Whirlpool is selling a "smart" washing machine for $1,700 that can be operated through the Internet…

where, ironically, most people put their dirty laundry.

*.*

I wonder how much money the average pirate would save on his dry cleaning if he'd just leave that parrot home once in a while?

*.*

This old couple is ready to go to sleep so the old man lays on the bed but the old woman lays on the floor. 

The old man asks, ''Why are you going to sleep on the floor?'' 

The old woman says, "Because I want to feel something hard for a change."

*.*

Keith walks into a bar.

Unfortunately, there is a pile of dog shit just inside the door, and he slips in it and falls over. He gets up, cleans himself up and walks to the bar and buys a drink.

A great big man called Pete then enters the bar.

He too slips in the same pile of shit, falls over, gets up, cleans up and then goes and buys a drink.

Little Keith turns to Big Pete and, trying to strike up a conversation, points to the pile by the door and says, "I just did that."

So, Big Pete punches Keith in the mouth.

*.*

I was inspecting communications facilities in Alaska. Since I had little experience in flying in small planes, I was nervous when we approached a landing strip in a snow-covered area. The pilot descended to just a couple hundred feet, then gunned both engines, climbed, and circled back.

While my heart pounded, the passenger beside me seemed calm. "I wonder why he didn't land," I said.

"He was checking to see if the landing strip was ploughed," the man said.

As we made a second approach, I glanced out the window. "It looks ploughed to me," I commented.

"No," my seatmate said.  "It hasn't been cleared for some time."

"How can you tell?" 

"Because," the man informed me, "I'm the guy who drives the plough."

Issue of the Times;
The Titanic Coverup Unravels by Christopher Condon

Gerhard Wisnewski is a German writer of non-fiction books and articles. He writes in the German language and his books are widely read in the German-speaking countries. He has written a number of successful books, many of them dealing with what are popularly termed conspiracy theories. One of his recent books, entitled Das Titanic Attentat (“The Titanic Murder”), is about the sinking of the Titanic in April, 1912. Unlike some of his books, it is not available in English translation but is definitely worth reading if you know German.

According to the conventional version, the mighty but overconfident Titanic accidentally struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage from Europe to New York. The collision tore a hole in the ship’s hull and caused it to sink with a huge loss of life. For a long time, it was difficult to challenge this official version because the best evidence, the sunken ship itself, had permanently settled in one of the deepest areas of the Atlantic Ocean, too deep to be accessible to investigators. (Incidentally, if the Titanic had sunk just a few miles to the west of where it actually sank, it would have wound up in much shallower waters where it would have been possible, even in 1912, to get to the wreckage.) Advancements in technology, however, finally made it possible to reach the Titanic in 1985 and to photograph and otherwise examine the wreckage. The new evidence that has emerged from this and from other sources has prompted Wisnewski to rethink the traditional story and to raise some disturbing questions.

·         Why did the crew make no effort to plug the leak in the Titanic, something sailors are trained to do?

·         Why did the Titanic deliberately sail into a field of icebergs?

·         Why have none of the photographs taken of the Titanic since 1985 found much damage that could be attributed to an iceberg?

·         Why did the Titanic’s crew throw an especially lavish party on the night of the disaster, a party that made many passengers and crewmembers drunk?

·         What happened to the Titanic’s logs and nautical maps? After the Titanic allegedly hit an iceberg, the crew still had 2.5 hours to save them, yet failed to do so, offering the excuse that even 2.5 hours was not enough. A few years later, however, the Lusitania was hit by a torpedo and sank in 18 minutes, yet its crew still managed to save most of these things.

·         Why did so many passengers cancel their reservations at the last minute, including some close associates of the owner, J.P. Morgan? The cancellation was especially puzzling in the case of Mr. and Mrs. J. Horace Harding. The Hardings said that they had suddenly realized that they were in a hurry to get to New York, so they switched their reservations to the Mauretania, which was scheduled to leave Europe sooner. Apparently the Hardings had not read the timetables very closely, because although the Mauretania did indeed leave Europe sooner, it also arrived in New York later.

·         What happened to Luis Klein, a surviving crewmember and native Hungarian of the Jewish faith? After the disaster, Klein had been outspoken in his criticism of the Titanic’s captain and top crewmembers. Perhaps for this reason, he was called to testify before the US Senate. Unfortunately, on the day before he was to do so, Klein disappeared from his Washington hotel room and was never seen again.

·         After the alleged collision with the iceberg, why did the Titanic’s crew members hasten the ship’s demise by making almost every conceivable mistake?

·         Why was no effort made to delay the sinking of the Titanic by jettisoning the anchor and chains? The anchor alone weighed 50 tons.

·         Why were the sleeping passengers not awakened?

·         Why did Captain Edward John Smith commit a criminal offense by sailing his ship for days with an unextinguished fire in his ship’s coal bunker? Why did he sign a false statement in Southampton, England denying the existence of this fire?

·         Why did it take the crew 2 hours to lower all the Titanic’s lifeboats into the water when they could have done it in 1 hour?

·         Before the Titanic could deploy any of its own lifeboats, there were already lifeboats in the water that could not have come from the Titanic. From which ship did these lifeboats come? From the mysterious ship that was spotted in the distance but never identified? What was the name of that ship and why did it not come to the Titanic’s rescue?

·         Why did the Titanic crew not follow the custom of giving priority to the passengers over themselves?

·         How did a collision with an iceberg cause the Titanic to sink? Ships frequently collide with icebergs, yet rarely sink, and almost never as fast as the Titanic sank.

·         What caused the Titanic to break in half shortly before it sank? Could the breakup of the Titanic have been caused by the two explosions heard minutes before?

·         Why were the Titanic’s crew members as well as many of the surviving passengers threatened with dire consequences if they talked to reporters and investigators?

·         Why did many crewmembers quit the Titanic after the ship’s first stop in Cherbourg, France rather than complete the voyage to New York?

·         Why did the men who had been working in the Titanic’s boiler room quit and take new jobs as bricklayers before they could tell their story to government investigators?

There was an official government investigation on each side of the Atlantic Ocean, one British and the other American, yet neither investigation raised much less answered any of these questions. When interrogated during the official investigations, crew members were remarkably ignorant regarding important aspects of their ship. If they gave any answers at all, they made sure that they were as short as possible, and they never went out of their way to say anything more. Judging from the statements of the crewmembers to the investigators, the White Star Line had built one of the most magnificent cruise ships in the world only to hire some of the most incompetent people in the world to sail it. And in spite of the fact that approximately 1500 persons died in the disaster, there was no criminal investigation whatsoever.

So if the official version of what happened to the Titanic is incorrect, then what is the correct version? According to Wisnewski, the whole story began when the noted financier, J.P. Morgan, with the encouragement of President Theodore Roosevelt, bought the White Star Line from British owners in 1902. The British Government was none too pleased that a foreigner was buying the White Star Line, but was not able to prevent Morgan’s working his way around British regulations designed to prevent foreigners from purchasing it. The reader might wonder why the British Government would even care whether or not a British citizen owned the White Star Line. Unlike five-star restaurants and luxury resorts, however, luxury liners have military value. The British Government thought that a war might break out (which of course did happen in 1914), and it wanted to be able to take charge of huge vessels like the Titanic so that it could move large numbers of soldiers quickly and without the need for naval escort. The British Government had already commandeered luxury liners during the Crimean War, would so again during the Second World War and yet again during the Falklands War. (According to Winston Churchill, the availability of luxury liners shortened the Second World War by about one year.) For this reason, the British Government wanted the White Star Line to remain under the ownership of British citizens, though not necessarily under the immediate control of the British Navy.

After it passed into the hands of J.P. Morgan, the White Star Line announced an ambitious program consisting in the construction of three magnificent luxury passenger liners to be known collectively as the Olympic Class. These three liners were to be named the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Gigantic, and were to be built in that order. Unfortunately, less than a year after the Olympic, the first of the three liners, was finally launched on October 20, 1910, it met with a terrible accident. On September 20, 1911, just as the Olympic was leaving Southampton harbor on the south coast of England, it collided with the Hawke, a British navy cruiser. Inasmuch as the Hawke was a military vessel specially designed to ram enemy ships, it is no wonder that it inflicted massive damage on the Olympic. Morgan may even have suspected that the collision was not an accident at all. As we have seen, the British Government had motive to damage the Olympic, and if it had deliberately intended to do so, there was certainly no vessel better equipped to do the job than the Hawke. Inasmuch as the matter fell under British jurisdiction, the furious Morgan had to go to British courts to get justice. Unfortunately, these ruled that the Olympic rather than the Hawke had been at fault. This not only made it impossible for Morgan to collect compensation from the British Government, but also complicated Morgan’s efforts to collect compensation from his own insurance company. So what to do? It was only a matter of a little time before a mandatory routine inspection in either Europe or North America showed that the Olympic had sustained so much damage at the hands of the Hawke that the White Star Line would have to write it off as a total loss. So J.P Morgan needed to act quickly.

Now it happened that around this time, construction was nearing completion on the second liner in the Olympic Class, the Titanic, an identical sister ship to the Olympic. According to Wisnewski, J.P. Morgan came up with a diabolical plan. He started by being careful not to make public the extent of the damage to the Olympic. He then greatly increased the insurance on the Titanic just a week before its maiden voyage to $12.5 million, $2.5 million more than it had cost to build. Morgan next ordered the identities of the Olympic and the Titanic secretly switched. The damaged and largely worthless Olympic was renamed the Titanic, and the brand new Titanic was renamed the Olympic. The ship that was now named the Titanic, but which had originally been named the Olympic, then embarked on what was sold to the unsuspecting public as the maiden voyage of the Titanic. On that voyage, Captain Smith deliberately sailed into an area of the Atlantic Ocean that he knew was filled with icebergs, and destroyed his ship by means that are not entirely clear, but which probably involved some sort of explosion in one of the coal bunkers. The claim of the White Star Line that the ship had accidentally sunk as a result of a collision with an iceberg initially seemed believable, especially because some crewmembers did claim to have seen an iceberg. But if given a little more time to reflect than they actually had, journalists, government investigators, and the public at large might have become suspicious. For one thing, none of the passengers said that they had seen an iceberg, only some of the crew, and not all of them. Among those crewmembers who said that they had seen an iceberg, none could describe it in anything other than the vaguest terms. Worse still, hardly anyone saw the ship strike the iceberg.

The best eyewitnesses would of course have been Captain Smith, his two assistants, and the chief architect of the ship, all of whom were on board. But none of these four men could testify because they had all drowned. At least that is what everybody believed. But there is reason to be suspicious. For one thing, none of their bodies were ever recovered. For another, Peter Pryal, a sailor who had served under Captain Smith on many other voyages over a period of almost 20 years, claimed that he saw and spoke with Captain Smith on a street corner in downtown Baltimore on two successive July days several months after Smith had supposedly drowned.  Could Pryal have been suffering from delusions, perhaps brought on by alcohol? Not likely. On the written testimony of his physician, Pryal was of sound mind and had no history of alcohol abuse. Moreover, it is known that Captain Smith had a nephew in Baltimore, who incidentally soon disappeared.

J.P. Morgan appeared innocent of any wrongdoing because after all he had booked passage on the Titanic himself and canceled only at the last minute because of illness, or so he said. (He later returned to the United States aboard the ship known as the Olympic, which, according to Wisnewski, was really the Titanic.) But there is reason to believe that Morgan may have known even when he booked his reservation that he would never actually board the ship. For one thing, it is doubtful that there was any last-minute illness at all. A New York Times correspondent, who saw Morgan at his seventy-fifth birthday party just two days after the Titanic sank, found Morgan looking very well and showing no signs of illness. Moreover, a glance at Morgan’s travel itineraries during previous years raises further doubts about his real intentions. These itineraries showed that year after year Morgan followed a fairly predictable pattern by spending the spring season in France and returning to the United States in the summer. He almost always celebrated April 17, his birthday, in Aix-les-Bains (near Lyon), arriving there almost every year on exactly the same day on exactly the same train. If what Morgan had done in most previous years were any indication of what he intended to do in 1912, Morgan intended to be in Aix-les-Bains rather than on the Titanic on April 17.

The possibility that Morgan had never intended to board the Titanic at all is given additional weight by the fate of the paintings that he had purchased in Europe. Morgan had been an avid art collector with deep pockets who frequently purchased expensive works of art during his vacations in Europe and then took them on board with him when he sailed back to the United States. If J.P. Morgan canceled only at the last minute because of unexpected illness, then his art would most likely have already been on board and would have gone down with the ship. But Morgan’s art survived because he had never placed it on board the Titanic in the first place.

