Cool September days ROCK!

I just ran 7.5 miles in 67 minutes and I feel fantastic! 

It was about 60° F when I started and it headed down from there - and cloudy too, so I didn't have to deal with that nasty overheating that we big, fat guys are prone to.

After all this running, my legs look skinny to me and my extremities are fairly ripped, but my core is still quite well padded.  My clothes are pretty loose, but I swear to god I look just as fat as ever.

Today's workout was quite an extraordinary contrast to Monday's run, when I basically gave up after two and a half miles and ended up doing a hair over 5 miles in an hour - even stopping to walk for a couple hundred yards, but there were probably a number of factors at work there.  First and foremost is that I think I doubled up on my blood pressure pill that morning.  The main evidence for that is that, when I started walking my pulse was only 90 bpm.  That ain't right.  I checked several times.  Also, I was flippin' starving when I got home from work.  I had a bowl of cereal and headed out for my run at about a quarter to six.  I ran the first two miles pretty fast, though not as fast as today - and it was about 65° out, so that shouldn't have been a major factor - and - oh yeah! - it was only two days after a 20 mile run.

Even with all that, I felt much better after that run than before it.  I was tired for a while, but not bone tired like I had been since the run and all day Sunday, continuing into Monday.  I might have had a bit of an insulin dump into my system after ingesting the carbs.  I don't guarantee that claim. 

I felt weird while I was running fast, like I wasn't completely in contact with the ground.  That's another thing that makes me think it was an OD of the BP drug.  I remember taking one after starting to eat breakfast, but it's my habit to take one immediately upon entering the kitchen. 

I know I wasn't all that brilliant at work that day, but I don't think I actually effed anything up.  But, sometimes it's hard to say right away.  You find that out months later when somebody hands you the thing you made and you see dumb errors that you normally apply five fail-safes to avoid.  And, of course, then it's too late and you have to work with the thing they gave you.

Holy crap!  It's one AM!

I wonder if I would be the first to recommend to Tea Party

Conservatives and libertarians that they read the Annals of Congress
Debates and Proceedings. The First Congress is the most interesting and it ends with the passage of the excise tax on Whiskey which caused the Whiskey Rebellion.

Here are the heroes and villains:

I have to wonder if the recorder of the speeches is responsible for their beautiful clarity, or if the speech makers themselves were that brilliant. I'm inclined to think that political pressure was applied toward that end. As it is today.

I've added Mike P's The Emptiness to my blogroll

I can't say as the guy's got a post that I consider a favorite. They all kick butt. Just start at his latest and work back from there. Actually, because of his brilliant use of the comic book images, that could easily be my favorite. (What were those guys on when they came up with Bizarro World?)

I deleted a couple more statists while I was messing with the blogroll, but I meant to add in Strike the Root and Antiwar.com. They'll probably be there when you read this, depending on how quick you are.

214# this morning.

Cause for celebration. The oldies station is playing Three Dog Nights' "Celebrate!" right now. Coincidence?

I ran 8.35 miles last night in 81 minutes, running the last mile faster than the first. I wish I'd been in that kind of shape when I ran the 15K. It helped a lot that it was 75 and dry.

This is from a Mises.org piece called "The Bankrupt Finnish Welfare State"

by Kaj Grussner (link to article):

As a rule, the tax authorities don't care about the law, in the rare event they even know it. Not only that, but it is clear from the way they act that they consider every penny to be their money, and may only be retained by the taxpayer at their discretion. It even happens that they make up arguments that are blatantly false and without any legal ground whatsoever in order to levy more taxes and impose various other sanctions. When the taxpayers challenge their outrageous claims, they simply ignore the challenges and press on as if nothing has happened — even though the constitution mandates that all decisions and rulings made by a government agency must be based on law and thoroughly explained.

This doesn't seem to apply to the tax authorities though, and neither do other legal principles. In all other matters, you are innocent until proven guilty, but if the taxman charges you with something, it is you who has to prove your innocence. If you fail, you're guilty, and it is the tax authorities who decide whether you fail.

This type of behavior is certainly familiar to the American public, as the IRS has subjected them to all kinds of violations. However, these violations, taking place no less regularly in Finland than in the United States, fly in the face of the aura of utopia that seems to surround the social-democratic welfare states of Northern Europe.

The statists may be very comfortable with high taxes, but even they tend to become squeamish when they hear of the havoc wrought upon private individuals and their families by the tax authorities. And it is of course the private individuals and small businessmen who suffer the most aggression, because they seldom have the knowledge or the resources to defend themselves. Billionaires and big corporations at least have a fighting chance; the little guys don't. So much for the compassionate society.

Hey! I just looked at his blog (linked on his name). Stef's going to interview him. Cool!

Most of the article is, in fact, about the bankruptcy of the welfare state in Finnland. The tax bureaucracy is part of it. Grussner, btw, is a tax lawyer there.

Paul Bonneau's got four fantastic articles

at Strike The Root. [I don't think I have a link to them here. I'll have to fix that.]

Here's a piece of one:

I have to laugh at libertarians and anarchists depending on the murderous state to defend their life via the "right to life," and even more so depending on the "right to property" as they dutifully pay their taxes (surrender their property). I guess that means there is only a "right to a state-determined amount of property," eh?

The real reason to stop believing, is that "there is no there, there" (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland). There is nothing protecting you. It is a phantasm, just a meme in our heads--not a very useful one at that--which the state violates with astounding regularity. Stop believing in this statist propaganda, folks. If you want protection, then protect yourself, or join with others in a voluntary association to do it. If you want property, have enough that can be protected with your gun, or by your friends with guns.

That's not to say that you can't ever use the state to help you in this protection, but keep in mind that doing so is exactly like employing the Mafia to protect you. Yeah, sometimes it will come out your way, but the cost will be high. And they are not the most reliable folks to depend on, and will turn on you when it suits them. Oh, and never forget that protection implies submission.

I do have a link to The Libertarian Enterprise, don't I? I put his link in to show that he's published elsewhere as well.

I'm speechless with admiration

for this new, young writer, Patrick Coleman, who absolutely kicks the asses of the critics of WikiLeaks. Not to mention Utilitarianism, the failings of which (and its predecessors as well) have led to the relativistic morass of modern society.

I suppose I have to support my contention that this fellow is brilliant with a quote:

We have all seen the movie or TV show in which the police are attempting to bring down an organized crime ring, but in order to do so they need to put a witness on the stand. If they put the witness on the stand, however, it is a near certainty that the gang will go after the witness along with his family and close friends. Knowing this, the police decide to take precautions, such as putting the witness and his immediate family in protective custody. But despite the police’s best efforts, the witness is somehow found and killed. Of course, if they had not tried to put the witness on the stand, the witness and his family would very likely not be in danger, but they would also be willingly leaving violent criminals on the street. Who do we blame for the death of that witness? The murdering gangsters, or the people taking every responsible step they can to stop the murdering gangsters?

The answer, I think, is evident. The US government has plunged itself, the people under its rule, the occupied portions of the Middle East, and arguably the entire world, neck-deep into a mire of destruction. It has facilitated and maintained an environment whose only product is death, and whose only escape is truth; but the truth, in this case, is dangerous. The ruling class would have us believe that our ignorance is necessary for our security, when it is really only necessary for their continued theft and expansion. Were it not for the actions of unaccountable and sociopathic politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate interests, over 900,000 Iraqis, Afghans and coalition troops would still be alive today. Are we really going to believe that people who are responsible for extinguishing that many lives, the overwhelming majority of which were innocent, and have shown no sincere care or remorse for their atrocities, actually possess the empathy to be concerned about the remote chance that a few people might die because certain details might have been missed in Wikileaks’ three month harm minimization process? I think not. And in the tragic and, unfortunately, likely case that more people do die, keep in mind that it is because a coalition of violent governments started a war, not because peaceful activists tried to end it.

