Sept. 30 — Oct. 6, 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.

Statement of Paul Jacob

      By Paul Jacob from Free Paul Jacob

"I’m accused of violating the Oklahoma statute requiring petition circulators to be residents, a residency requirement currently being challenged in federal court. There seems little justification for this underlying law other than to restrict and hamper the petition process. I believe it will ultimately be struck down as unconstitutional."

http://www.freepauljacob.com/?p=7

A matter of conscience

      By Taran Jordan from The Freedom Outlaw

"Morality, decency, ethical behavior are not and never have been the monopoly of organized religion - but rather of principled, decent, good-hearted and clear-minded individuals acting as their own conclusions lead them to do. (Religion knows this, and has been known to fight the fact tooth and nail.) Gandhi, for example, was not a clergyman - rather, he began his career as a lawyer and elected official. His individual study into Hindu and other philosophy colored his choice of stance and action."

http://taranjordan.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/a-matter-of-conscience/

Monks show how U.S. can challenge its own tyranny

      By Vox Day from WorldNetDaily.com

"The brave protest by the monks of Burma during the last month has captured the world's attention. Unarmed, standing in front of the Burmese military's guns with only their religious faith serving as their shield, they have not only shamed their dictatorial repressors, they have made a powerful statement that has resonated in even cynical hearts."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57909

Congress blinds DHS's space-borne eye of Sauron, postpones domestic spy plan

      By Ryan Paul from Ars Technica

"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been forced to postpone an Orwellian scheme to use spy satellites for domestic surveillance. The program, which was initially scheduled to go into effect this month, has been halted as a result of concerns expressed by Congress."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20071003-domestic-satellite-surveillance-program-postponed.html

Life in Amerika

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

Carol Anne Gotbaum: Victim Of Death By Government

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"Carol Anne Gotbaum did not strangle herself with the handcuffs that were used to restrain her. Thus it follows that the Phoenix Police Department, which claimed that the tiny, 45-year-old mother of three small children somehow choked herself on the cuffs, is concealing the truth about what killed her. ... There was no security risk here. The heroes in blue could have handled an admittedly frantic 105-pound woman without forming a rugby scrum, grinding her face into the floor, and cuffing her hands behind her back. They did this because they're permitted to, not because it was necessary."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/10/carol-anne-gotbaum-victim-of-death-by.html

Losing Our Initiative

      Paul Jacob interviewed by Brian Doherty from Reason

"On Tuesday, longtime libertarian political activist Paul Jacob was indicted on felony charges in Oklahoma for conspiracy to defraud the state, along with Susan Johnson of National Voter Outreach and Rick Carpenter of Oklahomans in Action. It isn't Jacob’s first time with the guns of the state aimed at him. He served five months in jail in 1984, after a year on the run, for refusal to register for the draft. I interviewed him by phone Thursday morning about his legal troubles and the threat they pose to citizen power over their government."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/122839.html

Public schooling

      By Charles Johnson from Rad Geek People’s Daily

"Mainstream media sources ... have repeatedly described what happened as 'a tussle … between a security guard and three students', as 'a scuffle with security guards,' ... This apparently is what passes for accurate description of a professional uniformed security goon battering two high school girls and a fourteen-year-old boy, while he’s backed up by another security goon hovering around the area...."

http://radgeek.com/gt/2007/10/02/public_schooling/

A paean to political Patriotism

      By Garry Reed from Loose Cannon Libertarian

"They will keep paying taxes and voting and believing pretty-sounding lies and going to jail even when they didn't hurt anyone. All because someone told them that they're good little Citizens and should always love someone else more than they love themselves, like a televangelist or a flag or a social welfare program or anything else that makes them feel warm and cozy while they're living under some Politician's thumb."

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

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

The Goal Is Freedom: Government Failure

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"Market advocates have often pointed out that the market itself -- if allowed to work -- contains fixes for these alleged failures, but an equally important point has gotten less attention. Accepting the critics' argument for the moment, it is fallacy to assert that any time the market is expected to generate suboptimal results, government should step in. Why is that a fallacy? Because it assumes that the results of government preemption would be superior to whatever results the market would have produced. But that cannot be assumed. It has to be proved. And it has not been. Market critics have had enough time to bring forth the arguments. Where are they?"