Advancements in deep sea technology are making it possible to probe more and more deeply into this mystery. In recent times, for example, investigators have started to focus their attention on the four-foot-high iron letters on the bow of the ship that spell out “Titanic.” From the preliminary examination of this lettering, it appears as though these letters were fastened on top of still other letters, suggesting that the ship may once have had another name. Two of the letters have fallen off the wreck and probably disappeared forever. Underneath these letters are the letters M and P, letters which could have helped to spell out “Olympic.” Unfortunately, the other letters are rather difficult to decipher and could be interpreted in any number of ways.

There are discrepancies between what we know of the ship on the bottom of the Atlantic and the Titanic. The former appears to have been painted twice, the first time in grey and the second time in black. We know that the Olympic was painted twice, but to the best of our knowledge, the Titanic was painted only once and in black. Also, the ship on the bottom of the Atlantic was outfitted with an elaborate system to facilitate the deployment of lifeboats. To the best of our knowledge, the Olympic had such a system but the Titanic never did.

As technology progresses, we may someday know the full story of the Titanic disaster. It goes without saying that if Gerhard Wisnewski’s suspicions turn out to be correct, the reputation of J.P. Morgan will be forever destroyed.

Quote of the Times;
“Social Justice warriors know that the revealed truth is that evil racists Whites don’t care about girls being kidnapped unless the girls are White.  Of course, the media has been covering it.  But would they be covering it more if Muslims had kidnapped hundreds of young girls, as these Social Justice warriors are implying?  The fact that they were unaware of the Rotherham schoolgirl sex abuse scandal which their fellow Leftists aided and abetted by silencing accusers answers that question.  What happened to young girls in Nigeria and in Rotherham are both horrible and beyond the pale.  But it is the Left who seem to not care about young girls who are of a particular race.”

Link of the Times;
http://thepunditpress.com/2015/01/22/arizona-state-university-offers-class-on-the-problem-of-whiteness/

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Q.  What's the difference between an aerobics instructor  and a dentist?

A.  A dentist lets you sit down while he hurts you.

*.*

A customer was continually bothering the waiter in a restaurant; first, he'd asked that the air conditioning be turned up because he was too hot, then he asked it be turned down cause he was too cold, and so on for about half an hour. Surprisingly, the waiter was very patient, he walked back and forth and never once got angry.

So finally, a second customer asked him why he didn't throw out the pest.

"Oh I don't care." said the waiter with a smile. "We don't even have an air conditioner."

*.*

Katy Perry has offered to write a theme song for Hillary Clinton if she runs for President in 2016. 

The tough part: finding a word that rhymes with Benghazi.

*.*

The Army Airborne major was used to harassment from Air Force fliers about crazy Army paratroopers jumping out of perfectly good aircraft.  "Obviously the Air Force knows there's no such thing as a 'perfectly good aircraft,'" the irritated officer finally countered one afternoon, "because they pay you bastards four times as much to stay in one as the Army pays its men to jump."

"You've got it all wrong, Major," an Air Force sergeant replied.  "The Army figures anyone stupid enough to jump out of an airplane voluntarily is gonna be too dumb to bitch about the salary."

*.*

Many say illegal immigration is a major issue in Texas.

Well, at least, Doctors Without Borders can stay home this year.

Issue of the Times;
The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think

It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems manifestly true. Until I set off three and a half years ago on a 30,000-mile journey for my new book, Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Days of the War on Drugs, to figure out what is really driving the drug war, I believed it too. But what I learned on the road is that almost everything we have been told about addiction is wrong -- and there is a very different story waiting for us, if only we are ready to hear it.  If we truly absorb this new story, we will have to change a lot more than the drug war. We will have to change ourselves.

I learned it from an extraordinary mixture of people I met on my travels. From the surviving friends of Billie Holiday, who helped me to learn how the founder of the war on drugs stalked and helped to kill her. From a Jewish doctor who was smuggled out of the Budapest ghetto as a baby, only to unlock the secrets of addiction as a grown man. From a transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn who was conceived when his mother, a crack-addict, was raped by his father, an NYPD officer. From a man who was kept at the bottom of a well for two years by a torturing dictatorship, only to emerge to be elected President of Uruguay and to begin the last days of the war on drugs.

I had a quite personal reason to set out for these answers. One of my earliest memories as a kid is trying to wake up one of my relatives, and not being able to. Ever since then, I have been turning over the essential mystery of addiction in my mind -- what causes some people to become fixated on a drug or a behavior until they can't stop? How do we help those people to come back to us? As I got older, another of my close relatives developed a cocaine addiction, and I fell into a relationship with a heroin addict. I guess addiction felt like home to me.

If you had asked me what causes drug addiction at the start, I would have looked at you as if you were an idiot, and said: "Drugs. Duh." It's not difficult to grasp. I thought I had seen it in my own life. We can all explain it. Imagine if you and I and the next twenty people to pass us on the street take a really potent drug for twenty days. There are strong chemical hooks in these drugs, so if we stopped on day twenty-one, our bodies would need the chemical. We would have a ferocious craving. We would be addicted. That's what addiction means.

One of the ways this theory was first established is through rat experiments -- ones that were injected into the American psyche in the 1980s, in a famous advert by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. You may remember it. The experiment is simple. Put a rat in a cage, alone, with two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with heroin or cocaine. Almost every time you run this experiment, the rat will become obsessed with the drugged water, and keep coming back for more and more, until it kills itself.

The advert explains: "Only one drug is so addictive, nine out of ten laboratory rats will use it. And use it. And use it. Until dead. It's called cocaine. And it can do the same thing to you."

But in the 1970s, a professor of Psychology in Vancouver called Bruce Alexander noticed something odd about this experiment. The rat is put in the cage all alone. It has nothing to do but take the drugs. What would happen, he wondered, if we tried this differently? So Professor Alexander built Rat Park. It is a lush cage where the rats would have colored balls and the best rat-food and tunnels to scamper down and plenty of friends: everything a rat about town could want. What, Alexander wanted to know, will happen then?  In Rat Park, all the rats obviously tried both water bottles, because they didn't know what was in them. But what happened next was startling.

The rats with good lives didn't like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did.

At first, I thought this was merely a quirk of rats, until I discovered that there was -- at the same time as the Rat Park experiment -- a helpful human equivalent taking place. It was called the Vietnam War. Time magazine reported using heroin was "as common as chewing gum" among U.S. soldiers, and there is solid evidence to back this up: some 20 percent of U.S. soldiers had become addicted to heroin there, according to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Many people were understandably terrified; they believed a huge number of addicts were about to head home when the war ended.

But in fact some 95 percent of the addicted soldiers -- according to the same study -- simply stopped. Very few had rehab. They shifted from a terrifying cage back to a pleasant one, so didn't want the drug any more.

Professor Alexander argues this discovery is a profound challenge both to the right-wing view that addiction is a moral failing caused by too much hedonistic partying, and the liberal view that addiction is a disease taking place in a chemically hijacked brain. In fact, he argues, addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's your cage.

After the first phase of Rat Park, Professor Alexander then took this test further. He reran the early experiments, where the rats were left alone, and became compulsive users of the drug. He let them use for fifty-seven days -- if anything can hook you, it's that. Then he took them out of isolation, and placed them in Rat Park. He wanted to know, if you fall into that state of addiction, is your brain hijacked, so you can't recover? Do the drugs take you over? What happened is -- again -- striking. The rats seemed to have a few twitches of withdrawal, but they soon stopped their heavy use, and went back to having a normal life. The good cage saved them. (The full references to all the studies I am discussing are in the book.)

When I first learned about this, I was puzzled. How can this be? This new theory is such a radical assault on what we have been told that it felt like it could not be true. But the more scientists I interviewed, and the more I looked at their studies, the more I discovered things that don't seem to make sense -- unless you take account of this new approach.

Here's one example of an experiment that is happening all around you, and may well happen to you one day. If you get run over today and you break your hip, you will probably be given diamorphine, the medical name for heroin. In the hospital around you, there will be plenty of people also given heroin for long periods, for pain relief. The heroin you will get from the doctor will have a much higher purity and potency than the heroin being used by street-addicts, who have to buy from criminals who adulterate it. So if the old theory of addiction is right -- it's the drugs that cause it; they make your body need them -- then it's obvious what should happen. Loads of people should leave the hospital and try to score smack on the streets to meet their habit.

But here's the strange thing: It virtually never happens. As the Canadian doctor Gabor Mate was the first to explain to me, medical users just stop, despite months of use. The same drug, used for the same length of time, turns street-users into desperate addicts and leaves medical patients unaffected.

If you still believe -- as I used to -- that addiction is caused by chemical hooks, this makes no sense. But if you believe Bruce Alexander's theory, the picture falls into place. The street-addict is like the rats in the first cage, isolated, alone, with only one source of solace to turn to. The medical patient is like the rats in the second cage. She is going home to a life where she is surrounded by the people she loves. The drug is the same, but the environment is different.

This gives us an insight that goes much deeper than the need to understand addicts. Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It's how we get our satisfaction. If we can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find -- the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about 'addiction' altogether, and instead call it 'bonding.' A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn't bond as fully with anything else.

So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.

When I learned all this, I found it slowly persuading me, but I still couldn't shake off a nagging doubt. Are these scientists saying chemical hooks make no difference? It was explained to me -- you can become addicted to gambling, and nobody thinks you inject a pack of cards into your veins. You can have all the addiction, and none of the chemical hooks. I went to a Gamblers' Anonymous meeting in Las Vegas (with the permission of everyone present, who knew I was there to observe) and they were as plainly addicted as the cocaine and heroin addicts I have known in my life. Yet there are no chemical hooks on a craps table.

But still, surely, I asked, there is some role for the chemicals? It turns out there is an experiment which gives us the answer to this in quite precise terms, which I learned about in Richard DeGrandpre's book The Cult of Pharmacology.

Everyone agrees cigarette smoking is one of the most addictive processes around. The chemical hooks in tobacco come from a drug inside it called nicotine. So when nicotine patches were developed in the early 1990s, there was a huge surge of optimism -- cigarette smokers could get all of their chemical hooks, without the other filthy (and deadly) effects of cigarette smoking. They would be freed.

But the Office of the Surgeon General has found that just 17.7 percent of cigarette smokers are able to stop using nicotine patches. That's not nothing. If the chemicals drive 17.7 percent of addiction, as this shows, that's still millions of lives ruined globally. But what it reveals again is that the story we have been taught about The Cause of Addiction lying with chemical hooks is, in fact, real, but only a minor part of a much bigger picture.

This has huge implications for the one-hundred-year-old war on drugs. This massive war -- which, as I saw, kills people from the malls of Mexico to the streets of Liverpool -- is based on the claim that we need to physically eradicate a whole array of chemicals because they hijack people's brains and cause addiction. But if drugs aren't the driver of addiction -- if, in fact, it is disconnection that drives addiction -- then this makes no sense.

Ironically, the war on drugs actually increases all those larger drivers of addiction. For example, I went to a prison in Arizona -- 'Tent City' -- where inmates are detained in tiny stone isolation cages ('The Hole') for weeks and weeks on end to punish them for drug use. It is as close to a human recreation of the cages that guaranteed deadly addiction in rats as I can imagine. And when those prisoners get out, they will be unemployable because of their criminal record -- guaranteeing they with be cut off even more. I watched this playing out in the human stories I met across the world.

There is an alternative. You can build a system that is designed to help drug addicts to reconnect with the world -- and so leave behind their addictions.

This isn't theoretical. It is happening. I have seen it. Nearly fifteen years ago, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population addicted to heroin. They had tried a drug war, and the problem just kept getting worse. So they decided to do something radically different. They resolved to decriminalize all drugs, and transfer all the money they used to spend on arresting and jailing drug addicts, and spend it instead on reconnecting them -- to their own feelings, and to the wider society. The most crucial step is to get them secure housing, and subsidized jobs so they have a purpose in life, and something to get out of bed for. I watched as they are helped, in warm and welcoming clinics, to learn how to reconnect with their feelings, after years of trauma and stunning them into silence with drugs.

One example I learned about was a group of addicts who were given a loan to set up a removals firm. Suddenly, they were a group, all bonded to each other, and to the society, and responsible for each other's care.

The results of all this are now in. An independent study by the British Journal of Criminology found that since total decriminalization, addiction has fallen, and injecting drug use is down by 50 percent. I'll repeat that: injecting drug use is down by 50 percent. Decriminalization has been such a manifest success that very few people in Portugal want to go back to the old system. The main campaigner against the decriminalization back in 2000 was Joao Figueira, the country's top drug cop. He offered all the dire warnings that we would expect from the Daily Mail or Fox News. But when we sat together in Lisbon, he told me that everything he predicted had not come to pass -- and he now hopes the whole world will follow Portugal's example.

