Archive for May, 2009

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110: An Alternative View of the Marriage Issue, Gay or Straight

May 28, 2009

Marriage is none of government’s business. Marriage was formerly, and is still in many places even today, a relationship that fits within the ceremonies and customs of a religion, not of a state; and it should stay that way.

Why? Because the government has no competence to set rules for or govern intimate relationships between persons **; and because it claims a monopoly on the use of force. Is that the kind of foundation you want for your marriage?

Does government have any valid concerns here? Only two: (a) Protecting minor children and other persons from harm, and (b) Providing a court system that may enforce, if called upon, contractual relationships (such as civil unions). These functions have nothing to do with marriage, per se; they apply to everyone regardless of marital status.

Ideally, all relationships commonly called ‘marriages’ are really civil unions. Partners in a civil union may also seek a true marriage, that is, performed by a minister or similar religious figure. Those who are non-religious will happily avoid this unnecessary complication.

** Perhaps priests and rabbis don’t, either; but that’s a different question.

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109: Top Ten Science Fiction Films

May 28, 2009

A very personal view of great science fiction films, not including TV series or made-for-TV movies:

1. Top ten modern sci-fi films, in alpha order:

Alien (director’s cut)

Alien 3 (theatrical release version)

Bladerunner (‘final’ director’s cut)

Brazil (original uncut version)

Clockwork Orange

Final Cut

Minority Report

Paycheck (with the deleted scenes; some of these make essential plot points)

Rollerball (1975, not the remake)

Twelve Monkeys (and the original, La Jetee)

2. Honorable Mention:

Dark City (original version now finally released, without the Kiefer Sutherland prologue)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978- the one with Donald Sutherland)

Children of Men

The Man Who Fell to Earth

3. “More than the sum of its parts”: Individual films are weak, but the series as a whole adds up:

Terminator 1, 2, 3

Cube 1, 2, 0   [‘0’ must be seen last]

4. Special award for brilliant concept though movie not so good:

The 13th Floor

5. Dubious award for an underscore so excellent it pulls your attention away from the screen:

Paycheck (music by John Powell)

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108: New Suffixes

May 28, 2009

Try these out:

.. Biologer

.. Americer

.. Quakist

.. Hikist (or ‘Bikist’)

.. Triflist (= Trifler)

.. Philosophist

.. Fidgetee (one subjected to fidgeting by others)

.. Fiddlant (Fiddler)

.. Dabblian (Dabbler)

.. Piqueur (one who piques, e.g., your interest)

An interesting diversion; a Mensa party-game.

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107: Ethics and Arm-Waving

May 28, 2009

‘Ethicists’ appear regularly on radio and TV these days, giving their sage pronouncements. They used to ground their opinions on principles: ‘greatest good for the greatest number’; or ‘duty’; or ‘virtue’. Well-thought-out theories that have been argued at length by many bright people.

But no longer. Now they are pleased merely to give pronouncements, accompanied by a satisfactory amount of vigorous arm-waving. But without a showing of reasons and principles, there is no more reason to listen to them than to anyone else on the same subject: they have lost their claim to having any sort of special knowledge or insight.

Good, then, for Ronald Dworkin. He’s discussing law, but his position holds also for ethics:

“[The Supreme Court] can find its moral authority only in the character of the reasons it offers for its decisions. It has a sovereign responsibility to show that its judgments are grounded in principles that can responsibly be claimed to be premises of America’s democracy. [Justices] must say enough, in important and controversial decisions about constitutional rights, to indicate the principled basis of their decision and show that they understand and accept at least the obvious further commitments those principles require.”

(Ronald Dworkin, “Looking for Cass Sunstein”. New York Review of Books, 30 April, 2009, page 32. Abridged; emphasis added)

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106: Capital Punishment

May 28, 2009

Concept for a short story:

The future: All those on death row are released to serve life terms. But the government has realized that, although killing its own citizens represents the ultimate expression of state power and serves as a useful caution to its citizens, it is no longer necessary to indiscriminately kill dozens or hundreds of people each year: a single death will do.

The government has also realized that the death of a common rapist or murderer, no matter how deserved, does not fully engage the passions of the public. The scum, they will say, have their reward; and they will shrug their shoulders.

No, there is a difference between the merely brutal and the truly evil, they say. And so the one man or woman to be killed each year, with full offices and ceremonies of state, must be evil. Only in this way can the public be fully engaged, complicit, equally guilty with the state in the commission of this killing.  So the quest began for the single most evil man in the country. Not an easy quest, because members of the government were exempted by statute, as were the leading professional sports figures, college deans, and of course lawyers. Other protected classes were added, the deserving poor, the undeserving poor, the huddled masses, the rich, the very rich, and … and …..

And that is why Melvin H. Robertson, an insurance adjuster from Campbellsburg, Indiana, the only one in America not exempted from capital punishment, found himself one day on death row.

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105 The Comma, Again

May 8, 2009

The comma serves three masters: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Sometimes [,] these masters may be at odds.

(1) Consider this sentence from a short story: “After dinner I carried out the garbage.” Grammar requires a comma after ‘dinner’, and normally the writer should provide one. But consider rhetoric: we may want the comma there, or not, depending on how the writer is shaping the story’s rhythm and narrative voice. The choice is a judgment as to which master must prevail this time.

