"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." ~Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp

B'Trey (111263) on Thursday April 10, @12:21PM (#23025904):
Horsefeathers. You (that is, society) assumed that burden on its own. It doesn't place any obligations on me. It's as if I decided to come over and mow your lawn for you. You'd probably be delighted that you didn't have to do it yourself anymore. But if, six months later, I came banging on your door and demanded that you stop allowing your kids to play in your own back yard because they were leaving toys laying around that made it harder for me to mow the grass, you'd most likely tell me to take a hike.

If you don't want to pay the cost associated with my behavior, then don't pay it. If I overdose on drugs, let me lay there and die if I don't have insurance or can't pay the bill myself if you so choose. But your actions in assuming responsibility for my debts don't give you any legitimate authority over my behavior.

I think a few people reading my journal have missed the very first journal entry I have made. This is entirely reasonable, as I don't expect everyone to read the entire journal.

This is a collection of things other people have said. I post them here from many sources, ./, friends, stories online, etc. I can't always cite the original author, and I'm sorry about that. This is a place for quotes which I find insightful, interesting, or simply thought provoking. Take none as truth or even my opinion for that matter. They are just words and ideas to ponder.

Now, I received a comment on my last entry which I am unable to respond to in place, so I'll put a response here.

Your journal entry boils down to "intolerance of things I like is bad, but intolerance of things I don't like is okay".

You seem to be turning one thing, namely "intolerance", into many things when you say, "but intolerance of things I don't like is okay". So, in effect, you are arguing against something the journal entry never stated.

Second, your extension from one thing to many things causes you to miss the point further, and I don't think you have picked up on what the previous journal entry says (though it does so fuzzily). I will provide another few examples which adhere to the same flow and general syntax to illustrate what the entry's author is saying:

Assume destruction is evil. Now, contemplate the destruction of destruction. The naive extension of this contemplation is to arrive at the conclusion that destruction of destruction is evil.

Assume murder is evil. Now, contemplate the murder of murder. The naive extension of this contemplation is to arrive at the conclusion that murder of murder is evil.

So, where does the confusion arise? It comes from the fuzzy and ambiguous nature of human language, English in particular. In the first assumption, destruction/murder is used to refer to a real world, physical act. In the naive extension, destruction/murder is used in a way where it means something totally different. In the extension, destruction really means "stopping destruction" and murder really means "stopping murder".

Applying this same framework to the original journal entry, the author simply uses lots of words to explain that "intolerance" in the real world means one thing, and intolerance of intolerance really means "attempting to curb/stem/diminish/stop intolerance".

Now, the only other issue here is that the original entry uses the word "you", as in, "because you are intolerant, I am justified to be intolerant of you". In this way, I disagree with the author and side with the comments made in the response to the journal entry. For me to agree with the entry's author, I would have to replace "you" with "your intolerance". As intolerance of an individual is real world intolerance, and intolerance of one's intolerance really indicates an attempt to curb/stem/diminish/stop real world intolerance.

intolerance is evil

intolerance of intolerance is actually good

in fact, to meet a fundamentalist, and for them to call you intolerant, as in, hypocritically intolerant, is actually a badge of achievement

because you are not hypocritically intolerant if you are intolerant of them

because what they don't understand is that fundamentalism is true intolerance, and therefore to be intolerant of that is actually to strive in the direction of more tolerance

intolerant: "because you are not a true christian/ true muslim, i am better than you" =evil

intolerance of intolerance: "because you consider yourself better than me based on your religious bigotry, i am intolerant of you" =good

intolerance can be predicated on a number of characteristics of a person that is not intolerant in and of themselves: race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.

intolerance can also be predicated on someone else's intolerance: not tolerating their intolerance of someone because of race, religion, seuxla orientation, etc.

so you can judge any tolerance in question as to what it is opposed to. and if it is opposed to some inherently nonintolerant feature of a person, it is true intolerance. but if it is opposed to an intolerant feature of the person themselves, it is not intolerance, it is a form of tolerance, because it directed against real intolerance

"Why bother improving security when you can just pass a law enabling you to arrest or expel anybody who tries anything funny?

After all, we all know that the most dangerous elements of our society are stopped by LAWS, right?"

::

"If the fundamental argument for the use of the proxies and security in schools is that the students are youths, to be protected from the corruption of the internet for the very reason that they are impetuous and easily led astray at this tender stage of their life, then it's inconsistent to punish them for the failures of those measures.

Clearly, the systems exist to protect the corrupt society from idealistic youth who are not materially benefited by the society. But it's a hard sell politically.

Thus this ridiculousness."

"Think of the Internet as a highway."

There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know didley about the net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a rotten metaphor.

Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose the highways were like the net. . .

A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection. No signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions. Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.

AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits. Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn nitrogylcerin and idle at 120.

No license plates. World War II bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks cruise around with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic helicopter. Little kids on tricycles with squirtguns filled with hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.

NO OFFRAMPS. None. Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system. (author unknown)

Everybody knows Pilot pens are crap. Pilot is going to lose this generation with the G-2 because they basically released a beefed up G-1 with a rubber grip and called it "innovation". Bic, on the other hand, is going to set the world on fire with the VelocityGel. It features a 0.5 mm tip for highly detailed work. Secondly, let's face it, with the backing of a company like Bic, Blue ink is going to blow black ink out of the water. It's another ink color war, and it's already over, idiot.

But still, this is the same kind of typical fanboi spew I'd expect from a Pilot user.

"I'm way ahead of the game, my transistors are -30nm. I had to do some funny things with space time, but they work. Until you observe them anyways. Next up, I'm going for inm chips."

One of Einstein's colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. "You don't remember your own number?" the man asked, startled. "No," Einstein answered. "Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?

Back when I was in school, I used to pirate a lot of music. Now that I have a real job and real income, I would like to purchase music online legally. After trying a number of services from rapsody to emusic, I have yet to be able to buy a single mp3 or ogg file. As a Linux user, is it even possible to pay for music online? Are there companies out there that will allow you to pay for and download a mp3 or ogg file by simply using your browser? I don't think pirating has anything to do with money. From my hours online doing my best to buy music, it seems that most people pirate because it is easier than paying; cost is not a factor. If anyone knows of a decent service, please let me know what it is!

Many of the circuits have been reverse engineered - traced from various schematics or actual hardware. There may be errors in transcription, interpretation, analysis, or voltage or current values listed. They are provided solely as the basis for your own designs and are not guaranteed to be 'plans' that will work for your needs without some tweaking. We will not be responsible for damage to equipment, your ego, county wide power outages, spontaneously generated mini (or larger) black holes, planetary disruptions, or personal injury or worse that may result from the use of this material.

Dear Stephen,

I don't know anything about physics but dude, I will get you laid. And you're probably all like, "but I'm paralyzed." Dude, you don't even know. The bitches I know don't give a fuck. I'm tellin' you man they're crazy!

Hope to hear back from you!

It's kind of like television. You are not the networks' customer. The ad companies are the customer; you are the product that is sold to them. Everything else is just flim-flam designed to keep you in front of the tube.

'There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with'.

- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

The law cannot protect you from the police.