"excising clergy from a list of 'trusted adults.'"
That seems fair -- although, for the same reason, other authority figures (teachers, coaches, cops, etc.) should likewise be excised.
Authority attracts people who abuse authority.
That's not to say that all religious leaders, or even most religious leaders, abuse their authority. But someone with a desire to abuse the vulnerable is more likely to seek out a position from which he or she can do so.
Resolved, that a congregation’s priest, pastor, etc., is probably more rather than less likely to engage in sexual abuse than a random member of the congregation.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
All Is Not Madness
No general comment (other than to note that some of it is, well, stupid) on Casey Chalk's piece, "Public School Sex-Ed’s Descent Into Madness," at The American Conservative. But I did find one of Chalk's complaints -- that a sex-ed curriculum "excis[es] clergy from a list of 'trusted adults,' interesting. My comment (awaiting moderation at TAC):
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Oh, For Crying Out Loud
A century ago, give or take, it took allegations of rape and rumors that the rape involved a champagne bottle to destroy a big actor's career or knock a successful show off the screen (big screen back then, smaller as time went on).
Nope, didn't read the tweet or tweets.
Nope, haven't watched the Roseanne reboot.
Nope, don't need to do either of those things to say this:
- Roseanne Barr has built an entire career on wandering back and forth across the thin line that separates "merely very abrasive" from "seemingly batshit insane." I see no reason to assume that whatever she tweeted unintentionally violated whatever presumed standard it was held to. Intentionally violating presumed standards is part of her job description as a comedian, and so far as I can tell she stays on the job pretty much 24/7.
- ABC knew (1) damn well when it picked up the reboot of her eponymous show. Why buy the ticket if you aren't willing to take the ride?
A bunch of people -- cast, crew, etc. -- just lost their jobs. Not because Roseanne Barr is offensive, but because ABC's execs are a bunch of cowards.
Friday, May 25, 2018
Story of My Life: Cheap Guitars
I am not a talented guitarist. Enthusiastic (when I have time to play), but not good.
I'm also a cheapskate, which means that with the single exception of the Joe Pass Emperor II I inherited from my dad (which I only take out rarely and reverently), I play cheap guitars. An old Epiphone dreadnought ($150 close to 20 years ago, and it came with gig bag, etc.), three Rogues (an acoustic dreadnought, an acoustic/electric dreadnought, and a lap steel) that came to less than $200 combined brand new, an Epiphone Les Paul ($95 on sale), a Walmart "First Act" strat clone ($10 with amp at a yard sale) ...
... and my current favorite, a student-sized First Act acoustic that I picked up for $2 at another yard sale. One of the tuning keys was completely shot, but that doesn't matter because I'm running it with only three strings (tuned to G-D-G) and using an old 3/4" socket as a slide while I run through some video lessons from online and await the arrival of my newest acquisition, a $35 mass-production take on a cigar box guitar (not an affiliate link):
I'm don't recall when I first noticed cigar box guitars, but they've appealed to me ever since for two initial reasons:
Then there's my life-long blues conundrum. Since I was a teenager, I've listened to e.g. Robert Johnson and wondered how the hell those old blues guys managed to sound like they were playing two guitars with about five hands. I just assumed they were virtuosi. And they were.
But they were also playing open tunings, keeping the rhythm on all the strings except one and playing lead on that remaining string. In fact, many of them had started out as children on single-string "diddley bows" (Ellas McDaniel renamed himself after that instrument) and then just transposed what they did with those onto single strings of multi-string instruments in open tunings.
Cool: I'm certainly no Blind Willie Johnson and never will be, but I'm starting to be able to play something that's identifiably slide blues guitar instead of just sour mush by cutting the number of strings I have to keep track of in half and using a stubby slide to noodle with the blues scale on the high string while keeping rhythm on the other two.
Cooler: An acoustic/electric guitar, with a slide and play-along CD, for $35 new.
I'm also a cheapskate, which means that with the single exception of the Joe Pass Emperor II I inherited from my dad (which I only take out rarely and reverently), I play cheap guitars. An old Epiphone dreadnought ($150 close to 20 years ago, and it came with gig bag, etc.), three Rogues (an acoustic dreadnought, an acoustic/electric dreadnought, and a lap steel) that came to less than $200 combined brand new, an Epiphone Les Paul ($95 on sale), a Walmart "First Act" strat clone ($10 with amp at a yard sale) ...
... and my current favorite, a student-sized First Act acoustic that I picked up for $2 at another yard sale. One of the tuning keys was completely shot, but that doesn't matter because I'm running it with only three strings (tuned to G-D-G) and using an old 3/4" socket as a slide while I run through some video lessons from online and await the arrival of my newest acquisition, a $35 mass-production take on a cigar box guitar (not an affiliate link):
I'm don't recall when I first noticed cigar box guitars, but they've appealed to me ever since for two initial reasons:
- They're cheap and you can build them yourself (I will likely build one at some point, but not from scratch -- CB Gitty offers parts and kits).
- Three strings in an open tuning is a LOT easier to make noise that's identifiable as music with than six strings in standard tuning.
Then there's my life-long blues conundrum. Since I was a teenager, I've listened to e.g. Robert Johnson and wondered how the hell those old blues guys managed to sound like they were playing two guitars with about five hands. I just assumed they were virtuosi. And they were.
But they were also playing open tunings, keeping the rhythm on all the strings except one and playing lead on that remaining string. In fact, many of them had started out as children on single-string "diddley bows" (Ellas McDaniel renamed himself after that instrument) and then just transposed what they did with those onto single strings of multi-string instruments in open tunings.
Cool: I'm certainly no Blind Willie Johnson and never will be, but I'm starting to be able to play something that's identifiably slide blues guitar instead of just sour mush by cutting the number of strings I have to keep track of in half and using a stubby slide to noodle with the blues scale on the high string while keeping rhythm on the other two.
Cooler: An acoustic/electric guitar, with a slide and play-along CD, for $35 new.
Monday, May 21, 2018
Are "Progressives" Thinking This "Guaranteed Job" Proposal Through?
Maybe, maybe not.
That's the doctor giving Johnny Rico his physical exam in Starship Troopers. He's explaining that (in Heinlein's universe), anyone can join the Federal Service, regardless of physical/mental ability, skill set, etc.
Bernie Sanders envisions something like this. If you want a job, the government will give you one, period.
Apart from the general evil of this idea (there's no way for the government to give someone a paying job without stealing the money to pay for that person's salary and benefits), it seems to me that some consequences naturally follow.
Consequence #1: There goes the "progressive" argument against "work requirements" for welfare enrollees, "unemployment insurance," etc. "I can't find a job" will no longer be an excuse because anyone can have a job for the asking. In fact, since these magical government jobs will presumably pay a "living wage," the rationale for food stamps, housing subsidies, etc. will disappear as well. I'm just guessing here, but my guess is that the aggregate Democratic constituency for all of those programs is much larger than the likely Democratic constituency for pie in the sky full employment ideas.
Consequence #2: At some point, the pool of government "employees" in make-work "jobs" from which they can't be fired gets large enough that the actual productive economy starts slowing down. Why take a private sector job where you have to perform or get sent home when you can just take a paycheck from Uncle Sugar for e.g. sharpening pencils and can't get fired even if your output is eight sharpened pencils in eight hours?
Consequence #3: At which point Sanders (if he's still alive) or one of his successors starts preaching that in order to "save the economy" from the consequences of the jobs guarantee program, the government needs to just take over that actual productive economy and start slotting the program's job applicants into those jobs. In other words, escalating state socialism, state seizure of the means of production.
Consequence #4: When it turns out that the government jobs program applicants don't want those kinds of jobs, and that the current workers in those industries don't want to work for the government and/or for whatever the government has decided is a "living wage," universal labor conscription. In other words, an attempt at full state socialism, aka Lenin/Stalin/Mao style state communism.
Okay, so maybe they have thought it through.
[I]f you came in here in a wheelchair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find you something silly to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe.
That's the doctor giving Johnny Rico his physical exam in Starship Troopers. He's explaining that (in Heinlein's universe), anyone can join the Federal Service, regardless of physical/mental ability, skill set, etc.
