Older blog entries for badvogato (starting at number 157)

"In the course of governing, Government should not compete 
with its citizens." - current federal policy, as outlined 
in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76.

Most interesting finding of the day from ccianet.org

What i am thinking is that the same argument can be used to support Universal Healthcare Coverage for citizens. Should basic public healthcare management be more accessible and be better off under governmental monoply power for all citizens as healthcare patients as well as healthcare providers and researchers?
25 Sep 2003 (updated 25 Sep 2003 at 22:35 UTC) »

two thumbs + two toes up 4 maslicke's colorForth page ...

sing, sing a song. make it simple to last a whole life long 
That Old Forth Religion 
...

4 God is watching us, god is watching us, from a distance...

i need to make a move before middle age paralyzes me...

17 Sep 2003 (updated 17 Sep 2003 at 14:02 UTC) »
The man who wasn't happy about Bushy's war in 1992 is speechless on events after 2000. Amen.
14 Sep 2003 (updated 14 Sep 2003 at 20:06 UTC) »

if i have to give a reconciliation on the merits of "war and peace", allow me try it this way: all creatures come into beings as equally important species in a long evolving food chain. Proliferation of nuclear weapons has far less chances than the proliferation of genetic engineerings on all species to put an end to life forms as we, humans were and are part of this grand evolution scheme. For better or for worse, only time can witness the outcome.

5 Sep 2003 (updated 5 Sep 2003 at 22:58 UTC) »

Hmmm...get TV on your PDA from mazingo.net - Zaurus 5600 only?! I can smell that time is ripe for resurrection of iTV corp focusing on interactively teaching the history of old languages and interactively making the future of new languages ... You are what you eat and watch ...you shall be either what you speak up against or what you remain reticent about ...

will read mazingo text service publishing guide and think about how to submit Jan van steen's gobase as a value added 'Allthings.GO' channel. This gives me an excuse to ship Jan my customized Zaurus as well. stay tuned...

23 Aug 2003 (updated 23 Aug 2003 at 15:14 UTC) »

must say hi to Barton Phillips who owns both Agenda Vr3 and Zaurus SL-5500 which makes him a good candidate to join the effort of getting goVRec to run on Zaurus/OPIEorGPE.

Installed Gutenbrowser on my Zaurus. One application can make a useless device indispensable...think about that! Two applications can make a useless device twice indispensable...Three thrice...Four four times...Five? merry merry go around, it shall return to useless at a new level...

The great document of Taoist anarchism, if we are all allow the name to this generally paternalistic doctrine, is a block of four essays in Chuang-tzu which we call 'Primitivist'. These are the chapters which, except for the 'Inner Chapters' by Chuang-tzu himself, stand out from the rest of the book as most idiosyncratic in style and thought. It so happens that they can be dated with unusual precision, placing them in a historical setting which helps us to relate the Utopian myth to real demands to contract the scope of government. The Primitivist wrtoe after the destruction of the state of Ch'i in 221 B.C. which completed the Ch'in reunification, and the time of disunion in which he wrties can only be the brief interregnum of 209 -202B.C. between the fall of the Ch'in dynasty and the final vitory of the Han. The philosophers, silenced under the unquely repressive regime of Ch'in, are already re-emerging to compete for influence. The Primitivist's great fear is that the Legalist tyranny of Ch'in has gone only to be replaced by the moralistic tyranny of Confucians or Mohists.

Morality, says the Primitivists, is useless in ordering society, because it serves whoever wins power. Its rules are like the boxes and bolts with which we try to secure possessions against thieves; a strong enough thief carries off the whole box and only worries that the bolts will not hold. It is the same with the state; witness Ch'in which was so perfectly run.

"However in one morning, T'ien Ch'eng killed the lord of Ch'i and stole his state. Nor was it only the state he stole; he stole it complete with all its wise and sagely laws. So T'ien Ch'eng has gone on having the reputation of a thief and bandit, yet the man himself lived as secure as Yao or Shun; small states did not dare to condemn, great states did not dare to punish, and for tweleve generations his house possessed the state of Ch'i. Then isn't it on the contrary taht he stole the state of Ch'i complete with all its wise and sagely laws and used them to keep safe his robbing, thieving self?"

In any case morality is necessary for the organisation of crime.

"So when one of Robber Chih's band asked him 'Do robers too have the Way?", Chih answered "'Where can you go unless you have the Way? A shrewd guess at where the things are hidden in the house is the sage's intuitiveness. Being first man in is courage. Being last man out is righteousness. Knowing whether or not you can bring it off is wisdom. Giving everyone fair share is benevolence. Without the five at his disposal, no one in the world could ever make a great robber.' "Judging by this, without the Way of the Sage the good man would not stand, without the Way of the Sage Robber Chih would not walk. If the good men in the world are fewer than the bad, the sages have benefited the world less than they have harmed it. With the birth of the sages the great robbers arise. Smash the sages, turn the thieves and bandits loose, and for the first time the world will be in order." Morality only puts you in the service of the robber....

The Primitivist's furious attacks on sagehood, wisdom and knowledge may seem to make him an exception to our generalisation that even Taoists value not the spontaneous as such , but the reaction with a clear vision of the object. But as with Taoists generally the attack is on kinds of knowledge conceived as interfering with awareness. The Primitivist identifies man's Potency with the powers of the senses and heart in their primitive purity, when the eye is not dazzled by "greens and yellows and multicoloured vestments", the ear by "instruments of bronze and stone and silken strings and bamboo", the heart by yangist and Mohist argumentation abou the "the hard and white, the same and the different." The consequences of civilization have been that man's nature is stimulated by luxury and sophistication to grow ambitions and desires as an excess like the superfluous flesh of webbed toes, and his Potency is diverted into offshoots like a sixth finger on the hand. Once they are grown he cannot bear to sacrifice them; "even someone with webbed toes will weep when they are ripped apart, even someone with a sixth finger will scream when it is bitten off." Those thinkers of the rival schools who are coming out of their hiding under the Ch'in, newly aroused by worldly ambitions, are making themselves the slaves, inwardly of the temprations of eye and ear, outwardly of duties and conventions....

What then should one do if reluctantly driven to accept the throne of the Empire

"Therefore if the gentleman is left with no choice but to preside over the world, his best policy is Doing Nothing. Only by Doing Nothing will he find security in the essentials of his nature and destiny."

There is however a positive side to this Doing Nothing: to remove people fro mthe artificial stimulations which make them grow i nthe wrong direction. It is here that we discover the positive function of those ancient Emperors down to Shen-nung, and the single paternalist element in the Primivivist's otherwise flawless anarchism.

study Steven D. Levitt's schema on data he selected to prove his renditions of 'truce' in America ...e.g. "How Senators Vote? Disentangling the Role of Voter Preferences, Party Affiliation, and Senator Ideology" (Levitt, June 1996). - Appendix - estimated ideologies for Senators in Sample is interesting. Bob Dole scored 0 of the estimated ideology. Is that a coincident or Bob Dole is simply used as a fixed point on Levitt's scale? Also read in some place that Steven's great uncle wrote the famous "Rudolph the red nose raindeer..." song, which reminds me of this little piece on our national anthem which came about in 1931 different as what it stands later for many newcomers...

listening to "the best of 10 years (1976-1986) kitaro" while reading about another Kitaro . you know what 'Kitaro' reads?

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