Thursday, June 17, 2004

A Sample from Colby Cosh's Mailbag

Evidently, Colby Cosh struck a reader’s nerve.  The salutation from a recent reader’s letter to Colby.

"LIARS!!! CHARLATANS!!! ASSHOLES… PISS DRINKERS!!!!
BRIAN RANVILLE
BRANDON, MB.
[phone number deleted] IF YOU WANNA KISS MY ASS OR EAT MY SHIT!!!"

Read the body of the letter here.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/17 at 04:26 AM
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The Femininity Vote

"It is time for a new wave of political pressure on the political parties in our own country. The process must start in the primaries. For every office at the state and federal level, we must begin to demand that an equal number of women and men candidates stand for the nomination of their party."

Sort of like a mass, powder your nose, girl’s bathroom break?

The above was written by Madeline Kunin and published in the Boston Globe.

Rainbough Phillips’ response as posted at Catallarchy.

"Apparently being female I cannot be adequately represented in a democracy unless the number of females in congress is proportionate to that in the population. And there I was planning on voting on the issues this year. I had no idea that I was supposed to be voting “female.”"

Posted by John Venlet on 06/17 at 04:16 AM
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Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Beam Me Up, Scotty

"In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, scientists have transferred physical characteristics between atoms by using a phenomenon so bizarre that even Albert Einstein called it spooky.

Such “quantum teleportation” of characteristics had been demonstrated before between beams of light."

“Scientists Transfer Info Between Atoms."

Via Drudge.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/16 at 03:03 PM
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Not Exactly What Comes to Mind

When I read or hear the word “perky,” I don’t usually think of the following, but, my mind may be in the gutter.

“European Stocks Perky, Rate Fears Subside."

Article link via Google News.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/16 at 06:40 AM
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Democracy in Action?

So, in Western Michigan, on Monday, there were elections, or calls to voters anyway, for the children of course, because the issues presented to the voters had to do with funding schools, buildings, busses, and a school official or two.  Let’s consider just one article regarding this event, and some information presented within.

When I first unrolled The Grand Rapids Press last night, the headline which jumped out at me was this, “A victory for the city." But it was the secondary headline, as presented in the dead tree copy, that really caught my eye.  "Voters give GR schools $165 million; officials say hard work just beginning." When I read those headlines, I wondered just who was “giving” $165 million to the GR schools, and why it was a victory.  Let’s look.

From the article linked above, we are informed that,

"The 17 percent voter turnout was among the highest in the region." So, 17 percent of eligible voters “gave” GR schools $165 million.  Now, what does that 17 percent figure represent?  According to the numbers presented in the paper, though not available online, the 17 percent represented 11,723 yes votes, and 7,063 no votes, for a total of 18,786 voters.  Thus, those 18,786 voters, are supposedly speaking for 110,505 voters, which is the total eligible 100 percent.  Working off of those numbers, we can determine that the 11,723 yes voters represent 10.6 percent of the total eligible voters, so 10.6 percent of the voters are coercing the 89.4 percent total eligible voters, into “giving” GR schools $165 million.

When I think about those numbers, I fully appreciate the violence of political action, and why the vote represents a “victory” to the coercers.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/16 at 06:06 AM
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Checking the Numbers

"Don’t become a novelist; be a statistician, much more scope for the imagination."

I borrowed the above quote, attributable to whom, I am not sure, from Russell Whitaker at Survival Arts, who borrowed it from a post a Samizdata. Read that quote again.

Now read a post by Stuart Buck titled “Words and Children, which looks into some research on verbal interaction between parents and their children, and the children’s subsequent testing abilities and vocabulary depth.  Reading Buck’s post made me wonder if the researchers were all statisticians, or simply math challenged.

Link to Stuart Buck’s post via Billy Beck.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/16 at 04:27 AM
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Abu Ghraib, Nope Saudi Arabia

The images, associated with the article I will link in a moment, look very similiar to the images which came to the world out of Abu Ghraib.  But, since the prisoner in the images is an American, being held by some Islamofascists in Saudi Arabia, there is no outrage at the images, heck, there’s no outrage that the individual in the images is under death threats.  The story is simply a news item, about an American being held hostage, who may be killed.  Ho, hum.