Bernie Sanders envisions something like this. If you want a job, the government will give you one, period.
Apart from the general evil of this idea (there's no way for the government to give someone a paying job without stealing the money to pay for that person's salary and benefits), it seems to me that some consequences naturally follow.
Consequence #1: There goes the "progressive" argument against "work requirements" for welfare enrollees, "unemployment insurance," etc. "I can't find a job" will no longer be an excuse because anyone can have a job for the asking. In fact, since these magical government jobs will presumably pay a "living wage," the rationale for food stamps, housing subsidies, etc. will disappear as well. I'm just guessing here, but my guess is that the aggregate Democratic constituency for all of those programs is much larger than the likely Democratic constituency for pie in the sky full employment ideas.
Consequence #2: At some point, the pool of government "employees" in make-work "jobs" from which they can't be fired gets large enough that the actual productive economy starts slowing down. Why take a private sector job where you have to perform or get sent home when you can just take a paycheck from Uncle Sugar for e.g. sharpening pencils and can't get fired even if your output is eight sharpened pencils in eight hours?
Consequence #3: At which point Sanders (if he's still alive) or one of his successors starts preaching that in order to "save the economy" from the consequences of the jobs guarantee program, the government needs to just take over that actual productive economy and start slotting the program's job applicants into those jobs. In other words, escalating state socialism, state seizure of the means of production.
Consequence #4: When it turns out that the government jobs program applicants don't want those kinds of jobs, and that the current workers in those industries don't want to work for the government and/or for whatever the government has decided is a "living wage," universal labor conscription. In other words, an attempt at full state socialism, aka Lenin/Stalin/Mao style state communism.
Okay, so maybe they have thought it through.
Aren't We Entering the Timeframe ...
... where it's time for the same people who, two years ago, claimed that incomplete federal investigations must not be publicly discussed by federal law enforcement officials with an election coming up, to start demanding a de facto temporary shutdown (at least as regards public announcements, intentional leaks, court filings, reports to Congress, indictments, etc.) of Robert Mueller's "Russiagate" probe?
After all, there's an election coming up again, right?
No? I don't think so either, but it seemed worth mentioning.
After all, there's an election coming up again, right?
No? I don't think so either, but it seemed worth mentioning.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Not Exactly a Word PSA But Still a Pet Peeve
Wikipedia gets this one right:
Dict.org does not capture this important distinction, probably because over time grills have come to be called "barbecue grills" and then just "barbecues."
Resolved, that cooking a burger, or a chicken breast, or a steak, or whatever, over a wood and/or charcoal flame is not "barbecuing" and the food itself is not "barbecue" even if you then smother it in "barbecue sauce."
Because of the aforementioned usage shift, I can't "prove" that by pointing at the dictionary, which is why this is not technically a Word PSA post.
But I believe it as fervently as a Pentecostal minister believes in the eternal lake of (presumably not low-temperature, hickory-fueled) fire.
I like to grill. There's no better burger than one that's been cooked fairly quickly over a wood and/or charcoal flame. Call it half an hour beginning to end, from lighting the charcoal and letting it burn down a little to walking in the house with a plate full of burgers (and usually a couple of hot dogs for variety, and now that Tamara is a vegetarian, possibly a skewer adorned with chunks of tomato, pepper and onion). The burgers get one flip halfway through, the hot dogs and veggie skewers get rotated in quarter circumferences, and they're all done shortly after they got started.
I also like to barbecue.
Barbecue starts the night before when I prep the meat (usually a slab of pork ribs, from which I remove the membrane, after which I store it in the fridge overnight either soaking in a marinade or covered in a dry rub and wrapped in tinfoil).
In the morning, I pull the meat out of the fridge and let it warm toward room temperature while I get a charcoal fire burning down to to coals and throw my first batch of water-soaked wood chips (hickory if I am smoking ribs, mesquite if I am smoking chicken) onto those coals to flavor the smoke.
Then I put the ribs on (with my barrel-type "barbecue grill" configured to circulate smoke rather than to maximize heat) and spend the next 6-8 hours trying to keep the temperature between 200 and 225 degrees Fahrenheit so that the meat cooks slowly up toward an internal temperature of 180 degrees, and gets maximum exposure to smoke during the process. This means occasionally adding charcoal (burned down to coals on the side, not inside the smoking area!) and more wood chips, removing charcoal, raging at the heavens if the temp gets out of control, etc.
The ribs occasionally get a light "mop" of liquid (water and either vinegar or vinegar, depending on my mood, with some garlic, pepper and mustard mixed in) to keep them from drying out.
For the last hour or two, I wrap the ribs in foil and let the temperature rise so that the outside gets just a little crispy. Then they come off the grill/smoker/heat and rest for a few minutes before I cut them.
Sauce is added by the eater, in the amount/type preferred by said eater.
Note: Another ingredient, cold beer, is added to me while I sit around watching/adjusting the temperature. It may not be the most important ingredient but it's important.
See the difference there? If grilling is a witty saying, barbecue is a fully elaborated philosophy. I barbecue once or twice a year. When the weather is right, I grill once, twice, even three times a week.
It bugs me to hear the two conflated.
That is all.
Barbecue or barbeque (informally BBQ or barbie) is a cooking method, a style of food, and a name for a meal or gathering at which this style of food is cooked and served. Barbecuing is done slowly over low, indirect heat and the food is flavored by the smoking process, while grilling, a related process, is generally done quickly over moderate-to-high direct heat that produces little smoke. [emphasis mine]
Dict.org does not capture this important distinction, probably because over time grills have come to be called "barbecue grills" and then just "barbecues."
Resolved, that cooking a burger, or a chicken breast, or a steak, or whatever, over a wood and/or charcoal flame is not "barbecuing" and the food itself is not "barbecue" even if you then smother it in "barbecue sauce."
Because of the aforementioned usage shift, I can't "prove" that by pointing at the dictionary, which is why this is not technically a Word PSA post.
But I believe it as fervently as a Pentecostal minister believes in the eternal lake of (presumably not low-temperature, hickory-fueled) fire.
I like to grill. There's no better burger than one that's been cooked fairly quickly over a wood and/or charcoal flame. Call it half an hour beginning to end, from lighting the charcoal and letting it burn down a little to walking in the house with a plate full of burgers (and usually a couple of hot dogs for variety, and now that Tamara is a vegetarian, possibly a skewer adorned with chunks of tomato, pepper and onion). The burgers get one flip halfway through, the hot dogs and veggie skewers get rotated in quarter circumferences, and they're all done shortly after they got started.
I also like to barbecue.
Barbecue starts the night before when I prep the meat (usually a slab of pork ribs, from which I remove the membrane, after which I store it in the fridge overnight either soaking in a marinade or covered in a dry rub and wrapped in tinfoil).
In the morning, I pull the meat out of the fridge and let it warm toward room temperature while I get a charcoal fire burning down to to coals and throw my first batch of water-soaked wood chips (hickory if I am smoking ribs, mesquite if I am smoking chicken) onto those coals to flavor the smoke.
Then I put the ribs on (with my barrel-type "barbecue grill" configured to circulate smoke rather than to maximize heat) and spend the next 6-8 hours trying to keep the temperature between 200 and 225 degrees Fahrenheit so that the meat cooks slowly up toward an internal temperature of 180 degrees, and gets maximum exposure to smoke during the process. This means occasionally adding charcoal (burned down to coals on the side, not inside the smoking area!) and more wood chips, removing charcoal, raging at the heavens if the temp gets out of control, etc.
The ribs occasionally get a light "mop" of liquid (water and either vinegar or vinegar, depending on my mood, with some garlic, pepper and mustard mixed in) to keep them from drying out.
For the last hour or two, I wrap the ribs in foil and let the temperature rise so that the outside gets just a little crispy. Then they come off the grill/smoker/heat and rest for a few minutes before I cut them.
Sauce is added by the eater, in the amount/type preferred by said eater.
Note: Another ingredient, cold beer, is added to me while I sit around watching/adjusting the temperature. It may not be the most important ingredient but it's important.
See the difference there? If grilling is a witty saying, barbecue is a fully elaborated philosophy. I barbecue once or twice a year. When the weather is right, I grill once, twice, even three times a week.
It bugs me to hear the two conflated.