This is the footnote explaining the estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths from the linked website.

So, yes, I'm coming out 100% against the current wars.

Earth Crossing Asteroids

It's frickin' hopeless. Trying to keep them from hitting us, I mean. You gotta watch this video. I'm going to quote the guy's whole explanation, in case you're a complete newb to Youtube and can't figure out where he hid it:

View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.
The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects.

Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at http://www.naic.edu/~nolan/astorb.html

Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifo...

Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley.

I assume szyzyg is Scott Manley. What an amazing and terrifying video. Of course it makes space look more crowded than it really is, the objects aren't millions of miles in diameter.

Apparently nobody knows anything about this song:

Feelin' low, cuz I know that it's all over now
And nobody cares for what happens anyhow
There's no use to cry
Cuz life passed me by
It meant for me to lose when I was born.

Dad's the only person I ever heard sing it - I have no idea whose song it is. Or... I imagine the title is "Feelin' Low," but I don't know that, even. I googled every pair of words in there -- nothing. Actually, I didn't spell "cuz" as I have here.

I got my Kingston 19-in-1 USB 2.0 Flash Memory Card Reader

Easiest thing in the world to use. Just plug it into your computer, let it fire up the drives, plug in your SD card and - bada-bing-bada-boom - there are your pictures! In this case, 253 of the most disappointing images ever produced. Actually there are about twenty good ones. Mostly the ones my daughter took of spring flowers.

I've got a "before" training picture in there that you probably won't see. I let the younger girl play with the camera a bit, so there are about fifty blurry pictures of the cat and the dog...the ground, her eyeball, the inside of her mouth... She got a couple of good ones too, but I'll be throwing a lot of them out.

Buncha dumb punk kids

who'll never amount to nuthin'!

link.

[Edit - 8/27] I should probably say that the ones I know, I like very much.

Does anybody know why I can't download my camera anymore?

For the past few months, when I plug in my camera and turn it on, it's been making a different noise than it used to. I can take pictures with it but I can't get the computer to recognize the camera.

Tom Sowell conveys the core of his message

-the message of his many books and articles--in four paragraphs [here]:

Native intelligence may indeed not vary by neighborhood but actual performance-- whether in schools, on the job or elsewhere-- involves far more than native intelligence. Wasted intelligence does nothing for an individual or society.

The reason a surgeon can operate on your heart, while someone of equal intelligence who is not a surgeon cannot, is because of what different people actually did with their intelligence. That has always varied, not only from individual to individual but from group to group-- and not only in this country, but in countries around the world and across the centuries of human history.

One of the biggest fallacies of our time is the notion that, if all groups are not proportionally represented in institutions, professions or income levels, that shows something wrong with society. The very possibility that people make their own choices, and that those choices have consequences-- for themselves and for others-- is ignored. Society is the universal scapegoat.

If "luck" is involved, it is the luck to be born into families and communities whose values and choices turn out to be productive for themselves and for others who benefit from the skills they acquire. Observers who blame tests or other criteria for the demographic imbalances which are the rule-- not the exception-- around the world, are blaming whatever conveys differences for creating those differences.

Espresso Drops! That's what I need!

Concentrated espresso packets, like those soy sauce ones. When somebody hands me a bland-ass cup o' coffee, I want something to juice it up. ...That's manly, I mean.

Big Race today.

I finished the Minnesota Half Marathon. St. Paul is really a beautiful city, even down at the waterfront. I got 2:13:somethin', gun time. Waiting for them to post the official chip times, hopefully later today. That might knock off a minute or two.

Ah! Here we are! This is my line:
538 261/317 63/73 2168 Erkkila, Alan 46 M Brooklyn Center, MN 2:13:49 2:13:16

The first number is my overall place, then sex place (there were 46 guys slower than me), division place (ten putzes in the 40-49 division), 2168 was my bib number, there's my name, age, gender (in case you doubted it - actually they just took my word for it, they didn't ask for proof), home town, and then there's my gun time and chip time. You notice that I only gained (or lost, depending on how you look at it) 33 seconds. Ah, well.

I wanted to beat 2:12, but, heck, I got close.

Here I am! In the blue hat.

Ah, it's been a while since I quoted Kevin Carson:

The next time you hear complaints about someone having a “bad attitude,” keep this in mind: It’s entirely because of people with “bad attitudes” that you’re not a slave. For the fact that you’re not working on a chain gang building a pyramid, you should thank all those whose previous bad attitudes won your present degree of freedom. Their bad attitudes echo down to us through time as the principal obstacle to your re-enslavement in the here and now.

It's from here. That's not the only great thing he said; read the whole thing.

Feelin' a little stiff this evening

Bullsh**! I feel like an old man!

I ran 15 miles today. I quit four miles out from the house and walked back from there. That's 15 miles running plus four miles walking, btw - just so there's no ambiguity there. Didn't feel in the slightest bit tempted to do any intervals. It was humid as hell, but not too hot - cloudy...the sweat wasn't evaporating much, so I took it kind of easy. I was carrying a bottle of green tea (diet, unfortunately - not a great choice), and a bottle of FRS Quercetin. They seemed to work OK for me.

Got the big 1/2 marathon in St. Paul next Saturday. It'll be a flatter course than the one from my house to Cedar Lake. It was just a roller-blading race for years before they added the running race - what the hell, they have the course all laid out, might as well make a few more bucks out of it, eh? It's right along the bank of the Mississippi on Shepard and Warner roads. I don't remember much for elevation changes there, but it's been a long time since I drove on them.
---
I've also started repainting the house. That's been keeping me busy. It's way past due. We were considering residing, but the finances are a bit uncertain these days, so painting it is. The cedar siding holds paint just fine, but the redwood stuff on the gable ends hates to be covered up.
---
The puppy's tally for chewing up things we care about: 3 shoes, 2 belts and 2 baseball caps. I'd like to blame another belt on her, but it just broke because it was cheap, Chinese crap. She's chewed up quite a few other things, but that just gave us the excuse we needed to throw them out.

I see this all the effin' time...!

"Tenants" - people - are inhabitants of rental property!

"Tenets" are rules.

I have the urge to quote a little Voltairine de Claire

It was the intention of the Revolutionists to establish a system of common education, which should make the teaching of history one of its principal branches; not with the intent of burdening the memories of our youth with the dates of battles or the speeches of generals, nor to make the Boston Tea Party Indians the one sacrosanct mob in all history, to be revered but never on any account to be imitated, but with the intent that every American should know to what conditions the masses of people had been brought by the operation of certain institutions, by what means they had wrung out their liberties, and how those liberties had again and again been filched from them by the use of governmental force, fraud, and privilege. Not to breed security, laudation, complacent indolence, passive acquiescence in the acts of a government protected by the label "home-made," but to beget a wakeful jealousy, a never-ending watchfulness of rulers, a determination to squelch every attempt of those entrusted with power to encroach upon the sphere of individual action - this was the prime motive of the revolutionists in endeavoring to provide for common education.

