"Rather than engage in a true debate on the controversial parts of the Patriot Act, as Senator Specter did yesterday, many proponents of the Patriot Act just point to non-controversial provisions of the Patriot Act and talk about how important they are. They say this bill must be passed because it reauthorizes those non-controversial provisions. That does not advance the debate, it just muddies the waters. I have news for those who would try that tactic here. It won’t work. We don’t have to accept bad provisions to make sure the good provisions become law. I hope the Senate will make that lesson very clear this week."

"The Patriot Act's supporters, and its detractors, could both do a better job of arguing their cases. But the burden of proof is on its supporters and, as I say, they haven't met it. Of course, I didn't think they had met it the first time around, when it passed with almost unanimous bipartisan support."

"Line-item vetoes from the executive and forcing each earmark to pass a vote in Congress sound like reasonable reforms for the existing process, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem, which is the overall size of the federal budget itself. Too many mandates have been granted to federal control, most of which fall outside of the constitutional boundaries of federal power as it is. The size of the budget creates a vast treasure that encourages grand corruption that makes earmarks look like petty cash. ..."

"Here's where the Net is going, as far as I can see. The world is moving to an "Empty Computer" model of computation. In the Empty Computer world, all my digital assets (all my docs, apps, images, videos, soundtracks, mail mssgs etc) are stored in my personal data structure, afloat in the Cybersphere. I can access my personal structure from any net-connected computer in the world (obviously, modulo security checks).

[...]

"... All my digital assets are afloat in my personal data structure on the net, available to me automatically on every computer everywhere -- on computers in phonebooths, supermarkets, planes, airports, classrooms, my office, etc. I log on and identify myself and there's my stuff. Computers become viewing devices for tuning in personal data structures (which are floating out there in the cyber-cosmos like Venus).

The Net will provide distributed, reliable, fungible storage for these floating personal data structures. What will the structures look like? I claim they'll look like "lifestreams," the electronic timeline-journals we first implemented in the mid '90s (everything fully indexed; with a past, present and future; the stream begins with your birth certificate). ..."

"Arguably, Wal-Mart is actually overpaying for these jobs -- likely because of minimum wage laws and other governmental regulations. If 79 qualified people are applying for every job, then the conditions of work are surely more desirable than they need to be. One imagines that Wal-Mart could, if it had the flexibility, cut the salaries and/or benefits offered and still attract, say, two applicants per opening.

"This isn't just an educated professional talking about situations that "those people" find themselves in. I have a doctorate in political science and have found myself in precisely the same situation as those Wal-Mart applicants when on the academic job market. Indeed, there were often many more than 79 highly qualified applicants -- Ph.D.s with publications and teaching experience -- for each college teaching position that I applied for.

"Because the academic market is so tight, universities have adopted virtually the same attitude toward aspiring professors as Wal-Mart does to prospective stockers. They demand heavy teaching loads, substantial committee work, a rigorous pace of professional publication -- and offer rather paltry salaries. And that's for people who have, on average, twenty-two or more years of schooling."

"I've said this before in public, and I will again. I think my own fumbling efforts at descriptive sociology and anthropology have earned a better press than they probably deserve, because the standards of scholarship in those fields are now so desperately bad that an outsider/amateur like me who applies even minimal rigor looks brlliant by comparison. My modest success is the flip side of the Sokal hoax, and both are less testimony to the cleverness of their authors than to the degree that the academic background of our work has become an intellectually impoverished wasteland.

"You complain that nobody wants to pay decent salaries to humanities academics as if this is market failure. I think it is the market mercilessly assessing the actual value of what they teach. If anything, they're paid far too much, and insulated from the hard choices independent scholars like me have to make."

Looks like a cold winter
It was October and the Indians on a remote Wyoming reservation asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild.

Since he was a chief in a modern society he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky he couldn't tell what the winter was going to be like.

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared. But being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"

"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared.

A week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?"

"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter.

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find.

Two weeks later the Chief called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"

"Absolutely," the man replied. "It's looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters ever."

"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy."

"... Everyone knows about capitalism's successes; we need to spare a little attention for its failures too. The US university is one big one. Everyone knows that elite US universities occupy the wacko left of the ideological spectrum. Because they run the ed schools, they've gradually turned the public schools into wacko-left institutions also, where children learn every day about all the awful things (aand [sic] none of the good ones) the US, western civilization, amd [sic] white men in general have foisted off on the world.

