The Role of Ron Paul

Comments on RP winning the CPAC straw poll:

Obama's senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, who's Iranian, said it best: "that president-elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one." The President's job as head of the executive branch is to see that the law as put into effect by the legislative branch is carried out, not to directly wield authority over the citizenry. The administration may suggest direction to Congress, but ultimately they are the lawmakers, not the President. Legislating from the Oval Office (via executive orders and other less overt action) should be abhorred even more than Supreme Court justices legislating from the bench.

Ron Paul makes sense, and the guy is on the money on just about everything. There are two issues: 1) he's too old to take office in 2012 (Reagan was the oldest to be inaugurated at 69) and 2) he's eminently un-electable, as evidenced by censorship of his 2008 campaign, not only by the liberal media, but the neo-con media, including Fox News and the NRA.

Make no mistake, if he got on the ballot, I'd vote for him. However, my take is that Dr. Paul's role is not to become President, but to reform U.S. politics, get the right kind of people in Congress, and to pave the way for when someone like him can actually get elected.

Save the Whales but Not the Universe

I've been posting too many CNN comments lately. On the idiot activist who boarded a Japanese whaler to affect a "citizen's arrest":

Treat these "activists" for what they are: pirates and/or terrorists! Shoot 'em and dump 'em!

And:

@Guest: Way to comment, anonymous coward! Like it or not, "terrorist" is a political term. The activists have no business harassing Japanese whalers. If they don't like the law, pursue changing it in a court of law. If they don't, they're operating outside the law (by definition) and are vigilantes (if the whalers can be considered objectively criminal, which is doubtful) or terrorists (the term used against people on the wrong side of the law). They've been watching Star Trek IV too much.

Chubs on Planes

Comment on a CNN article—I'm sure I'm gonna get some hate over this one ;-)

As a frequent international traveler, I admit that I dread being seated next to a person whose girth spills over into my space. On the other hand, I can appreciate that the seats are generally too small, both in width and in depth. I'm 6' tall, of average build, so I always have my knees in the seat in front of me. As such, perhaps the available width is unreasonable as well. (Furthermore, why are the armrests so narrow?! They're barely wide enough to put one person's arm on, much less share between two people! If the adjacent passenger is large, then by default you lose the armrest....) Thus both the airlines and passengers are culpable to some degree.

Personally, I advocate charging by weight of the passenger plus luggage. (I say this as a 195-lb male who tends to take a lot in luggage.) A 90-pound woman carrying only her 5-lb handbag shouldn't pay as much as a 300-lb man with 50-lbs of luggage. Clearly they contribute differently toward the fuel usage. (All eco-activists should be for this one, since it's clearly an incentive to be greener!) Granted other public transportation like buses and trains don't do this, but they're short hop (using less fuel) and have the need to quickly board and unboard passengers, making pay-by-weight impractical. For airplanes you already have to check in, and people already seem to be willing to give in to cavity searches to board planes, so why not step on the scale? Could it be that some people fear being weighed more than being rectally probed?! ;-)

Keep Tube

I was using TubeSock to download YouTube videos, but it doesn't handle the high-resolution MP4 versions. Thus I found a site called Keep Tube that acts as a gateway to pick up the MP4 stream. The direct URL is:

http://keep-tube.com/?url=XXX

XXX should be the YouTube "watch" URL.

More Shit

Further commentary on the shit thread of Demian's:

Finally getting back to this. What else am I gonna do when I'm down with a cold....

I was throwing the charity thing out there to counteract Demian's assertion that conservatives are cold-hearted SOBs. I've heard of a study (but haven't seen it myself) that indicates that conservatives, particularly midwestern ones, donate in much higher percentages than liberals, particularly the ones in California.

Charity for business may be, and I quote, "fucking bullshit", but it's not like that for me and, I'd wager, for most individuals. I feel like it's a social imperative: I am able to make a decent living developing HDDs because the social structures exist to support my specialization. As such, I can afford to donate from my salary to help as I see fit. On the other hand, much of my donations go to cancer research organizations.

The problem with sending aid to third world countries is that usually the dictator or whatever corrupt government is running things takes the spoils. How would you expect to "end poverty", though? There will always be poor people (despite what socialists will have one believe), and poor people beget more poor people. It's an unending cause, and to expect otherwise is purely unrealistic. Charity could be a means of preserving the status quo -- or it could be a good element to balance the tendency of things to go to shit. Your call. I prefer to believe that some good can be done. That said, some is never enough.

Part Two:

Your argument about Venezuelan gun possession is bogus, by the way. Check your facts -- most of those 6M guns are illegal. Right now only law enforcement can legally buy guns there. They just don't have the gestapo environment that the U.S. has. Americans are in general too cowardly to revolt, otherwise we would've had a new government after the Waco massacre.

If you're talking "socialism" like Chavez and dictators like him -- might as well be Hitler or Stalin -- then you're really nuts. Democratic socialism is at least plausible in that they believe that non-totalitarian government can help the underprivilieged. Communist socialism has been completely discredited. Communism itself is an ideal that unfortunately cannot be implemented practically: anyone with a modicum of logical thinking can appreciate that in order to administer things fairly a class must exist that decides those matters, and such an administration is prone to corruption. Plus, a populace that puts themselves in a position of servitude deserve whatever they get.

