Home of the Diablos

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 25 Jun 2001 12:00:00 GMT

John P. Mulligan at Thinkhole - She said yes! Looks like Mr. Mulligan is engaged to be married. Congratulations, John!

I just discovered Rotten Tomatoes. Henceforth, when looking for movie reviews, I'll go there first, and probably won't need to go anywhere else. The Google of movie reviews.

Google Image Search is in beta. Very nice! [joel]

I ordered America's Man on Horseback: A Fable? by Guy R. Odom at the recommendation of Will Cate, who thinks the book has similar ideas to what I expressed about the constitution last Saturday.

I was wondering if you've read "America's Man on Horseback" by Guy Odom. You'd like it. What you describe is basically the premise of this book, a "letter to the future leader" of the U.S. on how to get ourselves out of the mess the nation is in. I don't agree with all his ideas (conquering most of the western hemisphere? jeez...), but his main point is a radical obliteration of most of the federal governament, including recinding all federal laws going back to 1964. A provocative read, to say the least...

Jon DuPre at Fox News - All Extracurriculars Are Extraneous at This High School - When SCOTUS says you've gotta let Christians meet at your school, what's a poltically correct tyrant to do? Ban all clubs, that's what. And how apt: Mission Viejo High School is "Home of the Diablos", as illustrated by the image below from their home page. Satan is alive and well and living in southern California. Their clubs page says, "Mission Viejo High School offers a multitude of extra-curricular clubs and activities open to all students. All clubs are district-approved and are in compliance with district standards." It then has a table with two columns, "Club" and "Advisor". The table has no entries, in compliance with district standards. Mission Viejo's principal is Marilyn McDowell, mcdowell@svusd.k12.ca.us, 949-837-7722. The acting superintendant of the Saddle Valley Unified School District is Dr. William N. Manahan, manahanb@svusd.k12.ca.us, 949-580-3200. [market]

At the Mission Viejo High School in Southern California, you won't see kids rushing off to Key Club meetings or preparing posters for Students Against Drunk Driving rallies. In fact, you won't see any clubs at all that aren't related to the school curriculum.

The reason: The Saddle Valley Unified School District doesn't want to have to let in a Christian club.

I sent the following email:

Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 16:52:20 -0400
To: mcdowell@svusd.k12.ca.us (Marilyn McDowell), manahanb@svusd.k12.ca.us (Dr. William N. Manahan)
From: "Bill St. Clair" <bill@billstclair.com>
Subject: Christians unwelcome
Cc: bill@billstclair.com

Dr. Manahan and Ms. McDowell,

I just read the Fox News story about your response to the Supreme Court's ruling that would have allowed a Christian club to meet at the Mission Viejo High School. According to the article <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,27826,00.html>, in order to prevent this one club from meeting, you've shut down all non-curriculum-related clubs. Shame on you. And again, shame. From my perspective, Mission Viejo is truly the home of the Diablos. God is not welcome there. I hope you enjoy the hell you've made for yourselves. Too bad for the kids, though. Clubs of all types are a good outlet for them.

Sincerely,

Bill St. Clair
bill@billstclair.com

Licia Corbella at the Calgary Sun via MAPInc - Jury Clears the Air in Medicinal-Pot Case - Jury nullification is alive and well in Canada. Yes!

Matthew Ballin at The Free Radical - Unfair Use - A good screed on intellectual property. I'm still not entirely decided on ownership of bits, but Mr. Ballin makes a good argument. [market]

This attack upon a free market for art is not just an attack upon profit. It is a fundamental affront to the principle of property itself. Intellectual property is not a separate and disconnected matter from physical property; it is the basis for all property. Man's right to property comes from his right to own his life, to choose his actions, and to enjoy the benefits they bring to him. Man's means of gaining property is the application of his mind; he must decide what are his goals and his methods of achieving them. If it is accepted that people have no right to the product of their minds, than they have the right to nothing at all. That most Napster users do not or cannot make this connection does not change the situation. By giving up on the idea of intellectual property, they have given up on property altogether. If they turn away from an artist's ownership of his music, they have turned away from the mind itself - and defense of the mind is the only means by which any property rights at all can be defended consistently.

P. J. O'Rourke at The Oklahoman - Stupidity in the Golden State - Mr. O'Rourke properly characterizes Gray Davis' energy policy as "Joseph Stalin with the IQ of Keanu Reeves". [market]

President Bush was wrong to grant an extension of executive orders requiring out-of-state utilities to supply power to California. And everyone is wrong to listen to Californians whine about electricity deregulation. There never was any deregulation. The California Public Utilities Commission merely changed its regulations, which apparently weren't stupid enough to meet Golden State standards. Under California's 1996 re-regulation plan, electric companies sold their generating plants and became distributors. They were required to buy their power on the wholesale spot market and forbidden to enter into any long-term power supply contracts. Retail electricity prices were lowered by 10 percent and frozen at the new rate until March 2002.

This is like requiring A&P to sell you porterhouse at $2 a pound, no matter what the price of beef on the hoof. Imagine how many steaks there would be, and how many supermarkets. Go to one of those boarded-up grocery stores, purchase a phantom T-bone, screw it into a ceiling fixture, and try to light your house. You're in California.

Steve Gillmor and Adam Bosworth at XML Magazine - Generation Xml - Mr. Gilmore interviews Mr. Bosworth about web services. Good stuff. Why web services will scale while distributed objects do not. SOAP and WSDL are good as far as they go, but what is needed to truly interoperate is a better description of the protocol than just the method signatures. You need to know acceptable latencies, how to deliver a return message asynchronously, and a state-machine description that tells you in which orders you may call the methods. Also a good description of why we shouldn't bother trying to optimize XML size or parsing speed. [joel]

Dave Winer's DaveNet - Don't Be A Deer - Dave changes his tag-line from "It's even worse than it appears" to "There's no time like now" and tells us why now is the time to take the web back from Microsoft.

In today's scene, to zig to Microsoft's zag would mean applying enough resources, collectively, to produce several good alternatives to Microsoft's browser, ones which don't carry the lock-in burden and don't have to protect Microsoft Office. Such browsers would give more control to writers, designers and programmers, as Microsoft is taking 1984ish steps to take control for themselves, and would be a delightful writing tool far more appropriate to today's work environment than the aging and bloated Word, Powerpoint and Excel.

Add comment Edit post Add post

Previous Posts:
Orange and Electric Blue
Where all the presidents are above average
Fourth issue of "P.A." is in the mail
Summer Solstice, 2001
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

Navigation

History

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