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"Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing an individual right to possess arms for self-defense."
http://www.reason.tv/video/show/458.html
"[I]n honor of George we have busted the TSC censorship rules WIDE open!"
http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2008/06/rip-george-carl.html
"Historically, BitTorrent end users have faced little in the way of legal repercussions, regardless of their association with a tracker. Despite the seizure of LokiTorrent and EliteTorrent's userbase information, the only legal action taken was against the administration. That's not to say that can't change in Sweden, however history is on the side of the user – and so is The Pirate Bay."
http://www.slyck.com/story1691_SSL_Encrpytion_Coming_to_The_Pirate_Bay
"In short, what matters to handsets now is not so much features, graphics chips and innovative interfaces -- though those do help. What's critical is an easy-to-use development platform that enables programmers to create a wide range of software quickly and easily, so that they can give consumers the content and the software they demand."
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2008/06/mobile_apps
You are owned.
http://blog.tomender.com/2008/06/23/he-told-it-like-it-is/
"The inaugural use to which that armored assault vehicle was put was much more illustrative of the priorities and function of the Homeland Security State, which is to maintain terror -- not only the politically profitable fear of outsiders, but the tacit fear that commands submission to the State's demands. The amount Bayliss owed was less than trivial, but his defiance -- rooted in a very plausible set of grievances -- could have proven contagious if not properly dealt with."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/06/homeland-security-state-boyz-with.html
"Even for those in steady jobs, there is a creeping sense of instability, a generalized disquiet and unspoken worry that sits on one's shoulders adding drag to the day. Packaged in this malaise is the spike in oil prices and what that will mean for gas prices and every other thing we buy, the bottoming out of the housing market, companies announcing huge layoffs, and rises in food and health insurance costs outpacing salaries and wages. "
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/article646320.ece
"In fact, teens are currently abusing prescription meds more than coke, heroin and meth combined. Only pot can keep up with the painkillers, mostly because no one can find a single person who has ever died from a pot overdose in the history of science."
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/06/prescription-dr.html
“If you vote you have no right to complain.”
http://thomasvanwyk.com/blog/posts/the-public-sucks
"The lifeblood of the state is grounded in the illusion that it can protect us from fears and uncertainties, and provide us with a sense of security against the vicissitudes that define life itself. In furtherance of such fantasies, politicians and state officials are forever concocting fears with which to terrify the citizenry, and erecting scarecrows to ward off such imagined specters."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer177.html
"Choose something that needs to be done, then wear something (as innoffensive to the tyranny-blinded as possible) to indicate your anarchistic philosophy. Perhaps you could work under a Gadsden or Time's Up flag. For your Random Act of Anarchy, I would suggest such acts as picking up trash in a local park, without asking for permission."
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle473-20080622-02.html
"After more than two centuries of 'constitutionally limited government,' the results are clear and incontrovertible. At the outset of the American 'experiment,' the tax burden imposed on Americans was light, indeed almost negligible. Money consisted of fixed quantities of gold and silver. The definition of private property was clear and seemingly immutable, and the right to self-defense was regarded as sacrosanct. No standing army existed, and, as expressed in George Washington's Farewell Address, a firm commitment to free trade and a noninterventionist foreign policy appeared to be in place. Two hundred years later, matters have changed dramatically."
"The attempt to override the triple 'No' votes of the French, Dutch, and Irish peoples has brought the EU to a systemic crisis of legitimacy. A line too many has been crossed. Any sentient citizen can see that the process has become unhinged."
"Although faraway geographically, culturally, ethnically, and religiously from the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, like Bosnia, is an artificial country containing many ethno-sectarian divisions. Also as in Bosnia, politically correct Western do-gooders—some of whom histrionically argue that decentralized autonomous rule by ethno-sectarian groups constitutes 'apartheid'—would like a stronger central government in Iraq."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2243
"Officials with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have informed Bernanke about a plan that would have been unheard-of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system. The IMF's board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) is to be carried out in the United States. It is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,562291,00.html
"A significant factor that contributed to the early success of Firefox 3 was the download day event, which was coordinated by Mozilla's global marketing team. Mozilla aimed to set a new Guinness world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. During the first 24 hours after the launch of Firefox 3, the total number of downloads reached 8 million, exceeding the initial goal of 5 million."
