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"Like, Dude, you mean we can just walk right into any old place they call a Gun-Free Zone or where they put up those 'No Gun' signs and, like, just shoot up the whole freakin' place, but if some hard-ass solid-citizen-type geek is packin' a pistol where the liberal anti-gun nuts say he can't, the guy can, like, drop us in our tracks and ruin all our fun before we even get a good start?"
http://www.rcreader.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12741&Itemid=42
"Various writers have argued for the private production of security, showing how the state, with its territorial monopoly of protection, seriously harms the lives and property of those it claims to protect. The result of the state’s imposition of collectivized security has drastically increased the cost of protection while heightening our exposure to danger. In the name of protecting us, the state has milked the economy and all but destroyed the dollar, while waging an unremitting war on personal freedom. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/smith/smith5.html
"The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon charicature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation. That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years."
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05032008.html
"With so much in common, why can't the LP and CP unite? Part of it was that the LP's mission through the years has been to spread the libertarian philosophy of individual freedom. In a way, it has served as a gateway for further study and advocacy. Policy agreements with the CP are only that - agreements on policy."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2930
"Americans, like most people, would rather not look too closely at their unattractive traits. We like to pretend that we are self-sufficient, honest people. But our desire to rely upon and preserve the welfare state reveals the truth about who we really are."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/ludlow/ludlow1.html
"At the beginning of the 21st century, the typical American suburb is just about the safest place that has ever existed in the history of the world - yet it's full of terrified people. Statistics have little power in the face of a media environment in which extraordinarily rare events, such as strangers kidnapping children, are presented as commonplace by profit-hungry 'news' outlets, for whom the bottom line is that fear sells."
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/apr/30/campos-a-nation-of-hysterics/
"Look to the left, dear reader. Look to the right. Do you see Paul Volcker at the Fed? Nope. Volcker is still alive - warning that there is a painful adjustment coming. But at the Fed itself, there is only Ben Bernanke, promising to drop dollars from helicopters, if necessary, in order to keep the economy bubbling along. And since the United States lives so far beyond its means…and owes so much money to so many people…the likelihood that a Paul Volcker will come along to protect the dollar is probably about as likely as Alan Greenspan being elected as the new Pope."
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/RSS/DR042908sec1.html
"Absent-minded professor dad buys lemonade for his kid at a baseball game. Turns out it's a Mike's Hard Lemonade. After a guard spots the bottle, the kid is whisked away to the hospital in an ambulance (!) where they found no trace of alcohol in his blood about 90 minutes later. The doctors said he was OK to go, but instead he wound up in foster care. "
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126223.html
"Those who today suppose that freedom can come from the barrel of a political gun in the 2008 or any other election are making a similar error, and Stefan Molyneux made a comparable point here in his brilliant article about running for public office. Ransome's error was exactly that of virtually all of our neighbors at election time--for ballots are merely bullets, in drag. ... Governments never do anything else but impose force, and so government is always, invariably evil in all it does."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/davies/davies13.html
"The cop on duty thought it was a mistake, but his supervisor was insisting that he act. When Child Protective Services came to take the child into their cruel foster care, the police objected. But CPS was just doing its duty. It had no choice but to take the child since the police had requested a court order — also triggered by events — to remove the child. Observers who know the system say that the only surprising aspect to this case is that the child was returned so quickly. Had the couple been poor, uneducated, and unconnected, the case might still be tied up in the courts."
"We should use this day to celebrate every man’s, woman’s, and child’s right to freedom, liberty, and justice. It is a day that was and should become the symbol of every man’s equal right and our collective humane, desperate need for peaceful, non-violent disobedience of the ruling class’s decrees."
http://www.perbylund.com/blog/?p=66
"I want to show you this cartoon, but it is too big to copy here, so click on the link. It’s from Anarchy In Your Head."
http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/iron-fist-to-the-rescue/
"I am heartened that with some work, it is possible to find partial support from direct True Fans. Micro patronage has always been an option, and indeed a part of, most artist's livelihood. What is different now is the reach and power of technology, which makes it much easier to match up an artist with the right passionate micro patrons, keep them connected, serve them up created works, get payment from them directly, and nurture their interest and love."
