Ray Bradbury said, ""

Filthy Lie: What will Evil Glenn be doing for Mother's Day?

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I looked through the peephole. Evil Glenn was pounding on the door with the head of one of my neighbor's children.  As I opened the door, Glenn let go of her ponytails and let her run away.

"What do you want, you cancer upon the world?" I asked. I tried to slam the door on him, but he slipped his neck into the doorway instead of his foot. "Tom, it's that time of the year again," he rasped.

"What time? The time when you molest the goats in the petting zoo? You know that's not supposed to be literal."

"No- the zoos aren't open yet. I mean...M-m-mo...ther's day." Glenn licked his lips and wiped sweat from his brow. I could tell from his stammer that the man was one step away from shitting himself.

"You sound like you're one step away from shitting yourself," I said.

"You don't know my m-m-m-other.  Once you see her, you'll know why I'm sweating."

"Well, I'll have to be forever ignorant. I'm not going on any more of your 'trips.' That time when you ran naked through the elementary school with a gerbil stuffed into your mouth and a ferret wrapped around your balls gave me nightmares."

"I can make it worth your while..."

"I don't swing gay penguin."

"I'll link to you. Promise you an Instalanche."

"Ok. I'll go. What should I expect?"

8 hours later and a hemisphere away. We stood at the edge of a thick jungle. Glenn had changed into just a loin cloth, and was fuzzed over with mosquitos and bot-flies. I was dripping with DEET like a wet dog.  !ghaso, a pygmy, stood beside us wearing a penis-sheath, Nikes, and a Catfish cap.

"She's a tough one to catch," Glenn reminded me. I couldn't forget the hours of powerpoint presentations he had given on the plane. This wouldn't be easy at all.

!ghaso began hacking into the foliage.

The pyramid had crumbled, yet remained ominous. !ghaso sat on a large chunk of rock and swatted Glenn's hand away from his penis-sheath. Glenn by now was a fuzzy black lump of writhing insects.  I slathered on more DEET and looked up into the dusky jungle heights to the top of the pyramid.

"We're almost there, Tom," Glenn slurred through mosquito-swollen lips.

We began climbing.

***

It slumbered.

Through the dim light I could make out only a spray of teeth and the stench of rotten flesh.  A buzzing of flies grew in waves as shudders pulsed through and rippled its side. Beneath the buzzing I could hear a slow thudding  and the gurgles of its digestive system.

Glenn approached and laid a hand upon one of its many protuberances.

"Mama?"

A sonorous rumble began to weave its way through the floor and deep into my gut.  I looked over to !ghaso. He was preoccupied with an iPod and didn't notice.

A pause.

A deep series of gutteral explosions burst  through the dim chamber and sent the flies swarming. The air became black with flies, then gradually cleared as they resettled.

"Mama?"

The rumbling stopped. An eye opened, the dim light collecting in it and casting a grey radiance.

Glenn beckoned !ghaso over. When !ghaso ignored him, Glenn threw a rock at him. !ghaso crept closer to the beast. He pulled off his Catfish cap and handed Glenn something. Glenn held it for a moment, and gently placed it on one of the many liquid angles.

***

Back in Buffalo.  !ghaso had given me some good stock advice, so I snuck him into America in a suitcase and promised to buy him the Tivo he wanted.

He and Glenn were sitting on the couch, Glenn still trying to flick the penis-sheath.

"What was that you gave to your mother?" I asked him. He gave the sheath another flick, and smiled broadly.

"What does any mama's boy give his mommy? A tape of me singing her happy birthday when I was four."

That seemed too decent and adorable to be true. But Glenn was beaming so lovingly that I momentarily forgot myself.

"Do you have a copy of it? I'd love to hear it," I asked.

"Sure. Let me pop it in."

As the first strains of an alien multi-tonal squeal-grunt squirmed out of the speakers, I clawed at the power button, more ashamed of myself for having succumbed to Glenn's facade, than of having involuntarily loosed my bowels at the terrifing sound of the otherworld.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 23:45 EST | Permalink | comments (6) |
humor, evil glenn

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Mozilla

I'm getting used to Mozilla. After I applied the tweaks, it is working faster than either IE or Firefox (that's saying a damned lot!) ever did. It also has a text-editor built right into it. The only downside I see is a slightly less user-friendly format than Firefox (it has a very sweet preference window built in right to the config settings, though),  a slightly different rendering of pages,  and a very much unfriendly bookmark feature. Overall, I'm liking it. I would still like to be able to use Firefox though. Damn.

Update: I estimate it's about twice three times as fast as Firefox was with the pipelining tweak.

Update 2: Mozilla also uses far less RAM than Firefox.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 21:07 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
boredomblogging

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Google is dead to me

I will now find new search engines. It will be hard, but this is unexcusable.

Here is a way to block Google ads in Firefox (hat tip: prbconservative at LFG):

1. go here and install the Chromedit extension.

2. Restart Firefox, click on Tools, and Edit User Files

3. Click the Usercontent.css tab.

4. At the bottom of the window, copy this in:

@import URL("http://adblock.f2g.net/ad_blocking. css");
@import URL("http://adblock.f2g.net/sites.css") ;

5. Save, and restart Firefox. Viola! No more Google ads.

Update: Hmmm. This also kills Blogads. I'll have to find some way to limit it only to Google ads.

 

Update 2 : DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT! I installed Adblock, and now Firefox won't open. Agh.

 

Update 3: Firefox is still down. I'm almost weeping like a schoolgirl now. I've reinstalled it, reinstalled it after removing the extensions folder, etc. Still nothing. Nooooo!

Update 4: I uninstalled, reinstalled, cleared everything, removed all registry references, etc. Still nothing. I downloaded Mozilla, and am using it now.  I'm not keen on it. It's far less functional than Firefox, but it's still far better than IE.

I miss Firefox!

Update 5: Ok, I added some extensions, tweaked it a little, and see that Mozilla is actually quite good. It might be faster than Firefox.  I might actually try to learn the code.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 17:09 EST | Permalink | comments (5) |
moonbats

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More whining

That's odd. I'm trying to add the Neolibertarian Network image link, but the image isn't showing up on either the page or in the source code. It does, however, show up on the preview page. I've cleared my cache, but it still doesn't appear.

Update: this isn't a problem with Motime, because I am able to put other images in. It seems only to affect that specific image at Photobucket.

Update: I hosted it at Imageshack through their public hosting, and it's up now.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 15:29 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging, libertarianism

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A dictionary of correction

I had an idea a while ago, when I first read A Road To Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty.

The rise of polylogism produced the inevitable consequence of stealing the words of classical liberalism for statist purposes. In the 30's, this culminated in the Great Language Perversion, in which every single economic/philosophical word switched meaning to a statist interpretation.

I would like to compile a dictionary, detailing both the proper definition of an economic/philosophical term, the history of its perversion, and the implications of the perverted meaning. Thus, for instance, the section on "freedom," would document the gradual encroachment of "positive" rights by various individuals, from Culver v. Dam in 1798 on up to Roosevelt, and would detail exactly how such a concept contradicts all other concepts of classical liberalism and is compatible only with death and oppression. It would restore the coherence of classical liberalism, and simultaneously prevent the speaking-across-each-other that now constantly arises when libertarians revert partially back to the popular meanings of crucial words.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 14:04 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
books, philosophy, constitutionalism, anti idiotarians, libertarianism

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Liberty Dog on the "Nuclear Option"

Liberty Dog has an excellent argument for the constitutionality of the "nuclear option." The kind of argument that makes you want to write something equally intelligent, and all you can think of is, "Must. Not. Quote. Madison."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 13:49 EST | Permalink | comments |
politics, constitutionalism

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Template tweak

The Ogre has a tradition of playing around with his template for a new look each month, and I thought "eh, what the hell?"

I like it. I thought the old color scheme looked too much like what Buffalo looks like right now. What do you think? Too glaring?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 11:45 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging

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Whining

Has anyone else noticed that Amazon's Associates page is broken, and the "build links" link leads back to the report? This is annoying the hell out of me. I can't make a new box for my "What I'm Reading" sidebar section now.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 10:45 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging

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Search Engine Fun

My site is #6 in a googlesearch for llama mascara.  Don't ask.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 08:56 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, blogging

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Sidebar segregation

I segregated the libertarians (at least, the ones I am sure of) out of my "other bloggy people" section and into their own section- "libertarian posse."

Show more than a hint of libertarianism and I'll throw you into there as well. Bwahahaha!

Update: via the Egoist, I found Body in Mind. If you like the Cordair Fine Art Gallery, you'll love it (Nudity warning).

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 07:30 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
blogging, libertarianism

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A damp and dreary day

It's a damp day outside. Luckily I've got the kittens on the beach and Seven Seconds of Love to keep my mind off the rain.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 06:44 EST | Permalink | comments |
cats, bonfire material

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A new blogger

What do you call someone who quits her high-paying and stable job, to become a blogger?

Braver than almost all of us.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 05:56 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
blogging

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The most powerful threat to Islam

A while ago, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad condemned the Jews for inventing human rights and democracy in perhaps the most asinine slur ever uttered.

Now we hear things like this:

Tehran, 27 April (AKI) - The Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said that “human rights, are a weapon in the hands of our enemies to fight Islam.”

Speaking at the Conference for the Unity of Islam which opened in Tehran yesterday, Khamenei said: “The awakening of Muslims, had weakened the plot by America, by international Zionism and by other hidden forces on the planet implicated in a universal strategy which has the objective of fighting Islamic nations, which are a force of one and a half billion believers and with the large natural reserves.”

To a mixed audience of Iranians, Arabs and other foreigners at the conference, Ayatollah Khamenei said that it was “only through the unity of all Muslims, can they confront these diabolical attempts.”

Khamenei also explained how Iran is viewed globally in the role that it plays within the context of Islam. As the supreme leader of the Islamic republic, he said, that the “country has contributed to the awakening of Muslims and our enemies are trying to compensate for their poverty of thought, and so they have raised the banner of terrorism and are armed with human rights in order to defeat Islam and Muslims.”

Does this tell you something?

(Hat tip: LGF)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 30, 2005 05:23 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
islamomisia

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A piercing question

Whatever happened to I.M Weasel?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 29, 2005 17:20 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
humor

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A boring post

I'm going to make myself a pot of espresso and finish Rothbard's book. Then, I'm going to write another email to Amazon about their damned Associates page being broken (all the links go back to the report summary, and I can't build another box for my sidebar "what I'm reading" list). Then, I'll get started on a bunch of Austrian Economics pdf's I've been waiting to read. Another pot of espresso, and I'll play some guitar for a while.  Then another pot of espresso, and I'll blog for a bit.

Then another pot of espresso, and Hypnotoad.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 29, 2005 13:07 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
boredomblogging

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The Bricker Amendment: The cure for the UN *Updated*

The UN is an unaccountable international governmental organization composed of, by, and for, the benefit of dictatorial, rapacious, and genocidal madmen.  Its charter infringes upon private property, restricts rights, invents "positive" rights, and allows the enforcement of its expanded laws to be undertaken by unelected assemblies. It is in full contradiction of our Constitution.

There is an almost forgotten cure for its usurpation of our Constitution through unaccountable assemblies composed of the worst human scum.

The Supreme Court ruled that our Constitution could be over-ruled by international treaties, in several cases. United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304 (1936), for example. The courts held that our legal system could be based on a source other than our Constitution: the legal systems of genocidal, socialist, and dictatorial nations. In 1953,  Republican senator John Bricker, outraged at this judicial activism, proposed a radical amendment which would once and for all retain the legal sovereignty of the United States, and prevent it from ever being over-run with the laws of foreign nations including the genocidal cesspools on the Human Rights Commission.

His proposed amendment reads as follows:

Sect. 1. A provision of a treaty which conflicts with this constitution shall not be of any force or effect.

Sect. 2. A treaty shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation which would be valid in the absence of a treaty.

Sect. 3. Congress shall have power to regulate all executive and other agreements with any foreign power or international organization. All such agreements shall be subject to the limitations imposed on treaties by this article.

Sect. 4. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Bricker's bill would have established the principle of legislative non-contradiction. From the smallest level of government to the largest, its only purpose is to protect rights. A government which is properly limited, cannot embed itself within a higher level of government which disregards those limitations on force, without having first disregarded its own Constitution.

Bricker's bill would have established that the United States would be prohibited from entering into any international government which, like the UN, so clearly violates our Constitution. It would have made impossible the entrance of the United States into any non-democratic international government. It would also, at the same time, have led the State governments into questioning the burgeoning Federal government's laws as well.

Makes your mouth water and your pulse quicken, doesn't it?

The 83rd Congress voted on Bricker's proposal in 1953, and was defeated by a single vote when the Democrats and the Eisenhower Administration joined together to preserve the government's interventionist policies.

Here is the Wikipedia article on it.

Here is a brief history of the Bricker Amendment.

Here is a campaign letter advocating the Bricker Amendment.

Remember that there is no statute of limitations on amendments. It took 190 years for the ratification of the 27th Amendment. The Bricker Amendment, and its principle of legislative non-contradiction, is the first step toward cleansing America of the pernicious influence of intergovernmental bodies composed of unaccountable bureaucrats and rapacious dictators advancing anti-Semitic and anti-capitalistic agendas. The second step is to hang those dictators by their entrails.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 29, 2005 07:41 EST | Permalink | comments (5) |
politics, anti idiotarians

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The book meme

Jaime Soffer at Song of Time tagged me with the dreaded Book Meme.

You're stuck in Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

Most people seem to have forgotten what this means. In the end of the book, you find out that there exists a hidden society in which each person has preserved a book or several books in their memory. They literally become books. This society is the repository of human knowledge and thus they will be the ones to rebuild civilization after the nuclear attack. Accordingly, I must ask what is the most valuable thing to possess, what is the most important piece of information that can be passed down? Freedom. I would memorize the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist Papers, Human Action, and Bastiat's The Law. And I would be able to do it, because the world of Fahrenheit 451 was so mind-numbingly boring that anybody who wanted to could accomplish amazing feats of memory only seen in the similarly restrictive world of the Benedictine monks.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Several. My most absurd crush was on Yomiko Readman, from the anime movie Read or Die. She's a cuddly bibliophile who gets lost in books. We would be able to spend hours curled up together reading, if she wasn't imaginary.

My longest crush was on Cosette from Les Miserables.

My most powerful crush was on Dagny Taggert from Atlas Shrugged, I still would give the world to see her smile.

The last book you brought is:

Murray Rothbard's "Making Economic Sense". It is a wonderful compilation of the applications of Austrian Economics.  He is as logical as ever, and you get to see him occasionally bellow.

What was the last book you read, and what are you currently reading?

I read several books simultaneously. I just finished Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics."

 Right now I'm reading/rereading (Amazon's Associates thing is acting screwy, and I can't update my list in my sidebar now):

• Ludwig von Mises' "Human Action"
• The Federalist Papers
• Murray Rothbard's "Making Economic Sense"
• Murray Rothbard's "Power and Market"
• The Writings of James Madison
• The Collected Writings of Thomas Jefferson
• The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine
• Henry Hazlitt's "The Critics of Keynesian Economics"
• just started rereading George Reisman's "Capitalism"

What five books would you take with you on a desert island?

I would take:

• Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island"
  
• Ludwig von Mises' "Human Action"
• Cord Christian's "The Art of Survival"
• Wilson Mcfluffy's "How to Survive on a Desert Island, Get Rescued, and Publish a Book on How to Survive on a Desert Island, Get Rescued and Publish a Book on It in Order to Get Massive Amounts of Money and Be on Day-Time Talkshows for More Massive Amounts of Money"
• Mark Johnson's "The Ultimate Desert Handbook"

Who are you going to inflict with this meme?

Hmmm. I got tagged pretty late, so most people have probably already been tagged already. And I can't tag American Girl, because she thinks I have an abnormal fixation on pregnant women. Unless they've already been tagged, I'll tag Jheka, Liberty Dog, and the Goober Queen Photios. If any of them have been tagged already, then I'll get Sailor (unless he's been tagged already!). If everyone's been tagged already, then I'll have to think on it.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 29, 2005 03:38 EST | Permalink | comments (10) |
books, memery

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Inflation and the Fed

Scriptor responded to my post in which I describe how I angered my Keynesian professor. He said:

Lately I have been thinking about the idea of invisible money, money that doesn't exist but people act like it does and something as already been paid for. Such as buying on credit, you still get the product though you haven't paid the full price and you only promise to. Everybody goes fine and they do everything like the full price as been paid. This creates something I term invisible money, money that simply does not exist in the particular situation. Using the bank example you gave earlier, is it legal for a bank to give someone money out of an account when that money is not there? It would almost be like a loan, except it's not. This is money being taken out of thin air that enters the economy, with absolutely no backing. If this can happen, anyone wonder why the $ is so weak?

I responded:

Unlogged visitor

Money can be identified by being a final act in a transaction. I give you a dollar for a hotdog, and we never have to see each other again. In contrast, credit cards are not money, because later on you will have to pay in money.

What you call invisible money, is properly inflated money. You see, the Fed buys assets in open market operations. It doesn't matter what these assets are, because the important thing is what the Fed buys them with: money created out of thin air. This money can be either literally counterfeited money which it hands over, or numeraire accounts, which means the Fed just writes in its books a new account for that much money. Either way, the thing of catallactic significance is the creation of money, and the insertion of money into a specific area of the economy. It is obvious that such inflation is not showered upon everyone, but only those who sell assets. These people will have the benefit of being able to use money which did not entail its being first exchanged for a value.

