Monday, May 12, 2003
And while we’re at it…
Let’s discuss [cue Perky Voice] “Will it soon be illegal to give Oreos to children in California? Story at noon.” [KGO radio]
Oh Puh Leeze .
Some bozo is suing to Ban the Oreo Cookie because it contains trans fats which are ‘unhealthy.’
He filed the suit in Moron County, just north of San Francisco, thereby giving us in NoCal an even loonier public face. (although I don’t know why he feels that the children in the rest of the country, nay, the world, are either immune or not worth saving…) He claims that his suit has merit under “California civil code that holds manufacturers liable for common products if not ‘known to be unsafe by the ordinary consumer. (ital. mine, ed.)’”
This screaming ninny did not know that eating too many cookies is bad for ya !? Cheeze, my frelling grandmother told me that when I was six.
Someone with waaay too much time on his hands interviewed the twit [yes, sorry Lionel, he’s a Brit] and recorded this gem:
"I am probably full of hydrogenated fat [yer full of something, mate…] because until two years ago I didn't know about it."
[OK. Now, many may not realize that Moron/Marin County is the nesting place of the PC, health-is-all, knit your own yogurt crowd. If this cretin can fail to discern the down-the-nose, tut-tut, glares of superior disapproval he gets in the market while buying these corporate manufactured discs of death, surely he cannot have failed to note that he has to go entirely out of the county to find the damthings.]
(He twit-ters on;) "I resent the fact that I have been eating that stuff all my life."
This takes the cake (--the one made with real butter). Wake up you brain frozen, morally challenged excuse for a sentient being. Your expectations of a cuddle-soft, warm-n-fuzzy, Disney-creature world have entirely outstripped reality. The rest of us have noticed that even too much arugula can kill.
Darwin awards! Send in the second string! I gotta go.
{Exit, stage left, muttering}
…this guy could loose even a Darwin award … he resents it… like Kraft is out to get him… yeh, they stay up allll night just to . . . . . . . . .
Sunday, May 11, 2003
Articulate, ain’t he?
If anyone asks me why I feel so strongly about my right to own firearms, I usually reply, “Varmints.” Justice Kozinski puts a finer point on it:
Justice Alex Kozinski, on the Ninth Circuit's latest decision: SILVEIRA v. LOCKYER
fromhttp://www1.law.ucla.edu/`volokh/blog_data/silveira.pdf> Volokh via Feces Flinging Monkey Thank you, gentlemen.
Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. … When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases—or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. …But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there. ...It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions.
…Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms.
…The majority falls prey to the delusion—popular in some circles—that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth—born of experience—is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people. Our own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South. In Florida, patrols searched blacks’ homes for weapons, confiscated those found and punished their owners without judicial process.
…In the North, by contrast, blacks exercised their right to bear arms to defend against racial mob violence. ...As Chief Justice Taney well appreciated, the institution of slavery required a class of people who lacked the means to resist (finding black citizenship unthinkable because it would give blacks the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went”)
…All too many of the other great tragedies of history— Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few—were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here.
If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.
My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel’s mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The sheer ponderousness of the panel’s opinion—the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text—refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say.
Most interesting...
In looking around to assess the situation in the Iranian Blogosphere today, I came across Persian Blogger Chronicles. For those of you who have an academic bent (and, having one, myself, I do mean bent...) this is the blog of an ethnographer who is apparently Iranian and clearly a grad student. (He also has an English blog, a Farsi blog, a design research project, a wife and a 6 month old baby. Definitely a grad student.)His focus is on the "transformations that take place in the 'psychodynamics of mind' in a society, once the primary medium of comminication and intellectual production in that society changes," likening the Internet boom, with blogging as a sub-set, to the changes in western culture around Gutenberg's little machine. It is "bringing about another shift in the use of communication media: this time from literacy to 'cybercy.'"
Very kewl.
I cite in particular his analysis of blogs as an evolution of toilet graffiti. (HA! He's Right!)
("it's all about the caves and the ink..." see comments section)
Selections from a Survey
In light of the ban on Internet sites by the Iranian government today, here are selections from what I read while looking at bitz of the (English written) Iranian blogosphere.
SteppenwolfPerspective... ...I look at it as a doomed attempt as it was doomed elsewhere too. On the bright side, Iranians will always find a way to get around it. It is our name. Everything that has banned in Iran, has always found its way to the Iranian households too. Weren’t video-set banned in Iran 20 years ago? Weren’t alcoholic drinks banned in Iran? Wasn’t mingling of boys and girls in public banned in Iran? Didn't the number of breaches of those bans skyrocket? So I look at this restriction as a boost for the Internet in Iran , not in short term though.
snip
Internet? While Iranians have hard time dealing with more serious issues? While the world faces more serious issues that indirectly affects Iranians in way that the Internet doesn’t? Give me a break.
Free Sina Motallebi
but wait a second!
Free me too!
And free millions of others to whom free information is banned in Iran!
...anyways, I'm thinking of the time that I can come here & write about a free Iran & explain about every little changes with enthusiasm! What if that day is too far that I can never reach & what if...
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Curiosity got that monkey again…
Ok, Ok, so SDB yelled “fight” and I ran ‘round the corner to look. It’s my own dam fault for following my monkey curiosity that I ran straight into this. [I gotta admit I like his header pic and title – best incendiary I’ve seen in a while…].
* sigh *
Lately I have had a proto-rant running ‘round in my head on the subject of Tolerance vs Discrimination. Everything seems to end up on a continuum rather than on the no-work black and white scale. On one end I find Things I Like. (eg: playing with puppies, honesty with Self and Others, freedom of information and Knowledge) On the other end, Things I Not Only Disagree With But Actively Repudiate. (eg: the tactics of Saddam’s régime, to be B/W) In the first instance, there is no question of tolerance, I like these things. On the other end, there is also no question of tolerance because I abhor those things and can only live with myself if I actively fight them.