This isn't only relevant to the addicts I love. It is relevant to all of us, because it forces us to think differently about ourselves. Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love. The wisest sentence of the twentieth century was E.M. Forster's -- "only connect." But we have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live -- constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.

The writer George Monbiot has called this "the age of loneliness." We have created human societies where it is easier for people to become cut off from all human connections than ever before. Bruce Alexander -- the creator of Rat Park -- told me that for too long, we have talked exclusively about individual recovery from addiction. We need now to talk about social recovery -- how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog.  But this new evidence isn't just a challenge to us politically. It doesn't just force us to change our minds. It forces us to change our hearts.

Loving an addict is really hard. When I looked at the addicts I love, it was always tempting to follow the tough love advice doled out by reality shows like Intervention -- tell the addict to shape up, or cut them off. Their message is that an addict who won't stop should be shunned. It's the logic of the drug war, imported into our private lives. But in fact, I learned, that will only deepen their addiction -- and you may lose them altogether. I came home determined to tie the addicts in my life closer to me than ever -- to let them know I love them unconditionally, whether they stop, or whether they can't.

When I returned from my long journey, I looked at my ex-boyfriend, in withdrawal, trembling on my spare bed, and I thought about him differently. For a century now, we have been singing war songs about addicts. It occurred to me as I wiped his brow, we should have been singing love songs to them all along.

The full story of Johann Hari's journey -- told through the stories of the people he met -- can be read in Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, published by Bloomsbury. The book has been praised by everyone from Elton John to Glenn Greenwald to Naomi Klein. You can buy it at all good bookstores and read more at www.chasingthescream.com.

Quote of the Times;
Walk with those seeking Truth. Run from those who think they've found it. - Chopra

Link of the Times;
http://www.jtl.org/auster/PNS.pdf

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A new survey found that 27 percent of airline passengers don't like making small talk with the person sitting next to them. 

Or so the guy in the seat next to me brought up three times...

*.*

After welcoming his replacement and showing the usual courtesies that protocol decreed, the retiring colonel said, "You must meet my Adjutant, Captain Smithers. He's my right-hand man; he's really the strength of this office. His talent is simply boundless."

Smithers was summoned and introduced to the new CO, who was surprised to meet a humpbacked, one eyed, toothless, hairless, scabbed and pockmarked specimen of humanity, a particularly unattractive man less than three feet tall. "Smithers, old man, tell your new CO about yourself."

"Well, sir, I graduated with honors from Sandhurst, joined the regiment and won the Military Cross and Bar after three expeditions behind enemy lines. I've represented Great Britain in equestrian events, and won a Silver Medal in the middleweight division of the Olympics. I have researched the history of....."

Here the colonel interrupted, "Yes, yes, never mind those Smithers, he can find all that in your file. Tell him about the day you told the witch doctor to fuck off." 

*.*

This Friday was "Take your Dog to Work Day.” 

This of course, makes Monday "Apologize to the boss for what your dog did in his office on Friday" Day.

*.*

Doug goes to a doctor and says: 

"Doctor, my wife recently has lost her voice. What should I do to help her get it back?" 

The doctor replies, "Try coming home at 3 in the morning!" 

*.*

Starbucks has announced that they're raising prices on some of their drinks. 

I haven't been this shocked since the last time.

I guess they just wanted to get back into the habit.

Issue of the Times;
Defining Civilization: Women and Children First by John C. Wright 

A civilization whose citizens have lost the ability to admire its virtues, beauties, benefits and strengths is one whose citizens are losing the ability to defend that civilization. Before we pull stone from stone to dismantle the wall that separates civilized life from the chaotic bloodshed, cruelty, and misery of barbarism outside, it behooves us to examine the wall, and ask three questions of it: What is Civilization? How is it maintained? What can undo it?

To define civilization is like defining an elephant: the thing is too big to take it at a glance. Nonetheless, by imagining its absence (for example by watching a Mad Max movie) we can see what it provides.

In the absence of civilization, there is no law hence no property, ergo no man has any reason to check any craving for the land currently occupied by another, any fruitful plot or pleasant hunting ground, if he has strength enough to dispossess him. Personal chattel or cattle are even less secure, because a trespasser can carry them away without the effort of assaulting or, once in possession, holding the envied real estate.

Where there is no law hence no rights, any stranger has just as good a claim to lands and chattel as the first possessor, if his strength is the same; and if the stranger be weaker, it is prudent to destroy him ere he grow stronger. The inhuman calculus of prudence says that it improves one’s safety to have a reputation for strength and brutality, so that potential threats might seek elsewhere for prey, and so that indecisive neighbors become allies or clients.

Hence in this state of nature without manmade laws, your equals will invade to despoil you because they covet; the weaker because they fear you; the stronger because they do not fear you, for glory, or the mere pleasure of bloodshed.

In such a state, labor is vain, because whatever is built or made may be taken; cultivating the earth is vain, because an invader may harvest what you sow, and drink the wine of your grapes; there is no trade nor travel by sea, because there is nothing to transport; no machines for moving or removing great weights; no works of canals, bridges, walls, fortress, dams; no draining of swamps, nor clearing of forest; no knowledge of distant places; no reckoning of times and season; no lasting nor reliable record of years past, hence no accumulation of lore and learning between generations; no medicine, no letters, no arts; and, above all, men live wretched and impoverished lives, and brief.

Now, with all due respect to Thomas Hobbes, this description of perfect desolation in nature is inaccurate. The one thing missing from this picture is that real barbarians, past and present, enjoy the company, comradeship and protection of their family, clan and tribe. Real barbarians do not fear and mistrust every man as potential robbers and murderers, but only strangers outside their kin. For their mutual protection, the families have strong reason for brothers to gather with their fathers, uncles, nephews, and cousins in forming hunting parties and war bands, and, in tribes who live without letters or written law, oral lore, chants and epics, long-held customs, and the wisdom of grandfathers suffices to give the tribe the unity needed to survive against other tribes.

Such lore will stave off the perfect desolation of nature, as brother will respect the chattel and cattle, wives and wigwam of his brother, and in return will share as need and seniority dictates. And over time simple crafts and skills, rites and decorative arts will be learned and passed down.

There is no assurance, no invisible law of evolution, which says that tribal lore and custom must always accumulate and never lose these gradual, hard-won gains. There are peoples in Australia whom anthropologists believe once had knowledge of the bone needle, the art of sewing, the napping of flint and the making of spearheads, and lost them all.

Once a tribe learns the art of husbandry, and learns that in order to enjoy the fruit of their tillage, houses of stone, or, better yet, a wall to enclose a stronghold, can be erected, and smithies to smelt the gleaming bronze of sword and spear, wealth unimaginable heretofore pours into their coffers: sheep and oxen, donkeys and hunting dogs, gleaming arrowheads, slaves and wives, and all fashion of pottery and fabric. With this wealth, there is leisure, and specialization of labor. Where before all men in the tribe were at once warriors and hunters and herdsmen, slavers and tillermen, now emerges the figures we see already established when history first puts stylus to clay: the king and his fighting men, the priesthood, the merchant counting his coins, the peasant tilling the soil, the slave toiling in fields or mines or canals.

The priest can count the days and seasons, and watch the stars, and calculate the acreage of fields, and measure where boundary stones lie. Writing is theirs: not without reason that the word clerk means both man of the cloth and man of the pen.

The easy sharing of goods with brothers in need seen in tribal life is less because there is less need of it. The laws can be written, and, whenever the day comes when the priest tells the king that the king is also bound by the laws he enforces, then civilization exists.

This check on the lawlessness of the king is the last stone set in place to erect the wall of civilization; and since he is the force of law in the land, it must be a spiritual idea, a cult or faith or article of philosophy, and invisible and impalpable idea, which makes the king mortar that stone in place.

So to remove that last stone, first one must erode the mortar of the idea. This requires a treason of your clerks. Your priests have to undermine and undercut the legitimacy of the idea of civilization in the mind of your king to make that stone wobble and fall. This can best be done by having the priests outlaw from the public agora whatever gods support the city and uphold civilization, and instead introduce gods of irrationality, barbarism, and chaos. Such priests eliminate their own priesthood first of all.

If you don’t have priests, the treason can issue from whoever or whatever it is to whom you entrusted your common intellectual and spiritual heritage, such as your academics, media, singers of songs and tellers of tales, the press and philosophers.

The treason of the philosophers begins when they teach philosophy is pointless, truth is relative, and all words are meaningless.

The treason of the press is complete once journalism is dead, and instead of a fair, truthful or balanced version of world and local events, you hear nothing but lies, lies, lies and shameless and damnable lies. The press makes real the vision of the philosophers of a world without truth.

Likewise when the treason of the singers is complete, exchanging love songs for song about bitches and whores and shooting cops, for then all songs are ugly.

When the storytellers all tell tales wherein your civilization is always depicted as wicked, worthless, hypocritical, vile, they the imagination of the people is filled with a gray and murky disgust for the wall of civilization.

All that the lying academic need say at this point is that something better and brighter than civilization is on the other side of the wall, for example, the People’s Republic of Utopia, and that therefore the allegedly protective wall is instead prison wall.

If enough people and if the King believe it, then the first stone to go is the last one put in place. Everyone is told that the King must be granted a plethora of unlawful powers in the name of breaking down the wall blocking the way to Utopia. Once this first stone trembles, once it falls, civilization begins to crumble at an ever increasing rate.

Do not be deceived: a tyranny like that seen in Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China is as barbaric and wretched as Hobbes’ state of nature, despite that the state is totalitarian. A king with no check on his power is an anarchist, and he savages the people under his alleged protection no less than the dangerous strangers marauding through the bloody landscape of the Hobbes. 

Hobbes and many enlightenment writers had the insight that civilization was a social contract. They did not literally mean that every soul before birth signed a bit of paper on which the mutually agreed terms defining civilization were written in black ink. The writers meant that there was an organic and mutual reciprocity between subject and sovereign. Hobbes thought that the king could violate this reciprocity with immunity; Locke and other writers, including those inspiring our Founding Fathers, held that a sufficiently damaging and permanent violation freed the other party to the deal, the people, from any continued obligation of fealty or allegiance.

So, the first thing that can start the dissolution of civilization, and place our foot on the long, blood-soaked, sad path toward that aboriginal tribe that has forgotten how to make needles or sew, is the treason of the clerks.

One the king is convinced (or in these more degenerate and democratic times, the parliaments and congresscreatures who have kingly duties but no sense of a higher power to whom they are obligated) that he has authority to overrule the laws of civilization, perhaps to make the pathway clear to the alleged utopia that the priests said surely will arise once anarchy is unleashed, then the legitimacy of his state is gone, and he is merely a raving beast like a mad man-eating lion. 

The first thing the lion eats is the sense of honor that keeps his fighting men in check. His fighting men includes what in the modern day is both the military and the police. The police are made more and more militaristic; they are cast as the enemy of the people; and the military is degenerated from its ancient precepts of honor and courage, and instead becomes sensitive and friendly to womenfolk or sodomites.

Now, to be clear, in a modern bureaucratic state, anyone who has the power to enforce the law and harass the people is, for all practical purposes, a policeman, a soldier, a fighting man of the king. We would call these bureaucrats, everyone from the tax man to the clerk on a planning and zoning board enforcing an irrational eco-nutbag regulation.

The sense of honor needed to keep soldiers and civil servants in check evaporates as the lawlessness of the anarchic King spreads down the wall to the next row, and the soldiers, police, and civil servants become young lions, red in tooth and claw.

Once the fighting men are corrupted, next oldest support of civilization vanishes: the burghers, the townsmen, the bourgeoisie, the merchants, the shopkeeper and tradesman, and middle class. Their corruption is far easier and far quicker, because trade and possession depends on a faith in objective law and evenhanded enforcement of contracts, not to mention the soundness of coin or currency. The middle class can be taxed out of existence, as they were in ancient Rome, which collapsed the Western Empire in one generation, and kept the Eastern Empire in a state of servitude and poverty for the remainder of its millennium.

The merchants who turn to the King to make a sweetheart deal create crony capitalism, which is also, more correctly, called fascism. The industries, such as are left, become organs of the state and are protected by increasingly one-sided and nakedly unfair taxations and regulations.

The important point to note is that the treason of the merchants undermines the unspoken social contract which allows trade and manufacture, or even guilds and small shops, to exist: that is, namely, the unspoken social contract provides that spoken contracts shall be upheld, and trade be fair and free. This idea is laughed into nonexistence, and the merchants are no longer merchants, but become jackals slinking and slouching in the shadows of the lions consuming the people, greedy for scraps. 

