Happy Halloween!

Well I figure it's either now or wait until next year to make a post about that subject so I might as well do it now. As holidays tend to be times that people can forget about the more troubling aspects of life, I figure that I might as well make a post about my favourite holiday. With the all negativity that has been on (and will be) this blog, I think that sometimes it's good to take a break from all of that and just focus on things that are sources of pleasure and enjoyment. 



As I mentioned before, Halloween is my favourite holiday, one of the reasons for that, I think is that it is one of the most guiltless holidays of all with the whole premise being on enjoyment and fun without any notions of sacrifice, no thanksgiving, no memorializing, no goodwill to others, just a pure celebration of life. I think that's one of the reasons it is dismissed as childish, because children who have not been brainwashed by moralistic bullshit can appreciate that aspect of the holiday far more than most adults. 


One more point here, which is that while I am trying to finish this before midnight so that my blog will list this post on October 31st, I happen to think that Halloween should continue past midnight even though by today's reckoning that is another day. After all, these are just human conventions, putting the beginning of a new day at 12:00 AM, why not another time. As far as I am concerned, Halloween should still continue until at least the first crack of dawn or at least until the first bit of morning light in the east, which would be until at least past four or five in the morning at the latitude I am at. 

DRUGS!! part 3: Legalize All Drugs

Okay, I have dealt with different aspects of drugs before, but today I am going to give my view on what the policy on drugs should be and specifically I am aiming see this at these liberal (and libertarian) wimps who go half-way on this issue.


Okay, now to my main point. My unequivocal position on the issue of drug legalization is that all drugs (including all "hard ones") should be legal completely and with restrictions on buying and selling etc. As for children, I say let them have whatever they want, I really don't care that much anymore. If stupid crazy parents want to inject heroin into their kid's eyeballs, I really couldn't care less. As far as I am concerned, people that stupid have already made the mistake of breeding and have probably already doomed their offspring. That last point is especially true if you accept genetic determinism (many anti-drug conservatives do) which leads to the conclusion that the real root problem here is not drugs or anything else, but rather the wrong people breeding.


Another thing I want to address in this post is the phenomenon of many so-called advocates of drug law reform who always become wimpy and make stupid compromises like only advocating the legalization of marijuana or advocating the legalization of other drugs but adding strong regulations to that. Incidentally, that is one of the reasons I dislike the whole marijuana lobby and  the most visible marijuana users aka potheads  (among many other reasons). The funny thing about those potheads is that it is their actions that sort of make the anti-weed contention that marijuana rots your brain more than a little plausible. I of course do think marijuana should be completely legal like everything else, I feel no reason to somehow elevate it into some sort of miracle plant.


Lastly, the libertarians who falter on this issue are some of the most annoying of all. I suppose one reason some might be reluctant to advocate full legalization is their desire to not lost respect from the mainstream and/or attempt to convince more people to adopt libertarianism. Speaking as someone who holds what might be broadly characterized as a libertarian position (a very unenthusiastic libertarian I might add) the fact of the matter is that libertarians in their more moderate form do not have much respect from the mainstream nor have they gained any converts by watering down their views either. The reality of the situation is that the majority of the population doesn't agree with libertarian ideas and that's all there is to it. Anyhow, I think that's all I have to say about this issue.

The Free State Project and Civil Disobedience With My Own Take on The Whole Idea of Peaceful Protests

 Note: This blog entry  deals with events that have involved those associated with the Free State Project, specifically in Keene, NH. In order to understand my post, you will probably need to have followed recent events in the movement as I am too lazy to give a full background story here. The reason that I am writing this is to get some things off the chest that have bothered me about his movement for some time. The latter part of this post will deal with more general issues surrounding the nature of "non-violent" protest in general. 

As those who follow the doings of the Free State Project (specifically the Free Keene actions) may know, Ian Freeman, one of the hosts of Free Talk Live, who recently sentenced to 90 days in jail for his role in this incident that occurred last summer. If you what more details about this incident, go to Free Keene  and go back a few posts for more details.


