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Brian Fitzgerald - Arm the Animals: Brian takes the right to keep and bear arms to the limit.
jeff covey at freshmeat.net - Negotiating for Nerds: How to negotiate job compensation, especially with a startup. [picks]
I Know the Way You Can Get
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.
O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.
That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.
That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!
I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz - Daniel Ladinsky
{@Rules That Guys Wish That Girls Knew} came from the local office joke guy.
Charley Reese at the Orlando Sentinel - The not-so-hidden agenda of those million moms marching: Why is it that Mothers Against Drunk Driving focused on the drunks but the Forty Thousand Moms focused on a piece of steel?
Two explanations are possible. One, they are just ignorant and superstitious or, at best, thoughtless and ill-informed about their own country's history. Two, they know quite well what they are doing -- pursuing a hidden agenda to disarm the American people.
Ariana Huffington - Memento Mori: Ms. Huffington's father died last week in Athens.
Frank Shostak at the Ludwig von Mises Institute - Does the Fed Fight Inflation? A good short explanation of why changing interest rates does nothing to inflation. As long as the FED keeps putting more "money" into circulation, they will continue to be the primary cause of inflation. [latte]
J. Peter Mulhern at Washington Weekly - The Campaign 2000 Follies: the lighter side of the presidential race.
How could anyone smarter than Forrest Gump watch Bill Clinton win two national elections and still believe that policy has anything to do with presidential politics? Gore's advisors sound like nervous Ford executives in 1959. "The Edsel isn't selling as well as we hoped, but wait 'till the public notices how much torque its engine puts out."Torque doesn't sell cars and policy doesn't sell presidential candidates. If Gore's people don't understand that then he is well and truly doomed.
...
Once again, wish fulfillment masquerades as commentary. Most of the commentators want Mrs. Clinton to win, so they consistently overestimate her political strength. Even with the Republican Party in complete disarray, she can't poll above 50 per cent. Soon she will have an active opponent with an ample budget and none of Giuliani's baggage.
The Senate contest in New York could have been about that baggage. Now it will be about Mrs. Clinton. She can't run for office as the dutiful, long-suffering wife. She has to run as the overbearing twit who made a hash of health policy, which hardly provides the dream theme for a campaign.
Any Republican with a suitable resume and a pulse will be a serious threat to Mrs. Clinton's electoral ambitions.
Guy Jordan's letter to Washington Weekly - Gun Control: hehe.
The way for the gun banners to get their way is to devise a mutual and complete disarmament of all law enforcement simultaneously with the disarmament of the private citizens. When the day comes that the gun banners suggest such a course, I will begin to take them seriously....
Edward Zehr at Washington Weekly - A Look Into the Abyss: What Elian Tells Us About Ourselves: I just skimmed this, but it has some biting barbs and good legal analysis. Probably worth a careful read.
The black-shirted, brown-shirted and red-banner-waving totalitarians of the twentieth century missed the point on a grand scale. All that rough stuff is really unnecessary in building a totalitarian state. In fact, if overdone, it tends to give the game away. Goebbels was the one who had it right, not Himmler. Concentration camps are a drain on the economy. That doesn't mean that you cannot turn the occasional group of retrograde religious fundies into crispy critters if they offer sufficient provocation. (It adds to the entertainment value of the spectacle if you torment the kiddies with noxious gas for, oh say five or six hours prior to lighting the bonfire -- the imperial Romans knew about these things). After the flames subside it will all be seen as the fault of the fundies, of course. That sinister, shadowy countenance we sometimes catch sight of, however fleetingly, in the mirror is never our own.
Jefferson Adams at Sierra Times - United States Air Force 1, Toyota 0: The author's Toyota Celica gets caught in the jet blast of a C-17 Globemaster III. The Air Force refuses to pay for it.
Lynn Peters at Redbook - The Best Position for Making Love: extols the virtues of the missionary position, if done right.
Netherweb offers 50 megs of web hosting space and 2 gigs of transfers for $10/month. [lw]
Jelle van Buuren at Telepolis - European Union sets free export of encryption products: It is likely that on Monday the European Union will lift all export controls on encryption software. Yay! [/.]
Richard Cowan, Steve Kubby, & Kim Levin at Marijuana News - The Theory and Practice of Treason: Great story by Steve Kubby about the treasonous activities of California law enforcement. [mjn]
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law', because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. --Thomas Jefferson
