Ides of March
Everyone you see, you say to them,
"Love me."
Of course, you don't do this out loud;
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this,
This great pull in us
To connect.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying
With that sweet moon
Language,
What every other eye in this world
Is dying
To hear.
Bill St. Clair at the Berkshire Eagle - It is wise for women to be armed - The Pittsfield (MA) paper printed my letter, without calling me about it. Looks like they copied it verbatim, with the exception of changing "Feb. 9 issue" to "March 9 op-ed page". Amazing.
Article last updated:
Friday, March 15, 2002 5:11 AM MST
It is wise for women to be armed
To the Editor of THE EAGLE:-
I was dismayed to see on the March 9 op-ed page Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column bemoaning the creation of a Second Amendment Sisters chapter at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley. I salute those women for taking their self-defense into their own hands.
Unless you're rich or a senator, or both, and can pay for or have us tax slaves pay for your 24/7 body guards, the only practical and effective way to protect yourself from criminals is with a handgun. That goes double for women.
Why is it that Mr. Kristof would rather see a woman raped and strangled to death with her own pantyhose than for her to defend herself with a handgun? Of course he doesn't think that's what he's saying, but that is the effect of his philosophy.
All the laws and all the statistics in the world won't help you one bit when a man twice your size attacks you, but a small gun in your pocket will, usually without firing a shot.
BILL ST. CLAIR
New Lebanon, N.Y.
Libertarian Party Press Releases - New Justice Department plan to ban the Marlboro Man is 'health facism' - the cigarette nazis are at it again.
This week, the Justice Department revealed that it will ask a federal judge to impose unprecedented restrictions on tobacco companies' marketing efforts. Federal bureaucrats want to:
* Prohibit all photographs and color in cigarette advertisements, and restrict them to text-only, black-and-white formats. Ads would also have to devote 50% of their space to "graphic" health warnings.
* Ban all cigarette vending machines sales -- even in adult-only establishments like bars.
* Require cigarette packages to carry health-warning inserts.
* Forbid any tobacco product from being labeled "light" or "mild."
* Require half the space on every package of cigarettes to be reserved for "graphic" health warnings "created and supervised" by government bureaucrats.
Jerry Pournelle - Wednesday, March 13, 2002 - commentary elicited by someone saying that the state should have intervened before Andrea Yates got so out of it that she killed her kids. Will likely move here next week. [pournelle]
Is it your contention that the state should intervene in these situations? A psychiatrist says she ought not have more kids. The husband insists on unreasonable conditions in the home. The wife doesn't leave, doesn't go to the authorities, broods, and kills the kids. At what point did you want the uncivilized state of Texas to intervene?
How do you draft the legislation that allows the interventions?
Like New York, where a woman telephones a help line to ask if it is normal to get sexually excited when breast feeding her first-born, and hours later Social Services shows up, takes the infant away from her, jails her briefly, and makes her and her husband spend every cent they have getting the child back? Is that a good model of 'civilization'?
Doc Searls and Brent Simmons at Linux Journal - UNIX under the Desktop - "A penguin's-eye look at Apple's OS X." They like it. Big time. [heart]