Now a lot of people in the comments sections of some of the blog posts on that site are making the usual attacks on Ian and other activists. The sad fact is that one of them claims to be a left anarchist and yet smears Ian with what amounts to typical right-wing smears, entitled, spoiled, etc. As an aside here, it's interesting to note that many right and left "terms of abuse" are actually very similar to each other. The right decries the "privilege of today's kids in contrast to the conditions of people of earlier generations and they hold them morally guilty for being born in a certain time period. The left holds white people guilty for their privilege as opposed to poorer non-white people so there is a similar thing going on in my opinion.

Why I Took Away The About Section On The Sidebar and Changed The Words Below The Title

Well that title is probably one of the longest titles you will see on my blog. As the title says, I made some changes on my blog. At one time I had a message that I can't remember now exactly, but it was somewhat of a disclaimer for this blog informing any potential reader that what I wrote here was nonobjective and that they should refrain from criticisms of me. I also had a self-deprecating line below the title. The reason I took these off is that I think they at some level, were a manifestation of my insecurity and that they would in a sense be preventing me from improving my confidence through writing. As the main reason for writing this blog is to improve my written communication and my confidence in expressing myself through writing by putting out my work in a somewhat public forum, it would be detrimental to that effort to try and preempt criticism of what I have wrote. I figure that if some people do come and hurl insults here, it will be an opportunity for me to improve my confidence by being exposed to that scrutiny. I think the new tagline for my blog best expresses how I want others to approach my writing here   


Now another reason I put that up initially was because I am hesitant to throw out stuff that could be nonsense and thereby adding to the theatre of absurdity that makes up certain portions of the Internet. Today, there are radio hosts who make truckloads of money spewing out completely uninformed opinions without the slightest idea of what they are talking about. Though that came to mind, when I thought about this issue further, I realized that most of my writing is analysis of subjects based on my own personal beliefs which are for the most part in the subjective realm. I certainly do realize that many people will not agree with my conclusions on many issues, but the reason for that, I suspect, is due to a difference in value systems as opposed a difference in the degree to which I or other people are informed about a particular issue. Having said that, if anyone reading this detects any error in any post on this blog, past of future, and if they point it out to me with evidence to substantiate their claim, I will be more than happy to correct my mistake. If I'm wrong than I'm wrong, I happen that the inability to see and correct one's errors is not a healthy form of pride, but rather an ultimately self-destructive personality trait that unfortunately is not that uncommon. 

Drugs !! part 2

This is a follow-up post to my 2nd post on this blog entitled Drugs !!, thus the title of this entry, Drugs !! part  2 (maybe this will become a series, who knows) . In the previous post, I discussed the argument made by some that if drugs were legal and easily available, a large chunk of the population that had never used them before would rush to try them lured by the irresistible appeal of heroin, cocaine, meth etc. As I explained in that post, I think that such an argument is absurd, and today I want to go after another common idea out there about drugs and drug usage that seems stupid to me. 

This is the claim that if people for whatever reason no longer had to work, most of them would do drugs as well as other destructive behaviours in addition to not engaging in any productive activities. I implication here is that people are basically self-destructive morons who must be kept in line through labour because that is all most people are fit for. Now personally I think this argument is bullshit and well I think it's dangerous to project one's mindset onto other people, my own life experience bears out such a conclusion.

When I recall periods of my life that were the most enjoyable and  "carefree" the last thing on my mind was a desire to use any kinds of drugs including for that matter alcohol. Now on the other hand, when I have had to do things I didn't like, school assignments, classes, jobs, those have been the times that I actually wanted to take "mind altering" substances. Recently, I have started a very mind numbing and tedious job which basically involves just pushing paper, and I can tell you that some days, I really feel like I could use some really powerful stimulants, caffeine just doesn't work well enough for me. I have felt this way in the past when I was doing jobs with similar qualities and  that is one of the reasons that I find the argument above so ridiculous. 

