Archive for April 2005

Greg Swann, at my urging, reflects on Pope John Paul’s life and death. Go read.

I just landed in Chicago for a 3-day conference. Get back to the SF Bay Area Sunday evening. Don’t know if I’ll be able to blog anything or attend to comments.

…what I mean when I say that we live in a thoroughly and completely Upside-Down World, well, then now you know. I don’t know what the vote was, but no matter; the Connecticut Supreme Court is welcome to rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.

Well, Radley, I can only say that it seems a far easier task to me, if one is to set about it, to kill a “right” when all one can say about it is that it’s written down in an old, albeit distinguished document. Far tougher to kill a moral principle, if you catch my drift. ‘Course, that’s not about to stop them, either.

I’ll try to make this post concise and self-sufficient, but there’s quite a lot of background material. Ideally, you’ll be able to read just this and have a good idea of the thing. If it interests you and you have the time, I encourage you to delve through the background links. Here’s the background, roughly in chronological order: Billy Beck becomes the first to note that the new journal The New Libertarian and its NeoLibertarian Network (“NLN”) are doomed to failure. In a nutshell, both the NLN and the new journal are about achieving libertarian-flavored, incremental political changes through pragmatism and compromise, as distinguished from uncompromising stands on individualist and libertarian principles (which also doesn’t change anything). Meanwhile, at QandO Blog, where the NLN is housed, a list of words is published that libertarians shouldn’t use for fear of scaring off the audience (read comments too). A few days pass, and Billy lights it up again; this time, mentioning his old Internet friend of 15 years, Bruce McQuain, part of both the NLN and the new journal. Bruce answers his old friend Billy, the gist of it being that if you want anything to change, you’ve got to get in…

You know, there are at least several million worse ways for you and a traveling companion to spend $15,000-$30,000 (plus round-trip airfare to Naples). Be sure to check out the brochure.

Prepared to be impressed? Here’s my home office network, which I’ve been messing with since yesterday morning’s activities (see the previous entry). Excuse the mess, but when you’re head deep in this sort of stuff… Starting from the left rear, that’s my Sony Vaio Digital Studio, and to the right, that’s a new HP Digital Studio that I just got for Bea yesterday to replace her iMac that’s sitting right there in the center. Yes, that’s a 19″ Sony flat screen monitor, same as the one in my office at work. In the front, to the right is Bea’s PowerBook, and to the left, my Fujitsu Notebook. And, guess what? They are all networked together. Not just the PCs with the PCs and the Macs with the Macs, but all together. They can all print to that laser printer (lower right), can all share files with one-another, and all share the high-speed Internet connection. The two notebooks are 802.11 Wi-Fi equipped, and so we can be hooked in to the LAN and Internet anywhere in the house, even out in the backyard. But, you want to see something really cool? That’s an iTunes console, and I’ve got it installed on…

It’s 9:00 am on this Saturday morning, and I’ve already taken both cars down to the car wash and secured myself a spring (short) haircut. The only downside was having to sit in the barber’s chair listening to the ignorant banality spewing forth on every topic from steroids in baseball to health care and retirement plans. Jesus. One funny note, though. Had a home-improvement show on the radio, and no shit, I heard this slogan at the end of one of the adverts: The biggest name in caulk. No shit. Wonder if Rachel Lucas would’ve picked up on that.

I’m likely to catch shit over this, but I have to maintain my integrity, and by implication, there’s certain things that have to be posted here in spite of how unenvious I am of doing so. I cannot morn the apparent near-term passing of Pope John-Paul II. At least not in the sense of his office, anyway. I don’t know his heart, of course, but I am automatically suspicious of all authoritarians, and the Roman Catholic institution (as all religious institutions) is as authoritarian as you can get without actually engaging in violence or the threat thereof. Moreover, I have not a shred of doubt in the world that if any of these religious institutions again possessed the political power they once held, that they would use it precisely as they once did. I believe they are wholly unrepentant in this regard. Thus, while I can grudgingly accept the apparent “need” for some people to harbor and maintain fanciful notions of a God and streets paved in gold, etc., that is a far cry, to me, from institutions that preach the natural depravity of man, and who, incidentally, advance the even more evil agenda of foisting unearned guilt upon innocent…

First things first. I don’t know if he coined the term, but I’m ripping off Kim du Toit with that name for the Republican Party. Next, go read Dick Morris’ piece. The gist: But with Schiavo, there is no fetus. There is just Terri. And when we put ourselves in her place, more than 80 percent of us think we would want to die. To be told that we must linger in a non-life because of the dictates of a governor wedded to the religious right and a Congress in the grip of ideologically driven leaders seems to the vast majority of us a level of government interference we find too intrusive to tolerate. [emphasis added] I came across that via Bruce McQuain, who really does a thoughtful workup, including some of his own personal experiences. He’s dead on, and I seriously mean no pun. I’ve had both of my grandmothers die in the last few years. With the first, it was simply a matter of shutting down the respirator. For the second, it was restriction of nutrition, but she had been alert enough to demand that for herself. I cannot imagine what it would have been like if some…