End the War on Freedom

Why Just Ask the Donkey

Why
Just ask the donkey in me
To speak to the donkey in you,

When I have so many other beautiful animals
And brilliant colored birds inside
That are all longing to say something wonderful
And exciting to your heart?

Let's open all the locked doors upon our eyes
That keep us from knowing the Intelligence
That begets love
And a more lively and satisfying conversation
With the Friend.

Let's turn loose our golden falcons
So that they can meet in the sky
Where our spirits belong --
Necking like two
Hot kids.

Let's hold hands and get drunk near the sun
And sing sweet songs to God
Until He joins us with a few notes
From His own sublime lute and drum.

If you have a better idea
Of how to pass a lonely night
After your glands may have performed
All their little magic
Then speak up sweethearts, speak up,
For Hafiz and all the world will listen.

Why just bring your donkey to me
Asking for stale hay
And a boring conference with the idiot
In regards to this precious matter --
Such a precious matter as love,

When I have so many other divine animals
And brilliant colored birds inside
That are all longing
To so sweetly
Greet
You!

(The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, translations by Daniel Ladinsky)

I finally played with FreeAmp. I like it. Much easier to use than WinAmp without all the visual clutter. I had to download nt_wnaspi32.zip and install the enclosed dll to get CD reading to work on my Windows 2000 machine. I'm now ripping a CD with CDex (using the Ogg Vorbis encoder) while playing an MP3 with FreeAmp. Yay!

CDex

Angus Glashier's blog has disappeared, apparently intentionally, since the rest of www.glashier.com is intact. I moved it over to the "More Weblogs" section of my links page and added wood s lot to the "Weblogs" section.

Joel on Software has moved to JoelOnSoftware.com. [joel]

Vin Suprynowicz - Fourth issue of "P.A." is in the mail - a review of the first three issues of Privacy Alert, and a preview of the current and future issues. I highly recommend Vin's newsletter. To paraphrase Mad magazine: $72, cheap.

Ann Coulter at TownHall.com - Disestablish the Cult of Liberalism - commentary on the recent decision by the Supreme's allowing a religious group to meet after hours in a school. Repeat after me, the constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion. Separation of church and state was invented by atheists and state worshippers. [mumble]

The New York Times' obligatory hysterical denunciation of the decision revealingly complained: "(C)hildren that young are unlikely to discern that the religious message of authority figures who come to the school each day to teach does not carry the school's endorsement."

It is simply taken for granted that it's desirable for children to revere "authority figures" at government schools. Normally those authority figures are teaching the youngsters to put condoms on zucchini or training them in the catechism of recycling. Sending a mixed message about government "authority figures" might interfere with the state's ability to turn small children into Good Germans inculcated in the liberal religion.

It's well past time for liberalism to be declared a religion and banned from public schools. Allowing Christians to be one of many after-school groups induces hysteria not just because liberals hate religion. It's because the public school is their temple. Children must be taught to love Big Brother, welcoming him to take over our schools, our bank accounts, our property, even our toilet bowls.

Jude Wanniski at Polyconimics - Carbon Dioxide, the Staff of Life - Guess what, boys and girls? Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. Animals breathe oxygen and turn it into carbon dioxide. Plants breathe carbon dioxide and, using solar energy, turn it back into oxygen. A pretty good arrangement. [lew]

But what about the smokestacks and tailpipes? Well, Ceci, I went to the trouble of adding up all the greenhouse gases, as provided in Gregg Easterbrook's excellent book, A Moment on the Earth, and then converted the total volume to a linear scale. That's so you can get a better sense of mankind's total annual contribution. That is, I wondered if there were one mile of greenhouse gas, how much of that would be the result of all of man's doing. I found that out of 5,280 feet, mankind contributes five-eighths of an inch. And this is what all the fuss is about at Kyoto. Do you see why I got so worked up yesterday when you made the comment that CO2 is a pollutant, and the United States is the biggest polluter of all?

bob lonsberry - Time to Bring the Troops Home - Yes! Bring America's military men and women home to America. All of them. Now. What Mr. Lonsberry didn't say is that then we can eliminate the standing army completely. As Ike warned long ago, it is very dangerous to have a standing army during times of peace.

Because, from the looks of things, Bill Clinton is still in charge. And that's no good. President Clinton had his turn, and we didn't like it. Now it's time for President Bush to step up to the plate.

It's time for him to put his mark on the military.

And the best way to do that is by bringing it home. Bosnia, Kosovo, the Sinai, pack 'em up and get 'em home. The era of the peacekeeper is done, it's time for the American military to refocus on American defense.

John R. Lott, Jr. and William M. Landes at the Social Science Research Network - Multiple Victim Public Shootings - Concealed carry saves lives. It's the only thing that works against armed crazies. HTML abstract with PDF paper. The paper was written in November of 1996 and revised in October of 2000. [lew]

While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty reduce "normal" murder rates and these attacks lead to new calls from more gun control, our results find that the only policy factor to have a consistently significant influence on multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws.

...

Right-to-carry laws reduce the number of people killed or wounded from multiple victim public shootings as many attackers are either deterred from attacking or when attacks do occur they are stopped before the police can arrive. We are able to provide evidence for the first time that the harm from crimes that still occur can be mitigated. Given that half the attackers in these multiple victim public shootings have had formal diagnoses of mental illness, the fact that some results indicate concealed handgun laws reduce these attacks by almost 70 percent is remarkable.

Differences in state right-to-carry laws are also important: restricting the places where permits are prohibited increases murders, injuries and shootings; more training requirements reduce injuries; and higher fees increase injuries and the number of attacks...

Ryan Rempel at Other World Comuting - OS X for Legacy Macs - Apple supports only G3 and G4 Macs for the new Mac OS. Using the tools and instructions here, you may be able to make it work on 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500 and 9600 Macs and clones of same. Alwin is trying it. [heart]

Molecular Expresssion - Powers of Ten - not quite as nice as Phillip Morrison's book by the same name, but a good interactive demonstration of how different the world looks with a few orders of magnitude change in resolution. Java applet. [randomonium]

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