Monday, April 26, 2004

Noise Pollution Or?

Daniel Medley, over at Lobowalk brings to my attention a story out of Hamatrack, Michigan regarding Muslim calls to prayer. I was aware that the Muslims had requested permission to broadcast the five times daily call to prayer, over loud speakers, and now the Hamatrack city council has approved the request.  Daniel, like myself, doesn’t really want to have to hear this five times per day.  And the writer of the linked article definitely doesn’t want to hear the Muslim call to obesiance five times per day.  But think about this.  In my neck of the woods, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I can hear church bells peeling, or sacred music, twice per day emanating from various steeples.  Is there any difference?  To the best of my knowledge, the churches from which these sounds waft across the city, never asked permission.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/26 at 05:54 AM
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For the Libertarian Voters

Interviews with Libertarian candidates for president Michael Badnarik, Mike Ross, and Gary Nolan as published at Liberty for All.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/26 at 04:32 AM
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Reposting a Sound Opinion

"My undergraduate degree is in Journalism. I have worked on five newspapers. I was the editor of the last one. I have found mainstream reporters to be not very bright, not very educated, and liberal (ignorant, arrogant and blind). The publishers, who generally aren’t journalists, don’t want controversy. All of these things is why the talent has moved to the Internet. If newspapers had any sense, they’d fire most of their staffs and start paying to run many of the people who write for the Web."

Posted by Bob Wallace at LewRockwell.com Blog.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/26 at 04:29 AM
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A Virtuous Man

I, for some reason, am drawn to individuals who defy authority, individuals who are unafraid to test the system, who challenge the enforcers and attempt to beat them at their own game through cunning and audactiy.  Here is just such a man from the days of the Holocaust.  His name is not Oskar Schindler, his name is Shammai Davidovics.

“Smuggling Out of Hell."

Via Claire Wolfe.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/26 at 03:33 AM
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Modern Mass Democracy Fading to Black

"Through the modern state, the parasitic masses were able to consume whatever wealth was produced, constantly inflicting more chains upon the ever-decreasing number of wealth-producers in the marketplace. Capitalism was exploited yet held at short leash, and scientific achievements were to a great extent nationalized throughout the West. The parasitic society began slowly suffocating itself in an ignorant attempt to “liberate” the masses from productive efforts and the means for scientific breakthroughs. 

The modern mass democracy had a stranglehold on capitalism, constantly tightening the grip, causing mass suffering through recessions, depressions, and even wars. The inability of political means to take the former role of capitalism (i.e. wealth production) and reason (i.e. the philosophical basis of achievement and invention) yet increased the effect of the economic decline."

From a piece at Strike the Root, written by Per Bylund titled “The ‘Endarkening’."

Via Billy Beck.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/26 at 03:17 AM
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Cops Displaying

Certain members of the animal kingdom display when threatened.  Cobras unfurl their hood, rattlesnakes rattle, house cats arch their backs and hiss, and other examples abound.  Why do cops display?  To exhibit their authority.

"Eunice Crowder, you see, didn’t follow orders. Eunice was uncooperative. Worried a city employee was hauling away a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon, she had the nerve to feel her way toward the trailer in which her yard debris was being tossed.

Enter the police. Eunice, who is hard of hearing, ignored the calls of Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac to leave the trailer. When she tried, unsuccessfully, to bite the hands that were laid on her, she was knocked to the ground.

When she kicked out at the cops, she was pepper-sprayed in the face with such force that her prosthetic marble eye was dislodged. As she lay on her stomach, she was Tased four times with Zajac’s electric stun gun.

And when Nellie Scott, Eunice’s 94-year-old mother, tried to rinse out her daughter’s eye with water from a two-quart Tupperware bowl, what does Miller do? According to Ernie Warren Jr., Eunice’s lawyer, the cop pushed Nellie up against a fence and accused her of planning to use the water as a weapon."

From a story in The Oregonia titled “Even blind old ladies terrify the cops."

Via Drudge.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/26 at 03:00 AM
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Gone Fishin

It is 8:04 P.M.  In one hour and fifty-six minutes, I will crank over Woodrow, my curmudgeonly 82 Jeep, and head North.  Iz, my faithful Aussie, is raring to go, as am I.  I’m leaving at night, because I like to be on the roads late when I travel.  Plus, there is something about driving the two tracks of vast forests late at night that appeals to me.  I should enter the woods around 12:30 A.M.

JTK, if you listen closely, around 1 A.M., I will toast The Wild Shall Wild Remain! with a shot of ice cold Stoli, and sixteen retorts, deep in the woods that I love.

Back Sunday, I think, Monday at the latest.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 04:04 PM
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Meme-ic Before I Go

From the closest book at hand, because it is in my pocket, as I finish preparing to go North.