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1619

Nothing Comes Easy

      By Adem D. Kupi from A Pox On All Their Houses

"What is mostly going on in this pattern of alienation and impoverishment is destruction of capital for the sake of those who already own capital, to make it more scarce, not more abundant. ... This is the real reason for War, Regulation, Central Banking, all of it. Even land conservation and real-estate laws. It is to restrict the free movement of capital or to destroy it outright." [Auric Goldfinger and George Orwell might agree on this, though they would have different points of view.]

http://poxyhouses.blogspot.com/2007/10/nothing-comes-easy.html

Time to Boycott Voting

      By Joel S. Hirschhorn from The Intelligence Daily

"After many years of political disappointment, more progressives, liberals and conservatives – and certainly moderates and independents – know in their hearts that voting for Democrats or Republicans is a waste. Just imagine if voter turnout was cut to 25 percent or less! Let the whole world see Americans boycotting a broken and corrupt political system and rejecting what has become a delusional democracy. To keep voting in an unjust political system makes us willing political slaves that the rich and powerful elites exploit."

http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=173&a=3738

Fictions and False Gods

      By Michael S. Rozeff from LewRockwell.com

"States as we know them are a prime evil. They are ridiculous and absurd institutions in which a few men and women, operating with subnormal ethical and supernormal violent capacities, control the lives of millions upon millions of other normal people while demanding submission, obedience, and loyalty to the ultimate authority they proclaim for themselves. They are the sinful and false extensions of our imaginations into bonds of violence that chain us."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff176.html

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Secessionists meeting in Tennessee

      By Bill Poovey from Yahoo! News

"Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully. That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence. ... Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_re_us/secessionist_movement_1

Economics trumps empire

      By Brad Spangler from BradSpangler.com

"The Iranian state is in search of a credible currency. It ain’t the US dollar, which the Iranians proudly cite as having shrank to a position of denominating only 15% of their oil trades in comparison to other currencies. They’re looking to ditch that remaining 15%."

http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/809

No place like home for schooling

      By Sandra L. Churchill, from The Enterprise at SouthofBoston.com

"As most parents deal with the backpacks, lunch bags, school bus commutes and other common back-to-school routines, it's a different mindset for families who choose to homeschool their children. According to several parents who have undertaken the job, reasons for the choice are as diverse as the families themselves, spanning quality time at home, religion, and curriculum choice, to creativity, schedule convenience, and reduced peer pressure."

http://enterprise.southofboston.com/articles/2007/10/01/news/news/news12.txt

Keep Young Kids at Home

      By Gennady Stolyarov II from Le Québécois Libre

"Many parents today send their children to day care, preschool, kindergarten, and public school, thinking that these institutions will educate their children and form vital skills. Yet, if anything, attending these places of collective “learning” retards rather than stimulates education – especially in the youngest kids."

http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/070930-4.htm

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Plain and Simple: Nothing But Ouster Will Stop Bush-Cheney Torture Regime

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"There is really no point in Congress passing laws restricting the Regime's use of torture (assuming that these slavish sad sacks were actually interested in doing so); nor is there any point in the courts ruling against it (assuming that the Bushist apparatchiks, arrogant partisans and lying dimbulbs on the Supreme Court would uphold any lower court rulings outlawing the Regime's filthy practices). It is obvious beyond all dispute by now that the Bush Regime will simply ignore any and all attempts to put fetters on its atrocities."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1301&Itemid=135

Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners?

      By James Bovard from CounterPunch

"Bush's top advisors--and especially the vice president--are devoted to a Nixonian view of absolute power for the commander in chief. After he was driven out of office in disgrace, Nixon told interviewer David Frost in 1977, 'When the president does it that means that it is not illegal.' Frost, somewhat dumbfounded, replied, 'By definition?' Nixon answered, 'Exactly. Exactly.'. ... No American politician has ever been sentenced to death for ordering U.S. soldiers to kill innocent foreigners. Such orders have gone out many times--from the Philippines in the early 1900s, to Haiti in the 1910s, to Vietnam in the 1960s. There have been many other conflicts in which American presidents rubber-stamped U.S. military rules of engagement that guaranteed carnage among foreign women and children."

http://www.counterpunch.org/bovard10062007.html

The Blackwater Massacre

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

“The issue is not private contractors, per se, although the rules of engagement followed by the Blackguards are considerably more relaxed than those in force for the U.S. military: U.S. soldiers have been involved in similar incidents, and a lot worse. The point is that we are an occupying force, and are seen as such by the increasingly resentful Iraqis: whether private or U.S. government-owned-and-operated, an army of occupation is going to meet resistance, and so we have. We are fast reaching a critical point – when growing resentment and even hatred of the Americans takes the shape of a demand for some accountability from the occupiers.”

