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Month: February 2011

Startingpage.com

News from Katherine Albrecht: You already know StartPage, a privacy-enhancing alternative to Google. But what if you just prefer the results Google gives, even as you deplore its snooping? You might want to give StartPage’s sister site StartingPage.com a try. Google results wrapped in Ixquick/StartPage privacy. Given a “trust mark” by EuroPriSe, the European privacy certification authority, which, according to Katherine, “… only awards its seal of approval after a service passes an in-depth, independent audit by legal and technical experts.”

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Monday miscellany

The Swiss vote to keep their guns. Sounds as if their nannifying hoplophobes are just as bad as ours, though. NAFTA North. For “security” this time. Complete with more plans for biometric ID and tracking. Sigh. But don’t worry. The fedgov’s rushing to the rescue to protect our online privacy. I especially like the part about all those levels of government that are above the proposed law. Kevin Wilmeth, Rifleman Savant, gets it exactly right on Egypt. The future’s still dangerous (isn’t it always?). But the NOW has been magnificent. And zownds! — the Empire was irrelevant to it all.…

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Where will Atlas Shrugged play?

The world wants to know. That fantastic trailer’s got people asking. Nobody’s saying. According to the film’s official site the filmmakers are distributing it themselves by agreement with individual theater managers. If you want your local moviehouse to show it, it’s up to you to get the ball rolling. According the the film’s Facebook page theaters in eight cities are lined up. One is in Denver. Nobody’s saying more yet. Got any updates? Post ’em here!

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Atlas Shrugged trailer

Well, whodathunkit? The Atlas Shrugged trailer is out and despite the movie’s nearly non-existant budget and no-name actors, it looks amazingly good. Opens in theaters on — ta da — April 15. Perhaps not at your local multiplex. Definitely not at my local oneplex. But this might be worth traveling to see. Bonus: Here’s another trailer — made from existing movie clips by a fan who never thought there’d be an Atlas Shrugged movie. It’s pretty darned good, too. Keep in mind that this one has no connection to the actual film that’s coming out:

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“Definding” boundaries, part III

I should have included this with part II, but I didn’t quite have my head together this morning. This is for anybody struggling with boundary issues and not knowing the way out. You guys who already have it all figured out can ignore this. 🙂 Ten tips for defending boundaries 1. Know your boundaries. 2. Know your weak spots where it comes to defending boundaries (e.g. being “too nice,” saying yes when you want to say no, giving in to internal or external pressure, giving money to the wrong people). Watch for those weak moments and when you recognize one,…

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“Definding” boundaries, part II

Back in November, I wrote about defending personal boundaries. I typoed, then later corrected, the headline; but as several people pointed out, the typo made a certain kind of sense. So here it is again. In the original, I didn’t spend much time on why personal boundaries matter to freedom. MamaLiberty did that in the comments section: I think the boundaries, and setting them, are an integral part of self ownership. If we know for sure that we alone own our lives and are responsible for them … we are at least not as vulnerable. False guilt and ownership/responsibility issues…

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Wednesday miscellany

I’ve been working on a followup to last November’s blog “Defending Boundaries” (or, as I originally typoed it, “Definding Boundaries”). Will try to have that later in the week. But today I’ve accepted an invitation from a friend to go to the Big City. Not just the local Big City with the Wal-Mart (population 10,000 or so), but a real big city. Where I get to do something I’ve never done before — visit an Ikea store. Since I’ve always loved Scandinavian furniture, this could be dangerous — even aside from what friends assure me are the many other addictive…

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Your latest opportunity to be a criminal!

Got any relatives in the U.S. Air Force? Any at all? Not necessarily a son or a brother or a daughter or anybody that close. But how about your third cousin twice removed? Your uncle by marriage? The brother-in-law of your sister’s estranged husband? And have you read any of the information disclosed in the WikiLeaked cables? (Confess it; you know you have.) Then congratulations! YOU may be our Federal Felon of the Day!

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Monday miscellany

Why you should always pay your website designer. George W. Bush cancels speaking engagement in Switzerland. If he’d gone he might have been arrested for war crimes. Speaking of which, I was poking around Wikipedia the other day and learned that the top U.S. representative at the Bretton Woods Conference (and with John Maynard Keynes one of the two most influential figures in the monetary agreement forged there) was a Soviet agent. Sheesh. I really do try not to fall into conspiracy theories. But that’s just strange. A lot of what this man did is just strange. Very smart, Mubarak.…

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The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen

The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. A friend recommended this book by philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah. Here’s the book’s home page with links to interviews with the author. And here my Amazon link to the book. Appiah is no libertarian purist (and may be no libertarian at all), but he makes a case about moral and social change that probably rings true with a lot of us. If a practice is widespread, generally accepted, but becomes objectionable (foot-binding in China, dueling in Europe, female genital mutilation or honor killings in Muslim countries, etc.), governments may fail…

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