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/04/the_case_agains.php
"Now, citizens of the communist-controlled country can for the first time be the proud legal owners of a desktop computer, according to an Associated Press report. More than a dozen prospective buyers were lined up Friday outside Havana's state-run Carlos III shopping center for a chance to buy the tower-style Qtech PC and CRT monitor for $780, according to the report."
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9935007-7.html
"Due to the tensions with Washington in the past years over the nuclear disputes and the latest depreciation of dollars, Iran has vowed to decrease the greenback in its foreign trade. Iran central bank also has reduced dollars in the country's foreign reserves." [If this goes on others might join in abandoning the petrodollar. As Bugs might say: “Of course you know, this means war.”]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20080430&articleId=8853
"The fuzziness starts when we examine exactly what we mean by aggressors. It is clear that a direct and immediate threat of force, or use of force, is aggression, but the line is not clearly defined."
http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/what-is-self-defense-a-call-for-your-answers/
"It is 1939 all over again. The world waits helplessly for the next act of naked aggression by rogue states. Only this time the rogue states are not the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. They are the United States and Israel. The targeted victims are not Poland and France, but Iran, Syria, the remains of the Palestinian West Bank and southern Lebanon."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts04292008.html
"This is the historical rule of politics: political powers at a higher level will always find a way to cooperate in order to extract more powers from lower levels, just like new and even higher levels will form and eventually undermine the ones currently thought of as absolute powers."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/bylund/bylund3.html
"It is impossible to overstate the importance of the principles involved in the Padilla case for the American people. Ordinary Americans might ask, '“Why get all upset about some guy named Jose Padilla? He’s just a terrorist.' What such Americans fail to realize, however, is that Padilla was just the test case whose legal principles would then apply to all Americans."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0801a.asp
“Imagine living amongst a race of immortal, super-human creatures with superior intellect, abilities, resources and power. Further, imagine that these alien creatures enjoy all the same rights as citizens, but are burdened neither with the responsibilities that come with citizenship, nor a moral conscience that would give them some measure of forbearance from using their full power to their own advantage against us. What would it be like to live in such a world? It would no doubt be treacherous, fraught with an assortment of possibly life-threatening dangers. Yet we needn't imagine it, for we live in such a world today -- right now -- in the United States of America.”
http://depression2.tv/d2/node/98
"[T]he major news media are willing participants in the charade that Republicans and Democrats have substantially different ideas about things. Generally, we are asked to believe that Republicans want less government and more war, while the Democrats want more government and less war. As you may have noticed, that makes no sense. War and government go hand in hand, and both parties want more government. Each side tends to dislike only the wars started by the other side. "
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0805a.asp
"All politicians buy and sell favors, and presidential candidates are worse than most. In this race, none of the three remaining candidates are exactly squeaky clean when it comes to the doling out of federal budgetary largess. Even John McCain, who boasts that he doesn't request 'earmarks,' as pork-barrel spending is known on the Hill, actually has at least one to his name. And Barack Obama has not been shy about steering taxpayer dollars to people who might be able to help his presidential bid. But of the three candidates, no one can touch Hillary Clinton for her expertise in dispensing federal pork. She is fast becoming a sort of Heavyweight Earmark Champion of the Beltway...."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20306341/the_queen_of_pork
"So again, we come down to a stark choice for the Democratic candidate: either agree to 'move on' from 'bitter partisan rancor' over 'enhanced interrogation techniques' -- or else. There are of course several ways to eliminate someone from public life; the tools have been refined somewhat since the days when 'lone gunmen' stalked the land, removing inconvenient figures. "
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1494&Itemid=135
"Hardly anyone took the 'chickens come home to roost' remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/050308a.html
"Over the past fifty years, people in developed countries began showing up in doctors’ offices with autoimmune disorders in far greater numbers. In many places, the rates of such conditions as multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and Crohn’s disease have doubled and even tripled. Almost half the people living in First World nations now suffer from allergies. It turns out that people who grow up on farms are much less likely to have these problems. Perhaps, scientists hypothesized, we’ve become too clean and aren’t being exposed to the bacteria we need to prime our immune systems. ... The very thing that makes raw milk dangerous ... may make people healthier, and pasteurization could be cleansing beneficial bacteria from milk."