They will benefit from this act just as if they themselves counterfeited the money. And, just as if they counterfeited the money, those whom they trade with will similarly benefit- thus producing the phenomenon whereby those closest to the inflation benefit at the expense of everyone else. It is counterfeiting by proxy of the government.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 29, 2005 01:39 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
economics

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A roundup of funny (mostly stolen from IMAO)

Greatest. Environmentalist. Satire. Ever.

President Mike Adams.

A grown man takes on 13 5-year olds in a death match. (warning, punk: language)

Zombie Magazine

"Help, I've collapsed and am unable to lift myself off the floor!"

"I'll have the cat-foo-young."

Robin Hood was a Stalinist dirtbag!

Albert Einstein was a pot-smoking shroom-eating hippy!

Demi-ra.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 29, 2005 00:15 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, moonbats

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A Glenn Reynolds Moment V

Indeed. Heh.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 28, 2005 11:33 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, evil glenn

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Woo hoo! I angered a Keynesian!

I angered my Keynesian Fallacy professor today!

As he was going over the "money multiplier," I pointed out that banks under a fractional reserve system are inherently insolvent, and pointed it out using both his own T-account and Rothbard's examples from The Mystery of Banking.


This is a thing simple enough for a child to understand: You and I deposit a total of $100 in a commercial bank. The bank now holds $100 of our money, and since it is our money, we have the right to reclaim it when we choose. In other words, the bank owes us $100. Now suppose the bank lends out $90. Is it not obvious that the bank can no longer repay its debts to us if we choose to withdraw our money? Is it not obvious that adding more depositors does not change the fact that the bank will not be able to pay someone their own money? Is it not further obvious that each dollar that the bank still has in its vaults, has been essentially lent out more than once? Is it not obvious that the bank is allowed to do what no other business is able to do: to continue to do business while bankrupt?


He responded with a blustery, "if their liabilities exceed their assets, than the government will shut them down. You're wrong."


When I pointed that by definition, under a fractional reserve system the liabilities will exceed assets, and that governments throughout history have, when confronted with bank runs, prevented the people to whom the bank owes money from reclaiming their debts, via "suspensions of specie," rations, and outright lockdowns, while simultaneously forcing people who owe money to the bank, to continue paying their debts, he responded, "well, the FDIC stopped that." I had to point out to him that the FDIC is not an insurance system. It is instead a promise from the government to banks that the printing presses of the Treasury will create money to bail them out in the case their insolvency is realized.  The existence of the FDIC is an acknowledgement that the banking system, unlike every other industry, is operating on a fraudulent basis and is given a government privilege by remaining in business where any other business would be shut down and its owners forced to pay their debts. Instead of the government placing police officers at the doors of banks to keep people from getting their money back, the government has simply shifted toward counterfeiting, just like any typical crook.


This got him angry.  He responded  "no, you're wrong. The FDIC gives money to those banks which need it. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree."


Later in the class, I pointed out that "open market operations." is a weasel-phrase for the outright printing of money out of thin air and the destruction of money. This is obvious: when the Fed buys an asset, unlike the purchases of private individuals who are not counterfeiters, it makes its own money through the Treasury with which to exchange. It is the Fed's production of money which is the crucial element, not the fact that the Fed chooses to disguise this by exchanging this new money for an asset rather than outright bestowing it upon people as gifts.  He simply moved on to the next topic.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 28, 2005 09:49 EST | Permalink | comments (8) |
economics, scruffy college student life

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Hostile Funny III

Read Mike Adams' latest. Now.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 28, 2005 01:20 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor

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Hemingway's lists

We have all at one time admired Hemingway's construction of the story "Hills Like White Elephants" entirely out of unstated implications. When he wasn't being mauled by tigers, hurtling to the earth in airplanes, or producing deviant 6-fingered tabby fluffy-snuff films, he was mastering the art of the unspoken.

Few know that Hemingway honed his precise writing style in a series of fragmentary scenes collected post-humously in a book entitled, "The Lion, the Rake, and the Vagina."  In this highly experimental form, Hemingway mercilessly hacked away at all unnecessary verbiage in order to produce the masterpieces of brevity for which he is known.  The most striking element in these fragments is the frequent use of incongruous lists, in which Hemingway purposely provides no explicit connections.

I happen to have a copy of this book, stolen from a large-fingered gentleman in Alabama.

The Lion

p.46. The lion approached. I held my breath and checked my pockets. I had only a cigar, a tube of pink lipstick, an abacus, and a roach-clip. It was not good.

The Vagina

p.137. "You can't have me," she said. He put his colada down and looked out over the beach. Five boys were playing with a bicycle pump, a stray tabby, a length of yarn, and a magnifying glass. He looked at her and drank the rest of his colada in a silence punctuated by the distant sounds of laughter and mewling.

Here is a glimpse of the mind of Hemingway

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 27, 2005 23:49 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, best posts

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Oy

Oy. I had to give a 10 minute presentation today in my entrepreneurship class on my proposed Austrian economics consulting firm which would provide thorough analysis of the burdens of government interference on a local, state, federal, and international level.

I have two problems with public speaking: my partial deafness makes my voice abnormally loud, and I end up soon sounding like Loud Howard; I also begin improvising and soon end up rambling. The combined effect, I gather, is what you would get if you liquored up Henry Kissinger, gave him a megaphone, and told him to speak for 10 minutes on his favorite topic in economics. In other words, the presentation went horribly. It was only a practice run, though, for next week's full presentation.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 27, 2005 15:03 EST | Permalink | comments (9) |
scruffy college student life, bonfire material

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Increased productivity is a boon, not a cause of unemployment

Scriptor committed the fallacy of "overproduction" in his post on the beginnings of an economy.

Here is Say's own explanation. While you're at it, read his Treatise on Political Economy, and John Stuart Mill's brilliant restatement of Say's Law.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 27, 2005 07:02 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
economics

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Another shitty meme

Moehawk tagged me with the "turd in a punchbowl" meme.

Damn him.

The rules: one must write a 4 line poem, with the phrase "Turd in a punchbowl" as the first and third lines, and the second and fourth must rhyme.

Here it goes...... nothing.

Damn moehawk to the infernal wombat-spotted wastelands of Australia! Damn him to a land full of transvestite clowns and angry Jack Russell terriors!

Ok.  Blood pressure back to normal. I went to Rosie O'Donnell's blog, and learned from her the timeless art of the wordsmith. I learned from her the techniques of polysyndeton, hendecesyllabic hexameter, anaphoric alliteration, and the subtle allusions present in each word, as well as a deep appreciation of the evolution poetry has undertaken in its long and difficult journey to the pinnacle that is Rosie.

Like a llama orgling his long lost llama mate, across a field littered with the exploding toads of doggeral, in the midst of a thunderstorm of post-modern memetic inspiration the likes of which would have struck down Homer and caused Alexander Pope to run weeping to his mother,  the Muse of poetic inspiration gushes through my fingers so as I type this I am convulsed, galvanized,  ossified, nay,  mummified,  with the worlds I may produce within the confines of a quattrain. How many men will, in their trek through the dark alleys of the internet in search of exotic shaved bonsai kittens and lesbian hamster snuff films, stumble across this work of art and think to themselves, before resuming their rugged journey for deviant gay penguin videos, that their lives have been somewhat lightened due to the words I shall shortly ejaculate upon the screen with the help of the soothing fingers of the Muses?

Turd in a punchbowl
I've got some money riding on you.
Turd in a punchbowl,
which person will drink my poo?

Turd in a punchbowl!
I did not expect you here.
Turd in a punchbowl-
I think I'll drink the beer.

Read the poem, if you can dare besetting your eyes upon such heights of genius as few can compare!

I tag: American Girl,Travis Benning, and Harvey!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 27, 2005 03:33 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
humor, memery, bonfire material, best posts

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Scriptor on blogging

Via Geobandy, I found this excellent post on blogs by Scriptor at Historium.  Check out the rest of his posts- he writes lucidly on diverse topics, and you can tell he's having fun. This guy's definitely going on my blogroll.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 27, 2005 00:38 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
discoveries

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Three firefox tweaks

I found this tweak via Manic Viking and basil. Once I reset the browser cache limit, I noticed a definite change in the amount of RAM I now use while running FF and Musicmatch. I also followed the instructions to make Windows prefetch Firefox, and it loads much quicker now.

I found this tweak via a googlesearch. It's specifically for broadband users. Once I did it and restarted Firefox, I noticed a big difference- every page loads as if it has g-zip.

Update: here is a Mozilla page full of tips.

Update 2: I love these tweaks! The two pages which take the longest for me to load are normally Nzyme's page and My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Now, they load immediately.

Update 3: here is another Freeper tweak for limiting the browser cache.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 26, 2005 23:03 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
blogging

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A Glenn Reynolds Moment IV

Heh. Indeed.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 26, 2005 22:20 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, evil glenn

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"I punched Saddam in the mouth"

We all grew up wanting to punch a nazi or a dictator in the face. This man had the opportunity, and took it. (Hat tip: LGF)

In a south-city Saint Louis Bread Co., a young auto mechanic named Samir puts down his coffee long enough to carefully eye the other patrons. Assured no one is paying him any mind, he lowers his voice to a guttural whisper, fidgets with the zipper on his black tracksuit and rubs his grease-stained fingers along a finely manicured goatee. Then, in a syncopated rhythm of street slang and accented English, he transports himself back in time to a bitter-cold December night in Iraq. It had to have been the most sublime moment of his life. Samir tells how he arrived in Tikrit as an Arabic interpreter for United States Special Forces in late 2003, how he peered into a hidden bunker and heard a voice begging for mercy, how he reached into the darkness and pulled out Saddam Hussein.

“I was so angry,” says Samir, who immigrated to St. Louis eleven years ago after fleeing Iraq. “I began cussing at him, calling him a motherfucker, a son-of-a-bitch — you name it. I told him I was Shiite from the south and was part of the revolution against him in 1991. I said he murdered my uncles and cousins. He imprisoned my father.

”All these years of anger, I couldn’t stop. I tried to say the worst things I could. I told him if he were a real man he would have killed himself. I asked him: ‘Why are you living in that dirty little hole, you bastard? You are a rat. Your father is a rat.’“

In Arabic, Saddam told Samir to shut up. And when Saddam called him a traitor, an enraged Samir silenced his prisoner with a flurry of quick jabs to the face.

”I punched Saddam in the mouth."

Now that is a story to tell your grandkids.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 26, 2005 21:24 EST | Permalink | comments |
news, revolutions

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Hostile funny II

Go Read FrankJ's Harvey's  True Tidbits About Saudi Arabia. Make sure you're not drinking anything. Go!

Ferdy (pbuh) has some ideas about spammers' origins. Go meet the cat. Or else.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 26, 2005 11:06 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
humor

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Man-centered morality *updated*

Photios posted another excellent post on the depravity of North Korea. He stated in his conclusion:

Man-centered socialism has no higher moral view than himself. The morality that we have that tells us that it is not ok to kill someone who has not committed murder himself, that it is not ok to rape or steal or starve large populations, comes from a belief in God. What we have is an inversion of what is moral, death for life. If we want a man-centered, reason centered ethic we get Kim Jong Il and Peter Singer.

I argued the following:

Socialism, fascism, and communism are not man-centered. They are against man and the requirements for his life. Peter Singer is not man-centered. He is against man and the reason he requires to live.

It is folly to adopt the same terminology of the people with the gas-chambers.

He responded:

By man-centered I mean (and failed to make clear) seeing Man as the highest source of moral belief and the determination of that which is good or bad. This is an atheistic view. If Man is the highest source, he can decide for himself what is right and what is wrong. This is what Peter Singer is doing.

Understanding man-centered as the enemy does, you are right, and the use of the term in that way is folly.

I responded:

The valuation of human life as the standard of morality requires neither an atheistic nor a religious justification. So long as one values human life and its necessary condition of the absence of coercion as the highest value, a moral system can be formed regardless of the origin of man.

A religious man will hold Man as the highest value created by G-d, and will see the harmonies that voluntary cooperation among men yield, and the results of attempts to overthrow these natural harmonies with one's own plans. His morality is a respect for the outline G-d has laid out for how man is to live and from which no alternative is possible.

An atheist will observe the same harmonies in the rightly understood self-interest of men, and will adopt the same position. His morality is a respect for the capacity of man to live and be happy in a finite universe in which all happiness must be obtained by rational effort and from which no alternative is possible. Both the man-centered theist and atheist will hold the same moral beliefs, regardless of their justification for those beliefs. And both will be able to rest their moral systems on a solid base from which no refutation is possible: man and the universe are so constructed, regardless of the manner, that human life is impossible in the existence of coercion.

A man-centered morality, a morality which holds human life as the highest value, is precisely the opposite of all socialist systems including Islam.

I invited Someguy into the debate. He contributed the following:

Both the man-centered theist and atheist will hold the same moral beliefs, regardless of their justification for those beliefs.

And yet, and yet...every avowedly atheistic political system we have seen has tended toward either genocide (N. Korea and most of the rest of them), or suicide (post-Revolutionary France). The human person has not benefited much from them, to put it kindly.

So how to explain the atheist who demonstrates a clear grasp of the freedom, dignity, and responsibility of Man? The best explanation that I have seen so far is that of Fr. John Courtney Murray in his book, "We Hold These Truths". Essentially, the atheist in a Judeo-Christian culture (consciously or not) draws upon ideas and values that would be inaccessible or suppressed in an avowedly atheistic culture.

I responded:

Exactly. How can one hold a man-centered morality, yet reject the necessary condition for human survival and happiness of the absence of force?

Every avowedly atheist regime has first accepted the idea that humans can and must live under a state of perpetual coercion.

There are two steps critical in doing this: the first is to disown religion, which (excluding Islam), holds the use of force as only justifiable as an act of self-defense, and is the longest-lasting system of socialization into moral beliefs. Clearly a regime based upon coercion is incompatible with religions that limit coercion. Hence, Marx's "Religion is the opiate of the masses," and the national socialist purge of the people with the longest and most thorough religious beliefs condemning coercion.

The second step is to disown economics. Economics states with apodictic certainty that no coercion will achieve what is possible under voluntary cooperation without the inevitable repercussions that appear after acts of coercive intervention. Economics is value free, but can state with certainty that the desired goals of the socialists cannot be attained by their methods- and will in fact result in carnage and famine in direct inverse proportion to their utopian ideas. Hence Karl Marx's three-decade long formation of "polylogism," in an attempt to discredit the teachings of economics based on class, race, and nationality.

The result of both attacks on religion and economics is that the attacks, originally focused only on those obstacles to coercion, ripple throughout all branches of knowledge. In attempting to discredit Adam Smith as "bourgeous," the logical conclusion is to next discredit Newton or Edison. In attacking religion and economics, all products of the mind become open for rejection, and the existence of all truth is doubted. In short, post-modernism and moral relativism spread. In doing so, they destroy that which allows man to survive- a system of laws and beliefs which allow man to be absent from coercion so that he may produce.

The effect of doing the above, casting aspersions over all the products of man's mind, is precisely what must happen when one denies the fundamental necessity of human survival- death. Whether it comes in the form of crippling misery in gulags or concentration camps, subsidized abortions and idleness, or tax-enforced lowering of productivity and hence birth-rates, from the initial rejection of Man's nature, death is the sure result.

It is also clear that where one man-centered morality exists, others will as well. There is no conflict between two men who both recognize that neither can exist under threat of force. However, they can be made to act as if there is a conflict by the exact process I have described above- the gradual erosion of the meaning of truth, and the perversion of language to eliminate absolutes. Each side will dig in, attempt to reinforce its opposition by abandoning the very premises upon which they relied. The deterioration of knowledge produces interminable conflicts as contradictions expand and turn everyone homogenously anti-man.

Someguy responded:

Clearly a regime based upon coercion is incompatible with religions that limit coercion.

Yes. Judaism and Christianity do both that and, as you pointed out, internalize the virtues that Man needs in order to act both freely and responsibly.

However, they do something more: They teach man that there is a higher authority than any state, however it is constituted, and that it is to that authority that Man owes his ultimate allegiance. To sharpen the point: If the demands of the State conflict with his conscience as formed by those faiths, he is constrained to either opt out or resist, because his ultimate allegiance is owed to G-d.

This is quite radical in it's implications. In effect, if the State--even if it is formally constituted as a Republic--demands in any way Man's primary allegiance, it has already begun to drift towards totalitarianism.

I'm not sure how all of the above fits in with part of your comment on post-modernism and relativism. (And by that I mean that that's my problem, not yours.) Shooting from the lip: it seems to me that what they might do is (at least indirectly) help the totalitarian state to achieve it's goal of persuading or coercing Man to substitute itself for G-d as the object of his primary allegiance. If all other things--including religion--are relative, so much the easer.

I responded with an excerpt from an argument I had with Pastorius over email on the nature of economics:

You must dig further. It is irrelevant which justification a man gives for his rejection or acceptance of coercion. Reality,made by G-d or not, will encourage the former and kill the latter. No amount of complaining or sophistry will change the fact that humans require the absence of coercion to survive.

Here is an excerpt of an argument I undertook with Pastorius over the nature of economics. It should shed light on this:

Man will die without food. He will die without water. He will die without shelter. He will die without the means to obtain these, and the only means of obtaining them are by using his mind. None of them are given to him. The necessity of man to produce these things is a requirement for human life as surely and for the same reasons as physical laws. It is as impossible for a single man or a society to live without producing, as it is for a river to flow uphill- for the same reason.