It is this no job which unfortunately has prevented me from updating this blog as frequently as I would like to. My goal here from the beginning has been on improving my own writing primarily and as well, perhaps providing some material of interest to anyone who might happen to stumble upon this space. My goal has been to have at least three blog posts a week, something I have not been able to fulfill so far. Hopefully as I keep writing and my confidence improves, I will be able to churn out these entries faster. As for ideas, I have a backlog of posts that I intend to get around to so I think that should not be too much of a problem.  

I am anti-social (and proud of it)

Anti-social, a common label put on people who do not go along with a lot of the bullshit p's and q's of social interaction. I have certainly been labeled anti-social in my life more than a few times. The thing I find is that this issue like others is always framed in the way that the majority is right and healthy while the minority is wrong. A lot of these idiots that use the anti-social label seem to think that most of society is good while there is a small group that just refuses to kind along with the rest. I don't think that's the case at all, rather what I see in the adult world is the same kind of schoolyard bullshit only hidden behind a few more layers of socialization. The same game of domination and submission and the whole know your place in the pecking order that goes along with that. Now in my view, that is what is really anti-social, but for most, that is just reality and people that don't like it just need to grow up.

Well, I say fuck that. Furthermore, if saying that and having that attitude makes me anti-social than as the title of this post  says, I am more than proud to wear that label. The reason for this is that if society must be that way than I also say fuck society. For one thing, there are few people in this world that I feel close to and if I could be in a world without people and maintain the same level of development and civilizations (perhaps via advanced robot technology) than I would take such an option if it was actually available. As a little aside here, maybe my anti-social nature is what makes me feel drawn to cats which I am by the way, that explains the  picture associated with my username. 

Honesty

One of the things I have been pondering lately is the subject of honesty and how its opposite, dishonesty, is really harmful to the individual in the end just as much as it is harmful to the people that person deceives. This post will be a break from my (so far) usual bucket of hate that I spew forth through my keyboard and instead will provide what I think might be some practical advice to people based on knowledge gained from my own experience.

My Revised View of "The Pragmatic Libertarian" Podcast

Well it has been a little while now since I last updated this blog, but as work has been rather overwhelming in the last two weeks ( a blog post on that is probably in the works) I have not had the emotional energy to write a blog post ( it does take a lot of energy to write for me, maybe that's why I had trouble in school). To get to my main point though, I had in a past post done a review by of a podcast called "The Pragmatic Libertarian" by someone named Shawn, who goes by the username Xomniverse. Initially when I wrote that, I gave a mixed review noting that while I found many of his ideas intersting, I had some misgivings about other things he had said. After having listned to more episodes of his podcast and watching many of his videos on youtube, I have revised my opinion to a large extent. I now think very highly of him and find his ideas to be challenging and refreshing as they provide a much needed anecdote to some of the more simplistic cliched approaches to libertarianism that are out there. I would now just like to reccomend his podcast to any readers here that are interested in libertarianism and philosophy and politics as I think you will find much of value in his work. I will now be linking his podcast on the sidebar of my blog.

On The Casey Anthony Verdict: My Brief Thoughts

Well, I have returned again to another round of my blog. The next blog post I had planned was to be somewhat of a semi follow-up to the riot post, but because this story came out and I figure I will do current news from time to time, I figure that I will comment briefly on this story.

As most of you may know, Casey Anthony, the Florida woman accused of killing her child, Caylee, was found not guilty last Tuesday of that charge. I'm not going to get into the details of it, I think most people reading here are probably aware, but here is  a link to a CNN story and video about the verdict.