"Confidence," said the revolutionists who adopted the Kentucky Resolutions, "is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, not in confidence; it is jealousy, not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go... In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

These resolutions were especially applied to the passage of the Alien laws by the monarchist party during John Adams' administration, and were an indignant call from the State of Kentucky to repudiate the right of the general government to assume undelegated powers, for said they, to accept these laws would be "to be bound by laws made, not with our. consent, but by others against our consent--that is, to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and to live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority." Resolutions identical in spirit were also passed by Virginia, the following month; in those days the States still considered themselves supreme, the general government subordinate.

To inculcate this proud spirit of the supremacy of the people over their governors was to be the purpose of public education! Pick up today any common school history, and see how much of this spirit you will find therein. On the contrary, from cover to cover you will find nothing but the cheapest sort of patriotism, the inculcation of the most unquestioning acquiescence in the deeds of government, a lullaby of rest, security, confidence--the doctrine that the Law can do no wrong, a Te Deum in praise of the continuous encroachments of the powers of the general government upon the reserved rights of the States, shameless falsification of all acts of rebellion, to put the government in the right and the rebels in the wrong, pyrotechnic glorifications of union, power, and force, and a complete ignoring of the essential liberties to maintain which was the purpose of the revolutionists. The anti-Anarchist law of post-McKinley passage, a much worse law than the Alien and Sedition acts which roused the wrath of Kentucky and Virginia to the point of threatened rebellion, is exalted as a wise provision of our All-Seeing Father in Washington.

Anarchism & American Traditions

Hey! This guy's got a good blog!

This is a great analysis of an old TV movie that used to plague us back in the days of the CBS-NBC-ABC TV oligopoly.

I need to post this Max Keiser show

Lloyd deMause

The Childhood Origins of the Holocaust

There is one exception to the conclusion that democracies have less wars. It is a result of the concept outlined earlier that social violence is mainly caused by fears of losing the mommy’s love and approval because you try to exercise your freedom and individuation (the psychohistorical term for this fear of freedom is “growth panic”).11 Psychoanalysts often term this “abandonment depression,”12 and demonstrate that people who have abusive or neglectful childrearing fear all progress, all success, all freedoms and new challenges, and react with annihilation anxiety, fears that the fragile self is disintegrating, and by displacing their rage against “bad self” enemies. This is why wars are found far more frequently after periods of prosperity and social progress — wars after prosperity being 6 to 20 times bigger than those during depressions13 — plus no great-power war in the past two centuries was started during a depression.14 So the cycle of war historically begins with progress which leads to growth panic, fears of loss of maternal support, fusion with Motherland and finally war against all the “Bad Self” enemies of the Motherland.

But careful empirical studies of wars have also shown that the nations that are among the most prone to war are those that are in transition to democracy.15 This makes sense in terms of our “growth panic” model of war: democratizing nations are more belligerent because only a small portion of their populace are more advanced childrearing modes (psychoclasses). These more evolved psychoclasses — like liberals in Germany and Austria before the two World Wars — produce an explosion in industrialization and new social and political freedoms. But the less evolved psychoclasses — who were still in the majority — felt the new successes and freedoms were “selfish” and feared the loss of approval of the internal voice of their Killer Parent alter, and so had to oppose modernization and democratization . . . then fuse with the Killer Motherland and find “enemies” to punish. That is why genocidal wars have been specialties of fast-changing democratizing states which are “leaping into modernity.” As Michael Mann puts it in his book The Dark Side of Democracy, “murderous cleansing has been moving across the world as it has modernized.16 Even the United States carried out a genocide of American Indians while they were democratizing, following Thomas Jefferson’s directive claiming they “justified extermination.”17 Once these periods of democratizing wars are passed and the majority of the nation is able to achieve what I term “socializing mode” childrearing,18 mature democracies have in fact never gone to war with each other.19

Let me get those footnotes...

12. James F. Masterson, The Search for the Real Self: Unmasking the Personality Disorders of Our Age. New York: The Free Press, 1988, p. 61.
13. Joshua S. Goldstein, “Kondratieff Waves as War Cycles.” International Studies Quarterly 29(1985): 425.
14. Raimo Vayrynen, “Economic Fluctuations, Military Expenditures, and Warfare in International Relations.” In Robert K. Schaeffer, Ed., War in the World-System. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989, p. 121.
15. Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War.” International Security 20(1995): 5-38; Michael Mann The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
16. Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, p. 4.
17. Ibid, p. ix.
18. Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 249.
19. John A. Vasquez, “What Do We Know About War?” In John A. Vasquez, Ed., What Do We Know About War? Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 200, p. 367.

Well, I know I can complete a half-marathon.

I ran the distance today for the first time this year. We won't talk about the time. I know a guy who did one in 2:12 already. I'm not close to that yet.

Damn near fainted while showering up. Napped for four hours afterward. At least there was no blood. I hate it when there's blood.

Fourth of July weekend.

We camped out at the in-laws over the Fourth of July Weekend. Set up the pop-up trailer in their yard, so we could have the puppy inside with us at night. I ran the Vermilion 10K in 59:11. I'm happy with that time.

That's what I posted on Facebook.

Elaboration: We got out extremely late - 8:30 Friday night. Stopped to grocery shop at the Cloquet Walmart. Ended up there for an hour because a clerk misdirected my wife to the batteries. Got to the cabin at 2AM and started setting up the pop-up trailer. In bed by 3:00. We hadn't gotten around to doing a practice run on the pop-up, so getting it up in an hour wasn't bad.

I got up at 6:30 to run my race. I was primed to run 9:30 miles. I ran 9:32. I think that's just awesome!

I can't really remember what went on the rest of the day, but I know I crashed in a chair before sundown.

We went swimming on Sunday. I got a good sunburn on the parts I hadn't tanned yet. Most parts. There're some that never see the sun. Crying shame, I'm sure.

The highlight of the weekend was, we took out the boat Sunday evening at about 8:30 and drove around the point. The water was reflecting the copper-colored sunset mingled with glints of cerulean and deep navy blue, the clouds were pink and purple and peach...it was just beautiful. Then, everyone in the universe started shooting off fireworks. Pretty amazing displays, most of them.

Oh, also, yesterday, I helped my father-in-law cut down a big balsam tree that was hanging over the driveway. I didn't have much for roots, so the wind had blown it over. Too bad they couldn't keep the tip of it alive until Christmas, it would have made a perfect Christmas tree.

So that's what's new around here.

Mindsight, by Daniel J. Siegel

Link

The title looks like it's just another pop-psych book, filled with dumb buzz-words and magic psychobabble that you'd look like an idiot dropping into a conversation, but Siegel goes deep into the latest science on the workings of the brain, illustrating with case stories from his own psychotherapy practice. Well-told stories and clearly explained science.

Get it. It'll help.

Robert Heinlein on Duty

“Do not confuse 'duty' with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.”

Care of Stephen Browne.

Have I mentioned that Robert E. Howard is one of my favorite writers?

A guilty pleasure, I guess.

I just finished watching The Whole Wide World, with Renee Zellweger and Vincent D'Onofrio. "A true story about the true love of the greatest pulp fiction writer of all time."

Where the hell was I when this movie was out? Oh, I know: we were having our first baby. That knocked a whole lot of BS out of my head. I didn't get around to throwing out my Conan collection, though. My daughter just pulled them out of my paperback shelf and read them last year.

If you decide to read one, "Beyond the Black River" is the best story. I think it's in Conan: The Warrior. Ah, yes it is. There are other great ones, but there's something more in that one. Je ne sais quoi.