The laws of economics, being derived from the nature of the universe, are as immutable as those of physics. Man must act within them, for it is impossible to act beyond them. Within these laws the entire scale of happiness is found- from the simplest shelter to a mansion, from a flint knife to a machine tool. The laws of economics tell humans exactly what the laws of physics tell humans: what is impossible, and what actions must be taken to achieve desired results. It is impossible to gain prosperity by imposing slave labor, as much and for the same reason it is impossible for the law of gravity to be over-ruled.

All man's actions are undertaken to acquire a value. Those values which are compatible with the nature of man, will allow him to survive. Those which are not, will kill him. No matter how desirable it may be to kill, enslave, rob, or defraud people, they will produce death with apodictic certainty. Nothing can change their results. It is not a matter of opinion or belief, and is as certain a result as stating the conditions for a chemical reaction.

Man acts within the rules of reality, but neither can his desires achieve what is impossible, nor can his desires change what is possible. The laws of economics antedate man's judgment: they do not claim what man should value or desire, but they state that if one wishes to achieve a result (obtain a value), manner X will or will not achieve that goal.

I appended this to my last comment:

My last comment went off on quite a tangent, but the point I tried to make is this: no attempt to replace voluntary cooperation with coercion can succeed, and no one has ever attempted it except by first confronting the two obstacles which together stand and declare the impossibility of his goal. Both religion and economics tell the would-be dictator, "you cannot succeed, for the same reason you cannot walk through mountains. Nothing you say will change this truth, and you can only kill yourself and others in attempting it."

Someguy responded:

Man will die without food. He will die without water. He will die without shelter.

He'll die with 'em, too--just not as quickly. Which is why Man's choices must take place within a horizon that takes more than his immediate physical needs for survival into account. Which is another way of saying that his choices are ultimately moral ones; as they affect his fellow Man--not only the ones now living, but those who will become the heirs of his accomplishments.

The laws of economics, being derived from the nature of the universe, are as immutable as those of physics.

I think it's more accurate to say that they derive from the nature of Man himself. Non-human creatures do not need economics--the collateral effects of Man's economic choices on some of them notwithstanding (i.e., winding up on Man's dinner table).

I responded:

You have a false conception of economics and economic laws, which is based on the belief that economics is a study of man's judgments, from which your position would follow. But it is not.

Here is another excerpt from the abovementioned argument I had with Pastorius.

Economics is the study of human action: the science of the means humans choose to attain their chosen ends, and the commensurability of those means with the ends sought. It does not posit which ends are desirable, but only that given a desired outcome X, out of all the infinite methods possible to humans, some means will be commensurate with achieving that goal, and others will bring about different results which from the stand-point of the individuals involved, are worse than the previous situation. It encompasses the commensurability of all means to all possible goals, from the basest sexual predation to the highest fulfillment of religious virtues. It is ordered on the same non-contradictory expansion from initial and incontrovertible premises, toward infinite complexity, as mathematics.

You are looking at economics wrong. It is not the study of human judgments. It is the study of the logical consequences of those judgments in a finite universe in which all values are to be obtained through rational labor. Economics is the interaction of human desires with the physical reality in which they may occur and from which no alternative is possible.

It is clear that voluntary exchange is bounded by the nature of reality, and it is equally clear what this nature is: values cannot be exchanged if they are not first produced and they can only be produced through rational effort. The production of those values will be bounded by the laws of physics, and the benefit men acquire from those values will depend on their knowledge of the laws of physics in achieving their goals. Beyond this level of order, there exists the further level of order which is confusing you: it matters not what the judgments of the individuals are in what they choose to exchange, but whether their decided course of action is commensurate with those judgments, from an economic perspective. In other words, no matter how much you may desire prosperity, unless your means are commensurate, you will either not attain it, or you will attain famine instead.

It is again not simply a matter of the choices humans make in which values to produce and exchange: it is the interaction of those choices with the nature of reality which bounds them and determines as surely as the laws of physics the commensurability of certain courses of actions with certain selected goals. It is this interaction between the choices humans make and the logical consequences of those choices in a finite universe in which rational labor is required for human survival, that is the point of study, not the infinitely variable and unobservable desires of men. It is the study of the consequences of free will.

Someguy responded to this:

You have a false conception of economics and economic laws, which is based on the belief that economics is a study of man's judgments, from which your position would follow. But it is not.[...]

Economics is the study of human action: the science of the means humans choose to attain their chosen ends, and the commensurability of those means with the ends sought.

Here you seem to be saying that actions can not only be detached from judgements, but are not dependent on them. But here:

is not the study of human judgments. It is the study of the logical consequences of those judgments in a finite universe in which all values are to be obtained through rational labor.

you seem to reestablish the connection between judgment and act.

And judgements in economics are not moot, Tom, as long as they drive economic choices that have consequences for the Chooser and others--especially when they have consequences for others.

And, in my mind, the theory that all people would choose the correct methodology for obtaining prosperity if they only understood the laws of physics is disproved tout court by the existence of Socialism.

For Socialism--and when you get right down to it, all forms of economic and political collectivism--has as its goal what has been called "equality of result." Now it doesn't take the second coming of Hayek to figure out that that can only happen if you have a system in which a government is given enough power to take away every penny that you earn (and everybody else's pennies), and redistribute them so that everyone has more or less the same amount (except the government, which mysteriously manages to keep most of them). Neither does it take Hayek to figure out that such a system is bound to make all but a very few people either miserable or dependent on outside forces for enough to live on--or a little of both.

So how does such a telegraphed disaster of an economic system get implimented--or even exist in the first place? How does it get enough followers to belive its lies? It's because Socialism is merely Envy with a parliament and tax courts.

And if you can reason someone out of envy, that's a textbook I'd pay to read.

I've lived in Italy for 13 years now. My wife and I have had a lot of discussions at the diiner table lately about the future of Berlusconi's government. One of the reasons my wife wants him to get booted out is because he keeps talking about decreasing "i contributi" (the payments that employers and employees make into the state-run pension plan) and thus the pensions themselves.

I've tried to explain it to her this way:

"You know what's waiting for you if he loses: Prodi. You know that you guys voted Prodi out of office the last time for the same reason. Someday, you guys are going to have to face up to the fact that whoever you vote for is going to come up with the same plan. Either he will impliment it, or else Italy will go bankrupt. The fact is, you don't have enough "contributi" going into the pension plan because there aren't enough Italians working to pay taxes. That, in turn, has happened because:

1. Italians aren't making Italians.

2. The cost of labor and the near-impossibility of laying off people in a downturn makes hiring employees unattractive except as black market labor.

So eventually, you're going to hear the same thing no matter who you vote for."

Her answer: "They've got enough money. They're just a bunch of thieves!" Which is entirely possible, given the long and intimate relationship between theft and government in Italy. But my on-the-ground experience is that Socialism--like all other forms of madness--is impervious to reasoned argument.

Your thoughts?

I responded:

1. Economics only studies the commensurability of the means men choose to achieve the goals they seek. It studies not judgment, but judgment in a finite universe in which human survival is only possible by means of rational effort. To deal with economics divorced from the nature of man and reality, is precisely what the socialists attempt: to achieve prosperity by means which cannot succeed for the same reason a perpetual motion machine cannot be built. Your criticism is mistaken.

2. Socialism is a rejection of the requirement for human survival of the absence of force. The only way this is possible, is by rejecting both the religious and economic truth which asserts itself unrefutably that no coercive interference can achieve the ends the socialists wish, and will in fact lead to famine. In attacking the obstacles religion and economics provide, socialists attack all knowledge and all reason. It is precisely the socialists who reject reason and a rational attempt to construct morality. Remember that the predominant strains of socialism- the volkwirtschaft socialism of the National Socialists, and the socialism of the Stalinists, were both united in rejecting rationality. There are reams of paper documenting Hitler's Kantian call for an "end to reason," and Stalin's attempts to purge the Sciences of "politically incorrect" material. Get the idea that the national socialists were governed by reason out of your head, lest you attempt to assert that there is a rational justification for the Holocaust. Since there is none, since such a perversion can only rest on monstrous insanity, any claim to the same is a claim that reality and man are compatible with the Holocaust. It is a criticism aimed at the wrong target and bound to produce discord among people united against such irrational evil.

3. Your wife is right. From Hammurabi to Virgil to Thomas More to modern apologists for Iran, men have sought disparate utopias, with the common thread of the prior acceptance of the use of coercion to achieve their ends. To the degree they have acted on those ideals, they have caused famines, pestilence, and war.

The closest thing to a utopia our earth has ever seen, the United States, was specifically designed to not be a utopia, by men who repeatedly predicted its imminent collapse. The United States was designed to prove the maxim, "Freedom is not utopia. It is only infinitely better than all other alternatives ever attempted."

In all the centuries of human history, no attempt at doing the work of G-d, changing the nature of reality and man, by remolding man into one's own image, has ever achieved the results sought. This is prima facie evidence already against a rational person adopting socialism.

In addition to the inevitable failure of socialism based on its historical record, socialism is crippled by the impossibility of economic calculation which renders every single variant impossible in theory.

Just as a perpetual motion machine cannot be made, and one is impossible in theory, so is a system of universal coercion resulting in prosperity and peace.

Not only is the means impossible, but the very goals which the socialists seek, are different than the achievable goals which free men seek. A free man seeks "prosperity," by which he means his ability to satisfy his wants by voluntary cooperation in the least costly manner to himself. A socialist seeks "prosperity," by which he means everyone will be forced to accept his own scale of wants. The former goal is possible, and relies only on the existence of a body limiting coercion for it to be achieved. The latter relies upon that body of coercion to enforce a subjective and hence unknowable standard upon the lives of innocents.

Someguy responded:

To deal with economics divorced from the nature of man and reality, is precisely what the socialists attempt: to achieve prosperity by means which cannot succeed for the same reason a perpetual motion machine cannot be built.

O.K., I get you there. You're essentially saying that idealism is not a foundation for economic theory. Agreed. But that isn't what I was arguing.

Get the idea that the national socialists were governed by reason out of your head, lest you attempt to assert that there is a rational justification for the Holocaust.

"governed by reason"? I said that Socialism itself is a form of madness that defies reasoned argument. Did you read (and understand) my post? Are you actually responding to what I wrote?

Speaking of which, go back and read (carefully, this time) what my wife said. She's not saying she wants to chuck the system. She's saying that this thing that is almost ready to implode has the pension money for future generations, but that it's been ripped off by Italian politicians. What I'm trying to tell her is that regardless of whether theft is involved, socialist ecomomies are rigged to collapse anyway. I'm trying to convince her that the sooner Italy turns to a truly free market economy, the better off it will be. Delay will only increase the pain--which is going to be pretty bad already.

I responded:

You had argued along the line that human judgment- desires- is the subject of economics. I pointed out that it is only by neglecting the nature of reality in which these desires occur, is it possible to adopt socialism. Only a proper understanding of the nature of economics and economic laws can provide the non-religious foundation from which to refute socialism at its very core.

If I am not mistaken, you claimed that the socialists had attempted to construct their moral system on the nature of reality. They did not- and their mass graves is evidence. By extension, they could not do so without reason- and to claim that the socialists derived their morality from the nature of reality, is to implicitly accept the validity of their reasoning towards their savage results and to then oppose them without challenging their line of reasoning.* To implicitly accept the role of reasoning in socialism, is to be drawn between denouncing its obvious malevolent insanity, yet at the same time be awed by the "method in the madness." The claim that the national socialists were led into evil not by the acceptance of coercion as a necessary element of life, but by "following reason to its hideous limits," is a common criticism, which I attributed to your argument wrongly, as I see now.

I attributed it for the following reason. There are two modes of action: vertrational and zweckrational. The former is action toward a goal which is rationally derived. The latter is action toward a goal which is not rationally derived, yet the action chosen is. The Holocaust is an example of zweckrational behavior: there is no rational justification for the slaughter of an entire race- yet, the means by which the national socialists persued this goal was the most rational method of action. They desired to kill millions, and the most rational method was industrialized murder- they did not decide to start singing drinking songs. It is this rational approach to an irrational goal which has produced most of the modern criticisms of the national socialists as led by reason- and it is such neglect of the origins of their goals that lead to false discord among people who would otherwise stand on common ground. Look to the tiers of goals they chose: they sought prosperity by extermination, everlasting peace in murder. They chose cattle trains and death camps as the means to extermination as the means to prosperity and peace. The chain itself is irrational, yet the portion that is frequently observed- the adoption of the most rational means toward their irrational and hateful subservient goal of annihilation, is assumed to have been also behind their ulterior goal.

I inserted the "your wife is right," because the wife is always right. Always. This is also a matter of apodictic certainty, that whoever claims otherwise will end up sleeping on a couch.

Hopefully this debate will continue. I see as one of the worst effects of moral relativism, the artificial conflicts it produces in men who would otherwise recognize the common principle upon which they base their beliefs.

* I caught myself in an idiotic phrase, tripped up by my own double negative and wrote, "and to claim otherwise,"- clearly nonsensical. I corrected it with apologies.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 26, 2005 00:38 EST | Permalink | comments (12) |
religion, economics, philosophy, pooklekufr constitutionalism, lizardoids, best posts

Comments open but moderated. I reserve permission to kill spammers on sight.

Howler Monkeys

Ah, springtime. The drunken parties have started up again and the howler monkeys have come back out to proclaim their glee to the night.

All night long I can hear sudden bursts of howls at regular intervals of about a half hour. Reciprocating  "Woooo!"s, shrieks, llama-orgles, and "Yeah!"'s continue for about ten minutes, as I presume someone either does something interesting with a lawn jockey and a tub of margerine, or someone brings back a new case of beer.

I have only one thing to say. Penn can say it better, without even a word. (hat tip: Nzyme)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 25, 2005 23:05 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
scruffy college student life

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Destroying goods for fun

Apparently the Bangladesh government believes it has a prior claim on people's property, and that attempting to transport one's property constitutes a dread "loophole" which can only be rectified by an act of seeming irony worthy of a scene from Grapes of Wrath.

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladeshi customs officials found luxury cars, large-screen television sets and refrigerators in a container declared to be carrying metal scrap -- so they made it just that at a public ceremony on Monday.

Hundreds of people watched as officials from the National Board of Revenue (NBR) used bulldozers to crush a Mercedes Benz and a Toyota car and other luxury goods at a railway container terminal in Dhaka.

NBR chairman Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said a trading firm had sought to evade customs duties by falsely declaring that the container carried iron scrap.

"They wanted to befool us by saying they brought in scrapped metals...so we are giving them the same. They, or anyone like them, will not forget this," he told reporters at the site.

Cash-strapped Bangladesh is trying hard to increase domestic revenue ahead of announcing the budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year, beginning next July.

Officials say tax revenues were 9 percent short of target in the first nine month of the current 2004-05 fiscal year, partly owing to lower-than-expected import taxes.

Oh- in case you don't know, Dhaka has a problem with extremely high levels of arsenic contaminating its wells. It is considered the most polluted city in the world by the UN. The World Bank, UNICEF, WHO, Islamic Development Bank, NGO Forum, and other transnational organizations conducted numerous tests on the contamination- and all funded the sinking of more wells. The World Bank estimates that 20 million people are at risk, yet it continues to subsidize the sinking of new wells.  Fear not, however, for there have already been three International Symposiums on Reducing the Impact of Toxic Chemicals on Bengal Basin's Economics.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 25, 2005 22:30 EST | Permalink | comments |
odd news

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Sidebar update

Check out my spiffy new list of books I'm reading. I am now an Amazon Associate, a member of "the leading selling program on the Internet, with hundreds of thousands of members."

I signed up not to get the money which will certainly not come pouring my way, but to get a better and more manageable list. Tell me if the iFrames slow down my page load too much. If they don't, then I'll proceed to also change my "in my playlist" section as well.

Thanks, Ogre, for pointing me there. I had seen those little boxes everywhere, but didn't find out how to get one until you gave me a pointer.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 25, 2005 20:29 EST | Permalink | comments |
books, blogging

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Iran planning an EMP attack?

Via LGF:

WASHINGTON — Iran is not only covertly developing nuclear weapons, it is already testing ballistic missiles specifically designed to destroy America’s technical infrastructure, effectively neutralizing the world’s lone superpower, say U.S. intelligence sources, top scientists and western missile industry experts.

The radical Shiite regime has conducted successful tests to determine if its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, can be detonated by a remote-control device while still in high-altitude flight.

Scientists, including President Reagan’s top science adviser, William R. Graham, say there is no other explanation for such tests than preparation for the deployment of electromagnetic pulse weapons – even one of which could knock out America’s critical electrical and technological infrastructure, effectively sending the continental U.S. back to the 19th century with a recovery time of months or years.

Iran will have that capability – at least theoretically – as soon as it has one nuclear bomb ready to arm such a missile. North Korea, a strategic ally of Iran, already boasts such capability.

Here are some sources on EMP:

• EMP Primer
• Physics Site on it
  

Here is Dr. Wretchard's famous 3 Conjectures.