That is all.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
IDW is the New Blog
All of a sudden I'm hearing a lot about "the Intellectual Dark Web," presumably because of this New York Times piece by Bari Weiss.
Weiss defines the Intellectual Dark Web as "a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation -- on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums -- that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels."
In other words, it is really about format, not about content, even though the cited examples seem to be a) controversial and b) mostly considered "right-wing."
Everything new is old again.
Not quite two decades ago, it was the emerging "blogosphere" that positioned itself as the alternative to establishment media.
Twenty years before that, it was amateur "zines" which became easy and cheap to print with the advent of computer printers and the mass deployment of photocopy technology (or, before that, access to a mimeograph).
And before that it was alternative newspapers and magazines of a higher order of print quality, though not necessarily by much, than the "zines" -- the Berkeley Barb, for example, and I.F. Stone's Weekly.
People seem fascinated by format, and prone to assume that new format necessarily implies new content type. I don't think that's the case.
Yes, format affects content. A lot of the stuff I put on this blog, I once put on "e-zines" (the intermediary step between the old print zines and the blogs). But this blog also includes a lot of short (and not so short) asides like this one that I would never have submitted to a newspaper, or a zine, or an ezine. I don't think the substance really changed. It was just that more could be put out, more easily.
I say the same things on podcasts that I say on my blog, that I said in e-zines, that I wrote a little of (not much, I was young and busy with other stuff) in zines, and that I put in letters to the editors of regular papers.
I'm guessing the printing press inspired similar reactions. And hell, maybe the invention of decent pen and paper tools, and tablets and chisels for cuneiform, etc. Maybe among smaller populations until literacy caught on, but still.
So far as I can tell, the "Intellectual Dark Web" people aren't saying (on e.g. YouTube) anything really different than those same people were saying in other formats before the "Intellectual Dark Web" suddenly became a name.
Weiss defines the Intellectual Dark Web as "a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation -- on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums -- that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels."
In other words, it is really about format, not about content, even though the cited examples seem to be a) controversial and b) mostly considered "right-wing."
Everything new is old again.
Not quite two decades ago, it was the emerging "blogosphere" that positioned itself as the alternative to establishment media.
Twenty years before that, it was amateur "zines" which became easy and cheap to print with the advent of computer printers and the mass deployment of photocopy technology (or, before that, access to a mimeograph).
And before that it was alternative newspapers and magazines of a higher order of print quality, though not necessarily by much, than the "zines" -- the Berkeley Barb, for example, and I.F. Stone's Weekly.
People seem fascinated by format, and prone to assume that new format necessarily implies new content type. I don't think that's the case.
Yes, format affects content. A lot of the stuff I put on this blog, I once put on "e-zines" (the intermediary step between the old print zines and the blogs). But this blog also includes a lot of short (and not so short) asides like this one that I would never have submitted to a newspaper, or a zine, or an ezine. I don't think the substance really changed. It was just that more could be put out, more easily.
I say the same things on podcasts that I say on my blog, that I said in e-zines, that I wrote a little of (not much, I was young and busy with other stuff) in zines, and that I put in letters to the editors of regular papers.
I'm guessing the printing press inspired similar reactions. And hell, maybe the invention of decent pen and paper tools, and tablets and chisels for cuneiform, etc. Maybe among smaller populations until literacy caught on, but still.
So far as I can tell, the "Intellectual Dark Web" people aren't saying (on e.g. YouTube) anything really different than those same people were saying in other formats before the "Intellectual Dark Web" suddenly became a name.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
@Twitter: "Net Neutrality" For Thee, But Not For We
Camera 1:
Camera 2:
Or, to put it a different way, Twitter is going to prioritize content, with a "fast lane" for its own streams/notifications and a "slow lane" for other companies' streams/notifications. Sound familiar?
Currently, the Internet provides an almost frictionless experience for an individual to communicate with the world, and it also provides the lowest barrier to competitive entry for businesses the world has ever seen. It serves as a great equalizer in the access to information and in reaching a global audience. If you have an opinion or a new innovative web-based service, you don’t have to get permission to share it with the world at large.
This openness promotes free and fair competition and fosters ongoing investment and innovation. We need clear, enforceable, legally sustainable rules to ensure that the Internet remains open and continues to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. This is the heart of Twitter. Without such net neutrality principles in place, some of today’s most successful and widely-known Internet companies might never have come into existence.
Camera 2:
Twitter has long had a strange disdain for third-party Twitter apps, but it’s allowed many of them to pass under the radar for the last several years. That’s starting to change this summer, when Twitter will revoke a key piece of access that developers currently have to the service, replacing it with a new access system that limits what they can do. The changes aren’t going to make third-party Twitter clients useless, but they are going to make the apps somewhat worse.
The changes, which go into effect August 16th, do two main things: first, they prevent new tweets from streaming into an app in real time; and second, they prevent and delay some push notifications.
Or, to put it a different way, Twitter is going to prioritize content, with a "fast lane" for its own streams/notifications and a "slow lane" for other companies' streams/notifications. Sound familiar?
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Camera 2
Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, on the Gaza situation:
Oh, wait, sorry. As Jon Schwarz points out at The Intercept, that was actually Israel's foreign minister, Abba Eban, on why Israel was justified in attacking Egypt in 1967.
The blockade is by definition an act of war, imposed and enforced through violence. Never in history have blockade and peace existed side by side. From September 2007 onward the question of who started the war or who fired the first shot became momentously irrelevant. There is no difference in civil law between murdering a man by slow strangulation or killing him by a shot in the head. From the moment at which the blockade was imposed, active hostilities had commenced and Palestine owed Israel nothing of her Charter rights.
Oh, wait, sorry. As Jon Schwarz points out at The Intercept, that was actually Israel's foreign minister, Abba Eban, on why Israel was justified in attacking Egypt in 1967.
I Didn't Vote for Hillary Clinton Just Because She's a Woman ...
... so why the hell should I support the nomination of a different felon to head the Central Intelligence Agency just because that felon is a woman?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders isn't Madeline Albright, but she plays Madeline Albright on Twitter:
Donald Trump also agrees with Albright and makes the case that Clinton, rather than he himself, should have been elected president:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders isn't Madeline Albright, but she plays Madeline Albright on Twitter:
There is no one more qualified to be the first woman to lead the CIA than 30+ year CIA veteran Gina Haspel. Any Democrat who claims to support women’s empowerment and our national security but opposes her nomination is a total hypocrite— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) May 5, 2018
Donald Trump also agrees with Albright and makes the case that Clinton, rather than he himself, should have been elected president:
My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists. Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Some Thoughts on Platform Prose
In my earlier, very brief, report on the 2018 Libertarian Party platform committee's meeting in Columbus on Sunday and Monday, I noted that "[a]mong other things, we were also able to pass (IIRC) two of Mike Seebecks's proposed style cleanups on material toward the top of the platform ..."
Mike is working toward three goals with his proposals:
Mike is working toward three goals with his proposals:
- Proper spelling, grammar, and sentence construction;
- Uniform compliance with the Libertarian National Committee's style authority (The Chicago Manual of Style); and
- Format uniformity in which each plank in the platform incorporates policy proposals ("Libertarians support/oppose" in the first instance in a plank, "we support/oppose" in subsequent instances within a plank) and the underlying philosophical reasons ("Libertarians believe/we believe").
I wholeheartedly support all three goals and applaud Mike's hard work at going through the platform line by line and offering up the changes/corrections as proposals. He's been agitating for years for a style committee to take care of that stuff so that the platform committee can concentrate more on the substance than the writing. He hasn't gotten his way, so he's doing the hard part and asking the platform committee to incorporate that work in our proposals to the convention.
Those proposals ran into a couple of objections at the platform committee meeting:
Objection One: This stuff just isn't that important, let's get into substantive changes to the platform, i.e. adding planks on new issues, correcting material in planks that doesn't appropriately reflect the party's positions and accord with its Statement of Principles.
I consider that objection legitimate to a point. We have to set priorities, and it may be that the "substantive changes" are more important than the "style changes." Two ways of handling the importance issue are:
- Modifying our agenda to get to the "substantive stuff" first (which we did, after much argument both setting the agenda -- "style first" -- and modifying it -- "substance now").
