ivan

christ! there's a downer to a fun upbeat-thread! what were the details of the robbery? murderer ever get caught? he used a gun i assume?

Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security. --Benjamin Franklin very well, but what of locke, hobbes, rousseau and every other philosopher of government who confess that humans, born in an anarchic world with total freedom, must sacrifice some of those freedoms to a government or else suffer becuase of the excess of others exercising theirs? i don't concieve of gun-ownership (at least modern guns - like i said earlier, i think restricitng everybody to 18th century style weapons is fine) as an inalienable right - self defense certainly is, but that doesn't give me the right to an uzi, a flamethrower, an mx-missile, or even a semi-automatic pistol. As I've said before, Ivan; you don't seem interested in applying the same standard of antiquity to our first amendment vis a vis "the press" - as it now encompasses television, radio, the internet. I would also point out that euro-enlightenmentees Locke, Rosseau, and Hobbes (English, Swiss, English) weren't among the 55 delegates that met in Philladelphia during the summer of 1787. Benjamin Franklin was. Unfortunately, your willingness to sacrifice your constitutional freedoms would also have you force those sacrifices on me - and that's not acceptable. Big Ben had no part in crafting the right you so cherish (guns) - as you no doubt know, the bill of rights wasn't created in philly. and to say locke or montesquie or the others weren't present at the drafting of the american goverment is pretty goddamn daft - clearly they weren't there physically, but the ideas they articulated resound throughout the constitution and declaration (jefferson's "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" a near total plagariasm from locke, the seperation of powers from the frenchie, etc) "essential" in "essential liberties" is a most ambigious adjective - what's essential to me is not going to be the same for you - you clearly care about guns, where i'd be happier seeing them a whole hell of a lot harder to come by - i think the right to get fawked up 4 ways to sunday is pretty damn essential, but you don't and that's not acceptable to me either. i guess you at least sorta have it in writing in the 2nd amendment, but you know as well as i that it can be read to mean merely that the people in the form of their state militias have the right to bear arms. we have no absolutely unrestricted freedoms - we must accept limitations to them all - again, the question is the balance - to what degree will we part with specific rights? i think folks oughta be able to have guns, but nothing more than single shot, slow to reload ones - you can hunt and defend yourself just fine w/ those, but yes, they will be inadequate if you choose to iniate hostilities against a larger force (say a french class at 9 AM). its a compromise - you can still plug bambi or the uppity-negro crawling through the bedroom window for your daughter. now watch me compromise - legalize pot and you can keep the freak'n blow illegal. or legalize it but only sell it in packages w/ a big american flag on it and a picture of jesus crying

in other words, security can only be had by trading some liberty - the trick lies in the balance, and as we're all retards, therefore we'll constantly be swinging past the equilibrium point and bitching about it...

Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security. --Benjamin Franklin very well, but what of locke, hobbes, rousseau and every other philosopher of government who confess that humans, born in an anarchic world with total freedom, must sacrifice some of those freedoms to a government or else suffer becuase of the excess of others exercising theirs? i don't concieve of gun-ownership (at least modern guns - like i said earlier, i think restricitng everybody to 18th century style weapons is fine) as an inalienable right - self defense certainly is, but that doesn't give me the right to an uzi, a flamethrower, an mx-missile, or even a semi-automatic pistol.

From "The Eiger Sanction" starring Clint Eastwood. As true in 1975 as it is today. Now I'll have to go and re-watch it tonight. "Jonathan Hemlock: I can't believe that you're a stewardess. Jemima Brown: Actually I'm not, I'm a skyjacker in a drag. Jonathan Hemlock: Oh, that's reassuring, just give your name and I report you to the proper authorities when we land. Jemima Brown: Jemima Jonathan Hemlock: And I'm Uncle Ben... Jemima Brown: I'm serious, that's really my name... Jemima Brown, my mother was hooked on being ethnic. Jonathan Hemlock: Or else turned on by a pancake. As long as we both agree that it's to much for a black chick to have the name of Jemima. " I Jemima Brown She was totally hot !!!! 8D Still, wonder how she looks today, 37 years later. inspired me to look her up - she's 67 now. hasn't done any film in almost 2 decades - she was in Repo Man!