Now predictably, there have been strong reactions to this story, with many members of the public expressing outrage. In the media, one of the harshest critics of this verdict has been TV show host and former prosecutor, Nancy Grace, who, in my opinion, would be top runner for the award of world’s biggest cunt. Here is a little interview  with Ms. Grace about the verdict. Incidentally, if you want more stories and videos about this, go to cnn.com. 

Blogs and Attention Seeking

Well, it looks as if my last post did not garner the negative attention that I hoped it would. perhaps if I had linked that post below the comments of another blog post dealing with the same issues, I would have been able to attract the hate comments that I was sort of hoping for.


Anyhow, that lead me to thinking about the pros and cons of having one's blog be widely read vs. having very little readership. Having looked at the counter below my article, it's clear that I have not been the only person on my blog and I also have a few comments as well.


Now it's certainly true that for many people, things like blogs, youtube channels, and other assorted things are ways for people to satisfy the human drive for ego gratification (I think that's what I meant to say) which I don't think there's anything wrong with doing. As for myself, I have until recently been a passive observer on the Internet, never actually participating until less than a year ago. The reason I started blogging was that someone in comments section recommended that to me, I had never really given it much thought before. For one thing, I have always been a private person (the reason for my reluctance in online participation period) and my written communication is drastically inferior to my verbal communication, nevertheless, having gotten into blogging, I have come to rather enjoy it, messing around with the design and linking to things, it's all pretty fun. I also feel that as my writing is something that I want to improve upon, it makes sense to practice it and what better way of practicing it than by throwing out random piles of words for all the world to see. So I guess that this blog is as much for my benefit, regardless of how many people read it, as it is for any other purpose. Now as my main problem with writing is the ability to get stuff out on paper (or computer screen) in the first place, I figure that the way to improve my skills as to get as much material out there as I can. Thus, from now on when I write posts, my main focus will be on churning out material, and I won't be as picky about grammar and other stuff as I have been in the past, after all, this is not a school paper. I still will correct spelling mistakes and obvious errors, but other than that, so please no comments about subject-verb agreement or any other crap like that.


To return to what I was talking about at the beginning, I think there may very well be advantages in having a relatively unknown blog. The first advantage I can think of is that you can say more controversial things without having to deal with a barrage of angry comments or complaints from a host of whiners who troll the Internet. I wonder if I get even get away with some illicit stuff for awhile, maybe I should devote whole posts to slandering and/or libeling people and see if someone ever picks up on it. As an aside, I oppose such laws and would not take any action against someone who did that to me so if you ever feel the need to make up crazy stuff about someone, I am fair game. I also wonder how along it would take for a blog like mine cloaked in obscurity to be reported by some nanny if I were to post a bunch of porn images on it, not that I would do that. I've also thought about the possibility of posting stupid and absurd stuff for my own amusement, just to liven up the blog a bit. Anyhow, that's all I can think at the moment so I guess I'm signing off here. The font used here is Helvetica, by the way. 

Stanley Cup Riot Apologies: Neither Accepted Nor Rejected

I'm sure many of you (if your Canadian 99.999%) have heard of the little "party" that occurred in Vancouver on June 15th after the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals. For those of you that have not, here is an article from CNN that should give you a good summary of the events (I haven't read it, I'm just assuming that's the case). I suspect though, that if you have any interest in this article, you will already know enough about this incident so I will not discuss the events anymore at length.
                                                             
                                                          News Video from CBC covering the event.

The purpose of this blog entry is to give my take on the aftermath of the riot and specifically the apologies made by some supposedly remorseful "miscreants" who took part in the events. The first thing I want to get off my chest here is that unlike so many other people who feel that they have to express outrage regarding these events, I don't give a rat's hairy cock about this riot neither do I hold any animus against the people that took part. In fact, if an event like this only happens every time the Canucks get to the finals, then I am pro-riot because it makes the news a little bit more entertaining than usual. Given that, I suspect that we can look forward to another repeat in say, 2028. Now I'm not a fan of hockey in the first place, and for all I care, the Canucks franchise should fold or move to Portland then they can tear down that blight on Vancouver, Roger's Arena (give some of those looters work) and replace it with a bird sanctuary.

