Jan. 07 — 13, 2007

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Ender's Review
of the Web

Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the preceding week.
 

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Pursuing Liberty

Articles showing the positive influence of action in the pursuit of Liberty.

Getting the State Out of Our Heads

      By Kevin Van Horn from Strike The Root

"All of this is more than mere pedantry about proper word usage. As Orwell and various linguists have pointed out, vocabulary shapes thought. Statist language promotes a statist mindset. We cannot hope to make significant progress in combating the State's power as long as it still has a foothold in our heads. We must uproot the tendrils of State influence from our own minds, and to do this we must also uproot its hidden propaganda from our own speech."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/horn/horn1.html

MLL poster: Stop the Draft!

      By Wally Conger from out of step

"Don’t wait for an official re-launch of the draft. Begin fighting it now."

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/01/mll-poster-stop-draft.html

The Problem With Global Warming

      By Jonathan David Morris from The Free Liberal

"When you live in the northeastern part of North America and can leave your house wearing sandals the first week in January, you don’t 'blame' whatever source is allowing you to do this. You give it credit. And that’s what’s happening with global warming here. People are giving global warming credit for the weather we’re having. The long-term prognosis may not be good. But in the short term, global warming seems to be working. Can you blame us for enjoying this?"

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002544.html

Spicy Food Could Provide Compound to Fight Cancers ; News

       from Life Extension Foundation

"The compound that makes spicy food hot and generates the heat in muscle strain remedies could be the key to a new generation of cancer drugs that kill tumours with no side effects, a leading scientist has said. Capsaicin, the active component of chillies, has produced 'startling' results in tests to kill a variety of tumour cells including pancreatic cancer, one of the most difficult types of the disease to treat. "

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=4841

Life in Amerika

Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on the cause of Liberty.

The Pinpoint Search

      By Julian Sanchez from Reason

"That doesn’t solve every problem with such systems, of course. It does not deal with the chilling effect that may occur when speakers begin to watch their words on the phone based on the fear that they will trigger a computer in Fort Meade if they say the wrong thing. And once the necessary infrastructure is set up to use such a system to catch terrorists, it would be both relatively simple technically and powerfully tempting politically to expand it to hunt for the least sophisticated perpetrators of whatever crime is particularly unpopular at the moment."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/117074.html

A Totalitarian Tableau

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"The frail, middle-aged man splayed awkwardly on the ground in the middle of this photograph is Tufts historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. On Friday [Jan. 5, 2007], while attending the annual conference of the American Historical Association, the former Oxford don was arrested and assaulted by several police officers after committing the grievous offense of jaywalking. ... Like altogether too many people, Fernandez-Armesto made the mistake of assuming that the function of the police under our current regime is to protect individuals and maintain decent order."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/01/totalitarian-tableau.html

In Duke Rape Case, Accused Fight Back

      By Wendy McElroy from The Independent Institute

"The legal and moral travesty that is the Duke ‘rape’ case is winding down. The aftermath is commencing...but what will it look like? … The aftermath rightfully belongs to the true victims, to those who have been falsely accused and reviled."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1890

More Cops Died Directing Traffic Than Waging the Drug War Last Year

      By staff from StoptheDrugWar.org:

"Given the low mortality rate for police in the drug war -- 4 deaths in 1.8 million arrests -- critics of heavy-handed drug law enforcement tactics, such as the reliance on paramilitarized SWAT-style teams serving drug search and arrest warrants, have even more reason to wonder if they're really necessary."

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/468/more_police_died_directing_traffic_than_fighting_the_drug_war

Ordered Liberty without the State

Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.

