When I moved to the States it took me a while to get used to everything being non-metric, as well as dates being reversed. Today – in America – it’s Pi day, since it’s March 14, or 3/14. On May the 4th is Star Wars day. Meanwhile, the rest of the world probably looks upon these date celebrations with bemused eyes, as they write dates with day and then the month. For them, today is 14/3, which is nowhere near pi.
Category: rant (Page 2 of 2)
Dust bunny colony established a thriving metropolis in this site due to inactivity on my part. Most of last year I spent running – marathon training. That tends to take over your life, and all my plans to get more active here withered away. I’ve read a few books since then, watched a few movies – things I planned to write more about last year. I’m still running, but I’m hoping to put some thoughts on paper about running and other things, especially those things that fail to convey any meaning in 14 characters or less.
Lately I have been inundated with comment spam. One spammer went through every single post and attached a spammy comment to each one. Last week a spammer attached 50+ comments to one post. This week, more random comment attacks. For this reason I have set comments to be moderated from the start, and it took a few months before spam appeared. At the moment I can only deal with this by turning off comments, at least until I find another option. This blog has consisted of random and sporadic thoughts from the beginning, so probably nothing of interest to real people, at least most of the time.
One last thing. I’m brightening up the look, as older posts were getting lost in the descending gloom of the previous theme.
It is too bad that someone even has to write what Wendy McElroy recently wrote at her site, but somehow I’m not surprised.
One more reason I avoid sites like facebook and myspace. In the first place I would not like to be peppered with advertising at my “own” page. There’s the lack of time issue. And then, there’s the fact that your access can be revoked at any time, for unstated reasons. It’s almost like they’re the government, citing “security reasons,” so that users have no idea why they are banned, and can never discover the reason.
Law enforcement: seen by 99.99% of intelligent people as the sole prerogative of the state. Why? Because to let private individuals handle the task would mean only rich people received protection, that people with money could break the law with impunity (these days they just get bailed out by the federal government). Example no. 1,423,675 to show the state option is just as ludicrous as the private option. In the real world neither is perfect. Still, the state option is nearly held up as the only option.
On the drive home today this point was hammered home again. In the middle of rush hour just south of Austin I was passed by a motorcycle cop. A few minutes later I saw him parked along the highway with his radar, scoping for violators of the reduced speed segment of the highway due to construction. Not one mile later we chanced upon a car accident, with an overturned car surrounded by private samaritans. No police in sight. There is no money in saving lives. Maybe unfair, as the accident had just happened. Still, with the nearly daily examples from Radley Balko at Reason.com of police mayhem and brutality against innocents, and other mainstream articles on mis-management and fraud from the so-called thin blue line, where are the calls to eliminate the state police? I do not believe you could flip a switch and overnight have a fully private law enforcement paradigm, as the collective consciousness is too firmly wedded to the idea this is a “wild west” scenario (purely inspired by Hollywood and detatched from reality), and that bloodshed in the streets will rule.
Still, when even free-market libertarians keep faith in the holy trinity of the state (police, law, and defense — all nation-state concepts that dovetail nicely with fatherland/motherland/homeland mystical rites of the state), there is no hope for those who view anything free market related as horrible in being open to a market for law enforcement.
Why am I not surprised to read this story out of the UK, about the proposed tracking of kids to link them back to crimes long after childhood? Sure, it’s sold as a method to protect the kids, but it really is all about control. Petty, nanny-state control. Soon to be adopted in the US and civilized countries all around the world, no doubt.
Quite telling is this quote:
Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country, and its local authorities are increasingly using powers designed to prevent terrorism to spy on people suspected of petty crimes such as littering and failing to pick up dog mess.
I often glance through The Libertarian Enterprise, an online newsletter published by L. Neil Smith and edited by Ken Holder. In the current issue one contributor by the name of Michael Bradshaw riffs on a letter to the editor from Victor Milan, and so I read the hole thing. A few paragraphs into the article I had to carefully lift my jaw off the table. Is this person advocating murder as a strategy for achieving liberty? I think Milan’s original letter nailed the issue: too many libertarians are focused on the so-called Libertarian Party, and political campaigning such as the recent Ron Paul movement. Instead of reasonable discourse, Bradshaw instead calls for “sacrific[ing] the state. Literally. On an altar of fire” through killing political leaders. I am staggered that TLE actually published this stuff, as murder and violence never advances liberty. I abhor the loss of liberty throughout the world, but I certainly don’t consider John Ross’s Unintended Consequences or Vin Supryniwicz’s The Black Arrow as manifestos for liberty. I am no pacifist, for I believe in self-defense, but assassination politics is still politics and better left to professional criminals. It is also insane and completely without ethical grounding.
How long before this much maligned and restricted right dies completely? The most recent example is grim: convicted and arrested for a joke about Scientology? Give me a freakin’ break.
