Roads and other infrastructure should be provided by voluntary means, with some combo of user fees/advertising, etc. paying for them–and they would be in a free market, just as innovation would still get done without the monopoly formerly known as intellectual property paying off politically-connected rent seekers. Roads would also be better maintained in a free market, so the transportation costs incurred by Wal-Mart would fall in a free market.

Hi,

Since you mention it, I thought you might be interested to know (if you don’t already) that the problem you noticed with mis-attribution of authors has been fixed in the most recent release of FeedWordPress, version 2008.1105.

(If you’re curious, the problem was more of a relationship problem between FeedWordPress and BlogSpot than a problem exclusively with either. If FeedWordPress can’t find a syndicated author in the WordPress database by name, it then looks for someone with a matching e-mail address before it goes ahead to create a new user account. Unfortunately BlogSpot uses a single generic e-mail address for every user who does not want their own e-mail address listed (noreply@blogger.com). So older versions of FeedWordPress took the matching e-mail addresses to indicate that the authors were the same person. The newer version is more circumspect; there’s a list of generic e-mail addresses that it doesn’t take to uniquely indicate the author of the post. (By default, the list consists entirely of “noreply@blogger.com.” But if you notice this issue coming up with other generic e-mail addresses, you can add them under Syndication :: Authors.)

Hope this helps!

Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson Author, FeedWordPress

GT 2008-10-24: Ending State violence against women in prostitution in San Francisco: in which I speak in favor of Prop. K, a ballot initiative which would result in complete de facto decriminalization of women in prostitution who work in the city of San Francisco. Not because I’m pro-prostitution (I’m not), but rather because I’m against vice cops being able to inflict fines or jail terms on women in prostitution.

GT 2008-10-10: Whiteness studies 104: Class, cuisine, and authenticity: in which I discuss NPR “Progressives,” class, and the construction of “real Mexican cuisine.”

m. leblanc:

If you’ll recall, you are only authorized to use deadly force in order to protect yourself from deadly force,

“Authorized” by whom? If you’re referring to the law, then you are absolutely wrong. Washington state law certainly does not require a threat of deadly force in order to justify deadly force in self-defense. RCW 9A.16.050 considers the use of deadly force a justifiable form of defense against rape, or any other form of “felony or … great bodily injury” against a person or a third party.

As well it should. If your claim is not about what the law allows for, but rather about morality or something of the sort, then I think it is absolutely moral for a woman to kill her kidnapper and would-be rapist in self-defense. Do you disagree? If so, why?

Jill:

which would mean that a lot of kids in more conservative or rural areas would get really crappy sex ed, or none at all. And likely crappy science and literature classes, too. Which is why I think libertarian principles applied to education are problematic.

Well, then. Thank goodness government schooling has done such a great job making sure that kids in more conservative areas don’t end up with really crappy sex ed, or none at all.

Oh, wait.

Found it! The comic you seek is “Dan Rather” (1992).

While I was looking through the archives, I also found this strip from 1990.

You write: “But as recently pointed out by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his keynote speeches at TREXPO West, we actually live in the most criminally violent period in American history. The murder rate is down, not because Americans have stopped trying to kill each other but because emergency medicine has advanced ….” This is not true. If you check the FBI UCR, since 1992, violent crime rates per 100,000 population have fallen every single year except for small upticks in 2005 and 2006. (The increase those two years never brought the rate above where it was in 2003.) Absolute numbers of violent crimes committed decreased every year except for 2001, 2005, and 2006, even as population increased. The figures include not only murder and non-negligent homicide, but also attempted murder, all forms of aggravated assault, and forcible rape, so advances in ER procedures and technology would make no difference at all. Why are you repeating a claim that could have easily been proven false by spending a couple minutes checking easily-read tables on the FBI’s website?

Francois,

Where did you get the image for the “New School Version” from?

Bob,

I did, actually, understand the metaphor. The problem is I don’t like it, and I sometimes try to use flat-footedly literal readings to point out implications of metaphors that I don’t like.

I don’t mind “vulgar” language, and I certainly don’t mind giving William a shout-out for a brave and eloquent speech in front of the world, especially at such a time.

What does trouble me is metaphors that tend to identify courage with masculine sexual anatomy that more than half the population doesn’t have, because it identifies courage with masculinity (and in particular with an especially obnoxious form of male sexual aggression, i.e. proudly exposing your man-bits to an assembled crowd). And, contrapositively, it also suggests that there’s something wrong with not having balls — by identifying not having balls with being cowardly. That kind of metaphor points up irrelevant or nonexistent features in those who get the “praise,” and simultaneously excludes a lot of people (like, say, Betsy or Celia) who actually are both very brave and also literally ball-less.

It’s particularly troubling when the tenacity, endurance, and courage of that majority, in the face of suffering, terror, or death, have historically been, and often currently are, systematically blanked-out, denied, disparaged, or ridiculed and mocked (as silly, worthless, sanctimonious, or “bitchy”) — mainly because those forms of tenacity, endurance, and courage were and are practiced by people with no balls, and also because they were and are typically practiced outside of antisocial institutions devoted to killing foreigners or beating up demographically “suspect” locals — institutions such as the hollering, chest-thumping uniformed thugs trying to intimidate and assault their way through the streets in St. Paul. (And it’s largely from the vernacular talk within those military and paramilitary outfits, suffused as they are with a cock-swinging macho “warrior” mindset, that metaphors about things like balls of steel have generally entered our language.)

There are lots of good, visceral metaphors for courageous defiance — showing spine, having guts; even “courage” is one (etymologically, it means having heart). So why not use one of those metaphors, which would probably have worked just as well in the rhetorical context, and which don’t have the same sexual implications?

Thanks for spread the word on all this.

Just one thing. William Gillis’s address at the press conference was marvelous. But what have his testicles got to do with anything? And where in the video did he flash them? Seems to me like if he did, that would have been just rude, not to mention distracting from the main point.