But no civilization of this is possible without the brotherhood of family and clan. And that is not possible without marriage and an institution of paternity.

So the final course of stones to go is the social contract, the bargain, between fathers and mothers, between male and female. The deal is that, in return for the bearing the burden of bearing children, the womanfolk will be protected and cherished. When the barbarians attack, the women and children go first to the stronghold, and the men man the walls; the iceberg strikes, the women and children go into the lifeboats, and the men go to death in the icy water. In return, the women preserve and reproduce the race.

In barbaric ages and nations, this was done by polygamy, where the women were chattel, and in Christian civilization, by monogamy, where the women could not be divorced nor put aside except for fornication.

To prevent the menfolk from killing each other, or slaying the bastards fathered by other men on their wives, the women uphold modesty and chastity. Modesty deters unwanted extramarital or premarital sex; the chastity confirms the paternity of offspring, and expels a cold marriage of convenience in favor of a warm and romantic Christian marriage.

The first crack in this base course of the wall of civilization was the legalization of no-fault divorce, which was widened by contraception, and then a free-love sexual free-for-all which has, for all practical purposes abolished marriage among our urban poor. 

The crack was widened again by feministic hypocrisy and insanity, which somehow demands all the burden of paternity be bourn by the father, even though he can be divorced at any time, and cast away; but that men take care not to offend women, no, not by so small a trifle as wearing a loud shirt or using the wrong pronoun; whereas women can do as they please, and whore around.

Such harlots seek to become the chattel of the strongest young lion or the richest sniveling jackal, and the idea of a modest matron raising children becomes as laughable to the corrupt harlot’s mind as an honorable soldier or an honest merchant.

Obviously no one believes that women can both be equal to men in facing all danger, and yet at the same time must be protected by trigger warnings lest they faint away. No one believes it, feminists least of all. This rampant hypocrisy has been clear ever since the days they rallied around Clinton, the Adulterer-in-Chief, and with their silence damned to hell all the women mutilated, enslaved, humiliated, falsely accused, and slain by Shariah Law.

In the same way the priests betray and eliminate the idea of the sacred, and the kings betray and eliminate the idea of legitimate authority, and fighting men and public servants betray and eliminate the idea of honor and duty and faithful executions of the laws, and the merchants destroy the idea of a fair deal, the feminists destroy the mystical concept of womanhood.

The feminists hatred for the feminine is accomplished, and their treason is complete, when motherhood is as purely despised as maidenhood, and women are once again possessions of the strongest.

It is noteworthy that, in the current day, all the courses of the stone wall, from lowest to highest, are cracking, creaking, and tumbling, and the loudest traitors cry that the stones are oppression, blocking and hindering us from skipping down the road of yellow bricks; they scream that the Emerald City of Oz is just outside the gate, which we must throw open to welcome the Wonderful Wizard who will grant all our contradictory and childish wishes.

And the bloodthirsty lions and jackals awaiting without are never mentioned.

Whether the traitors are blind but sincere, or merely suicidal and malign, makes no difference to the end result. 

Quote of the Times;
“Show men endless images of beautiful models and actresses and singers, show them endless images of beautiful, slim, women engaging in sex with enthusiasm, tell them that a world of uncommitted and marriageless sex is the norm — then, for reasons they don’t understand, slam the door in their face.  This is not a prescription for long term stability.” - The Possibility of an Island - Houellebecq

Link of the Times;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4GGAtLYppw

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If you ever get pulled over by a police officer and he says, "Where's the fire?" just say, "At my house!", then speed off.  

But remember to call ahead and have someone start a fire at your house, or you'll end up in mighty big trouble.

*.*

Britain's Prince George is said to be walking.

In no time at all, he'll be talking and will no longer have to walk.  


Just say, "Would you get me... "

*.*

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea – US Air Force Tech. Sgt. William Kilgore “loves the smell of toner in the morning.”

Kilgore, assigned to the 51st Fighter Wing’s Logistics Readiness Squadron, is regarded by colleagues and superiors alike as a “reckless desk jockey,” often completing his assigned tasks at the expense of hundreds of toner cartridges.

According to Senior Airman Charles “Chef” Yates, the “brash, eccentric office cowboy” puts on several pots of coffee each day, precisely at 0745, 1045 and 1415, all the while humming “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Sources also disclosed that the operatic anthem underscores Kilgore’s daily bowel movement at 0910.

“I thought [Kilgore] was a little odd when he cornered me and asked if I liked to web surf,” said Yates. “I knew he was bat-shit insane when he kicked over his chair at the last Cyber Awareness Training brief and shouted, ‘You can either web surf, or you can fight!’ before charging out, yelling, ‘To the Keurig!’”

Kilgore, who has bumper stickers that say “We Are the ADMINfantry!” and “Charlie Don’t Collate” prominently displayed on his desk, claims to have engaged tens of thousands of reports, memoranda, and FOUO documents at the office’s Xerox WorkCentre 3615/DN. He also claims he can “field strip” and reassemble the machine blindfolded in under seven minutes.

“How many copies have I made? There were those six thousand that I know about for sure,” he said. 

*.*

Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey are headed for divorce.  

Mariah is now free to do what she's already been doing.

*.*

Grandpa was celebrating his 100th birthday and everybody complimented him on how athletic and well-preserved he appeared.

"Gentlemen, I will tell you the secret of my success," he cackled. "I have been in the open air day after day for some 75 years now."

The celebrants were impressed and asked how he managed to keep up his rigorous fitness regime.

"Well, you see my wife and I were married 75 years ago. On our wedding night, we made a solemn pledge. Whenever we had a fight, the one who was proved wrong would go outside and take a walk."

Issue of the Times;
Obama’s Next Useless Subsidy by James E. Miller   

As if the country weren't full of enough petulant, overgrown children.

President Obama’s new proposal to offer “free” community college for two years to anyone “willing to work for it” is more of the same trite welfare nonsense that further belittles an already feeble nation.  The president’s plan comes at the opening of a new Congress where Republicans are, at last, in charge. It’s not that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner will pass anything that actually shrinks the size of D.C. The most any cynical conservative person can hope for is that they’ll stop the worst of the executive overreach and act as a bulwark against harebrained progressive schemes. And there is nothing more asinine than the government picking up the tab for community college.  The president’s “free college” proposal requires congressional authorization, which means it hopefully will get the thumbs down from Republicans. But since the party of Lincoln is so laughably inept at preventing the government’s growth, there is a slight chance the proposal could become law. Should government-provided college become the norm in America (more so than it already is), it may well corrode the sliver of self-responsibility still left in the country’s young adult population.

Obama’s proposal contains the loaded term “free,” so right away the plan comes off as a costless way to help out high school graduates. The government has already socialized the handling of student loans. Surely, it can’t be a huge jump to provide “free” tuition for the lowest rung on the university ladder.  But nothing that comes out of the Mordor that is the District is actually free. Obama’s plan will cost an estimated $60 billion. Admittedly, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $18 trillion in national debt. Even so, you don’t dig yourself out of a financial hole by promising to extend credit to give away more freebies. For the left, fiscal responsibility is one of those archaic ideas that has its roots in white, oppressive patriarchy.

The problems with the president’s new social scheme don’t end with the price tag. The “free college” initiative is being marketed as a benefit to the middle class when, in reality, it’s aimed at the worst performers in school. Anyone bright enough to pass high school can find a way to have college paid for, either through loans or scholarships. Reihan Salam of National Review points out that community college is virtually free already for the low and middle classes. Using statistics from College Board, he writes that in the 2011-2012 school year, “net tuition and fees were $0 for students from households earning $60,000 or less while it was $2,051 for students from households earning over $106,000.” If the president’s plan becomes law, it won’t exactly lift the middle class to new and unimaginable heights.

Uselessness aside, I suspect there is something greater behind Obama’s push for more universal education. Given the current low price of community college tuition, the program is demonstrably aimed at pleasing the sensibilities of liberal voters. Obama-backers won’t receive any support through the program, but they will feel good about generating one more form of welfare. As George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen estimates, the marginal impact of free community college will be minimal at most. Once again, the possible success rate of a government program is overestimated, which is a disservice to the public.

As immature and illiberal as college curricula already are, the idea of sending more impressionable youths to any form of university is idiotic. The state of higher education in America is in dire straits. The traditions that have long defined a well-rounded education have been eroded over the last few decades, with more and more emphasis placed on accumulating high marks and resume boosters. Stanford scholar Franco Moretti recently proposed a radical emphasis on “quantitative reading” by colleges, to replace actual absorption of classic texts. Contemplation on normative and moral goals is being replaced with a pseudoscientific push to turn human beings into cold, calculating machines.

The Obama Administration is already emphasizing that students will receive funding only if they attend schools that either provide transferable credit or job training. I’ve never understood why conservatives and liberals put strong emphasis on college leading to employment. Job training doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree; it requires discipline and sticking with employment no matter how crummy. You can learn persistence by getting a job right out of high school.  Today’s top universities are no longer churning out thoughtful graduates who go into adult life with a worldly view on things. They are spitting out overachievers who are so afraid of failure they can barely function in normal life. Recently in New Republic, former Yale professor William Deresiewicz documented the alarming trend of college graduates who have zero skills at coping with life’s twists and turns. Current undergraduates show severely low levels of emotional well-being. They, Deresiewicz said, possess “toxic levels of fear, anxiety, and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation.”  If the top universities in the country are producing graduates with the maturity level of a middle school geek, how in the world is universal community college going to help America’s competitiveness?

By and large, contemporary higher ed is a rip-off. I graduated from a state university in 2011 with a bunch of mediocre, C-average kids who skated through school. Before that, I blazed through community college, paying most of my way by working at a local theme park. Both required little intellectual dexterity. I learned early on that you only need to show up to every class to virtually guarantee a passing grade. Anyone with 8th-grade writing skills can graduate base level university if they remember to set their alarm after coming home from a frat party.

Anyone who thinks the key to American prosperity is more college graduates ought to have their own university degree revoked. We don’t need more bachelor’s degrees. We need fewer special snowflakes that drift through school and fall apart in the real world. We need young adults that know both success and failure, joy and heartbreak; who can struggle on when times are hard. No university can teach students to be grateful for the privileged lives they lead. Places of learning can only provide the foundation to better understand the highs and lows that come with being a person. And they are far from the only place that can serve as that conduit.

In between fake rape accusations and speech suppression, universities are no longer places of learning. They are a means to put off being an adult for four years while pissing away work experience on an increasingly worthless piece of paper. They swaddle young folks in a cocoon of politically-correct warm feelings. When these students emerge into the cutthroat job environment, the safety blanket that protected them from “trigger warnings” and offensive material will be gone. All that’s left will be the raw, uncaring world which college failed to prepare them for.

And President Obama wants to create more of these sorry people?

Quote of the Times;
"I have come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline." - von Mises

Link of the Times;
http://io9.com/what-europe-will-look-like-in-2035-if-russian-tabloids-1587988556

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Follow me on Twitter: @aod318

Book-burning is such an ugly phrase.

I prefer to think of it as "English lit."

*.*

Classic:

A married couple is driving down the interstate.

The husband is behind the wheel. His wife looks over at him and says,  "Honey, I know we've been married for 15 years, but, I want a divorce."

The husband says nothing but slowly increases speed to 60 mph.

She then says, "I don't want you to try to talk me out of it, because I've been having an affair with your best friend, and he's a better lover than you."

Again the husband stays quiet and just speeds up as he clenches his hands on the wheels.

She says, "I want the house." Again the husband speeds up, and now is doing 70 mph.

She says, "I want the kids too." The husband just keeps driving faster, and faster, he's up to 80 mph.

She says, "I want the car, the checking account, and all the credit cards too." The husband slowly starts to veer.

"Is there anything you want?"

The husband says, "No, I've got everything I need."

She asks, "What's that?"

"I've got a driver’s side airbag."

*.*

Negotiations between union members and their employer were at an impasse.

The union denied that their workers were flagrantly abusing their  contract's sick-leave provisions.

One morning at the bargaining table, the company's chief negotiator held  aloft the morning edition of the newspaper, "This man," he announced,  "Called in Sick yesterday!" There on the sports page, was a photo of the supposedly ill employee, who had just won a local golf tournament with  an excellent score. 

The silence in the room was broken by a union  negotiator. "Wow," he said. "Think of what kind of score he could have had if he hadn't been sick!"

*.*

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, there's going to be one big-ass fight over where to set the thermostat.