“Islamic Group Shows Tape of U.S. Hostage."

Posted by John Venlet on 06/16 at 04:19 AM
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004

This is Journalism?

Yahoo News provides a link to a story titled “Bidders for gunmaker’s assets hope to shut it down," a headline that naturally drew my attention.  The very first paragraph, leads the reader down the path of the anti-gun drummers’ camp.

"A gun company whose product accidentally paralyzed a California teenager goes on the auction block Thursday at a bankruptcy sale with some rather unlikely bidders."

Reading the above, could lead one to feel that a nasty old gun, in an angry moment, just up and discharged into some hapless individual.  Folderol.  The gun was in some individual’s hand.

The next two paragraphs expand on the article’s headline.

"Family and friends of 17-year-old Brandon Maxfield said they will bid on the assets of gun manufacturer Bruce Jennings - who specializes in inexpensive pistols called “Saturday night specials” - and plan to close Jennings’ business for good if their bid wins.

“It wouldn’t be used to make guns; Brandon has no interest in ‘blood money,’ “ said his attorney, Richard Ruggieri of San Rafael, Calif. “The critical issue ... is (preventing) the business from just being flipped over and continuing. That’s what we’re really in it for."

Right, anti-gun attorney’s are never in it for the money, they only want to protect society from those guns, especially those guns that just up and shoot somebody for no reason at all.  It can’t have anything to do with the fact that the manufacturer declared bankruptcy,

"One day after the jury’s verdict became official, Jennings filed for protection under federal bankruptcy law. His businesses, headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., have ceased production, said Ned Nashban, a lawyer for Jennings."

and the $23 million awarded by the sheep pen full of jurors, cannot be collected.

A child being shot and paralyzed, is tragic.  A jury determining that the gun manufacturer is 45 percent liable, is, to me, a more tragic event.

Via Yahoo News.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/15 at 12:37 PM
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Will Al Gore File a Competing Claim?

“Inventor of world wide web wins $1.65-million Prize."

"Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web, never received either the fame or the fortune accumulated by other Internet stars.

A lot of that changed on Tuesday when Berners-Lee received the first Millennium Technology Prize, a one million euro ($1.65 million Cdn) cash award recognizing his revolutionary contribution to humanity’s ability to communicate."

Via Google News.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/15 at 12:00 PM
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Monday, June 14, 2004

Dive In

Saturday and Sunday NBC broadcasted the U.S. Olympic Diving Trials, and I must say, I enjoyed viewing the competition, especially, the ten meter platform dives.  Laura Wilkinson once again captured a spot on the 10 meter platform team, and I congratulate her for that.

The gracefulness of the divers in the air, twisting, somersaulting, and spinning is a sight to behold.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/14 at 04:49 AM
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Sunday, June 13, 2004

If You Can't Stand the Heat, Stay Out of the Kitchen

How do you feel about non-compete clauses?  Personally, though I’ve signed one or two in the past, I’ve never let them bar me from pursuing what I needed to do to earn income.  One organization attempted to rein me in with a non-compete clause, utilizing letters from attorneys with imposing letterheads, which I replied to with a hearty invitation to pursue their spurious legal claim.  Nothing came of it.

Now, this does not mean that I would utilize proprietory information from a business with which I had severed ties.  I find doing that a somewhat repulsive use of someone elses shoulders to stand on, and I prefer to stand on my own.

Non-compete clauses are nothing more than a garlic necklace, or silver cross, to brandish because certain companies and individuals are afraid of competition.

“Hospital sues doctor over practice location."

Posted by John Venlet on 06/13 at 08:30 AM
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Practicing Proctology, Now?

Asininity is like kudzu, these days, and the TSA union representing the proctologist wannabe screeners, who apparently think they are conducting probing rectal exams, have their heads so far up their anal cavities, they’re choking on it.

