THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR View 300 March 8 - 14, 2004 |
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This week: | Monday
March 8, 2004 I am finishing the column which in theory was due last night, but when the 7th is on a Sunday I finish it up on Monday. Adelphia Cable Modem is still out, and I'm still using the satellite. This gives high speed transmission and so is good for big files, but each request has to go to space and back so the latency is horrible. NOTE the VIRUS Warning in MAIL
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This week: | Tuesday,
March 9, 2004
Coming up for air. Saw the game last night: I don't think Shaq intended to hit that guy. Neither did either announcer. This may become interesting. Clearing off my desk, getting ready to do fiction again. ================= I don't particularly like being the defender of Martha Stewart, who may or may not be a nice person. I have never met her. What I am concerned about is that she committed no indictable offense, but was ruined, and will be imprisoned, and used as an example, for lying, not under oath and without any warning that what she said might subject her to criminal charges, to "Federal Investigators." That in itself is a step on the road to tyranny. It is also a step on the road to converting us all from citizens with some moral and ethical obligation to cooperate with our government, to something different. See http://www.applink.net/wolfpack/past/c/causes_of_rebellion.html for where it leads. ================== Several people have sent this link, which I actually put in my first column about the Mac but which I think I haven't put up here:
http://members.cox.net/clyqz/macs.html You might also want to look at: Subject: Implications of Google. http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/224 --- Roland Dobbins The why will be self-evident.
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This week: |
Wednesday,
March 10, 2004 A fine morning in Los Angeles. Cleaning up mail. For a scary new blackmail scheme that just might affect you, see mail. =============== This morning's LA Times had yet another story about how puzzled the economists are: the economy is booming, but there are no jobs being created. Of course there are plenty of jobs being created. They just aren't being created in the United States of America. Immigrants soak up the low-paying service jobs, keeping that price of labor low (if it weren't for immigrants the minimum wage would be considerably higher and no legislation would be needed to get it there); while Free Trade puts a cap on what can be paid for exportable skilled work. Welcome to the New Age, where telephone tech support facilities built in Appalachia with huge local subsidies now sit idle because the jobs are in Bangalore, and people who left the mines to be retrained for this new work now can't even find jobs as miners. They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there -- but a lot of people would scab for J. H. Blair now only he ain't hiring union or non-union. Rule by the middle class requires that everyone have the ability through hard work and regular habits to become part of the middle class. If they can't, they can use the vote for something else. ================= I hope we have had enough of the Stewart case, since I think all possible views have been given. My conclusion is simple: the lesson here is, never cooperate with the government under any circumstances, whether or not the investigation is about you, since anything you say can be used against you, and if they want to get you, it will be. This is not the lesson I learned in Civics at Christian Brothers College High School in Memphis, nor is it the lesson that one would wish taught in a proper Republic; but it is the lesson of the Martha Stewart case, make no mistake about it. The government wanted to send a message about the awful majesty of the government's agents. Message received.
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This week: |
Thursday,
March 11, 2004 It is 0930 and already hot. We have to take Sable for a walk, after which I'll take her to the groomers. I have posted one letter. I'll get to more later.
She looks wonderful!
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This week: |
Friday,
March 12, 2004 This is a day to be devoured by locusts. Bills to pay, errands to run. The bombings in Spain show the jihad snake is not dead; but we knew that. The question is, what shall be done? One possibility is not a possibility, which is to renew the Crusades with a vengeance, expel all Muslims from Christian territories, and in general make it very difficult to do this sort of thing in our part of the world. Another is to subject all citizens to repressive measures in the name of equality and not "profiling". In the name of security and liberty pretty well end liberty and hope that gets us security. A third is to put up with a few thousand casualties per decade as part of the price of liberty, just as we put up with millions of cases of congestive heart failure per decade as the price being free to smoke and drink and eat as we choose. It will be interesting to see which we choose. As to who done it in Spain, I think there's little doubt that al Qaeda with the help of Spanish Muslims brought this one off. It's not the style of the Basques. ===================
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This week: | Saturday,
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This week: | Sunday,
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