Heil Muller
Interdiction Insanity is a letter I wrote to the editor of the Berkshire Eagle in response to an op-ed in yesterday's issue. I couldn't find the op-ed on their web site.
Thanks to aaron for the link and kind words about BlogMax.
The Libertarian Enterprise has a new issue, "Oshcraft's Shoggoth". It's all good. Go read the whole thing. Don't miss the articles by Suprynowicz, Tull, and Purves. I'm late today, so I'm not going to provide individual commentary, but I couldn't help pointing at this one:
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Letter from Don Winfield - The rest of this letter is worth
reading, but I especially liked the following:
I consider these to be the rules of Natural Law. Natural Law is that which is discovered as opposed to being pronounced by some self-serving and arrogant idiot who thinks he is God.
- Do all you have agreed to do.
- Do not encroach upon the person or property of others.
- Unbridled competition with personal responsibility is the law of the land.
The third is my personal observation for one of the necessary foundations for a just society that continues to gain in abundance, harmony, health, happiness and morality.
Mark Perkel - Telling Teenagers the Truth about Smoking Pot - Mr. Perkel does not advocate ingesting cannabis, though he apparently does so himself. A no-nonsense page full of real information. Topics: Lying to Teens about Marijuana does more harm than good, How bad is Marijuana Really?, Benefits of Marijuana, Marijuana can make you Smarter, Marijuana can make you Dumber, Drug Abuse is a Bad Idea, It's your Life! Be Responsible!, Why Marijuana should be Legal, Who opposes legalizing Marijuana and why, Important People for Legalizing Marijuana, Oppressing Pot Smokers is the Real Crime, Myths about Marijuana, Twisting Logic, Marijuana Related Links. Lots of book covers with links to Amazon. Mr. Perkel runs People Before Lawyers: "This organization is for people who are having trouble getting justice in court and are representing themselves pro se..." www.perkel.com is a voluminous web site. Added to my links page in the "Intellect" section. [anodyne]
The most dangerous thing about Pot is getting caught with it. You can go to jail. People get very weird about Pot and you can get in a lot of trouble over it. So if anyone asks if you've been smoking Pot, Just Say No!
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Many drugs out there are highly addictive. The most addictive drug that kills more people than any other drug is Tobacco. This drug is to be avoided at all costs. The addiction to Tobacco is much harder to break if you get hooked at a young age. Besides cancer and death, Tobacco will totally change your lifestyle. Your whole life will revolve around scheduling when and where you'll be able to smoke next.
Vin Suprynowicz at the Las-Vegas Review Journal - 'If it's not in writing, they're screwed' - The story of Howard Liang and his family, who moved from China to America so their son could attend college. They opened a Chinese Restaurant, China King, in a Wal-Mart plaza, and were told by the landlord that the lease made theirs the only Chinese Restaurant in the plaza. New owners, new Chinese Restaurant, er... Asian buffet. And the lease is missing the exclusivity clause. Vin encourages folks to head over to China King and keep the Liangs in business.
Massad Ayoob at Backwoods Home Magazine - Armed & Female - Mr. Ayoob uses the title of Paxton Quigley's book to make the point that women can and should be armed. [kaba]
For more than a century, the handgun has been called in American lore "the equalizer." There is truth here. The sad part of the truth is that a gun makes an emotional dwarf like Sirhan Sirhan equal to the destruction of a giant like Robert Kennedy. The happy part of the truth is that a handgun makes a petite and gentle female equal to the destructive power of an enraged adult male, or a gang of them. Remember back a quarter century to the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, stabbed to death before the eyes of at least 38 witnesses who did nothing. Their statements afterwards made "I didn’t want to get involved" a catch-phrase for the downslide of American values. Remember the incident called "the wilding" in Central Park much more recently, a brilliant Manhattan woman gang-raped and beaten into profound brain damage by a gang of "youths" armed only with their physical strength. Remember these, and tell me again that women have no need for guns.
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It is not a choice of being predator or prey. A lot of people miss that, including one otherwise intelligent reporter who went through my school recently. If you become a wolf to ward off the other wolves, you have defeated your own purpose. You have, as my generation learned to say, destroyed the village in order to save it.
No. The ideal is to be the sheepdog. You did not come with intent to harm. You came with intent to protect. If the wolf approaches your flock, you will bark to warn him off. If he comes closer, you will threaten with your more aggressive presence. And then, if he is stupid enough to attack, you will do what instinct tells you to do to a predator who is trying to tear your lamb’s throat out.
You will interdict the predator. And you will do what you must to stop him from harming that lamb, even if you must tear his throat out.
And in the end, if you were not born to be the protector like the sheepdog, it will suffice if you are a mother sheep with a .38 Special. Because, when you think about it, if mother sheep had guns to protect their lambs, they wouldn't need sheepdogs at all.
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Some men fear that women will be too faint-hearted to pull the trigger of a self-defense weapon. Faint hearts come in both genders. It’s in the mind, not in the chromosomes. One offender climbing through a window looked at the gun in one of my female student’s hands and said, "You ain't got the balls to shoot me, Bitch." He woke up in the hospital with his bullet-shattered arm amputated. Another rapist told his eight-months pregnant victim, "Bitch, I'm gonna f--- that baby right out of you!" As he bent to remove his pants, she smashed him in the head with a table lamp, picked up his dropped gun, and emptied it into him.
With equivalent training, the female may indeed be deadlier than the male. One good laboratory for this is law enforcement, where use of force training is identical between the genders. I've noticed over the years that policewomen are less hesitant than men to use appropriate force. A male officer may be reluctant to reach for his baton in a fistfight or for his gun when the opponent draws a knife, thinking that the manly thing to do is handle things with his bare hands. Females labor under no such delusions, and will be quicker to employ the appropriate "force option," by and large.
Stephen Yagman at the L.A. Times - Yet Another Sorry Lesson for the Hapless Feds - The "Bureau of Anarchy, Tumult and Fire" does it again. Roaring in with their standing army when they could have simply served the guy an arrest warrant when he was out on his morning walk. Two dead because of it. [kaba]
Fox News - Fearful Female Students Take Up Arms - Some women in Fort Collins, CO are obtaining pistols and concealed-carry permits to protect themselves from a serial rapist. Bravo! Well, bravo to the women for defending themselves. A big un-bravo to Colorado for requiring a permit to exercise a constitution right.
To get a permit in Larimer County, applicants are required to take a handgun safety course, pass a background check and pay a $130 fee. The permits are good for as long as the sheriff stays in office.
Philip E. Agre - Your Face Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places - long article with lots of links at the end. Argues why face-recognition systems in public places should be banned and counters some of the arguments for them. Slashdot discussion here. [wood s lot]
Some applications of automatic face recognition systems are relatively unobjectionable. Many facilities have good reasons to authenticate everyone who walks in the door, for example to regulate access to weapons, money, criminal evidence, nuclear materials, or biohazards. When a citizen has been arrested for probable cause, it is reasonable for the police to use automatic face recognition to match a mug shot of the individual against a database of mug shots of people who have been arrested previously. These uses of the technology should be publicly justified, and audits should ensure that the technology is being used only for proper purposes.
Face recognition systems in public places, however, are a matter for serious concern. The issue recently came to broad public attention when it emerged that fans attending the Super Bowl had unknowingly been matched against a database of alleged criminals, and when the city of Tampa deployed a face-recognition system in the nightlife district of Ybor City. But current and proposed uses of face recognition are much more widespread, as the resources at the end of this article demonstrate in detail. The time to consider the acceptability of face recognition in public places is now, before the practice becomes entrenched and people start getting hurt.
