National Chairman, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)

10 years and 8.5 hours ago, at 4:30 AM PST, I was awakened from my sleep at a friend's house in West Hills, part of southern California's San Fernando Valley, by what would be quickly called "The Northridge Earthquake," which was centered a few short miles from where I'd been sleeping. For the following days, my buddies and I holed up at my friend's parents' relatively undamaged house... armed and comfortable.

You won't hear about it much - if at all - in official histories of the event, but there were humvees with soldiers (whom I've always assumed were Guardsmen) patrolling some parts of LA and the Valley.

Bastiat, like many great thinkers, understood that a collective – no matter how you define it – consists of individuals, and ergo the idea of a “collective right” is based on a false premise. A collective right does not exist, because without individuals, the collective does not exist. Individual rights are the basis – the root – the foundation of any just society, because the individual is the basis, the root and the foundation of any society. Individuals create society, and consequently government. Their rights exist apart from governments and aren’t granted by other individuals. Individual rights exist because individuals exist – not vice versa. Bastiat understood this simple concept. Our Founding Fathers understood it even better. It’s only when ignorant, bed-wetting, socialist dullards, who are deathly afraid of an armed populace threatening their seat of power, get a hold of these sacred ideals, that the individual right gets mired in vacuous invective and subjugated to the great whole! Therefore, for any pseudo-intellectual hacks with pretensions to being a body of justice to noisily squawk their “interpretation” of the “collective rights” theory, and worse yet, ascribe that type of idiotic thought to those who founded this great country is ignorant, disrespectful and deceitful.

Nicki Fellenzer

Another interesting little piece arrived a couple of days ago from Netflix, a documentary produced a couple of years ago in Silicon Valley, "Revolution OS". It's worth the watch, especially if you're one of the many like me Who Were There When It Happened (in my case, I was working at Netscape when the big Mozilla code release happened... even attended the big bash in the City). I was delighted to see my friend Christine Peterson given the credit she deserved for having invented the term "open source", and was also delighted to see a short bit with another old friend, Terry Egan, at a documented SVLUG Installfest.

One of things I'd not taken the time to mull over in writing when I wrote my recommendation of "Master and Commander" some days ago was the portrayal of the role of boys on the HMS Surprise (which I believe is the Sophie in the original book) in the Nelsonian Age of seafaring. The ship set sail on a mission to engage and capture an actively hostile enemy, a 44-gun French privateer (a bit ahistorical, but not detractingly so), with teenage and preteen midshipmen on board. What better apprenticeship for a potential young naval officer than an education while underway? Anything else is a poor substitute. Of course, this was set in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars. Later decades would see the rise of that Victorian social fiction, "adolescence," the synthetic prolongation of childhood by legislative fiat.

The notion of an overarching, purely secular society is a good and powerful one. It means that you can exercise your beliefs in your home, your church, your community, yet work together productively at other times, in other places, with those who hold different religious beliefs -- or even none at all.

A principal trouble with our culture at this minute is that so many individuals think they have a right to impose their beliefs on others by force. Moslems often believe it, but so do creatures like George Bush. It is my sincere hope that people will learn to keep their religion in their pants and relate to one another in benevolant and amiable ways.

If we can't -- imagine the Spanish Inquisition armed with hydrogen bombs -- it'll be the end of us all.

L. Neil Smith

A good friend of mine in England, a libertarian and passionate yachtsman, today chimes in with his own endorsement of "Master and Commander." As I mentioned yesterday, do go and see it on the big screen!

Taking Michael Reed's recommendation to see it on the big screen rather on DVD, a few hours ago Peggy and I saw "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World." It was superb, and I'd heartily recommend it myself. I might even get around sometime soon to reading the original book by Patrick O'Brian that's been sitting on my shelf for two years. When I do, I'll make sure to keep my copy of Dean King's "A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales," so I don't end up whining about the heavy use of early 19th century nautical terminology many of the amateur reviewers on Amazon.com seem to have trouble with. Of course, I'm actually pretty familiar with nautical terminology anyway, so my perspective is admittedly a bit skewed.