"Attacking Iran would be folly, but we seem to be living in the Age of Folly. Morons and idiots took us into an unjustified war against Iraq before we had finished the job in Afghanistan. Now we have troops tied down in both countries. For some years now, I've worried that we seem to be more and more like Colonial England – arrogant, racist, overestimating our own capacity and underestimating that of our enemies. As the fate of the British Empire demonstrates, that is a fatal flaw."
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=13061
"Don't be fooled by the scare stories of wireless devices on airplanes and in hospitals, or visions of a world where no one is yammering loudly on their cellphones in posh restaurants. This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good 'manners' on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music to a computer other than your own. They want to enforce their legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible."
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/
securitymatters/2008/06/securitymatters_0626
"Predictably, lawyers from the Department of Defense expressed indignation at the Senators’ suggestions that they may have crossed any lines. In Jessup-like fashion they deviated from direct questions in part to avoid answering them and in part to provide long lectures about terrorism, terrorists and the need to defend the country through the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' The implication was clear. The determination of how badly detainees can be abused is a matter of national security and only the military – not some namby-pamby Senators or U.S citizens – are smart enough to make that decision."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/peters/peters22.html
"So, the world is now faced by an America that claims it wants to 'spread democracy' while using its military to tyrannize countries that simply want to sell their oil for another currency. America has become what she always claims to be opposed to: an absolute tyranny that no longer even cloaks itself. Not surprising, given the role assigned to her by her globalist masters in ushering in the preconditions for eventual total centralization."
http://www.small-business-goldmine.com/dow-crash.html
"In the pre-9/11 world, civil asset forfeiture was probably the most blatantly immoral and unjustifiable federal activity. It was [and] is one of the biggest moral stains on the American people - far worse than the drugs and gambling it is supposed to prevent. But, while it may be the biggest outrage, it's not the only one that Democrats have foisted on us."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2987
"It's not about the war, or the economy, or the faltering Republican brand, or any of that: This is about hate and fear, and a dark instinct in our blood going all the way back to Salem, and whether or not a desperately ambitious ex-heretic named John McCain can whip up a big enough mob in time to drown the latest witch."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/21129038/full_metal_mccain
"Democrats are trying to rationalize capitulating on surveillance and telecom immunity in the new FISA bill by calling it a compromise. It isn't."
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=democrats_capitulate_on_fisa
"Some Democrats dissent. Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, the lone senator to vote against the Patriot Act, calls the new bill a 'capitulation.' Senator Barack Obama, in contrast, expresses superficial misgivings but assures us this “compromise” preserves substantial judicial oversight."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2244
"The significance is impossible to exaggerate: It means that it is not necessary that all people of the world have the same talents in order to benefit from cooperation. In fact, it is the very diversity of the human population that makes it advantageous for them to work together and trade to their mutual benefit."
"Let's call this data intensive approach to problem solving Correlative Analytics. I think ... I am suggesting Correlative Analytics rather than No Theory because I am not entirely sure that these correlative systems are model-free. I think there is an emergent, unconscious, implicit model embedded in the system that generates answers."
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/06/the_google_way.php
"Symbian is currently the most widely-used smartphone platform, but its popularity and relevance have been declining as handset makers moved towards other platforms, including Windows Mobile and Apple's iPhone, as well as Linux and other open source alternatives that reduce licensing costs and offer more flexibility. The Symbian's business model and development strategy were far out of step with the direction in which the industry was collectively moving. Nokia's efforts to completely open the platform will change that and make Symbian a much stronger contender in the next-generation mobile space."
