@Man, Jabber, Artificial Flavors

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 12:17:34 GMT

Linda Hamilton cc'd me on a fax she sent her lawyer asking him to withdraw her motion for a new trial or change of venue. She thinks Massachusetts courts and judges are universally corrupt. She plans to proceed by filing criminal and civil charges. The link points to my transcription into HTML of the fax.

Received via email from Nathan Walters. Reprinted here with his permission.

I am opposed to the prohibition of any drug. While some drugs are more dangerous than others, the choice of whether or not to alter one's consciousness is a personal moral and spiritual issue. If our society can usurp this right based on the idea that the fabric of society will be strengthed then we are one short step away from totalitarianism. Society does not have rights, only individuals have rights. The Nazi's believed that by eliminating the jews, who were thought to be an immoral drain on society they would strengthen Germany. Today in the US, many in our government believe the same thing of drug users. The problem with this thinking is that the opposite effect will occur. By restricting the ability of a population of people to make free moral choices, the population will lose the ability to make proper choices in their own lives, and this will lead to absolute societal breakdown. The truth in this is evidenced by the Russian people.

@Man - Attention, Fat Corporate Bastards! tell's the corporate pigs what the man in the street really wants from the internet, and it ain't what they're selling. [picks]

You almost certainly think of the Internet as an audience of some type--perhaps somewhat captive. If you actually had even the faintest glimmering of what reality on the net is like, you'd realize that the real unit of currency isn't dollars, data, or digicash. It's reputation and respect. Think about how that impacts your corporate strategy. Think about how you'd feel if a guy sat down at your lunch table one afternoon when you were interviewing an applicant for a vice-president's position and tried to sell the two of you a car, and wouldn't go away. Believe it or not, what you want to do with the Internet is very similar. Just as you have a reasonable expectation of privacy and respect when you're at a table for two in a public place, so too do the users of the Internet have a reasonable expectation of privacy and respect. When you think of the Internet, don't think of Mack trucks full of widgets destined for distributorships, whizzing by countless billboards. Think of a table for two.

@Man's home page says:

The photo above is of me (@Man) overlooking the Thames river in London. When I die I want my body dumped whole into the Thames, so it can float peacefully downstream, scaring the living daylights out of countless people.

Michelle Locke of AP via Fox News - Lawyers Urge Supreme Court to Allow Distribution of Marijuana for Medical Use - The supremes will decide soon whether medical necessity can be used as a defense in court against the drug laws. I hope they do the right thing, but I doubt it will change much if they do. Remember, prohibition has nothing to do with the properties of the prohibited substance. It's all about control, creating an excuse for fascist laws. [zero]

The Supreme Court is not looking directly at Proposition 215, but rather at whether medical necessity may be used as a defense against federal drug bans. It's unclear whether the justices will rule on that general issue or rule more narrowly on how lower courts have handled this case.
If the court says "Yes" to the necessity defense, it could make it easier to distribute medical marijuana in California and the eight other states with similar laws -- Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Maine, Nevada and Colorado.

Dave Winer's DaveNet - What is HailStorm? - Dave's opinion-du-jour on Hailstorm is to route around it. Internet 3.0 won't work off a central server. [script]

Many users are now Internet-savvy enough to run servers on their desktops. We don't need a centralized XML server, that's a solution to the problem of 1993, not 2002. We've learned how to aggregate and distribute information without central control. It's ready for a mass market.

Tom von Alten at Fort Boise - Duck and cover - here comes a Hailstorm - hilarious satire on Microsoft's new revenue generation machine. [Jake]

Microsoft is committed to protecting privacy and to developing technology that provides the most powerful and secure online experience. Everyone saw how we were burned when email messages we thought were private were made public in the U.S. vs. Microsoft trial last year. We don't want to repeat that sort of mistake!

Damaged Justice at Music for Misanthropes - Tuesday March 27, 2001 - Commentary on More Than Just Jabber, an XML Magazine interview with Jabber founder Jeremie Miller. I DL'd Swagger and WinJab from links on JabberCentral's Jabber Clients page. The WinJab HOWTO looks useful. Oh, boy! A new toy! [MfM]

The Jabber architecture is ignorant of the XML that's flying around. It's up to the services and the applications take advantage of it. Jabber is just a generic XML-routing framework; it's based on some sort of user identity so that you can communicate with another person and that person's applications, instead of just a URL or an IP address.

"Flavors" was the name of the object system in Lisp Machine Lisp. It has been supplanted by the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) in modern Lisps, but there is a host of Flavors code out there, even today, over 10 years after CLOS replaced Flavors. Artificial Flavors is Mike Travers' partial implementation of Flavors in Common Lisp. Good name. Hehe.

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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