In the middle come things which may not personally appeal to me but through which I can find no harm being done. I tolerate others’ religious beliefs, up to the point where they attempt to utilize them as justification for harming people, or annoying me. I tolerate differing sexual orientations than mine, when conducted in ways that respect Self and Other. Playfulness is good. Stretching the limits of a paradigm is good. The actions of a predator push past the point of none-of-my-business into the zone of repudiation.
Having the ability to discern the difference between these things is Discrimination. {Latin discrimen: dis-, apart + cernere, to sift.} I regret the third meaning relating to judging groups of people unfairly. Seems it muddies the water on a perfectly good word when other words carry that meaning with more clarity. Prejudice. Bias. Bigot.
Me ol’ Mum used to say that without the powers of discrimination, one’s mind was open – like a sewer pipe, open at both ends. So without the ability to discriminate, one cannot tolerate but only accept what is placed before one.
yeech.
Seems obvious once I have written it down. Whelp, “A Firm Grasp of the Obvious Is The Cornerstone of Sanity,” I always say.
So to actually refer to this; why, again, does this make us a degenerate society? Simply because someone is discussing a subject which our Puritan and tightly sphynctered heritage may cause our gut to tighten a little. Is it noble and glorious to push past that, uh, knee-jerk reaction and investigate the validity of the claims being made about this natural activity? Or should (and this seems to be a most appropriate situation for a good old fashioned shoulding*) should we just button up and clench up? Worse, yet, there seems to be a spirit of playfulness in this suggestion. No hint of doing anything in the streets that will scare the horses.
Although, questioning the “of courses,” a spirit of playfulness, and freedom of discussion/information do tend to give a case of the nerves to control junkies like Osama, #any-brand# of fundies, and - I can’t (yet) quite figger out the name of this group of status-quo-ers… So that seems the best reason for it I can think of.
*A “shoulding:” It resembles a stoning, only with words.
Monday, May 05, 2003
In Case you Wondered…
My Bloginality is INTP.
Actually, I have always tested as an INXP where X is the balance between thinking and feeling approaches. Such fine levels of discernment aren’t available on a four question, a or b type quiz, but it’s representations of the essences of the types are excellent. And this won’t mean so much to anyone who is not such a Jung nut.* (as opposed to a wing nut…)
If ever you are searching for some insights into your personality and the basic beliefs from which derive some of your favourite, yet most vexing habits, the Meyers-Briggs test is a good place to start. Please Understand Me, has a silly title but quite useful info.
* . . . “Don't worry; we are Jung and Anna Freud!”
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Required by Law to Lie
from People's Republic of Seabrook comes this Houston Chronicle article.
HB 15 would also require that women be told that their risk of breast cancer may increase if they have an abortion. This is inaccurate and untrue. The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the National Breast Cancer Coalition, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the National Women's Health Network and others have all publicly denied the claim by anti-choice groups that there is such a link.
Great. Now there is a law proposed which would require doctors to lie to women. Here they come, the Xian moralizers. Too bad they are too chicken-poop to stand up and argue the issue on its merits. Like people who believe in a position. No.
They are so sure of their superior morality that they will lie and cheat their way into forcing others to live by their rules. Quite a demonstration of moral superiority, and self-confidence.
Moral Consistency of an Alley Cat
Thank you to Shell of Across The Atlantic for the heads up on this bit of news from Tejas, home of the control issue.
Women seeking abortions in Texas will be offered materials detailing the development stage of their fetuses before undergoing a mandated 24-hour "reflection period" under legislation tentatively adopted by the House today.
I think it is not because they believe that a woman has not thought about her decision to have an abortion. (Although there is an implicit slur that women are having abortions on a 'whim' which 24 hours ought to cure...) I think the real point behind the "waiting time" is to indicate, that there is something *wrong* about doing it in the first place. Why other would there be a waiting period? There is none required for, say, breast augmentation, or knee surgery.
The waiting period sets abortion apart from other medical procedures and says that this is an issue of another kind. It adds, as it is governmentally imposed, that this is an action of which the government doesn't quite approve and wants to ask, "Are you really sure, dearie?" It is, in effect, the camel's nose into the tent. If a 24 hour waiting period is OK, then why not 48 hours, 1 week, 6 weeks, 9 months?
By our acceptance of this waiting period, we give our implicit acknowledgement of their point that abortion is not solely the woman's decision but that of the society/government.
The governmental imposition of a waiting period says not that a woman hasn't thought well enough, but that she is not capable of thinking well enough.
The bill, by Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, requires written proof, signed by the patient, that she has been offered the state-produced literature and color photos of fetal development at two-week increments before the waiting period.
OK. So. Not only are women not capable of thinking well enough without being told to. Now they are saying, once given the facts about the development of a fetus, women will be unable to recognize that for the first couple of months, a fetus is just a collection of undifferentiated cells. Or is the state produced literature going to be authored by Disney and show a tiny little fully developed baby at week two singing and gurgling and calling, “Mommy.”
Such inflammatory Horse Hockey should not be tolerated. By anyone.
Let’s run over this again for those who like a clear statement of the obvious. A group of undifferentiated cells is n o t a baby. A baby is a creature that can (is able to) exist outside the womb. Medical technology has pushed that time back beyond what it was on the Wyoming frontier or in ancient Babylon, nevertheless, there is a point beyond which it cannot, in fact, be pushed. Even if we were to develop an artificial uterus, (again
a group of undifferentiated cells is no more a baby than a wish to be President will get Al Sharpton to an inauguration. Period.
Thank you for your time. We now return you to the regularly scheduled world of the not so obvious.
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{/if}