- Putting the "style" changes toward the bottom of our rankings in the committee's report, so that the convention delegates get to them after handling the "substance" changes, which we will likely do.
Now, why do I say "to a point?"
Well, the committee was scheduled to meet for nine hours on Sunday and five hours on Monday. My recollection is that we spent a good three hours on Sunday and at least half an hour on Monday arguing about the agenda instead of debating the proposals. Whether we were working on the "style" or "substance" material, we could probably have finished up at least a couple more items if not for the agenda fighting.
Also, the "style proposals" were available for us to work on for weeks before the physical meeting. We could have handled them by email ballot and it wouldn't have been an issue. But several delegates made clear early on that they would only support proposals that they could vote on from a hotel meeting room hundreds or even thousands of miles from their homes. After which nobody really bothered pushing email ballots. And there was quite a bit of overlap between those who would only vote at a hotel and those who complained that once they got to the hotel, all that "unimportant" stuff they had refused to handle quickly and easily by email was there waiting for them to handle slowly and with great difficulty.
On the latter point, my sympathy is, shall we say, minimal.
Objection Two: I'm going to name names here, because I don't believe there's any shame at all in the objection. Aaron Starr of California doesn't like the format uniformity part, where every plank has a "Libertarians/we believe" part and a "Libertarians/we support/oppose" part, because he thinks it makes for boring reading. Nobody, in his opinion, wants to sit there and read a gazillion paragraphs that all follow the same format.
From a certain standpoint, I agree. The platform, taken as a whole, might seem a bit dry if written that way.
BUT!
I disagree.
Not very many people are going to sit down and read the platform from top to bottom.
Most people who aren't LP members/activists come to the platform wanting to know what "Libertarians believe" about, and what actions "Libertarians support/oppose" regarding, a particular issue. They're there to see what we think about abortion or gun rights or immigration or trade. Maybe two of those, but probably not three or four and almost never every issue the platform addresses. They aren't going to be bored by the uniformity because they're going to read the plank or three that they're interested in and then go back to swilling brandy and playing Bejeweled while, hopefully, thinking it over.
Party members/activists will also likely read a plank or three at a time but come back often, and they will benefit from having a format that makes it very easy to get directly to what the party supports/opposes and why on any given issue.
In my opinion, Aaron's objection to a uniform format only makes sense if we assume that people are going to read the platform from beginning to end and go away disappointed that it didn't rip along like a suspense novel with a cliffhanger at the end of each plank.
I don't want the platform to be boring, but I do want it to be accessible with minimal effort and to be written in a way that tends to spotlight the party's consistency of approach to the issues. That consistency is a feature, not a bug. It's a strength, not a weakness. We should show it off.
Word PSA
Lieu \Lieu\ (l[=u]), n. [F., OF. also liu, leu, lou, fr. L. locus place. See Local, Locus.] Place; room; stead; -- used only in the phrase in lieu of, that is, instead of.
Not too terribly long after 9/11, some friends received a note to the following effect (paraphrased from memory except for the phrase "in lieu of") from their kids' school's administration:
I came across the same bizarre usage this morning in another context.
This one isn't complicated: "In lieu of ..." means "instead of ..." not "because of ..." or "due to ..."
Not too terribly long after 9/11, some friends received a note to the following effect (paraphrased from memory except for the phrase "in lieu of") from their kids' school's administration:
Dear parents,
In lieu of the war on terror, [school] is implementing the following measures:
[insert a bunch of silly security theatrics here]
I came across the same bizarre usage this morning in another context.
This one isn't complicated: "In lieu of ..." means "instead of ..." not "because of ..." or "due to ..."
Monday, May 14, 2018
VERY Quick Platform Committee Meeting Report ...
... since I am sitting on the floor at the airport awaiting my flight home.
WE DID IT!
Thanks to Jim Fulner pushing a modification of the agenda to get to it, and after several hours of debate, the platform committee passed the one recommendation that I promised all of you I would push for:
3.4 Free Trade and Migration
We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders.However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property.
There were several attempts at amending the motion to merely remove that last sentence, and there may be minority reports calling for different and/or additional changes. But as of now, the platform committee WILL be asking the delegates at the 2018 Libertarian National Convention to strike that sentence.
Among other things, we were also able to pass (IIRC) two of Mike Seebecks's proposed style cleanups on material toward the top of the platform (e.g. preamble); and, right before I had to leave for the airport but before the meeting ended, a sex work plank that is not all I had hoped for and that may also get the minority report treatment, that is definitely better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Yes, it was a long, slow slog of a meeting. Yes, there were some complaints of certain members being dilatory and trying to run out the clock. Frankly, there was a lot less of that than I expected and I prefer to attribute a lot of it to good faith differences on the issues rather than malice. I congratulate our chair, Caryn Ann Harlos, for keeping things on track in spite of the challenges, thank our secretary, Mimi Robson, for her fine work in keeping dueling proposals straight, and thank all of my fellow committee members for their hard work.
Also, thanks to the party members who showed up to assist us, urge us to do right things, etc. As is typical of LP meetings, the hanging out and yakking with each other was the best part. Especially since it meant I got to try out Tim Hortons for the first time (one sentence review: Not bad, but the coffee isn't as good as Starbucks and the donuts aren't as good as Krispy Kreme).
WE DID IT!
Thanks to Jim Fulner pushing a modification of the agenda to get to it, and after several hours of debate, the platform committee passed the one recommendation that I promised all of you I would push for:
3.4 Free Trade and Migration
We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders.
There were several attempts at amending the motion to merely remove that last sentence, and there may be minority reports calling for different and/or additional changes. But as of now, the platform committee WILL be asking the delegates at the 2018 Libertarian National Convention to strike that sentence.
Among other things, we were also able to pass (IIRC) two of Mike Seebecks's proposed style cleanups on material toward the top of the platform (e.g. preamble); and, right before I had to leave for the airport but before the meeting ended, a sex work plank that is not all I had hoped for and that may also get the minority report treatment, that is definitely better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Yes, it was a long, slow slog of a meeting. Yes, there were some complaints of certain members being dilatory and trying to run out the clock. Frankly, there was a lot less of that than I expected and I prefer to attribute a lot of it to good faith differences on the issues rather than malice. I congratulate our chair, Caryn Ann Harlos, for keeping things on track in spite of the challenges, thank our secretary, Mimi Robson, for her fine work in keeping dueling proposals straight, and thank all of my fellow committee members for their hard work.
Also, thanks to the party members who showed up to assist us, urge us to do right things, etc. As is typical of LP meetings, the hanging out and yakking with each other was the best part. Especially since it meant I got to try out Tim Hortons for the first time (one sentence review: Not bad, but the coffee isn't as good as Starbucks and the donuts aren't as good as Krispy Kreme).
Wednesday, May 09, 2018
Not a Complete Emergency, but a Time-Sensitive Project
So, the Libertarian Party's platform committee is meeting this coming Sunday and Monday in Columbus, Ohio.
And that committee has already provided, in a non-technical sense, for streaming the meeting for those who want to watch it.
In the technical sense, however, I just found out a few hours ago that the meeting venue lacks wi-fi (I suspect that's one reason it was selected by the person who proposed it).
I'm a bit rushed for time (I fly out tomorrow), but if one or more people are willing to put up the money I am willing to go buy a "hot spot" device and some bandwidth for the specific purpose of streaming the meeting. I'm guessing about $100 for the device and a bunch of bandwidth. There's no time to get one shipped because I will be out of here before even one-day shipping would reach me.
Gimme a yell via the contact form if this is something you're interested in backing. If not, I think that we'll manage to cobble something together come what may.
And that committee has already provided, in a non-technical sense, for streaming the meeting for those who want to watch it.
In the technical sense, however, I just found out a few hours ago that the meeting venue lacks wi-fi (I suspect that's one reason it was selected by the person who proposed it).
I'm a bit rushed for time (I fly out tomorrow), but if one or more people are willing to put up the money I am willing to go buy a "hot spot" device and some bandwidth for the specific purpose of streaming the meeting. I'm guessing about $100 for the device and a bunch of bandwidth. There's no time to get one shipped because I will be out of here before even one-day shipping would reach me.
