Ball Diamond Ball

No philosophy makes any sense without reference to basic principles. Here are mine:

Individual Rights are the only rights which exist.
The very idea of collective or group rights is in conflict with the idea of individual rights. The U.S. Constitution guarantees certain enumerated rights to Americans without prejudicing unmentioned rights.

The Constitution is the source document for all law in America.
No law contrary to the Constitution is a law. No other document (or worse, undocumented idea) is equal in stature to the Constitution. Rights do not flow from the Constitution, but pass through it to us from a higher source. The higher source is unassailable by any law.

Islam is manifestly incompatible with democracy and is therefore hostile to the United States. This does not make … Continue reading →

This is the lead paragraph of a calmly-written, scientific-toned opinion piece by Bob Carter of the Daily Telegraph:

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

This is a great read, and the sort of cautious but backed-up-by-facts discourse I expect in scientific reading. Contrast this with the death shrieks which … Continue reading →

VERY ROUGH DRAFT:
Comments welcome.

In my Defense of the Death Penalty, one of the key points is that the value of life is set in a market, not as an absloute. It may be an absolute to you that every life is precious, and frankly, I appreciate your upward contribution to the aggregate value, but there are people who do not hold so refreshing a view as yours. To some, the value of your life is to be measured against, say, the value of that wristwatch of yours, as modified by your ability to deny its possession. In this way, perhaps the Buddhists are correct, in that the value of your worldly wealth is subtracted from the value of your life (this is a gross simplification, and … Continue reading →

EARLY DRAFT: Obviously unfinished. Feedback welcome…

EFF, E2A, and You: The Electronic Second Amendment.

What guarantees your access to the world beyond your browser?

In world of physical media and flesh-and-blood people, the second amendment protects the first, protects itself, and protects most of the rest of the bill of rights, as well as the constitution itself.

Conservatives are typically supporters of a freedom-based interpretation of the second amendment, and enjoy pointing out that if armament goes, speech will soon follow.

How unseemly then, that the online equivalent of the second amendment has become the preserve of scruffy hippies, while conservatives, almost by default, hold ground bounded on the high side by the impassable mountains of censorship, while the low side ends in the high grass of tumultuous … Continue reading →

What’s the difference between Al Gore and the Unabomber? The Unabomber knows he’s not the President.

EARLY WORKING DRAFT

Some of you may remember the “Al Gore / Unabomber Test”, which is no longer available at several sites. Please send a link if you find it. Short of that, I’ll simply sum it up like this: there were six quotes from Al Gore’s book Earth In The Balance, and six from “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s Manifesto. The task set before you was to determine from which tract the eco-freak quote was pulled. I failed miserably. So did everybody else. The meaningful statistical difference between average real score and random answers score was nothing.

Why do I bring this up now? Eco-Freak Al Gore has gotten his face back in … Continue reading →

This is great. I heartily recommend reading the whole thing. Here is a money quote, the penultimate paragraph:

Muslims who are never tired of blaming non-Muslims for giving a bad name to their faith should, for their own sake, look at the images of their coreligionists holding swords over the heads of innocent foreigners in Iraq. Do they not look evil? I have always wondered if the Muslims realize the impact of statements written on banners behind Islamist head choppers. What kind of Allah and the prophet would bless the acts of barbarism? Those banners proclaim that the worst kind of barbarism is being carried out in line with Islamic teachings. Why shouldn’t a non Muslim think that Islam is an evil faith when all of the … Continue reading →

[UPDATE KEY: verified, disproven, new.
This is my off-the-cuff theory: the ship was heavily modified (see pictures), and was subsequently overloaded (conjecture). Heavy seas and high winds (various reports) contributed to the instability. The ship, probably ungainly even in a calm sea, in the bad weather was moving enough that some vehicles broke free and began sliding around, becoming a serious free weight issue (conjecture). Perhaps passengers assembled on one side of the ship for some reason (conjecture).
The ship seems to … Continue reading →

What’s the difference between Al Gore and the Unabomber? The Unabomber knows he’s not the President.

EARLY WORKING DRAFT

Some of you may remember the “Al Gore / Unabomber Test”, which is no longer available at several sites. Please send a link if you find it. Short of that, I’ll simply sum it up like this: there were six quotes from Al Gore’s book Earth In The Balance, and six from “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s Manifesto. The task set before you was to determine from which tract the eco-freak quote was pulled. I failed miserably. So did everybody else. The meaningful statistical difference between average real score and random answers score was nothing.

Why do I bring this up now? Eco-Freak Al Gore has gotten his face back in … Continue reading →

Walter Cronkite says we should have abandoned Iraq when a hurricane knocked out NOLA… He says it would have provided a perfect excuse. I beg to differ. He advocates running away from a commitment.

This would change the nature of all of our international commitments: “The United States hereby commits to come to the aid of any country signatory to this pact against aggression and other forms of tyranny–unless in case of rain, in which case we will only play home games.”

A commitment is something you must do. Capital letter-C “Commitment” is what guarantees you will do it. A commitment is something you can point to on paper, and is something which can be counted, whereas Commitment is found within the hearts of trustworthy people, and cannot … Continue reading →