Summer Solstice, 2001

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 21 Jun 2001 12:00:00 GMT

This place where you are right now

This place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you.

Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
Against the earth and sky,
The Beloved has bowed there -

Our beloved has bowed there knowing
You were coming.

I could tell you a priceless secret about
Your real worth, dear pilgrim,

But any unkindness to yourself,
Any confusion about others,

Will keep one
From accepting the grace, the love,

The sublime freedom
Divine knowledge always offers to you.

Never mind, Hafiz, about
The great requirements this path demands
Of the wayfarers,

For your soul is too full of wine tonight
To withhold the wondrous Truth from this world.

But because I am so clever and generous,
I have already clearly woven a resplendent lock
Of His tresses

As a remarkable truth and gift
In this poem for you.

(The Subject Tonight Is Love, versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Received via email. Hehe.

A young man, hired by a AOL.com, reported for his first day of work. The manager greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom and said, "Your first job will be to sweep out the place."

"But I'm a college graduate." the young man replied indignantly.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know that," said the manager. "Here, give me the broom, I'll show you how."

From Quotes of the Day:

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say." -- Will Durant

Once or twice a week I go to ABC Sports & Fitness to work out before work. Just around the corner is Price Chopper^® #138, where I often stop to pick up a little something on the way to the ABCS&F. This morning I got two items. While standing in the line at check-out, I noticed four lighted check-out signs with no people around, so I went there. They were self checkout stations, the Optimal Robotics U-Scan^® Express. I scanned the UPC codes on my items, stuck them in the prepared bag, inserted a twenty dollar bill in the cash accepter, took my change, and walked out. There was one employee there watching the four machines and helping people use them. Very neat. Very easy. I like.

The safety nazis have struck again. After my work-out I took my newly purchased bottle of Johnson & Johnson^® Baby Shampoo into the shower. I got all wet, opened the lid of the shampoo, and squeezed. Nothing came out. There was a seal under the cap, which was twisted on too tightly for me to undo with wet hands, so I had to make a trip to my towel to get it off. This is getting ridiculous. Pretty soon, I'll have to rip the seal off my dick to take a pee.

Janelle Brown at Salon - Sell a glowstick, go to prison - The d.e.a. (dung eating assholes) is cracking down on raves using crack-house laws from the eighties. Pfui. My take: time for dance promoters to start protecting their property. If narcs show up, shoot the bastards on sight. kuro5hin discussion here. [kuro5hin]

An injunction handed down against a group of New Orleans party promoters last Wednesday charges that glowsticks -- along with pacifiers, Vicks VapoRub and dust masks -- are "drug paraphernalia," and their presence on a dance floor is a sign that illegal drug activity is taking place.

...

"The government has this crazy notion that, somehow or another, a promoter should be held criminally responsible as a drug offender because of what people in the audience may do," said Arthur Lemann III, the lawyer for Brian Brunet. "It's a lot like arresting the usher because Pavarotti stabs the fat lady at the end of the opera."

...

"If they shut down every rave and nightclub and place of public assembly in the country, nothing will happen except that the dangers of drug intake will go underground, and people who make bad choices will pay the ultimate price," says Lirot, who is battling the Club La Vela case. "Whereas in the alternate settings, smart people take precautions and deal with problems professionally and safely and in a medically secure fashion. Chasing things underground is never a good idea -- although society thinks they benefit in the short term, they will end up paying for it in the long term."

John McCabe at loony.org - Dear Real.com, You suck. - John relates his experience finding and installing the newest free player from Real.com to play a 30-second movie.

After some MORE hunting around, I found the second super-secret link to the free player. I poignantly recall the declaration that Real.com would make their money on the content providers, and the player would be free forever. Free, yes, but at what cost?

I am then prompted for an email address. Of course, I have spent countless aborted attempts at finding this crappy program by now, so I dutifully enter "fuckyou@youbastards.com". If you happen to have that email address for yourself, let me apologize now. You can't imagine how many fake "@loony.org" emails I get every month. I do understand what it's like.

I download and install the player.

Taking the "typical" installation was something I didn't pay enough attention to. They knew this. They counted on it. By the time I was done putting the player on my computer, every file type that Windows recognized was associated to RealPlayer. Every file I tried to download went through RealDownload. My wallpaper was reset to RealNetworksDeservesMySoul.bmp, a rather disturbing image I am still in therapy over, and the recipe for every Thai dish I ever tried was uploaded to Usenet, and crossposted over several hundred unrelated groups, with the tagline "me too."

Rick Weiss at The Washington Post - Bush Backs Broad Ban On Human Cloning - Grabbe titled this one, "Here Comes the Black Market in Cloning". How true! [grabbe]

Andrew Orlowski at The Register - Red Hat moves Into the black - Yay!

Stan Gibson at eWeek via ZDNet News - Red Hat database ready to roll - Red Hat plans to start offering PostgreSQL for an annual subscription of $199/month. It will likely be called the "Red Hat Database". [newsforge]

segfault.org - Linus Torvalds to leave Transmeta for Guinness - OH, NOOOOO... (wink, wink) [newsforge]

Linus' unexpected decision was largely related to the recent announcement of redundancies at the Guinness plant in Dundalk, where ex-staff will be compensated with free beer for life. The announcement brought home to him the many discussions about the nature of Free Software and, Linus said, finally helped him decide that Free Beer was more meaningful to him than Free Speech. The hardened hacks present agreed with this sentiment completely, and Linus received a standing ovation. Free beer was then made available to all.

michael at Slashdot - Total Solar Eclipse - tomorrow's total eclipse will be viewable on the web at www.live-eclipse.org from 11:35 to 13:25 UTC (that's EDT+4).

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FreeAmp Rocks!
Budget-cutting as political drama
The Melonheaded Snipe
High court OKs after-hours religious club
The saga of The Moose's Tooth
Peter McWilliams: American Hero
Legalize Heroin
Hope
Pay more for better work? Sounds suspicious
State to squeak by on 'less money than we started with.' Heh, heh

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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