"Lest we falter, let us remember the world that Milton Friedman lived through: World War I; war socialism; fascism; Communism; the Great Depression; the New Deal; Nazism; World War II; the Cold War; the Great Society; the Vietnam War; Carter stagflation: Bill Clinton’s softer, gentler statism; and the Bush revival of the welfare/warfare state. Yet Friedman never hesitated, never gave up, never considered abandoning the field."
Part One:
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0803f.asp
Part Two:
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0804e.asp
"[T]he unwritten rule is that reporters who are too troublesome lose access to sources and private sessions and other perquisites. So reporters, even when they think they're being snowed, even when they can't stand the White House's current occupant, all too often hold back at least a little. It's a delicate calculation."
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=13029
"If prices are allowed to fluctuate freely, resources will be directed to where they are most desperately needed. Someone who wishes to build a new deck in San Antonio will have to think twice if lumber prices increase because people in Iowa are struggling to rebuild their houses. If lumber prices are not allowed to change, our deck-builder in San Antonio lacks the signal he needs to learn that the lumber he would otherwise use to build a deck might be better used rebuilding houses in Iowa."
"Essentially, these measures would require close monitoring of all investors, whether they be Private and Public Pension Funds, other Investors or speculators. The Exchanges themselves would have to have constant monitoring of the positions of such investors so that controls will be effective. That in itself is onerous. But it is a fact of life that if you give bureaucrats their head in such markets they will cease to be free and cease to reflect the true market picture." [In the case of our current markets, they will not cease to be “free” as that has already occured, but they will become even less free.]
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10596.htm
"For many years, silver commentators have warned us that someday supplies of silver would dry up, inasmuch as net industrial use plus investor demand have long exceeded new mine production. At this point we could expect to see some combination of shortages and price increases, and probably chaotic market conditions. We should not expect anyone to ring a bell or make an authoritative announcement when this point is reached. Far from that, those involved could be expected to do all in their power to deny and disguise the shortage of deliverable silver...."
http://news.silverseek.com/SilverSeek/1214312789.php
"When our rulers decide to go to war, they simply step on the gas and flood the engines of inflated expectations, fueled by bank credit expansion. The results are the decline of the dollar and the current economic crisis, which might be compared to a hangover that follows an extended binge. Americans are suffering a double-hangover in the sense that they're still recovering from the post-Cold War triumphalism that envisioned a unipolar, Washington-centered world."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13046
"There you have it. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq. And on the wings of no-bid contracts – that's right, sweetheart deals like those given Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater. The kind of deals you get only if you have friends in high places. And these war profiteers have friends in very high places."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/062708b.html
"What’s truly frightening is that Obama doesn’t seem to realize that U.S. foreign policy has been interventionist. For example, he said, 'We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. 9/11 showed us that try as we might to ignore the rest of the world, our enemies will no longer ignore us. And so we need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world.' (Emphasis added.)"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0806h.asp
"Almost with a single maladroit stroke, a relatively small group of world-improvers undermined the progress of 9 generations. Five years later, Americans are on the losing end of the 'biggest transfer of wealth in history,' as T. Boone Pickens described the oil market of 2008. George W. Bush has the highest disapproval ratings of any U.S. president in history. America's most profitable industry - finance - has collapsed…its currency has lost a third of its value…and European, Chinese and Indian economists are wagging their fingers saying, 'I told you so'."
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/RSS/DR062508sec1.html
"His counterculture take on the world's sorry state of affairs filled 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials and three books. Carlin won four Grammy Awards for best spoken comedy album, and it was announced Tuesday that he would be awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor."
