Happy Tenth Birthday to Linux!
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking. -- H. L. Mencken
From The Federalist:
"Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" (1959) -- Jesse Helmsand:
And last, in Lambu, Ghana, Aleobiga Aberima died of a gunshot wound after he asked a local witch doctor to make him bulletproof. "After smearing his body with a concoction of herbs every day for two weeks, a fellow villager volunteered to shoot him to check whether the spell had actually worked," reported the BBC. "He died instantly from a single bullet." Undoubtedly a frontrunner for the annual "Darwin Awards."
Well, Gun Owners Day at Saratoga Race Track was pretty anti-climactic. There were seven of us there including yours truly. Geneice Hovak and her husband, Tom Chandler and Bill somebody from SCOPE, a guy with a brace on one knee, and one other guy. I'd never make it as a politician. Don't remember names. Maybe Geneice will clue me in and I can change this paragraph later. Anyway, I found them at a picnic table near the horse walk at about 11:30. We hung there for a while, then went to where Pataki's $500 a plate fund-raiser was happenning. We eventually went to the circular grassy area in the middle of the entrance turnaround, held up the hanging redcoats that Geneice brought and our signs. I left about 1:30, just as we were being told that where we were was private property and we'd have to go outside the fence. Pataki never showed while I was there.
Anatta at Kuro5hin -
Symbol of Life: Gone Forever? - bemoans the perversion of the
swastika symbol
by the Nazis. What was for thousands of years "a symbol
of changing seasons, life, the sun, wealth and prosperity, and good
luck" was perverted in five years into a symbol of genocide. There is
a swastika in the
emblem, to the right, of the
Shri Ram Chandra Mission, with whom I meditated for many years.
Babuji wrote about the emblem:
The Swastika mark near the bottom represents the point we start from. It is the sphere of forms, rituals and practices of various types we proceed with in our pursuit, by the path, denoted as Sahaj Marg, cut through mountains of difficulties and obstructions by Nature herself. We march on through different spheres of light and shade of varying grossness, far far above the sphere of the moon and the sun, growing finer and finer at every step till we attain the highest point of approach. The sphere of light created by the rising sun denotes the new spiritual era started by His Holiness, the Samartha Guru. It spreads all over the space, commanding the regions we start from and pass through during our march along Sahaj Marg.
Walter Williams at Capitalism Magazine - Citizens Tethered to a Democratic Leash Called Tyranny - a review of Sheldon Richman's Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. The growing tyranny of our democratic state. Said well in my favorite line from The Patriot: "Should I prefer one tyrant 3000 miles away or 3000 tyrants one mile away." [zero]
Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" has a chapter titled, "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear." He said citizens of modern democracies faced a despotism of a different character, which "would be more widespread and milder; it would degrade men rather than torment them." De Tocqueville went on to say, "I do not expect for their leaders to be tyrants, but rather schoolmasters." He adds, "It only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood." It does so by providing security and necessities, assuming responsibility for their concerns, managing their work, and more, "It gladly works for their happiness but wants to be the sole agent and judge of it."
Bjorn Lomborg at Guardian Unlimited - Why Kyoto will not stop this - Mr. Lomborg agrees that humanity's output of carbon dioxide is heating up the planet. Kyoto, however, will cost much more to implement and do less good for the world's people than simply paying the costs of living in a hotter world. The Kyoto protocol is politically motivated. It is not science, nor is it humanitarian. Part of the Guardian's Special Report on Global Warming, which I linked to yesterday, but didn't read until today. [mind]
So is it not curious that the typical reporting on global warming tells us all the bad things it will cause, but few or none of the negative effects of overly zealous regulation? And why are discussions on global warming rarely a considered meeting of opposing views, but instead dogmatic and missionary in tone?
The problem is that the discussion is not just about finding the best economic path for humanity; it has much deeper political roots. This is clear in the 2001 IPCC report, which tells us that we should build cars and trains with lower top speeds, extols the qualities of sailing ships and bicycles, and proposes regionalised economies to alleviate transport demands.
Essentially, the IPCC is saying that we need to change individual lifestyles, move away from consumption and focus on sharing resources (eg through co-ownership). Because of climate change, we have to remodel our world.
Bjorn Lomborg at Guardian Unlimited - Running on empty? - Guess what? Every commodity that the enviro-whackos have said is running out is cheaper and more plentiful than ever. We use oil more efficiently than we used to, and other even more plentiful energy sources are on the way. What Mr. Lomborg doesn't say is that more liberty will solve the energy problem better than any centralized scheme. New technologies will soon eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels, but they won't supplant oil until they're cheaper to use. This requires lots of investment in research and development, investment that won't happen unless the investors have the liberty to profit from their work. Socialism doesn't work. Laissez Faire capitalism does. Another article in the Guardian's Special Report on Global Warming. [mind]
In the long run, renewable energy sources could cover a large part of our needs. Today, they make up a vanishingly small part of global energy production, but this will probably change. The cost of solar energy and wind energy has dropped by 94-98% over the past 20 years, and have come much closer to being strictly profitable. Renewable energy resources are almost incomprehensibly large. The sun could potentially provide about 7,000 times our own energy consumption - in principle, covering just 2.6% of the Sahara desert with solar cells could supply our entire needs.
It is likely that we will eventually change our energy uses from fossil fuels towards other, cheaper energy sources - maybe renewables, maybe fusion, maybe some as yet unthought-of technology. As Sheikh Yamani, Saudi Arabia's former oil minister and a founding architect of Opec, has pointed out: "The stone age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil." We stopped using stone because bronze and iron were superior materials; likewise, we will stop using oil when other energy technologies provide superior benefits.
DRCNet - Colombian Legislators Introduce Legalization, Cultivation Bills, Ask UN to Evaluate Global Anti-Drug Strategies - The have very little chance of passage, since the U.S. has such a large influence in Colombian politics, but Senator Vivianne Morales introduced bills that would legalize cultivation and sale of drugs in Colombia. Yes!
DRCNet - Jamaican Ganja Commission Calls for Decrim, Battle With US Brewing - Jamaica is on the verge of decriminalizing cannabis for individual use and religious rituals. The U.S. is threatening to withdraw aid. I hope they give us the finger and smoke their ganja anyway.
DRCNet - Hempfest Draws 100,000 in Seattle, Hempstock Draws the Cops in Maine - the cops in Maine gave Hempstock a hard time. Still 2,500 to 3,000 attended.
Ed Oliver at The Massachusettes News - Baby Seized by State Police from Mother's Hospital Room - they kidnapped her newborn baby! Bastards! They kidnapped her other two kids earlier, and one of them was killed by a Rottweiler. We've gotta start defending ourselves from dee S.S., with extreme prejudice. [kaba]
After giving birth on Sunday, August 5, Ross says she was celebrating with her family in her hospital room on Monday. A nurse entered the room and took the baby, saying she had to check his vital signs.
Within minutes a posse of police, state police and DSS social workers swarmed the room and informed the family that DSS had taken the baby due to a 51A report of "neglect," which had been filed by a nurse only hours after the baby was born. The report alleges that Ross had not fed her baby "the right way" when she was in recovery and had allowed her mother to hold and feed the newborn.
CNET - The Time of the Penguin - Linux is 10 years old today. Linus Torvalds announced his OS project on 25 August, 1991. Oh what a difference a decade makes! [newsforge]
OpenMCL "is an Open Source version of Digitool's excellent Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL) implementation, which runs on LinuxPPC. It features a native code compiler, multithreading support, and good ANSI CL compliance." I worked on MCL at Apple and Digitool during 1990-1997. [meat]