I will make a prediction: if Iran attacks, it will do so by proxy of Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda attacks, it will be either in America or Europe, for very different reasons: the former for destruction, the latter for almost certain capitulation to Islam. If an attack takes place, it will take place in July or August, for the jihadis will have taken note of what happens in hot areas where there is no electricity.  I further predict that if these EMP plans are caught any further downstage, this would be a prima facie causus belli the likes of which we have not seen against a single nation since Pearl Harbor. Any development beyond current levels, if known, will spell disaster for whoever attempts to downplay them.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 25, 2005 19:06 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
news, predictions

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Spreading the Ecosystem Love I *Updated! With Platypi!*

I am right now at #2085 in the Bear's Ecosystem. There are thousands of blogs below me, and thousands above me. How many of those thousands below me are excellent, extraordinary blogs that might otherwise never rise from the invertebrates?

I will take the role of the Zoology Dragon and advance their rankings. I will do this in the following order: people in the same rank I'm in, people in the two ranks below me, and the occasional unfortunate crustacean. This will be a regular feature, similar to basil's mealtime posts. There are plenty of blogs out there waiting to be read, and too much spamblogs to plough through to find them. Look at these blogs, and link to them yourself if you like them.

1. Pink Kitty's Scratching Post. She's pink, she loves cats, and she likes to slap hippies too.

2. The Conservative Philosopher. Not only are they sane, but they have a regular series of posts of moonbat letters-to-the-editors of the NYT.

3. Oddybobo. She's a sweet vicious woman who'd pray for you and shoot a trespasser at the same time.

4. Eternal Perspectives. He is a Godblogger who also focuses on the decay of post-modern moral relativism. He can piss off alot more hippies if he evolves.

1. 10,000 Monkeys and a Camera. He calls religious people wingnuts, and has a link to Indymedia, but he posts some damn good pictures.

2. Naked Drinking Coffee. I can't tell whether he is a deranged stalker, or a lawyer with a strange sense of humor involving bananas, latex, and mules.

3. Capitalist Lion.  Do I need to elaborate?

4. Paul Krugman's blog. The poor bastard who thinks he's an economist is lower ranked than his self-esteem at a nudist colony.

1. A Blog For All.  An excellent blog that should be higher than mine.

2. The Goober Queen. She's a kid-n-catblogger.  She blogs about how to torment her children too!

3. Lady Mac's Musings. Go for the cute dogs, stay for the fun.

4. Texas Conservative. Need I say more? Yes- Why did you stop blogging?

5. History's End. A fellow lizardoid whose blog also should be higher than mine.

6. Saddam's Cyber Palace.

7. Leatherpenguin. Come on, you know you're curious.

8. Sailor in the Desert. He held a blunderbuss to my head in order to get on this list.

9. moehawk. He says I inspired the name of his blog, and he posts excellent beach photographs. And, his headlining skills are so good, he got to do basil's Headlines! And, he begged to get on this list.

You guys at the very bottom have it rough. Part of that is because some of you deserve it. I mean, a blog dedicated to describing your panties in detail, is not apt to get many links, until now. 

Others, like the Giuliana Sgrena Chronicles, are somber, rather than playful accounts of life like Baghdad Bob's own blog.

 Where The Hell is Emilio, a blog apparently dedicated to Emilio Estevez's lack of a recent career, is downright spooky.

 What The Fuck Do You Want To Know? is not conducive to people peeping in. Cool bee-sex picture.

Others of you, like Javanoob, I can't wait to outsource some jobs to. Javanoob is a Vietnamese man who plans to learn Java in three to six months. I'd want a guy like that working for me.

 How to Get Killed By An Icicle is a wonderful name, and the focus of the blog is cool as well. Check out this death joke.

Moehawk brought to my attention Moeswoes. And he has some serious woes indeed.

Update: I'm keeping this up for a little bit, and deleted the ego-roundup above it. Want to get a link? Want to kiss Herman full on the lips? Than let me know!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 23:49 EST | Permalink | comments (16) |
blogging

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A dilemma

Today I went food shopping and noticed two books seducing me from a shelf: Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and Jerome Corsi's Atomic Iran. I had just enough money to either buy a couple oranges and a gallon of apple cider, or one of the books.

I struggled.

I weighed all the available possibilities. I considered the possibility of evading scurvy for a couple more weeks, versus reading a possibly good book. I looked longingly at the oranges, and back to the books. I did "eenie meenie minie moe" several times, alternately removing a book or the food from my basket. I reflected on the momentary pleasure the oranges would give me, versus the pleasure the book would give me, and tried to weigh the unweighable. I pondered on the sayings, "the man who would choose food over books, will eat his rotten intestines in hell, the ungrateful philistine," and  "if you must choose, choose life."

I ended up getting the oranges and apple cider. I'm sure tomorrow I will wish I had gotten one of the books instead, then savor the oranges as much as possible.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 22:42 EST | Permalink | comments |
scruffy college student life

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Let the hippies do the work

Sounds like a damned good idea. 

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 22:18 EST | Permalink | comments |
moonbats, anti idiotarians

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The Auditor

This is one tough dog. (hat tip: the Terriorists)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 18:49 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
dogs, discoveries

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Beauty

Who can look at this and not marvel at both the capacity of man to discover, and the wonder of the universe laid out before him?

(hat tip: LGF)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 18:16 EST | Permalink | comments |
beauty

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Archive post of books read since April 24th 2005

I'm making this post so I can place it in my sidebar under the list of books I'm currently reading (idea ripped off Matt at Eurabian Times)

Thomas Sowell's Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One

Murray Rothbard's Making Economic Sense

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 18:01 EST | Permalink | comments |
books

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Some guitar songs to learn

If you like playing klezmer and classical guitar, you must learn Yo Menamori Dun Aire, a Ladino song.

For those of you with electric guitars, here are the Seven Golden Songs to learn:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 16:27 EST | Permalink | comments |
beauty

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25 For Freedom II

In the last post on this, I gave the following list of the 25 26 people with the most influence on Libertarianism.

Here is the list with links to some of the online sources available. Browse them, and see how much these men (and a woman) have influenced the development of freedom.

Samuel
Adam Smith
John Baptiste Say
John Locke- A Second Treatise on Civil Government, A Letter Concerning Toleration
Condorcet
James Trenchard
Thomas Gordon
Thomas Paine
James Mill
John Stuart Mill- On Liberty, Principles of Political Economy, Representative Government
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
Lord Acton
Richard Cobden
Herbert Spencer- Man Vs. The State, From Freedom to Bondage
William Grahamn Sumner
Frederic Bastiat, Economic Harmonies, Economic Sophisms
Carl Menger- Principles of Economics, a biography
Mark Twain
Eugene von Bohm-Bawerk- a biography, Capital and Interest
Ludwig von Mises
Ayn Rand
Henry Hazlitt - Henry Hazlitt Foundation, a biography
Murray Rothbard
F.A. Hayek
Milt Friedman
Thomas Sowell

Ah, what the hell. I'll include George Reisman again. Now it's up to 27!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 15:19 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
politics, economics, philosophy, anti idiotarians, libertarianism

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Popeblogging

Someguy over at Mystery achievement has an excellent post on the new Pope's approach to Islam, and has a few paragraphs worthy of Victor Hugo.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 13:58 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
religion, lizardoids, discoveries

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25 For Freedom I

Liberty Dog had an idea:

I want to do a similar project here in the Blogosphere, except that it will be dedicated to the 25 people most influential to libertarian thought throughout history.

What I propose is to have libertarian bloggers send me a list of those they consider to have had the most influence on libertarian thought. I will compile the list and then anyone who submitted a list will be able to vote online via a Condorcet voting script to determine the top 25. Then each blogger (assuming we have 25) will get to write a short 250-300 word writeup on one of the top twenty five. If we have more than 25 bloggers interested in doing a bio, then we will have writeups for honorable mentions as well.

This will be interesting.  I think I'll first try to think of as many as possible, then supplement them with my arguments for why they should be included. This will be a series.

Right off the top of my head, I can think of:

Samuel
Adam Smith
John Baptiste Say
John Locke
Condorcet
James Trenchard
Thomas Gordon Thomas Paine
James Mill
John Stuart Mill
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
Lord Acton
Richard Cobden
Herbert Spencer
William Grahamn Sumner
Frederic Bastiat
Carl Menger
Mark Twain (I will maul anyone who claims otherwise)
Eugene von Bohm-Bawerk
Ludwig von Mises
Ayn Rand
Henry Hazlitt
Murray Rothbard
F.A. Hayek
Milt Friedman (though his influence is tempered by his vast contradictions, such as supporting the friggin' withholding tax)
Thomas Sowell

That's 26! Mark Twain and Samuel are staying in, though.

Update: I replaced George Reisman with Thomas Sowell. While Reisman is thorough, Sowell is thorough, funny, and someone I would much rather learn from.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 11:41 EST | Permalink | comments |
politics, economics, philosophy, anti idiotarians, libertarianism

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Two good things

Check out Pamela's list of Israeli innovations.

Go read the Rottweiler's beautiful fisking of Kos.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 11:18 EST | Permalink | comments |
lizardoids, discoveries

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The Longest Post Ever Written

I have to take offense at what Pastorius said, when he said he was offended by this post. He said:

I take offense at what Tom said, when he said:

I am offended by Pastorius over at Cuanas when he said,

I am offended by Tom when he said,

I have to take offense at what Pastorius said, when he said he was offended by this post. He said...

And I'm sure he will agree.

And he'll agree.

And I'm sure he will agree

And he'll agree

And I'm sure he will agree.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 24, 2005 00:00 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
humor

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This is either pure insanity or a damned good satire

The Sailor has an excellent post on celebrity eco-moonbattiness that has got to be a satire.

An excerpt:

MTV has this new series, "Trippin'," that extolls the the "virtues" of backward, third world countries and how "environmentally" friendly they are. Of course, they do neglect to mention the high infant mortallity rate and the far shorter than average life expectancies. Actress carmen Diaz and some of her Hollywood elitist pals, go jetting around the world, to these places to revel in "environmental" correctness. The article by Marc Morano, looks into these Hollywood environuts.

Actress Drew Barrymore, who reportedly earns $15 million a film, told MTV viewers in one episode that after spending time in a primitive, electricity-free Chilean village, "I aspire to be like them more."

 Barrymore, apparently enthralled by the lack of a modern sanitary facilities, gleefully bragged, "I took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal. It was awesome."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 23:45 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
discoveries

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Ha!

Notice my new Ecosystem ranking?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 22:50 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
blogging

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100 Things an Evil Overlord Should Do

Given FrankJ's plans to be the evil overlord of the blogododecahedron, he may be interested in this list of things an evil overlord should do, compiled by hundreds of geeky people. (hat tip: The Ten O'clock Scholar who mentioned me in the post where I found this)

Note: according to Peter's copyright, anyone and his dog is allowed to post it, but not allowed to alter it.

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

26. No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

30. All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

31. All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

33. I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

36. I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

38. If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

39. If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

41. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

44. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

46. If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

47. If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

54. I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

55. The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

62. I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

69. All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

70. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

71. If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

72. If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

73. I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

75. I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

77. If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

78. I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

79. If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

82. I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

83. If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

88. If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

89. After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

91. I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

93. If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

95. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

97. My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

_{This Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.}

Read the list

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 19:30 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor

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Sidebar addition -a libertarian dog with objectivist tendencies

One Billion Red Chinese and a Dog Named Liberty.

Long name, great blog.  And he's got Capitalism Swag! He is also important enough to receive a personal letter from S_ooooooh^aaaa herself!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 19:10 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
blogging

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Coffee and a sophism

Curious. This guy sells what looks like excellent coffee. Yet he is capable of seriously contending that corporations are not bound by the decisions of the consumers.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 18:02 EST | Permalink | comments |
discoveries

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My exotic death

I will be slaughtered attempting beastiality with a kodiac!



How will you die? Take the Exotic Cause of Death Test

(Hat tip: William Teach, the Thong Pirate)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 16:43 EST | Permalink | comments (6) |
humor, memery

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Woo hoo! Books!

My copy of Rothbard's "Making Economic Sense" arrived!

I'm off to the mailroom to pick it up.

Update: Agh. The mailroom was closed. On the upshot, the library wasn't. I got:

• The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine
• Power and Market: Government and the Economy, by Rothbard
• The Constitution of Liberty, by F.A. Hayek
• Vol. 3 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, by Hayek
  

I haven't read Hayek in a while, it will be interesting how much more soft his beliefs will appear after months of Mises and Rothbard.

I think the library has a bias. It has 4 books by Rothbard, and not even his best ones (I hunger to read his Conceived in Liberty series on the history of America). It has an incomplete series of Hayek, and only two Mises books. It has one copy of Atlas Shrugged,  and no other books by Ayn Rand. It has one copy of Menger's "Karl Marx and the Close of His System" (A thorough and immediate fisking of Marx's labor theory of value, BTW), and that is neither in a good translation nor a good condition. It has Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics," his Culture Trilogy, and his Visions of the Annointed, and his book on Saye's Law, but no "Basic Economics" and his book on knowledge and decision making. It has none of Walter Williams' or Lew Rockwell's books.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 15:34 EST | Permalink | comments |
books

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Some childhood reflections

Today is a dreary rainy day, and is reminding me of other days I've known.

I lived in a Tenafly NJ apartment until I was five, and remember it as a sweltering and buzzing summer- not a single rainy day, and only one memory of a snowy day on which I placed my father's boots on the fire-escape.

I then spent a couple years living in a house in the Catskills- I look back now and it was almost always either summer, early fall or early spring.  There are a few memories of snow though, the snow I wobbled through when getting into the car to get diagnosed with childhood pneumonia, and the snow-drifts I'd turn into ad hoc igloos.

I then spent several years living in trailers in the Catskills.

The first one I moved into after the 1992 mortgage hikes, during the middle of a winter with four foot high snowdrifts. I remember only dense, cold winters while we burned trash to stay warm, and impossibly long summer days.

The second trailer I lived in while my mother sought to get her nursing license with 19-credit semesters and two jobs, while my father was an unemployed alcoholic- it was always either buzzing with summer flies, or in water-pipe-shattering winter. I spent my time outdoors either reading on inexplicable rock walls in the woods, going to what seemed like dozens of Woodstock revivals with my father and being cooed over by aging hippies, or sleighing sockless down a steep hill which ended with a busy road.

The day my mom got her nursing license, she rented  a house and split up with my father.  Here, it was always late fall. Each time I try to recollect blossoms, I see instead leaves turning.

She eventually managed to mortgage a house with only $600 to her name, and I lived in an honestly decent house for the first time in a decade.  Here the full spectrum of seasons I recall, and have no problem recalling either walking through the woods in the summers, walking to and from the bus-stop to college in the winters, or walking around and photographing springtime and fall scenes.

My time in college is split between two rival recollections. My first two years seem to have been in constant winter, shivering at bus-stops and listening to classic rock and blues, or arguing with my friend and I surrounded by shivering smokers at the college. Simultaneously, when I think about that period of my life outside of college, I remember most the summers.

Two weeks before I moved to Buffalo to attend Canisius College, my mom moved again to a smaller house, as both my sister and I would be off to college.  My time there has been consistently damp and cold, but then again, I've only gone back during the middle of winter, late fall, and very early spring.

I suspect that in a couple years, I will recollect my time in Buffalo as a warm spring.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 14:59 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
hick life, boredomblogging

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On Buffalo

Buffalo smells like sewage when it rains.

It smells like flowers, Fruit-Loops, and motor oil the rest of the time.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 23, 2005 12:29 EST | Permalink | comments |
boredomblogging, trivia

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The Religion of Environmentalism

Here's a speech Michael Crichton gave to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on 9/15/2003 (reposted from February):

I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.

As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future. I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why.

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs.

There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?

And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process. And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly: the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. Generations of hatred, tribal hatreds, constant battles. The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated, or learned to build their villages high in the cliffs to attain some measure of safety.

How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction.

There was even an academic movement, during the latter 20th century, that claimed that cannibalism was a white man's invention to demonize the indigenous peoples. (Only academics could fight such a battle.) It was some thirty years before professors finally agreed that yes, cannibalism does inbdeed occur among human beings. Meanwhile, all during this time New Guinea highlanders in the 20th century continued to eat the brains of their enemies until they were finally made to understand that they risked kuru, a fatal neurological disease, when they did so.

More recently still the gentle Tasaday of the Philippines turned out to be a publicity stunt, a nonexistent tribe. And African pygmies have one of the highest murder rates on the planet.

In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die.

And if you, even now, put yourself in nature even for a matter of days, you will quickly be disabused of all your romantic fantasies. Take a trek through the jungles of Borneo, and in short order you will have festering sores on your skin, you'll have bugs all over your body, biting in your hair, crawling up your nose and into your ears, you'll have infections and sickness and if you're not with somebody who knows what they're doing, you'll quickly starve to death. But chances are that even in the jungles of Borneo you won't experience nature so directly, because you will have covered your entire body with DEET and you will be doing everything you can to keep those bugs off you.

The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk-and as the years go on, and the world population grows increasingly urban, it's uninformed talk. Farmers know what they're talking about. City people don't. It's all fantasy.

One way to measure the prevalence of fantasy is to note the number of people who die because they haven't the least knowledge of how nature really is. They stand beside wild animals, like buffalo, for a picture and get trampled to death; they climb a mountain in dicey weather without proper gear, and freeze to death. They drown in the surf on holiday because they can't conceive the real power of what we blithely call "the force of nature." They have seen the ocean. But they haven't been in it.

The television generation expects nature to act the way they want it to be. They think all life experiences can be tivo-ed. The notion that the natural world obeys its own rules and doesn't give a damn about your expectations comes as a massive shock. Well-to-do, educated people in an urban environment experience the ability to fashion their daily lives as they wish. They buy clothes that suit their taste, and decorate their apartments as they wish. Within limits, they can contrive a daily urban world that pleases them.