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/0081992
"Driven by higher gas prices, America's auto fleet today is almost 40 percent more fuel-efficient than in 1979. In contrast, the energy efficiency of both bus and rail transit has declined as transit has reached into distant suburbs where few people use it. Despite investing hundreds of billions of dollars in transit improvements, the share of urban travel served by transit has actually declined from just under 3 percent in 1979 to well under 2 percent today. ... One simple way to relieve congestion is to coordinate traffic signals. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that three out of four traffic signals need updated coordination systems. Signal coordination costs little yet can save huge amounts of time, fuel and emissions."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9373
"A large body of evidence is showing that the addition of certain types of 'friendly' bacteria to the diet can have beneficial effects on immune function and microbial activities throughout the body and in people of all ages. The role of probiotics in health may extend far beyond what was originally conceived."
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=6783
"The shifting, shimmering Northern Lights might be more ordered than anyone realised. New observations suggest that, contrary to expectations, some of the colourful light shows appear to be polarised, with their electromagnetic waves lined up in a common orientation."
http://space.newscientist.com/article/
dn13802-is-there-a-hidden-order-to-the-northern-lights.html
"Free-market businesses are ethically sound because they are funded voluntarily by willing customers. In contrast, NASA is a coercive shakedown. First, there is no market for what it sells. There are no eager buyers spending their own money on NASA’s goods and services. Instead, NASA’s annual budget of $16.8 billion (2007) is taken from taxpayers—under threat of violence—by the government’s hold-up men, the IRS. It is a case of naked exploitation that benefits politically connected companies and a government bureaucracy that exists for its own sake."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/ludlow/ludlow2.html
"The Law of Unintended Consequences is a fascinating thing. You can never be entirely sure what the second-, third-, etc. -order effects of any action will be. This is especially so with government policy because centralized decision-making can do so much damage to so many people. That ought to humble the politicians and bureaucrats, but it never does. Take the possible connection between the 'public schools' and the current housing and mortgage woes."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=2055
"Fed officials would have us believe that they can take rates higher soon to combat the inflation already present in the economy, but how can anyone take them seriously when the consumer and the economy have become even more leveraged since the Fed caved into saving the housing and stock markets just last summer? Can we really have any confidence in an institution that took rates from 1% to 5.25%, then back to 2% and now wants to move back up again, all in the space of a few years? This is the type of roller coaster action you get when you let a small group of individuals decide the cost of money instead of the market."
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/pento043008.html
"'There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.' ... Interest rates are going down. House prices are going down. Since the beginning of the year the stock market has been going down. But what's going up?"
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10147.htm
"Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups."
http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html
"[T]he media IS doing its job. It's cheerleading the country to war, it is diverting attention from the main political and economic issues of the day, and it is destroying its political enemies. That's what it's paid to do. Its foolish to think the media should perform differently because of the PR nonsense about a 'free press'. The media gets its marching orders from its corporate managers; that's who issues the paychecks on Fridays."
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/14323
"This struggle will demand the greatest sacrifices of us all. No amount of money or authority siphoned off by our political leaders can be thought of as too great."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer171.html
"When members of Congress assume this shocked pose and spout such nonsense to the press, we may rest assured that they do indeed take us for fools. The congressman is hurt to his core, he says, to think that former military officers may be cashing in on their previous military service and their connections with former associates still at the Pentagon. Well, let’s see: this sort of thing has been going on actively for only sixty-five years or so."