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11711

Delusion of exceptionalism

      By Paul Campos from Rocky Mountain News

"Nationalism is perhaps the most interesting delusion of modern times. Its power is illustrated by the fact that lots of otherwise sensible people are unapologetic nationalists, even though nationalism requires its adherents to subscribe to various bizarre beliefs."

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/
opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5712141,00.html

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Year of the Rat: A 2008 Campaign Diary

      By Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone

"The presidential campaign ritual in this country has obviously devolved into a deeply flawed phenomenon, one that tends to produce incompetent or inappropriate leaders and fails to really touch the population on any level anymore beyond disgust and resentment."

http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/index.php/
2007/10/02/year-of-the-rat-a-2008-campaign-diary-by-matt-taibbi/

The Candidates

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"On September 17, Values Voters hosted a debate for Republican Presidential candidates. All the candidates showed up. Well, except for the Loathsome Foursome of Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Fred Thompson. Each one had better things to do than try to persuade the Republican base that he is their nominee for President. The abortion flip-flopper from Taxachusetts, the thrice-married, pro-abortion cross-dressing gun grabber, the abortion lobbyist, and the "maverick" with a history of bad blood with evangelical leaders, figured they'd have nothing to gain. In a way, this was a good thing, as it gave everyone else more time to speak."

http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2682

Hypocrisy Rules the West

      By Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"Neither Bush nor Brown stand in solidarity with those who are demanding their freedom from foreign occupation by American and British troops. Indeed, Bush and Brown, as commanders in chief, are on a killing spree that makes the government in Burma look extremely restrained by comparison. ... To cut to the chase, what is the difference between Bush and Brown on one hand and the murderous Burmese government on the other? Bush and Brown are actually worse. They pretend to be democrats concerned with what people actually want. The Burmese government doesn't pretend to be anything but a military dictatorship."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10012007.html

Evil Women

      By L. Neil Smith from The Libertarian Enterprise

"The real question—as raised by Sally Field last Emmy night—is, are women any better fit to lead this sad world than men have proven to be? The answer is, absolutely not. One of my correspondents observed that, if women ran the world, it would have been reduced to thermonuclear vapor a long, long time ago. Think about Hillary Clinton and then dare to disagree"

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle437-20070930-04.html

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Gold's time to set price records?

      By Peter Brimelow from MarketWatch

"Friday's close in New York, $10.70 above the previous week's close at $743.10, was the highest monthly close ever. (Gold briefly cleared $800 on an intra-month basis in back in 1980)."

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/gold-melting-up/
story.aspx?guid=%7BE46E3D74%2D3213%2D45C8%2DAB52%2D11CA37E56058%7D

Dollar's double blow from Vietnam and Qatar

      By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard from Telegraph

"The drastic shift by the Qatar Investment Authority is a warning that petro-dollar powers with some $3,500bn under management may pull the plug on the heavily endebted US economy -- which needs to suck in the majority of the world's savings just to stay afloat."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/10/03/bcnviet103.xml

Patience, fairness and the human condition

      By staff from The Economist

"Three studies published this week ... have cast light on the evolution of both patience and fairness. It turns out that patience is older than fairness. It also turns out that although the propensity to be fair varies a good deal from one person to the next, that variation is rooted in genetics rather than culture."

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9898270

Fair Trade in Bloom

      By Andrew Downie from International Herald Tribune

"Fair trade products that have experienced the biggest jump in demand include coffee, cocoa and cotton, according to the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations. Dozens of other products, including tea, pineapples, wine and flowers, are certified by organizations that visit farmers to verify that they are meeting the many criteria that bar, among other things, the use of child labor and harmful chemicals. There is no governmental standard for fair trade certification, the same situation as with 'organic' until a few years ago." [Before government got involved in labeling items “organic”, the label meant more than it does today.]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/02/business/02trade.php

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Take My Buying Power…Please

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from The Daily Reckoning

"[T]he stupid Congress - as un-freaking-believable as it sounds - wants to impose tariff sanctions on Chinese imports to 'punish' them for not allowing the dollar to fall in buying power, ignoring the fact that higher prices punishes us, too! Hahaha! It would be more entertaining to burn our money and wear signs around our necks that say, 'Take our buying power! We're freaking morons!' "

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG100507.html

Why Did the Canadian Cross the Border?