But the natural world is not so malleable. On the contrary, it will demand that you adapt to it-and if you don't, you die. It is a harsh, powerful, and unforgiving world, that most urban westerners have never experienced.

Many years ago I was trekking in the Karakorum mountains of northern Pakistan, when my group came to a river that we had to cross. It was a glacial river, freezing cold, and it was running very fast, but it wasn't deep---maybe three feet at most. My guide set out ropes for people to hold as they crossed the river, and everybody proceeded, one at a time, with extreme care. I asked the guide what was the big deal about crossing a three-foot river. He said, well, supposing you fell and suffered a compound fracture. We were now four days trek from the last big town, where there was a radio. Even if the guide went back double time to get help, it'd still be at least three days before he could return with a helicopter. If a helicopter were available at all. And in three days, I'd probably be dead from my injuries. So that was why everybody was crossing carefully. Because out in nature a little slip could be deadly.

But let's return to religion. If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn't ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn't fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don't get down on our knees and conserve every day?

Well, it's interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true. As we have moved into the future, these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert. They were never there---though they still appear, in the future. As mirages do.

Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on.

With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.

So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.

I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.

I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigeous science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.

Most of us have had some experience interacting with religious fundamentalists, and we understand that one of the problems with fundamentalists is that they have no perspective on themselves. They never recognize that their way of thinking is just one of many other possible ways of thinking, which may be equally useful or good. On the contrary, they believe their way is the right way, everyone else is wrong; they are in the business of salvation, and they want to help you to see things the right way. They want to help you be saved. They are totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view. In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.

I want to argue that it is now time for us to make a major shift in our thinking about the environment, similar to the shift that occurred around the first Earth Day in 1970, when this awareness was first heightened. But this time around, we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead.

There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism.

First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It's not a good record. Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth---that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric. The effort to promote effective legislation for the environment is not helped by thinking that the Democrats will save us and the Republicans won't. Political history is more complicated than that. Never forget which president started the EPA: Richard Nixon. And never forget which president sold federal oil leases, allowing oil drilling in Santa Barbara: Lyndon Johnson. So get politics out of your thinking about the environment.

The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover. We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish. We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs. Religions are good at none of these things.

How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There's a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren't true. It isn't that these "facts" are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present it in the strongest way. Not at all---what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false.

This trend began with the DDT campaign, and it persists to this day. At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results, that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field get honest fast.

Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.

Thank you very much.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 22, 2005 18:12 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
philosophy, anti idiotarians

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An Economic Debate

I've been having a little conversation with Pastorius that originated with my idea that barter economies contributed to the misogyny of primitive cultures.

He posted the following on his blog:

I responded thus:

Pastorius responded:

I responded:

Pastorius expressed confusion over this argument:

I responded:

My argument has so far been tangential to Pastorius' objection. I have yet to touch specifically on voluntary exchange in the manner which he seeks.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 22, 2005 13:39 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
economics, lizardoids

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Hostile funny

V the K has possibly one of his most funny captions.

You go read FrankJ's excerpt of the Bolton hearings. Now.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 22, 2005 12:37 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, lizardoids

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Your one stop shop for llama knowledge

Ever want to know what a llama orgle sounds like? What llama spit is like? Where llamas come from? Whether llamas make good psychiatrists? Why your llama is terrified of you? How to fend off a llama attack? (here is a photo of two llamas attacking a woman in a hospital!)

Look no farther than  The Llama Compendium!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 22, 2005 07:43 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor

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Thursday Night Animation Fight

In the first round, these animations won:

Now onto Round Two.

Which rocks harder?
Vines Kittens or Lightsabre Kittens?

Which makes you laugh and then wonder why you laughed?
Weebl meets Elvis or Weebl in France?

Which is more disturbing?
The Tourrettophone or Holding?

Which is more blasphemous?
Zoology Dragon or Weebl Meets Scooby?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 20:32 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor

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Another little change

I added a "what I'm reading" section in my sidebar, and placed both the status of my "Human Action daf yomi" in there, as well as the other books I'm reading now.

For those of you who don't know, Ludwig von Mises' Human Action is the most thorough and logically structured defense of laissez-faire, and simultataneous refutation of centralized planning, ever written.  It is available for free online at the Mises Institute. Mises places economics on a ground from which no refutation is possible,  proceeding from those axioms forward in a flawless manner to construct a theory of free markets that is irrefutable unless one attempts to undermine his initial premises. If you have never read it or Henry Hazlitt's "the Failure of the New Economics," you are right off the bat crippled when trying to defend freedom and capitalism against their persuasive enemies.

I also added an "in my playlist" section.  I might switch it to All Consuming, as Travis does with his book section, but I can't figure out how to modify the section so it looks right.

Update: I also fiddled with my sidebar.  The right-margin beyond the border appears too large in IE, but just right in Firefox.  I might fiddle around with the color scheme as well.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 19:17 EST | Permalink | comments |
books, blogging, boredomblogging

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Haloscan trackbacks II

Several Motimers tried adding Haloscan trackbacks, but were thwarted by Haloscan's awful instructions.

If you do as Haloscan says, each of your posts gets the same trackback. Thus, when I pinged ButterflyLane's post, ALL of her posts got pinged.

That is not good.

Here's what I sent to Jheka:

1. Go to Haloscan.com and register.

2. Go to Instructions/code.

 3. click "none of the above/manual" and go to the next page.

4. Add the script in their step one right above your /head tag.

5. The tough part: getting just the Trackback in. Haloscan's instructions are goofy here. Right after the BlogItemCommentLink in the section surrounded by Blogger tags, place this there , and keep the | with the space after it):

Or, go here and copy-n-paste the code from the second message, putting a | between the BlogItemCommentLink and the code.

Once that's done, you'll have a trackbacks section right after the "comments" link. Then customize how it appears at Haloscan.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 18:35 EST | Permalink | comments (10) |
blogging

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Thanks!

The Llamabutchers appreciated my randomly generated essay on Llama Orgling.

If you still think that Dr. Alan Sokal is a dadaist pony-tailed hippy fool blasting doobies with Willie Nelson between scientific conferences, think again. He stands firmly against the modern rise of subjectivism and post-modernism among the Left, and made that paper to display the intellectual vapidity of the post-modernist zen-mystic voodoo feel-happy hippy nonsense of science politicized by no-mind buddhist fuckmonks.

*Insert gigglesnort here at my neologism "buddhist fuckmonk"*

What better word can describe people who think "man, you know [takes a long drag] there's no... such thing as a word, you dig? It's all the Man's bullshit trying to oppress us with his 'logic,'  and his... 'objective reality,' man. I'm off to drink some Yage-root¹, lick a toad, pop some ginseng pills and masturbate to Kerouac,  then freeze to death on a New Mexico railroad². [inhales] See you, my boddhisattva brother!"

1. Reference to William Burroughs the Wife-shooter's South American hallucinogenic vine.
2. Neal Cassidy, the hyperactive sex-monkey of the Beats, froze to death on a New Mexico railroad.

Update: Damn, my mockery sounds almost exactly like what my hippy father would say before he became a born-again Christian.

Update 2: For reference, my father is an ex-hippy former-atheist born-again Christian, and my mother is an ex-Catholic former-hippy Wiccan. They met in a barefooted Christian convent in New Jersey, and left after they accused the "Elders" of bullshitting when speaking in tongues.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 16:17 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, discoveries, anti idiotarians

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The Real Cuba

You must see these photos at Free Thoughts (hat tip: Jheka, who is also a fellow Marsupial now).

Keep them in mind when a democrat whines about the beauty of Cuban socialized healthcare.

Update: here are photos of a hospital praised by Fidel and the media alike as a marvel of Cuban healthcare.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 15:20 EST | Permalink | comments |
discoveries

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Economics fun

My professor of Intermediate Keynesian Fallacies said something odd today:

Who'd have thunk it? I found an actual economics professor who doesn't idolize the state! Consistently, at least. Maybe my in-class hecklings are having an effect.

While he was covering money in his thoroughly Keynesian way, muddling the development of money, I interjected this idea:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 14:31 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
scruffy college student life

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Finally, a real fact of the day

Roman Emperor Valerian I was captured in 260 a.d. by the Persian emperor Shapur I, used as a footstool, and was stuffed and displayed as a trophy.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 13:37 EST | Permalink | comments |
trivia

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A little change

Notice anything different?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 13:12 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging

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Marius' letter to Cosette

The most perfect love-letter ever written, from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (chapter 246). It took Victor Hugo 60 years to accurately describe the incoherent elation of young love.

Here it is:

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love.

Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.

How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!

What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be jealous of this had not God the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.

The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams.

God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees.

Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.

Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.

The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.

Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.

Oh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other! You will come to me, will you not, bliss! strolls by twos in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse the destinies of men.

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase in intensity even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.

You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.

All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.

When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.

On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do: to think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you.

What love commences can be finished by God alone.

True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little.

If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.

Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise; we possess paradise, we desire heaven.

Oh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love. Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as well as heaven, and more than heaven, it has voluptuousness.

"Does she still come to the Luxembourg?" "No, sir." "This is the church where she attends mass, is it not?" "She no longer comes here." "Does she still live in this house?" "She has moved away." "Where has she gone to dwell?"

"She did not say."

What a melancholy thing not to know the address of one's soul!

Love has its childishness, other passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which belittle man! Honor to the one which makes a child of him!

There is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the night. There is a being who carried off my sky when she went away.

Oh! would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, gently caressing a finger,--that would suffice for my eternity!

Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.

Love. A sombre and starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony.

Oh joy of the birds! It is because they have nests that they sing.

Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.

Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.

If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 10:48 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
beauty

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The acceptance of a man who dwarfs Hitler in murders

Superhawk at the Rightwing Nuthouse has a great post on the latest acceptance of a man who killed more people than Hitler.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 21, 2005 09:41 EST | Permalink | comments |
news, economics, lizardoids, discoveries

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Wednesday evening animation fight

Ah, I am more tired than a dachschund trying to lick its own ass.

So here is the animation fight: tell me which of each matching is more funny, odder, more strangely erotic, or more likely to be the constant mental refrain of  your old age.

Biscuits v.  Soluble

Salad Fingers I v. Banana Fingers I

Hippo Girl v. White Stripes Kittens

Viking Kittens at the Gay Bar v.  Salad Fingers V

The winning four go on to the next round.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 20, 2005 16:33 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
humor

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A bundle of assertions, to be expanded into full argument form later

Rights are individual claims to the requirement for human survival of the absence of coercion. They are bound up and indissoluble: I cannot have a right to life if I have no right to property, and I cannot have either if I have not the right to use both so long as I coerce no other.

Those who believe there are more (or less) rights, have no place in the legislative process, and are the enemies of a society ordered on equal rights. In a constitutional republic, the government is prohibited from acting on their beliefs, even if they are in a majority.

Laws exist to protect these rights by limiting force against innocents, and directing it only toward those who have first violated rights.

To "create" new rights, is synonymous with going above the requirement for human survival that they be free from the use of force, rejecting the fundamental nature of man, and accepting a claim on some people's rights and so violate their rights.

Such "new rights," are not rights at all, but violations of the rights of some to benefit others. And it will be seductive to believe them, because what is to be expected, but that by depriving one man of his right to property, another man will indeed benefit? It is the direction of the force of the law onto innocents.

Mutatis mutandis for people who claim there are less rights. Those who presume to divorce the right of life, from the right of property, are actually destroying both.

The source from which proper law must derive is the nature of man. It is his rights, which are as required for human survival and prosperity as any physical law. We may refine our ideas of these rights, just as we may refine our concepts in mathematics and science, but in the end it is reality itself that determines the laws. Laws which are compatible with the nature of man will lead to prosperity and happiness, laws which are not will bring out such suffering that they are modified or abolished to be compatible. Our agreement on what these rights are will not change the fact that where "new" rights are posited, the people will live in misery and poverty, and where less rights are protected, the people will live in even more misery and poverty.

The government has two duties: to protect the individual rights of all under it, and to determine the most efficient way to do that. The first duty is determined by the nature of man, and cannot evolve. The second function is determined by reason, and must evolve if it is to accomplish the first. By "evolve," I obviously do not mean that it contradict its first duty.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 20, 2005 06:00 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
politics, philosophy, pooklekufr constitutionalism

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A public apology

Ferdinand T. Cat (pbuh) posted his view on the influence of the blogosphere in preventing election-rigging. He posted: "In the new reality of the information age, you can spread your message faster by taking Glenn Reynolds to lunch."

I commented, "Taking Glenn Reynolds to lunch is also a fast way to spread herpes."

Ferdy deleted the comment, and sent me a polite email explaining why.

I am sorry.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 19, 2005 20:07 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
blogging, evil glenn

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"If I could be..." makes the rounds

So far American Girl and Pastorius have gone on to answer the "If I Could Be..." meme. Pastorius, unlike everyone else, has actually been what he answers!

According to Ogre's tabulations, there are now 3¹+3²...3⁵=363 answers floating around, ideally.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 19, 2005 19:42 EST | Permalink | comments |
memery

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The Botfly Gallery

Botflies are our friends.

Not. (Warning: Very very very very very very gross and icky as all hell pictures)

Update: Mkultra wanted more information. Here is the most thorough site on botflies I have ever seen, with more first-person testimonials than you can shake a hefty stick at. (Hat-tip: Travis)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 19, 2005 17:48 EST | Permalink | comments (5) |
discoveries

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If I could be...

Oddybobo the Bully tagged me with the "If I could be..." meme, stolen by Ogre from Marla Swoffer. There's several levels of this meme already.

This meme reminds me of Stephen Lynch's song "Superhero," so I'll answer it in the form of a somewhat amusing and suggestive folk song of my own.

[adjusts capo, strums a geeky open C chord. A drunk at the back of the room yells, "What are you, Gordon friggin' Lightfoot? Get a job, bum!"]

If I could be a llama-rider...
I would be orgle-dude
I'd ride my llama into the slums
and begin to watch for bums
and if I saw them trying to get high
smoking crack and their sticks of thai
I'd trample them to death until they were goo...
cause I would be orgle-dude.

If I could be a professor
I would be economics-guy
I'd walk into class naked as Adam
swaggering with my head held high
And I would teach supply and demand
pointing out graphs on my own hand
I'd explain Laffer's curve upon my own thigh...
cause I'd be economics-guy

If I could be a musician
I would be folk-song wanker
I'd walk into bars and set up an amp
and tune my guitar in a twang and a jhrkrrrr
And I would screech and moan and whine
Like I was Bob Dylan snorting a line
I'd sober up a room full of drunken bankers...
cause I'd be folk song wanker

If I could be a linguist
I would be chomsky-man
I'd sling bullshit faster than a chimp
and call Iraq a Vietnam
And I would cry out "you little Eichmanns!"
and shout about our genocidal nation
I'd drown my insanity in Atavan....
cause I would be chomsky-man

If I could be a scientist
I would be Dr. Moreau
I'd combine humans and beagles
and chickens with J Lo
And I would laugh and shake with snot out of my nose
as I combined a llama and a Glenn Reynolds
I'd populate an island where even Glenn is normal
cause I would be Dr. Moreau

The Rules: Immediately following there is a list of 20 different occupations. You must select at least 5 of them (feel free to select more). You may add more if you like to your list before you pass it on (after you select 5 of the items as it was passed to you). Each one begins with "If I could be..." Of the 5 you selected, you are to finish each phrase with what you would do as a member of that profession. Send a trackback to Ogre's post, because he's keeping track of his little sin against nature.

Hmmm. Now who should I tag? She Who Stomps On Kittens got Two Dogs already. I'll tag Pamela at Atlas Shrugged, Pastorius at Cuanas, and American Girl.

Update: American Girl answered.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 19, 2005 10:58 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
humor, memery

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My Southpark Republican Doppelganger

I'm a South Park Republican coffee-drinking mad guitarist.

Make your Southpark Republican doppelganger at the place the picture leads you, and enter it into the Gallery at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 19, 2005 03:14 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
humor, memery

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A paella of work, procrastination, and a possible brush with death

I wrote and read (Capitalism and Freedom may be the only Milt Friedman book that doesn't anger me with his Monetarist contradictions. I just end up laughing for a while after page 41, and wonder how he could argue so well against government interference in prices of every commodity but one) and wrote from about 4 o'clock to 8, then inevitably crashed, fell asleep until just a few minutes ago.

I have the rest of the night to continue procrastinating and working. Looks like I'll have to stay awake most if not all of tomorrow night too.

And that damn sigh came back.  A drunken monkey is helping, as well as these guitar-playing hamsters, but not much.

Update: I just went into the kitchen to make some coffee, and found my flat-mate had apparently tried to make soup, but left midway through,  and forgot to turn off the fucking stove. His ramen packet was laying open on the counter; he hadn't even put it into the water yet.  The water was all evaporated away and that half of the kitchen was several degrees hotter than the rest of the apartment; it must have been on for at least an hour. He better have a good explanation of why the fuck he'd leave with the stove on. What could have happened? If I had allowed my sleep debt to accumulate the full 12 our so hours I need, instead of only five...

On the bright side, I now no longer feel love-lorn. What's being a couple hours from a sweet smile and a hug, or a fluffy kitten, when there is a good chance you could have died?