Gimme a yell via the contact form if this is something you're interested in backing. If not, I think that we'll manage to cobble something together come what may.
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
Libertarian National Convention Bylaws Proposals (w/ My Recommendations), Part 2
This post is part 2 of a multi-part series. Click here for part 1. I'm going over the 2018 bylaws committee's proposals for consideration by the Libertarian National Convention in New Orleans at the end of June.
A note that I should have made earlier, in the form of a comment at Independent Political Report by Chuck Moulton: "The report is in order of support from the bylaws committee, so in general the further you go the more controversial they get." In the PDF of the proposals, each includes a committee vote count, e.g. 9-0.
Without further ado:
PROPOSAL #4: Clarifying Procedures for Regional Alternates
All this proposal does is add "and alternate(s)" to the bylaws language concerning regional representatives to the Libertarian National Committee. I don't see any problem with it.
PROPOSAL #5: Simplify Article 4 Language on Membership
This proposal takes a meat ax to the bylaws language concerning "sustaining membership" and reduces that language to:
This one, I have two problems with.
The first problem was pointed out at IPR by Dr. George Phillies of Massachusetts, and that is the trailing 12-month $25 dues requirement. If someone renews early, they lose sustaining membership time.
Example: Suppose I become a sustaining member on January 1st. Then, on December 1st, I renew my membership, a month before I have to. I lose a month. If I don't send my NEXT $25 in by the following December 1st, I'm not a sustaining member anymore. So I send it in on November 15th to avoid being late and lose ANOTHER two weeks of sustaining membership.
Sustaining membership should always be extended by 12 months for each $25+ payment. If I become a sustaining member on January 1st and renew on December 1st, my sustaining membership should be extended by a year, not by 11 months.
That first problem is obviously a language oversight, an unintended consequence.
The second problem is intentional and, in my opinion has precedent explaining why it's a problem. It is this language: "or have had donated on their behalf."
I don't have a problem with one person paying another person's dues per se, but the ability to create new sustaining members out of thin air invites people with a little money to inflate delegate apportionments to particular states.
I'm going to tell this story without a lot of detail because it's been a little while, because I don't recall all the details, and I don't want to get details wrong:
A few years ago, a person made a substantial donation to a state affiliate. That affiliate used the donation to renew a bunch of expired sustaining memberships "on behalf of" the sustaining members who, for whatever reason, hadn't renewed themselves. As a result, that state affiliate got to send more delegates to the next national convention than it otherwise would have.
It would take quite a bit of money to exert a really big effect on delegate numbers that way (at 20,000 sustaining members, it would be one delegate per 280 members, which means $7000 in $25 dues payments per additional delegate). But why explicitly open the door to that unless the intent is to explicitly open the door to that?
I could support this proposal, simply because it makes the bylaws more concise, if the "or have had donated on their behalf" language was removed and the trailing 12-month problem was fixed. But not without those fixes.
PROPOSAL #6: Make Elected Libertarians Automatic Delegates at Convention
This proposal allows, unless specifically disapproved by the affiliate or national convention delegates, "any sustaining member serving in public office subject to a vote of the general electorate" to be a national convention delegate.
I oppose this change for three reasons.
One is that I am long on record in favor of reducing, not increasing, the number of delegates to the Libertarian National Convention. My preferred number is ~538, apportioned among state affiliates exactly as presidential electors are apportioned among states (the ~ would be an additional delegate apportionment to the District of Columbia LP and to any US territorial LPs of the number of presidential electors their population would entitle them to if they WERE states). I'm not going to make an argument for that preference of mine here, but it is a preference of mine and colors my opinion of this proposal.
The second is that the language is fuzzy. Since some appointed public officials can be recalled or otherwise removed by voters, they are in fact "serving in public office subject to a vote of the general electorate."
The third is that different states offer wildly different possibilities for getting elected to "public office." At least at one time, low-level election judges were elected in Pennsylvania in non-partisan races (I helped a couple of people get elected to that office); in Missouri, they were appointed and had to be either Republicans or Democrats. Ballot access laws also vary from state to state. So having more or fewer elected officials doesn't necessarily mean that a state affiliate is "better" or "worse" than another, or that it deserves or doesn't deserve extra representation at the national convention.
I am in favor of Libertarians serving in public office also serving as national convention delegates. But their state affiliates should offer them the normally apportioned delegate seats instead of getting an extra apportionment.
OK, that's part two (I've decided to cover three proposals per post). Catch ya later.
A note that I should have made earlier, in the form of a comment at Independent Political Report by Chuck Moulton: "The report is in order of support from the bylaws committee, so in general the further you go the more controversial they get." In the PDF of the proposals, each includes a committee vote count, e.g. 9-0.
Without further ado:
PROPOSAL #4: Clarifying Procedures for Regional Alternates
All this proposal does is add "and alternate(s)" to the bylaws language concerning regional representatives to the Libertarian National Committee. I don't see any problem with it.
PROPOSAL #5: Simplify Article 4 Language on Membership
This proposal takes a meat ax to the bylaws language concerning "sustaining membership" and reduces that language to:
“Sustaining members” are members of the Party who:
a. During the prior twelve months have donated, or have had donated on their behalf, an amount of at least $25; or
b. Are Life members.
This one, I have two problems with.
The first problem was pointed out at IPR by Dr. George Phillies of Massachusetts, and that is the trailing 12-month $25 dues requirement. If someone renews early, they lose sustaining membership time.
Example: Suppose I become a sustaining member on January 1st. Then, on December 1st, I renew my membership, a month before I have to. I lose a month. If I don't send my NEXT $25 in by the following December 1st, I'm not a sustaining member anymore. So I send it in on November 15th to avoid being late and lose ANOTHER two weeks of sustaining membership.
Sustaining membership should always be extended by 12 months for each $25+ payment. If I become a sustaining member on January 1st and renew on December 1st, my sustaining membership should be extended by a year, not by 11 months.
That first problem is obviously a language oversight, an unintended consequence.
The second problem is intentional and, in my opinion has precedent explaining why it's a problem. It is this language: "or have had donated on their behalf."
I don't have a problem with one person paying another person's dues per se, but the ability to create new sustaining members out of thin air invites people with a little money to inflate delegate apportionments to particular states.
I'm going to tell this story without a lot of detail because it's been a little while, because I don't recall all the details, and I don't want to get details wrong:
A few years ago, a person made a substantial donation to a state affiliate. That affiliate used the donation to renew a bunch of expired sustaining memberships "on behalf of" the sustaining members who, for whatever reason, hadn't renewed themselves. As a result, that state affiliate got to send more delegates to the next national convention than it otherwise would have.
It would take quite a bit of money to exert a really big effect on delegate numbers that way (at 20,000 sustaining members, it would be one delegate per 280 members, which means $7000 in $25 dues payments per additional delegate). But why explicitly open the door to that unless the intent is to explicitly open the door to that?
I could support this proposal, simply because it makes the bylaws more concise, if the "or have had donated on their behalf" language was removed and the trailing 12-month problem was fixed. But not without those fixes.
PROPOSAL #6: Make Elected Libertarians Automatic Delegates at Convention
This proposal allows, unless specifically disapproved by the affiliate or national convention delegates, "any sustaining member serving in public office subject to a vote of the general electorate" to be a national convention delegate.
I oppose this change for three reasons.
One is that I am long on record in favor of reducing, not increasing, the number of delegates to the Libertarian National Convention. My preferred number is ~538, apportioned among state affiliates exactly as presidential electors are apportioned among states (the ~ would be an additional delegate apportionment to the District of Columbia LP and to any US territorial LPs of the number of presidential electors their population would entitle them to if they WERE states). I'm not going to make an argument for that preference of mine here, but it is a preference of mine and colors my opinion of this proposal.
The second is that the language is fuzzy. Since some appointed public officials can be recalled or otherwise removed by voters, they are in fact "serving in public office subject to a vote of the general electorate."
The third is that different states offer wildly different possibilities for getting elected to "public office." At least at one time, low-level election judges were elected in Pennsylvania in non-partisan races (I helped a couple of people get elected to that office); in Missouri, they were appointed and had to be either Republicans or Democrats. Ballot access laws also vary from state to state. So having more or fewer elected officials doesn't necessarily mean that a state affiliate is "better" or "worse" than another, or that it deserves or doesn't deserve extra representation at the national convention.