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/comedian-george.html
"So, the Civil War was supposed to be quick and easy, and obviously it wasn't. The Union's military victories gave the losers an uncontrollable lust for revenge, and they renewed their oppression of blacks at the earliest opportunity. Nobody could be counted on to protect the blacks. The Civil War was no shortcut to civil rights. After the war, Northerners didn't want to remember why they had fought, or at least the part about freeing the slaves."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/powell.php?articleid=13035
"Forty years ago today the Federal Communications Commission issued one of the most important Orders in its history, a ruling that went unnoticed by most news sources at the time. It involved an application manufactured and distributed by one Mr. Thomas Carter of Texas. The 'Carterfone' allowed users to attach a two-way radio transmitter/receiver to their telephone...."
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/carterfone-40-years.ars
"Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel run the first successful test of the automated, distributed Domain Name System. DNS will lay the foundation for the massive expansion, popularization and commercialization of the internet."
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/06/dayintech_0623
"The Haditha massacre occurred on Nov. 19, 2005. A few months later, after an outcry in the Iraqi – and American – media, murder charges were brought by the U.S. military against eight Marines. Today, all but Wuterich have either had their cases dismissed, mostly on technicalities, or, in one case, found not guilty. Wuterich's trial date has been postponed. Yousef Aid Ahmed, the sole surviving brother of what used to be a large family, told the McClatchy News Service: 'We put our hopes in the law and in the courts, and one after another they are found innocent. This is an organized crime'. ... This is why they hate us, not only in Iraq but throughout the region."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13031
"Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, have been one factor propping up sky-high oil prices. Crude hit a record level on international markets near $143 a barrel on Friday."
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSBLA82623620080628
"The fact of the matter is, the whole NATO/American effort in Afghanistan is circling the drain. The American papers should be full of in-depth, multi-sourced stories about the war there. A friend just back from Britain reports that the British press is full of just such stories. In one recent ten-day period, the Brits lost nine soldiers killed, including their first woman. Was that reported anywhere in the U.S. press?"
http://www.counterpunch.org/lind06272008.html
"If the United States attacks Iran either this summer or this fall, the American people had better be prepared for a shock that may perhaps be even greater to the national psyche (and economy) than 9/11."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9437
"It seems to me a near certainty that we're about to enter something I have long called 'The Greater Depression.' I suspect it will be inflationary (in the direction of what Germany underwent in the early '20s, or Zimbabwe today), rather than what the U.S. had in the '30s. I should somehow trademark the term 'Greater Depression,' except that I'm sure Boobus americanus would then blame me for it."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10612.htm
"Page rarely shows much emotion, but I detect a flicker of genuine excitement when he's talking about Android. This isn't just another of the mini apps, like Google Checkout or Google Desktop, that the company's engineers seem to air-drop onto the Web every week — each of which has the potential to become a massive challenge to an entrenched competitor or remain forever in development. This is a much bigger gamble. It's designed to change an industry and Google along with it."
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android
"Oil prices will climb to $170 a barrel this year because of increased demand, political tension and decisions made by monetary policymakers in the U.S. and Europe that have devalued the U.S. dollar...."
"Oil has been leading the charge for inflation. And T. Boone Pickens says it not only has the high ground…it'll go higher. He says global oil production has peaked out at 85 million barrels/day while demand is running about 86.4 million barrels. The price will rise more, he believes, until demand for oil falls to equal the available production."
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/RSS/DR061908sec1.html
"Dozens of midnight screenings of director Christopher Nolan's second installment in the bat-franchise have sold out, causing theaters across the country to tack on 3 a.m. showings to meet fan demand...."
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/dark-knight-pre.html
"Dalton Trumbo was the most famous and probably the most talented of the Hollywood 10, the group of left-wing film industry professionals who went to prison after refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Along with many other actors, writers, directors and musicians, they were then banished from the business. Trumbo himself served 10 months in federal prison after his conviction for contempt of the 80th Congress; as he remarks in an archival interview seen in the film, he entirely agreed with the verdict, as he felt nothing but contempt for that Congress and several later ones."