      By Paul Jacob from The Free Liberal

"A decade or more ago, a young teenage Ukrainian visited Minnesota under a charity program. He had a bad heart, and needed help. An American family housed and fed the lad and his mother. Many people from around the world come to America to get free care just like his. He would have died without it." [But wait, there's more....]

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002999.html

The Green Consensus

      By Alvaro Vargas Llosa from The Independent Institute

"It is true that biofuels will eventually create business opportunities for developing countries too, but for that to happen, Europe and the U.S. will need to scrap their protectionist policies. Brazilian sugar cane ethanol is the obvious example. The U.S. imposes a 54 percent tariff in order to protect corn farmers in Iowa, Kansas and other states. Corn is a much less efficient source of ethanol than is sugar cane."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2038

The Worst Recession in 25 years?

      By Robert Murphy from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"In the Austrian view, the boom-bust cycle is caused by the Fed's maintenance of artificially low interest rates, which causes businesses to expand, hire workers, buy other resources, and so forth, even though these projects are not justified by the true supply of savings in the economy. The greater the 'stimulus' the worse the malinvestments."

http://www.mises.org/story/2728

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Nothing new: The politics of fear

      By B.W. Richardson from Montag ...

"As Rothbard, Chodorov and countless others concluded, the fear-mongers were right: The enemy is at the gates, but the enemy is not Russian, Arab, terrorist or even a tobacco farmer. The enemy is the politician who would strip you of your freedom in the name of protecting you against the terror du jour."

http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2007/09/nothing-new-politics-of-fear.html

The Bootlickers' Breakfast: Bush Honors Thugs Who Dishonor War Survivors

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Terror and intimidation are the only tools left for a faction whose manifest lies have been exposed and are no longer believed by anyone, beyond a rump of fanatics (and the highly-educated mandarins of the corporate media, of course)."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1300&Itemid=135

The Sons of Leviathan

      By Jim Fedako from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"A few years later, another local resident blustered about bombing a local mall. There was never any evidence that he possessed the wherewithal to execute his plans. Yet, post-9/11, this arrest achieved much greater attention. The Leviathan was allowed to advance because a majority of local residents have accepted — no, embraced — the belief that only government can provide safety in a crisis, and that safety is more valuable than liberty."

http://www.mises.org/story/2723

How Bogus Fears Bought Bush Four More Years

      By James Bovard from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Is a president entitled to frighten voters into submission to perpetuate his power over them? While many people are catching on to Bush’s deceits on Iraq, most Americans have forgotten the scams of his reelection campaign."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0707c.asp

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

B.W.'s Book Report: The Betrayal of the American Right

      By B.W. Richardson from Montag ...

"How long has the government of the United States given lip service to freedom and individual rights while enforcing its steel will over a citizenry it treats as a collective, a tyrannical government identical in most ways to the empire with which it broke ties in 1776?"

http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2007/10/bws-book-report-betrayal-of-american.html

Brass in Pocket: A Chronicle of Blood Money Foretold

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Everything I wrote in those days was based upon mainstream news reports and other public information; all of it was easily available to, say, the 'liberal hawks' and Democratic leaders and others who now claim that they were hornswoggled by the wily Bush gang, that they are simply gobsmacked that this noble crusade somehow turned into a rampage of murder and loot: 'Boy howdy, we never seen that comin'!' These gormless Gomers are either brazen liars or dribbling fools of the highest order – or both. "

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1302&Itemid=135

Ahmadinejad

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"For all his weird statements about freedom, women, and homosexuals in Iran, not to mention his views on the Nazi treatment of Jews, at least Ahmadinejad took on all comers. He even accepted his host's insults with equanimity. That people panicked about his appearance at the forum only made him look respectable. Too bad Ahmadinejad didn't use his time better. He might have educated the American people about the history of U.S.-Iran relations, of which most Americans are unforgivably ignorant. "

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0710a.asp

Government Without Government

      By Michael S. Rozeff from LewRockwell.com

"As long as this country remains reasonably prosperous, people will not risk their gains, especially if they might incur large losses. They will not endorse quick and large changes. But they can be and have already been led gradually to all sorts of radical changes in their lives during the prolonged and ongoing Second American Revolution. A Third American Revolution can occur if it is carried out gradually. On the other hand, if there should be a Greater Depression, then people will be open to more radical and fast change. People at that point will be open to all sorts of ideas and men on white horses. ... The evidence grows that 800–1000 years ago and more, the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Icelanders, and the German tribes governed themselves without government as we know it, without big government."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff175.html

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Shifting Targets: The Administration’s plan for Iran

      By Seymour M. Hersh from The New Yorker

"The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh?printable=true

Phil Ochs: "One More Parade"

      By Wally Conger from out of step

[Insightful photo montage to a Phil Ochs classic.]