"Why does it work this way? In part because humanities and social science professors are paid approximately nothing. They've always earned less than their accountants, but nowadays I'll bet they make an order of magnitude less. (Science profs are underpaid too, but at least we have consulting opportunities, etc.) Why shouldn't US humanities professors hate this country and hate capitalism when their mediocre-ist students routinely get rich while their professors can't even pay their damned bills? Do we really think this is a clever way to run a country -- to pay the people who have maximum influence on the attitudes of young people so little that they're bound to be resentful and angry? Nowadays, colleges that have managed their portfolios well are swimming in money and are putting up new buildings right and left. How much of that filters down to the faculty? Zero."

"And why do we want to be a nation that worships rich people anyway? Conspicuous consumption used to be bad taste. Unfortunately taste has been abolished. And students have never been so obsessed with money, and so indifferent to spiritual things. It's not the tech industry's fault. But the next time a multi-billionaire tech bigshot tells me how wonderful capitalism is, I'm going to throw up. Obviously they think it's wonderful. But there's more to life. ..."

"Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled -- whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others -- to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country's affairs. The lack of any significant connection between a person's opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it is his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world."
-- Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit

"... When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensible that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose." [Emphasis added]
-- Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit

"To the contrary, the [New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men's] report frontally accepts that there are intrinsic differences in how men and women cope with health, education, responsibility and violence. It concludes that social policies must not begin by denying differences. If you're running a zoo, know the real nature of your guests. This applies nationally, not only in New Hampshire. The clout of female voters has been transmuted into a strangely pervasive inattention to the legitimate needs of boys and men. While there remain grating sources of unfairness to women, the community is in the process of steadily creating a new legal and educational structure that generates new gender unfairness: 90% of the victims of Ritalin and similar drugs prescribed for schoolkids are boys; but even drugged they perform less well than girls. A 2005 study at Yale found nationally that even in prekindergarten boys are nearly five times as likely to be expelled as girls." [Emphasis added]

15. Why is "phonics" not spelled the way it sounds?

18. If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

"Regarding specific points of disagreement: I would say that gasoline can be re-used if you smash the engine, just like dinosaur residue can be reused even though they and their ecosystems are smashed. Computer code loses its potency in a way that nothing else does.

[...]

"Raymond claims that what I dreamed up as a "farce" is to him a "hopeful" possibility. What I wrote up as farce was people abandoning the species to become Gods because of Wal-Mart."

"Surely our water line won't freeze overnight in Deming..."

and

"Surely our water line won't freeze overnight in Tucson..."

"Perhaps for those baffled as to why a Black Police Association is encouraged whereas a White Police Association would be (rightly) denounced, the pamphlet asks: "Can minorities be racist?". The answer appears to be: "Not really".

"It says : "Minorities may of course have prejudices relating to the majority group and may sometimes act on these. Whether it is appropriate to refer to this as racism is debatable (remember that Racism = Prejudice + Power). ..."

"Among elementary students, 17% of all students and 33% of white boys had been diagnosed with ADHD and the vast majority had been medicated for this condition at some time during the 1997-98 school year."

[...]

"In southeastern Virginia, the region with the highest documented rate of ADHD drug treatment of any community, students identified with ADHD were 3 to 7 times more likely than their peers to experience adverse educational outcomes. Regardless of whether children diagnosed with ADHD were medicated, they were far more likely than their schoolmates to be expelled or suspended from school, require special education services, and repeat a grade ..."

"I have a high school aged son, who although smart as heck and a real asset in our family business, is a terrible student. He knows more than I ever will about American history and is an inspired mechanic. However, he HATES school. He would rather stay home and work like a field hand on our family farm than go to class. If we let him skip a day, he will work for a dozen hours beside his dad rather than sit in class for half that time.

"I think you are absolutely right that this is because boys are no longer allowed to be boys. By their very nature they delight in the gory, violent aspects of life.

"Give 'em a stick and it turns into a Tommy gun quick enough. Society today abhors that aspect of male human nature. Schools work overtime to squash it and to brainwash the little critters that their very essence is bad, bad, bad. If that doesn't work they give them drugs instead.

"We value all of our kids for who they are. I wish I had the gumption to homeschool them."