Go see the movie soon and tell me what you think. If you've already seen it, feel free to opine now. The comment box awaits your pleasure.

I'm just now finishing watching "The Mountain Men" on The History Channel. It's quite interesting; watch it if you get the chance.

It's dangerous to be right when your government is wrong.

Voltaire

...although I can only speculate as I do not know the young woman who caught my eye, it is not hard to see the 'domestic compromise' at work here... her family insisting she wear the hijab whilst she insisted on dressing to kill in the manner of her adopted western culture and friends.

This little drama must get played out a million times a year across Europe and North America amongst the Muslim diaspora and in the long run, it is not hard to see which cultural force is going to win. I suspect that one of the reasons that small pockets of western Muslims have become radicalized is that it is they who are most starkly confronted with what happens in the majority of cases when the old ways are confronted by western secular individualism. No civilization based on submission to arbitrary edicts from the Dark Ages can survive contact with a civilization that essentially encourages you to find your own way and do what you will.

Perry de Havilland

I'm watching the 1951 classic "Halls of Montezuma," and noticed a couple of interesting costuming details. Here's one: the character of Lt. Carl Anderson, played by Richard Widmark, carries what looks like a Randall Model 1 knife with a double brass hilt... while the rest of the Marines seem to be carrying standard-issue KA-BARs. While a KA-BAR is a perfectly useful utility knife, a Randall Made Knife would have cost its wearer a pretty penny in WWII. These knives have long been sought after by soldiers and collectors since 1937. I recently sold a Model 16 Special #1 Fighter myself for a premium of almost $100 over retail... since you can't get one from the factory any earlier than summer 2007.

If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.

Albert Szent-Györgi
(1893-1986)

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

Mark Twain

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to go to the forest to gather wood, saw it, and nail the planks together. Instead, teach them the desire for the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Concorde SST was finally retired by British Airways today, after years of running at a loss. As much of an Anglo-French boondoggle as it turned out to be, I've always been a bit fond of the plane: the idea of a supersonic transport has always been, um, sound; someone will do it right someday.

Years ago when I lived in London, I had the occasional pleasure of seeing a Concorde crossing over London on its way to or from Heathrow Airport, in climb or descent configuration, far enough away from the airport that its spindly landing gear were retracted and its nosecone was pulled up in its sleek inline (unbent) cruise configuration.

I even got to visit one of the birds, and step inside, ten years ago this autumn. I was part of a small group of people who toured catering operations for British Airways at Heathrow (long story) with a side trip to the Concorde hangar. I have a ton of pics from that trip, and even a couple of cool ones of myself in the Captain's seat in the narrow cockpit of the one plane we were allowed to enter. If I have time soon, I'll dig those out and scan a few to this site.

I really wish that BA would cave in to Richard Branson's attempts to buy a Concorde off its hands: a Virgin Atlantic Concorde might actually make money, as well as keep alive a fabulous piece of aviation history.

Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness.

It comes to bring us evil - only evil - and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs.

Roger Q. Mills of Texas, 1887

That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.

Section 35, Alabama Constitution of 1901

Last spring I wrote up a short review of a great Ealing comedy from 1957, "All at Sea", with Alec Guinness. Just last night I finished watching another great British comedy, this one from 1959 by John Boulting, "I'm All Right Jack". It's a great little satire on the dirty politics between postwar British industry and trade unions. Peter Sellers' depiction of a power-mad, USSR-worshipping shop steward alone is worth the viewing. You'll find it on Netflix.

Inside every alienated hacker who thinks he stands for the "good things that don't ultimately matter to most businesses" there is a tycoon struggling to get out. It's not the system that he hates. His gripe is with the price the system initially offers him to collaborate.