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/09/one-more-parade-phil-ochs.html

Iraq Is Already Partitioned: Here’s How to Make it Work

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"Thus, an incomplete and unratified partition on the ground in Iraq is a dangerous situation, exacerbated by U.S arming and training of all factions, now including the Sunnis, which could make the ongoing civil war even worse."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2037

Once More into the Breach

      By Justin Logan from Cato Institute

"The same network of think-tank analysts, media outlets, and government officials who brayed for war in Iraq have set their sights increasingly on Iran. Savvy as ever, they remain focused on consolidating public opinion and seem to be monitoring anti-Iran sentiment closely."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8722

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Scientist -- Jean Baptiste Perrin : Sept. 30, 1870

       from The Nobel Foundation

"The work for which he is best known is the study of colloids and, in particular, the so-called Brownian movement. His results in this field were able to confirm Einstein's theoretical studies.... In this way the discontinuity of matter was proved by him beyond doubt: an achievement rewarded with the 1926 Nobel Prize. ... Perrin was the creator of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, an organization offering to most promising French scientists - whose scientific talents would otherwise be lost - a career outside the University."

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1926/perrin-bio.html

Filmmaker -- Lewis Milestone : Sept. 30, 1895

       From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"He is known for directing Two Arabian Knights (1927), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), The General Died at Dawn (1936) Of Mice and Men (1940), Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)."

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

Drummer -- Buddy Rich : Sept. 30, 1917

       from BuddyRich.com

"Arguably the greatest jazz drummer of all time, the legendary Buddy Rich exhibited his love for music through the dedication of his life to the art. His was a career that spanned seven decades, beginning when Rich was 18 months old and continuing until his death in 1987."

http://www.buddyrich.com/about/bio.html

Activist – Fannie Lou Hamer : Oct. 6, 1917

      By staff from The African American Registry

"She began working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organizing voter registration campaigns in the Mississippi Delta. In 1964, white members of the Democratic Party in Mississippi continued the tradition of refusing to accept Blacks in their delegation to the national party convention. Hamer and others formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The MFDP sent 68 delegates to the national convention, to challenge the white Democrats right to represent Mississippi."

http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/
389/Fannie_Lou_Hamer_an_eloquent_and_blunt_civil_rights_activist

Culcha'

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

To Thine Own Self Be True: Chapter 2 - The Promise

      By Susan Callaway from The Price of Liberty

"Bill had shown Jason how to hold the terrible pill in his teeth until he could spit it out without being seen by the teachers. He had also made sure Jason understood how important it was for him to watch the other boys carefully and mimic them so the teachers wouldn't know he wasn't swallowing the drug. They had seen one boy held down and given something with a needle after refusing to take it, and he had never been seen again."

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/07/10/01/trueself2.htm

Lords of the Golden Compass

      By Stax from IGN » Entertainment » Movies » News

"There are rumblings online about which stars are set to cameo in The Golden Compass, the first screen adaptation of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels that's due in theaters December 7."

http://movies.ign.com/articles/825/825263p1.html

UWA 40: Beedle-bees and rum-a-doodle-dum

      By Warren Bluhm from Uncle Warren's Attic

"Uncle Warren unplugged: Red and I on the road, a couple of my old folk tunes ('You Can Tighten My Belt' and 'Hi Horse Tweedledum Ladies'), and a taste of what the Attic might sound like if I paid the license fees and played non-podsafe stuff."

http://unclewarrensattic.blogspot.com/2007/10/uwa-40-beedle-bees-and-rum-doodle-dum.html

Onward to Barsoom!

      By Wally Conger from out of step

"All six members at the meeting expressed a deep commitment to the project, acknowledging that they had been inspired by Burroughs’ creations from a very early age. This is evidenced in the excitement for the John Carter property and the plans for a film trilogy faithful to the Burroughs books. Projected release date is sometime before 2012."