"Ned Barnett is an expert on military technology, and frequently serves as a contributor to The History Channel on mil-tech issues. He has plenty of experience researching military ordnance. He told me:

“Based on my extensive experience in researching military technology, I can verify that this is a 152mm or 155mm artillery shell – unfired – and by the looks of it, fairly old. ...""

"Prior to sometime in the mid-1980s, there were influential voices in computer science opposing the idea of the file because it would lead to file incompatibility. Ted Nelson, the inventor of the idea of linked digital content, and Jef Raskin, initiator of the Macintosh project at Apple, both held the view that there should be a giant field of elemental data without file boundaries."

"What is this universal information structure? A narrative stream, which says, ''Let me tell you a story. '' The system shows you a 3-D stream of electronic documents flowing through time. The future (where you store your calendar, reminders, plans) flows into the present (where you keep material you're working on right now) and on into the past (where every e-mail message and draft, digital photo, application, virtual Rolodex card, video and audio clip and Web bookmark is stored, in addition to all those calendar notes and reminders that used to be part of the future and have since flowed into the past to be archived forever).

"And so the organization of your digital information reflects the shape of your life, not the shape of a 1940's Steelcase file cabinet. [...]"

"George Bush won the election. If you don't like it, you better win elections."
-- Rahm Emanuel

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
--Al Gore

"I love California I practically grew up in Phoenix."
--Dan Quayle

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- A Cheyenne representative proposes a bill he says would clean up Wyoming elections.

Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, proposes a system that would allow candidates who collect a modest number of donations from private citizens to then qualify for public campaign funds. Zwonitzer presented the bill Wednesday to the League of Women Voters in Cheyenne.

[...]

Putting such a system in place in Wyoming would cost $3 million per biennium, Zwonitzer said. It would cost another $200,000 to establish a Wyoming Voters Commission he proposes in the legislation to provide unbiased information about candidates.[Emphasis added]

"I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else."
-- Lily Tomlin

"'Tis a pity. Biden occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party. He supported Bill Clinton's crime bill (more cops, fewer assault rifles) which helped the Democrats fight the talk-show calumny that they were pro-crime and anti-cop. In his maturity, he has emerged, along with some appropriate gray hair, as one of his party's most important -- and knowledgeable -- voices on foreign policy. Even on Iraq, an area where too many Democrats forgot that there was any reason for war, Biden took a decidedly centrist -- and defensible -- position. He voted to authorize the president to go to war but has since characterized that vote as "a mistake.""

[Flying Dog Brewery] "Road Dog porter was the first of our beers to cross the line with the authorities and shortly after its launch in 1995, we were told to remove it from the shelves due to the alleged use of profanity. The offending text was Ralph's inscription that simply read, 'Good Beer. No Shit.' We replaced the text with, 'Good Beer. No Censorship.' and with the help of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) we fought to get the original text re-instated. In 2001 we achieved our goal and today, 'Good Beer. No shit.' stands proudly as a statement of fact on all Road Dog Porter packaging."

The PM Energy Family Blog: "The ugly reality of being energy independent hit today. Some gunk got into our generator’s carb, rendering it inoperable on a day when we really needed it."

"Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
-- George Orwell

Sullivan: "... If the terrorists leave us alone in Iraq, fine, [someone close to the inner circles of the Bush administration] said. But if they come and get us, even better. Far more advantageous to fight terror using trained soldiers in Iraq than trying to defend civilians in New York or London. "Think of it as a flytrap," he ventured. Iraq would not simply be a test-case for Muslim democracy; it would be the first stage in a real and aggressive war against the terrorists and their sponsors in Ryadh and Damascus and Tehran. Operation Flytrap had been born.

"I subsequently aired this theory on my blog, and received incredulous responses. Readers chimed in with objections. Wouldn't that mean essentially using U.S. soldiers as bait? Isn't this too cynical and devious a strategy? Isn't there a limitless supply of jihadists just longing to mix it up with the U.S. in a terrain they know better than we do? What on earth are you talking about?

[...]

"Will this strategy work? Its obvious disadvantage is that it's tough to fight an escalating terrorist war in the same country you're trying simultaneously to nudge toward civil order and democracy. Terrorism undermines civil society even in countries with very advanced traditions of democracy, let alone a country like Iraq. Certainly, that internal contradiction helps explain why the U.S. is now desperate for more help in pacifying Iraq as well as waging war within it. One possibility is that better and more aggressive policing in urban areas (by Iraqis and foreign troops) will enable U.S. soldiers to leave the cities and fight a guerrilla war against al Qaeda and Hezbollah in the Iraqi hinterland, putting extra pressure on Iran and Syria at the same time. That would be an elegant solution. But at the moment it's a somewhat optimistic one.