(2) Sometimes none of the masters is happy. Consider this sentence (from Dana Milbank’s column in the  Washington Post, 1 May 2009):

“The stated purpose of the hearing was to examine whether merchant ships need private or military security on board.”

This sentence could mean either:

(a) “The stated purpose of the hearing was to examine whether merchant ships need private or military security on board, or no security at all.”

or

(b) “The stated purpose of the hearing was to examine who should provide on-board security for merchant ships: private firms or the military.”

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104: Futile Attempts to Control Population – II

May 8, 2009

Coercive plans to limit population need not be cruel or Malthusian. Consider this one:

Each woman in the world would have, by right, two child-birth licenses. One of them she could sell, at the prevailing market rate, if she wished (a kind of ‘cap and trade’); or she could choose to give birth. The second license would be for her use alone, and could not be sold or given away. If a child dies in childhood, an additional license would be granted to the mother. If a woman declines to have a child or any children at all, that would be her sole decision.

This plan would improve the wealth and power of women everywhere in the world, especially in poor countries. And each woman would still have the right to bear one child; two, if she chooses.

World population would decrease slowly and steadily to some agreed sustainable level; then the policy could be liberalized.

BUT … even if we agree that this is a workable and humane plan, who would initiate it? Who would administer it? How could it be enforced? How would cheaters be detected? punished?

This population plan, like all the others that have been proposed, no matter how attractive in theory, are doomed to failure. We are wired, by God or evolution (probably both), to breed.

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103: Futile Attempts to Control Population – I

May 8, 2009

1) The Optimum Population Trust (optimumpopulation.org) says –

“Too many people: Earth’s population problem.

“The world’s population is expected to grow by another 2.3 billion, from 6.8 billion in 2009 to 9.1 billion in 2050.

“Human consumption of renewable resources is already overshooting Earth’s capacity to provide. Resources are becoming scarcer and the number of hungry people increasing year by year.

“Reversing population growth is one of the measures needed to ensure environmental survival.”

Fine so far. Unfortunately, OPT goes on to say “It can be done by voluntary and peaceful means,” and, on another OPT web page,

“The Optimum Population Trust is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion in family planning.”

Sorry, Charlie. Voluntary population reduction hasn’t worked. Won’t work. We have a real ‘tragedy of the commons’ here. Neither extreme poverty nor relative wealth nor earnest moral suasion have stopped people from uncontrolled breeding.

2) Lester Brown (Scientific American Magazine [on line], April 22, 2009):

“Many of [failing states’] problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. … Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty — and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.”

Brown’s plan may slow population growth; it probably would. But not reverse it. And, health and education initiatives in many parts of the world are failing just because population is growing uncontrollably faster than health and education can keep up.

3) Ted Turner wants to reduce human population “humanely”, which he defines as voluntarily. (NPR interview, 7 May 2009). But we already have too many people for sustainability, and the number is still growing.

Coercion: Giving up one freedom, the freedom to breed without limit, is necessary if we want to preserve all our other freedoms, and if we want to avoid the eventual Great Die-Off.

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102: “Archiving in Bed”: Sex Junk Emails – III

May 8, 2009

(The following extracts are verbatim. Most appear to show a high level of performance anxiety, and a lot of aggression]

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Carnal revitalizer!

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Doping for your porksword!

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Revitalize your porkmonster!

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Fill your bed partner’s brain with the excitement and satisfaction.

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Do your girl more than in time, when you were 18.

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Everything will go right in bed, if you swallow this blue pilule.

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Give your weenie some boost and no girl will laugh.

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Get unfailing manhood.

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So, need you letter.

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Where to go, when you want to buy anti-anxiety goods? Nowhere, just click and get your goods delivered.

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If you want to be all the time confident in yourself and archive everything you want in every bed.

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Power up your gun and conquer ladies’ hearts.

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Why couldn’t men enlarge love-sticks?

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Click below links to add some Inches to your Manhood.

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Problems in Getting the Sex Lifee You Want and Deserve – Starting With F

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To intiere perfection the servis of warre two them both stain, their followers, o king, filled.

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Or two’s quiet in our own home, with carry and which has walls and a trench full of water on extermination of the kshatriya race. There is eternal lord viz. Isana, in all their successive citizens, they will do their duty, and do it more thomas jefferson was speaking. When abe finished never forget. It was a young girl, very slight, capsules of gold, hermetically closed on both having said these words, hrishikesa quickly urged middle of the road, and glared at him with a terrible hat and coat and goes out. Come in here, cries in the tents of the wealthy. I’m so glad we’re.

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Your wife’s compartmen unlocks the jewel case drops off the

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Others envied. If my mistress does nothing that

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In morality and profit and were kind to all creatures. Further into a work of a thousand lessons. In even arthur thought it would make him sick, and boulle sent to his soninlaw the sum of four thousand of a moment the evervictorious arjuna stringed.

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Gain the full control over your drilling machine.

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Walls of weakness will fall crushed by you new mighty manhood.

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Make your King-Kong twice larger.

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Ears with statistics proving that people today a feeling could be roused in her. Will had been is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me one word only with it, said rosamund or the malachite table. Been going on in this island, and i’ll put one.

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101: O Lord, Show Me a Sign !

May 8, 2009

102 Lord show me a sign

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100: Samuel Johnson on the Getting of Money

May 8, 2009

“THERE are few ways”, said Samuel Johnson, “in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.”

– but Johnson had never met a hedge fund manager.

From The Economist print edition, 23 December 1999

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