Never been one to let the carrier drop

Perhaps, since the youngest voters have to deal with the consequences of any actions taken for the longest, we should have a weighting system for voting, set up so the longer you were going to be on the planet after your vote, the more it counted for. I realize this runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that the older voting public are wiser. However, I think it’s possible they’re also more cynical, more bitter, or more corrupted.

Just a thought.

I have a whole list of thoughts I had in the middle of the night the other night concerning how to make a open source, verifiable, trustworthy voting network. I’ll post them sometime later.

Recently a talk-radio personality on a certain radio show that will remain nameless asked, ‘Where do rights come from?’. After very careful consideration, I’ve determined that they generally come from might.

That isn’t a particularly desirable situation, but it does seem to be how things are.

For example, what gives God the right to send me to hell, presuming that (a) there’s a God and (b) He/She/It* does such things? The ability to do so, is pretty much the only answer that I can come up with. What gives the legislature of the state of Utah the right to imprison a girl for having sex? Again, being armed with superior firepower is pretty much the only answer I can come up with.

I’m pretty disguisted with the universe right now. Yes, it’s got lots of beautiful little bits but people keep doing things to other people against their wills for no reasonable reason all over the place.

Another question one might ask is why is any of this any of my business? You could certainly make the case that Sheer isn’t affected by the war in Iraq – after all, I’m not that likely to be killed (my friend Chief Smoke could be, but after all he did choose to be in the Army and that is kind of a occupational hazard).

I guess the only answer I can come up with is that every time someone (like that aforementioned 13 year old who’s in jail for having sex) is wrongfully imprisoned, everytime someone innocent is killed, every time someone is treated unfairly, it makes us all a little less free, a little bit more in a position to huddle in fear inside our locked houses, more inclined to hide things, more inclined to trust our fellow man less.

In other words, I care because by being within a few thousand miles of the people who are wrongfully imprisoning that girl, I’m made less free. My soul is somehow vaugely tainted by her unhappiness.

I’ll be the first to support cops and other government figures when they’re stopping someone from stealing someone else’s belongings, or stopping someone from hurting someone else. But they should keep their laws off my morality. Let me state this as clearly as possible: it is not moral to legislate morality. It is not moral to enforce your morals on other people, and it is not clear that anything is morally ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ because I, you, or anyone else says it is. And even if something is immoral, well, imprisoning someone is immoral too. Do two wrongs make a right? Apparently in modern thinking they do..

I accept that I’m powerless. I accept that I can change nothing. I accept that all I can do is sit here and stare at the brokenness and wonder how on earth it got so broken. I accept that I’m probably a part of the brokenness – that by existing, I probably make things worse.

* = I’m leaning towards he, but only because it’s the majority opinion.

http://kutv.com/utahwire/UT–SexOffender-en/resources_news_html

This really irks me.

What business of the government’s – which is just a collection of people after all – is it if a couple of kids want to have sex? Yes, they should have been taught about the whole contraception thing, yes, they’re a little young.. but to lock them up for something that just about everyone wants to do? It’s beyond pathetic and somewhere deep into shameful. Whoever did the locking up oughta be the one locked up, in my view. Or, as Eddie from Callahan’s observed, ‘this world sucks.’

Well, okay, it could be worse. But this particular aspect of it sucks the big one.

Honestly, isn’t getting pregnent enough punishment?

One of the popular reasonably-new* linux distributions uses the command ’emerge’ to download and install packages. This seems a unusually apt choice of words when you consider my inifinity argument, which I’ll repeat here even though you all have heard it a billion times before.

All of the wonderful software and music and our DNA and, well, basically, everything is lurking inside infinity waiting for us to find it. That album Mischief Committee did already existed, in mp3, ogg, and wav formats, long before we ever recorded it – lurking inside infinity. Copyrighting digital media is like copyrighting addresses on a number line. What we programmers and musicians do is emerge peices of infinity that were already there.

I’d like to make it clear that this isn’t neccesarily my final answer on this .. my opinions, as on all things, may change as I grow. But it’s where I sit right now.

* = compared with, say, slackware

Should anyone happen to use ISC’s dhcp server and need a script for parsing the leases file..

blah

As per this document, the government once considered Einstien to be a felon because he supported Communism.

I really get angry whenever I think about the ’50s and communism. First of all, the U.S. is supposed to be based on freedom – ostensibly, freedom of speech, freedom to peacefully assemble, freedom of religion – and the state religion is capitolism, this we know, but, why should it have ever been a felony to hold a economic ideal contrary?

In fact, it seems likely that armed with good computer networks, you could make communism work. The basic idea is just ‘everybody works, everybody eats’ – it’s just the implimentation that gets tricky.

In any case, I’m glad that I can now be a member of the comunist party if I want to without fear of government repraisals. (Well, unless the NeoCons get their way, in which case I will be thrown in jail for a list of offenses too long to mention here, almost all of them informational in nature)

The FBI has a long history of chasing down people that the public likes – Einstien and John Lennon are a couple that jump to mind, but there are a lot of them. I’ve come to think of the U.S. government as basically evil on all fronts, a beast that must be put up with because there is no way to get rid of it that doesn’t cost more blood, sweat, and tears than it is worth. I hope that over time, the next generation, which has grown up with many tools and ideas that the last generation did not have, will replace the government with something that’s worth having – somethign that doesn’t lie, doesn’t define actions as crimes unless they hurt other people, something that tries to minimize the number of laws and always go for simplicity in defining them, something that doesn’t permit corperations to put acquisition of wealth above the needs of their human components..

I don’t know. I really hope that things continue to get better with time. But I see Dubya. And he lied, and everyone.. liberals, conservatives.. everyone.. knows that he lied, he started a war on false pretenses, killed thousands of innocent people – and nothing bad is happening to him. Nothing bad will happen to him. He’ll get rich, and other people will get the idea that what he did is right and good and proper.

I mean, the only way I can make dubya make sense is if we’re all living in the matrix and he just exists to try to make me angry so that I’ll generate more energy. I can’t understand why no one is stopping him.. why soldiers are still willing to fight.. why people are deluding themselves that this battle is morally right – or neccesary – or economically wise.

[sigh]

Next problem: Kayti wants to move back to Colorado – and I don’t – but I don’t want to break up with her. I don’t want to give up the band, and the good sushi, and all my friends in Seattle. But… argh.. it’s very upsetting.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/6e72/

I just had one of those epiphanies that would hav ebeen obvious to anyone but me.

The big difference between liberals and conservatives, at least right now, is which direction in time they are travelling. Liberals are travelling – or at least looking – towards the future, while conservatives are travelling – or at least looking – towards the past. It’s not ‘conservative’ in the sense of ‘conserve resources’. It’s conservative as in ‘change as little as possible’.

Which works just fine until you hit that oncoming train that you thought was the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Sheer tries to improve on his optimism some]

’nuff said.

Kayti doesn’t actually neccesarily think being adopted has caused a negative impact in her life. Other people are of the opinion that it has and have told her that and she has talked about it with me which set me to thinking and worrying and whatnot.