Trading on Reputation -- Stateless justice in the medieval Mediterranean

      By Christopher Faille from Reason

"Even those who see the state as a necessary evil make sure to include the judicial system in the 'necessary' part. But the story of the Maghribis is the story of a complicated system of international trade that mostly refused to use government courts."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/117079.html

Breaking Conformity

      By Thomas Hoyt from Strike The Root

" Even though Milgram’s is the most famous, it’s not my favorite. No, my favorite psychology experiment is Asch’s on conformity. Here, in the typical setup Asch would have a vertical line drawn on one card and three other lines on a second card, and would ask the group of subjects (all within earshot of each other) questions about the relative lengths of the lines. The twist is that all but one of the subjects were actually confederates, who purposely gave incorrect answers. The point was to measure how much peer pressure (or more broadly, the desire to conform) would cause people to give obviously false answers. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/hoyt/hoyt1.html

The President and the Physician

      By Per Bylund from Center for a Stateless Society

"It should be obvious no one would like to see a physician known for stubbornly providing bad treatments that do no good – or even do harm – and who can only think of increasing dosages when the 'treatment' doesn’t work. But voters are of a different breed it seems than are patients."

http://c4ss.org/content/24

no politics?

      By freeman from no politics

"This position of mine doesn’t mean that I won’t express my own personal ideas and preferences here. I’ll be chiming in with entries that include a look into certain specifics that I have a fondness for, but such examples provide only suggesions, food for thought that express an ideal suiting my own personal reality-tunnel rather than a blueprint for everyone to follow. ... In the real world we would never even consider going to a physician known for maltreating his or her patients, yet in politics the exact same behavior is rewarded over and over."

http://freemania1.com/?p=23

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Desktop fabricator may kick-start home revolution

      By Tom Simonite from NewScientist.com

"'Mainframes had existed for years, but personal computing only took off in the late seventies.' A cheap self-assembly computer called the Altair 8800, launched in 1975, sparked the rapid development of personal computing, he notes: 'We hope Fab@Home can do the same for rapid prototyping'."

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10922?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=

Liberty Comes to Liberty City

      By Jesse Walker from Reason Hit & Run

"I can't say for sure … if the organizers genuinely hope to transform their camp into a more permanent neighborhood, a la the Third World squatter cities that Neuwirth, Hernando De Soto, and others have described. But their rhetoric certainly suggests [that] ...."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117781.html

The Coup: After Midnight

      By Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"You have to choose. One way or the other. If you make the lazy, ignoble, uncaring choice, you can't honestly call your society free. Or just. Or healthy. Because, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.' ... Birkers and yuppie matrons and old-time Hardyvillians might not have a lot in common. But we share a common human decency, and on that, perhaps we all can build. "

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070108.html

Bipartisanship? Bah!

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Where did all the wise heads get the idea that Americans voted for bipartisan cooperation last November? After six years of full Republican control, it looked to me as though the voters wanted divided government — blessed gridlock — do-no-harm government. Hear, hear!"

http://fff.org/comment/com0701c.asp

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

The Shape-Shifting Of A Hitman

      By Lila Rajiva from Dissident Voice

"Straight out of the Peace Corps in Ecuador, Perkins was dazzled by the money, prestige, and James Bond aura his new life offered. Soon, he became a master of producing outrageous forecasts that brought in massive contracts for construction and engineering to Main and other US companies, like Bechtel, Halliburton and Brown and Root. Perkins's work didn't end with just enriching his firm, though. He claims he was also actively involved in schemes to bankrupt countries so that they would forever present easy targets for their first world creditors when the creditors were in need of military bases, access to resources, or votes in the UN. If the leaders of the targeted countries displayed too independent a style of thinking, the EHM was replaced by a more sinister figure -- the jackal. The jackal simply eliminated the troublemaker. The jackals were the CIA-sanctioned thugs who instigate coups, abduct and assassinate. And behind them was the US military."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan07/Rajiva13.htm

Surge & Dictatorship

      By James Bovard from BOVARD

"Apparently, once a president lies a nation into war, he is entitled to absolute power for as long as he chooses. Regardless of how many Americans die or how many hundreds of thousands of foreigners are killed, the president’s prerogatives are sacred, at least as long as he recites the proper phrases regarding the spread of freedom and democracy. "

http://jimbovard.com/blog/2007/01/09/surge-dictatorship/

We Are Devo: Bush Picks New Flunky to Fan War and Tyranny

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Just as Bush himself is a stunning exemplar of devolution in action, so too do all his appointments represent an ever-descending level of quality. No matter how bad things get with Bush, it seems there's always something even worse around the bend. Or as Dylan sang: 'When you think that you've lost everything,/You find out you can always lose a little more'."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=988&Itemid=135