It's a beautiful movie. Howard was more than the bios in the books, apparently - though he was quite a lot in those. The movie is based on the memoir by Novalyne Price of her time with him. Brought a tear to my eye. Get it and watch it.

Oh, Novalyne Price's book is One Who Walked Alone.

How can we have sustainable government?

Here's the PDF he mentions. It's just a two-pager, so have no fear about downloading it.

"But what about the poor?" you ask?

Raise kids to be entrepreneurs!

Here's the way to do it.

Thank you, anarchei!

Ah, crap, I gotta go to bed.

I didn't notice: my last post was my 2500th!

But few of my own words, of course.

Speaking of someone else's words, here's J. Neil Schulman praising Glenn Beck's.

I'm pretty sure the Overton window isn't named after the Overton who wrote An Arrow Against All Tyrants. No, the link I found, there, proves it wasn't. Ol' Richard certainly did his part to move the window, eh?

You know what sucks?

When you accept that all political parties' critiques of all other political parties are essentially correct, it really leaves you very little to say about the topic. The Democrats are right about the Republicans, the Republicans are right about the Democrats, Conservatives are right about Liberals and vice versa, Marxists are right about Capitalists - and again vice versa...

We're talking about the Capitalism as it really exists, not the pure Free Market that has never existed except in Iceland and Ireland, and, well, actually anywhere where a government was nominally acknowledged but actually ignored, like colonial Pennsylvania and the back country of... well, any back country.

Take the oil spill. Of course they f'ed up! They're all standing around pointing guns at each other and everybody who looks at 'em instead of concentrating on getting petroleum products to me. 'They' are everybody sticking their noses in between the hole in the ground and me - all the "governmental affairs" specialists in the various companies lobbying for special privileges and wheeling and dealing for special restrictions that only hurt their competition, all the environmental groups lobbying for their personal hobbies, all the bureaucrats fighting for their cushy jobs and all the politicians preening before their constituents so they can keep their cushy jobs.

We've got to do whatever we can to stop supporting the lot of 'em.

By the way, on Probligo's blog I repented of ever having supported George Bush or anything he did. That certainly doesn't mean that I support anything Obama's doing - anybody who thought he return us to Clinton's '90s was an ignoramous - but that should all be clear from my first two paragraphs.

I think it was Kropotkin who wanted us to grow societies until they choke out governments (I'm using the terms as Tom Paine used them). That's the plan.

Sad news on the spare blog

I lost an old, reliable friend.

It'd be tasteless to let you think I'm talking about a person or a pet. I've posted the last days in the life of my first powertool over there.

I haven't been able to find the old camera

I haven't really had a lot of time to look, though. The main drain in the laundry room backed up right when we (all right, I mean my wife) needed to do six loads of laundry. Well, part of that need was created by the back up soaking all the clothes on the laundry room floor. So, after we got tired of vacuuming up the water and lugging the bucket around to the shower drain, we jury-rigged a hose directly from the washer to the shower drain. Somebody still had to watch to make sure that didn't overflow - it hasn't, except when I covered the drain with 'Liina's tub when I was giving her her bath last night and the washer started draining just as she finished. I didn't know it was running because I had the dehumidifier and the ceiling fan running to help the rug dry out from the first flood.

Anyway, I went to Menard's to see what they had to unclog it. Being kind of a Tim Allenish sort of guy, I bought the strongest thing they have: concentrated sulfuric acid.

I have a recommendation: use something else to unclog your drain.

No, I used the stuff carefully and conscientiously, but the whole house smells like a giant pig took a dump in it. And it's still too early to check and see if it worked or not.

Hey! We just doubled our chance of having a good time on a Friday night!

Nooo, nobody changed their sexual orientation! Jeez!

We bought a pop-up camper. I'll show you some pix of it and talk about them tomorrow. $500. But it's older than the guy we bought it from.

Yeah, the canvas needs work, and there's a little bit of fiberglass work to do too, but it seems pretty solid otherwise.

I'm fine

Running. I've got a race Saturday, the Manitou 15K around White Bear Lake. I liked that run back in 2007 so I wanted to do it again. I ran about that distance just now in 110 minutes, compared to 93 minutes for the race back then, but training isn't racing. Plus, I think it's warmer now than it will be Saturday morning. They're predicting thunderstorms.

I'll post the results on the other blog (linked at the bottom of my link bar).

We went up to the inlaws place on Lake Vermilion for Memorial Day weekend. Sid and I put the track system in, so we could take a boat ride and we enjoyed a cruise around Birch Point and back. Very nice. The lilacs are still in bloom up there and the wild roses are blooming in the ditches.

The kids went in swimming and the puppy thought she'd join them. I think she's decided she's not a water dog. The waters pretty cold yet. The ice typically isn't off the lake until the second week of May.

Following the dictate of Xerxes, or whoever it was,

I worked up my sweat today by teaching the Little One to ride a bike. We're not there yet, but she's getting better. I'm just holding her under the arms to help her balance. I keep bashing my ankles on the long bolts that formerly held the training wheels. I need to remember to wear boots next time.

It wasn't hard to work up a sweat, it was 93° and humid as heck today. I'm sure it was hotter whereever you are, but that's by far the hottest it's been this year up here. We're lookin' at thunderstorms for the next couple days.

Oh! I forgot to mention, we got a puppy the other day! A schnoodle! Cutest little thing! Definitely a lap dog.

Awesome News! Mark Twain's unpublished papers are about to be published!

After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all
By Guy Adams

Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.

The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.

That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.

They make much of salacious details in the article, but, having been tantalized most of my life by biographies of Twain/Clemens, I want to see what he really thought.

H/T Lowkey at FDR.

It's been a while since I offered a German lesson

I suppose you were getting rusty

Hi

I've just been adding tags to all my posts lately. Besides running and fathering. What I really wanted to do was make it easy to see what else I've said about running.

It's forcing me to reread old posts. It's funny to see that I haven't written all that much that I disagree with now.

Been running a lot lately.

Well, not a lot compared to what I will be doing. For those who haven't seen the other blog lately, I've signed up to run another TCM. The TC 1-mile is tomorrow. I had today scheduled as a rest day, but I didn't feel overtrained in the slightest, so I decided to go run a slow 2 miles (+ whatever - I ran for twenty five minutes; half street/half trails so it's hard to measure) tonight. I ran it all straight away from the house and then walked back in 45 minutes.

I need to keep records of all that because the company is offering fabulous prizes for people who do a crapload of that sort of thing. Speaking of which, I haven't told the form that I ran 32 minutes Saturday, and 26 each yesterday and Monday.

No adventures so far. I'm too experienced at this to screw it up. [I'm tweaking my inner gremlin. Hope he's got a sense of humor. "(Snort!) Sense of humor?! I'm THE ONE with a sense of humor around here? You'd better hope I have a sense of humor, with you callin' me a gremlin all the time." Well, let's not put the therapy session online.]

What kind of a name is Cali Supernova?!

I don't know, but I'm copyrighting it for commercial purposes.

Hey! A guy brought up some questions

for Stef from the book I'm reading/working through on the Sunday show! [Which I missed on Sunday because I'd rather be out playing with the kids and doing yardwork on a beautiful day than hanging out in my basement, when I know that the show will be available as a podcast within a few days, and I'm not feeling as deeply troubled by anything as to need to call in myself. Of course, that was Sunday. If I'd had to deal the things I had to deal with this morning then, I'd have had cause to call in. But things seem better now, so I'll not go into that.]