Update: 3:59 am I'm taking a break until 5:00 or so.  Working for a maximum deadline of Wednesday is one thing, but having to deal with hippyjock flat-mates who leave stoves burning entitles a man to take a break from his work and ponder the meaning of life (and also find other insomniac bloggers).

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 18, 2005 23:53 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
scruffy college student life, boredomblogging

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What not to do on a spring day

I've been up since yesterday morning writing and procrastinating, and will be up all night tonight doing the same.

I looked out my window, reflected that I am 500 miles from my cats, and hundreds more from a warm hug, and sighed. Not a happy lovestruck joyful sigh, but the kind of sigh that would mean certain death for the nearest huggable thing that stumbles across my path.

Never sigh like that on a spring afternoon.  Ever. 

Now I'm going to go looking through my pictures of my cats, make some coffee, and continue weaving my way through sleep deprived procrastination and productivity.

Update: between my own cats, and this kitten jazz on the beach, I am feeling better now.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 18, 2005 13:38 EST | Permalink | comments |
philosophy, cats, scruffy college student life

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Lizardoid news

Pluto's Dad has finally left Blogspot, and now has his own MT-powered domain: http://www.eyesontheballnews.com/ He was able to transfer his comments over using Carpe Bonum's excellent instructions.


Also, today is Photios' first day working at Electric Boat. Go over there and congratulate the hell out of him. He's spent decades in those subs protecting us, and now is making the subs that will protect our children.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 18, 2005 12:34 EST | Permalink | comments |
news, lizardoids

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Haloscan trackback

I just added Haloscan trackbacks, and will soon add autodiscovery code. If you'd like to add trackback, without adding the Haloscan comment system (which makes your old comments disappear), leave me a comment and I'll step you through the way.

If you don't know what trackbacks are, here is the simplest answer: your trackbacks let other people let  you know that they posted about you.

Update: I'm going to leave this up until sometime later today. If the page is loading more slowly than usual, tell me, for I may have to remove the autodiscovery code.

Update 2 (3:15 am): The Bear (PBUH) is back! All is back to normal in the Ecosystem. I can finally add this blog!

Update 3 (3:23 am): I added the code, and also changed the Alliance blogroll back to the Bear's script.  This will definitely cause my page to load more slowly. Tell me if it is intolerably slow.

Update 4 (3:41 am): I removed the autodiscovery code. I can handle other people doing more work in order to send me trackbacks, but I don't want my page to be prohibitively slow-loading.  For those of you with MT or Typepad, I can only say: blah. Now you'll have to send me trackbacks the same way the few other people do.

Update 5 (3:54 am): Yes, this is procrastination.  I'm off to get more coffee.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 18, 2005 00:57 EST | Permalink | comments (6) |
blogging

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A Glenn Reynolds moment

Indeed, again.

(He actually says that!)

Update: we all know he is obsessed with homo-erotic penguin videos. But owl sex? That is a whole new low.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 21:54 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, evil glenn

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Return of the Attack of the Son of the Interview Meme

I'm done! I am free from this meme!

Two Dogs accepted the Interview Meme, and will be posting his answers soon.

I asked him some easy questions. Here are the questions I asked:

1.  Your neighbors in the next apartment are having loud screaming hot wild monkey sex. Do you: a)bang on the wall with a shoe until they shut the hell up, b) rent a wildlife documentary on hyenas, put a hyena laugh on a loop, and play it over and other throughout the night while screaming "Mommy!" c)scream "amen!" every time she shouts his name, d) knock on their door right in the middle of things and yell, "la migra!"?
2. Putin vs. Chirac. Which one would win? Remember that Chirac fights dirty and bites, but Putin has henchmen.
3. Admit it, you've always wanted henchmen. Would you rather have: burly, cartoonish neanderthalic thugs speaking Brooklynese, or beautiful fem-bots that all look like Dr. Rice?
4. The puddle of blood has barely begun to dry and the body is still warm. Who do you call to take care of your mess: your best friend or your mama?
5.  What is the most bizarre and provocative list of five items you can think of? (ex: a garden hose, three liters of pudding, a chicken, and a bicycle pump)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 21:00 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, memery

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Random generation and the subjectivity of the Left

In my last two posts, I played around with randomly generated essays. We've all seen the recent case of the Scigen conference, in which two grad students submitted a nonsense paper to a lax scientific conference.

Randomly generated essays gained prominence when Dr. Alan Sokal submitted the randomly generated "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to the journal Social Text in 1996. Full of ex cathedro assertions, bald-faced lies, and subjectivist voodoo, Sokal meant his creation to be immediately seen for the illogical and unscientific fraud it was.  It was not. The paper, in essence denying the existence of an objective reality, meaning, and reason, was accepted into an emminent publication of modern cultural philosophy.

Here is Dr. Sokal's explanation of his actions:

Read his whole explanation. Dr. Sokal is fighting the subjectivist hordes who are trying to eliminate all traces of reason from the sciences. He is a hero, to be admired. Dr. Sokal has an entire site dedicated to this affair, go read it.


While the Scigen students did their prank mostly for amusement, both incidents are helpful in pointing out the dangers of politicizing science, and the specific danger of attempting to apply to science the illogic Zen mysticism of "post modernism."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 18:18 EST | Permalink | comments |
philosophy, satire, anti idiotarians, best posts

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On the Economic Importance of Kitten Strangulation

This essay is another completely random generation from the source available at SciGen Automatic Scientific Paper Generator.

Update: if you think that the Scigen people and Dr. Alan Sokal are Dadaist fools, think again. Here's Sokal's essay in which he derides the subjectivist approach to science which allows such nonsense to go unchallenged.

The subject of kitten strangulation is a controversial issue. I find my self constantly drawn back to the subject of kitten strangulation. While it is becoming a hot topic for debate, its influence on western cinema has not been given proper recognition. Inevitably kitten strangulation is often misunderstood by the over 50, whom I can say no more about due to legal restrictions. Relax, sit back and gasp as I display the rich tapestries of kitten strangulation.

Social Factors

Society is a human product. When Sir Bernard Chivilary said 'hounds will feast on society' [1] he, contrary to my learned colleague Sir George Allen’s recent publication ‘Into the eye of , could not have been referring to eighteenth century beliefs regarding society. A society without kitten strangulation is like a society without knowledge, in that it helps to provide some sort of equilibrium in this world of ever changing, always yearning chaos.

Did I mention how lovely kitten strangulation is? Just as a dog will return to its own sick, society will return to kitten strangulation, again and again.

Economic Factors

We no longer live in a world which barters 'I'll give you three cows for that hat, it’s lovely.' Our existance is a generation which cries 'Hat - $20.' We will begin by looking at the Lead-a-Duck-to-Water model. For those of you unfamiliar with this model it is derived from the Three-Amigos model but with greater emphasis on the outlying gross national product.

Of course the cost of living cannot sustain this instability for long. Many analysts fear a subsequent depression.

Political Factors

Politics, we all agree, is a fact of life. Comparing international relations since the end of the century can be like observing playing with a puppy and singing with a blackbird.

Let us consider the words of that silver tongued orator, jazz singer Odysseus Skank 'The success of any political system can only truly be assessed once the fat lady has sung.' [2] Amazingly, he new nothing of kitten strangulation until he was well into his thirties. I feel strongly that if politicians spent less time thinking about kitten strangulation and put more effort into their family life, that we would have a very different country.

While kitten strangulation may be a giant amongst men, is it a dwarf amongst policy? I hope not.

Conclusion

In summary, kitten strangulation is, to use the language of the streets 'Super Cool.' It collaborates successfully, provides financial security and most importantly it perseveres.

One final thought from the talented Aretha Franklin: 'At first I was afraid I was petrified. Thinking I could never live without kitten strangulation by my side.' [3]

[1] Sir Bernard Chivilary - Interestingly... - 1904 Badger Books

[2] Skank - Politics for Dummies - PV6 Media

[3] My kitten strangulation! - Issue 4 - BFG Publishing

Read "On the Economic Importance of Kitten Strangulation"

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 16:15 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, alternative facts

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On Llama-orgling

An essay on Llama orgling (Completely randomly generated via the Essay-generator available at the Scigen Automatic Scientific Paper Generator, yeah, the one you heard about)If you think that the Scigen people and Dr. Alan Sokal are Dadaist fools, think again. Here's Sokal's essay in which he derides the subjectivist approach to science which allows such nonsense to go unchallenged.

Think back to the first time you ever heard of Llama orgling. At one stage or another, every man woman or child will be faced with the issue of Llama orgling. While much has been written on its influence on contemporary living, it is yet to receive proper recognition for laying the foundations of democracy. Inevitably Llama orgling is often misunderstood by the over 50, many of whom blame the influence of television. At the heart of the subject are a number of key factors. I plan to examine each of these factors in detail and and asses their importance.

Social Factors

Interweaving social trends form a strong net in which we are all trapped. When The Tygers of Pan Tang sang 'It's lonely at the top. Everybody's trying to do you in' [1] , they shead new light on Llama orgling, allowing man to take it by the hand and understand its momentum. More a melody to societies dysfunctions than a parody of the self, Llama orgling irons out misconceptions from our consciousness.

Some analysts have been tempted to disregard Llama orgling. I haven’t. To put it simply, people like Llama orgling.

Economic Factors

The dictionary defines economics as 'the social science concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services'. Of course, Llama orgling fits perfectly into the Fish-Out-Of-Water model, a complex but ultimately rewarding system.

My personal view is that oil prices looms over Llama orgling this cannot be a coincidence. Supply Side Economic Tax Cuts Tax deductions could turn out to be a risky tactic.

Political Factors

Politics - smolitics! Looking at the spectrum represented by a single political party can be reminiscent of comparing chalk and cheese.

In the words of nobel prize winner Elijah Rock 'Man's greatest enemy is complacency with regards to personal and political hygiene.' [2] This quotation leads me to suspect that he was not unaccustomed to Llama orgling. It speaks volumes. It is a well known 'secret' that what prompted many politicians to first strive for power was Llama orgling.

The question which we must each ask ourselves is, will we allow Llama orgling to win our vote?

Conclusion

In my opinion Llama orgling has a special place in the heart of mankind. It fills a hole, 'literally' plants seeds for harvest, and never hides.

I will leave you with the words of Hollywood's Mariah De Niro: 'I would say without a shadow of a doubt: Llama orgling ROCKS!!

And now for something silly:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 16:02 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, alternative facts

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Weekendboredomblogging

Weekendblogging: the posting of mundane and boring stuff on the weekends when you expect everyone to be too busy being lovestruck, dancing in the sun with puppies, and robbing liquor stores, to read your posts.

Weekendboredomblogging: the posting of especially boring stuff just to annoy what few readers you have.

Ah, I went food-grubbing today and brought back a veritable feast:

24 packs of Ramen soup, chicken and beef flavor (the staple of my diet)
6 oranges (to avoid scurvy)
Two boxes of Earl Grey Tea (in case I want my caffeine British style)
Sugar (for the tea. I drink my espresso black.)
A dozen eggs (Damn catchy commercials)
A thing of cheese (ditto)
A summer sausage (something about cheese makes you buy a sausage. Some ancient Norse custom, I bet)
raspberry hamentashen (Couldn't find any halava)

I would have gotten some cans of chicken soup and matzo balls, but I couldn't afford it.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 15:06 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
scruffy college student life, boredomblogging

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WTF?!!!!!!

Look at this and this. (Hat tip: Two Dogs who led me to Rory goofing off in Asia)

I won't ruin the surprise. I'll just say the first involves mascara, a shaved pussy, and q-tips, and the latter is an ancient Japanese custom.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 13:54 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, cats

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Attack of the return of the son of the Interview Meme

Jake got himself tangled up in the Interview Meme. Mo'mail was temporarily on the fritz, so I had to leave the questions in his comments. He seems dour, so I asked him less bizarre questions than usual.

Here are the questions I asked him:

1. The life of Christ was one of gentleness, peace, and respect for others. A good Christian is one who accepts his life the morals by which he lived. In contrast, Muhammad was a serial rapist, pedophile, murderer, and anti-Semite. A good Muslim must reject the life of Muhammad and the morals by which he lived. Do you believe Islam could admit of a Reformation? Searchable Hadiths
2. Which is your favorite Federalist Paper and why?
3. What is your favorite exotic curse word from this site?
4. A stranger drops by your house and hands you airplane tickets to any cemetary in the world and several liters of soda. On whose grave would you urinate, and why?
5. Hypnotoad or the Viking Kittens?

I still have one more person to beat over the head!

Who is brave enough, after seeing the torments of their predecessors, to get involved?

Here are the "rules":

1.  Leave me a comment saying “interview me”. The first five four two one commenter(s) will be the participants.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some.)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 17, 2005 01:15 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
religion, memery

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How did I spend a springtime Saturday, you ask?

This post is my answer to the Homespun Bloggers Symposium question this week: "how has blogging changed your life?"  I don't think my application to them has been accepted yet, though.

I will let my five regular readers trace a typical Saturday for me, and judge for themselves the impact blogging has on my life. The only lists you will see are the songs I listened to, and the only trace of a coherent theme you will find is my lack of normal college-student activities involving vomiting.

I have a paper due on Tuesday about the biased treatment Plutarch and his sources (mostly Sulla's autobiography!) give to Sulla the Butcher over Crassus the Whiny-Underdog.  So, understandably, I am procrastinating my ass off.

First off, I got up at 10 and made myself 6 pots of espresso over the course of 7 hours or so blogging.  During this time, I listened to a random playlist of:

Then, I read some of the collected short stories of Ray Bradbury. Afterwards, I blogged a bit more and made more coffee.

At around twilight, I switched playlists over to Charlie Mingus' Folk Forms, mixed with tracks from Coltrane's Giant Steps, and began working on second order partial differentiation while both playing around blogging and studying the Federalist Papers paragraph by paragraph.

I then spent a couple hours blogging on LGF, intermittently ploughing through both my blogroll and the rathergood animations.

I am writing now while listening to Billy Holiday (Love Me or Leave Me), drinking coffee, and still procrastinating.

I ask you: is there any other past-time, besides pornography and crack-cocaine, that could so use up a portion of a man's life? I cannot now imagine my life without blogging, and I know that without it I would doubtless be either more prolific, or locked in a Mexican prison.

Other bloggers who responded:

•  Mud and Phud
• Little Red Blog
• Bunker Mulligan
• Grizzly Mama
  
• Dagney's Rant
• Redhunter
  
• Major Dad 1984
• Ogre's Politics and Views
• Carpe Bonum

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 23:24 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
music, blogging, scruffy college student life, boredomblogging, homespun

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Alternative Fact of the Day VI

John Brown was a very good insane man who tried to get fugitives slaves into Virginia. He captured all the inhabitants, but was finally conquered and condemned to his death. The confederasy was formed by the fugitive slaves.- English as She is Taught

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 19:28 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, alternative facts

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Don't know what cuitlacoche is?

Good for you. (hat tip: Contagion)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 17:41 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, discoveries

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Meet Hobbes

 I adopted a tiger (hat tip: Lady Mac).

adopt your own virtual pet!

Isn't he cool?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 16:30 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, cats

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Woohoo! books!

 I just ordered Murray Rothbard's "Making Economic Sense" for $0.10 at the Mises Institute Store. Ten cents, because of a Tax Weekend sale.

I love capitalism! If capitalism were a woman, I'd wine, dine, and slaughter her enemies for her.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 16:05 EST | Permalink | comments |
books, economics

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The true face of a troll

All bloggers lucky enough to have their own trolls, wonder what they look like. What face would you put on someone who can say such remarkably inane and hateful things?

I, for the first time, have true visual evidence of a troll. This is but one species, so appearances will vary slightly.

The face of a troll:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 15:39 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor

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Islamism vs. Islam over at Someguy's, part II

The debate on Islam vs. Islamism continues over at Mystery Achievement over a range of posts.

I have injected constitutionalism into the debate, as well as my arguments against the impossibility of an islamic reformation. Pastorius has injected his scriptural knowledge, and TVD has injected something.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 13:28 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
politics, religion, philosophy, pooklekufr constitutionalism, predictions, lizardoids, revolutions, fiskings, best posts

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See me take on Howard (pbuh)

 Over at Constitution in 2021.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 13:10 EST | Permalink | comments |
politics, philosophy, fiskings

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What kind of English do you speak?

Via Graumagus at Frizzen Sparks, a place full of things that make llama orgling look downright Amish, I found The American English Dialect Profiler.

My Linguistic Profile:
50% General American English
30% Yankee
15% Dixie 5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

Figures.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 16, 2005 11:26 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, discoveries

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What is Motherhood?

Jheka has his What Is.... threads, in which he offers several examples of an abstract concept.

I'll try my hand at it.  G-d bless the mothers.

See the pictures:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 15, 2005 12:16 EST | Permalink | comments (7) |
beauty

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Reuters redux

Hat tips: Charles and Kragar

Reuters ran the following story shortly after midnight (EST). Zombie took a screenshot of it, in case Reuters alters it:

Current version:

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) - Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least 16 people in simultaneous attacks on two Israeli buses on Tuesday, breaking a long lull in such violence and threatening to disrupt an Israeli plan to pull out of Gaza.

The bombings by the militant Islamic group Hamas in the southern city of Beersheba were the first in Israel since March and the deadliest since last October. They showed that Hamas was not a spent force, even after repeated Israeli assassinations of its leaders and the building of a West Bank barrier.

Thousands of Hamas supporters celebrated in Gaza, singing and throwing sweets in the air after bombings which the group said were to avenge Israel's assassination of two top leaders after the last suicide bombing nearly 6 months ago.