wish it were - about 50% of my kids are gone 2day - course, i'm sure it has nothign to do w/ the beautiful day outside

we should all live in an anarcho-syndicist commune

actually i said i was willing to sacrifice the former (gun rights) to protect the later (privacy) - ergo i'm with you. i don't need guns - i do need my johnson though, and no doubt The Man would want it if he kept the Big Hairy Eye-Ball on it all the time

just to be sure everyone understands, as a couple of folks pm'ed me confused, i did turn over the offending ipod as soon as i got it - wether or not the parents give a shit is immaterial, they must be informed, legally and morally in this case. having dealt w/ them before, i'd wager they won't be too angry.

maybe it's helpful to think of the 32 dead at VT as soldiers? after all, most folks say the troops in iraq are "dying for our freedoms" - that's pretty much true for the VT-folk, though that classic platitude might be better rendered in this case, "they died because of our freedoms" you can't make an omlette w/o breaking eggs, no? nor can you have a right to bear arms and a right to a privacy w/o shit like this happening. i'm willing to sacrifice the former to preserve the later, for what it's worth...

hmm - sounds like everyone in "trainspotting"

thanks for the link - i'd heard of this case before but didn't remember the specific details

You sure it wasn't 'the best climber is the one quoting a quote that another climber has already quoted?' this gives me the hershey squirts

it very well coulda been coke's not pot...every person i ever knew that got into coke at a young age went down in flames big time anyway, the law's clear enough - this kinda stuff has to be reported to admin not sure how Big Bro it is - mostly i like looking at kids ipods just to see what kinda music they're swinging too these days - i looked at one once revealing the kid was a mega-bon-jovi fan - i had no idea what to think about that

i've always assumed that's why the admin folks got paid more than me - "here ya go, have fun w/ this one!"

no not kiddie porn in the sense that there were no sex acts depicted or nudity - just kids in their underwear rubbing all over each other

as quoted from alfred, lord tennyson

also pics of drinking bad mexican beer 15 yr olds count as adults?

the waning years of the bush the II white house?

no

word ipods and cell-phones feature prominently on the list of shit my daughter won't be getting from me, followed by a car less than 20 years old i guess these are the kids of parents from the cocaine-era though...

confiscated an ipod in the midst of a lecture (what, is my verbage not pleasing to you? do my stories not take a life of their own?) figured since she made a big deal out of refusing to hand the thing over until after she turned it off that i oughta take a look at it since she didn't have her headphones, thought the pictures folder might be the right thing to check out pictures of your students prancing around in their underwear, getting frisky w/ one another, drinking beer and snorting coke - priceless! if only i could share w/ the group w/o crossing some sorta ethical boundary....

Microscopic-American?

another from my own experience (already 30 meters up an ice-cliff, as we go to rope up having just scared shit out of ourselves getting to the tiny ledge we stopped on): "i thought you had the rope?"

Judged from today's 'enlightened' worldview, this is truly sad and injust. But judged from the values of a different time, then this seemed to be rather the norm than the exception. I have a hard time grasping the idea of genicide. Being that there were no men of fighting age (or very few)in this camp and they attacked at dawn and shot old men, women and children it was more of a extermination campaign against the indians. They even mutilated the bodies which later the indians copied with Custor and were called barbaric sounds like your talking about sand creek, not wounded knee the sandcreek massacre occured before "custer's last stand" which in turn occured before the wounded knee massacre atrocity highlights from sand-creek: - black kettle had his nuts chopped off and turned into a tobacco pouch (he was a venerable and friendly indian chief who'd been given an american flag to fly over his tent to show his "civilian status", he'd brought his people to a local army fort for protection when other tribes had started hostilities - that fort then turned on him) - soldiers placed bets on the gender of fetuses inside slaughtered women and then performed dissections to settle the bet -some soldiers removed the ovaries of dead indians and laid them out on their saddles for souvenirs "bury my heart at wounded knee" is an excellent read on the subject - an early attempt at "revisionist" history