On The Title Of This Blog: An Explanation

I have been thinking for awhile about the title of my blog and whether it conveyed what I wanted this blog to be about. I actually went through a number of titles at first, finding that many of them had already been taken. In the end, I settled on something that I thought would convey the way I think, but it may not be as clear to others as it is to myself so a little explanation is in order here.

 I'm the kind of person who has two sides inside myself that fight for domination. The one side is the happy, optimistic side that believes that everything will turn out swell in the end. The other part of me is the negative pessimist that believes that everything will turn out wrong and that the worst outcome is usually the one to be expected. This battle rages on inside me whether I am thinking about my own fate, or the fate of the world at large. Thus, it plays a large part in my commentary on social and political issues as well as the somewhat personal stuff that I write about from time to time. When you read this blog, you may find that some posts seem to come from quite different perspectives. This can be accounted for by whether the optimist or the pessimist in me was more in control at the time the post was written. 

 It should also be noted that not all of my posts fall into either of these categories, some are just random observations and some are just for fun. The fun ones often come from me being in  my pessimistic state, as I often tend to have a dark perverse sense of humour when I am in that state.

Spare The Rod and Spoil The Child?

This is about a story that I came across a few days ago and I though it would be as good a news piece as any to do some commentary on. It concerns the case of Rosalina Gonzales, who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of injuring a child, for what amounted to simply spanking her child with her hand. Judge Jose Longoria seemed to think it was a big deal, saying "In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel. You don't spank children." Here is a video from the courtroom.

This is the link to the story that I quoted from and I would recommend looking through the comments below as they relate to an  issue that I am going to bring up later.

Some Further thoughts On Libertarianism and Pragmatism

This is a follow up post to my previous post reviewing the first episode of "The Pragmatic Libertarian podcast." As I mentioned in that post, the description below the title of the podcast on the site reads "Because Liberty Works" indicating that Shawn (the creator of the podcast) believes that individual liberty will lead to good results. The purpose of this post is to discuss what my view of putting libertarianism into practice would be if liberty did not work and specifically how I would feel about it on a personal level.


My main point here is that I really care less and less about the supposed negative results that could happen in a society based on libertarian principles. Both Conservatives and Liberals warn of the dire prospects for society if their plan to control society is not put into practice, but the question I would ask is why care that much about these horrible consequences in the first place. My reason for this is that most people say that I, and the majority of people over college age (high school age for some) am past the supposed "best years of my life." Now, that may or may not be true, the hopeful part of me would like to believe it not to be so, but the pessimist inside is inclined to accept it. As unhappy a conclusion that may be, the happen to see a silver lining in giving up one's hopes and dreams.

Blog Designs

Having been experimenting design wise with my blog, I have gradually become more aware of my looks and dislikes stylistically. I have been changing things around rather frequently trying to find a design that suited my tastes. I may as yet change the template for this blog, I'm looking at some on the Internet beyond the basic ones on this site, but I'm a little wary of making such changes lest I mess up some of what I've already done on this blog. I've also become quite fond of the Georgia font, I use to think Arial was the most readable, but having compared posts using both fonts, I happen to think that Georgia is easier on the eyes. 


I also, by the way, have an empty blog on wordpress with the exact same name as this one that I don't think I'm going to be using. I have to say that the controls were a lot more complicated than the one's here, which is not good for a moron like myself. 