Michael Lewis
Next, p136

Almost 10 months ago to the day, I wrote a short blurb on this blog about Shenzhou V, which was supposed to have carried 2 taikonauts. That launch happened today, in the same type of communist secrecy which surrounded Yuri Gagarin's launch so long ago, and featured only one taikonaut, Yang Liwei. CNN reports:

Quoted by Chinese media just before he blasted off into space, Yang said he would "gain honor for the People's Liberation Army and for the Chinese nation."

All hail the "motherland": another ersatz superpower dedicated to making space its military summit. Yet another incident which compels me to recommend Victor Koman's Kings of the High Frontier.

Resist aging and death with every resource available to you. Nurture skills of self-defense. Learn how to survive under difficult conditions; this may shield you in sudden misfortune. Distinguish between illusion and reality, between emotion and fact. Avoid making important decisions on too little sleep.

Kick your own ass. The universe neither cares about you nor recognizes any obligation to you. It is fixed and blind, a mad robot programmed to kill. You are free and seeing; you must outwit it at every poor turn.

Whatever your labors & aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, you must create your own sanity, prosperity, and peace.

The world is so gorgeous it hurts. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Romana Machado

The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

William Henry Harrison
Inaugural Address, 1841

...as if to make my point for me, when I arrived at that part of the speech, three or four angry individuals -- out of approximately three hundred, undoubtedly Nerf libertarians themselves -- got up and walked out. I was gratified, of course. Any speech that fails to offend at least one percent of your audience is a poor, pale thing, hardly worth making.

L. Neil Smith

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I'm doing homework for my only online college class (the rest are on campus), and I have the TV on in the background for noise. It's the Sci-Fi Channel, and one of the first Stargate SG-1 episodes, "Emancipation", is playing. I had to look up when the Daniel character says the people they're meeting are descendants of Mongols. As soon as I did, I saw one bowman nock and draw an arrow in the Western tradition, with the first two fingers (3 is also sometimes used in the West)! You see, Mongol bowmen never used that string draw technique: they used a very distinctive thumb draw instead.

Back to work now.

Someone on the smith2004-discuss list said he'd like me to post a picture I had taken last year of an MBA Gyrojet 13mm rocket carbine. Here it is. The owner had it on display at a gun show in San Jose, and was kind enough to allow me to have a couple of photos taken.

"warren_et" on the same list calls the projectile a - get ready for this - "Single-Stage-To-Obit rocket".

I've not yet read this book, but when I have some time off from my studies, I plan to. My friend Perry Metzger has given me permission to reprint this recommendation he sent a few minutes ago to a mailing list I own:

So I finally finished the book. My verdict is still not in - the book is very obviously just 1/3 of the overall story. However, I'll say that I rather enjoyed the first 1000 pages of the story that Quicksilver represents. It isn't quite at the level of my favorite Neal Stephenson books ("The Diamond Age" is at the top of my list), but it is a very interesting read.

It also has the interesting feature, which a history book would not, of giving you a much wider view of what was going on in the 17th century than you could otherwise get. Usually history is taught or read in narrow vertical slices - you learn about Louis XIV, but not that Robert Hooke was off in London discovering that all living things are made up of cells at the same time, and that all that while the Turks were attacking Vienna. The irony is, in spite of being a work of fiction, it gives you a wider and better lens on the birth of the modern age than a non-fiction book would have...

Looks like I'll be ordering my copy soon.

"Samizdata.net often makes references to the importance of the 'meta-context' in explaining and determining events around us. A question to consider: What would happen if the mainstream media were somehow forced to refer to Saddam's old regime by its own official title, which is The Arab National Socialist Party or Arab NAZI Party? What a thought…"

Gabriel Syme

"It is essentially accidental that the Shang developed a logographic script rather than a phonetic script like most of those that became dominant elsewhere in Eurasia. This accident, however, had momentous consequences for the way Chinese civilization developed. It shaped the nature of the elite: the difficulty of mastering this script made those expert in it an elite possessed of rare but essential skills. Because the Chinese logographic script did not change to reflect differences in pronunciation, the literate elite easily identified with others whose writings they could read, including predecessors who lived many centuries earlier and contemporaries whose spoken languages they could not comprehend. Just as crucially this script also affected the processes of cultural expansion and assimilation. People on the fringes of Chinese culture who learned to read Chinese for pragmatic reasons of advancing or defending their interests were more effectively drawn into Chinese culture than they would have been if China had had a phonetic script. Reading and writing for them could not be easily detached from the body of Chinese texts imbued with Chinese values, making it difficult for them to use their literacy to articulate the vision of a local population defined in opposition to China."