*.*

You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to liquor. 
You may be a Muslim 

You wipe your butt with your bare hand, but consider bacon unclean. 
You may be a Muslim 

You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least four. 
You may be a Muslim 

Issue of the Times;
“Microaggressions”, “Trigger Warnings”, and the New Meaning of “Trauma” by Chris Hernandez

When I joined the Marines, I met a man who had survived a helicopter crash during a training exercise. The first time I saw him his head and face were covered in burn scars. A balloon filled with saline, that looked like a dinosaur’s crest, was implanted in his scalp to stretch the skin so hair could grow. Something that looked exactly like the checkered buttstock of an M16A2 was imprinted on one side of his head. He greeted me when I checked in to my unit, and totally ignored the shocked expression I must have had when he approached. He shook my hand, asked a few questions, then left with a friendly “See you later, PFC.” His demeanor left me with the absurd thought, Maybe he doesn’t know how strange he looks.

He had been assigned to my reserve unit while undergoing treatment at a nearby military burn unit. I wound up becoming friends with him later, and eventually worked up the nerve to ask him about the crash. Of course, I quickly followed my question with, “But if you don’t want to talk about it, nevermind. Sorry.”

He brushed off my concerns. “Nah, no problem. The day I can’t talk about it is the day it starts to haunt me.”

He told me about loading up with his platoon in the helicopter that day. He described what it was like to see the ground coming through the window and realize they were about to crash. He talked about grabbing his seat belt release, being knocked unconscious on impact by his rifle butt slamming into his temple, and waking up on the floor with his head on fire. He told me how he crawled toward the exit, in flames, past screaming, burning Marines trapped in their seats. He recounted his memory of shouting that he would come back to help them. He told me how he managed to drag himself over the edge of the helicopter’s ramp and fall into a rice paddy. He told me about other Marines who saw the crash and ran to save him and some others. He talked about all the friends he lost that day, more than a dozen. He talked about how much he missed being an infantryman, and how he had made peace with the fact that he could never be one again.

What struck me was how easily he was able to tell the story. I had never heard of someone making a decision not to let trauma affect their lives. I had a great uncle, still alive then, who had been a Marine in the Korean War. He came back traumatized, took years to get back to normal, and to his dying day never told anyone in the family what he experienced. Even after I became a Marine, he gave me only the barest details of his service. As far as I know he never told his Marine son either. Unlike my friend, my uncle couldn’t talk about his trauma.

I’ve experienced trauma myself. I don’t know how many murder scenes I’ve worked as a police officer. I remember the shock I felt when I walked up to a car after a seemingly minor accident and saw a two year old’s head lying on the floorboard. I stood helplessly outside a burning house as a ninety-two year old woman died inside, while her son screamed hysterically beside me. For years after my time as a soldier in Iraq I’d have a startle response if I unexpectedly saw a flash, like from a camera, in my peripheral vision (it reminded me of flashes from roadside bombs). Soldiers near me were shot, burned or killed in Afghanistan.  

My childhood wasn’t rosy either; early one morning when I was eight I heard pounding on our kitchen door, then was terrified to see a family member stumble into the house covered in blood after being attacked by a neighbor. Even today, after thirty-five years, I still sometimes tense up when I hear a knock at the door. When I was ten, my eleven year old best friend committed suicide because of a minor sibling dispute. He wrote a note, left a will, snuck his father’s pistol from a drawer and shot himself. I was severely affected by his death, and ten years later got a copy of his suicide note from the city morgue. After I read it, I finally felt that I could heal from that horrible event.

I’m no stranger to trauma, and I’ve dealt with it by writing and talking about it. I suppose I’ve always defined “trauma” the traditional way: a terrible experience, usually involving significant loss or mortal danger, which left a lasting scar. However, I’ve recently discovered my definition of trauma is wrong. Trauma now seems to be pretty much anything that bothers anyone, in any way, ever. And the worst “trauma” seems to come not from horrible brushes with death like I described above; instead, they’re the result of racism and discrimination.

Over the last year I’ve heard references to “Microagressions” and “Trigger Warnings”. Trigger Warnings tell trauma victims that certain material may “contain disturbing themes that may trigger traumatic memories for sufferers”; it’s a way for them to continue avoiding what bothers them, rather than facing it (and the memories that get triggered often seem to be about discrimination, rather than mortal danger). Microaggressions are minor, seemingly innocuous statements that are actually stereotype-reinforcing trauma, even if the person making the statement meant nothing negative.

Here are two examples of “trauma” from the “Microaggression Project”:

My dad jokes with my younger sister that he remembers selling Girl Scout Cookies when he was a Girl Scout. She laughs, understanding the fact that since he’s a boy means that he could not have been a Girl Scout. Thanks, Dad. I’m a boy and a formal Girl Scout.

The assumption that Girl Scouts will be girls. That causes trauma.

24, female-bodied, in a relationship – so Facebook shows me ads with babies, wedding dresses, and engagement rings. Change gender on Facebook to male – suddenly I get ads pertaining to things I actually care about.

Facebook thinking a woman might be interested in marriage and children. That causes trauma.

As one might expect, “Microaggressions” and “Trigger Warnings” are most popular in our universities. In late 2013 A group of UCLA students staged a “sit-in” protest against a professor for – no joke – correcting their papers. These “Graduate Students of Color” began an online petition stating “Students consistently report hostile classroom environments in which the effects of white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other forms of institutionalized oppression have manifested within the department and deride our intellectual capacity, methodological rigor, and ideological legitimacy. Empirical evidence indicates that these structural and interpersonal microaggressions wreak havoc on the psychophysiological health and retention rates of People of Color. The traumatic experiences of GSE&IS students and alumni confirm this reality” (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/931/772/264/ucla-call2action/).

A college professor expecting graduate students to write grammatically correct papers. That causes trauma.

In addition to correcting grammar, the professor insulted the “Graduate Students of Color” by changing “Indigenous” to the proper “indigenous” in their papers, thus reinforcing white colonial oppression of indigenous people. Oh, and he shook a black student’s arm during a discussion. “Making physical contact with a student is inappropriate, [the aggrieved Graduate Student of Color] added, and there are additional implications when an older white man does so with a younger black man” (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/25/ucla-grad-students-stage-sit-during-class-protest-what-they-see-racially-hostile).

A white professor gently touching a black student’s arm. That causes trauma.

I’ve reviewed these reports of “trauma”, and have reached a conclusion about them. I’m going to make a brief statement summarizing my conclusion. While I mean this in the nicest way possible, I don’t want victims of Microaggressions or supporters of Trigger Warnings to doubt my sincerity.

Fuck your trauma.

Yes, fuck your trauma. My sympathy for your suffering, whether that suffering was real or imaginary, ended when you demanded I change my life to avoid bringing up your bad memories. You don’t seem to have figured this out, but there is no “I must never be reminded of a negative experience” expectation in any culture anywhere on earth.

If your psyche is so fragile you fall apart when someone inadvertently reminds you of “trauma”, especially if that trauma consisted of you overreacting to a self-interpreted racial slur, you need therapy. You belong on a psychiatrist’s couch, not in college dictating what the rest of society can’t do, say or think. Get your own head right before you try to run other people’s lives. If you expect everyone around you to cater to your neurosis, forever, you’re what I’d call a “failure at life”, doomed to perpetual disappointment.

Oh, I should add: fuck my trauma too. I must be old-fashioned, but I always thought coming to terms with pain was part of growing up. I’ve never expected anyone to not knock on my door because it reminds me of that terrifying morning decades ago. I’ve never blown up at anyone for startling me with a camera flash (I’ve never even mentioned it to anyone who did). I’ve never expected anyone to not talk about Iraq or Afghanistan around me, even though some memories still hurt. I don’t need trigger warnings because a book might remind me of a murder victim I’ve seen.

And before anyone says it; being Hispanic doesn’t make me any more sympathetic to people who experience nonexistent, discriminatory “trauma”. Discrimination didn’t break me (or my parents, or grandparents). I’ve been discriminated against by whites for being Hispanic. I’ve been threatened by blacks for being white. I’ve been insulted by Hispanics for not being Hispanic enough. Big deal. None of that stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do. It wasn’t “trauma”. It was life.

Generations of Americans experienced actual trauma. Our greatest generation survived the Depression, then fought the worst war in humanity’s history, then built the United States into the most successful nation that has ever existed. They didn’t accomplish any of that by being crystal eggshells that would shatter at the slightest provocation, they didn’t demand society change to protect their tender feelings. They simply dealt with the hardships of their past and moved on. Even my great uncle, the Korea Marine, never expected us to tiptoe around him. He wouldn’t talk about his experience, but he didn’t order us not to.

So again, fuck your trauma. If your past bothers you that much, get help. I honestly hope you come to terms with it. I hope you manage to move forward. I won’t say anything meant to dredge up bad memories, and don’t think anyone should intentionally try to harm your feelings.

But nobody, nobody, should censor themselves to protect you from your pathological, and pathologically stupid, sensitivities.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at chris_hernandez_author@yahoo.com or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

Quote of the Times;
“Depressive states are often creative attempts by the Self to drive us into deeper communication with our wholeness.”

Link of the Times;
http://unethicalhacks.com/

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to complement The Field!

Or

Follow me on Twitter: @aod318

While more strippers and more whiskey are undoubtedly a good thing, I've found it's much easier to convince your boss that you deserve a raise if you just leave that part out.

*.*

On the way back to New York as I was sitting in the Phoenix airport, they announced that the flight to Vegas was full.

The airline was looking for volunteers to give up their seats.

In exchange, they'd give you a $100 voucher for your next flight and a first class seat in the plane leaving an hour later. About eight people ran up to the counter to take advantage of the offer.

About 15 seconds later all eight of those people sat down grumpily as the lady behind the ticket counter said, "If there is anyone else OTHER than the flight crew who'd like to volunteer, please step forward..."

*.*

A college senior took his new girlfriend to a football game. The young couple found seats in the crowded stadium and were watching the action. A substitute was put into the game, and as he was running onto the field to take his position, the boy said to his girlfriend, "Take a good look at that fellow. I expect him to be our best man next year."

His girlfriend snuggled closer to him and said, "That's the strangest way I ever heard of for a fellow to propose to a girl.

Regardless of how you said it, I accept!"

*.*

THE PACIFIC OCEAN – Steaming through an estimated 700,000 square kilometers of filth, United States Navy warships laid territorial claim today to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a big strategic win for the Red, White, and Blue, according to U.S. government officials.

Emphasizing America’s profound cultural ties with garbage and refuse of all kinds, a Navy spokesperson aboard the destroyer USS Milius trumpeted the acquisition as an “emotional homecoming” for the billion-some plastic water bottle caps, knotted trash bags, and used tampon applicators that constitute the Texas-sized mass.

Garbage Island marks the first addition to the United States’ list of territories since the Northern Mariana Islands in 1978. While responses in the West have been overwhelmingly positive, the move has sparked controversy with heads of state in Beijing who assert equal claim to the island.

“For decades, we Chinese have demonstrated a profound and steadfast commitment to the destruction of global ecosystems,” said one official, going on to explain the “almost-spiritual” connection he feels with Garbage Island. “Besides, most of that junk was ‘Made in China’ in the first place.”

At press time, Chinese warships were en route to the garbage patch, while diplomats in Washington and Beijing scheduled hasty, high-level consultations to determine which nation is rightfully entitled to all that shit.

*.*

I recently had a medical exam, and all the doctor could find wrong with me, was that I was overweight.

"I'm prescribing these pills for you," my doctor told me. "I don't want you to swallow them.  Just spill them on the floor twice a day and pick them up, one at a time."

Issue of the Times;
The Value Of Self-Knowledge by C.Contrary

So long as the sun rises, human misery abounds. The self-help and psychiatry industries are therefore thriving, for trite books and yuppie dope now stand in for religion, the earnest practice of which is too demanding for most 21st century team members. (It’s not as if there’s a great lack of belief here in the US.)

Yet to be sure, that one person should turn to another for guidance is not in itself a bad thing. I glance at my library, for example, and behold the magnificent works of hundreds of Great Dead White European (and American) Males: Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Seneca, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Pascal, Spinoza, Samuel Johnson, Burke, Hume, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Carlyle, Ruskin, Emerson, Thoreau, William James, and many more.

How much I have learned from them! Most men define themselves by doing things that any number of other men can do. That can’t be said for the greatest minds and writers. They teach, or reveal, what we would not know without them. I would be much more ignorant of human life if it wasn’t for these immortal names on my shelves.

All of the men in my list, in their various ways, were concerned with that timeless and incomparably difficult question: How should I live? It is a question that, if it matters to me, only I can answer for me. For however much I may learn from the great dead, or even from some of the living here in our glittering dark age, I am still a unique person, with his own history, his own problems, his own anguish. I alone have access to the content of my consciousness.

