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Author: Bryant

Dreams of future past

All the hip liberals are dogpiling on libertarianism this month, and skillfully missing the point. Apparently the lure of libertarians potentially voting Democrat in the face of Bush’s overspending is too much for some.

The question is not “would it be OK to let everyone in the world own nukes right now?” That’s a very easy one. “No, it would be pretty much completely not be a good idea.” The question is “Would this be a better world, and if so, what do we need to do to get there?”

In the debate which is the primary target of mockery, Richard Epstein is taking precisely that approach. Randy Barnett and David Friedman are not, mind you, which goes a long way towards explaining why I don’t self-identify as a libertarian.

But it is important to remember that a hundred years ago, concepts such as welfare seemed hopelessly utopian. Things change.

Privacy and travel

Bob Barr is fairly peeved at the Transportation Security Administration for their new list of fines. $1,500 for “non-physical interference with screening” does seem a little high, particularly since attitude is one of the aggravating factors.

The new TSA guidelines are available as a Word document. I’ve also stuck the ones relevant to travellers in the continuation of this post. I can’t get that miffed about high fines for people bringing hand grenades on flights, mind you, but I do keep coming back to $1,500 for non-physical interference. Would that be filing charges?

WISHing on a web

Wish #87 asks:

What are three or more web sites you’ve used recently as a player or GM? Why do you use them? What do you get from them?

20’ by 20’ Room, of course!

But also:

  • ThePulp.Net, which is the best source for pulp info, plus links to lots of free pulp ebooks.
  • The FAS IRP, which is the Federation of American Scientists’ Intelligence Resource Program. Essential for modern-day espionage/technothriller games. And for Feng Shui.
  • Incunabula, hub site for the Ong’s Hat mythos, which I sprung on my superhero players recently.

Other tricks… if you search Google Images for “party pictures,” you’ll get a lot of candid shots. Great for pictures of NPCs who aren’t supposed to look like movie stars.

Oh, yeah, speaking of photographs: the Library of Congress put its Prints and Photographs Catalog online. For Boston-specific photos, I use this site. Yale’s Beinecke Library also has a very nice digital collection.

Ecto fixed

Full kudos to Adriaan Tijsseling, who tracked down my ecto bug (as bitched about earlier) and will be fixing it in the next version. In the meantime, I skillfully avoid the bug by not using the Text Only option for the toolbar. The fact that he kept track of who was having the problem and let me know personally about the fix wins points with me.

Bah, science

This shouldn’t come as any big surprise, but the world’s largest anthropological society says that civilization does not in fact depend on limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

So maybe we can drop that line of attack on gay marriage? Nah, didn’t think so.