Killing Cocaine

      By Alvaro Vargas Llosa from The Independent Institute

"No Latin American government could decriminalize drugs unilaterally without incurring the fatal wrath of the United States, exposing its country to ferocious reprisals. A recent example is former Mexican President Vicente Fox’s attempt to sign into law a bill passed by Congress legalizing tiny amounts of certain drugs for personal consumption. When the seven plagues of Egypt fell upon Fox—courtesy of Washington—the conservative president was forced to rethink."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1889

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

A Strange Way To Promote Freedom

      By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"At what point will the Bush administration wake up and realize that its effort is unworkable, that the costs are ghastly, that the best strategy is quick exit, three years ago? Well, the truth is that many people do realize this. The problem is that there is a huge machine running full speed and it is benefiting too many people. Tens of billions, hundreds of billions, are landing in the pockets of well-connected elites, and they want to keep the party going as long as possible."

http://www.mises.org/story/2453

Surge and Mirrors: What Bush Really Said

      By Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"Bush suggests that Muslims in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine are waiting and hoping for more invasions to free them of violence. Did Bush's invasion free Iraq from violence or did it bring violence to Iraq? It is extraordinary that anyone can listen to this blatant declaration of US aggression in the Middle East without demanding Bush's immediate impeachment."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01122007.html

Bush's Last Stand

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"Bush clearly sees the struggle in regional terms, and seeks to expand the conflict beyond Iraq's borders. That has always been the point of our intervention in Iraq: to establish a launching pad for the 'liberation' of the Middle East. Why else are U.S. soldiers storming the Iranian consulate in Irbil, and taking six consular personnel hostage – clearly an act of war? "

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10310

Say Good-bye to a Future Republican Presidency

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"What can President Bush be thinking? Taking the best case (which is not all that good), in a convoluted way of thinking, the president could be setting up a U.S. withdrawal. For public relations purposes, he could show that he made every effort to help the Iraqis, but that they just could not rise to the challenge. They will most certainly fail to meet the economic, political, and military goals that he will set for them. Then a U.S. withdrawal could be justified even to the president’s conservative supporters."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1888

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

I Blew It on Microsoft

      By Lawrence Lessig from Wired

"We pro-regulators were making an assumption that history has shown to be completely false: That something as complex as an OS has to be built by a commercial entity. Only crazies imagined that volunteers outside the control of a corporation could successfully create a system over which no one had exclusive command. We knew those crazies. They worked on something called Linux. ... Many Linux-style volunteers are building free wireless networks that enable participants to share access and offer capacity to others. These volunteers are also building free protocols that enable legal access without shifting control to a last-mile access provider."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/posts.html?pg=6

The Goal Is Freedom: Pleasing Consumers Isn't Easy

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"I love electronic gadgets -- not just for their functionality or the toy factor, important as those things are. (Ideally, a good gadget combines both.) I also love them because, for me, they underscore the market's uncertainty and consumer orientation. I'm an unabashed high-tech-gadget market watcher."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1038

Coffee Has Its Benefits

      By Rallie McAllister from Life Extension Foundation

" For years, coffee has been viewed as a guilty pleasure by some, and a major health hazard by others. In the past decade, however, a growing body of scientific evidence supports the notion that moderate coffee consumption offers a number of perks for the body and brain. Coffee may not be classified as a health elixir, but since it's made by brewing beans, there's no denying that it's a plant-based beverage. Like other plant foods, including fruits and vegetables, coffee is rich in disease-fighting antioxidants. "

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=4837

Trusting your instincts leads you to the right answer

       from EurekAlert!