The Pragmatic Libertarian Podcast

Today, I want to discuss the first episode of a podcast entitled "The Pragmatic Libertarian" by a person named Shawn aka as XOmniverse on YouTube. I would recommend his channel as he has done a lot of interesting videos on topics like libertarianism, objectivism, and related matters. For the purpose of this post, I'm going to be dealing entirely with Shawn’s first podcast. So far, it looks good and I hope there are many more episodes to come. The tagline to the podcast is "Because Liberty Works" which is something that needs to be articulated if a liberty oriented viewpoint is to gain widespread adherence within society. What I want to do here is not a full review, but rather to touch upon a few points of interest for me within this episode and to add some of my own thoughts. My purpose for doing this is not for criticism (not really even constructive criticism) but rather to offer an additional perspective upon these issues. I would recommend listening to the podcast's first episode before reading the rest of this.

In this first episode, Shawn's main point was to introduce the podcast and the main part of it was first to deal with a certain kind of libertarian which he pointed out was a stereotype to some extent (though some do fit it) but he was mainly going after the kinds of ideas that these types hold to because they are at times held by more moderate libertarians. After that there was a brief explanation of deontological vs. consequentialist ethics and then a part where Shawn dealt with the misconceptions about pragmatists. There were a few points there that I wanted to touch on where I have a different perspective.

Weinergate update

A stupid pointless post:

I have no interest at all in this story and couldn't care less about the integrity of politicians etc. but considering this is a blog and blogs often tend to have news stories, I figure I will throw something out here until my next post of substance.  Apparently, Anthony Weiner did send photos and messages to an "underage girl"

For the voyeuristic types:

Weiner's wiener (apparently)

DRUGS !!

I have been wondering about what to discuss in my first real blog post for a few days and several things came to mind. After thinking them over, I decided that the subject of drugs would be just as good a topic as any. Considering that this is a libertarian-oriented blog politically, and such types are supposedly obsessed with this issue, this would make a perfect start to my blog. 

 Now I am not going to talk about drug legalization or the problems with the war on drugs or anything else like that. Rather, I want to deal with a certain claim that I have heard regarding how people would behave if the availability of drugs was dramatically increased such as would occur if they were legal.                                              

The argument is that if drugs were legal, the temptation to try them for people who have never used before would be so great that a huge segment of the population, formerly non-users, would become hooked on these horrible substances. I have heard this concern expressed not just about morons, but even regarding people with superior intelligence. One of my professors in a philosophy class discussion said that he did not know if he would not go out and buy heroin if it could be purchased legally. Now I understand that when it comes to people that are addicts already, having a more readily available supply at a fraction of the current price would allow these users to consume a higher quantity of their drug of choice. The thing I don’t understand is the notion that all these people out there who have never tried drugs are just itching to get their hands on some cocaine, heroin, meth, take your pick. 

 Maybe my brain just works differently than 99% of the population (it does actually) but I can't for the life of me understand this desire to  consume  things that  people have never tried, but are considered so horrible and destructive.  As an example, if someone tried to offer me a dish that was supposedly the best tasting food in the world, but it also had all there horrible possible side effects comparable to hard drugs, I think I would pass. I suppose that if I had one day to live, I might consider using  some of these  substances, but even then, there would be a whole host of things I’d rather do if I had such limited time, like drinking 50 strawberry virgin daiquiris for example,  as opposed to snorting  coke, injecting heroin, smoking  crack, smoking  weed  etc. Hell, even in some hypothetical world where I could have anything I wanted and could take any drug and get all of the pleasure without any of the repercussions, I really don’t think I would be that interested in doing so. There are just so many more things in life that I desire to do, and it’s hard for me to fathom how psychoactive drugs are considered to the ultimate forbidden fruit.  Anyhow, in closing, it seems to me that anyone with a half-decent brain would be able to resist such temptation, but then again, I could be wrong.

Intro

A welcome to any unfortunate souls who managed to stumble upon this blog in the nether regions of the Internet. As this is the first post of my blog and I am still experimenting with the design a bit, I won't have much of anything to say at the moment. If anyone cares, this post's font is in Georgia, but I suspect I will be using Arial mostly, I just want to see if this font looks better. I may also be adding some gadgets as time goes on. Well that's about all for now.