The Cambridge Illustrated History of China by Patricia Buckley Ebrey, p28

"...only at Katsura [Detached Palace] does there exist that overwhelming freedom of intellect which does not subordinate any element of the structure or the garden to some rigid system. At Nikko, as in many architectural attractions of the world, the effect is gained by quantity - about in the same way that an army of two hundred thousand is larger than one of twenty thousand. At Katsura, on the contrary, each element remains a free individual, much like a member of a good society in which harmony arises from the absence of coercion so that everyone may express himself according to his individual nature. Thus the Katsura Palace is a completely isolated miracle in the civilized world."

Bruno Taut, in a speech given 1936 to the Society for International Cultural Relations (Kokusai Bunka Shinkoukai) in Tokyo
as quoted in Japanese Culture by Paul Varley, 4th edition, 2000, pp325-326

"It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. This means that when men are born from heaven they are all equal. There is no innate distinction between high and low. It means that men can freely and independently use the myriad things of the world to satisfy their daily needs through the labors of their own bodies and minds, and that, as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others, may pass their days in happiness."

Fukuzawa Yukichi
Gakamon no Susume (An Encouragement of Learning), 1876
as quoted in Japanese Culture by Paul Varley, 4th edition, 2000, p243

Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Ronald Reagan

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

Thomas Jefferson

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.

Sherlock Holmes, from "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans"
Arthur Conan Doyle

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.

Oliver Cromwell

I then went on, beginning with the rise and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions of the present time, during which time I labored to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.

Herman Melville
Moby Dick, Ch. 17, The Ramadan

It is one of the Christian delusions that Christianity brought charity into the world. It did no such thing. There were plenty of agencies for taking care of the poor and helpless long before Christianity was heard of, and even before Judaism. Both Christianity and Judaism have converted charity into a sort of pious racket. The alms-giver, in return for a trifling expenditure on this earth, will be rewarded with an infinity of bliss post-mortem. This purely selfish note is struck with great clarity by Judaism, and only less clearly by Christianity. It appears also in the other religions of the East. Thus religion has not really promoted charity, but debased it.

H. L. Mencken

One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. ...[This] convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency. that they should have this immunity is an outrage. There is nothing in religious ideas, as a class, to lift them above other ideas. On the contrary, they are always dubious and often quite silly. Nor is there any visible intellectual dignity in theologians. Few of them know anything that is worth knowing, and not many of them are even honest.

H. L. Mencken

Sean Gabb announces today the publication of "All the Way Down the Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition in England and Some Lessons for Civil Liberties in America" by Professors Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel; an excerpt from this long and well footnoted article:

Is it possible for a nation to go from wide-open freedom for a civil liberty, to near-total destruction of that liberty, in just a few decades? "Yes," warn many American civil libertarians, arguing that allegedly "reasonable" restrictions on civil liberty today will start the nation down "the slippery slope" to severe repression in the future.[3] In response, proponents of today's reasonable restrictions argue that the jeremiads about slippery slopes are unrealistic or even paranoid.[4]

This Essay aims to refine the understanding of slippery slopes by examining a particular nation that did slide all the way down the slippery slope.(p.400) When the twentieth century began, the right to arms in Great Britain was robust, and subject to virtually no restrictions. As the century closes, the right has been almost obliterated. In studying the destruction of the British right to arms, this Essay draws conclusions about how slippery slopes operate in real life, and about what kinds of conditions increase or decrease the risk that the first steps down a hill will turn into a slide down a slippery slope.