"A UCL (University College London) study has found that you are more likely to perform well if you do not think too hard and instead trust your instincts. The research, published online today in the journal Current Biology, shows that, in some cases, instinctive snap decisions are more reliable than decisions taken using higher-level cognitive processes. Participants, who were asked to pick the odd one out on a screen covered in over 650 identical symbols, including one rotated version of the same symbol, actually performed better when they were given no time at all to linger on the symbols and so were forced to rely entirely on their subconscious. "

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/ucl-tyi010807.php

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

They Clapped: Can Price-Gouging Laws Prohibit Scarcity?

      By Michael Munger from Library of Economics and Liberty

"What if you pass an anti-gouging law, to symbolize your opposition to scarcity? Scarcity hurts; it means that I can't have everything I want. Let's abolish scarcity; what then? As I have tried to argue, all a state accomplishes by passing an anti-gouging law is to ensure that there is no ice."

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungergouging.html

Goo-Goo History: Or, Everything You Know is Wrong!

      By Kevin Carson from Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

"The federal government at the time adopted inspection regulations for all meatpackers engaged in the export trade. It was a classic example of cartelization through the state: the meat exporters, which happened to be the largest firms, for all intents and purposes adopted an industry code enforced by the state. It was exactly the kind of code an industry might have adopted on its own initiative, with the added benefit of being non-defectable."

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2007/01/goo-goo-history-or-everything-you-know.html

The Earth is the State's, and the Fullness Thereof

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"Willcutt requested a breathalyzer test, which measured his blood-alcohol content at 0.00 percent. He was arrested anyway. Once in jail, he was required to provide a urine sample, which likewise produced a 0.00 percent reading for alcohol, amphetamines, barbituates, benzodiazepine, cannabinoids (Marijuana), cocaine, methadone, opiates, phencylidine and proxyphene. Nonetheless, Rachel Brown, the vindictive, careerist shrike who serves as city prosecutor, went ahead and filed charges against Willcutt anyway – on the assumption that the complete lack of evidence against Willcutt didn't validate his innocence."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/01/earth-is-states-and-fullness-thereof.html

Minimum Wage and Common Sense

      By Gerald Zandstra from Acton Institute

"I would guess that the vast majority of the people reading these words have, at some time and maybe for a period of time, worked a minimum wage job. The minimum wage does not encompass a particular class of people. To make this assumption borders on racism, classism, or gender bias, depending on which people you assign to it. Low paying jobs, for the vast majority of people, are entry-level jobs. They are where we begin, not where we end. ... The problem with the minimum-wage solution is that it leads to negative consequences that are equal to—or sometimes worse than—the problem that the policy sought to remedy. Studies over the past forty years indicate that a legally determined minimum wage leads to fewer available jobs, especially for the very people the legislation wants to help."

http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?article=361&fromemail

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Grab Hold of Reality and Take Her for a Spin

      By Retta Fontana from Strike The Root

"I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read, 'My Grandson is serving in the military.' ...So whom exactly, is this grandson serving? According to The Decider, he’s bringing 'freedom and democracy' to the Middle East , but he’s clearly not serving the Muslims. He’s not serving me, or my family. Our freedom is not at stake, at least not from outside the Capital Beltway. Who does that leave save military contractors? They, along with the political whores in Washington , are the ones who benefit from grandson’s 'serving,' so that is the only logical answer. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana3.html

They Never Learn -- Somalia is Iraq writ small

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"U.S. intervention is limited, as far as we know, to air strikes, but, as I pointed out not so long ago, the presence of American 'boots on the ground' is only a matter of time, and probably not much time at that. Certainly we are positioned to directly intervene, what with the U.S. military base of operations in nearby Djibouti. As to whether we'll be seeing a 'surge' against the developing Somali insurgency around this time next year – or sooner – is more than a matter of pure speculation."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10299

Claiming the Prize: Bush Surge Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"And this unholy union is what Bush is really talking about when he talks about 'victory.' This is the reason for so much of the drift and dithering and chaos and incompetence of the occupation: Bush and his cohorts don't really care what happens on the ground in Iraq – they care about what comes out of the ground. The end – profit and dominion – justifies any means. What happens to the human beings caught up in the war is of no ultimate importance; the game is worth any number of broken candles."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=989&Itemid=135

Surge Protector

      By Matt Hutaff from The Simon Magazine

"Political courage is an extinct commodity on Capitol Hill. As long as a representative's relative isn't in the body count, don't look for him or her to care. Remember, they rubber-stamped Bush's actions in the past in the face of all logic. There's no reason to believe real change in Iraq will start any time soon."

