• Temperance : Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
• Silence : Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
• Order : Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
• Resolution : Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
• Frugality : Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing.
• Industry : Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
• Sincerity : Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; speak accordingly.
• Justice : Wrong none by doing injuries; or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
• Moderation : Avoid extremes; forebear resenting injuries so much as you think deserve.
• Cleanliness : Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
• Tranquility : Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.
• Chastity : Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
• Humility : Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Paul at Wizbang celebrates the death of 32.83 people and countless more that have nothing to do with keeping "us" "free". #

Richard : "Fathers, lock up your daughters when that happens." #

Krzysztof Kowalczyk writes about why LISP failed as a programming language: #

The proof is in the pudding. Despite everything nice that Paul Graham and other Lisp advocates have to say about how great Lisp is, it failed as a programming language. Ultimate proof: Jabberwocky. It's a Lisp IDE, presumably written by people who know and love coding in Lisp.

It's written in Java.

Charley Reese writes on the importance of religion in society. This is something that Leo Strauss seems to think and something Chip Gibbons despises. #

Chip Gibbons grabs some pointers about the Federal Reserve System. I think it's funny he's been to Jekyll Island, GA. And more . #

Grant at the intersection of anthropology and economics considers the different mindsets of Don Boudreaux and Dr. O'Neill. #

In Santa Fe recently, Don Boudreaux was speaking extemporaneously. At one point, he paused, looked down, touched the table before him deliberately, and said something like, "I don't presume to know what's best for other people [on this topic] or that I could possibly ever know such a thing."

It was a simple, matter of fact, acknowledgment of the limits of his moral authority and it struck me like a thunder bolt. It seemed to me to reveal an essential difference between two camps of social scientist: those who believe they know the moral order of things, and those who are prepared to defer to the arrangements the world works out on its own.

When I listen to many social scientists these days, they are plumping for their preferred order of things. They take this to be the point, the very obligation, of their scholarship. It is this presumption of moral authority that has shifted their teaching in the liberal arts from a dispassionate engagement to a partisan one, provoking, in the process, the "culture wars" of the 1990s and the present day.

Jon Udell mentions Asterisk. It's pretty good if you like it out of the box but the code is disgusting if you need to add features. #

Dr. Ron Paul gave a speech before the House of Representatives on June 2nd, 2004. #

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.J.Res. 83, which amends the United States Constitution to allow appointed persons to fill vacancies in the House of Representatives in the event of an emergency. Since the Continuity of Government (COG) Commission first proposed altering our system of government by allowing appointed members to serve in this body, I, along with other members of Congress, journalists, academics, and policy experts, have expressed concerns that having appointed members serve in the House of Representatives is inconsistent with the House's historic function as the branch of Congress most directly accountable to the people.

A trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11 . #

Richard wonders if the "my" in "my girlfriend" or "my friend" is something to be worried about. I don't think so, but I've definitely thought about it before. ;) #

Ego: I am linked in this post . Hah. #

Alex comments on my fire: #

You have to give him credit for realizing that he can't do anything about it and going back to his daily routine. However, I thought maybe some financial plans and shopping for a new place to live might have been in order before blogging. Anyway, check it out. This has to be one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while.

I probably would have left my house earlier in the day if the fire trucks weren't blogging the whole street.

Tony Pierce is as American as apple pie. #

why the president is a fucking retard by tony pierce, 110

if you ever go to the special olympics you will see a spirit that is absent from any other sporting activity you'll ever witness: unconditional love and reward.

even the slowest, most fumbiling child who finishes a race gets a hug. a loving embrace for participating in the event. a symbol and an action that says, you tried and thats all that matters.

you are loved.

the only institution that mimics this behavoir is the united states of america and it's relationship to the president of the united states, george bush, and the people and things that he supports.

And Tony is the only person to have the balls to say this:

after calling the sitting president a fucking retard id be a fucking asshole if i didn't celebrate the death of the president who started all this bullshit.

the gipper today met the reaper and ive never believed that on a mans death everyone should kiss his ass if indeed he was an asswipe when he was alive, so fuck you mr president. im glad you're dead and i wish you had never lived.

( More coverage on that if you're interested.)

Faré posted The Only Path To Tomorrow by Ayn Rand on his site. #

The history of mankind is the history of the struggle between the Active Man and the Passive, between the individual and the collective. The countries which have produced the happiest men, the highest standards of living and the greatest cultural advances have been the countries where the power of the collective — of the government, of the state — was limited and the individual was given freedom of independent action. As examples: The rise of Rome, with its conception of law based on a citizen's rights, over the collectivist barbarism of its time. The rise of England, with a system of government based on the Magna Carta, over collectivist, totalitarian Spain. The rise of the United States to a degree of achievement unequaled in history — by grace of the individual freedom and independence which our Constitution gave each citizen against the collective.

While men are still pondering upon the causes of the rise and fall of civilizations, every page of history cries to us that there is but one source of progress: Individual Man in independent action. Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. A savage's whole existence is ruled by the leaders of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Richard links to an Atlantic interview with Niall Ferguson about why America is bad at being an empire. #

In a way, if you are the imperial power you have to accept that people are going to hate you however you go about spreading your influence. One of the problems Americans have is this desire to be loved. Legitimacy isn't necessarily based on affection. It's based on credibility. And I think what we're seeing in Iraq is just the latest in a series of tests of American resolve and credibility. It's not the hatred one should worry about, it's the contempt. The legitimacy that the United States will achieve if it makes a success of Iraq will outweigh the inevitable resentment. You need to be respected. And the United States has a long way to go before it attains that respect, most obviously in the Middle East.

One of the things he says is that Americans don't want to be involved in other countries. That is, they would rather run Wall Street businesses than run countries. This is very different than Roman governors or the British elite. I'd like to run a province, why not?

Greg Ransom posts an article by Jonathan Rauch , of Reason , about F. A. Hayek and same-sex marriage. He mentions a quote from Hayek that I have a small thought on, the whole artcle is interesting though. #

It was on this point that Hayek was particularly outspoken: Intellectuals and visionaries who seek to deconstruct and rationally rebuild social traditions will produce not a better order but chaos. In his 1952 book The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, Hayek made a statement that demands to be quoted in full and read at least twice:

"It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depends. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by traditions and superstitions which made man submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotions rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. This may well prove a hurdle which man will repeatedly reach, only to be thrown back into barbarism."

In my History of Mathematics class we were talking about Euclid and in the book it mentioned modern critique's of The Elements . (For those not in the know, The Elements is a Greek book about mathematics from a geometric perspective that was written under Ptolemy at the Museum in Alexandria and was the standard math textbook for almost two thousand years.) One of the main problems is that Euclid tries to define every word he uses in a technical sense, of course the result is that some words have very strange definitions. For example, a point is defined as "that which has no parts."

The lesson was that reason and definition needs undefined terms and gaps to be comprehensible and useful.

Chip Gibbons worries that WordPress may start charging soon just like everyone else so he's not sure about switching. #

Chip, I recommend reading Mark Pilgrim on WordPress. And the GPL in general. The bottom-line: WordPress is guaranteed to be free forever and even if new versions are not, the old versions can never be taken away so a community could be created to make new versions better if the primary version became non-Free.