Kateri put me up to this
Mood:  amorous
Topic: General
Kateri thinks i should post more often. she sits behind me and reads over my sholder, which is messed up, but we tolerate such things. What is up with napster these days?

anyway, becca rocks. if she reads this--hi. Only 3 weeks till gradation. happy, but why did not i get to know certain person sooner. ;(
Only have econ papers left and spanish final on friday.

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~geoffo/humour/flattery.html

Topic: useless fear
the chains of violence must be broken by a determined effort to be un-violent. that is proponents of freedom must stop using govt. coersion for their ends. it does not matter what the law says. what matters is what is right. thus there must be no punitive action sanctioned or encoraged against those who circumvent regulations etc. determinatly ignoring the beast will make it die.

hyperlexia tophat

was a winning "google" entry

Article I wrote for one of the student newspapers
Topic: Politics
On Copyright Law

In response to the recent article “On the Morality of Copying Copyrighted Material,” I raise several objections.
It does seem odd to talk about the morality of taking what rightfully belongs to another, but that is not the act in question. The act in question is not the theft of CDs, DVDs, etc. Instead, we are talking about the copying of an object. Theft is obviously wrong, but as the saying goes “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” When I copy a song, I have not deprived the owner of anything that he had before. A new object of subjective valuation has come from what was virtually worthless with very little work involved.
As for contracts, the “contracts” attached to copyrighted material are illegitimate for several reasons. First, standard common law contracts layout the penalties for breach of contract, and those penalties are arbitrated in civil courts or by an agreed upon arbiter. Copyright contracts on the other hand resort to criminal law, making them contracts between the seller and the government rather than between the buyer and seller. Second, legitimate contracts are written by the contracting parties. Copyright law is written by the government. Third, a contract is a made in an act separate from the production of another good. Under copyright law, a copyright is (frequently) automatic upon the production of intellectual property. Since the contract attached to a copyright fails to conform to the basic structure of private law contracts, it cannot be a valid contract. Far from promoting prosperity, copyrights are a form of State imposed monopoly. The success of the Coca Cola company in protecting its Coke formula for decades clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of private solutions to information protection.
The primary problem with the whole idea of copyrights is a misunderstanding of intellectual property. Intellectual property cannot be treated like physical property because the source of value in each is different. Physical property has value because it is useful and scarce. Intellectual property, on the other hand, can be reproduced at virtually no cost. The storage medium may have a cost, but that is not at issue here. If someone has a house, and I take his house, he is worse off. If I copy his house with my own materials on my own land, he is not harmed. There would be a problem if I said that I originated the design, but lying is already immoral and illegal inasmuch as it relates to advertising, contracts, etc. The same holds for other intellectual property. I cannot misrepresent the author of some set of data, but I can replicate it all I want. The exception being a case of a valid contract to not reproduce the data. However, my contract cannot bind a third party who comes upon the data without a contract attached, even if this happened because of my breach of contract. As an aside, valid contracts always have escape clauses and or strict time limits, unlike copyright contracts.
In conclusion, go out and copy whatever you want. People think in terms of universals, and universal ideas ought to proliferate rather than being constricted by the claws of the leviathan.

Topic: General
The ground has some snow on it, so my classes have been largely canceled so far this week.
My investment project has already made a good bit of money. As long as the market does not crash in the next two and one half months, the project should be an easy A.

About me: I am a senior at a small liberal arts college on the east coast in the so called mountains.



nice machine

Mood:  mischievious
Topic: useless fear

Happy Deathday!
Your name:	ENTER USERNAME
You will die on:	Tuesday, April 5, 2033
You will die of:	Fall from Great Height
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Created by Quill

Gang and other international warfare.
Topic: Politics
Gang and other international warfare.

A nation is a corporation, at least in the Latin sense of being an organized body of people. Above-ground businesses and many social groups function the same way. There are goals that the organization pursues. And toward that end, there are certain rules and procedures to be followed. Failure to do so results in punishment. These range from being snubbed at church to being declared an enemy combatant and hunted with laser guided bombs.
Each group competes for the loyalty of its members. As most people are members of several groups, the issue is not multiple loyalties, but rather the order of loyalties.
Street gangs are smiler to other organizations in that they provide social support, economic opportunities, and a basic ordered structure to the lives of their members.
Violence arises primarily because they are restricted from otherwise legit. activities like dealing in drugs and arms. Those activities in them selves do not harm anyone and any problems are caused by the personal choices of the users.
The trouble is competition. Not that competition itself is a problem. Just when armed groups vie for dominance, people tent to get hurt. Thus there is competition between cops and gangs, and between gangs and gangs, and between cops and cops (they tend to be more civil about it though, or the federal cops win). Crips and Bloods killing each other is not conceptually different from American and Iraqis killing each other over turf or oil. Any given group or govt. tends to react rather violently when another group or govt. threatens its monopoly of force in a locality.
If everyone was allowed to belong to whatever groups they wanted, and sell whatever there is a market for, there could be a variety of groups wielding force in any given place. Basic economic motivations would point toward cooperation among distinct groups rather than chaos.
Oh wait, that would be following the first and second amendments and allowing for free trade and association.

Topic: Politics
Must the government protect us from mentally ill persons?
This question makes some assumptions that are unwarranted to say the least.
First: The presumption that the govt. can significantly reduce or eliminate the negative externalities caused by mental illness.
Second: The presumption that the govt. definition and diagnostic procedure for mental illness is correct.
Third: That mental illness exists and causes problems as such.

As an example, the govt. a supposedly been trying to solve the problem of poverty for a long time now. England has had programs in place for at least 200 years. As is quite evident, there are still a lot of poor people and they still suffer the deleterious effects of being poor. Interestingly, there are more pore people where there is more welfare. This indicates that welfare only expands the problem of poverty rather than solve it. Having grown up in a slum/hood, I see that long term (as in multigenerational) poverty is a mental illness. that will not show up on any official list of disease, but it can be just as debilitating as other recognized conditions. They probably go hand in hand in many cases.
It would seem that the primary point of continuity between illnesses (mental and physical) is that they impair function in some way. Thus, something as common as having a short time horizon and favoring instant gratification is just as much a disease as some other problem like . I'm not saying that mental illnesses are not real, or that they are not complex and issues. The point is that the govt. has no consistent way to decide what needs to be treated and how.
Additionally, there is the problem of subsidizing illness. When there are significant benefits to being ill, like free rent, food, etc., there will be more people who are ill. If there are benefits for being psychotic, there will be more psychotic people. Benefits to poor people cause more poverty. If public mental health programs and poverty programs were aimed at reducing the , they would just go away and let people have a nice strong dose of reality.

Topic: useless fear