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01304_surge_protector.html

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

RAW Essence

      By Robert Anton Wilson? [fnord] from RAW Data: Musings from Robert Anton Wilson

"Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11."

http://robertantonwilson.blogspot.com/2007/01/raw-essence.html

Ford: A Lincoln and an Imperial(ist)

      By David R. Henderson from Antiwar.com

"Reward some bad behavior and refrain from punishing it, and you will get more of that behavior. That is why Ford's decision to pardon Nixon was so destructive. It sent a strong signal that future presidents would not be made legally accountable for their behavior. And in making that decision, Ford did his part to contribute to 'the imperial presidency'."

http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=10283

A Century of Interventionism and Regime Change

      By Anthony Gregory from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The reasons for such rampant American interventionism, as Kinzer argues, fall mainly into two categories: economics and ideology. Corporate interests have exercised enormous power over U.S. foreign policy, contributing hugely to why William Howard Taft overthrew Zelaya’s government in Nicaragua, why the Eisenhower administration overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala and Mossadegh in Iran, and why Richard Nixon overthrew Allende in Chile. The importance of private interests in public policy is paramount, and libertarians and free-market thinkers would do themselves well to see the frequency of conspiracy between the U.S. warfare state and big corporations, which are not, despite the common misconceptions, overwhelmingly favorable toward free markets."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0609g.asp

Dr Albert Hofmann: The father of LSD

      By staff from The Independent

"By 1965, more than 2,000 papers had been published, many reporting extremely positive outcomes in treating anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and alcoholism. Hofmann's vision of LSD as a 'medicine for the soul' seemed to be coming to fruition. But LSD began to leak out into élite society. Artists, painters, performers and musicians began to experiment with it in looser, less formal contexts. Anaïs Nin, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg and Huxley all explored its creative potential."

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article337680.ece

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Less Than Zero

      By William S. Lind from CounterPunch

"As I have said before and will say again, the price of an attack on Iran could easily be the loss of the army we have in Iraq. No conceivable action would be more foolish than adding war with Iran to the war we have already lost in Iraq. Regrettably, it is impossible to read Mr. Bush's dispatch of a carrier and Patriot batteries any other way than as harbingers of just such an action."

http://www.counterpunch.org/lind01122007.html

Operation Cannon Fodder: Bush's Grand Delusion

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"The Times does note that Bush was more candid in a pre-speech confab with Congressional leaders. There he made clear that the democratically chosen prime minister of the absolutely sovereign democratic Iraqi government will be summarily removed by the President of the United States if he doesn't produce results. ... Can Mr. Bush possibly be implying that the people of Iraq will not be allowed to choose their own leaders, if said leaders are not pleasing to Washington? Can it be that we have perhaps been somehow misinformed as to the true nature of the 'American experiment in Iraq,' as the NYT demurely describes four years of carnage and chaos?"

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=993&Itemid=135

Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq

      By Ted Galen Carpenter from Cato Institute

"The United States needs to adopt a withdrawal strategy measured in months, not years. Indeed, the president should begin the process of removing American troops immediately, and that process needs to be complete in no more than six months. A longer schedule would simply prolong the agony. It would also afford various Iraq factions (especially the Kurds and some of the Shia political players) the opportunity to try to entice or manipulate the United States into delaying the withdrawal of its forces still further."

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tgc01112007.html

"This Time For Sure!"