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2008/06/26/trumbo/index.html
"The painstaking process involves the animator - Harryhausen famously worked alone until a technical issue meant he had to bring help onboard for Clash of the Titans - moving the model by minute degrees for every frame of film. For a four and a half minute sequence involving the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, Harryhausen estimated that there were a total of 150,000 model moves involved."
http://movies.ign.com/articles/884/884833p1.html
"Select videos will be featured in a weekly 'Upload Showdown,' and winners will become 'pro' content creators on Atom.com and have access to additional Comedy Central resources like a spot on a new late-night televised program, Atom TV, a sort of week-in-review special about the site."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9978330-36.html
"Thank you, George Carlin. Few people have done more to repress what other people can say."
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=174956
"Donnie Hoyle's return is derailed by an unexpected email."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l309y6i9azc
"Despite arguments against capital punishment, the Justices overwhelmingly approved its use, especially if they get to participate in some executions."
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/supreme_court_rules_death_penalty
"Since it is my mission here on Earth to raise awareness of the effects of inflating the money supply, which, in turn, causes higher prices (which everybody seems to love) for assets like stocks (e.g. the DJIA since 1974), bonds, houses and government, and it causes higher prices (which everybody seems to hate) for consumer goods, like higher prices for food and energy. We love inflation and we hate inflation! So, it's a love/hate relationship! The most confusing kind! No wonder my head is spinning all the time!"
http://news.goldseek.com/RichardDaughty/1214546520.php
"At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later."
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory
"Carlin railed against war, poverty, racism, sexism, how the privileged dupe the commoner in order to fleece them. He had no answers for these problems; only a firm conviction that group dynamics keep these perversions alive across the generations. The answer lies, where it has always lain, in the politics of Eighteenth Century Jeffersonian Democracy, that is to say, in the individual."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/giles/giles25.html
"[W]hen the young rich man approached Jesus and asked him what he needed to do to be saved, Jesus told him to keep God’s commandants. Then he suggested that the young man sell everything he had and give it to the poor. The young man, being wedded to his wealth, could not answer that call and walked away dejected. Whether one believes that Jesus was simply causing the young man to confront an impediment to his following God or whether he really meant for the young man to do what he suggested, one thing is clear: when the young man rejected the suggestion, Jesus did not call on any of his disciples to take the young man’s money in order to give it to the poor."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0803a.asp
"Carlin ridiculed our watering-down of sexual descriptions and ethnic categories, not to mention our mourning clichés, all of which he believed were the real-life manifestations of George Orwell's 'Newspeak,' utilized to obscure reality, numb the mind, and discourage criticism. As much as Carlin loathed theology, war, greed, and hypersensitivity, he was most disgusted when religous puritans, the military, corporations, and P.C. 'classroom liberals' mangled the language for the purpose of soothing the masses."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/127137.html
"The mainstream media will doubtless refer to Carlin as an 'entertainer,' a word that fails to account for what he truly was. I prefer to think of him in words that the late Alan Watts used to describe himself: a 'standup philosopher.' ... There are many so-called comedians whose works consist of little more than four-letter words, but whose language is not a prelude to the kind of understanding offered by Carlin."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer176.html
"In December 1962, when Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, the police broke open his candy bars, looking for dope. They checked the IDs of audience members, including George Carlin, who told the cops, 'I don’t believe in Ids.' Then they arrested him for disorderly conduct, dragged him along by the seat of his pants and hoisted him into the police wagon."
http://www.counterpunch.org/krassner06272008.html
"Gandhi once said, describing his critics, 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.' After declaring, essentially out of nowhere, that he had a program to end the disease of aging, renegade biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey knows how the first three steps of Gandhi's progression feel. Now he's focused on the fourth. "
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2008/06/methuselah
"We should never forget that Microsoft's success has never been a result of innovation or great ideas or helping people. It was the direct result of obtaining a monopoly position with its operating system and leveraging that position in every way it could to force its will on the industry."
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