I am in favor of Libertarians serving in public office also serving as national convention delegates. But their state affiliates should offer them the normally apportioned delegate seats instead of getting an extra apportionment.
OK, that's part two (I've decided to cover three proposals per post). Catch ya later.
Monday, May 07, 2018
Schneiderman
Did he do it?
I don't know.
But given his obvious obsession with using government force to control people's lives and get his own way in the general/collective sense, I can't say I'd be surprised if he turned out to be a retail abuser as well.
I don't know.
But given his obvious obsession with using government force to control people's lives and get his own way in the general/collective sense, I can't say I'd be surprised if he turned out to be a retail abuser as well.
Libertarian National Convention Bylaws Proposals (w/ My Recommendations), Part 1
[This post is part 1 of a multi-part series. Click here for part 2. I'm going over the 2018 bylaws committee's proposals for consideration by the Libertarian National Convention in New Orleans at the end of June.]
The Libertarian Party's Bylaws Committee has released its recommendations for this year's national convention to consider. Here's a direct link to a PDF of those recommendations, and here's a link to an Independent Political Report article (with comments from several people, including me) on the topic.
Since Chuck Moulton asks for my opinion on all of the proposals (we don't always agree but tend to respect each others' opinions), I'm going to give it the old college try. BUT! I take off on Thursday for this weekend's Platform Committee meeting in Columbus, so I may be pressed for time. I'll do what I can, when I can.
PROPOSAL #1: Allow Debate on Proposals to Delete Platform Planks
This proposal is exactly what it sounds like. Each national convention delegate receives "tokens" which they place in boxes representing platform planks that they would like to see deleted. Any plank which gets tokens representing 20% of credentialed delegates gets an up or down deletion vote. Currently, "Such votes shall be cast without amendment or debate." Under this proposal, there would be ten minutes of debate before the vote.
I oppose this proposal, but it's not a major issue to me. Why do I oppose it? If 20% or more of delegates want the plank deleted, chances are it's a controversial enough plank that the delegates are aware that it's controversial and already have firm opinions on it that won't be changed by 10 minutes of debate. So it's basically a proposal to waste 10 minutes times however many planks are at issue. And the national convention is always pressed for time anyway.
PROPOSAL #2: Clarify Method of Electing Judicial Committee
If I'm understanding this proposal correctly, all it does is make it clear that Judicial Committee members are elected by ballot rather than by a voice or rising vote. Which makes sense, and is something I'd obviously support. If I'm misunderstanding it, hopefully someone will explain what I'm misunderstanding so I can modify my opinion as needed.
PROPOSAL #3: Appoint Credentials Committee Members Earlier
Right now, state affiliates which are entitled to appoint members of the credentials committee must do so no later than 30 days prior to the convention. This would change that deadline to six months before the convention.
I don't have a strong opinion here.
On one hand, a deadline of one month before the convention would give state affiliates more time to appoint such members at their state conventions, which are usually less than six months prior to the convention.
On the other hand, a six month deadline would give LPHQ more time to attend to other things than bugging the affiliates about their appointments, and the committee more time to do anything it might need to do prior to the convention.
But on the third hand, a six-months-ahead deadline does offer more opportunities for arm-twisting and subversion, and the credentials committee has been a source of problems in recent years, as for example when, two conventions running, it recommended approving credentials for a fake state affiliate from Oregon rather than for the real one (that was corrected in 2016, over the vocal protests of a supporter of the fake Oregon affiliate who, with accomplices, is on this year's bylaws committee). So I'm a bit suspicious. Anyone else have an opinion?
And that's all I have time for at this moment. More -- and more controversial -- later as time allows.
The Libertarian Party's Bylaws Committee has released its recommendations for this year's national convention to consider. Here's a direct link to a PDF of those recommendations, and here's a link to an Independent Political Report article (with comments from several people, including me) on the topic.
Since Chuck Moulton asks for my opinion on all of the proposals (we don't always agree but tend to respect each others' opinions), I'm going to give it the old college try. BUT! I take off on Thursday for this weekend's Platform Committee meeting in Columbus, so I may be pressed for time. I'll do what I can, when I can.
PROPOSAL #1: Allow Debate on Proposals to Delete Platform Planks
This proposal is exactly what it sounds like. Each national convention delegate receives "tokens" which they place in boxes representing platform planks that they would like to see deleted. Any plank which gets tokens representing 20% of credentialed delegates gets an up or down deletion vote. Currently, "Such votes shall be cast without amendment or debate." Under this proposal, there would be ten minutes of debate before the vote.
I oppose this proposal, but it's not a major issue to me. Why do I oppose it? If 20% or more of delegates want the plank deleted, chances are it's a controversial enough plank that the delegates are aware that it's controversial and already have firm opinions on it that won't be changed by 10 minutes of debate. So it's basically a proposal to waste 10 minutes times however many planks are at issue. And the national convention is always pressed for time anyway.
PROPOSAL #2: Clarify Method of Electing Judicial Committee
If I'm understanding this proposal correctly, all it does is make it clear that Judicial Committee members are elected by ballot rather than by a voice or rising vote. Which makes sense, and is something I'd obviously support. If I'm misunderstanding it, hopefully someone will explain what I'm misunderstanding so I can modify my opinion as needed.
PROPOSAL #3: Appoint Credentials Committee Members Earlier
Right now, state affiliates which are entitled to appoint members of the credentials committee must do so no later than 30 days prior to the convention. This would change that deadline to six months before the convention.
I don't have a strong opinion here.
On one hand, a deadline of one month before the convention would give state affiliates more time to appoint such members at their state conventions, which are usually less than six months prior to the convention.
On the other hand, a six month deadline would give LPHQ more time to attend to other things than bugging the affiliates about their appointments, and the committee more time to do anything it might need to do prior to the convention.
But on the third hand, a six-months-ahead deadline does offer more opportunities for arm-twisting and subversion, and the credentials committee has been a source of problems in recent years, as for example when, two conventions running, it recommended approving credentials for a fake state affiliate from Oregon rather than for the real one (that was corrected in 2016, over the vocal protests of a supporter of the fake Oregon affiliate who, with accomplices, is on this year's bylaws committee). So I'm a bit suspicious. Anyone else have an opinion?
And that's all I have time for at this moment. More -- and more controversial -- later as time allows.
Sunday, May 06, 2018
Who Knew? For That Matter, Who Knows?
The latest prescription drug to get used as an "abuse/addiction" fetish by the drug warriors is gabapentin. From an AP article:
OK ... what the actual fuck? So far as I can tell, gabapentin is not only not a "cheap high," it's not a high at all. And I've been using it three times daily for several years. The back story on that:
A long time ago (circa 1990), a tie-down strap on a boat trailer broke and the tongue of the trailer hit me in the small of the back (I worked in shipping at a factory that built boat trailers). It hurt for a few days, then went away except when I did things like run for more than a mile or so.
In the late 2000-oughts, the pain went from "only when Tom runs long distances" to "even when Tom walks very far" and then "sometimes just all the time." It got worse and better, worse and better. I generally used a cane if I knew I'd be walking much. At one point I was looking at ramp blueprints on the assumption that I would be in a wheelchair fairly soon.
Finally, I gave in and got a referral from my doctor to a spinal surgeon, who looked at the images and told me "yes, you have an old injury, with a little bit of degeneration. It should hurt, but it shouldn't hurt nearly as much as you say it hurts. I think that it's more a matter of referred diabetic nerve pain than pain from the injury itself." And she prescribed gabapentin.
Miracle. Drug. Within weeks, I put the canes away. I walk several miles a day every day now, with very occasional twinges of lower back pain (usually in the morning -- probably need a better mattress). I've even been doing a little bit of running (spurts of a quarter mile or less during my walks -- I need to lose weight for that to not be too hard on my knees).
But getting high? I have never, ever, ever noticed even the slightest psychoactive effects from the drug. Or even sleepiness or anything like that.
Three clues from the same article:
and
and
They're finding gabapentin in the bloodstreams of people who are overdosing on opiates, particularly opiate pain medications.
