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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 05 Aug 2000 12:00:00 GMT

Peter Norvig - The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation: LOL! [faisal]

Keith Dawson at TBTF - ShareZilla: peer-to-peer spam: Guess it was too good to last. Someone has started spamming P2P networks. The Gnutella folks are suggesting that you use their new client, Gnotella, which has user-customizable spam filters. [tbtf]

From kaba:

I will fight til Hell freezes over; then I will fight on the ice. -- BrianWilson.net

L. Neil Smith at KeepAndBearArms.com - The Third Clock: Guns save lives. All the gun grabbers know this. They have guns near their beds for that very reason. The reason they want to take our guns away is that the tax rate is getting dangerously close to the place where people will start shooting the tax collectors. L. Neil says that somewhere there is a death clock, counting the number of deaths from guns, and a life clock, counting the number of people who were saved by a gun (40 times the number on the death clock). [kaba]

I think there ought to be a third clock. John Lott offers some impressive numbers of the people whose lives might have been saved if they'd had easy access to guns, the victims of victim disarmament who died because of you people who advocate, introduce, pass, and enforce laws that violate the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

Patricia Neill at LewRockwell.com - That Naked Man Is Not an Emperor: Patty reminds us to question everything, especially our own beliefs. It's been 3 weeks since Patty wrote an article for Lew Rockwell. I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms. [lew]

Bob Murphy at LewRockwell.com - The Stupid Drug War: The war on some drugs is not only tragic and futile, it's downright stupid. [lew]

Finally, we turn to the standard "trump card" argument of the prohibitionists. Most will agree that yes, marijuana should probably be legalized, and maybe even some harder drugs. But surely I am just being stubborn (myself, I prefer the term "consistent") when I maintain that drug prohibition is never justified. To prove this, they cite the logical possibility of, what I have come to call, the WND -- the Worst Nightmare Drug.
The WND induces immense euphoria, and is outrageously addictive. It is incredibly cheap to produce. Most insidious of all, the user of the WND becomes instantly homicidal, and immediately slaughters in cold blood anyone in sight. Surely this drug must be prohibited!
Nope. The prohibitionist, by citing the WND, makes the mistake common to most arguments in the debate -- he assumes that proving the existence of a certain drug to be bad is the same thing as justifying government efforts to eliminate its consumption. But these are completely distinct issues. I have no doubt that the WND, if discovered or engineered, would in some sense make the world "worse off." I also agree that people "should not" use it. But these concessions do not mean we should make it illegal, since such a policy is counterproductive. Of course, if you decide to take the WND and kill four people, you will go to jail -- not for consumption of a dangerous substance, but because you just killed four people, you jerk.

Anders Hejlsberg at O'Reilly Deep Inside C#: an interview with one of the designers of Microsoft's C# programming language. Interesting. When it runs on Linux, AIX, Solaris, and the MacOS, I'll think about taking a closer look. [/.]

Jeff Regan at deja.com's comp.lang.java.advocacy forum - Java or Eiffel: good answers to a beginning programmers questions about which programming language to learn first. I'll have to admit here that I haven't looked at Eiffel, Sather, or Haskell. I should. [cafe]

Jerry Brito at Liberzine - Making money in a "copyright-free" world: interesting analysis of why artists could actually be better off if we completely eliminated intellectual property. [market]

Ed Wolfe at Sierra Times - Beatin' about the Bush: commentary on GW's acceptance speech. The Webslinger heard his speech a little differently: [sierra]

"I intend to fix the way we steal money from your paychecks each week to make sure we will be able to give some of it back to you when you're old and have failed to provide for yourselves.
I promise to interfere with legitimate private businesses to ensure that prescription drugs are affordable. You're too stupid to simply use the free market and the natural law of supply and demand to have an impact on consumer goods.
I promise that less of your money will be stolen directly from your paychecks by way of the illegal income tax.
I will work to reduce our nuclear arsenal and will deploy nuclear defenses without regard for the fact that our nuclear arsenal has served as an effective deterrent for decades and that defensive measures alone are inadequate."
...
None of these things are jobs the President of the U.S. has any business being involved in. But the majority of the people watching TV don't know that and wouldn't care if you told them. In fact, they wouldn't even believe you. If I told them that I'd like to see a candidate say that he was gonna reduce the government to nothing but those 19 things the constitution authorizes it to do, they'd think I was delusional. 19 things?? Our government is involved in hundreds of things!
...
This country may be dying of cancer of the soul, but at least it promises to be good for a few more laughs before it finally kicks the bucket. So, I'm gonna sit back and try to enjoy the show.
I only hope that when it's finally time to lock and load, I won't be too old by then to rock 'n' roll.

And don't miss J.J Johnson's side bar to Ed Wolfe's speech commentary:

The only thing that bothers me is that while you welcomed all that "color" on stage, I noticed that the most famous black republican who received more GOP votes that any other black man in history was strangely absent from the convention - as in, not allowed to speak. But then again, I guess Dr. Alan Keyes wasn't black enough.

Ed Parker at Sierra Times - That Means Revolution: Thinks that September's "Millennium Summit" at the U.N. will result in a declaration of "world governance" or some such newspeak to hide the fact that our country is being taken over by communists. Says that this will be the time to start shooting. This article will likely move here next time Mr. Parker writes an article. [sierra]

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair