Aug. 12 — 18, 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.

Fanning the Flames of Freedom Abroad

      By Sunni Maravillosa from The Price of Liberty

"I greatly enjoyed talking with the students, and sharing my perspectives on freedom and life in the United States. Largely because of their varied and insightful questions, I have come to appreciate being born in this country more than I think I ever have; seeing the remnants of the Soviet era all over such a lovely country, and hearing of its lingering effects on the people, helped me to realize that even with recent events, America is still a better place to be - and to be from - than many other countries."

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/07/08/13/sunni.htm

When It's Life or Death, Who Makes the Call?

      By Sigrid Fry-Revere from Cato Institute

"In denying patients the right to weigh the risks for themselves, the FDA and the court denied them their only hope for survival. The government essentially told them that it would be better for them to do nothing and die than to take risky experimental treatments. ... In our case, each option had its own set of risks, including death, but also a chance at a better life."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8644

Distrust Authority

      By James Leroy Wilson from Independent Country

"The good that comes from conspiracy theory is a mistrust of all government, of all authority. I find conspiracy theories plausible to the extent they advance my mistrust of all government and all authority; when they instead tout reasons why one authoritarian was 'unjustly' replaced by another, I shrug, laugh, and move on."

http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/08/distrust-authority.html

Ron Paul's Landslide Victory in Today's Alabama Straw Poll

      By David T. Beito from Liberty & Power: Group Blog

"I just got back from the Alabama Republican Straw poll. Paul won a crushing 81 percent of the total. Paul supporters came from all over the state and the party establishment here was overwhelmed and caught completely off guard. This is a wonderful victory, at least it was for me. "

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/41975.html

Life in Amerika

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

Building a Better Beast : "Homeland Security" in the US and the PRC

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"If the State objects to any element of the individual's life and background, as documented in the card, that individual will not be able to earn a living or participate in the economy. This system is being described by Chinese authorities as a 'pilot program' for a future nation-wide human inventory control apparatus. I can't help but suspect that it's likewise intended to provide a shakedown for the deployment of a very similar system in our own Homeland Security State."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/
2007/08/building-better-beast-homeland-security.html

Infrastructure Gridlock

      By Randal O'Toole from Cato Institute

"Automobiles provide more than 80 percent of American passenger travel and have greatly contributed to our wealth, health, and social well-being. Yet transportation planning in too many cities has been taken over by anti-auto groups aiming to divert billions of dollars of highway user fees to rail transit projects that will never carry more than 1 or 2 percent of urban travel."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8637

US doles out millions for street cameras -- Local efforts raise privacy alarms

      By Charlie Savage from The Boston Globe

"In the last month, cities that have moved forward on plans for surveillance networks financed by the Homeland Security Department include St. Paul, which got a $1.2 million grant for 60 cameras for downtown; Madison, Wis., which is buying a 32-camera network with a $388,000 grant; and Pittsburgh, which is adding 83 cameras to its downtown with a $2.58 million grant."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/
articles/2007/08/12/us_doles_out_millions_for_street_cameras/

Prices for key foods are rising sharply

      By Kevin G. Hall from McClatchy Newspapers

"The Labor Department's most recent inflation data showed that U.S. food prices rose by 4.2 percent for the 12 months ending in July, but a deeper look at the numbers reveals that the price of milk, eggs and other essentials in the American diet are actually rising by double digits. Already stung by a two-year rise in gasoline prices, American consumers now face sharply higher prices for foods they can't do without. This little-known fact may go a long way to explaining why, despite healthy job statistics, Americans remain glum about the economy."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/18902.html

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

Alan Moore interview

      Reviewed by Wally Conger from out of step

"The folks at Infoshop News have posted a very thoughtful conversation with comic book author and anarchist Alan Moore. The entire interview is worth reading, but to whet your Libertarian Left appetites, here’s a short bit from Moore about why he separated himself from the Wachowskis’ 2006 movie version of his extraordinary graphic novel V for Vendetta...." [If you follow the link to the full article, I expect you will enjoy what you find.]

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/08/alan-moore-interview.html

The Pirates’ Code

      By James Surowiecki from The New Yorker

"[P]irates ... flourished outside the state—and, therefore, outside the law. ... Unlike the Mafia, pirates were not bound by ethnic or family ties; crews were as remarkably diverse as in the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' films. Nor were they held together primarily by violence; while pirates did conscript some crew members, many volunteered. More strikingly, pirate ships were governed by what amounted to simple constitutions that, in greater or lesser detail, laid out the rights and duties of crewmen, rules for the handling of disputes, and incentive and insurance payments to insure that crewmen would act bravely in battle."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/07/09/070709on_onlineonly_surowiecki

Statism Is Counterintuitive

      By Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com

"I am all in favor of a well-rounded, deep education in the principles and traditions of freedom. But it seems to me that people often forget just how intuitive libertarianism is, once some basic and mostly universal values are embraced consistently. Statism, on the other hand, is counterintuitive and must be learned. Today’s popular statism is often inculcated through considerable indoctrination, schooling and study."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory144.html

Put the Monster in the Cornfield

      By Alex R. Knight III from Strike The Root

"While government is widely reviled at many levels by people across the political and philosophical spectrums, I hold that it is only the libertarian anarchist whose denunciation is at once consistent, moral, and logical. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/knight/knight2.html

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Sea-shanty festival a porthole on Brittany's mode de vie

      By Susan Sachs from The Christian Science Monitor

"Over the past 20 years, Brittany, once derided as the unruly stepchild of France, and still considered one of its more obstinate family members, has declared its singularity proudly. An explosion of new bands has rediscovered Breton music, much of it similar to sea shanties of the British and Canadian coasts. Classes in Breton dancing and the Breton language are now common here. ... The region has its own Celtic language, Breton – or Brezhoneg in the vernacular – which now appears on street signs along with the French names of towns. It also has a tiny separatist movement, its own black-and-white-striped flag, and a history of hostility to state interference."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0816/p20s01-litr.html

State challenges feds over gun-rights restoration

      By staff from BillingsGazette.com

"The state of Wyoming says the federal agency that enforces gun laws was wrong to reject a state law that seeks to allow people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to regain their firearms rights in the state courts. Wyoming this week filed its opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver, challenging a ruling issued in May by U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson of Cheyenne. ... The state argues that Congress has specified that states should be able to set up their own systems of restoring gun rights to people convicted of domestic violence by erasing the disqualifying conviction."

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/08/18/news/wyoming/23-gunrights.txt

Harvard Journal Study of Worldwide Data Obliterates Notion that Gun Ownership Correlates with Violence

      By staff from Center For Individual Freedom

"In America, on the other hand, 'despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s.' Critically, Dr. Kates and Dr. Mauser note that 'the fall in the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared with the rest of the world,' where 18 of the 25 countries surveyed by the British Home Office suffered violent crime increases during that same period."

http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/Gun-Ownership.htm

Major New Theory Proposed to Explain Global Warming

      By Michael Asher from DailyTech

"The theory is based on a branch of mathematics known as [Synchronized] Chaos. The math predicts the degree of coupling to increase over time, causing the solution to 'bifurcate,' or split. Then, the synchronization vanishes. The result is a climate shift. Eventually the cycles begin to sync up again, causing a repeating pattern of warming and cooling, along with sudden changes in the frequency and strength of El Nino events. Better yet, their theory has predictive power."

http://www.dailytech.com/
Major%2BNew%2BTheory%2BProposed%2Bto%2BExplain%2BGlobal%2BWarming/article8450.htm

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Big Bother Is Watching

      By L. Neil Smith from The Libertarian Enterprise

"[L]eft-wing socialists believe we're all a little bit stupid and must be helped (to death, if necessary); right-wing socialists believe we're all a little bit evil and must be watched. The majority in the militant middle believe that we're all stupid and evil and must be locked down—if not simply executed outright. Why call them 'moderates' when fascists says it so much better? "

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle430-20070812-02.html

Our Ripening Reich

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"George W. Bush's chief delinquency as Chief Executive, according to Philip Atkinson, is leniency. He has been too indulgent of the masses and their delicate moral sensibilities, which would be offended by the spectacle of blood and horror that is necessary to pacify Mesopotamia and terrify the Islamic world into acquiescence."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/08/our-ripening-reich.html

Stop Abusing Snitchin'

      By Radley Balko from Reason

"Late last month, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the death of the Kathryn Johnston, the 92-year-old Atlanta woman killed by police during a November 2006 drug raid on her home. Johnston died when she mistook a team of narcotics officers for criminal intruders. When the police broke down her door, she met them with an old pistol. They opened fire, and killed her. A subsequent investigation revealed that the entire chain of events up to and shortly after Johnston's death were beset with lies, planted evidence, and cover-up on the part of the narcotics cops. "

http://www.reason.com/news/show/121967.html

The Nanny State’s Road to Serfdom

      By Jeffrey A. Singer from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"[I]f we are to proscribe risky behavior in the name of saving taxpayer dollars, then we descend a slippery slope. Where do we stop? Virtually every activity can be regulated on the basis of the argument that it is a potential cost to the taxpayer. Today the state is banning transfatty foods. Tomorrow it may dictate the size and content of meal portions. "

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0705f.asp

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Honest and Open Thievery -- The limits of Congress's ethics reforms

      By Jacob Sullum from Reason

"Still, it's hard to find fault with the new requirement that senators publicly identify themselves and state their reasons when they block legislation. We just shouldn't expect too much as a result of this openness. As with earmarks, legislators don't try to hide their actions when they're proud of them, even if they shouldn't be."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/121947.html

Tool Time: Rove Goes But the Malevolent Machine Rolls On

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Despite his vaunted 'genius' for political skulduggery, in the end Rove too is a drab factotum, a bagman, a greasy cog in a vast machine that will keep grinding on, killing and corrupting, without him. (Assuming that Rove is actually stepping away from the machine, which is most unlikely.) Stories of far greater significance than the slinking exit of a dirt-smeared toady have appeared in the last two days -- items far more revelatory of the hellish world that the porcine minion has helped make on behalf of his masters."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/
Articles/Tool_Time%3A_Rove_Goes_But_the_Malevolent_Machine_Rolls_On/

Join forces against the North American Union

      By Vox Day from WorldNetDaily.com

"The ruling party is nameless. [Some] refer to it as the War Party, but that is only a description of one of its many interests, a better one would be the PoG, the Party of Government. Democrats and Republicans alike belong to it; the fact that more grassroots Democrats are inclined to favor large government is irrelevant.... One need only visit the many left-wing sites to realize that their sense of betrayal by the Democratic House and Senate in supporting the continuation of the Iraqi occupation is as great as that suffered by Republicans who naively voted for Bush and his 'strong government' regime."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57125

The Padilla Precedent

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"I have no brief for Jose Padilla as an individual; he appears to be a standard-issue street thug who got the standard prison-upgrade to minor league Muslim fanatic. But there are gravities of loathsomeness, and Padilla is being used by people immeasurably more evil than he is to accomplish unspeakably vile ends."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/08/padilla-precedent.html

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Space Race -- Lessons in adversity from NASA and from the space tourism industry.

      By Katherine Mangu-Ward from Reason

"The reactions to the two accidents offer a quick primer on what it's like to operate on the government's time and dime, versus operating in a competitive market. Both accidents have brought out the best in the major players, who have reacted calmly and competently. But there are subtle, fundamental differences in their respective aftermaths."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/121992.html

What does Milan have to do with Silicon Valley? IP laws threaten innovation

      By Ken Fisher from Ars Technica

"The complex world of fashion sees trends come in and out of style overnight, and the tiniest difference in style can add up to big money at the cash register. Not only that, but fashion enjoys some of the biggest margins in business, known to be several hundred percent for high-end designers. Yet competition to stay fresh spurs constant innovation as well as tweaks to classic styles and supports a quite powerful business. Despite the 'open' nature of copying in fashion, there's still a thriving fashion vertical that has space for Wal-Mart, Ralph Lauren, and Salvatore Ferragamo—all without copyright mucking up the business. "

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20070814-what-does-milan-have-to-do-with-silicon-valley-ip-laws-threaten-innovation.html

Latin America's Global Players

      By Alvaro Vargas Llosa from The Independent Institute

"Latin America’s comparatively backward investment levels are nowhere near 30 percent of GDP, and yet many local companies are expanding beyond the national borders. Of course, there is a limit to how many businesses will be able to follow suit in the absence of a major economic takeoff of the region, but the 'premature' globalization of many businesses is an interesting indication that the potential is there."

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2012

Give organs 1st to those who agree to donate

      By David Undis from The Capital Times

"Giving organs first to organ donors will convince more people to register as organ donors. It will also make the organ allocation system fairer. People who aren't willing to share the gift of life should go to the back of the waiting list as long as there is a shortage of organs."

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letters/205470

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Reality vs. the State

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

"It turns out that creating money out of thin air has a downside too. Every dollar you create waters down the value of the existing stock of money. It's just like stretching the lemonade at a picnic: people eventually notice the difference. The people who get the money first – the big investment banks – don't experience the price rise, but later users of the same money do."

http://www.mises.org/story/2681

Endangering Endangered Entities

      By Garry Reed from Loose Cannon Libertarian

"It appears, from reading public reports on the matter, that the very people in charge of keeping our officially governmentally designated endangered species free from endangerment can't catch a clue. Perhaps it's because their generation grew up permanently parked before interminable Saturday morning cartoon shows where they were repeatedly taught that animals are just cute little peoplelike creatures who can talk and sing and dance and knock one another on the noggin without enduring damage."

http://www.freecannon.com/EndangeredEntities.htm

Carbon Credits: False Absolution

      By Fred Foldvary from The Progress Report

"Biologists have long known that the introduction of exotic species and elements into an environment can have damaging unintended consequences. The best rule for the environment is to avoid fooling with mother nature. The direction of reform should be to restore the natural environment rather than to engage in interventions to offset previous interventions. Massively interfering with an ecology is like government intervention into a free market; the interfering agent cannot possibly know the long-run effects of altering a complex dynamic system."

http://www.progress.org/2007/fold518.htm

US food aid is 'wrecking' Africa, claims charity

      By Leonard Doyle from The Independent

"Critics of the policy say it also undermines African farmers' ability to produce food, making the most vulnerable countries of the world even more dependent on aid to avert famine. Under the system Washington buys tens of millions of dollars of surplus corn and other products from agribusiness. The food, which can only be exported on US flagged ships, is then sold by charities to raise money to pay for emergencies."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2871490.ece

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Casual Talk of War

      By Sheldon Richman from MWC News - A Site Without Borders

"[I]mportant is a complete reassessment of U.S. foreign policy and a rediscovery of the wisdom of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who warned us against an activist foreign policy. They and their philosophical descendents such as William Graham Sumner understood that America cannot keep government limited at home while expanding it abroad."

http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16101/26/

Government Blunders Create More Demand for Its Services

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"For example, after the Bush administration exacerbated the worldwide threat from Islamic terrorists by invading and occupying two Muslim nations, spied on Americans without warrants—which is both illegal and unconstitutional—to 'urgently' combat such terrorism, and then saw its Attorney General dissemble about the espionage program, Congress has actually rewarded the administration for its actions."

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2011

Why Interventionism Fails -- The complexity conundrum

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"The conceit that we can understand, let alone decisively influence for the better, the complex interplay of historical, religious, and cultural factors operating in Iraq is what motivates the War Party to soldier on. What's interesting is that this has been recognized by conservatives as a conceit, and a potentially fatal one, when it is exercised on the home front: massive social engineering projects like the so-called Great Society, the New Deal, etc., have traditionally been rejected by American conservatives, who see the dead hand of government as hopelessly incompetent and dangerously empowered by these ultimately quixotic gestures. Yet, today, they have their own New Deal for the Middle East."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11460

No Light, Just Tunnel: The Bipartisan Guarantee of Continuing War in Iraq

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Most people persist in believing that the Bush Administration has 'mishandled' or 'bungled' the war in Iraq, when in fact they have achieved almost all of their goals. (A reality that we have examined here, here and here, among other places.) They have vastly enriched their cronies. They have installed a U.S. military presence in Iraq. They have expanded the size, power and scope of the armed forces and the intelligence services (which now have their own secret armies) beyond the wildest dreams of the most hawkish Cold War militarist."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/
Articles/No_Light%2C_Just_Tunnel%3A_The_Bipartisan_Guarantee_of_Continuing_War_in_Iraq/

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

The Goal Is Freedom: The Natural Right of Property

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"The radical edge that Hodgskin gave his laissez-faire advocacy confuses people whose thoughts come in prefabricated boxes. Today if someone sympathizes with labor's plight, he's bound to be labeled a collectivist, although earlier radical individualists located the source of that plight not in the market but in the halls of government. This was better understood in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the likes of Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Herbert Spencer held the libertarian vanguard."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1509

Theodore Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency

      By Thomas E. Woods, Jr. from LewRockwell.com

"Many of Roosevelt’s contemporaries favored a strong executive and an expansionist foreign policy because they had become convinced that American business needed to seize foreign markets for their unsold surpluses. Roosevelt seems to have shared this view, but his primary concern in expansion was a geopolitical one: to elevate the United States to the great-power status to which it had an increasing claim. ... Roosevelt solidified trends toward centralization that had been at work since the 1860s and institutionalized what amounted to a revolution in the American form of government."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods79.html

From UNIVAC to Google

      By Katherine Mangu-Ward from Reason

"The mechanistic, industrial look of the megacomputers of the ’50s gave way to the Kitchen Computer’s sleek lines and blinking lights, but it wasn’t until Apple started making computers that looked like compact, nonthreatening office machines that they snuck into our daily lives. In the electronic Eden of 1976, the Apple I sold as a kit for $666.66. The kits allowed users to assemble the working parts and then bolt their own computers onto wooden boxes."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/120942.html

Watching 'Frost/Nixon' leads me back to Bush

      By Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times

"This duo [George Bush and his regent Dick Cheney] has beaten Nixon at every nefarious turn, from starting an unnecessary war on false premises, to stretching executive privilege to laughable lengths, to turning the Justice Department into a strategic operations unit of the Republican Party, to transforming the Constitution into a suggestion box."

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/12/Opinion/Watching__FrostNixon_.shtml

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Decline and Fall -- U.S. comptroller general: America is Rome

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"Walker is hardly the first to draw the parallels between the Roman and American empires: some of us have been making this argument for years. Yet if even our government officials are now telling us that we are on the road to ruin, then shouldn't we examine the ominous parallels a bit further?"

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11448

Hitler's Handouts -- Inside the Nazis' welfare state

      By Michael C. Moynihan from Reason

"[M]ost of the money used to fund the Nazi war machine, Aly argues, was obtained by simple theft. Berlin expressly sanctioned plunder of the occupied territories, urging soldiers to satiate the material desires of the home front with soaps, perfume, coffee, and meat, sent back to the Fatherland via the army post. Limits on package size were lifted expressly for this purpose, while puppet governments seized gold, looted treasuries, and undermined local currencies 'to cover a significant proportion of the day-to-day costs of war'."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/120941.html

Mob Rule: Gearing up for the Tehran Hit

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"[I]t is yet another round in the endless PR campaign to demonize Iran in the eyes of the American people: A government that has an officially designated terrorist organization as part of its armed forces! My God, better order some more haz-mat suits for Sump City, Iowa, before they sarin-gas the county fair! Better go fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here!"

http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/
Articles/Mob_Rule%3A_Gearing_up_for_the_Tehran_Hit/

Time for “Benign Neglect” in Mideast?

