Banished to the Fifth Level of Hell
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice." -- Albert Einsteinand:
"If a man neglects to enforce his rights, he cannot complain if, after a while, the law follows his example. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Doonesbury - December 13, 2003 - another good one in the series on GW's visit to Iraq. Hahahahaha.
Guess I won't be qualifying for sainthood any time soon: [pournelle]
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of
Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the
levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | Very High |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | High |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Extreme |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Moderate |
| Level 7 (Violent) | High |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | Moderate |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | High |
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test
Jerry Pournelle - On False Memories - they're very real and very easy to implant. [pournelle]
There are dozens of other cases of implanted memories. You can probably implant them in yourself; it's certainly easy enough to do with your children. Tell them about "the time when you are about 5 and got lost in the Mall, and the mall cop found you and gave you an ice cream cone" and in a few hours you will know the flavor of the cone and the color of the uniform and whether the mall cop carried a weapon.
And you can convince trauma victims of chilling flashback memories -- that never happened.
The implications for the law ought to be clear.
Jerry Pournelle - Tyranny or Incompetence? - Nothing to consider. Tyranny, pure and simple. [pournelle]
Perhaps I am just upset, perhaps I am a victim of biased news, perhaps anything: but I do not want to hear that the United States of America is keeping people who have not been informed of the charges against them and who have no prospect of ever being released. Prisoner of War camps to intern hostiles, conditions like Stalag 17: those are not pleasant but they are acceptable. Charging people with war crimes is acceptable. Shooting them out of hand for being on a battlefield in arms without uniforms: that is harsh, but acceptable. Imprisoning them in a base under US control and saying they are beyond the reach of the courts because the base is technically under the sovereignty of a foreign government : that is the kind of legal quibbling this nation can do without.
If this is the price of a New World Order, perhaps we ought to reconsider the costs and gains.
Particularly when the real danger is Saudi Wahabbi agents in the heart of East Europe.
Jerry Pournelle - The Return of the King - Jerry saw an early screening.
WOW! Great Jumping Jehosophat!
Three hours plus, and they left out the Scouring of the Shire -- pretty well had to -- and the romance between Eowyn and Faramir -- again they pretty well had to -- but they didn't leave out much else. Both the battles and the quiet scenes. Liv Tyler can't have more than 10 minutes on screen but she's wonderful. As is Blanchett.
And wow.
Scarmig at Strike the Root - How I Said No to the Automatic Social Security Number - he just kept saying no, and now his daughter has health insurance, a pediatrician, and licensed day-care, but no beast number. When she's old enough to make the decision for herself, she can choose to get one if she wants it. Or not. [lew]
Human Events - What's Next for Big Brother? - a little-known part of the campaign finance "reform" bill. [kaba]
Yet, perhaps the most ominous and Gestapo-like provision in the law is the provision--quoted on our cover page as summarized by Justice Stephen Breyer--requires that every broadcast outlet in America keep a record of every instance in which any American requests any broadcast time to deliver any message about any national political or legislative issue--even if it is not near an election, and even if it does not name an elected federal official.
Why does the government need a record of when a citizen of, say, Bismarck, North Dakota, inquires about buying time from a local radio station to state his views about, say, government attacks on freedom of speech?
For years, Americans who respect the 2nd Amendment have resisted a federal gun registry. Big Brother government does not need to know which law-abiding citizens might have a firearm in a bedside drawer because the Constitution says Big Brother government cannot infringe on the citizen's right to keep and bear arms.
Nor does Big Brother government have the rightful authority to establish a federal speech registry--because the 1st Amendment says "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."
This law does exactly that. It is an abomination to a free people. Those who voted for it hoping the court would strike down its unconstitutional provisions--and the President who signed it conceding it was constitutionally questionable--made an egregious error. Now they have a duty to redress that error by repealing this law.
Maggie Gallagher at Townhall.com - Man vs. Bear in the woods - commentary on New Jersey's bear problem. [kaba]
In one rural community (according to The New York Times), schoolchildren have started carrying their lunch bags in their hands instead of their backpacks. That way, if they see a bear, they can just toss him their noontime meal. Saves wear and tear on the backpack. Not to mention the children.
...
To the anti-hunters, the bear is a symbol of nature as they love to experience it: pristine, untouched by human hands. To kill a bear is to desecrate nature. And nature is a kind of religion, an escape from human depravity, a place of innocence.
This view of nature has nothing to with what nature is, of course: Nature is ruthlessly indifferent to human sentimentality, and death and killing is abundantly part of the cycle. But the alleged nature-lovers urge alternative methods of bear control, educating humans on how to co-exist with bears ("Toss the nice black bear your lunch, dear"), or sterilizing bears, rather than killing them.
The Telegraph - The wild west (and east) gets wilder - on the consequences of "environmental" policies of re-introcing large predators near human habitation. [kaba]
roblems are the worst in the northwest where, since their reintroduction from Canada in 1985, hundreds of wolves now roam. Their numbers are so large that several states, particularly Wyoming and Montana, are pushing for shoot-on-sight policies dropped in the 1950s to be reinstated.
In Paradise Valley, Montana, locals have started organising vigils to protect their cattle during calving season.
"It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck to hear 75 or 80 cows screaming," Merlin Dale, 53, said. "When my daughters go to babysit, they are handed a rifle and told: 'Be careful.' The wolves were got rid of for a reason."
Ben Westhoff at FamilyBadge.Org - Love the Gun You're With - when Michigan concealed-carry proponent Greg Jeffery first went hunting, he used an AK-47, with a magazine block to limit it to 5 rounds. People thought this was strange, but you and I know it's not. The 7.62x39 has almost identical ballistics to the 30-30, the most commonly used dear gun. [kaba]
Bill Piper and Tony Newman at Drug Policy Alliance via Friends of Liberty - Congress Votes to Censor anti-''War On Drug'' Ads - fascist bastards! [whatreallyhappened]
WASHINGTON - December 9 - A little-known provision buried within the omnibus federal spending bill that the U.S. House of Representatives approved yesterday would take away federal grants from local and state transportation authorities that allow citizens to run advertising on buses, trains, or subways in support of reforming our nation's drug laws. If enacted, the provision could effectively silence community groups around the country that are using advertising to educate Americans about medical marijuana and other drug policy reforms. Meanwhile, this same bill gives the White House $145 million in taxpayer money to run anti-marijuana ads next year.
The Capital Times - Editorial: King George's retribution - Commentary on the Busheviks forbidding rebuilding contracts to companies in countries that didn't help make the rebuilding necessary. [whatreallyhappened]
The best allies the United States had in the months prior to the invasion of Iraq were not those countries that grudgingly went along with George W. Bush's rush to war. The best allies were Canada, France and Germany.
These three countries, all of which have been consistent and well-regarded sources of information and analysis for the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. international security agencies, explained that Iraq did not pose an immediate - or particularly serious - threat to its neighbors in the Middle East, let alone to the distant United States. They reminded U.S. officials that there was no evidence to suggest Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. They detailed the success of past U.N. weapons inspections, which had destroyed most if not all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and they proposed a regimen of aggressive inspections to ensure that any remaining weapons - and the capacity to develop them - would be eliminated.
