Free College

I know I've completely abandoned this place and no one will ever read this, but this is too interesting not to post. Apparently MIT has decided to make ALL their courses that happened over the past few years available online. Now if you have an urge to learn pretty much anything about anything, you can just download a whole course. This seems to me to completely eliminate the need to go to college when you can DL courses from a better college for free, but people still insist on you have that pesky degree....

Why a "Jury of your peers" Sucks

I found this quote on the JREF forum and was struck by how true it is. So here you go, ladies and gentlemen, an excerpt from Mark Twain's "Roughing It" on the concept of a jury in America.

I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, [N.B. - Virginia City, Nevada, not the commonwealth of Virginia] which we call a jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America:

"Have you heard of this homicide?"

"Yes."

"Have you held conversations upon the subject?"

"Yes."

"Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?"

"Yes."

"Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?"

"Yes."

"We do not want you."

A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligence and unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standing, were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that sworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice.

When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men was impaneled--a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in the streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were the same thing.

The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect?

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs. Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty and equal chance with fools and miscreants? Is it right to show the present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated-- every effort I make to save the country "misses fire."

The Best Attack Ad Ever

Ladies and gentleman, the contest is over, everyone can just quit trying, the best attack ad ever has been found. Now I'm perfectly aware that everything in it is a serious misrepresentation of the truth at best, but for sheer hilarity and shamelessness this one takes the proverbial cake.

See it Go

Yes, I am, in fact, still alive. Anyways, today 7-11 announced it was no longer using Citgo gasoline

Convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc. is dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo as its gasoline supplier at more than 2,100 locations and switching to its own brand of fuel.

The retailer said Wednesday it will purchase fuel from several distributors, including Tower Energy Group of Torrance, Calif., Sinclair Oil of Salt Lake City, and Houston-based Frontier Oil Corp.

This is why I love the free market. First Hugo Chavez comes over here to trash Bush and generally make a fool out of himself. Now, without any government intervention whatsoever, companies are punishing him by no longer buying oil from Citgo, a Venezuelan company. This is a prime example of how the free market can operate when left to its own devices. People are happy, businesses are happy, and Chavez is still a fool.

The Pope v Muslims

I am sure most of you have heard the Pope's recent comments on muslims. Of course his comments weren't even his own, but a quote from a 14th century emperor. The quote he used was:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Now, normally I have absolutely no use whatsoever for the Pope. However, in this instance, his point was essentially correct. Muhammad spread Islam with the sword personally and encourage others to do. There's really no getting around it. The truly hilarious thing is all of this is the reaction of Muslims worldwide. Many have responded by firebombing churches, burning the Pope in effigie, and showing up at rallies calling for the Pope's head and protesting, among other things, freedom. It is almost as if they are TRYING to prove the Pope correct. Basically they've responded to the accusation that they are violent with a "take that back or I'll kill you," apparently missing the irony of the whole situation. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, although I don't think there's much of a chance that the Pope will stick by his guns for very long. Hopefully one day they'll be someone who will pick up the gauntlet from the Pope and Danish Cartoon publishers and actually stand up for their freedom to criticize Islam no matter how violent the muslims get.

Local MMA Documentary

Here's a short documentary about local MMA fighter Mike Varner. I train at the same gym as him and this gives some insight as to what life is like at the Boneyard.

Crikey

I know it will sadden you all to learn that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, has died

Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and conservationist known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” was killed Monday by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44.
[...]
“He came on top of the stingray and the stingray’s barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart,” said Stainton, who was on board Irwin’s boat at the time.

Here we have further proof of the danger of doing collosally stupid jobs. I guess he should have just stuck to crocodiles.

I Never Liked Pluto Anyway...

Well, it is official, Pluto is no longer a planet.

Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930.

Pluto is now officially a dwarf planet. And not even the largest dwarf planet (that would be UB313). So that's it, screw Pluto, Pluto is gone. Kids in science classes worldwide can now take heart in the fact that they only have to build a crappy model of 8 planets instead of 9.

Next You're Going to Tell Me OJ is Innocent....

There was a breakthrough today in, believe it or not, the Jon Benet Ramsey case.

A former schoolteacher was arrested in Thailand in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey — a surprise breakthrough in a lurid, decade-old murder mystery that had cast a cloud of suspicion over her own parents.

Federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the suspect who was arrested Wednesday as John Mark Karr, a 42-year-old American, and one law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Boulder police had tracked him down online.

This is absolutely unreal. Did anyone even seriously believe the police where still working on this? This has made-for-TV movie written all over it (if there hasn't been one already). If this pans out and parents were truly innocent then a lot of people, myself included, are going to have a nice big helping of crow.

Victory for Stupidy in Virginia

"Alternative medicine" is about to take another life in Virginia.

A 16-year-old cancer patient's legal fight ended in victory Wednesday when his family's attorneys and social services officials reached an agreement that would allow him to forgo chemotherapy.
[...]


Last summer, the teen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system considered very treatable in its early stages. He was so debilitated by three months of chemotherapy that he declined a second, more intensive round that doctors recommended early this year.

He since has been using an alternative herbal treatment called the Hoxsey method, the sale of which was banned in the United States in 1960.

First off, being the believer in freedom that I am, I fully support the right of this kid and his parents to do something so suicidal as stopping chemotherapy. It's the kids life and his choice. The real villian in this story is the Mexican clinic where he has been "treated" with some sort of herbal remedy or another. Now, as we all know, "alternative medacine" is just a euphamism for "quackery that doesn't work." And, as usual, they are telling this kid that he can be cured through whatever useless procedures they feel like performing.

Some people may want to blame the kid and his family for being stupid. This is obviously true to an extent, but when people are faced with the possibility of death they tend to believe anyone who offers them hope. That is what this clinic is doing. They're preying on the desperate and hopeless. They do not have a cure for cancer, they are frauds and scam artists like the rest of the "alternative medacine" crowd. I hold these people beneath contempt and hope this kid and his family come to their senses before it's too late.

Cease Fire

As I'm sure most of you know, we are mere hours away from the most useless cease fire ever! There are many, many, problems with the cease fire. The major one being that it is really impossible to have a cease fire with a terrorist group. Lots of members of the group operate independently and I don't think the so-called Hezbollah leadership could stop them if they wanted to. Aside for that glaring error, the cease fire also manages not to even remotely solve anything in the first place. It does not require the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers (which should have been the first god damn thing on the list), nor does it make any provisions for disarming Hezbollah. The U.N. "peace-keeping" force that will be inserted into southern Lebanon doesn't have the authority to do much of anything. There job is essentially to stand around and watch everything go to shit again. All this cease fire does is buy Hezbollah time to get rearmed and reorganized before they attack Israel again. And you can bet when that happens we will once again have a dramatic outcry about how agressive Israel is being when they respond. I can not fathom why Israel would accept this deal aside from the fact that they obviously need to get themselves a new Prime Minister.