20020904

. . . and let me deduct the cost from my Federal income taxes

I've closed at least two posts with that line, referring to one of my pet ideas, that because gun ownership is a public good, the public should in some way defray the costs of providing that public good. If not sincerely, I promote it at least with tongue-in-cheek, to reverse-psych leftists into grokking libertarian objections to the Federal income tax.

Apparently someone has unwittingly climbed on board with me. As reported by the Volokh Conspiracy, Gary Wills finds the right to publicly funded sturmgewehren, sort of:
"What Madison and the Congress did was underline the independent action of the militias when they were not federalized, pledging that the new government would keep them equipped for that local purpose. The right to demand this service is the first and foremost meaning of "Second Amendment rights."
Emphasis mine.

Another quote here, from Yevgeniy's post, formatted such that I think it's a quote from or paraphrasing of Gary Wills, not Yevgeniy's own words:
"Rather, it's an affirmative entitlement to a form of government subsidy. Quite a remarkable reading of the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."


Honey, we need to go shopping.
"Customers who bought this book have also bought . . ."
While I was ordering David Brin's book about privacy, The Transparent Society, Amazon informed me which books "Customers who bought this book also bought", which books "Customers who shopped for this book also bought" and which books "Customers who bought this book also recommended". Think what we could learn if Amazon sold, uh, marital appliances.

20020903

Blogroll adjustments continue
Weclome to Hell in a Handbasket.
It's the damned "Post" key I should have hesitated to hit
As usual, I have second thoughts about a post, this time on the Vast Masonic Bilderblogger Conspiracy, which in retrospect reads like so much whining by a blogger who just has to accept that he's not as good a writer or thinker, and not as well connected to other good writers and thinkers, as he'd like to be. On the first two points, I can only counsel myself, "practice," and on the third, "blog."

. . . guess I'll go eat worms . . .
And I think there's a trend growing in the Blogosphere, as the truly talented bloggers . . . start getting too much mail to respond to it all and picking to which mail they'll reply or post about, much more carefully than in the humble beginnings. They've started turning inward, to each other.

The self-pity here is astonishing on its own. Underscore it with the fact that Glenn has posted 4 items from me, 2 of them since I started blogging, one of which may have caused him embarrassment because his post quoted a spelling error of mine.

What have I to bitch about? He's linking to my stuff! Considering Glenn's readership, I value those items more than my letters to the editor printed in my hometown papers, where big J-schools can be found.

Hello, McFly?
They will slowly cut themselves off from the flow of esoteric/unusual incoming content that gave them their starts as bloggers. Content that they don't read is content they don't post, which is content that We Wonder What They Did With when we hear about it from another source, instead of from them.

The content, the information, eventually emerges because the means to publish it is now ubiquitous and accessible to anyone. The content will be found and published, even if it's just by a path-of-least-resistance dropout like me.