"1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions."

"But little time is left thee for self-honor."

Imagine that.

Marcus Aurelius Antonius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 170 A.D.?

Via Billy Beck.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 03:53 PM
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It Must be Time to Make New Signs

Alex Tabarrok, at Marginal Revolution, links to a Future Pundit post titled “We Should Develop Defenses Against Large Asteroids." Tabarrok has this to say in his preamble to the Future Pundit link.

"Ironically, we spend very little on one of the few public goods that I support, asteroid detection and deflection."

I would like to opt out of the public good.

Then there’s this headline.

“Scientist Predicts Earthquake by Sept. 5."

Lets see, asteroids cover the fire and brimstone part of the end of the world, earthquakes cover, well earthquakes.  Here’s someone who is predicting hail storms and such, based on sun flare activity, and in the Middle East, locusts are rising, they think.

I keep looking for robed individuals walking around with large placards stating, “The World is Going to End, Sometime in September, Maybe.” I haven’t seen any, yet.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 10:56 AM
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Wild Man, Wild

The estimable John T. Kennedy, a sovereign man, blog lord of No Treason, and friend, has launched his solo forum.  The Wild Shall Wild Remain. I shall drink a toast, and run fifteen plus one through the Beretta, to JTK’s solo success while I roam wild, in the woods of northern Michigan this evening, after Midnight.  Wild.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 10:44 AM
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So What

The headline.  “‘Doonesbury’ Character to Lose Leg in Iraq."

BFD.  The artist can draw him a new one.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 10:42 AM
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Tis The Season

Winter has passed and the streams of northern Michigan are beckoning me.  The fishing report holds promise of hatching mayflies, the weather report is just an educated guess, but neither report really makes a difference, to me, whether or not I head north for an extended period of time, well, till Sunday at least.

The next five nights will be spent fireside, the days will be spent busting brush to favored stream sections in search of rising trout.  There may be a post or five before 10 P.M. this evening, but after that, I’ll be incommunicado.  I hope to commune with a trophy brook trout.

Update: If you look closely, I’ll be somewhere in this section of northern Michigan, as shown in this satellite photo.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 03:37 AM
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Monday, April 19, 2004

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today, April 19th, is Holocaust Remembrance Day.  An event from history, which was so cold, calloused, calculated, and ignored, while it was ongoing, it boggles the mind.  I must admit, I did not realize that today was a day designated to officially recall this tragic time, though I did not forget the horrors inflicted by the Nazis.

Jeff Jacoby’s remembrance is voiced in a piece titled “Faith in the depths of Hell."

Via J. Bowen at No Watermelons Allowed.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 08:52 AM
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It's Everbodies Fault Except the Drunk's

Ryan Pisco, after drinking Coors, was killed after driving a car, his girlfriend’s, 90 miles per hour into telephone pole.  So, who should be sued, why of course, Coors, the girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s mother. 

Coors should be sued because, according to the dead man’s mother, it ”..failed in its duty to protect the country’s youth from drinking." The girlfriend should be sued because she allowed her drunk boyfriend to drive off in her car without her in it, and the girlfriend’s mom should be sued because she shouldn’t have given her daughter a car as a gift.

“Mom sues Coors over son’s death in accident."

Of course this specious suit should be thrown out, but it probably won’t be.  And what is even more disturbing, is, a so called jury will probably rule for the mom of the dead drunk.

Via Jonathon Alder at The Corner.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 08:22 AM
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Spelunking for Popularity

The other day I criticized a Nicholas Kristof piece which commented on the 9/11 commission.  Kristof’s piece was titled "Why Didn’t We Stop 9/11?" Within that post, I linked to a Billy Beck post which was related to the subject matter Kristof was wondering about.  Also, in the comments section, a commentator, Robert, left a link to another opinion on this subject.

Today, stopping by The American Spectator, I find another interesting piece written by Geoffrey Norman.  Norman’s piece is titled “Surprised Again" and within his piece Norman has the following to say, among other things.

"Taken together, the 9/11 hearings and the 2004 presidential campaign are an almost lethally demoralizing combination. William Faulkner famously said (or wrote) that the past is not really dead; it is not even past. Well, he was a smart man but even he probably couldn’t have anticipated the way we have gone spelunking down the memory hole these last few weeks, mining for votes. First, Bush/Kerry rekindled the debate over Vietnam. Then, the hearings turned into the kind of “it wasn’t my fault; it was all your fault” sort of exercise that obscures the past in the smog of partisanship when what most people outside of Washington would settle for is a little more clarity.

With this crew and these hearings—fat chance. When it is not about votes; it is about book sales and television ratings. Will the hearings produce any new information or insights or—perish—the kind of wisdom it will take to prevent a future 9/11?"

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 06:54 AM
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