The bombers boarded buses at the same stop near Beersheba's central bus station and detonated hidden explosive belts when the vehicles were just a few dozen metres (yards) apart, gutting the buses and scattering bloody remains.

"The bus simply blew up. It just blew up in front of my eyes," said motorist Joey Harel.

The bombers had come from the nearby West Bank city of Hebron, in an area where Israel's West Bank barrier is not yet complete. Israeli officials said that underlined the urgency of finishing its construction to keep out attackers.

Palestinians denounce the barrier as a means of seizing land they want for a state, because it loops around large Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The World Court has ruled the barrier illegal.

Israeli troops sealed off Hebron after the bombing.

BOMBS COULD HAMPER GAZA PLAN

The Beersheba bloodshed could make it harder for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to overcome resistance in his right-wing camp to his plan for evacuating occupied Gaza and bits of the West Bank to "disengage" from conflict with Palestinians.

Anti-pullout protesters quickly descended on the scene of the bombing, waving banners that condemned the withdrawal plan.
Rightist hawks powerful in Sharon's Likud party contend that quitting Gaza would "reward Palestinian terrorism".

But Sharon dismissed an Israel Radio report quoting a senior government official as saying the fresh assault by Hamas, sworn to destroy Israel itself, was designed to sabotage his plan.

"Israel will keep fighting terror with all its might. This attack has nothing to do with disengagement but only the murderous nature of Palestinian terrorists," he told reporters.

Earlier in the day, Sharon had set out a timetable for steps toward pulling 8,000 Jewish settlers out of Gaza. He said a draft bill establishing rules for compensating uprooted Jewish settlers would be put to his cabinet by September 26.

Sharon's plan has destabilised his coalition. But he is counting on majority support in opinion polls, and the reluctance of rightists to risk parliamentary seats at early elections, to achieve the withdrawal.

"Disengagement will be carried out. Period," Sharon said before the Beersheba attack.

"HORRIBLE SIGHTS"

Medics said at least 16 people were killed and 86 were wounded, some critically. Rescue workers carried the dead off the buses and put them straight into body bags.

"I saw horrible sights. Two bodies were hanging from a window," rescue worker Moshe Zikstein told Reuters.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, visiting Egypt, bemoaned the bombings. "Killing civilians, whether from the Palestinian side or Israeli side, will achieve nothing except hatred and more enmity and therefore we condemn that strongly."

The European Union and Washington echoed Qurie, saying such violence undermined efforts to resolve the Middle East conflict.

Shortly before the Beersheba bombings, Palestinian militants renewed their vow to continue fighting Israel until it quit all territories it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israeli soldiers at a Gaza border terminal captured a would-be suicide bomber on Tuesday who was wearing a new form of explosives belt hidden in his underwear, the army said.

Israel says the 200 km (120 miles) of its barrier erected so far have thwarted dozens of would-be bomber infiltrations into its densely populated north and coastal regions.

But sections between Jerusalem and Hebron have been held up by an Israeli court order that they be rerouted to avoid cutting off Palestinians from their farmland.

The problem is, it didn't happen. At least, not this year. It is posted nowhere else between Tuesday and today. Yet Here is a story from September 1, 2004:

Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least 16 people in simultaneous attacks on two Israeli buses, breaking a long lull in such violence and potentially disrupting an Israeli plan to pull out of Gaza.

The bombings in the southern city of Beersheba were the first in Israel since March and the deadliest since last October. They showed that Hamas militants were not a spent force even after repeated Israeli assassinations of their leaders and building of a West Bank barrier.

The Islamist group claimed responsibility for the new attacks as vengeance for Israel's assassination of two top leaders in helicopter missile strikes soon after two suicide bombers hit the port of Ashdod nearly six months ago.

The bombers boarded buses at the same stop near Beersheba's central bus station and detonated hidden explosive belts when the vehicles were just a few dozen metres apart.

"The bus simply blew up. It just blew up in front of my eyes," said motorist Joey Harel. The blasts gutted the buses and scattered bloodied remains. Many of the passengers were leaving a market.

The bombers came from the nearby West Bank city of Hebron. Israeli officials said the unfinished section of the barrier near Hebron underlined the urgency of finishing its construction to keep out such attackers.

Palestinians denounce the barrier as a grab of land they seek for statehood because it would take in large Jewish settlements. The World Court has ruled the barrier illegal.

Israeli troops sealed off Hebron after the bombing.

Could hamper Gaza plan

The Beersheba bloodshed could make it harder for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to overcome resistance in his right-wing camp to his plan for evacuating occupied Gaza and bits of the West Bank to "disengage" from conflict with Palestinians.

Anti-pullout protesters quickly descended on the scene of the bombing, waving banners that condemned the withdrawal plan.

Rightist hawks powerful in Sharon's Likud party contend that quitting Gaza would "reward Palestinian terrorism".

But Sharon dismissed an Israel Radio report quoting a senior government official as saying the fresh assault by Hamas, sworn to destroy Israel itself, was designed to sabotage his plan.

"Israel will keep fighting terror with all its might. This attack has nothing to do with disengagement but only the murderous nature of Palestinian terrorists," he told reporters.

Thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets of Gaza City in joyful celebrations after the bombings.

Sharon sets steps for pullout

Earlier in the day, Sharon had set out a timetable for steps toward pulling 8,000 Jewish settlers out of Gaza. He said a draft bill establishing rules for compensating uprooted Jewish settlers would be put to his cabinet by September 26.

Sharon's plan has destabilised his coalition. But he is counting on majority support in opinion polls, and the reluctance of rightists to risk parliamentary seats at early elections, to achieve the withdrawal.

"Disengagement will be carried out. Period," Sharon said before the Beersheba attack.

Medics said at least 15 people were killed and 86 were wounded, some critically. Rescue workers carried the dead off the buses and put them straight into body bags.

"I saw horrible sights. Two bodies were hanging from a window," rescue worker Moshe Zikstein told Reuters.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, visiting Egypt, bemoaned the bombings. "Killing civilians, whether from the Palestinian side or Israeli side, will achieve nothing except hatred and more enmity and therefore we condemn that strongly."

The European Union and Washington echoed Qurie, saying such violence undermines efforts to resolve the Middle East conflict.

Shortly before the Beersheba bombings, Palestinian militants renewed their vow to continue fighting Israel until it quit all territories it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

 
So what happened? The new Reuters story contains details that make it look recent, yet it is clearly a hash of the September story. Did someone at Reuters release a stock story altered ad hoc in anticipation of another bombing, or was this a clerical error? A clerical error wouldn't explain the updated and new details in the story. If this was done on purpose,  what was that purpose?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 14, 2005 23:50 EST | Permalink | comments |
news, discoveries, media hunting

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Human meat: it's what's for dinner

(hat tip: Pam Blogmeister)

Looking for an exotic dish at a restaurant? Try human-meat.

This site is real.

Update: from their "resources" page:

Butchering the Human Carcass for Human Consumption by Bob Arson (WARNING. NOT FOR THE QUEASY)

"This is a step-by-step guide on how to break down the human body from the full figure into serviceable choice cuts of meat." This is an invaluable resource for any grocery store or restaurant participating in the Cannibal Flesh Donor Program.

Here the caution in choosing your meal must be mentioned. It is VERY IMPORTANT to remember that animals raised for slaughter are kept in tightly controlled environments with their health and diet carefully maintained. Humans are not. Thus not only is the meat of each person of varying quality, but people are also subject to an enormous range of diseases, infections, chemical imbalances, and poisonous bad habits, all typically increasing with age. Also as an animal ages, the meat loses its tenderness, becoming tough and stringy. No farm animal is ever allowed to age for thirty years. Six to thirteen months old is a more common slaughtering point. You will obviously want a youthful but mature physically fit human in apparently good health. A certain amount of fat is desirable as "marbling" to add a juicy, flavorful quality to the meat. We personally prefer firm caucasian females in their early twenties. These are "ripe". But tastes vary, and it is a very large herd.

Body Preparation: Acquiring your subject is up to you. For best results and health, freshness is imperative. A living human in captivity is optimal, but not always available. When possible make sure the animal has no food for 48 hours, but plenty of water. This fasting helps flush the system, purging stored toxins and bodily wastes, as well as making bleeding and cleaning easier. Under ideal conditions, the specimen will then be stunned into insensitivity. Sharp unexpected blows to the head are best, tranquilizers not being recommended as they may taint the flavor of the meat. If this is not possible without exciting the animal and causing a struggle (which will pump a greater volume of blood and secretions such as adrenaline throughout the body), a single bullet through the middle of the forehead or back of the skull will suffice.Excerpt:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 14, 2005 19:32 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
odd news, discoveries

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Avignon: taking back the Carnival from Dr. Socialist Eurofag Zen

Lawrence Simon got pissed off at Yeah Whatever's slurs, and laboriously built up his own anti-Carnival of the Vanities without all the shitty snarks. (hat tip: Superhawk)

I will now call Yeah Whatever the name he calls himself: Socialist Eurofag (He also calls himself Dr. Zen. Should I call him Dr. Socialist Eurofag Zen?).

I will repeat that: the man who called me and people who agree with me "regressives," calls himself Socialist Eurofag. I was afraid of calling him by his own nom de blog, for fear it would be lost among his own myriads of  "regressives," "clueless c*nts," and similar snarks.
 

Update: Socialist Eurofag, AKA dr. Zen, has been waging war on the Wikipedia article about the clitoris. Seriously.  (Hat tip: Eric at Classical Values).

 Here's what Dr. Eurofag has to say about Wikipedia:

I need a new forum. I'm tired of the uselessnet, which is for knobheads. I'm tired of wikipedia, which is a c*nt magnet with its own c*nt gestapo, with more fuckheads than my pantry has moths. I need a solution for moths in the pantry. I have become willing to exterminate them, so long as I don't have to see it or remove the carcasses.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 14, 2005 13:14 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
blogging, moonbats, lizardoids, discoveries, anti idiotarians, fiskings

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Sidebar onanism

I accidentally posted the wrong link at LGF. If you're looking for deranged cannibal moonbats, go to this post.

I just added a testimonials section to my sidebar after finding this praise of me and my blog by Someguy:

At his new site, hamstermotor, Tom the Pooklekufur has a collection of must-read posts on the possibility of an Islamic Reformation. Read them all. His verdict on that possibility--much more pessimistic than Rev. Sensing's or my own--rests on a comparison between Islam's sacred texts and those of Christianity and Judaism. It is an argument that rests on both clear moral perception and common sense, and is therefore worth your time.

 And btw, check out the rest of Tom's site--if you dare. He's like a cross between Matt Colt of Eurabian Times and Hunter S. Thompson at his most lucid. While I sit here wasting my time trying to reason with people, Tom is out there running down the enemies of our civilization in a Ford Fairlane--steering wheel in one hand and a bottle of Wild Turkey in the other. Go and visit, but don't make him mad.

As Mark Twain said, "I can live for two months on a good compliment. Especially involving drunken road rage" Thanks, Someguy!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 14, 2005 12:40 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
blogging, discoveries

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Which one leads to the straightjacket?

 Which will drive you insane sooner: Aaah, Magical Trevor or Salad Fingers V?

Oh- has anyone else had problems with haloscan? It suddenly disappeared from most of the blogs I was reading today.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 14, 2005 11:54 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, discoveries

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Thursday afternoon lizardoid roundup

They even got the mustache!

Pluto's Dad shoves some taxes in his eye and makes a point.

Sgt. Fluffy wonders what's in the iPods over at al-Guardian.

Sherri has too many important posts to list. Here's just one, on the recent rape of a mentally disabled girl.

FabioC promises to post on Biodiesel. Given last his chemistry post, this should be good.

Bummerdietz says he pisses off everyone. What about the bigamists?

Fjordman posts on China's censorship policies and the American software companies such as Google which are abetting it.

Jheka asks what is beautiful, and finds babies, naked women in boxes, and dachschunds.

At 2:00 pm today, Dr. Rusty Shackleford at the Jawa Report will be liveblogging while his students take a test.

The Rightwing Nuthouse posts on the same shit-slinging European ass-cowboy that's been slinging his shit at people on the blogosphere including
me, Ferdinand T Cat (pbuh), and Carpe Bonum.

Pastorius and Someguy have been having a debate on islamism. Read the posts at Mystery Achievement in chronological order.

Lawhawk points out what should be an elementary thing: an ambassador to country A for country B, works for country B.

Gateway Pundit finds hippies.

From the 10th, Fred Fry International has a brilliant post on the Left's network and sleaze.

You are a luddite, and reject all the evil mechanisms of our capitalist society. So what do you do? You live off roadkill. True luddite insanity. (hat tip: The Ten O'Clock Scholar)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 14, 2005 11:11 EST | Permalink | comments |
lizardoids

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Some more nuggets of wisdom from Yeah Whatever

Yeah Whatever, the blog that engaged in a prolonged ad hominem attack on me, Sortapundit, Carpe Bonum, and others, has another slice of the mind of a tolerant liberal:

Here is a stunning example of the tolerance and liberty-loving positions he holds:

And there is this statement of his non-dogmatic tolerance: 

Here is what he had to say about Ferdinand T. Cat (pbuh):

Here is what he has to say about G-d and Terri Schiavo:

Here is what he had to say about someone called John Ray:

I believe he implied that his carnival was full of "clueless c*nts."

I have put this post into the category "moonbat."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 23:24 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
moonbats, discoveries

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Alternative Fact of the Day V

Abraham Lincoln was born in Wales in 1599.- English as She is Taught

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 21:46 EST | Permalink | comments |
alternative facts

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Yeah Whatever had a point

Hmmm. Looking back over my posts, I see way too many assertions, too few actual arguments.

Lest I begin to sound like this, I must try far harder to state both the conclusions (the assertions I made), and the premises behind them.

I'll try to expand my arguments from now on and cut back on unsupported assertions.

Yeah Whatever's slur of me did have a point. In making statements such as:

I left out several key premises and definitions.

I made the same mistake when I wrote:

And:

This is sloppy thinking.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 21:05 EST | Permalink | comments (6) |
humor, blogging, satire, fiskings

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An example of a dishonest ad hominem attack (several, in fact)

Speaking of ad hominem attacks, the blog  Yeah Whatever responded to my criticism of the 2020 constitution movement:

How many qualities and positions does this writer attribute to me? How much evidence does the writer provide for these qualities and positions I allegedly possess?

How many of my logical fallacies does this writer point to as evidence of my "simplistic" arguments?

How many premises does this writer provide for the statement "keeping it not on level is what your protecting your rights amounts to," and where does this writer find basis in my statements advancing the concept of equal freedom, for the assertion that equal freedom is not "keeping it level"?

How many arguments are present, as opposed to assertions? I admit I do not flesh out my arguments as well as I would like, and make far too many assertions,  but I usually try to include at least one premise in an argument. 

In that same post, Carpe Bonum, Sortapundit, and others are given a similar treatment.

I'll post a couple other sections from that blog:


Heh.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 19:52 EST | Permalink | comments (8) |
philosophy, discoveries, fiskings

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Ad hominem attacks

"You dingo-licking llamasniffing beast child of an octopus and Hillary Clinton!"

"How dare you say you eat tunafish?! You little Eichmann!"

Ad hominem attacks like the above are logically synonymous with the sentence, "I REALLY don't like you."  Nothing more, nothing less.

Notice that the subject of the sentence, "I REALLY dislike you," is "I". It says nothing about the victim.

They are statements of value judgements that have been reified: the reason for the dislike has merged completely with the expletives. Think of Archie Bunker saying, "But he's a Negro!" as if he had also added "and bad!" They are incomplete value-judgments: they are in effect conclusions of arguments whose premises are not stated.

There are two types of ad hominem attacks: honest ones, and dishonest ones:

Honest ad hominem attacks are ones which make no pretense at being a part of an argument. They are simply angry outbursts which the author appends to his actual arguments. These ad hominem attacks are for emphasis, and don't affect the validity of the arguments which they are near. I used several in my fisking of the "2020 Constitution." You'll note that after an attempted refutation of a particularly asinine statement, I would insert a statement like, "Ingrate. Go live in North Korea."

Dishonest ad hominem attacks, in contrast, are used as premises in arguments. The author attempts to form an argument using his statement of feeling, which destroys the structure of the argument. These ad hominem attacks are the ones you are trained to look for in Logic classes, for a good reason: they attempt to inject emotion into an argument, rather than express the emotional reaction of an argument.  Whereas an honest ad hominem attack says, "I have just explained why you are a cakesniffer. You disagree? Then find out where I erred, you chickenslurper," a dishonest ad hominem attack says, "I don't like you. Since I don't like you, you are wrong."

Hence the difference between the manner of argumentation of the sane and the Left. The sane man waits until he is finished explaining why someone just said something asinine and evil. The liberal starts off claiming his opponent is asinine and evil, then indicting the opposing argument because of its alleged evilness.

I admit, I struggle to use honest emotive "Screw you and the horse your mama rode in on!" statements that don't have a trace of premise in them. I want to keep my ad hominem attacks honest and pure in their hatefulness and viciousness. Sometimes I err, but usually make a point of ensuring that my ad hominem could in no way be confused for a premise in an argument.

As Muhatma Gandhi said,

"I would eat your liver with fava beans and a nice chianti, but I'm a vegetarian. Now fuck off."

Find out:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 18:13 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
humor, hateblogging, fiskings, best posts

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Stolen from FrankJ (who scares me)

What would be a good name for a band?