Stef took four calls (in 2½ hours) - all brilliant - the first of which is on Self-Therapy. It constitutes a great review of the book that'll have you clicking my link to pick it up. Stef hadn't read it, but one of the FDR guys read a passage and asked what Stef thought of it. It wasn't all praise, he chides (hilariously) therapists and Buddhists for being too loose with the forgiveness for evil people.

Check out the podcast. (It's #1653, if you find you have to go here to look for it.)

Étienne de La Boétie

"Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces."

co The Mises Store.

Hm. Can't link it right now. Wonder what's up. Here's the ebook.

"The State is just

this bitch that we've been married to for the last 10,000 years."

--Stefan Molyneux, podcast FDR 1645.

Ask them 'why?'

Jay Earley, in his book Self-Therapy, asks me to name a couple of my protectors and answer some questions about them.

I think it will be easy to do. There are quite a bunch of them in the room, waving their hands and excitedly shouting, "pick me!" I'm going to pick two of the tough guys in the back, who aren't waving their hands: The Distractor and The Mumbler.

I'd like to make this funny, but I won't. The questions:

What is it's role in helping you manage your life and interact with the world?

How does it relate to other people?

How does it protect you from pain?

What is its positive intent for you?

What is it trying to protect you from?

Mr. Distractor ("Don't call me an "it.")
Mr. Mumbler ("Don't call me an "it.")

I'll get back to this later.

Author Alice Miller dies

I'm very sad, but she lived a long and fruitful life. I'm going to have to do a bit of fisking on this obit, though.

Apr 23, 2010 1:10 PM | By Sapa-dpa

Alice Miller, the author and psychologist who claimed that Adolf Hitler was bad because he was spanked as a boy, has died at the age of 87, says her Berlin publisher.

All right, that's just a sensationalistic "grabber." We'll let it slide here.

Miller, who was born in Poland, later lived in Switzerland and spent her last years in Provence in France, died on April 12 and was buried in strict privacy. This was not made public at the time, said Suhrkamp Verlag, the publishing company.

As a psychoanalyst she was convinced that corporal punishment and sexual abuse during childhood had lifelong effects on her patients.

Her views were controversial, with some arguing that the notion triggered a wave of false allegations against parents and teachers, after suggestible patients became convinced they were abuse victims.

Which is also controversial; the truth or falsity of the allegations, I mean.

In her 1980 book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, she proposed that Hitler's father traumatised the young Adolf with beatings and verbal abuse and taught him to despise himself and Jews.

She did not merely propose that claim, she cited proof that he was a brutally abused child. Her point was to prove her thesis.

Historians replied that the Nazi dictator's personality was not so easily explained, but the thesis was still widely publicised.

She didn't claim it was the whole explanation. And, by the way, "historians"? How many and how knowledgable are they about recent developments in psychology? Can't reporters ask these questions?

Her books about childhood trauma and giftedness appeared in 30 languages. Miller was born in 1923 in Lviv, which was then in Poland and is now a city in Ukraine.

Now here is a fitting obituary:

...[E]xposing the full extent of the psychological damage flowing from the justification of violence against children was Alice Miller's life's work and her great contribution to the world. She showed how people will go to incredible lengths, for their entire lives, for generations, just to avoid the natural feelings of humiliation, shame and anger that flow from being abused, and then having that abuse justified. People will do just about anything -- excuse, avoid, forget, invent whole ideologies -- if it will allow them to continue to repress those negative feelings, and continue to maintain the fiction of the justification.

What I learned from being the youngest of five children

Probably the biggest lesson I learned is that people who want to boss you around need to have their heads out of their rears. I never minded getting an order from somebody who knew what they were talking about, at least in the situation - their tone was important and could effect whether I resisted or talked back or not, but if they were right about something needing to be done I did it.

Yes, I assumed the authority to judge whether the thing needed to be done or not. The criteria were:
Could they hurt me?
Could they get away with hurting me?
Would they get in trouble for hurting me?
Would the consequences of their being in trouble roll down to me?
Was the matter at hand objectively important?
How important?
For what?

Each of those deserves greater elaboration, but I have to do other things right now.

Watch out for this mistake

From a review of All About “Heaven”: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, by Lisa Miller, Newsweek's religion correspondent

...[T]here is an unthinking "respect" automatically accorded to religious ideas that throttles our ability to think clearly about these questions. Miller's book – after being a useful exposition of these ideas – swiftly turns itself into a depressing illustration of this. She describes herself as a "professional sceptic", but she is, in fact, professionally credulous. Instead of trying to tease out what these fantasies of an afterlife reveal about her interviewees, she quizzes everyone about their heaven as if she is planning to write a Lonely Planet guide to the area, demanding more and more intricate details. She only just stops short of demanding to know what the carpeting will be like. But she never asks the most basic questions: where's your evidence? Where are you getting these ideas from? These questions are considered obvious when we are asking about any set of ideas, except when it comes to religion, when they are considered to be a slap in the face.

Of course there's plenty of proof that the idea of heaven can be comforting, or beautiful – but that doesn't make it true. The difference between wishful thinking and fact-seeking is something most six-year-olds can grasp, yet Miller – and, it seems, the heaven-believing majority – refuse it here. Yes, I would like to see my dead friends and relatives again. I also would like there to be world peace, a million dollars in my current account, and for Matt Damon to ask me to marry him. If I took my longing as proof they were going to happen, you'd think I was deranged.

"Rationalist questions are not helpful," announces one of her interviewees – a professor at Harvard, no less. This seems to be Miller's view too. She stresses that to believe in heaven you have to make "a leap of faith" – but in what other field in life do we abandon all need for evidence? Why do it in one so crucial to your whole sense of existence? And if you are going to "leap" beyond proof, why leap to the Christian heaven? Why not convince yourself you are going to live after death in Narnia, or Middle Earth, for which there is as much evidence? She doesn't explain: her arguments dissolve into a feel-good New Age drizzle.

Hey, kids!

If you enjoyed this discussion, don't miss this one!

Here's something to think about

If you like that song, the guy wants you to do something.

Signs and Wonders

Earthquakes, volcanoes, meteorites, wars and rumors of wars, floods... Got any famines or pestilence?

Whoops! Got some of the latter at my house. Gotta take care of something right now.

Here's a fun interview of Doug Casey

by the Whiskey and Gunpowder boys: Anarchy Is the Solution to the Evil Idiocy of the State. And here's an interview of him and Tom Woods:



Update: here's a bit from Anarchy, Part II:

Doug: I find the concept of a necessary evil rather repugnant. It’s largely sophistry, usually trotted out to justify some type of criminality. Can anything that’s evil really be necessary? And can anything that’s necessary really be evil?

Entirely apart from that, people say the state is necessary because that’s all they’ve ever known. But it’s not, in fact, part of the cosmic firmament. There have been times and places in history when central authority was so distant, or negligent, that the people did function — and prosper — in what was essentially a functioning anarchy.

Kevin Carson has some disturbing news and analysis

From Corporate Welfare Queen Kills 25

Mountaintop removal is just what the name implies. It involves clearing areas of thousands of acres, in the process filling nearby valleys and stream beds with debris and destroying entire watersheds. It also involves showering surrounding areas with coal dust from silos — you know, the dust Blankenship’s taxes pay the schoolkids to breathe. And then there’s the multi-billion gallon sludge ponds full of coal mine waste. The dam enclosing one such Massey pond gave way several years ago, with its contents wound up in the Big Sandy River. A number of towns lie in the flood path of other such ponds, should they give way.