Thus it is certain that no one can look into me as penetratingly as I myself can, provided that I am up to the task. It is certain that no one can understand me as well as I myself can, provided I try to know myself. What I must do is to ponder myself and the world around me, while I am instructed by the works of the great minds of the past who did the same, and then apply what I find to the strange and difficult endeavor of living.

Not everyone does this today. In love with convenience, and in deeper love with delusion, many people now turn to watered-down wisdom and to the often problematic medications of psychiatrists. Is there not something very sad about so many of us turning to others (and their drugs) in order to know how to live? Have most of us looked deeply enough into ourselves?

Perhaps not. For self-knowledge is a test of character. It takes a certain fearlessness to be utterly honest with yourself. We are, all of us, subject to terrible thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. We sometimes have quite immoral motives. And it is painful to see these aspects of our nature. As with the sight of a rotting corpse, we’d rather look away.

Most people, when told they have done something wrong, react, at least at first, by putting a kind of convenient spin on things: they didn’t really do this or that, we are told; or, whatever happened didn’t happen quite like that; the point here being to shirk responsibility. And yet, human beings owe each other criticism. A friend or family member who is living in such a way as to harm himself or others deserves to be reproached.

And so it is with ourselves. If we have any sense of dignity—if, in other words, we value ourselves—then we need to be exacting and unsparing in our self-analysis. But, just as many people, in their relations with others, distort the truth in order to avoid the pain of it, so too they are not unflinching when it comes to looking into themselves: their view is only partial, their bad aspects ignored.

We must employ discriminating caution in our efforts to acquire self-knowledge. It is true that the mind, in its inclination to avoid pain, has a way of steering us toward rationalization and away from truth. And while we must be vigilant in guarding against this awful tendency, we must also not go so far as to become cruel perfectionists. Sincere self-examination which brings to light our culpability must be followed by self-forgiveness. Otherwise we avoid the common extreme while falling into the other, which is indeed torturous.

Though often hard, and sometimes even terrifying, self-knowledge is empowering. Having come to know myself in a deep sense, I find that I do not need any self-help book—I have already studied the book of my life. So too with anti-depressant medications. While for many people these are undoubtedly useful or even necessary in times of crisis, what I must do in any event is to take control of my life, insofar as I can.

That will often mean changing my life, and to that end, myself; in particular, my flaws. This is hard work, of course, but again, it is empowering: I achieve power over myself, where others may have no choice but to be subject to the power (say, the bad advice or prescription) of others.

To be serious about having good character, or improving our character, is to be serious about self-knowledge. If I want to live a decent life, or a better one, then clearly I cannot be ignorant of myself, of how I am living or should live. I must rather be steadfast in examining my motives and intentions.

What is the reason for Socrates’ famous remark that the unexamined life is not worth living? It is that without examining my life I cannot value it: any sense of value depends on knowledge; in order to live a worthy life, we must have a sense, borne out by experience, of just what makes it so.

It is no wonder that the greatest teachers of humankind were characterized by immense self-knowledge. A person who knows much about his complex nature—and all human beings are complex—may for that very reason be well-equipped to instruct others. You may not be Montaigne or Emerson. Even so, the fruits of your self-examination can afford you insight into others, who, after all, are not so different from you; you may indeed aid other people in walking a more illumined path.

“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed,” said the great sage Samuel Johnson. I believe that every student of himself, having asked himself how he should live, should eventually come to a set of beliefs which are rather homely, in the sense that many thoughtful minds have been there before, so that the truth is no mystery.

It has long been thought, and rightly, that we human beings require a balance of satisfying intellectual and physical activities, interests, hobbies. These, along with meaningful relationships, are what make a life happy, or at least tolerable, for these make for an ongoing sense of vitality. If one of the purposes of your self-knowledge is to determine how you should live—as of course it should be—then you need not expect your conclusions to be so far from what many thoughtful travelers on the way arrived at before you.

Life is an endeavor in which we get to know ourselves. How strange is that notion, the notion of a self that does not know itself, as if to exist is to be a kind of stranger even to yourself. For life is a kind of ineffable unfolding. During its course, we find we are ever-changing, growing, moving between contradictions.

Indeed, while we may, if we are successful, arrive at more or less the same conclusions with respect to how we should live, we shall all find our distinct phenomenological experience—what we essentially ARE—to be endlessly unique, and frequently surprising. You are a self, and the self that you are contains innumerable surprises. That is dream-like, and beautifully strange.

Quote of the Times;
“If it is reasonable to hold Christians today responsible for the actions of other Christians during the Crusades nearly one thousand years ago, how is it unreasonable to hold Muslims today responsible for the action of other Muslims yesterday?”

Link of the Times;
http://anti-gnostic.blogspot.com/

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Send E-mail to efreem2@alumni.umbc.edu

Or

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I wish I were a spy and evil people had come to my house and torn it apart looking for secrets. 

Then at least I'd have an excuse for it looking that way.

*.*

"Researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu.

A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone's relief, it was confirmed that the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu.

The cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts. However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors of paints appeared on the bird's beaks and claws. By analyzing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.

MTA then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.

The Ornithological Behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause: when crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.

The conclusion was that while all the lookout crows could say 'Cah', none could say 'Truck.'"

*.*

Girlfriend to a U.S. Marine private first class stationed at Camp Pendleton is planning the storybook divorce she always dreamed of, sources confirmed Tuesday.

Saying that she had been planning this since she was a little girl, Ashley Gibson told reporters she has always dreamed of that beautiful day when she would be granted spousal and child support from Pfc. Anthony Roberts for the couple’s six future children.

“I am just so thrilled that one day I will join Tony in the sacred bond of marriage for the rest of our lives together,” Ashley said, “or for a period of five years, whichever comes first.”

According to sources within the offices of prominent Divorce Planner Larry Abrams, Esq., Ashley has worked out every little detail, from purchasing a brand new car and fancy electronics to cleaning our her husband’s bank account and moving all of the furniture out of base housing while he’s on deployment.

“He is going to be so surprised by the amount of thought and care that went into all this,” Ashley said, while eating an entire bag of Doritos so she can be prepared to fit into her divorce sweatpants.

*.*

My wife was counting all the pennies and nickels out on the kitchen table when she suddenly got very angry and started shouting and crying for no reason. 

I thought to myself, "She's going through the change."

*.* 

When I was in the pub I heard a couple of dickheads saying that they wouldn't feel safe on an aircraft if they knew the pilot was a woman. 

What a pair of sexist sh!ts.  I mean, it's not as if she'd have to reverse the bloody thing!

Issue of the Times;
Libertarians and Abortion by Jonathan Goodwin

THERE ARE A HANDFUL OF THORNY ISSUES for libertarians – in some cases, significant issues on which there is significant disagreement.  One such issue is that of abortion.

I will approach this issue via the positions of two of the staunchest and most principled libertarians of recent times – Murray Rothbard and Walter Block, and primarily Block.  Both have written in favor of abortion (Block via his concept of “evictionism”), and both have defended their respective positions from what they consider to be a libertarian viewpoint: a trespass by the unborn child on the property rights of the mother.

With this in mind, I will present the case that it is the unborn child, and not the mother, that has the right of use of the womb for the term of the pregnancy.  I base this on causation, reasonable reliance, unilateral contract, and, as Block has introduced the language of landlord and tenant, a lease and the covenant of quiet enjoyment.  I rely on established contractual principles that are not in violation of the non-aggression principle.

I.       Abortion is Killing, but is it Murder?

Block and Whitehead offer their personal view regarding abortion.  From “Compromising the Uncompromisable: A Private Property Rights Approach to Resolving the Abortion Controversy,” by Dr. Walter Block and Roy Whitehead:

…we maintain that abortion is an abomination. It is a massive killer. More people die annually as a result of it (1,591,000) than perish from heart disease (720,058), cancer (505,322), stroke (144,088), or all accidents (91,983). Adding insult to injury, death occurs in these cases because of the purposeful action of other people.[ii]

Rothbard begins with a recognition of the “Catholic” side of the argument.  From “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto,” by Murray Rothbard:

For the essence of that case – not really “Catholic” at all in a theological sense – is that abortion destroys a human life and is therefore murder, and hence cannot be condoned….Murder is not an expression of religious preference; no sect, in the name of “freedom of religion” can or should get away with committing murder with the plea that its religion so commands.  The vital question then becomes: Should abortion be considered as murder?[iii]

II.     When Does Life Begin?

Rothbard suggests to not get bogged down in the “minutiae about when human life begins….”[iv]  Block and Whitehead develop this concept further, concluding that it is appropriate to consider that human life begins at conception:

At what point does human life begin?  There are really only two reasonable possibilities: at conception or at birth; all other points of development in between are merely points along a continuum which begins and ends with these two options.

So which is it? Does life begin at the beginning point of this nine-month continuum or at the end of it? We take the former position. We maintain that the fetus is an alive human being from day one onward, with all the rights pertaining to any other member of the species.[v]

I am no scientist, and cannot claim any unique knowledge on this question of when human life begins.  An exploration of this question is far beyond the scope of this paper, however I offer the following:

When discussing the philosophical and/or ethical issues, surrounding the start of life the desire for science to provide a clear cut human/non-human boundary is very understandable. We need to be able to define this because it is important in our laws and our understandings. However, even from the brief descriptions given above, it is clear that there is no simple answer that science can give. It may well be that reality doesn't have an answer for us, and that "when does life begin?" is, in fact, a meaningless question.

Scott Gilbert concludes based on these premises that:

The entity created by fertilization is indeed a human embryo, and it has the potential to be human adult. Whether these facts are enough to accord it personhood is a question influenced by opinion, philosophy and theology, rather than by science.[vi]

Science appears to offer no definitive answer – what remains is “opinion.” Therefore, I find no reason to disagree with either Block or Rothbard in their conclusion.  I am certain that the life is human one minute before birth (and science agrees on this point), and as science offers no conclusive answer to the question of when life begins, my examination proceeds assuming that human life begins at conception.

III.    Aborting the Unborn Child is Like Failing to Come to the Aid

Block and Whitehead compare abortion to the act of failing to come to the aid of another – of failing to be a “good Samaritan” – therefore not an aggressive act.

The woman who refuses to carry her fetus to term is in exactly the same position as a person who refuses to rescue a drowning swimmer. Abortion is not, in and of itself, an act invasive of other people or their property rights, even when fetuses are considered persons.[vii]

This is not a good analogy.  In the case of the drowning swimmer, the potential rescuer (presumably) did nothing to cause the swimmer to drown – the person did not throw someone unable to swim into the middle of the ocean after inviting the novice to go for a boat ride.  However, the woman did take an action in the situation the act of becoming pregnant.  Aborting the unborn child is like deliberately throwing a non-swimmer into the middle of the Pacific Ocean after providing a formal invitation to a nine-month cruise – a cruise with no scheduled stops.  The invitation conveys an obligation; the act of throwing the person overboard is an aggressive act, in violation of the non-aggression principle.

IV.   The Unborn Child is Trespassing

Rothbard states this case:

…this is the crucial consideration.  If we are to treat the unborn child as having the same rights as humans, then let us ask: What human has the right to remain, unbidden, as an unwanted parasite within some other human being’s body? …What the mother is doing in an abortion is causing an unwanted entity within her body to be ejected from it; If the unborn child dies, this does not rebut the point that no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person’s body.[viii]

What is meant by the term “unbidden”?

Unbidden: [ix]

1.      Not ordered or commanded; spontaneous.
2.      Not asked or summoned; uninvited.

It seems rather inappropriate to consider the child was “unbidden.”  The mother took an action that could result (no matter the precaution taken) in pregnancy.  Pregnancy is not “spontaneous.”

Block and Whitehead also suggest the unborn child is trespassing:

Given this, how can we defend the mother's right to kill the fetus? Simple. She owns her own body, and the unwanted fetus growing within it is in effect a trespasser or parasite. This may sound harsh, but when the property rights in question are thoroughly analyzed, it is the only possible conclusion that may be reached.[x]

I suggest it is not so “simple” nor is it “the only possible conclusion that may be reached” when “the property rights are thoroughly analyzed.”

Block and Whitehead continue:

To see this point, consider the following case: Suppose one day you wake up to find yourself attached to another person, e.g., Thompson's by now famous violinist, through your kidneys. You have two healthy organs, and the other person has none that are functioning. During the night, while you slept, doctors performed an operation connecting that person to your kidneys through a sort of umbilical chord, and there you lie. This operation was conducted without the permission or even knowledge of either "patient."