      By Leon T. Hadar from The Independent Institute

"Muslims and non-Muslims have been fighting over this territory for years, resulting in thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees, as negotiations mediated by foreign governments have failed to resolve the conflict. But nobody is calling on Washington to launch a new peace initiative. Why? Because we're not talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we're talking about the Armenians and Azeris clashing over Nagorno-Karabakh."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2013

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Entrepreneur -- Blind John Metcalf (civil engineer) : August 15, 1717

       From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Although made blind from smallpox at the age of six, John had an eventful life, which was well documented by his own account just before his death. In the period 1765 to 1792 he built about 300 km (180 miles) of turnpike road, mainly in Lancashire, Derbyshire, Cheshire and Yorkshire."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Jack

Scientist -- Richard Willstätter : August 13, 1872

       from The Nobel Foundation

"Willstätter continued on lines of fundamental importance, and his brilliant and fruitful work is regarded today as a pioneering achievement. The investigations into photosynthesis and into the nature and activity of the enzymes were precursory of modern Biochemistry."

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1915/willstatter-bio.html

Actress -- Jane Wyatt : August 12, 1910

       From Turner Classic Movies

"Her best-known work from this time, though, was her appealingly played performance opposite Ronald Colman in Frank Capra's classic journey to Shangri-La, 'Lost Horizon' (1937). … Wyatt did play the occasional second lead in expensive pictures ('Gentleman's Agreement' 1947, 'My Blue Heaven' 1950) but became more commonly typed as the sensible wife or girlfriend opposite Cary Grant ('None But the Lonely Heart' 1944)...."

http://tcmdb.com/participant/participant.jsp?participantId=209946

Musician -- Buck Owens : August 12, 1929

       from Buck Owen's Crystal Palace: About Buck

"Music became the inspiration that lead him out of the fields and into a life of a recording artist that not only achieved a dream of success but also helped develop a sound that took the world by storm."

http://www.buckowens.com/aboutbuck.html

Culcha'

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

A Map Of Mankind (Part 7 - Finale)

      By George Potter from Market Theocracy

"The star is known to humans as CD-75 967. It is part of the constellation of Apus, and is 91 light years from the Sun. As the first human being to gaze on it with naked eyes, she has the right to give it a more poetic name. She ponders and chooses Helios in a burst of optimism."

http://markettheocracy.blogsome.com/2007/08/18/a-map-of-mankind-part-7-finale/

How Great Thou, Bart [Review: The Simpsons Movie]

      Reviewed by Jim Amrhein from Whiskey & Gunpowder

"I was afraid that, in the movie version of The Simpsons, these elements would be diluted or tempered in pursuit of the wide-reaching mega-appeal summer blockbusters strive for. I needn’t have worried. This dissenting spirit is not only alive and well on the big screen, but applied with such alternately brutish and near-subliminal expertise that, in my humble opinion, The Simpsons Movie sets a new American cinematic benchmark (not to mention sounds a new wake-up call) for the criticism of government, Big Business and the major media in this country… But especially the government."

http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2007/20070813.html

Sophie Scholl: A Life of Courage

      Reviewed by Wendy McElroy from ifeminists.com

"This brilliantly crafted film deserves every syllable of praise. It is confirmation that German filmmaking, which has arguably been in decline since the 1970s, is reestablishing its reputation for innovation and excellence. … Sophie Scholl is not merely a movie about moral courage. Its value in that respect should not be understated but, for me, the most fascinating aspect was the interaction between ideals and evil that occurs in subtle and varied ways throughout the film."

http://www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.211

The Deal with the Devil -- Part IX: Selling Out

      By Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"To tell you the truth, even though a lot of us suspected Gael Carolina's intentions right from the start, we weren't as worried as we should have been. After all, how could he build those hotel-casinos of his imagination unless someone would sell the Delaval organization the land to do it?"