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"The formal announcement of the planned 'surge' in Iraq will be what I call a 'Bullwinkle Moment.' Many recall how the beloved dim-wit cartoon moose, consistently thwarted in his efforts to pull a rabbit out of his hat, exclaimed, 'This time for sure!' -- before failing again. 'This time for sure!' pretty much encapsulates what passes for the White House strategy behind Bush's intention to dispatch tens of thousands of additional US soldiers to Iraq."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/01/this-time-for-sure.html

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Actress -- Butterfly McQueen : Jan. 8, 1911

      By staff from The African American Registry

"McQueen could not attend Gone With The Wind’s premiere because it was held in a whites only theater, but she was a guest of honor at its 50th anniversary celebration in 1989."

http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/651/Butterfly_McQueen_an_actress_who_wanted_more___

Cartoonist -- Charles Addams : Jan. 7, 1912

       from CharlesAddams.com

Event timetable of Charles Addams' life

http://www.charlesaddams.com/biography.html

Businessman/Philanthropist -- Bill Graham : Jan. 8, 1931

      By Michael Goldberg from BillGrahamFoundation.org

"For thirty years, Graham never stopped raising money for dozens of causes, ranging from AIDS research to the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, Amnesty International to the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Graham never seemed happier than when he was harnessing the tremendous power of rock & roll for the good of a cause."

http://www.billgrahamfoundation.org/about.html

Actor -- Bob Denver : Jan. 9, 1935

      By Ken Severson from Internet Movie Database

"Before he became established, he worked as a mailman and teacher. He then got a screen test for the part of Maynard G. Krebs and to his surprise won the part. After four years on 'The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis' (1959), Denver got his most famous part of Gilligan, in 'Gilligan's Island' (1964)." From the IMDb bio page.

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0001134/

Culcha'

Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.

Movie Review: Pleasantville (1998)

      Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

Dramatic fantasy stars Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, Don Knotts, Marley Shelton, J.T. Walsh; written and directed by Gary Ross. “I’ve liked all the Gary Ross films I have seen. However, this one occupies a special place in my estimation because of its celebration of self-discovery and individuality. Few films go as far as this one in showing the importance of individuals seeking their own way for the ultimate health of a community and society at large.”

http://endervidualism.com/agora/pleasantville_1998.htm

Fiction: Tessellation

      By George Potter from End the War on Freedom

[Fiction, first lines follow.] "To hell with you, spirit. I did not return to this place to do battle with spirits. I returned to this place for my own selfish and important reasons. It was you, spirit, who initiated this conflict. It was you, spirit, who laid down the gauntlet. So be it."

http://billstclair.com/blog/gloryroad/tesselation.html

Literary Loss

      By Paul Krassner from The Huffington Post

"Mainstream media have yet to acknowledge the death of Robert Anton Wilson, prolific futurist author and countercultural icon who passed away early yesterday (January 11). He had been suffering from post-polio syndrome. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-krassner/literary-loss_b_38549.html

UWA #18: Fond memories

      By Warren Bluhm from Uncle Warren's Attic

"... of working in radio, covering the news and Studebakers are interspersed with some tasty music by Los Gallos, the Young Iroquois Drummers, Paul Whiteman and Melanie Lewis."

http://unclewarrensattic.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=170506

The lighter side

Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.

Mandvi - Name Game

      By Jon Stewart and Assif Mandvi from The Daily Show

"Assif Mandvi reports Obama is only one letter away from Osama. Is it a risk we are willing to take?"

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=80595

800,000 Privileged Youths Enlist To Fight In Iraq

       from Onion News

"Citing a desire to finally make a difference in Iraq, in the past two weeks, more than 800,000 young people from upper-middle- and upper-class families have put aside their education, careers, and physical well-being to enlist in the military, new data from the Department Of Defense shows."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/privileged_youths_enlist_to_fight_in_iraq

Colbert Report: What Number is Stephen Thinking of?

      By Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report

"This may seem like an impossible contest to win, but it's merely nearly impossible."