"At some point, I'd argue, the president therefore has to make this strategy more formal. He has to tell the American people that more violence in Iraq may not in some circumstances be a bad thing. It may be a sign that we are flushing out terror and confronting it, rather than passively waiting for it to attack again. He has to remind people that this war is far from over, that the mission is still very much unaccomplished, and that this is not Vietnam. Right now he looks defensive, reactive and not in full control. That must end. And articulating the flypaper strategy might just help end it."

You know, I bet that the troops at Valley Forge griped about the quality of the rags they had to wrap their feet with too. Some folks just aren't happy unless they have something to bitch about.

Seriously, there certainly are problems with the military's arms and equipment, but if you were wondering whether Winslow T. Wheeler knew what he was talking about you don't have to look farther than his comment: "That the large 9mm caliber M9 pistol is collecting similar complaints brings into question just what it is that troops are complaining about." The large 9mm, loaded with hardball, is a sorry joke compared to the old standard .45 ACP, as we told the bastards when we were involved with the early testing at the Armor Engineer Board that led to the adoption of the M9. But No, we had to go with the NATO standard caliber.. you know, the caliber selected by the Germans and French.

On the other hand, I ran more than a few qualification ranges and recall a significant number of troops who were simply terrified of the blast and roar of the .45 (believe it or not).

Likewise, Some wax poetic about the fine qualities of the old M1 and M14, and I like the M14 a lot but, judging from actual results on the range, it's not for city boys, although I know some country girls who can plumb tear up a 1000-yard target with one. Both the .45 and 7.62 are great rounds, but they apparently have too much recoil for someone who's never fired a gun of any kind before. That should be blamed on their mamas, not on the military.

The big problem is one that really isn't solvable: Logistics run afoul of Murphy's Law. You can't have multiple calibers of small arms to suit the needs of each individual trooper without issuing the guys with M14s 5.56mm ammo and the guys with M16s 7.62. Personally, I would have gone with the more effective caliber and let the wimps sweat, but that's just me.

CHEYENNE -- Wyoming could both ease legal restrictions on the use of deadly force and allow more citizens to carry concealed weapons under measures some lawmakers are pushing in the coming legislative session.

Reps. Stephen Watt, R-Rock Springs, and Mick Powers, R-Lyman, are sponsoring a measure that would put Wyoming in the ranks of "no-retreat" states.

In addition to specifying that Wyoming citizens have no duty to try to escape before using deadly force against assailants, their bill would specify that a person has a right to assume that anyone breaking into his home poses a deadly threat in most instances.

"It expands when you can use deadly force," Watt said of his bill. He said he's sponsoring the measure because he believes people have a fundamental right to protect themselves.

[...]

Mike Krampner, a Casper criminal defense lawyer, said it's established fact that most break-ins are committed by people intent only on stealing property.

"There is a respectable school of thought that the human life, no matter how depraved, is worth more than any amount of property, and that we ought not to encourage summary execution for attempted theft," Krampner said.

[...]

On the concealed carry issue, Rep. Becket Hinckley, R-Cheyenne, says he plans to sponsor a measure in the coming session that would allow citizens to carry concealed handguns without going through the current state application process.

The state currently limits concealed carry licenses to those who go through an application process intended to screen out felons and others barred from owning guns.

Somewhere along the line some people with an advanced case of religious self-righteousness forgot their own heritage and written history and placed the lives of criminals over those rights of self-defense that householders held for thousands of years. Fortunately, it now seems that that despicable trend has finally turned as evidenced by several legislatures considering enacting Exodus’ original “no retreat” commandment.

[From the 'CHEYENNE' clip, above] Eric Johnson, assistant professor at the University of Wyoming College of Law, also serves as faculty director of the university's prosecution assistance program -- a clinic where law students provide assistance to prosecutors -- and he sees problems with the "no retreat" proposal.

"It's not that I want people to have to walk away with their tails between their legs," Johnson said. "It's a concern that this could be misused by people who are clearly culpable, to create reasonable doubt in a case in which they're clearly at fault."

"That’s the good news. The bad news was noted by Tacitus, the first century Roman historian. He stated, “The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.” Well, some things never do change, do they?