Now, you’d think tort liability for the full damages of wholesale devastation of the entire countryside, the poisoned water and coal dust, the deaths from gross negligence, and all the rest of it, would seriously undermine the profitability of mountaintop removal. And you’d be right.

That’s exactly what the regulatory state was created to avoid. Let’s look at a little history. I can’t recommend strongly enough “The Transformation of American Law,” by Morton Horwitz. According to Horwitz, the common law of tort liability was radically altered by state courts in the early to mid-19th century to make it more business-friendly. Under the traditional standard of liability, an actor was responsible for harm that resulted from his actions — period. Negligence was beside the point. Courts added stricter standards of negligence and intent, in order to protect business from costly lawsuits for externalities they might impose on their neighbors. The regulatory state subsequently imposed far weaker standards than the traditional common law; the main practical effect was to preempt what remained of tort liability. A regulatory standard amounts to a license to commit torts below the threshold of that standard, and lawsuits against polluters and other malfeasors can be met with the defense that “we are fully in compliance with regulatory standards.” In some cases, as with food libel laws or product disparagement laws, even voluntarily meeting a more stringent standard may be construed as disparagement of products that merely meet the regulatory standard. For example, Monsanto has had mixed success in some jurisdictions suppressing the commercial free speech of those who advertise their milk as free from rBGH; and conventional beef producers have similarly managed in some cases to prevent competitors from testing for mad cow disease more frequently than the law mandates.

So a class action suit against a coal mining company for the public nuisance created by mountaintop removal could be thwarted by simply demonstrating that the operation met EPA regulatory standards, even if such operations caused serious harm to the property rights and quality of life of the surrounding community.

Well, I was thinking about purging the most egregious statists from the blogroll

But it seems there aren't many left. A couple, but they're pretty good for what I say they're good for, so I'm not inclined to dump them. One thing I want to do, though, is add a blog to the roll: Faith Reconsidered, by a guy who calls himself Eulercircles.

I'm afraid I have to admit, I don't get the reference, even though I minored in Math. A minor, apparently, doesn't take you far enough into the subject to find out what Euler was up to. I just worked my way to the end of the "cookbook" and gave it up as a bad job. Couldn't get those dif e.q.s to come out fluffy like they're supposed to.

Oh, and Kyle Bennett has a great post that'll stand the test of time (it already has, to a certain degree): An Agorist Manifesto in 95 Theses.

Anyway, on to the reconstruction project.

OK, done. I ended up just deleting some dead blogs. I felt bad about scratching some old team members, but there was nothing there to look at. I kept a couple because they still link me and I'm a link whore.

Since I'm actually fairly proud of the new me, I should get out there and make my presence felt. Anybody got any good ideas about where to go?

Ah, heck. Watch this instead.

Greatest Slide Stunt Ever

Yup

Believers need to grapple with this

Why I am no longer a Christian.

They made better looking cars back in the '30s

See these beauties.

I was going to say, 'No matter how you slice it, that '33 Plymouth Coupe is a beautiful car' 'til I looked at some of these a little closer. It is, indeed, possible to slice 'em so I don't like 'em.  Whoops!  I meant these, not those.  Same difference, as my mother would say, but wrong for the context.

By the way, I got that picture here.

'20s cars are too utilitarian and '40s cars are too rounded for my taste. I like that long, sleek, sexy/curvy look they had in the '30s. They made a lot of good-lookin' cars in the mid-50s to late '60s too, and a few since, but my favorites are from the '30s.

I told you about the old antique car museum in Muskogee that my Dad took me to.  I'm not sure I conveyed the depth of my mourning when my Mom took me to one of her antique booths a decade ago and it was in that building and the cars were all gone.  I'd visited the place, I think, four times.  I could have recited many of the plaques to you at one point.  When I was in there with Mom, I walked around and looked at the place where the copper Rolls Royce had been and Hitler's Mercedes, and...I don't remember what all else, it's been too long, and I haven't spent that much of my time dwelling on it, really... 

But the place was a touchstone to me.  "Antique Car Museum" indeed!  It was like a shrine to me!  The only reason that made any sense as a name, was that the collection was so eclectic that only a broad term could cover them all.  Unless you wanted to call it "Shrine to Automotive Artistry." 

I always looked for the billboard for it and I always looked to make sure it was still open whenever we passed by.  I did bring the wife and the boys there, back in the early '90s.  I'm glad of that.

Anyway, when I was in there with Mom, some old geezer was sweeping the floor and complaining that there were no visitors.  Mom commisserated with him a bit and he moved on.  Then she told me that he was the owner,  and he'd sold all the cars due to some legal difficulty...  Dude, I really wanted to cry then.

Bring love

I plan to make a plaque of that phrase and hang it above the front door. I think there are very good reasons to put on either side, out or in. Maybe I need to make two.

The first should go on the outside, I think. We need to bring more in. When we've got enough to share, I'll put one on the inside.

Now this is naiveté

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." --James Madison, Federalist No. 57

I got it from these guys; the Founders Quote daily email.

David Friedman praises his father, Milton's, childrearing methods

This speech was given as David accepted the Goldwater Award for his father in 1997. Milton was apparently unable to make it for health reasons, though he did call in. The award ceremony was MC'ed by US Rep (R, OK) J.C. Watts, who did a wonderful speech that I only wish were more true than it is, as did Arnold Schwartzenegger, and there is a good video of Milton himself on the c-span clip.

But none of it holds a candle to David's stories of growing up as Milton Friedman's son. The guy got fathering right.

I have David's book, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life. It reads like he talks: witty, mischievous, informative.

Oh! My! God!

It's pretty certain that I know victims of this pedophile. Or victims of his victims, at least. The two murderers I knew best were both Catholic boys. I knew one deaf boy who went to that school. His family left town. It seemed sudden to me, but we'd already parted as friends, so I wasn't paying attention.

No, I take that back. I don't know that he ever went there. I know for a fact he went to a different school. Whether or not there was any contact with the kids from Father Murphy's school I couldn't say.

But, since I heard about this, I've been thinking about who that I know might have been a victim of "serious" child abuse or molestation. I'm thinking of the sullen kids who became drug users and dropped out. One of the above murderes fit that bill perfectly. Another kid was just kind of boisterous in grade school turned quiet in Junior High and eventually went to prison for trashing the old school.

There were other kids. Kids who never liked me and I never liked them. In seventh and eighth grades they were the peckerheads who made junior high hell. Then they got into drugs and dropped out. I'm thinking the ones - the "burnouts" we called them - who lasted longer in school, weren't trying to bury traumatic memories.

I felt guilty in High School, I remember. Not about those kids and their problems, whatever they may have been. Back then, I was glad to have them out of my life. No, I felt guilty that I was smarter and stronger than almost everyone I knew, and I was guaranteed to go to Heaven. I didn't deserve any of that. There were people who worked out harder, studied harder and were tons better witnesses of the Love of Jesus than I was, but such were the facts.

Didn't take me long to blow all that shit up. Waiting to find out what Jesus had in mind for me to do with these gifts - and, particularly, what my idle hands found to do during that waiting - accounted for that.

And now... now that I know why those kids had those troubles, I feel guilty that I never reached out to them. I wasn't devoid of similar experiences. Some of us who'd experienced various kinds of abuse didn't use chemical drugs, we used Jesus instead. I'd say the evidence that I've seen, points to the theory that the severity, duration and type of abuse affect the outcome. I'm sure the professionals have beaten that dead horse to smithereens, but I'm just discovering the value of psychology myself.