Sean Gabb, of the UK's Libertarian Alliance, has himself written a number of superb essays on the RKBA over the years. After reading the piece above, visit the LA's site and look for his work.

Here's something you don't see everyday: "Rare Mid to Late 19th Vampire Killing Kit", on auction at gunbroker.com, the original 19th century text from the enclosing wooden box:

Vampire Killing Kit

The accoutrements for the destruction of the Vampire

This box contains the items considered necessary for the protection of persons who travel into certain little known countries in Easter Europe where the populace are plagued with a peculiar manifestation of evil, known as Vampires... Professor Ernst Blomberg respectfully requests that the purchaser of this kit carefully studies his book. Should evil manifestations become apparent, he is then equiped to deal with them efficiently... Professor Blomberg wishes to announce his grateful thanks to that well known gunmaker of Liege, Nicholas Plombeur, whose help in compiling of the special items, the silver bullets,etc., has been most efficient. The items enclosed are as follows...

1. An efficient pistol with its usual accoutrements
2. A quantity of bullets of the finest silver
3. Powdered flowers of garlic (one phial)
4. Flour of Brimstone (one phial)
5. Wooden stake (Oak)
6. Ivory crucifix
7. Holy Water (one phial)
8. Professer Blomberg's New Serum

The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1896

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile-driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack!

Winston Churchill

Driven from every corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment on matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.

Samuel Adams

You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
1941

So long as a man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off from the gratification of the instinct of imparting what he is learning, of propagating through others the ideas and impressions seething in his own brain, without stunting and atrophying his moral nature and drying up the surest sources of his future intellectual replenishment.

James Joseph Sylvester
(1814 - 1897)

Fox News is reporting that Uncle Josef Stalin's Mini Me clone, Kim Jong Il, has admitted that North Korea has nuclear weapons. Anyone surprised?

In a February post, "An ancient Japanese hideout gun", I showed a grainy picture of a "tanto pistol" which Jeff Sherwin had photographed recently in the arms museum at Matsumoto Castle in Japan. Tonight at the dojo, Jeff lent me a small stack of photos to scan with the better scanner (an Epson 1260 Photo) I picked up a few days ago; here's a sample:

Still a bit indistinct, but here's a breakout of the image on the left:

And the one on the right, which appears to be a mortar/rocket assembly:

I'm not able to make out any detail of the text on the placards in the display case, so I'll have to take pictures of the text on my own visit, whenever I get back to Japan. I promise a translation: my kanji knowledge has been getting reasonably adult in recent times.

As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of "self-defense." In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
Chapter II, Black Power, p55

I'm testing out a new scanner (an Epson 1260 Photo) which I've obtained to help bring a bit more order to my archives: I'm digitizing as much of my archives as I can manage. I hate paper, but I have too much of it.

I found a 12-13 year old pamphlet from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, entitled "Why Cryonics Can Work". I'm a member of the organization, and before I moved to Europe for a few years in the early 90's, I was pretty active as a weekend volunteer. Here's a bit of that history, the front of the aforementioned brochure:

I believe this is one of those "what I did on my spring vacation" types of photos: to the best of my recollection, this happened in the spring of 1991 when I was back in the States for a couple of weeks from London. Instead of taking it easy - which I have a hard time doing anyway - I heard that Alcor was in need of, um, warm bodies to help move a cold one from storage in an old style dewar to one of the recently manufactured Bigfoot units. The guy in the sleeping bag was the first man successfully frozen and maintained continuously since 1967.

From left: Dr. Michael Perry, Mike Darwin and (back to camera) me. I believe, from the hair, that the 4th person may be Steve Bridge. Notice the heavy gloves and my care in reaching around the body: the sleeping bag was saturated with liquid nitrogen. Cold.

Have you forgotten?

