“Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb
voting on what to have for lunch,
Liberty is a well armed lamb
contesting the vote.” - Ben Franklin
Archive for July, 2005
I’m not going to outright accuse members of our government of bombing our ally in attempts to force the PATRIOT Act’s “renewal” through. That would be putting myself on the level of Fox News. However, I DO find it overly-convenient.
Or perhaps Al-Qaeda (or however you spell it) is REALLY in charge of our government, by using “vote yes, or we’ll blow you up!” threats.
Matthew Reilly posted this on slashdot recently:
“If you haven’t done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I’ve always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been “because I’m paranoid.” But that doesn’t usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I’ve been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters:
“Yeah! Hunters don’t kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!”
but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said:
“If the’re not guilty, why are they running?”
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it’s one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it’s another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people’s rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says “why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?” Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
It has potential..
http://digg.com/
http://php.scripts.psu.edu/users/b/f/bfs124/area%2051%20Pictures/index.php
http://scic.cec.eu.int/DAI/terminology/download_gloss/Domain13.htm
I had an odd, scary thought. First of all, pay no mind to the following as my belief. I’m rather private about my beliefs, but lately I’ve been a little more open. I’m writing this because these thoughts… disturbed me. Yes, the guy who can laugh at zombie movies, disturbed.
what if you got “The Message”, but realized that it wasn’t the “happy” ending?
wouldn’t that suck?
And then I remembered something.
It all depends on which pill you swallow. Heh.
It’s been two weeks since we’ve had contact with the Earth SGC. We lost contact with the Lazarus when those bastards attacked. We saw one hell of a show in the night sky, though.
We contacted the less aggressive humans on the planet, and we’re hoping Earth SGC sends in a team soon. The last message we’d sent got cut short, but we’re hoping the need for help made it through.
The humans in Halus call the “Aztecs” the Sanctified. Apparently, they’re direct decendents of the original humans who brought the gates to this galaxy. Something happened to them to drive them nuts.
They certainly went nuts on us. A few days after Dr. Jackson went home, they all disappeared into the woods. We didn’t see any of them for nearly a month. That’s when we discovered a shuttle had been taken one morning. By time we’d found out, they had already boarded the Lazarus. We found a couple of escape pods the next day, but they were empty and still sealed shut.
They’re smarter than we gave them credit, we know that now. They’ve held the gate complex ever since.
We’re making our way to the temperate continent, to try and haggle the use of the second gate, there. Assuming, of course, this enhanced generator still works. It’s my hope that we can tag this galaxy as a dead zone, and move on to the next one. I have a feeling that General Hammond will disagree. I wish we’d never found that trade network.