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=89
"For perhaps the first time in history, a country minted coins that attempted to convey an idea by means of an image. That was no easy undertaking. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the reverse may also be true. Some words are worth a thousand pictures, and ideological words can be so potent that no picture can do them adequate justice. Despite the daunting nature of its task, the new mint proved itself equal to the challenge."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0801f.asp
"Together with Alan Greenspan, he [Ben Bernanke] certainly helped move US equity prices during the Great Reflation of 2002-2005. They also giddy-upped the price of pretty much everything else, too. Starting of course with real estate inside the United States, and commodity prices everywhere else."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10143.htm
"The creator of LSD, Albert Hofmann, is dead at the ripe old age of 102 (he's pictured at the right by artist Alex Gray). The man who launched a thousand trips first synthesized the drug in 1938 and then learned of its hallucinatory effects five years later, after accidentally ingesting it."
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126249.html
"May 3 will retain its place in computer history as the day spam was born. Thirty years ago, some guy entered the record books for being the first to pitch unwanted commercial e-mail."
http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9934966-60.html
"The perpetual conundrum of the old men who declare war is how to get the young boys to commit to the battle field. They have solved this conundrum by selling young boys on a counterfeit cause: freedom. War is somehow always about freedom, whether it is insuring it, or making the world safe for it.... "
http://counterpunch.org/oconnor04302008.html
"The indications of an imminent attack – the latest incident, the steady stream of accusations coming from the U.S. regarding Iranian influence in Iraq, the nuclear charade, etc. – have suddenly taken a more ominous turn with the recent statement of America's top military officer that the U.S. is weighing military action against Iran."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12755
"Enmeshed in two military occupations that have turned into well-publicized quagmires, the Army and Marines are understandably having trouble enlisting new recruits. Their answer: vastly increase the number of convicted felons and other societal miscreants accepted into their ranks."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2180
"Five years after President George W. Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished' from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier off San Diego, Iraq is in chaos, U.S. troops are mired in a sectarian war, and the entrenched conflict is dragging the nation into a recession."
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5191
"With the first Intel-Cray products appearing in the 2010-2011 timeframe, it's clear that three Intel technologies have caught Cray's eye: the native 32nm Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) scheme, and the forthcoming discrete, x86-based graphics product, codenamed Larrabee. Cray will plug all of these components into its SeaStar interconnect fabric, and when combined with Cray Linux they'll make for an HPC and floating-point monster."
"If last quarter is any indication, however, software--whether open or proprietary--has yet to provide a real spur to its hardware and services business. This is perhaps worrisome, given that so many open-source businesses with which I'm familiar are thriving in the economic downturn. A bad economy has been very good for open source. But Sun's slowness to feel these effects is perhaps not surprising, given that its renewed commitment to and investment in software is of fairly recent vintage. The company will need time to plant the software seeds and let them grow."
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9934186-16.html
"Wasn't Blade Runner supposed to depict a bleak, dystopian future? Someone really should tell Sonny Astani. The 55-year-old real estate mogul is planning to bring 2019 Los Angeles to life in the form of two 14-story animated billboards modeled on Ridley Scott's opening sequence."
http://www.wired.com/culture/design/magazine/16-05/st_bladerunner
"American researchers claim they have developed a medical powder that allows severed fingers to grow and reform."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/01/2233125.htm
"Watching over Repairman Jack’s shoulder as he performs his extra-legal services righting wrongs is always a delight. His efforts at fulfilling the wishes of his clients while adhering to his strict standard of conduct make him a figure rare in modern literature: one who not only believes in freedom and justice, but one who practices those virtues ruthlessly and consistently."
http://www.russellmadden.com/Cutting_Both_Ways.html
"Perelman, who was born in the Soviet Union and left in 1977 at the age of 14 when the government was letting some Jewish people leave, said the novel’s emphasis on 'individualism and [the] entrepreneurial spirit' resonates with him."
