Laser Slingshot
Q: How many libertarians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Well, that depends. Generally "screwing" anything is an individual effort best left to the individual to determine. It would depend on what type of libertarian we're describing. Randian, Anarcho-socialist, anarcho-Capitalist, Capitalist, Free Market type (with support for military or against)... If you're a strict Randian then it would be....
# Dana Summers at The Orlando Sentinel - I Like This Pat Robertson - cartoon commentary. Hehe.
# Dana Summers at The Orlando Sentinel - Eminent Domain - cartoon commentary. Hehe. [militant]
# Chuck Asay at comics.com - Common Sense - cartoon commentary on the no-fly list. Hehe. [militant]
# John Ross - Thoughts on the Marriage III, or The Marriage Strike: It's Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better - some controversial ideas about our patriarchal society.
# Chris Elliott at The New York Times - Looking for Friendly Skies? Stay on the Ground - flight attendants are getting cranky. Their pay and job security is decreasing and the passengers are also in foul moods. I wrote the following letter to the editor:
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 10:36:49 -0400
From: "Bill St. Clair" <billstclair@gmail.com>
Reply-To: bill@billstclair.com
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: Letter to the editor
I read Chris Elliott's August 23 essay on America's increasingly unfriendly skies. Wanna invigorate the airline industry? There's one very simple way to do it. Get the Keystone Sekurity Kops out of the airports. Let the airlines themselves decide, individually, how much prodding and poking they'll do of their passengers, and let the market decide which security methods will survive. Some prefer a disarmed airplane. Many want to defend themselves. The airlines could easily provide both, if the feds would get their useless TSA goons out of the way.
Bill St. Clair
bill@billstclair.com
# MSNBC - Hawaii sets caps on wholesale gas prices - If you live in Hawaii, prepare for massive gasoline shortages. [claire]
# Claire Wolfe - Books and Movies - short reviews of a large range of freedom-oriented books and movies, recently updated and expanded. [claire]
# Cat's Domain - Wrist Rocket Laser Slingshot - Very cool. Two models, $50 for the regular PS-52 model. $70 for the PS-55, which also has a red-dot sight.
# Sun Developer Network - The Swing Connection: Swing Sightings - a list of new Swing-based client applications. FreeMind (mind mapping software) and blue (a music composition system, based on CSound) looked interesting to me. [cafe]
# thorj - Sketcher - "is a client/server system that lets you simultaneously chat and paint together with your friends, or discuss and plan out your next big project with your colleauges. Features: Anti-aliased tools, IRC-like chat and modern a Java Swing interface." Works good. The server is written in Java as well and uses a non-standard TCP port, so you have to be in full control of the server machine. [SourceForge]
# mtamizi - TerpPaint "is a Paint program written using Java and AWT/Swing. TerpPaint is part of the TerpOffice suite developed at the University of Maryland." Nice, professional quality, paint program. Packaged as a Java application, not an applet. The SourceForge project page has version 3.4. Version 4.0 is available here. Both had a glitch. The VB file that was supposed to start it, after compiling, never worked. I had to start it myself from the TerpPaint class (no packages). And the first start came up wrong. The second and subsequent starts worked fine, however. [SourceForge]