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=80784

Bush Offers to Re-hang Saddam

      By Andy Borowitz from Borowitz Report

"After video images of the Iraqi strongman’s hanging appeared on the Internet and turned him into a martyr in the Arab world, a “new, improved re-hanging” of Saddam was the only solution, Mr. Bush said."

http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6666

Deep Thought

Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles

Climate Change Revisited

      By Doug Hornig from What We Now Know

"The giant glaciers tend to grow and recede on a 12,000-year cycle, which means they’re about due to return again. When and if they do, they’ll override our land, flatten our proud skyscrapers, and relentlessly drive humanity into ever more densely populated southern latitudes. Those already living there are not likely to open welcoming arms. It isn’t a pretty picture. Trapping a bit more of the sun’s heat looks like a very viable alternative."

http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayArchiveArticleWwnk.php?id=229

Choosing Secure Passwords

      By Bruce Schneier from Schneier on Security

"[I]f you want your password to be hard to guess, you should choose something not on any of the root or appendage lists. You should mix upper and lowercase in the middle of your root. You should add numbers and symbols in the middle of your root, not as common substitutions. Or drop your appendage in the middle of your root. Or use two roots with an appendage in the middle."

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/choosing_secure.html

Obvious From the Beginning

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"The President was horrified and angered. He was determined to go after not just the terrorists responsible, but all who gave them aid and comfort. He reasoned that it isn't just the terrorism that is the problem, it's the ideology behind it. He knew in his heart all along that fundamentalist Christianity was a grave threat to the U.S., and now, at last, here was proof!"

http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2057

Blinding by Paradigm

      By Glen Allport from Strike The Root

"A paradigm arranges the world, or some portion of it, into a mental framework. While the term is generally used in regards to science, it clearly describes thought and behavior in a much broader context. Paradigms define the importance and character of specific events, connect events to each other in meaningful ways, and shape our predictions of what various actions and approaches will lead to."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/allport/allport2.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Liberty and Equality for Some -- Same as Usual, but a Different "Some"

      By Fred Reed from FredOnEverything

"On their merits, a lot of women are better than a lot of men at a lot of things, so that, even if we decided things by ability, they would rise. This would be as it should be. But we don’t decide things primarily by merit. We decide them by race, creed, color, sex, and national origin. There is today an enormous amount of affirmative action in favor of women and against men. Much of it is hidden."

http://www.fredoneverything.net/WomenandAfAc.shtml

THE LOW POST: Treading Water in Iraq

      By Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone

"President Bush is going to go [went] on TV this week and tell [told] the American people that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is somehow going to make a difference in the security situation. He is going to be aided in this effort by a legion of knucklehead editorialists who entered the New Year pimping a preposterous new creation story about Iraq, one that argues that the Iraqi-American Eden was spoiled only by arrogant generals and Pentagon officials who tried to secure an occupied country on the cheap."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13141451

They have made a killing

      By Terry Jones from The Guardian

"In 2002 the house budget committee and the congressional budget office both guesstimated the cost of invading Iraq at approximately $50bn; $500bn seems a bit wide of the mark. What's more, with over half a million dead, it means that the world's greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed. That can't be value for money! So how on earth could such a vast overspend occur? After all, the US is the flagship of monetary common sense. Well, for starters, in 2003 the White House refused to allow competitive bidding for contracts in Iraq, which is odd for the champions of free enterprise. Then the White House ensured there would be no overseeing of what was spent. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1983865,00.html

robert anton wilson 1932-2007

      By freeman from no politics!

"RAW introduced me, through his writings, to a cornucopia of food for thought. People I’ve been introduced to and acquired an interest in thanks to RAW include: Alfred Korzybski, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, G.I. Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound, Terence McKenna and Wilhelm Reich. Quantum physics, Discordianism, general semantics, magick, guerilla ontology and yoga are just a few of the tools and ideas that I’ve picked up an interest in through my peek into RAW’s reality-tunnel." [Welcome back, freeman]

http://freemania1.com/?p=22

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