"On several occasions, for several days each, the union and screeners said, there were no large or extra-large gloves at Terminal C, for international arrivals, forcing baggage screeners to use their bare hands to conduct searches—if they conducted them at all.

“If you’re a screener and you’re told to go through this bag, and you have no gloves, would you be sure-fired to go through this bag, or would you be hesitant?” asked Joe Seawright, the Newark organizer for the union, which represents about 30 Newark screeners."

Bend over, please.

“Union Says Newark Glove Shortage a Threat."

Also, I wonder if the gloves carry the “union” label?

Posted by John Venlet on 06/13 at 08:17 AM
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The Ripest Fruit

I read the following, taken from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, early last week and it struck a chord with me.  In fact, I seem to keep being drawn to this passage, and rereading it, once, or twice, a day for the past week.  Though I may tweak a word or two within the passage, I have found it to be a choice morsel.

“If we place ourselves at the end of this tremendous process, where the tree at last brings forth fruit, where society and the morality of custom at last reveal what they have simply been the means to: then we discover that the ripest fruit is the sovereign individual, like only to himself, liberated again from morality of custom, autonomous and supramoral (for “automonous” and “moral” are mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has his own independent, protracted will and the right to make promises--and in him a proud consciousness of his own power and freedom, a sensation of mankind come to completion.  This emancipated individual, with the actual right to make promises, this master of a free will, this sovereign man--how should he not be aware of his superiority over all those who lack the right to make promises and stand as their own guarantors, of how much trust, how much fear, how much reverence he arouses-- he “deserves” all three--and of how this mastery over himself also necessarily gives him mastery over circumstances, over nature, and over all more short-willed and unreliable creatures?  The “free” man, the possessor of a protracted and unbreakable will, also possesses his measure of value: looking out upon others from himself, he honors or he despises: and just as he is bound to honor his peers, the strong and reliable (those with the right to make promises)--that is, all those who promise like sovereigns, reluctantly, rarely, slowly, who are chary of trusting, whose trust is a mark of distinction, who give their word as something that can be relied on because they know themselves strong enough to maintain it in the face of accidents, even “in the face of fate"--he is bound to reserve a kick for the feeble windbags who promise without the right to do so, and a rod for the liar who breaks his word even at the moment he utters it.  The proud awareness of the extraordinary privilige of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over oneself and over fate, has in his case penetrated to the profoundest depths and become instinct, the dominating instinct.  What will he call this dominating instinct, supposing he feels the need to give it a name?  The answer is beyond doubt: this sovereign man calls it his conscience."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Translated and Edited by Walter Kaufmann, Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, “Guilt,” “Bad Conscience,” and the Like, Section 2, pg. 495

Posted by John Venlet on 06/13 at 05:52 AM
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Friday, June 11, 2004

Mommy, He's Not Playing by the Rules

Most of us, at some point in our lives, have heard the phrase used as the title to this post, which is typically uttered by children under the age of ten years old.  It still can be heard coming from the mouths of children, today, who happen to be over the age of ten, lobbying voters to shakedown the residents of East Grand Rapids for more money for the “community.”

"It’s OK to be opposed to the proposal, and I think debate is healthy,” said City Commissioner Don Lawless. “But we should have a standard that we identify ourselves when we engage the debate."

I bet Don Lawless, and those like him, wouldn’t be calling for a standard of identification if some anonymous donor was coughing up the money, rather than lobbying against.

“Familiar face behind last-minute bid to defeat EGR library plan."

Posted by John Venlet on 06/11 at 03:12 PM
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Compassion, True Enough

"Liberals think compassion has only one manifestation: support for social-welfare programs. But these programs are coercive. They take people’s wealth without their consent (against their will) and give it to others. That’s not compassion! That’s not even benevolence. It’s coercion. Like a robber, the state says, “Give me your money or else.” Compassion is concern for others that manifests itself in voluntary giving."

The above was written by Keith Burgess-Jackson, the Anal Philosopher. Keith’s post is titled “Clichés and Mixed Metaphors." The remainder of Keith’s post is also worth a read.

Posted by John Venlet on 06/11 at 09:00 AM
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