Weaselpirate Find out:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 16:24 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, blogging

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Happy birthday, Charles!

Charles Johnson has been laying his scaly feet upon this earth since he escaped his guards and crashed his nitrogen-filled spaceship into Hawaii in 1953.

He has seen our nation fight the threat of communism and win. He has seen the morass into which Europe has fallen, nations throw off their perpetual dictatorships, the growth of personal computers, and Frank Zappa's underpants. He has participated in the the creation of the computer revolution and the blogging revolution. He has spent his life learning, and continues to evolve. He may even one day be able to breathe in our atmosphere.

May he live long enough to see us win the fight against the threat of Islam!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 15:40 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
lizardoids, anti idiotarians

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Looking for grizzly kittens?

My Pooklekufr site is still #2 in a Googlesearch for "grizzly kittens" quoted.

Heh.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 13, 2005 01:04 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, blogging, discoveries

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A mundane post

This one's custom-made for the Bonfire of the Vanities. I will try my hardest to make this post boring, bad, idle, vapid, strangely erotic, and unbearable.

Tonight I must:

• Translate 30 lines of In Catilinam.
• Finish reviewing logistic differential equations and move on to multi-variable calculus.
• Finish preparing a 10 minute presentation on my business proposal for my Entrepreneurship class tomorrow. Atlas Equities and Economic Consulting: providing a much more thorough analysis of government-intervention on a local, state, national, and international level, than the Heritage Foundation's index of economic freedom.
• Frantically reread all the good parts of the books I have to return tomorrow.
• Try to recover my nerves with a long hot shower from the spurious mathematical voodoo of a make-up test in Keynesian Fallacies, the pseudo-mathematical-gerbil-chasing of which still stains my soul.
• do a belated Lizardoid Roundup, as I have been remiss in spreading the lizardoid love
• Somehow get some sleep.

Tomorrow will be busier, and I shall remain on the very brink of productivity and procrastination until noon next Tuesday.

I'm off to make some espresso, blog until my sense of urgency overwhelms me, and start ploughing through this list.

Update 1:30: drinking espresso, and slowly making my way through both my blogrolls and Cicero (Told you I was going for boring).

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 22:45 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
blogging, scruffy college student life, bonfire material

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Flood V

 Agh.

I owe $7 or so in library late fees for 9 books being a week late due to the flood:

• David Friedman's "Law's Order,"
• Eumonn Butler's "Ludwig von Mises: Fountainhead of the Modern Microeconomics Revolution,"
• Barbara Fried's "The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire,"
• D. Weinstein's "Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer's Liberal Utilitarianism,"
• Avraham Tory's "Surviving the Holocaust: the Kovno Ghetto Diaries,"
• Henry Hazlitt's "Failure of the 'New Economics',"
• Frederic Bastiat's "Economic Harmonies,"
• Milt Friedman's "Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: an Economist's Protest,"
• Gilbert Tucker's "Common Sense Economics.
  

Not only am I annoyed at returning so many good books, but now I will have $7 less (out of $55)  to spend on coffee and food.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 21:18 EST | Permalink | comments |
books, hick life, scruffy college student life

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Provident 360 responds to the response

Provident 360 responded to my response today to his reponse to my response to his post. Got that?

My last comments on this issue:

Usually I don't even waste my time with such foolishness but something tells me that you can be helped.

This is an ad hominem attack.

Did your parents teach you that greed is good?

My parents are irrelevant.

Do you believe that success is measured by only obtaining the desired results?

The premises that you make to support you theory leads me to believing the answer to both questions are yes.

Who doesn't measure success in an effort by achieving the desired result?

The desired result is, however, not as important as the actual result. Utopianism invariably has the unsightly problem of leaving behind piles of corpses.

Success is also measured on how one achieves the desired result or outcome.

The means to achieve an end must not contradict that end. You cannot bring prosperity to workers by making them unemployed via minimum wage laws, etc.  Success must be non-contradictory- the desired result must actually be achieved, and without violating the principle behind it.

 This is where ethics come into play. I wouldn't consider a career criminal as successful. So, was slavery ethical? After all, it was practised by many societies for over 100s of years.

Slavery is the treatment of humans as property. An ethics which disregards this aspect, and asks only "well, it was used widely," is not only corrupt, but I suspect that no one actually holds such a muddled justification of slavery, making this a strawman argument. By disregarding the obvious source of injustice behind slavery, and focusing on its immorality as if the extent of its practice has anything to do with it, you attributed a position to me and presumably others which is highly suspect.

Slavery here in the United States should be given a harsher name than just slavery.

Slavery comes in many forms. There is the slavery of captured children and women for sex, for instance. About 35 million humans [Correction: scanning some sources, there is a range between 27 million and the number 35 million] in muslim countries right now are slaves subject to sexual abuse. Then there is the slavery of labor, more well known.

For most of human history, slavery was heavily weighed toward the former. Every hunting and gathering tribe practiced war rape, and war rape and "distribution" of the wives of the captured was practiced in Greece even as Socrates and Demosthenes lectured.  This practice continued in the Germanic tribes until well past the Renaissance. It still continues in much of Africa, where most of the 27-35 million slaves live in agony.

 No where, at no time, did any nation practice slavery as brutal as it was here.

Slavery is the treatment of a human being as property. Socialism, fascism, and communuism treat humans as property. Socialism, communism, and fasicm, is slavery. These beliefs led to the murders of 170 million humans in the last century.  All of Africa has been heavily socialist since the turn of the last century. Dictatorships during the 20th century spread to encompass almost three quarters of all humanity. That is a lot of slaves, alot of suffering, and alot of death.

Socialism is the treatment of humans as property. Europe operated on a feudal system for over a millenia, oppressing generations in poverty and guild socialism. That is more grinding poverty for over four times longer than America has existed.

Just watch the movie Roots by Alex Hailey (again, if you watched over 10 years ago; it has a greater impact as you get older and more wiser) One factor that puts american slavery in a class of itself, is america treated their slaves as subhuman. They even had the audacity to right it in the constitutions and in laws.

I will invoke Godwin's Law on myself. Compare the suffering and death caused by the legal subhuman status of slaves in America over the course of hundreds of years, with the death and misery caused by the legal subhuman status of slaves in National Socialist Germany within the span of two decades.

Do you know that most of the families that owned slaves in America are the majority of today's top 10% wealthiest.

This sounds suspiciously like a circumstantial ad hominem attack.

Do most of these black last names taken from slave masters should familiar?: Johnsons, Smiths, Howards, Browns, Jacksons, Jeffersons, Williams, Wilsons, etc; most of the names are last names of Presidents.

Roman males  had only about 15 last names to choose from. Women only had one name: the name of the family (i.e. all the women in the Claudius family were named Claudia). A coincidence of names was ensured across generations.

America was founded by immigrants from all Europe, with a wealth of diverse names. There have been less than 50 presidents, yet how many millions of Smiths have walked on American soil in obscurity? 

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 19:31 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
economics, fiskings

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The Retrosexual Code

I found the Retrosexual Code at Frizzensparks via Harvey (panties be upon him).

A call for men over the world to stop shaving what's not supposed to be shaved, to stop putting junk in their hair, and to open doors for ladies whether they like it or not.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 17:31 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, discoveries

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A song for Rummy

Wisconsiners want to hunt cats. Jheka's already got to be fearing for Rummy's life in case any tourists from Wisconsin get any funny ideas. Here's a horrible song to strike terror in the heart of all catbloggers.

Steven Lynch's "Kill a Kitten"

Intro: Em C G D

Verse 1:
                   Em       C G       D      Em        C     G D
When the game of life makes you feel like quitin'
It helps a lot if you kill a kitten
Mark my words cause from where I'm sittin'
You can't go wrong if you kill a kitten

Riff
              Em                           C
There's no crime that you'd be commitin'
I know the law you can kill a kitten
And if you need yarn for that scarf you're knittin'
You'll get plenty when you kill a kitten.

Feed it turpentine
Or break its spine
Crush it with your shoe
       G                   D
As long as you kill a kitten.



Verse 3:
If the one you love isn't quite a smitten
She'll like you better if you kill a kitten
And I quote the Bible cause that's where it's written
If ye loveth Jesus ye must kill a kitten.

(Riff)
 Flush him down the can
Hit him with your van
Drown him in a lake
Bake a kitty cake
Throw him at a train
Make him snort cocaine
Stick some TNT up his cat booty
Do what you must do
        G                D
As long as you kill a kitten

Bridge:
Killin' kittens isn't easy
And if the thought makes you feel queasy
Grab a pitchfork from the shed
And kill a puppy dog instead. (Start back on the Em C G D on "instead")

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 15:14 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
humor, cats

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My idea: a Carnival of Fiskings

I love reading fiskings. I devour fiskings, and have ever since I read the Greatest Fisking In History as a child: "The Failure of the New Economics." Some of you will fondly remember Twain's fisking of James Fenimore Cooper in "the Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper," and J.S. Mill's "Examinations of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," but I am raised of Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand, and treasure the evisceration of Keynes more than a bad writer and an unknown bad philosopher.

The blogosphere is the home of fiskings. You can find fiskings on any issue from any perspective, and fiskings of those fiskings from yet another perspective.

Think of how many fiskings go isolated. One blogger fisks a speech from a Christian standpoint, another fisks it from a political standpoint, a democrat fisks it from a hallucinatory toad-stool, and none of them gets a chance to rip out each other's souls through their words.

What if there was a one-stop shop for fiskings?

What if you could go one place to find the best fiskings of the week, whether a fisking of the insane by the sane, a fisking of the fisking, or a fisking of the fisking of the fisking?

What if you could trace a single fisking through the filters of several fiskings, each attacking the material from a different angle? What if there were Contests of Fiskery, where one example of particularly idiotic statements would be fisked by numerous people and the best and most vicious fisker wins acclaim?

I want to make it possible. I want to create the Carnival of Fiskings, where the best of the blogosphere may gut each other in words, sharpen their fangs on current speeches, and where the MSM will meet a horde of opponents eager for some old-time verbal castration.

Technical notes: I envision the fiskings being categorized according to perspective, humor, vitriol, and issue.  There would also be a category for the best fiskings. As per the advice of the omniscient Ferdinand T. Cat, I will spend a couple weeks hunting down interested bloggers.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 14:02 EST | Permalink | comments |
books, blogging, fiskings

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A new copy of the Federalist Papers

I had  only $70 to hold me over for the next three weeks. So, naturally, I brought a book instead of food.

I got another copy of the Federalist Papers today. I now have three copies, each one better than the other.

My workhorse copy is a Bantam Classic edition with an introduction by Garry Wills. It is severely dogeared (3 years old),  but has in addition to a copy of the Constitution, a little glossary to show how the words have changed. For instance, the sentence "your argument is obnoxious, but it will be liquidated once its specious character is discovered," was not originally so insulting.

My new copy is introduced and with notes by Charles Kesler, edited by Clinton Rossiter, and published by Signet Classic.

It includes a copy of the Constitution with clauses cross-referenced to the paragraphs in the Federalist Papers concerning them, a copy of the Articles of Confederation, copy of the Declaration of Independence, voluminous notes, and a thorough "index of ideas."

I also ordered a tactile copy of Bastiat's The Law, the bookstore being almost entirely gutted this time of the semester. Am I the only one who gets pissed off when you try to find a book in a college bookstore, and have to explain that you want to read it for your own enjoyment, and don't know what course it is in?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 13:29 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
politics, books, philosophy, scruffy college student life

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Bolton's hearing

This is exactly how Bolton should answer democratic harangues. Excerpt from an imaginary hearing, brought to us by FrankJ (who for some reason scares the hell out of me):

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 12:36 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor

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Provident 360 responds

 A while ago, I criticized a post at Provident 360 in which he stated, " It's time to put a stop to this [wealth inequality] and real [sic] them [rich people] back into our community."

He responded thus:

A couple things:

1. Policies which seek equality in results prohibit precisely the innovations which keep humans out of gut-wrenching poverty. There is a reason why the only country in history to focus on equality of opportunity instead, increased the standard of living by an order of magnitude within one century.

2. Do I need to remind you that every single society prior to 19th century America had slaves, and that in each society slavery crippled the economy? Do I need to remind you that everywhere slavery existed, and still exists, the standard of living is lower? Do I need to remind you that slavery no longer exists in America (except for Saudi Arabian diplomats)? Do I actually need to remind you that slavery can dig ditches, but cannot create skyscrapers, vaccines, hygeinic facilities, and lightbulbs?

3. The ad hominem attack is unnecessary. You could have simply pointed out that the mathematical flaws behind the Gini index, but this would require that you first identify the nature of its failing.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 12, 2005 06:05 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
economics, fiskings

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Jlhpisces responds

Jlhpisces responded to the Interview Meme. Go check out her answers.

Oh- now there are but two spots left.

Are there two more crazybrave people out there willing to get tangled up in the Interview Meme of Doom?

The "rules" once again:

1. Leave me a comment saying “interview me”. The first five four two such commenters will be the participants.
2.  I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some.)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 22:15 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, memery

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Alternative fact of the day IV

The only form of government in Greece was a limited monkey.- English as She is Taught

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 22:01 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, alternative facts

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Filthy Lie: Evil Glenn's reality TV series

Blogging and bloggers have become sexy in a big way.

Tell a woman in a bar that you're a blogger, and before you know it a dozen women will be ripping off each other's clothing and smearing barbeque sauce all over each other to get onto a post.  Female bloggers have to fend off horny young men in their comment sections with sticks, while male bloggers spend hours "chickblogging." 

In this wave of blogaphrodesia, Glenn Reynolds is naturally the hardest hit of all the bloggers. Not even Michelle Malkin has to deal with so much sincere lovespam and constant crowds of fainting teenagers.

Glenn, always the exhibitionist,  is creating a new reality TV series, "Glennblogging 101," to document his struggle to stay afloat in the orgy that is the blogosphere.

The following is a transcript of a rare interview I managed to get out of him with the promise of a frothy puppyshake at the end:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 20:33 EST | Permalink | comments (10) |
humor, evil glenn

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Flood VI

 Ha! The girlfriend of my flat-mate just called for him. She said they were worried that I had died over the vacation.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 17:39 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, hick life, scruffy college student life

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The link between Mises and Rand

The Mises Institute has an excellent article on the shared beliefs of Mises and Rand. 

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 17:37 EST | Permalink | comments |
economics, philosophy, discoveries, anti idiotarians

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Anti-communist reading list

Mike Adams has a wonderful anti-Communist reading list. Besides Mark Steyn and Walter Williams, he is one of the funniest sane people.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 17:20 EST | Permalink | comments |
philosophy, discoveries, anti idiotarians

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Flood V

I forgot to adjust my alarm clock when I got back in last night, and overslept. I missed my Calculus class just when we are about to start a unit on improper integration. Damn.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 09:09 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
hick life, scruffy college student life

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Return of the Son of the Interview Meme

So far only three intrepid people have accepted the Interview Meme: Travis, American Girl, and Jlhpisces (Jlhpisces hasn't answered yet, though).

Go read the questions I posed and their answers. If you want to get tangled up in it, smack yourself over the head. If you still want to get tangled up in it, anger a cat and hold it against your face. If you after that you still want to get tangled up in it,  then drop me a comment.

The "rules" reposted:

1. Leave me a comment saying “interview me”. The first five four two such commenters will be the participants.
2.  I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some.)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 02:35 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
humor, memery

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Phin's 25 word challenge

 I've been screwing around at Phin's 25 word challenge. Go check it out and add your own 25 word increment in the life of Jack.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 11, 2005 01:38 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, evil glenn, memery, discoveries

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Debkawatch

The Final Historian opened up Debka Watch, devoted to remedying the consistent inaccuracies of Debka. He needs some help in running the site. If you're tired of appending disclaimers to your posts, have knowledge of Mideast affairs, and can knot a cherry stem with your tongue, the Final Historian can use your help.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 10, 2005 23:40 EST | Permalink | comments |
blogging, lizardoids, anti idiotarians

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Flood IV

I'm making my first cup of espresso in three weeks, and figuring out how the flood screwed with my schedule.

1. The flooding of my home:

• Slowed down my progress on a paper on Plutarch's bias for Sulla against Crassus (manning a sump-pump is inhospitable to Classics). This weekend I will have to work like Glenn Reynolds on a puppyshake binge.
• Left me to translate Cicero's In Catilinam during my "free time." Hell, I was on vacation, so the time was all technically free. But you know Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." I'm going to spend the night working on it.
• Had a positive effect in preventing an aneurysm from reading the spurious economics of Hicks' IS/LM model for my Intermediate Keynesian Fallacies class. Score one for procrastination!
  

2. The week's delay:

• caused me to miss a Keynesian Idiocy exam, a quiz on events from Sulla's first march on Rome to the death of Caesar, some in-class readings and possibly other quizes.
• had the positive effect of allowing me to eat another week's worth of real food before going back to Ramen.

All in all, the flood screwed up my schedule pretty badly, but I got to spend an extra, albeit damp, week with my family, pets, and solid food.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 10, 2005 23:06 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
hick life

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Alternative fact of the day III

To find the weight of the earth take the length of a degree on a meridian and multiply by 6 1/2 pounds.- English as She is Taught.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 10, 2005 22:12 EST | Permalink | comments |
alternative facts

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(Not so) alternative fact of the day II

Congress is divided into civilized half civilized and savage.- English as She is Taught

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 10, 2005 21:09 EST | Permalink | comments |
alternative facts

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