Charles Hope and the Luminous Top

John Jay on jury nullification

Explicitly acknowledging jury nullification, the first Chief Justice, John Jay, wrote: “It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision… you [juries] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy”.

Natural rights, succinctly

I found a very clear exposition of the natural rights and their consequences, thanks to Gerald Casey.

1. Adam may legitimately command Benjamin to refrain from action C if and only if C is a demonstrable initiation of aggression against the person or property of Adam or against the person or property of another innocent human being.

2. Adam may legitimately command Benjamin to perform action C if and only if C is an element of a freely (non-coercively) arrived-at binding agreement between Adam and Benjamin, and C does not violate condition 1.

3. In no other case may Adam legitimately command Benjamin.

4. If, in 1, Benjamin refuses to refrain from the action C, then Adam may use proportionate force to restrain or punish him.

5. If, in 2, Benjamin refuses to perform action C, Adam may use proportionate force to elicit compensation.

6. If, in 3, Adam commands Benjamin, Benjamin may refuse to comply with such a command and, where appropriate, may resist that command with proportionate force.

There is no alternative to Capitalism

Conflict hypothesis of the Business Suit

Marc Cuban flames the business suit and among the hundreds of failed attempts at humor in response, I found this one amusing:

Suits make young men look like dorks. And this is important, because a young man starting out needs the approval of the older, established men. And that young man is more attractive to the young women, with non-Republican hair, tans, lowfat bods. Soo, a suit and a haircut is really a symbolic castration ritual to bring the young apes down the ladder below the older bulls. Harsh, but true. No matter how much you tell yourself you look better in a suit rather than a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, it just ain't so. Suits represent wealth, power, and integration into the business world, which is attractive to the opposite sex for reasons of status rather than sexuality, tho the two are inevitably confused.

Hypothesis on the origin of graffiti

There was a time when cities looked like

before the Modernists reformatted our society with their creepy robot visions and their faceless collectivist philosophies,  cramming our urban poor into buildings that looked like

but the youth quickly responded by covering their public surfaces with designs like

perhaps exhibiting an innate human need for ornateness and complexity which more closely reflects the natural environment of our evolution. I used to hate graffiti as disgusting public urination, but what if it is an instinctive attempt at recomplexifying an unnaturally lifeless environment?

Poem To Kim Jong Il

Poem To The NDC Chairman: Kim Jong Il published in Pyongyang by the Rodong Sinmun Daily

It is none other than the National Defense Commission chairman,

General Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il] [preceding name in bold as published], the unrivaled heaven-sent General of Mt. Paektu, who

Learned how to govern the world

From a table placed in the Supreme Command for mapping out a plan of operations during the war days,

While hearing the sound of guns coming from a battlefield on Mt. Paektu during the anti-Japanese [struggle] days,

With steely will and gun barrel,

Standing tall at the head of the chuch'e armed forces,

Assuming responsibility for the destiny of the fatherland and the nation,

And led the revolution as a whole,

Along the single-track road from century to century.

 

It is none other than our NDC chairman,

The powerful and fearless General Kim Jong Il who,

Since no political formula of conventional framework

Or ultramodern scientific and technological means

Could calm the fiery wind of threats and natural disasters,

And the mountains of the most arduous trials,

And because only with the invincible gun barrel could they be broken through,

Lifted up the almighty military-first banner,

Turning the treacherous road of "arduous march"

Into a march toward a paradise, a broad level way out.

 

A brilliant, invincible military-first command,

A big heart to the tens of millions of soldiers and people when they are united,

A supreme commander well acquainted with the military affairs,

And an invincible NDC chairman to the country.

As no one can casually associate with him

And as he is held at the very top of our Republic,

The mad wind of imperialism stopped struggling and keeps its head down

And my fatherland displays fireworks to celebrate successive triumphs.

 

It is none other than the NDC chairman,

Our peerlessly superb General Kim Jong Il, who,

Oh, with do-or-die resolve when fighting is inevitable,

With the pluck that he would win victory in all fights without fail,

Standing firmly on a hard bulwark in the anti-US showdown,

With lightning and thunder reverberating throughout the skies,

Overwhelmed the dissonance from the bastards' heated anti-Republic commotion,

With the scream of those being destroyed.

 

Sacred it is.

My country's sky is blue over the gun barrel

And stacks of all kinds of grain stalks harvested in a bumper crop grow high.

It is none other than our NDC chairman,

The military-first veteran of all battles General Kim Jong Il, who,

 

Giving priority to the gun barrel and national defense,

Hardened the defense position of the fatherland into a fortress

And pushed towers of great construction up through the sky,

Beating the drum for advance with the sound of national defense hammer,

Raising the height of the fatherland with the launching pad of an artificial earth satellite,

Demonstrating the lofty dignity of the nation of the sun and

The majestic appearance of the powerful state of chuch'e to the whole world.

 

O, the peerless general who is the general of all generals,

The matchlessly great man who is the greatest of all great men.

It is none other than our NDC chairman, the greatest man in the world,

The brilliant, ever-victorious commander General Kim Jong Il,

The military-first sun admired by the whole world,

The person whom we will forever uphold at the very top of the Republic

And for whom tens of millions of soldiers and people will become guns and bombs to defend him at the risk of their lives, who,

With his hand,

 

Has achieved immortal accomplishments

That cannot be built even in a long historical period, even in hundreds of years

On the rock-firm foundation laid for a powerful state of chuch'e.

Thushara Delrokshi: exploited, dead, not forgotten

(originally posted here on 19 Aug 2005)

An 18 year old Sri Lankan maid hung herself early morning Wednesday, at her host’s house in Sidon, Lebanon.

Daily Star:

The victim was identified as 18-year-old Sri Lankan Thushara Delrokshi, employed by Hilal Nasser and Rima Faour just 20 days earlier, having only arrived in Lebanon on July 22.

As’ad AbuKhalil:

The lousy Hariri rag (Al-Mustaqbal) even mocked her death: they said that her love of her country has killed her.

thisisthepope :

I grew up in a household where Sri Lankan maids were treated worse than animals, sent to the “office” for disciplining, made to sleep in attics, made to eat leftovers, locked indoors with their passports confiscated.

Al-Jazeera:

They forced her to work impossible hours, giving foot massages until 2 am then rising at six to make breakfast. And for half a year, the Arab family that hired Lisa, a Filipina maid, paid her nothing.

I can’t stop crying.

Beatrice Fernando:

After I jumped off the balcony, I blacked out. I woke up later in the hospital, paralyzed. Eventually, I got a flight home to Sri Lanka . I didn’t speak much about what had happened to me.

maids-online.com:

We are a recruitment company that recruits housemaids from Sri Lanka and the Philippines to Lebanon and around the world. Please use the navigation menu on the top to browse through the site…

Real-time prices for South African peasants

(originally posted here on 15 Jul 2005)

Textually writes:

Farmers in the rural community have become the first in South Africa to test a project giving them instant access to produce prices over their cellphones.

Real time prices are hot. So is cutting out the middleman. Those middlemen were not parasites, however. They were providing a useful service as information brokers, but no career in Information is safe from the disruptive effects of the silicon chip.

Good prices are more important than they seem. The failure of socialism is due less to its cliched neglect of human nature, and more to its inability to provide accurate prices! The most egregious example of a parasitic-seeming  information broker might be the Arbitrageur who makes millions simply trading dollars for yen, earning a profit on the differences in value, but also eliminating them and stabilizing the currency markets. And finally, here is a fascinating piece about the scuttled terrorism futures market and the fallacy that orange juice prices are a spookily effective predictor of crop weather. Prices are good, but they’re not quite that good!