My Quiet Life

Matt has a picture of his new Mazda3 up. He's also looking to sell a nice turbo Miata, if you're in the seattle area (or even if you're not!).

I am tremendously busy, hence the vacuous silence around here, but in the meantime, you can read me rambling about libertarianism over at Aunt B's, or making fun of "bloggerblaster". Or you can read about Moses Harman, who I think is my new hero:

Of the 19th century reform movements occupying a place in Kansas history such as prohibition, populism and women's suffrage, none were more startling than those advocated by free-thought journalist, Moses Harman. Harman not only denounced all forms of government and religion, but also added a new dimension in reform by advocating that women be freed from sexual slavery by abolishing the institution of marriage. Although a complex person, Harman contended his creed was short. He believed in freedom, love and wisdom, and knowledge utilized. He further maintained that marriage destroys freedom and compels slavery, kills love, and incarnates hate, and is the inveterate foe of wisdom.

Now that's what I'm talkin' about.

Global Labor Strategies has a good run-down of the major hurdles to global cooperation among unions.

Via Tyler Cowen, check out this article. It says funny things like this:

... largely because men and women are equipped with such different hardware from the neck up ...

... due to differences in brain structure and chemistry, men are inclined to cull the savannah for food; women maintain the cave. Women communicate; men fix. Women remember events and emotions; men remember the dimensions of the deck. Men are from cerebral cortex, women are from amygdala ...

It's so cute when they ignore science.

Rev noted this url in the comments of this post, which appears to be an attempt of a refutation of sorts of libertarianism in general. It appears to be coming from some sort of religious authoritarian perspective, or maybe he's arguing for some sort of platonian rule, with a class of wise rulers, except there's just one ruler, and he's imaginary. He also asserts that without god, individual morality takes precedence, and "cannibalism, polygamy, slavery, or predatory sexual behavior" run rampant. I assume that "dogs sleeping with cats" is a given.

As luck would have it, I ran across a passage tonight that is relevant to how society (and moral codes along with it) evolves, and that there's no delineation between societal and individual development. It's from The Poverty of Philosophy, by our good pal Karl Marx. I'm not sure it's a refutation to what this dude is saying, because I'm not 100% sure what he is saying, other than that we should have a theocratic government, and that liberterianism is bad because it interferes with that or something. Anyways, here's the passage:

It is superfluous to add that men are not free to choose their productive forces -- which are the basis of all their history -- for every productive force is an acquired force, the product of former activity. The productive forces are therefore the result of practically applied human energy; but this energy is itself conditioned by the circumstances in which men find themselves, by the productive forces already acquired, by the social form which exists before they exist, which they do not create, which is the product of the preceding generation. Because of the simple fact that every succeeding generation finds itself in possession of the productive forces acquired by the previous generation, and that they serve it as the raw material for new production, a coherence arises in human history, a history of humanity takes shape which becomes all the more a history of humanity the more the productive forces of men and therefore their social relations develop. Hence it necessarily follows that the social history of men is always the history of their individual development, whether they are conscious of it or not. Their material relations are the basis of all their relations. These material relations are only the necessary forms in which their material and individual activity is realized.

Donald Sensing linked to this -- apparently without any indication of mockery or even irony.

This is totally awesome.

Get that guy, plus a girl, and a bonfire/blanket on the beach (think The Jerk) and he'd get laid instantly.

Is it a bad sign when you have a weird dream that involves a blogger? Is it worse if it's on a Friday night? .. and if you haven't been drinking?

I have chronic dreams about going on vacation to the beach but then being unable to round up anyone to actually go to the beach. It's very freudian. Anyways, in this dream, I was milling around bored by a pool in some vacation resort, and Sarcastro was there with his brother (does he have a brother?), who in this dream was played by the dad from that Viva La Bam show (I have no idea either). They were playing this "game" in which they would sneak up on one another and drop a lit match in the other's hair. I guess the loser would be the one with the least hair at the end of the day. The Viva La Bam guy was losing, as he had a giant charred bald spot on top of his head.

Anyways, I was milling around the pool, looking for a hot tub, when the Viva La Bam guy tried sneaking up on me with a lit match, but I heard him, turned around, and calmly explained, "if you take one more step, I will use every weapon at my disposal to kill you." and so he turned around and threw it into Sarcastro's hair instead.

Then the dream segued into a bit about floating killer octopus carapaces and a fish/bird war. Good times. I am guessing Sarcastro's involvement was triggered by reading his guest-blogging contributions right before bed. Get out of my head, damn you!!

Do you ever get the impression that some people support President Bush merely because they have a big fat crush on him? Look at him hold that football -- confident, yet aloof! Isn't he dreamy?!

I know I've had my share of man-crushes in the past, but usually because of their socioeconomic aptitude rather than their ability to photograph well with a football.

I just spent $22.50 to buy the Agile Development with Ruby on Rails book in the PDF version, and this is what I get:

We'll send you an e-mail when the books are ready to download, and that e-mail will also contain the download location, but you might want to save this page, as e-mails have been known to go astray.

Downloads are available for roughly four days after shipping, so be sure to download your purchase fairly promptly.

Wtf? Four days to deliver a PDF? Why did I even bother? What is the point of buying a PDF copy of a book if you don't get instant gratification? If I'm going to wait four days I might as well get the physical book. I am going to try to cancel my order..

UPDATE: Okay, well, I downloaded it like 10 minutes later. I am not sure what that ominous warning is. Perhaps to freak out lazy, demanding people like myself.

UPDATE 2: Erik points out that my reading skills are lacking.