Well, duh. People who overdose on opiate pain medications are overdosing on opiate pain medications BECAUSE THEY ARE IN PAIN. Apparently, in pain that neither the opiates nor the gabapentin are, at that moment and in reasonable doses, effective in fighting.
My guess is that the "cheap high" talk is along the same lines as the bananadine phenomenon or an old wives' (young singles'?) tale that I remember hearing about in junior high school relating that one could get high just as with cocaine by grinding up aspirin and snorting it.
My guess is that the origin of that idea is some people syllogizing thusly:
Many doctors aren't aware of gabapentin's potential for abuse, particularly among those with a history of misusing drugs, said Rachel Vickers Smith of the University of Louisville.
People tracked in her research describe gabapentin as a "cheap high" that is almost "always available."
OK ... what the actual fuck? So far as I can tell, gabapentin is not only not a "cheap high," it's not a high at all. And I've been using it three times daily for several years. The back story on that:
A long time ago (circa 1990), a tie-down strap on a boat trailer broke and the tongue of the trailer hit me in the small of the back (I worked in shipping at a factory that built boat trailers). It hurt for a few days, then went away except when I did things like run for more than a mile or so.
In the late 2000-oughts, the pain went from "only when Tom runs long distances" to "even when Tom walks very far" and then "sometimes just all the time." It got worse and better, worse and better. I generally used a cane if I knew I'd be walking much. At one point I was looking at ramp blueprints on the assumption that I would be in a wheelchair fairly soon.
Finally, I gave in and got a referral from my doctor to a spinal surgeon, who looked at the images and told me "yes, you have an old injury, with a little bit of degeneration. It should hurt, but it shouldn't hurt nearly as much as you say it hurts. I think that it's more a matter of referred diabetic nerve pain than pain from the injury itself." And she prescribed gabapentin.
Miracle. Drug. Within weeks, I put the canes away. I walk several miles a day every day now, with very occasional twinges of lower back pain (usually in the morning -- probably need a better mattress). I've even been doing a little bit of running (spurts of a quarter mile or less during my walks -- I need to lose weight for that to not be too hard on my knees).
But getting high? I have never, ever, ever noticed even the slightest psychoactive effects from the drug. Or even sleepiness or anything like that.
Three clues from the same article:
Medical journal articles estimate that between 15 and 25 percent of opioid abusers also use gabapentin. And emerging research suggests combining gabapentin and opioids heightens the overdose risks.
and
Gabapentin was detected in a third of fatal overdose cases analyzed by Kentucky medical examiners in 2016.
and
Michael Polydefkis, a neurologist at John Hopkins University who primarily treats seniors with nerve pain, says he has never seen patients deliberately misuse gabapentin.
They're finding gabapentin in the bloodstreams of people who are overdosing on opiates, particularly opiate pain medications.
Well, duh. People who overdose on opiate pain medications are overdosing on opiate pain medications BECAUSE THEY ARE IN PAIN. Apparently, in pain that neither the opiates nor the gabapentin are, at that moment and in reasonable doses, effective in fighting.
My guess is that the "cheap high" talk is along the same lines as the bananadine phenomenon or an old wives' (young singles'?) tale that I remember hearing about in junior high school relating that one could get high just as with cocaine by grinding up aspirin and snorting it.
My guess is that the origin of that idea is some people syllogizing thusly:
- Opiates are effective in treating some kinds of pain;
- Opiates will get you high;
- Gabapentin is effective in treating some kinds of pain; therefore
- Gabapentin will get you high.
But, of course, the drug warriors and the "addiction" industry are always in dire need of new stuff to scare people with. And gabapentin happens to be next on their list of excuses for trying to run other people's lives.
Friday, May 04, 2018
Sending Crypto is Getting Easier ...
I've made several purchases recently using CoinPayments.net to let me pay in any crypto I have handy. That way I don't have to, for example, pay a Shapeshift fee to convert Ethereum or Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to Old Wrecked Bitcoin (BTC). I just pay directly using what I have on hand.
That's pretty cool, so I decided to buy a CoinPayments "Pay By Name" tag (cost: A whopping 1.99 USD) and add that to the ways you can support my work at KN@PPSTER and the Garrison Center. There's a link over in the sidebar (and here's one too).
Instead of futzing around with converting one coin to another, or asking me for a wallet address for WildAssBizarreCoin, just choose what you want to send (from a pretty wide range of options) and I'll get it. Even cooler, if you have your own CoinPayments wallet, there aren't any fees for sending coins from your wallet to mine there.
If you don't have a CoinPayments account, well, here's an affiliate link. If you sign up through it, I earn a commission on your transaction fees. A lot of sites accept payment via CoinPayments, which means that you could actually send me money without sending me money, just by creating an account to do the OTHER stuff you do :)
That's pretty cool, so I decided to buy a CoinPayments "Pay By Name" tag (cost: A whopping 1.99 USD) and add that to the ways you can support my work at KN@PPSTER and the Garrison Center. There's a link over in the sidebar (and here's one too).
Instead of futzing around with converting one coin to another, or asking me for a wallet address for WildAssBizarreCoin, just choose what you want to send (from a pretty wide range of options) and I'll get it. Even cooler, if you have your own CoinPayments wallet, there aren't any fees for sending coins from your wallet to mine there.
If you don't have a CoinPayments account, well, here's an affiliate link. If you sign up through it, I earn a commission on your transaction fees. A lot of sites accept payment via CoinPayments, which means that you could actually send me money without sending me money, just by creating an account to do the OTHER stuff you do :)
Some More Housekeeping
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
I've been thinking about warrant canaries lately -- I maintain them here at KN@PPSTER and also at the Garrison Center.
The idea behind a warrant canary is that the feds have a habit the last few years of issuing "National Security Letters" demanding information from web site operators, etc. and forbidding them to disclose the fact of that demand. A warrant canary is a reverse engineer kind of thing. If it is updated, it means there's been no such demand. If it isn't, anyone who notices can assume that there has been such a demand. So all the victim has to do is not act to communicate the fact of a federal demand.
So anyway, I was thinking recently about the fact that the feds are not required to be truthful in any way, shape, manner or form. They're free to lie their asses off to get something they're after. So what's to stop them from just fraudulently updating a victim's warrant canary themselves?
It's hard to come up with a perfect solution to such a thing, but I have added an extra layer of verifiability to both the aforementioned warrant canaries. They are now PGP-signed and will be signed each time they are updated. My latest PGP key (fingerprint: 39EF 85F2 53CA C3B0 476A DF0B 2ECC E0C6 B0ED 3584) is available elsewhere on this blog and I will paste it in at the bottom of this post as well.
But how do you know I'm not just a fed making this up? You don't -- but I have sent private, encrypted messages to two readers -- Darryl W. Perry and MamaLiberty -- with what I hope are sufficient bona fides of my identity to establish the trustworthiness of the key. So if you don't already have my key saved and/or don't trust it, and if you doubt that the PGP signature on the canary is really me, you could presumably contact one of them and ask them to verify the signature. Not foolproof (and please don't fill their mailboxes up with requests just for the hell of it), but a start.
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I've been thinking about warrant canaries lately -- I maintain them here at KN@PPSTER and also at the Garrison Center.
The idea behind a warrant canary is that the feds have a habit the last few years of issuing "National Security Letters" demanding information from web site operators, etc. and forbidding them to disclose the fact of that demand. A warrant canary is a reverse engineer kind of thing. If it is updated, it means there's been no such demand. If it isn't, anyone who notices can assume that there has been such a demand. So all the victim has to do is not act to communicate the fact of a federal demand.
So anyway, I was thinking recently about the fact that the feds are not required to be truthful in any way, shape, manner or form. They're free to lie their asses off to get something they're after. So what's to stop them from just fraudulently updating a victim's warrant canary themselves?
It's hard to come up with a perfect solution to such a thing, but I have added an extra layer of verifiability to both the aforementioned warrant canaries. They are now PGP-signed and will be signed each time they are updated. My latest PGP key (fingerprint: 39EF 85F2 53CA C3B0 476A DF0B 2ECC E0C6 B0ED 3584) is available elsewhere on this blog and I will paste it in at the bottom of this post as well.