Well, I gotta get the beanie ready for bed. (No school this week, so her mother and I aren't watching the clock.)

Update: You should go here to see what Stef has to say on this topic. You have the choice to watch his video, or read what he says in it. Or both. It's still a kick in the gut to hear my town spoken of in this context.

Here is a very clear statement of the Objectivist Credo

The context is a debate between two Objectivists and two Canadian Socialists. (The Objectivists are Canadian as well, but Peikoff was living in NYC at the time and I think he lives in California now. I think he must have American citizenship, but I haven't heard about that.)

Sorry... Got distracted.

Here's a rap we can all get down with:

Logic Texts

William Stanley Jevons, the Englishman who discovered the subjective theory of value simultaneously with Austrian Karl Menger and Frenchman Léon Walras, wrote a book called Elementary Lessons in Logic, which he considered an introduction to John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive.

The latter was highly recommended by Dr. James Hall, whose course, Tools of Thinking I bought from The Teaching Company and the latter is on sale now by The Mises Institute.

I set myself the task of reading them.

Broke bleeps like me go for the free online ebook.

My comment spammer reminded me of something

A week ago last Sunday pastor Paul did a great sermon on The Prodigal Son. He based it on something he read by a guy who did an anthropological study by going around the Middle East telling New Testament stories to Arabs and Jews who'd never heard them and carefully noting their reactions.

After church, I said to my family, "You know, if the whole Bible were like that story, I'd have no trouble with it." Then I discovered that I had to repeat the whole sermon for the benefit of those who were in the room with me, but weren't listening.

Jeez Louise.

[Speaking of Jeez Louise, I just corrected a couple of typos that made it past my editing efforts.]

What's Nietzche talking about here?

A little guessing game.

Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!

Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!

Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,--the cold monster!

Everything will it give YOU, if YE worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.

It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours!

Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!

You don't have to look far here to find out.

I'd say it's funny that I didn't remember that passage, but reading Also Sprach Zarathustra is like hitting yourself in the head repeatedly with a 2x4. It does feel good when you quit.

Oops! Forgot to H/T William Norman Grigg at Lewrockwell.com

Proof that there's a Heaven

No, I just mean the picture. That's Burg Hohenzollern. Been there. It was just a cool, sunny day when I was there. Walked all over that hill and the next one. The interior of the castle is nice...castle-y. Sort of half-way between the Residenz in Munich and Meersburg (the actual burg, not the town; 'burg' means fortress, though not to the degree that 'festung' does - 'burg' allows for a considerable amount of decoration - Wikipedia covers all that here).

The 'halfway' remark is tongue-in-cheek.

My favorite castle is Meersburg, my favorite room in a castle is the drinking room in Burg Lichtenstein.

Have I said all this before?

Happy Spring

Ya all Equinoxed out?

Interesting Juxtaposition on Freedom News Daily today

3) Israel: Rocket fired from Gaza kills Thai worker

Los Angeles Times

"A rocket launched from the Gaza Strip killed a Thai farmworker in southern Israel on Thursday, the first such fatality in the area in more than a year. The blast occurred in a clump of greenhouses in the farming community of Netiv Haasara, just north of Gaza. The 30-year-old victim was not immediately identified. Rocket and mortar fire into southern Israel from Gaza, which once occurred daily, has been dramatically reduced since the Israelis' 22-day assault on the coastal strip at the end of 2008 and early last year. But in recent days, the number of attacks has increased, including five in a 48-hour period, military officials said." (03/18/10)

http://tinyurl.com/ykgtgm3 -----

4) Federal drug thugs launch new anti-tobacco offensive "for the children"

Los Angeles Times

"Taking aim at the tobacco industry's youth marketing machinery, the Food and Drug Administration Thursday outlawed free samples of cigarettes and banned the use of tobacco brand names on promotional gear and in the sponsorship of concerts and sporting events. Theagency also added a federal ban on the sale of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products to people under 18, imposing a uniform standard on varying state restrictions already in place. ... The new rules 'will help our kids stay healthier by making it harder for tobacco companies to target them,' said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at a press conference announcing the new marketing rules." (03/18/10)

http://tinyurl.com/yb2ojwz

The government really has only one tool: search and destroy.

A minor obsession

I was watching a PBS special a while back, David Broza at Masada, which I thought was wonderful. He had this beautiful young woman on singing with him. I missed her name when he announced her, so I tracked her down - from the "Masada" performers page (that's the link above). Apparently she's a cellist named Maya Belsitzman. Not much on the web about her. Wikipedia's got nothing.

She just looked so overjoyed to be there.

This is really important

And it doesn't end with infancy.

Hey! One of the Hot Facts Girls is doing a series on

Norse Mythology! Very cool. Here's the first video. I'd like to hear some opinions about the series from greater experts than I. I got all my info from Magnus Magnusson. I both read the book and watched the twelve hour documentary series (twice).

I probably should have linked the Wikipedia page.

So... I actually have more important things to talk about, but enjoy a little fluff after that last hit. (If my idioms seem vague, well... just take 'em however you want.)

Here's a good quote, from a guy named Nathan:

Even if we take the premise that atheism is religion, if you're going to call atheism a cult then you must logically, implicitly admit that all religion consists of cults. But then the starting premise ultimately leads to the realm of nihilism, a self-detonating position.

Religion is about the bigoted, prejudicial thinking that dismisses the lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary in favor of a given position.

Atheism is accepting the lack of evidence and considering evidence to the contrary. You couldn't get more opposite than that.

It's in response to this video by Richard Dawkins:



Another commenter brings up Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." You can find that on line here.

I mentioned a while back that I enjoy a good heresy now and then

They used to call these people Devil Worshippers. They seem to be sweeping some things under the rug in this article.

All sorts o' fun stuff here.

Here are two of Stefan Molyneux's videos

that I think are particularly hard hitting:


An internet aquaintance has translated this into Finnish. I'm working on reading that.

Update: I just replaced that version with the one with Chinese subtitles.

Here's the other one:



Stef misspeaks Joe Stack's name a couple times. I wonder if he was making a freudian connection with Richard Speck on the first one. No guesses on the later one.

Against my better judgment,

so to speak, I'm going to post this link to Vincent Cheung's Christian Apologetics site because I think Christians need to argue their point better than they do. Of course, there's still an awful lot of this sort of thing going on there,

but he's better than the rest.

While doing the menial tasks,

of which my job largely consists today, I found myself meditating on the word "figment." Well, it was because a gal in the office said, "You don't see me! I'm a figment!" We thought she had today - President's Day - off.

I'd never heard the word used in isolation before. And it shouldn't be; at least not in that context.

fig·ment (fgmnt)
n.
Something invented, made up, or fabricated: just a figment of the imagination.

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[Middle English, from Latin figmentum, from fingere, to form; see dheigh- in Indo-European roots.]

figment [ˈfɪgmənt]
n
a fantastic notion, invention, or fabrication a figment of the imagination
[from Late Latin figmentum a fiction, from Latin fingere to shape]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 6th Edition 2003. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Bacon!! Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!

I'm sure you've seen that commercial.

But I mean Sir Francis. Here's the source of a couple of famous aphorisms. See if you can pick them out.

The sixth part of my work (to which the rest is subservient and ministrant) discloses and sets forth that philosophy which by the legitimate, chaste, and severe course of inquiry which I have explained and provided is at length developed and established. The completion however of this last part is a thing both above my strength and beyond my hopes. I have made a beginning of the work--a beginning, as I hope, not unimportant:--the fortune of the human race will give the issue;--such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined. For the matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human race, and all power of operation. For man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature's order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails.

