Basketball

I love basketball.  I love it from the women’s grade school level, in which I used to coach, to the Olympic level with NBA and other international superstars.  Why?  I love it for the same reason as I do rugby.  The games are models of chaos.  They are models of life.  They are models of anarchy.

Speculative News Is Fake News

Today I took a dreary passage down the path of a slow news day, a day in the middle of the weekend news cycle.  It would be sort of OK if this phenomenon were marked with a drought of information, but instead it is littered with misinformation and disinformation (the first is inaccurate, the second is deliberately inaccurate).  Apparently, the media wants us to believe there is an endless cornucopia of critical news.

Confessions of a Blogging Opium Eater

With a nod to Thomas De Quincey, I have had to deal with the consequences of an addiction once again.  As a life long University of Kentucky basketball fan, I now must look forward to a long, cold summer.  I will have fleeting moments, perhaps in the NBA playoffs, perhaps when they contest the Rugby World Cup to see who can deny the New Zealand All Blacks. But this all got me thinking about the nature of undying love, freedom, individuality, and consequences, from the POV of a voluntaryist. 

Unforeseen Consequences, Boeing Edition

I don’t want to rehash the details, to second guess, to play “I told you so.”  It looks as though, however, that complication has led again to unforeseen consequences.  It seems that a collision among customers, research and development, marketing, and multitudinous governmental regulatory agencies has produced another snarl of buck passing and finger pointing, diluted responsibility and destroyed accountability. 

Randolph Bourne

Bourne packed a lot of ideas into his short life, and did much writing for someone who was repeatedly canned for being so forthright with his ideas.  Today, his legacy includes the Randolph Bourne Institute and its instrument, Antiwar.com.  Furthermore, Bourne is famous for the very durable quote, “War is the health of the State.” 

Tempus Fugit

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

The Shadow Factory

All units (individuals) have agenda.  Each human will try to attach her agenda to the agenda at the highest levels attainable — for instance, in The Shadow Factory, the top set of agenda is that of the White House (nominally authored by George W. Bush, truly by Dick Cheney), a lower but very high set of agenda for the NSA, expressed by and through General Mike Hayden.