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/10/onward-to-barsoom.html

The lighter side

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

Country Music Stars Challenge Al-Qaeda With Patriotic New Song ‘Bomb New York’

      By staff from The Onion News Network

"A group of country music's biggest stars have a message for terrorists: you can't hurt America by blowing up New York City."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/67327

Cheating Death – Sleep

      By Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report

"If work is interfering with your sleep, Dr. Stephen T. Colbert says sleep while you work."

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=103730

New Heart Device Allows Cheney To Experience Love

      By staff from The Onion

"Attending a Monday evening GOP fundraiser at the Washington Convention Center, Cheney was accompanied by David Gillian, 6, a young boy he had previously crippled, and by a small fawn who had followed him to the event. Mounting the podium as the featured speaker, he told supporters he had cast aside his planned speech on the counterinsurgency in Iraq's Anbar Province in order to 'tell the real truth'."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/67469

Mentally Ill Money

      By John Hodgman from The Daily Show

"John Hodgman explains why the American dollar is weakening in value thanks to God."

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=109224

Deep Thought

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

Is The Net Good For Writers?

      Various excerpts from interviews by RU Sirius from 10 Zen Monkeys

"Now the web — and its democratizing impact — has spread for over a decade. Over a billion people can deliver their text to a very broad public. It's a fantastic thing which gives a global voice to dissidents in various regions, makes people less lonely by connecting other people with similar interests and problems, ad infinitum. But what does it mean for writers and writing? What does it mean for those who specialize in writing well? "

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/10/05/is-the-net-good-for-writers/

Are Cancer Cures Being Hidden From the Public?

      By Bill Sardi from LewRockwell.com

"According to a 2005 poll reported by the American Cancer Society, 27% of Americans agree with the statement: 'There is currently a cure for cancer but the medical industry won't tell the public.' Another 14 percent are uncertain. Denials from cancer authorities were swift after release of the poll results."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi73.html

Who's the Fascist?

      By James Leroy Wilson from Independent Country

"Fascism implies soul-crushing conformity, ethnic supremacy, and ideological uniformity. But it also [implies] fervent nationalism, and an economic system dictated by governmental and corporate elites, (which could be flexible and pragmatic in its operation). Overall, fascism is a form of consciousness in which love for and obedience to The State trumps everything else."

http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/10/whos-fascist.html

Stale as Office Coffee

      By PintofStout from Murphy’s Bye-Laws

"Office coffee smells like coffee in the little pre-measured pouch, aromatic and enticing, even hopeful. It looks legitimately like coffee when it brews. It even taste a little like coffee in the first few seconds of its existence. But all hope is quickly dashed after having more than a taste, and all that remains is the weak bitterness of dashed hopes and the stale shame of being fooled again. It reminds me of election years."

http://pintofstout.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/stale-as-office-coffee/

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Oil Produces Expensive Caesar Salad

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from The Daily Reckoning

"Then, last Thursday, I was pretty well 'adjusted' and could barely hold my head up off the bar, when… Wham! The oil future shot up over $2.79 to $83.09! Hahaha! I was right! Absolutely correct, from an investment perspective…"

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG100407.html

You Can't Get There From Here

      By Robert X. Cringely from I, Cringely

"Whatever the cockeyed logical basis of this transaction [IBM selling its network services business to AT&T], it will do nothing to change the deliberate bandwidth scarcity problem that plagues businesses and consumers alike worldwide. The only way to solve THAT problem is by taking back ownership of our own last-mile connections and creating a true competitive marketplace for backbone services. It's a move that would pay for itself almost instantly, but I doubt that it will ever be allowed to happen."

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20071005_003153.html

Regulatory roadblocks

      By J.D. Tuccille from Disloyal Opposition

"The problem is that, in our brave new world, you can't just put up a building, install equipment and beds and begin accepting patients. There are regulatory hoops to jump through, and those hoops increase dramatically if you keep patients for more than a day -- the magic cut-off point at which a clinic becomes a hospital in the eyes of government officials."

http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2007/10/regulatory-roadblocks.html

The Storm Worm

      By Bruce Schneier from Schneier on Security

"Old style worms -- Sasser, Slammer, Nimda -- were written by hackers looking for fame. ... Worms like Storm are written by hackers looking for profit, and they're different. These worms spread more subtly, without making noise. Symptoms don't appear immediately, and an infected computer can sit dormant for a long time. If it were a disease, it would be more like syphilis, whose symptoms may be mild or disappear altogether, but which will eventually come back years later and eat your brain."

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/the_storm_worm.html

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