Small-time tyrant socialists like Castro (who vehemently denied being a communist before rising to power...now he's unabashed about it) and Chavez needed their backers to be armed in order to execute their "revolutions". When they're in power, though, they aim to crack down on access to weapons of resistance so as to enforce their monopoly of force. That's precisely why the people shouldn't trust a government that disbars the use of arms: it's the first step down the road to totalitarianism.

Part Three:

You're right about Jefferson's support of public education. I think his heart was in the right place, but the problem with government involvement in education is that they then gain the ability to brainwash future generations. In this regard, homeschooling is a vitally important option to maintain. I don't see myself doing it (my kids will go to a private school if I can afford it, otherwise I'll shoot for a charter school) but it's every right of a parent to avoid government-mandated crap. Regarding private versus public, I went to a Montessori for a year in elementary and learned more in that one year than in any other two years in the public school system. (This coming from a kid who's been an honors student since 3rd grade.) Regardless of the availability of public education, private will always be superior because of less red tape and the presence of a business mandate (if the kids don't do well, parents quit paying for it).

In any case, the mandatory public systems instantiated by the government, regardless of good intent, are villainous. People shouldn't be forced to comply with someone else's idea of how they should spend their income.

As for the infallibility of icons such as Jefferson, of course he was human and had his failings, such as keeping slaves. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, eh. Abraham Lincoln, however, revered, was not as great as some make him out to be: he was the first to make extensive use of Executive Orders, which are used for vile purposes today. I'm a bit torn on the Civil War: while slavery was definitely a bad thing, the right of the states to secede should have been inviolate. (Yes, I'm solidly in the camp of the Anti-Federalists.) Slavery was an institution at the time, and while now it seems very antiquated, the whole colonial "white man's burden" was at a time the prevailing thinking. Kind of like smoking used to be atarimae, a sharp contrast to how it is villified today. Then there's that piece of shit Franklin Roosevelt who devalued the dollar, outlawed private gold ownership, created a raft of socialist programs including Social Security, and managed to get us embroiled in WWII, which set the stage for the U.S.'s interventionist foreign policy in the 70 years since. (Yes the Japanese attacked the U.S., but not until after we embargoed them, basically cutting off the lifeline to an island nation, to limit their aggression. The embargo itself was tantamount to an act of war. I'm not an apologist for what happened, but it's important to look at the entire context of the conflict. Plus, we had intelligence that the Japanese were planning an attack. Just clarifying my views on WWII -- basically one that pisses off both Americans and Japanese!).

Information on Venezuelan gun laws is hard to find, but the sources I've been able to find indicate that private ownership isn't legal (for example). From the link, dated 2006.11.25:

However, the Chavez government has tightened gun laws. Once it was easier to take out a gun licence than a driving licence, but now only police officers can buy guns legally. In spite of this, there are a number of gun shops nationwide and the evident levels of gun ownership would suggest that the law is not being implemented effectively.

Augmented Reality Wi-Fi Helicopter

Russ sent me a link to the Parrot AR.Drone site. I want. Of course the salient question is: how much does the damn thing cost?!

News Dump

Well, it's not news when it gets old. Maybe I should call my lingering browser windows "olds"....

Product review: Vibram Five-Fingers Classic [barefootrunner.com]
Why a Big Meal Makes You Hungry [WSJ]
Newly-Found Windows Bug Affects All Versions Since NT [Slashdot]
Why do we give to disaster relief? [CNN]
Boogie Board writing tablet [CrunchGear]
Understanding Race - Human Variation

Plastic Port Buffer

Just found a non-marring port buffer for the HK-91. I've heard that the metal ones scratch the receiver when removed, which is undesirable. Might have to get one of these to try out.

Shit

One of Demian's scatological rants on FB turned political, prompted me to respond, which led to him questioning the manhood of gun owners and me to retort with the following piece of eloquence:

You can joke about gun owners compensating all you want, it's bullshit. We got more inches and testosterone than the pussy anti-gunners. We'll screw your girl and her friend and they'll be back in a week for more when they can walk again. =D

Wouldn't be surprised if he unfriends me this time, haha. That's ok, we weren't butt buddies anyhow.

Organic Homemade Ketchup

This showed up in my Facebook stream because Marigold commented on the author's wall picture. The recipe looks pretty simple:

INGREDIENTS

1 x 28 oz. Can Tomato Puree

1 x 6 oz Can Tomato Paste

1 Tbsp Vinegar (I like Unfiltered Raw Apple Cider)

1/4 Cup Water

1/6 tsp each Garlic & Onion Powder

1 pinch each Secret Spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice

1 tsp Celtic Sea Salt

1/4 tsp Stevia Extract Powder

1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum (optional natural thickener)

DIRECTIONS

In a large saucepan, pour in the 1st 4 ingredients. Stir, and bring to a simmer.

Add in the rest of the ingredients, and stir them in using a whisk.

Simmer for 10-20 minutes. The longer you simmer it, the thicker and more rich it will become.

Let cool,and pour into glass jar(s).

Well, that wasn’t too bad now was it.

You should have been making your own this whole time!

Will keep in the refrigerator for 7-10 days.

If you like tangier ketchup, add a little more vinegar. Sweeter? Add more sweetener.

You can play with the spices & seasonings to develop your own signature ketchup. Spicy sounds good, too.

What’s you’re favorite ketchup accompaniment to have with you’re new recipe?

How will you tweak it? I’d love to know how it goes for you :)

ENJOY!

Be Well,

-Maximillian Barry

Hmm, it uses Stevia. Did the FDA accept that finally...?