But how do you know I'm not just a fed making this up? You don't -- but I have sent private, encrypted messages to two readers -- Darryl W. Perry and MamaLiberty -- with what I hope are sufficient bona fides of my identity to establish the trustworthiness of the key. So if you don't already have my key saved and/or don't trust it, and if you doubt that the PGP signature on the canary is really me, you could presumably contact one of them and ask them to verify the signature. Not foolproof (and please don't fill their mailboxes up with requests just for the hell of it), but a start.
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Thursday, May 03, 2018
Listing Pollution is Getting Worse
About a year and a half ago, I noted and complained about it as practiced on eBay. I even put up a petition asking eBay to crack down on the practice. It got a whopping 15 signatures.
A year and a half later, listing pollution is more widespread and far worse. Shopping for clothing items on Amazon is far more annoying than it should be, and takes far longer because now most stuff seems to be priced "from" $X.
For example, in search results, a pair of "brown dress shoes for men" is listed as "from $13.99." What does "from" mean? When you click through, you probably learn that if you want the shoes in size Triple Extra Small Narrow, and in Puke Green with Meat-Colored Flecks, yes, they are $13.99. But if you want them in any normal size and/or in any normal color scheme, they're $27.99.
Question #1: If I'm not willing to pay $27.99 for the shoes if that's what they're advertised at, why the hell would I be willing to pay $27.99 for them after Amazon wasted my time and pissed me off by trying to trick me into thinking they would be $13.99 or something close to that?
Question #2: If I ask the search results to show me only items that are eligible for Amazon Prime (i.e. free two-day delivery), and they show me a result with the little Prime logo next to it, isn't it reasonable to expect that when I click through I will not see "not eligible for Amazon Prime" and a minimum delivery wait of three weeks under every size and color option I click on? I pay good money for Amazon Prime, and while I don't expect every item on the site to be Prime eligible, I do expect items that Amazon tells me are Prime eligible to actually be Prime eligible.
A year and a half later, listing pollution is more widespread and far worse. Shopping for clothing items on Amazon is far more annoying than it should be, and takes far longer because now most stuff seems to be priced "from" $X.
For example, in search results, a pair of "brown dress shoes for men" is listed as "from $13.99." What does "from" mean? When you click through, you probably learn that if you want the shoes in size Triple Extra Small Narrow, and in Puke Green with Meat-Colored Flecks, yes, they are $13.99. But if you want them in any normal size and/or in any normal color scheme, they're $27.99.
Question #1: If I'm not willing to pay $27.99 for the shoes if that's what they're advertised at, why the hell would I be willing to pay $27.99 for them after Amazon wasted my time and pissed me off by trying to trick me into thinking they would be $13.99 or something close to that?
Question #2: If I ask the search results to show me only items that are eligible for Amazon Prime (i.e. free two-day delivery), and they show me a result with the little Prime logo next to it, isn't it reasonable to expect that when I click through I will not see "not eligible for Amazon Prime" and a minimum delivery wait of three weeks under every size and color option I click on? I pay good money for Amazon Prime, and while I don't expect every item on the site to be Prime eligible, I do expect items that Amazon tells me are Prime eligible to actually be Prime eligible.
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
I Probably Should Have Done a Little More Research ...
... and spent just a few extra bucks.
Arriving tomorrow: A Thetis FIDO U2F Security Key.
Every time I am about to travel, I get more security-conscious. Going from a PIN to a full-blown passphrase on my phone and reducing the inactive time before it locks, for example. And updating my PGP keys. And setting up Boxcryptor.
I finally decided that part of all that is upping to two-factor authentication with respect to various sites I use (an added security layer in case my Chromebook gets lost, stolen, or held hostage by government ghouls) and that I would prefer authenticating with a dongle to receiving a code via phone (with the phone as backup in case I lose the dongle).
The Thetis only supports U2F authentication, not OTP. I did research U2F versus OTP and am convinced U2F is pretty good to go. What I hadn't really noticed, though, is that not nearly as many sites support U2F as OTP (here's a site that keeps track of which sites support two-factor dongle authentication and what types).
Neither of my preferred password managers (LastPass, which I use, and Password Tote, which I just took out for a test drive) supports U2F (they both support OTP, although LastPass only does so in its premium version, which I might have bought if it supported U2F). That's kind of a buzz-crusher.
Fortunately, Google and DropBox DO support U2F, and that's a good portion of what I want to keep behind a little more protection than e.g. my RSS reader or Disqus account. But for $5-10 more I could have had both U2F and OTP. Live and learn, I guess.
Arriving tomorrow: A Thetis FIDO U2F Security Key.
Every time I am about to travel, I get more security-conscious. Going from a PIN to a full-blown passphrase on my phone and reducing the inactive time before it locks, for example. And updating my PGP keys. And setting up Boxcryptor.
I finally decided that part of all that is upping to two-factor authentication with respect to various sites I use (an added security layer in case my Chromebook gets lost, stolen, or held hostage by government ghouls) and that I would prefer authenticating with a dongle to receiving a code via phone (with the phone as backup in case I lose the dongle).
The Thetis only supports U2F authentication, not OTP. I did research U2F versus OTP and am convinced U2F is pretty good to go. What I hadn't really noticed, though, is that not nearly as many sites support U2F as OTP (here's a site that keeps track of which sites support two-factor dongle authentication and what types).
Neither of my preferred password managers (LastPass, which I use, and Password Tote, which I just took out for a test drive) supports U2F (they both support OTP, although LastPass only does so in its premium version, which I might have bought if it supported U2F). That's kind of a buzz-crusher.
Fortunately, Google and DropBox DO support U2F, and that's a good portion of what I want to keep behind a little more protection than e.g. my RSS reader or Disqus account. But for $5-10 more I could have had both U2F and OTP. Live and learn, I guess.
This is What a Sh*thole Country Looks Like
Per ABC News:
Our would-be masters have pretty much dropped any pretense that their "public schools" are anything more than combination day prisons and serf indoctrination/conditioning centers.
As teachers across the country combat the growing numbers of students vaping in schools, administrators are now using technology in high school bathrooms to cut down on e-cigarettes.
Edward Salina, the superintendent for Plainedge Public Schools on Long Island, New York, told ABC News' Brad Mielke during an interview for the "Start Here" podcast that Plainedge High School is involved in a pilot program for Fly Sense, a sensor system that alerts school officials when students are vaping.
...
Fly Sense, which is also an anti-smoking and anti-bullying sensor system, can be placed where cameras aren't allowed, such as in bathrooms or locker rooms. Salina said the high school has cameras located outside bathrooms to catch people five minutes before they enter and five minutes after they exit the bathroom.
Our would-be masters have pretty much dropped any pretense that their "public schools" are anything more than combination day prisons and serf indoctrination/conditioning centers.
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
A Couple of Fun Facts
Fun Fact #1: In 2015, the Garrison Center's first year as a going concern, the Center's op-eds were picked up by mainstream newspapers and non-libertarian political publications 545 times. In the first four months of 2018, Garrison Center op-eds were picked up by mainstream newspapers and non-libertarian political publications 571 times.
Fun Fact #2: Not long ago, I opined that perhaps one reason Garrison is doing better than the Center for a Stateless Society in the op-ed mill racket is that C4SS's op-eds have to be explicitly anarchist while Garrison's don't. I may have been wrong. Here's the final paragraph of the April 26 Garrison op-ed, in support of California secession:
"Ultimately, political government itself is the problem and a system of market anarchy or panarchy (competing “public service” providers within the same geographical area) is the solution. Until we can feel our way to such an arrangement, peaceful secession, decentralization, and devolution are probably the best outcomes we can reasonably hope for."
Anarchy, panarchy, and secession, oh my! Too radical for mainstream newspapers? Nope. Picked up by USA Today, the Reno Gazette Journal, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, the Des Moines Register, the Fon du Lac Reporter, the Saint George Daily Spectrum, the Fort Collins Coloradoan, The Arizona Republic, the Detroit Free Press, the El Paso Times, the Nashville Tennessean, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Indianapolis Star, OpEdNews, the Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, and the Winchester, Tennessee Herald Chronicle.
Fun, fun, fun.