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/04/28/atlas-shrugged-the-movie-at-last/
"Lavinia makes for an unlikely heroine, which is just what Le Guin likes about her. From Mulan to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, sassy, kick-ass girls are preferred nowadays to circumspect homebodies like Virgil's Latin princess. There may even be a touch of self-reproach in Le Guin's choice of Lavinia as her main character, since the heroine of her 1971 novel, 'The Tombs of Atuan,' is a priestess named Tenar who rebels against a life entirely devoted to serving a pantheon of nameless, implacable gods."
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/05/01/LeGuin/index.html
"Lee, along with artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, created many of the Marvel superheroes soaring across movie screens, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk."
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2008/05/lee_cameos
"Stephen suggests that Indiana Jones make a movie that's more suited for the senior citizen audience."
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=167414
"The release of Grand Theft Auto IV puts Aasif Mandvi on the streets of Liberty City."
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=167329
"[T]his is not about how people going into a stupid convenience store are 'bothered' by me politely informing them about how stupid they are, and how the last 4,000 years of human economic history shows that they should be buying silver and gold instead of an Extra Large Big Gulp soda, a bag full of delicious highly-processed foods (like Twinkies) and a handful of Lottery tickets, but about the velocity of money, and about how the power of velocity, as the money cascades hand to hand in transaction after transaction, is seemingly reduced at each step by the tax rate."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10145.htm
"Coming off his appearance with PBS’ Bill Moyers and his televised speeches before the NAACP and the National Press Club, the preacher said that 'one thing is abundantly clear: people just can’t get enough of me on television.' By launching WrightTV, the minister said, 'It is my sincere hope that I can quench the public’s seemingly limitless thirst for hearing me talk'."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6870
"Science, it seems to me, has become an institution in its own right—an unassailable purveyor of rock-solid conclusions, of truth. But for many reasons—and for me, its reliance on aggregate information being foremost among them—that perspective is narrow and potentially dangerous. Science is supposed to be a self-correcting way of gaining understanding; it was not intended to prescribe and proscribe things at an individual level. This view, along with the myth that a study or two proves a particular finding, has left me (a former researcher!) very skeptical of the institution."
http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/node/1357
"[I]n my view, he makes grandiose and indefensible claims on behalf of the use of mathematics in economics. I am no philosopher, but I venture to say also that he makes indefensible claims about mathematics itself — a point that I will leave for better qualified heads to judge. Samuelson's main claim is that 'in deepest logic,' mathematics and prose 'are strictly identical'.... My not-very-highly-tutored philosophical hunch is that this claim will no longer be regarded as holding water, if it ever was so regarded."
"In the past, electronic circuit theory has revolved around three fundamental components: the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor. Now a fourth has been added to that list, the memristor."
"Members of the deflation camp assert that the large-scale contraction of credit happening within the banking system means that deflation is upon us, even if the money supply is expanding. At the same time, another camp is pointing to the breathtakingly rapid growth in M3 money supply as evidence that hyperinflation is a near-term threat. In our opinion, both camps are wrong."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10111.htm
"Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke
"Critics of LRT point out that it is not theoretical capacity that is crucial, but actual ridership and the cost incurred to garner this ridership. National figures indicate that on average, LRT carries about 5,000 people per track-mile per day, while urban freeways carry over 20,000 per lane-mile per day. So, in actual numbers of people served, freeways seem to handle over four times as much traffic as LRT does."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2183
"The datacenter market alone just doesn't have the capacity to absorb enough 45nm and 32nm transistors to make the massive investment in fabricating them worthwhile, even if you factor in a concomitant proliferation of (low-transistor-count) thin clients. So to have a robust market for transistors at this level of integration you have to keep selling more and more of them across a wider, more broadly distributed swath of the power grid."
"The upshot of asking lying, greedy bankers (the villains of history) to tell the truth and let everyone know what disreputable, untrustworthy scum they are has now proved to be an unreliable system of self-regulation...."
http://dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG042808.html
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