What rights and obligations do you have with regard to this violinist?[xi]

The authors suggest that you have the right, after properly notifying persons who are able to assist the uninvited party, to sever the connection.  I find this analogy also lacking.  I quote: “This operation was conducted without the permission or even knowledge of either ‘patient.’”

In the case of pregnancy, one of the two “patients” – the one purportedly trespassed upon, who is providing the kidney services (the mother) – did take an action with knowledge: in order to become pregnant she was no innocent bystander.  Intercourse always carries the possibility of pregnancy. This wasn’t some sneak event in the middle of the night performed by a devious Dr. Frankenstein, secretly inserting an unborn child into the womb.

From Dr. Paul:

The fetus, of course, neither aggressed nor intruded. The mother and father placed him there.[xii]

V.     There is no Contract

Block and Whitehead suggest there is no contract:

The fetus does not yet exist, and even when it does, it is impossible to have a contract (implicit or otherwise) with a one-week-old baby.[xiii]

It is possible to have a contract with a minor.  It is voidable, however, only by the minor.

For most contracts, the general rule is that while it's not illegal to enter into a contract with a minor, the contract is voidable at the discretion of the minor. Voidable contracts are usually valid contracts and are binding unless the child cancels it.[xiv]

               As to the type of contract, I will come to this shortly.

VI.   There Might be an Agreement, But the Mother Can Change Her Mind

Rothbard suggests an out clause, exercisable unilaterally by the mother:

The common retort that the mother either originally wanted or at least was responsible for placing the unborn child within her body is, again, beside the point.  Even in the stronger case where the mother originally wanted the child, the mother, as the property owner in her own body, has the right to change her mind and eject it.[xv]

What Rothbard is suggesting is that the mother can break the agreement, even if the result is the death of the counter-party.  It seems a rather one-sided out clause – where the one breaking the agreement suffers little if any consequence (in fact, sees a net gain, else why break it?), while the ultimate consequence is paid by the party that (presumably) was satisfied with the terms of the original deal.  It doesn’t seem like any clause to which the unborn child would have agreed up front.

Most, if not all, contracts contain language that covers the possibility of one party or the other wanting out of the agreement.  Remedies include continuation of performance for a specific time, return of certain forms of compensation, etc.  Such contracts include language for even the most significant breach.  An illustrative example:

It is further understood and agreed that any breach of this agreement by you will result in irreparable harm to the counter-party, that money damages will not be a sufficient remedy for any such breach of this agreement and that the counter-party will be entitled to equitable relief, including injunction and specific performance for any such breach or any threatened breach, and that you shall not oppose the granting of such relief.[xvi]

If the mother changes her mind – as Rothbard suggests she has every right to do – it will cause irreparable harm to the unborn child.  Money damages will most certainly not be sufficient for the benefit of the now-dead unborn child.  The counter-party (the unborn child) would be entitled to equitable relief, including specific performance, and such relief shall not be opposed.  What specific performance would the unborn child demand?  It is not difficult to imagine the answer.

Similar language is included in many contracts today, and one would expect in this most one-sided contract between mother and unborn child – where the party that set the terms of the contract could then break the contract and realize a gain while the counter-party suffers death – it seems reasonable that the expectation would be not less than what is standard in every-day commercial agreements – for exchanges much less significant than life and death.

There are libertarians who believe a specific performance clause is counter to libertarian theory.  In my limited reading of others on this issue, it seems Rothbard is one such libertarian[xvii] and Block is not. [xviii]  I find it to be a slippery slope for a libertarian when one begins down the path of calling into question the enforceability of the terms within a contract – a contract not otherwise aggressing against an unwilling third party.[xix] 

VII.  Evictionsim is Block’s Answer

In a blog post entitled “Evicitonism: The Only True Libertarian Position on Abortion,” Block summarizes his concept: [xx]

In a nutshell, the argument for evictionism is as follows:

1. The fetus is trespassing into the womb of the woman.
2. The rights of all fetuses are equal.
3. Therefore, the only right choice would be evicting the fetus. Killing it would be wrong.[xxi]

I find no trespass.  How is one trespassing when one was invited?  When the party host extended the invitation, she knew it would be for a nine-month visit with no possible way for the guest to depart in the meantime.  The unborn child was invited by the action of the woman for just such a term. 

Block develops the idea further:

What is evictionism? It is the theory that a pregnant woman has the right to evict from her body the unwanted unborn child, but not to murder it.[xxii]

He recognizes that, with today’s medical technology, if the eviction occurs prior to the sixth month or so, the infant will likely die.  However he suggests, over time, that improvements in technology will afford the evicted infant a chance at life even if the eviction occurs earlier in the pregnancy. 

From Block and Whitehead:

The position put forth here, in contrast, is one of eviction not of killing. However, if the only way to evict is by killing the fetus, then the woman's right to her property - that is, her womb - must be held above the valuable life of the fetus.[xxiii]

There is significant fault with this assertion.  Even if one grants Block’s position, Rothbard suggests that property rights can be legitimately defended only proportionately:

The victim, then, has the right to exact punishment up to the proportional amount as determined by the extent of the crime, but he is also free either to allow the aggressor to buy his way out of punishment, or to forgive the aggressor partially or altogether. The proportionate level of punishment sets the right of the victim, the permissible upper bound of punishment; but how much or whether the victim decides to exercise that right is up to him. [xxiv]

Rothbard here seems to directly contradict his reasoning in support of a woman’s right to abortion due to the child’s trespass – the punishment certainly is not proportional to the (supposed) crime.  One or the other position must be invalid.  I suggest it is not Rothbard’s position on proportionality.

Is a shopkeeper justified in shooting a six-year-old child in the back while the child is escaping with a one-dollar candy bar?  It seems Block and Whitehead would say yes. After all, it is the shopkeeper’s property rights in question.  Does the six-year-olds’ aggression justify any and every level of violence by the shopkeeper in defending his one-dollar candy bar? 

In my limited work on the concept of “proportionality,” I conclude that the answer will not be found solely by applying the non-aggression principle. [xxv] In the spectrum of possibilities beginning with simply retrieving the stolen property, there are many reasonable answers not inconsistent with libertarian theory – so, while Rothbard’s view of proportionality is one possibility, I don’t believe it is the only possibility. 

But I am certain that shooting a six-year-old for stealing a candy bar is nowhere consistent with the non-aggression principle; this example can be applied as well to the case of the unborn child, making invalid Block and Whitehead’s position.

The Rights of the Unborn Child

I suggest that the unborn child does have rights to (and the mother has obligations to the unborn child regarding) the use of the womb based on general contractual principles, and further on contractual principles found in rental real estate.

IX.    Causation

Causation:

Causation is the "causal relationship between conduct and result". That is to say that causation provides a means of connecting conduct with a resulting effect, typically an injury.[xxvi]

Here I speak to causation not in the abortive act (although this could be used to counter Block’s “evictionism” argument), but in conception.  The woman’s “conduct” during intercourse brought on the “result” of pregnancy.  It is difficult to accept that the woman somehow has no responsibility at all for the pregnancy (and therefore, the unborn child) directly caused by her conduct.

From the afterword of Dr. Paul’s paper, by Doris Gordon:

Being in the womb and needing parental care is a situation parents impose upon their children; children do not impose it upon their parents. As libertarians agree, no one’s mere need for care should be made an obligation upon anyone else under the law. But if we are responsible for causing those needs, as with our own children, and if we negligently or intentionally fail to provide care and then harm results, we are accountable.

The critical moral point is not need but causation and assent (i.e., choice), and thus responsibility. …since parents, fathers as well as mothers, are responsible for causing their own children’s need for protection, their obligation is not a matter of choice but of their children’s rights.[xxvii]

It cannot be avoided that the mother’s action caused the pregnancy. 

X.     Reasonable Reliance

The unborn child, now existing bidden in the womb, at the invitation of the mother, might reasonably conclude he can rely on certain conditions; a reasonable reliance:

Reasonable reliance:

…what a prudent person would believe and act upon if told something by another. Typically, a person is promised a profit or other benefit, and in reliance takes steps in reliance on the promise, only to find the statements or promises were not true or were exaggerated.

The one who relied can recover damages for the costs of his/her actions or demand performance if the reliance was "reasonable."[xxviii]

What would a reasonable person – one unable to swim – assume if invited on a nine-month ocean cruise?  Would he reasonably assume this invitation included the possibility that his hostess would throw him overboard?

After receiving an invitation that inherently involved nine months of complete – life-and-death – dependency, what would be more reasonable for the unborn child to rely upon than he was promised the benefit of the full term in the womb?

XI.    A Unilateral Contract

Block and Whitehead suggest that there can be no contract (“implicit or otherwise”) as there was no counterparty at the time; the child did not exist at the time of contract:

…there can be no such contract in the case of pregnancy, at the very least because there is simply no child to have a contract with at the point of intercourse when the child is created.  [xxix]

I suggest that the unborn child (and even the yet-to-be-conceived child) does have a right in contract, despite Block’s objection that a contract cannot be had with a party not yet in existence:

Unilateral Contract:

A contract in which only one party makes an express promise, or undertakes a performance without first securing a reciprocal agreement from the other party.  An agreement to pay in exchange for performance, if the potential performer chooses to act.[xxx]

Offering a reward is a typical example of such a contract – a reward is made known to the general public.  The counterparty need not be known at the time the contract is offered, yet it is enforceable by the counterparty if properly claimed.  Technically, the counterparty need not even be born or conceived when the offer was made (imagine in 1963 a fifteen-year-old boy finding Hitler on skis in Bariloche).  Subsequently, someone comes to claim the reward: the person who chose to act.  Although he was not the individually identified counterparty (at the time of contract there was no specific counter-party), he has a contractual right to the reward. 

The woman made an offer; she placed herself in a position of being obligated to a counter-party that might take her up on her offer.  The unborn child took her up on the offer, and can therefore enforce the contract – contracts with minors are enforceable by the minor, if the minor chooses to do so; contracts with a minor can only be voided by the minor.  I suspect the unborn child would choose to enforce the contract.

XII.  The Unilateral Contract is an Offer to Lease

Block uses the language of landlord and tenant (“evictionism”) to describe his concept – I will walk along his chosen path: The mother as landlord and the unborn child as tenant have entered into a lease – a fixed-term tenancy, with the term tied to a specific event: birth.  Such a lease term was recognized in common law:

Fixed Term Tenancy:

A fixed-term tenancy or tenancy for years lasts for some fixed period of time. It has a definite beginning date and a definite ending date. Despite the name "tenancy for years", such a tenancy can last for any period of time—even a tenancy for one week may be called a tenancy for years. At common law the duration did not need to be certain, but could be conditioned upon the happening of some event, (e.g., "until the crops are ready for harvest" or "until the war is over").

A fixed term tenancy comes to an end automatically when the fixed term runs out or, in the case of a tenancy that ends on the happening of an event, when the event occurs.[xxxi]

In this case, the term of the lease is for the term of the pregnancy – the “happening of an event,” being birth.

Can the landlord evict the tenant without cause?  I have reviewed several typical real estate lease contracts, and find nothing to suggest this is so.  And without such a possibility, there is, of course, no remedy proposed.  I suspect if the landlord wants the tenant out during the term of the lease, the landlord must negotiate proper terms and compensation for this proposed breach.  What would the unborn child demand as compensation?  It doesn’t seem so difficult to guess.

XIII.                    Covenant of Quiet Enjoyment

In a lease, the tenant is protected in his right to enjoy the property without disturbance:

In the covenant of quiet enjoyment, the landlord promises that during the term of the tenancy no one will disturb the tenant in the tenant's use and enjoyment of the premises. Quiet enjoyment includes the right to exclude others from the premises, the right to peace and quiet, the right to clean premises, and the right to basic services such as heat and hot water and, for high-rise buildings, elevator service.[xxxii]

The landlord (the mother) makes this “promise.”  It seems clear that the unborn child would want to exclude an abortion doctor from the premises, and would want peace and quiet as opposed to the horrendous and permanent calamity that comes with being aborted.  The landlord is obligated to ensure the abortion doctor stays out.

XIV.          Conclusion: The Property Rights to Use the Womb Belong to the Unborn Child

The unborn child is not an aggressor; the unborn child is not a trespasser.  Based on these factors and contractual principles, I suggest that the unborn child has the rights to use the womb, rights the mother gave up for a time – in a similar manner in which a tenant has the right to occupy the rental home, rights the homeowner has given up for a time. 

Just as in a rental agreement where the homeowner transfers the right to occupy the house to a tenant (without giving up ownership of the home), the mother has transferred the rights to occupy the womb to the unborn child (without giving up ownership of the womb).

