Saturday, July 24, 2004

Yawn

George W. Bush is Jewish. A Syrian wouldn't lie about something like this, would he?

Gay Marriage: What's It For?

So Michael Williams asks here. IMO he's basically on target - it's about "we're just as good as you" and wanting to suck up some bennies.

Oh, but they're in Love! Fine - you don't have to be a cynic to ask what that has to do with marriage. Are we now to be permitted to marry anything we love?

If we're going to do it and extend it to same-sex couples, what justification do we have to stop there? If the definition of marriage is just some arbitrary social construct, then why can't it group people more than two at a time? If it needn't be restricted by sex, then why should it respect age, genetic distance or even be limited to pairs? And what about the narcissists - why even require two)? Can gays provide any intellectual or moral justification for limiting marriage only to pairs?

Oh yeah, there's this crap about it being a "civil right". I've never heard any legal justification for that assertion. If the intentions of the legislators or justices is to be given any weight, does anyone really believe that any anti-discrimination legal decisions, laws or amendments were made with the intent of permitting gay marriage?

Enough - this has been addressed here many times. Somehow the fact that I have weighed in on this topic doesn't settle it - imagine that....

Public service announcement

Attention you single men: Fred Reed doesn't think you should get married.

But if you won't be dissuaded, at least listen to Ben Franklin.

Above all, don't believe everything you read.

Security Clinton style

I'm guessing that I would have seen this photo long ago if the models were Republicans.

Stolen from Clayton Cramer.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Creepy

If you think abortion is bad, check out "reduction".

Tell me another one

If you read the news long enough you'll see everything.  One that I saw on the news in FL once told of a man who got too affectionate with the filter suction inlet on a swimming pool at a motel.  Others have tried to explain intimate encounters with vacuum cleaners that way ("I was nude, and I tripped over the vacuum, turning it on, and....) , and the list of items found in colons is long ("I accidentally sat on that light bulb.  Honest!").

But to date no one has tried to tell us that he "inadvertantly" stuck classified documents in his pants.  See Glenn Reynolds from about here on up for all the links you can stand on this farce.  Sheesh, how stupid do they think we are?

NWA Worldwide Exclusive!

That's right - where else could you read where I've been the last few days?

Yep, I went to Chicago for a long weekend and got to see some people I've wanted to see for a long time. This was the first time I had flown since 9/11 so I was wondering what to expect. Of course I had seen the Syrian musician story just before I left...

It wasn't too ridiculous. I had already frisked myself and put stuff that would flunk a metal detector into ziplock bags, and if I hadn't bumped my shoulders on the sides of the metal detector I would have made it through without incident. I did forget to take this laptop out of my carry-on bag at O'Hare, which got a bit of a rise out of the security people, but it wasn't a catastrophe.

There was one small snafu with the luggage. It seems that the airline has two flights from O'Hare to BWI on Monday nights, and although I was on the later flight the bag was placed on the earlier one. That's a good idea as long as the planes land in the order they're scheduled, but somehow the earlier flight had a crew scheduling problem and wound up leaving after mine did. I got my stuff, but it probably added an hour to my time at the airport.

If you go to Chicago, be aware that several of the big attractions such as the Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum are only open until about 5, even in the summer. My friend and I did manage to spend an hour in the Field Museum, then it was off to nearby Chinatown for dinner and shopping.

Then it was off to suburban Brookfield for "Brookfest", featuring a carnival and local oldies legends the Cryan' Shames and the Ides of March. Both had national hits in the 60's and early 70's - you must have heard the horn riff from "Vehicle".

Most of the rest of the time was with relatives. Yep, same people, same bull sessions, same stories, same arguments. And I can't wait for the next time.

One of my relatives brought her boyfriend. They were new graduates from a small expensive liberal arts school - she had studied English and history, and he was a philosophy major. They were raving about that abomination "Fahrenheit 9/11", but somehow hadn't heard of "Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man". The best part was when she said that the two of them were "realists", which almost made me gag. The philosophy major's denial of the existence of objective reality was a hoot. He gave the stock lefty spiel that Communism had never been properly implemented, and I inquired what was "scientific" about "scientific socialism" - how could we know what would happen if it were implemented if in fact it never had been? No answer, of course.

Alas, it's back to the salt mines.  But at least the world knows what was happening while I was gone so everyone can finally get a good night's rest. 

Good news from Iraq

Arthur Chrenkoff has been compiling good news from Iraq for some time now, and he's done a very good job. His latest compilation has even been featured on the OpinionJournal's site.