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070813.html

The lighter side

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

U.S. To Re-Hang Saddam Hussein

      By staff from The Onion

"To remedy the public relations failure, Hussein's body has been dug up from its burial place near Tikrit and wired together by U.S. Army forensic experts to ensure that it holds its shape during the ceremony. The re-hanging, which will be aired on all major networks and accompanied by a 30-minute retrospective highlighting the many reasons why Hussein was a terrible person deserving of this ignoble end, will be 'brighter, cheerier, and more upbeat,' than the first attempt."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/65173

Even Dick Don't Know Dick

      By Jon Stewart from The Daily Show

"Dick Cheney has so many secrets that not even Dick knows Dick, as the 1994 Dick Cheney can attest. "

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=91612

"Gays Too Precious To Risk In Combat," Says General

      By staff from The Onion News Network

"Gen. McBrayer discusses how valuable homosexuals are, and why we must never put their lives at risk by allowing them in the military. "

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/65102

Cheating Death -- Genetics

      By Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report

"Gene therapy will cure our most devastating health problems - like erectile dysfunction in mice."

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=91642

Deep Thought

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

Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth

      By Kevin Carson from Foundation for Economic Education

"Entire categories of goods and production methods have been developed at enormous expense, either within military industry or by state-subsidized R&D in the civilian economy, without regard to cost. Subsidies to capital accumulation, R&D, and technical education radically distort the forms taken by production. ... Blockbuster factories and economic centralization become artificially profitable, thanks to the Interstate Highway system and other means of externalizing distribution costs."

http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8092

The Soul Is Software

      By Glen Allport from Strike The Root

"Little is yet known about the software involved in creating the soul, and clearly this software, including the software utilized by DNA , is different in many ways from the software running on a modern digital computer."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/allport/allport7.html

For Your Own Good

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"Will the fear of arrest and punishment reduce 'sin' enough to make higher taxes for greater policing and more prisons worth it? Will individuals be safer and more prosperous if 'immoral' goods and services were controlled by organized crime instead of tolerated in a legal, open market? Does not prison for non-violent 'offenders' also destroy families and harm society?"

http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2644

Deniers

      By Russell Madden from Atlas Magazine

"The Global Warmers seem to be shifting from an emphasis on touting 'consensus' (as though truth were determined by majority vote; indeed, when scientists rely on appeals to 'consensus' rather than evidence/facts to bolster their case, you know something is rotten in the state of Denmark) to attacking skeptics as DENIERS. The targets of these attacks are, thankfully, not withering into abject guilty apology as do too many who face the Statist-Collectivist Machine. "

http://www.russellmadden.com/deniers.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

AMD to extend x86 for multicore era

      By Joel Hruska from Ars Technica

"It's likely that Linux support for the extensions will come fairly quickly, but more widespread support will depend on what performance improvements, if any, the technology yields in those initial Linux implementations."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20070815-amd-announces-new-hardware-profiling-technology.html

Surviving Immortality: Just getting to the Singularity is the hard part

      By Robert X. Cringely from I, Cringely

"Between now and the Singularity a lot of things will change and one of the most frustrating aspects of that change for many people is how hard it is to be specific about it. ... I could say we'll have umpteen terabytes of storage, for example, but couldn't say exactly what storage technology would allow that. Holographic? Quantum? Some technology from behind Door Number Three? Nobody can say for sure. Or at least I can't. But I feel confident of the number, if not the way that number will be achieved."

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070817_002727.html

MV Babe :: Belinda Carlisle

      By Tom Ender from The Sudden Curve

"Long before Destiny's Child or The Spice Girls, even before The Bangles, came The Go-Gos . . . ."

http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2007/08/mv-babe-belinda.html

The Ballad Of I Know Damn Right (I)

      By George Potter from Market Theocracy

"They are rebuilding me. Wonder if they think I’ll thank ‘em? Rebuild. Feel the layers fall in. Pieces of body. Pieces of mind. Feel. No touch taste or sight. Black world. Feel. In a tube, invaded by tubes. No name. No idea. No past. But not all blank. Something left. Some things I know. My brothers are dead. The circle is broken. The code is shattered. That is left. Wonder if they think I’ll fuckin’ thank ‘em?"

http://markettheocracy.blogsome.com/2007/08/16/the-ballad-of-i-know-damn-right-i/

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