The mother took an action that resulted in the pregnancy – causation.  Her conduct caused a result for which she is responsible.  She cannot be relieved – by her unilateral choice – of the obligation that came to be as a direct result of her action.  The obligations, caused by her actions, are hers because of a unilateral contract – the one the mother extended to the potential taker – the unborn child.  In this case, the unborn child took up the offer at the moment of fertilization.  That he did not exist when the offer was made is irrelevant.  There was sound basis for the unborn child to reasonably rely on his being wanted – the mother took action that gave this appearance.

The use (separate from ownership) of the property (the womb) belongs to the unborn child for the term of the lease – a fixed-term tenancy tied to a specific event: birth. The unborn child has the right of quiet enjoyment in the property.  I conclude that the unborn child, not the mother, has property rights in the use of the womb for the duration of the pregnancy.

Within the context of abortion, therefore, the mother has no right to take action against the unborn child that might result in harm to the unborn child.

Quote of the Times;
“Politics must be the battle of the principles... the principle of liberty against the principle of force.” - Herbert

Link of the Times;
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/under-obama-u.s.-personal-freedom-ranking-slips-below-france/article/2556322

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I wonder if Cookie Monster ever goes into the bathroom and throws up after eating a whole bag of chocolate chip cookies.

It would be cool if he did, because then we would have something in common.

*.*

There recently was a thread about awful room-mates, along with pictures. I have my own experience.

Housing complex. The units are basically small cottages, made for two room-mates, with a common area and attached kitchen, a small storage closet in the common area containing water pipes leading to Suite A's bathroom. The two private areas of the suite contained a private bedroom, a sliding glass patio door, and a private bathroom. Sounds idyllic.

My roomie, Jed, liked to throw parties. He liked tarantulas, too, and kept six.

For the sake of saving my effort in recounting this story, here is a basic rundown of the chaos:

This run-through of incidents is going to be kind of terse, because I'm working off of a check list I made a while ago.

During our stay together, my roomie:

He brought his motorcycle into our common room because he was "afraid it would be stolen." This was fine, but then he started it and let it idle for 15 minutes without opening any windows, causing all of our stuff to smell like motor exhaust.

After his girlfriend left him, he went berserk in his private bathroom with a sledgehammer or a geologist's hammer and smashed all of his bathroom fixtures. 

His toilet was inoperative at this point, so he used mine for a time, until I refused him access. Later I would find out that he shat in garbage bags and kept them in the common room closet for weeks. More on this later.

He set fire to our carpet with alcohol during a party. He pissed in the fridge. He shat in the fridge. He shat in the crisper drawer. He shat on the oven top, and instead of cleaning it up, turned on the burner, reasoning that carbon is easier to clean than feces.

He left a dead cat he found somewhere in our oven for a week and forgot about it. I discovered it later.

He owned 6 tarantulas, and would let one run around free-range. He assured me he had "tamed it." I assured him he was a stupid fuckhead.

He never showered.

He sold drugs from his room. He smoked pot with his friends in the common area. He spilled bong water on two of my text books. He and his friends did cocaine off of the television set in the common area.

He had a party to which he invited too many people, and they spilled into my room. Strangers had sex in my room at that party. In my bed. One of them had pubic lice. Someone took a dump in my closet. Someone left a used condom in my slipper. I discovered all of these things after it was too late.

Morning after said party, my mother knocked on the front door, and a stranger from that party answered and immediately threw up on her legs.

Crackheads would regularly come by our apartment at all hours of the night trying to buy drugs because of his illicit activities. Whenever I answered the door and indicated that there was no crack to be had, they would sometimes get, desperate, belligerent and violent, and refuse to leave.

He put food products containing milk, meat and cheese on the heating unit and turned it on for three hours to see what would happen. I could've told him what would happen if he asked me.

He got angry at some video game he and his friends were playing in the common area, so he busted into my room while I was sleeping, and punched me in the face and stomach.

A few days later he put a tarantula in my bedsheets while I was sleeping.  Thankfully I wasn't bitten, but I was freaked out and still sometimes jump out of bed in the middle of the night for no reason and attack my sheets.

He shat in a lot of our fixtures. He would put his shit in baggies and leave them in strange places. I was thankfull for when he used a baggie. A few words of advice for potential room-mates: A light fixture is not a toilet. A heating vent is not a toilet. The sink is not a toilet. The oven is not a toilet. That is all.

I was pissed at this point. He refused to clean or take care of all of the messes listed above, so I ended up cleaning them, but keeping an hourly log and catalogue of what work I did and worked out a bill, which I sent to him.

I was tired of cleaning feces out of our refridgerator, finding turds in our crisper drawer, shit on the stovetop, vomit on the carpet, vomit in our potted plants, vomit on the grille of our television set, urine on the carpet, urine on the kitchen floor seeping behind the refridgerator, dead animals in our oven and freezer units, and bags of feces hidden in our light fixtures.

Have you ever had to move your refridgerator out of its little nook to get behind it to clean urine mixed with whatever the fuck lurks behind a refridgerator in the first place?

After sending him the cleaning bill and getting a refusal of payment, I took some of his stuff, dumped it in a storage unit across town, and held it until he paid me back. He stole some of my stuff in retaliation, but I called the cops and repossessed my belongings. He was unable to articulate to the cops that I had some of his shit in this exchange, so I ended up basically getting my shit back while he had to be put in their car to cool off.

Upon retrospect, I think maybe he became mentally ill after losing his girlfriend, and not being able to part with his feces was part of his illness. This is purely speculative.

He wasn't poor. He was from a wealthy family. They don't come into the picture, though.

I had had enough. I bought a minifridge, a plug-in stovetop, two padlocked footlockers, a wooden bar, duct tape, a remote-control car, and an external padlock. 

Actually, upon reflection, I really want to share how I kept my room-mate out of my private area. It was dubbed the "Home Alone" security system.

I had two potential entrances to my private area, a sliding glass patio door and a regular door to the common area. I secured the common door with a padlock on the outside which was really just for show. The inside was barricaded. At the bottom I had a rolled up towel, and I sealed the rest of it with tape to avoid smell or other chemical assaults from the common area.

I packed against the door with my king-sized bed, which was in turn secured from being dislodged by a bookshelf full of weights and books. Even if he got through the padlock, he would not have been able to open the door without busting it in two. The top half of the door was unsecured; I was worried he might break the door and gain access, so when I seized his stuff I had it put in public storage across town.

Now the sliding glass door is where the home alone shit comes in. It had a lock, but it was nonfunctional and only accessible from the inside. So in order to secure the door while I was away, I got a remote controlled car, attached it to a string which was secured by a fisheye screw at the top of the door, and tied to a security bar which would drop into the tread of the sliding door, preventing it from being opened.

Anyone who has a sliding glass door would know how this works, but if anyone needs further explanation, I'm happy to furnish it.

So when I came home, I would whip out my little remote control, make the RC car run off and lift the bar, then gain access to the apartment. To prevent this system from being discovered, I papered the inside of the sliding door with butcher paper, and I ran a wire outside of the door in an obvious manner, so that the roomie would think that this wire somehow, if tugged correctly, would undo the lock. To my knowledge, all of his attempts to get inside my apartment were by messing with this wire, which was attached to the handle of an antique coffee grinder and a paint can. If you tugged it, you'd get a wierd uneven resistance as the handle crank turned and the paint can danced, which added to the illusion that this wire was some secret way of ingress.

I heard this account from the neighbors, because it occurred while I was away, but apparently he had lost his front door key, had some kind of intestinal problem, and had to take a shit really bad. All of the neighbors he knew he had already hit up for toilet access and been refused by this point. So he's swearing like crazy and yanking at this wire, and bashing against the door in a frenzied desperation when the neighbors call the cops, reporting a B&E. When the cops show up he's taking a shit in the bushes just outside my window. I fucking hate him so much.

I think he went crazy and lost all his friends at some point, because around the time I barricaded, I stopped hearing parties. In fact, I stopped hearing anything from the common area of the apartment, except for the occasional formless moans and thumping. I don't know precisely what went on in there, because I mentally washed my hands of the whole area. I did, however, start smelling odors. I taped up my door. I know it wasn't smart to do things like this, but I was just fucking sick of dealing with his shit. I didn't call the landlord or anything, despite the fact that I knew he was destroying things over there. After cleaning so much of his shit up, I just wanted the universal god of justice to see what a wreck the place would become without my presence.

Forgive me for being a little spotty in my descriptions after this point.  What I do know of what transpired over there I can only reconstruct from forensic evidence, what precisely was destroyed, what commmon friends have told me in their accounts, and two forrays over into the waste zone over the next two months. I essentially didn't even see the front door of our apartment during this time.

*.*

Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Not get into another fight

With that transvestite hooker, Mike.

*.*

Famous Last Words

Pardon me, sir. I did not do it on purpose.

Said by: Queen Marie Antoinette after she accidentally stepped on the foot of her executioner as she went to the guillotine.
 

I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.

Said by: Humphrey Bogart

 
I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct.

Said by: Dominique Bouhours, famous French grammarian

 
I am perplexed. Satan Get Out

Said by: Aleister Crowley - famous occultist

 
Hey, fellas! How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s paper? ‘French Fries’!

Said by: James French, a convicted murderer, was sentenced to the electric chair. He shouted these words to members of the press who were to witness his execution.

 
It’s stopped.

Said by: Joseph Henry Green, upon checking his own pulse.

 
LSD, 100 micrograms I.M.

Said by: Aldous Huxley to his wife. She obliged and he was injected twice before his death.

 
You have won, O Galilean

Said by: Emperor Julian, having attempted to reverse the official endorsement of Christianity by the Roman Empire.

 
No, you certainly can’t.

Said by: John F. Kennedy in reply to Nellie Connally, wife of Governor John Connelly, commenting “You certainly can’t say that the people of Dallas haven’t given you a nice welcome, Mr. President.

 
Tomorrow, I shall no longer be here

Said by: Nostradamus

 
Hurry up, you Hoosier bastard, I could kill ten men while you’re fooling around!

Said by: Carl Panzram, serial killer, shortly before he was executed by hanging.


Please don’t let me fall.

Said by: Mary Surratt, before being hanged for her part in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. She was the first woman executed by the United States federal government.

 
Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.

Said by: Voltaire when asked by a priest to renounce Satan.

*.*

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.

Marriage is like a phone call in the night: first the ring, and then you wake up.

For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.

Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. 

All tragedies are finished by a death, all comedies by a marriage.

Issue of the Times;
Brought Up To Believe by Bionic Mosquito

…King George was a tyrant.

…Americans fought for independence.

…Americans won their independence.

…the founding fathers were selfless.

…Robert Morris was America’s financier.

…government exists to protect my life and property.

…the time during the Articles of Confederation was chaotic.

…a written constitution is a check on government expansion.

…the Constitution protects my rights.

…Thomas Jefferson favored a smaller central government.

…America was never about Empire.

…Lincoln saved the Union.

…Lincoln cared about the slaves.

…Lincoln was honest.

…the West was wild.

…Japan’s aggression in Asia was a shock to the US government.

…Germany started the Great War.

…Wilson made the world safe for democracy.

…democracy represents the best form of government.

…democracies are reluctant to go to war.

…laissez-faire capitalism caused the great depression.

…Hoover was a do-nothing president.

…Hitler started the war in Europe.

…Stalin was a victim of Hitler’s aggression.

…Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise.

…World War II ended the depression.

…World War II was the good war.

…World War II was fought by the greatest generation.

…the United States defeated Hitler

….Germany was the only combatant to commit atrocities in Europe.

…the atomic bombs ended the war.

…the atomic bombs saved one million lives.

…the US government would stand against world government.

…the US military fights for my freedom.

…the US military fights for the freedom of other, less fortunate, people.

…the global presence of the US military is an unwanted burden.

…foreign wars are almost…romantic.

…JFK was shot by a lone nut.

…by saving and working hard, you will retire into the American dream.

…money and banking must be managed by the state.

…the United States is a nation of laws, not men.

…Reagan was a conservative.

…there is a meaningful difference between democrats and republicans.

…a third party would provide the solution.

…CATO is a friend of liberty.

…Milton Friedman was a free-market economist.

…central banking is not central planning.

…central banks are necessary to regulate markets.

…nineteen men could…well, you know.

…they hate us for our freedom.

…a police officer’s job is to protect and to serve.

…Palestinians are a threat to Israel.

Quote of the Times;
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” – Kerouac

Link of the Times;
http://www.reaxxion.com/3273/the-fantasy-of-women-being-equal-to-men

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Send E-mail to efreem2@alumni.umbc.edu
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