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

Leonardo da Vinci

It is inconsistent with the nature of life - as revealed by the record of the past - for a species to remain in an environmental niche when the opportunity exists for escape. Most individuals of the species remain within the security and comfort of the environment to which they have become adapted... [But] certain individuals will always probe the limits of their environment. These adventurous few are the vanguard of a new development in the evolution of life... As most fish remained in the water, and most apes remained in the forest, just so, in tomorrow's world most of us will remain on the earth... But a small percentage of the human species... will leave us, and their descendants will spread out into the galaxy.

Robert Jastrow
Introduction to The Next Ten Thousand Years by Adrian Berry, 1974

Der größte Unsinn, den man in den besetzen Ostgebieten machen könnte, sei der, den unterworfenen Völkern Waffen zu geben. Die Geschicte lehre, daß alle Herrenvölker untergegangen seien, nachdem sie den von ihnen unterworfenen Volkern Waffen bewilligt hatten.

[The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.]

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitlers Tischegesprache Im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941-1942. [Hitler's Table-Talk at the Fuhrer's Headquarters 1941-1942], Dr. Henry Picker, ed. (Athenaum-Verlag, Bonn, 1951)

I was in training this weekend, and was so thrashed I forgot to wish Thomas Jefferson a happy 260th birthday yesterday.

Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.

Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1815

You can't have your cake and eat it too; either the Net is a business and you pay for routable IP space, or it's a communist free love fuck fest, and it's your god-given right to have portable routable IP space.

Jeremy Porter

Patrick Crozier has posted a real winner on Samizdata. You don't often see this kind of openly expressed respect of America on the part of an Englishman... unless, of course, he's a libertarian.

Nationalism, of course, is intrinsically absurd. Why should the accident - fortune or misfortune - of birth as an American, Albanian, Scot or Fiji Islander impose loyalties that dominate an individual life and structure a society so as to place it in formal conflict with others? In the past there were local loyalties to place and clan and tribe, obligations to lord or landlord, dynastic or territorial wars, but primary loyalties were to religion, God or god-king, possibly to emperor, to a civilization as such. There was no nation. There was attachment to patria, land of one's fathers, or patriotism, but to speak of nationalism before modern times is anachronistic.

William Pfaff
The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism
p17

I've recently heard Fox News reporters calling found weapons caches "arsenals". Guys, an "arsenal" is a place where weapons are manufactured (and sometimes designed); an "armory" is a place where weapons are simply stored.

While I'm ranting, I also noticed that one of Fox's talking head retired military analysts actually misused the term "decimate" to mean "annihilate". This is a somewhat understandable mistake, had it been committed by someone not schooled in the arts of war, but rather shocking on the part of a professional officer.

To those who don't understand my quibble, see this definition of "decimate". I disagree with this guy, by the way: I'm aware that words do change meanings over time, but "decimate" still retains the distinction of "to reduce (in force)". And yes, I'm aware of the arguments of Pinker against "language mavens" in his superb The Language Instinct and related works - I actually agree with most of them - but I'm annoyed at the degradation of language where caused by several generations of horrible government schooling.

(Bitch mode off)

...once you're crazy and know nothing about numbers, the chances of finding something psychotic and hateful in a scrabble factory explosion are hovering just around 100%.

Penn Jillette

Dogs could not be used in the streets in the manner many Jews were treated. One circumstance among others put an end to the ill-usage of the Jews. About the year 1787 Daniel Mendoza, a Jew, became a celebrated boxer and set up a school to teach the art of boxing as a science. The art soon spread among young Jews and they became generally expert at it. The consequence was in a very few years seen and felt too. It was no longer safe to insult a Jew unless he was an old man and alone. But even if the Jews were unable to defend themselves, the few who would now be disposed to insult them merely because they are Jews, would be in danger of chastisement from the passers-by and of punishment from the police.

Francis Place, Improvement of the Working Classes (1834) as quoted in Robert Kiefer Webb, Modern England: From the 18th Century to the Present (1970).

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

Lillian Hellman

The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.

Sun Tzu
The Art of War, p100

On March 28, 1797 Nathaniel Briggs patented a rotary clothes washing machine, thereby doing more for female liberation than any bunch of screeching, an