Okay, everything but the last two sentences was obfuscation on my part as far as my question was concerned, but I wanted to include that part to show Bacon's admirable humility before the task he foresaw.

That was the antepenultimate paragraph. To continue the theme of exposing proper scientific humility, let me submit the penultimate and ultimate (I just love those three words) paragraphs of The Great Instauration (all of them are on pp. 22-23 of my copy of The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, by Edwin A. Burtt):

And all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. For God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may He graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures.

Therefore do Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first fruits of creation, and didst breathe into the face of man the intellectual light as the crown and consummation thereof, guard and protect this work, which coming from Thy goodness returneth to Thy glory. Thou sawest that all was very good, and didst rest from Thy labors. But man, when he turned to look upon the work which his hands had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could find no rest therein. Wherefore if we labor in Thy works with the sweat of our brows, Thou wilt make us partakers of Thy vision and Thy sabbath. Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom Thou shalt give the same spirit, Thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies.

Some say he was Shakespeare. Not I, but some.

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Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome Driven by Fructose Sugar Diet - Science Café - UCSF

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Well, I'm caught up with Molyneux!

1578 Podcasts. I think it took me a full year - my first mention of him was March 5, '09, and it's clear that I'd already listened to quite a few of his podcasts at that point.

It's been most enjoyable and completely turned around my ways of thinking in a number of areas.

I feel like doing the math on that, but somehow it's already after midnight, and I've sworn to start getting some sleep.

Women glow and men chunder

Let's see if we can't talk the women into joining us in chundering over this abuse of the courts.

Norm Lurie is a dirtbag.

I want Lady Gaga

to win the Grammys. I think Bad Romance is the greatest tune since The Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams.

She scares me, though. If she knocked on my door and asked me to come with her, I'm afraid I'd go.

For those who believe that memorizing things is of value

I don't think I've seen much that would be more worthy of it than this last half of Francis Bacon's preface to his Great Instauration

For my own part at least, in obedience to the everlasting love of truth, I have committed myself to the uncertainties and difficulties and solitudes of the ways, and relying on the divine assistance have upheld my mind both against the shocks and embattled ranks of opinion, and against my own private and inward hesitations and scruples, and against the fogs and clouds of nature, and the phantoms flitting about on every side; in the hope of providing at last for the present and future generations guidance more faithful and secure. Wherein if I have made any progress, the way has been opened to me by no other means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human spirit. For all those who before me have applied themselves to the invention of arts have but cast a glance or two upon facts and examples and experience, and straightway proceeded, as if invention were nothing more than an exercise of thought, to invoke their own spirits to give them oracles. I, on the contrary, dwelling purely and constantly among the facts of nature, withdraw my intellect from them no further than may suffice to let the images and rays of natural objects meet in a point, as they do in the sense of vision; whence it follows that the strength and excellency of the wit has but little to do in the matter. and the same humility which I use in inventing I employ likewise in teaching. For I do not endeavour either by triumphs of confutation, or pleadings of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even by the veil of obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any majesty; which might easily be done by one who sought to give lustre to his own name rather than light to other men’s minds. I have not sought (I say) nor do I seek either to force or ensnare men’s judgments, but I lead them to things themselves and the concordances of things, that they may see for themselves what they have, what they can dispute, what they can add and contribute to the common stock. and for myself, if in anything I have been either too credulous or too little awake and attentive, or if I have fallen off by the way and left the inquiry incomplete, nevertheless I so present these things naked and open, that my errors can be marked and set aside before the mass of knowledge be further infected by them; and it will be easy also for others to continue and carry on my labours. and by these means I suppose that I have established for ever a true and lawful marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty, the unkind and ill-starred divorce and separation of which has thrown into confusion all the affairs of the human family. 3

Wherefore, seeing that these things do not depend upon myself, at the outset of the work I most humbly and fervently pray to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, that remembering the sorrows of mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life wherein we wear out days few and evil, they will vouchsafe through my hands to endow the human family with new mercies. This likewise I humbly pray, that things human may not interfere with things divine, and that from the opening of the ways of sense and the increase of natural light there may arise in our minds no incredulity or darkness with regard to the divine mysteries; but rather that the understanding being thereby purified and purged of fancies and vanity, and yet not the less subject and entirely submissive to the divine oracles, may give to faith that which is faith’s. Lastly, that knowledge being now discharged of that venom which the serpent infused into it, and which makes the mind of man to swell, we may not be wise above measure and sobriety, but cultivate truth in charity. 4

And now having said my prayers I turn to men; to whom I have certain salutary admonitions to offer and certain fair requests to make. My first admonition (which was also my prayer) is that men confine the sense within the limits of duty in respect to things divine: for the sense is like the sun, which reveals the face of earth, but seals and shuts up the face of heaven. My next, that in flying from this evil they fall not into the opposite error, which they will surely do if they think that the inquisition of nature is in any part interdicted or forbidden. For it was not that pure and uncorrupted natural knowledge whereby Adam gave names to the creatures according to their propriety, which gave occasion to the fall. It was the ambitious and proud desire of moral knowledge to judge of good and evil, to the end that man may revolt from God and give laws to himself, which was the form and manner of the temptation. Whereas of the sciences which regard nature, the divine philosopher declares that “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but it is the glory of the King to find a thing out.” Even as though the divine nature took pleasure in the innocent and kindly sport of children playing at hide and seek, and vouchsafed of his kindness and goodness to admit the human spirit for his play-fellow at that game. Lastly, I would address one general admonition to all; that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity. For it was from lust of power that the angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell; but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man ever come in danger by it. 5
The requests I have to make are these. of myself I say nothing; but in behalf of the business which is in hand I entreat men to believe that it is not an opinion to be held, but a work to be done; and to be well assured that I am labouring to lay the foundation, not of any sect or doctrine, but of human utility and power. Next, I ask them to deal fairly by their own interests, and laying aside all emulations and prejudices in favour of this or that opinion, to join in consultation for the common good; and being now freed and guarded by the securities and helps which I offer from the errors and impediments of the way, to come forward themselves and take part in that which remains to be done. Moreover, to be of good hope, nor to imagine that this Instauration of mine is a thing infinite and beyond the power of man, when it is in fact the true end and termination of infinite error; and seeing also that it is by no means forgetful of the conditions of mortality and humanity, (for it does not suppose that the work can be altogether completed within one generation, but provides for its being taken up by another); and finally that it seeks for the sciences not arrogantly in the little cells of human wit, but with reverence in the greater world. But it is the empty things that are vast: things solid are most contracted and lie in little room. and now I have only one favour more to ask (else injustice to me may perhaps imperil the business itself)—that men will consider well how far, upon that which I must needs assert (if I am to be consistent with myself), they are entitled to judge and decide upon these doctrines of mine; inasmuch as all that premature human reasoning which anticipates inquiry, and is abstracted from the facts rashly and sooner than is fit, is by me rejected (so far as the inquisition of nature is concerned), as a thing uncertain, confused, and ill built up; and I cannot be fairly asked to abide by the decision of a tribunal which is itself on its trial. 5

The numbers refer to the paragraph.

Here's a little (14 minute) video

that tickles my prejudices:

Million Dollar Idea:

Spats for watches. Whattaya think?

This is me

Digitized for your convenience.

Murder of crows?

Who makes this crap up?

I can't imagine that most of these have been used in normal conversation. A nuisance of cats?