Press "Enter" to skip to content

Monday Miscellany

  • The Constitution as an 18th-century Patriot Act. Hm. I’ve always thought of that applying more to the Alien and Sedition Acts. But it’s an interesting point. Anyhow, I’m definitely of the school that says, “The Constitution isn’t perfect, but it’s better than what we have now.” (Any idea who originated that quote?)
  • Last week while looking for a link to the Whiskey Rebellion, I stumbled across this cool site dealing with booze, with some emphasis on the bootleg variety. I’m not a drinker myself. I fall asleep after one glass of wine. I think beer tastes like dish detergent and whiskey tastes like something regurgitated by a particularly dissolute wino. But lots of friends are, or want to be, homemade brewers or vintners. Same site also has an irreverently honest look at prohibition. The original one, that is.
  • Comment spammers. They’re getting more clever at not being obviously spammy. Early on, I approved — then unapproved — a few dubious posts. Reason I’m saying this is that I might be getting too suspicious; if you’ve posted a real, but not real specific, comment and didn’t see it, I may have “spammed” it. BTW, I’ll never ditch a comment just because it’s critical; criticize away. The only non-spam comments I ever plan to delete are ones that are vulgar, threatening, irrelevant to the topic, or childishly insulting. (If you want to insult me, do it with class. Extra points for including five-dollar words instead of four-letter ones. 😉 )
  • On the contrary, some comments around these parts are so good they could be stand-alone blog posts — like the ones here and here. Some comment threads are turning into active dialogs. Short, but thoughtful.
  • Survivors know best: Torture is always wrong. And “survivors” emphatically include those who volunteered for the experience knowing they would live and walk free minutes later. Imagine how much worse when you don’t know how far your tormentors will go [link added after entry posted], or when the agony will end.
  • From the There-Are-No-Coincidences department. Or maybe it’s the It’s-a-Small-World department. Two days ago, at P.T.’s suggestion, I watched “The Miracle Worker,” a movie I hadn’t seen in decades. This morning, I decided that each Monday Miscellany section should have some “news you can use” in it. But what? What? Into my head pops “unschooling.” The very first site I hit contains (to my non-Javascript-accepting browser) nothing but a quote from that very Miracle Worker herself, Annie Sullivan, teacher of Helen Keller. It’s a good one, too. And here’s more on unschooling (aka “delight-driven learning”): here and here and here.
  • Finally, I can understand how bloggers fall into the trap of just tweaking on government stupidity instead of offering real content and real solutions. Gummint supplies so much material. Here’s John Stossel on the patent office’s response to upside-down faxes. And how about that laugh-a-minute Census Bureau? They spend a third of a billion to promote the coming head-count, then make a gloriously inept error perfectly calculated to scare the heck out of one entire ethnic group.

6 Comments

  1. Claire
    Claire February 8, 2010 7:01 am

    Thank you, Pat. Good try. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’d accept that attribution. Fred Smith may like to say it … but so do I, and I’m dead-solid certain I didn’t originate it. I’m betting against Respectable Fred and guessing the statement was originally made by some waggish libertarian outsider, ca. 1970.

  2. Pat
    Pat February 8, 2010 7:46 am

    Maybe Nixon?

    Sorry… I couldn’t resist.

  3. George Potter
    George Potter February 8, 2010 1:18 pm

    Hey, Claire, I stumbled onto the Happy Mountain pages wandering around from the link you posted. I enjoyed them greatly. 🙂 As you know, I’m very proud of my own family tradition.

    It’s odd you should mention the good discussion in comment threads, in the same post where you explain your sensible comment deleting philosophy. As I’ve mentioned on certain other sites, I’m a hardass ‘ban ’em if they don’t behave’ type. People make faces at me because I’m an anarchist, but the point they always miss (and the only point that matters, I maintain) is respect for property rights. This isn’t some monolitihic mindset, but goes to the very heart of how I want to interact with people: I want to hang out with like-minded folks on private property. If someone comes along disturbing our get-together, we toss ’em over the fence. The great thing about online hangouts is that you [i]can[/i] just let anyone wander in and say howdy, and strike up a conversation, and toss ’em over the fence if they prove to be assholes. Can’t do that in real life. Gotta distrust ’em from start.

    How many cool people have we met because they wandered in and said howdy? All of ’em, right? 😀 It’s a fun way to meet people. And — so long as you reserve the right to toss ’em over the fence upon revelation of assholishness — the fun never ends!

    On blogs people seem to accept this. On forums you always get hundreds of pages of drama and people throwing themselves on their dull swords and not even having the decency to shut up afterwards. You know the drill. And, I’m sad to say, this situation happens because hosts have been remiss in their throwing assholes over the fence duties. 😛

  4. Mr.Fox
    Mr.Fox February 8, 2010 7:39 pm

    Thanks for the booze site. I want to suggest to everyone who don’t trust US dollars as money and/or US financial institutions to store them – one can go gold/silver/platina at goldmoney.com (both to keep the gold in their accounts or to pay other people with it). I’d love to hear if anyone uses their services and likes/dislikes them.

  5. Claire
    Claire February 9, 2010 5:51 am

    George,

    Sigh. I know whereof you speak on all that “forum drama” (and LOL — thowing themselves on dull swords). I know rude people must have simply been rude people all through history. But it sure does seem as though discussion forums have created more of them. I think the difference in blog comments is that usually nobody sees what gets deleted.

    Anyhow, all that’s ever been deleted here is spam, far as I know. And every day I’m more impressed with the quality and content of the comment threads. Thanks for brotherly support.

    And — OMG! — thanks for the new novel you’ve started at your site. I’m not usually much on reading long fiction online, but I’ll make an exception for that one.

Leave a Reply