(I am the chairman of the evaluation committee)
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The Indiana Law Fantasy Baseball League's Premier Gay Erotic Writer
(I am the chairman of the evaluation committee)
Thursday, March 08, 2012
more on legalizing dueling (and the tangent to which it will lead)
"To call yourself a free country and then outlaw dueling is preposterous." (Mike Connors, 3/6/2012)
The End.
If two Americans want to duel, they should be allowed to go to a sanctioned range, take a sobriety test, sign a waiver, pay a fee, and duel. And if we’re willing to tolerate one final act of paternalism, combatants can have the option of dueling with special holsters that lock in pistols until a signal releases them simultaneously.
When a disagreement rises to the level where participants are willing to duel, it is conceivable that one will murder the other if dueling is not an option. And when there’s a murder, who gets stuck paying the bill for the police investigation? And the trial? And the appeal? And how much more of our tax dollars are spent to imprison, feed, and clothe a murderer for the rest of his life? Or execute him?
Execution isn’t the swift, efficient remedy of the past. No more long-drop hangings with a second-hand rope on a judge’s whim the day after the victim’s funeral. The modern capital-punishment appeals process is so exhaustive that a majority percentage of death row inmates probably die of heart disease.
Why not let them duel like gentlemen? Like sportsmen. Because not only will it allow us to reapportion wasted tax dollars, but combatants will pay to use the dueling range, and we can tax that.
Give me one argument against it.
Give me one argument against it other than, "America should no longer be a free country."
Televise the duels.
Who wouldn't watch?
Ok, who that watches football or ultimate fighting wouldn't watch?
Make it interesting. Allow them to choose from a variety of weapons. If they agree to use samurai swords, then so be it.
What's the harm in a little ax fight to the death between consenting adults?
Imagine the spark to local economies. Tourists have been crossing the Atlantic for generations to pile into stadiums and watch sword-wielding men kill unarmed bulls. But where’s the drama in that? We kill thousands of cows every day. Give me a table full of spears and a red blanket and put me on a field with a bull, and we might give spectators an interesting show. But there’s no excitement in watching a highly trained matador methodically kill a bull (unless you enjoy watching large defenseless animals endure slow painful deaths.) But it’s not every day that you can step into an area and watch two human beings put each other to the ultimate test.
And don’t give me that bullshit prisons-create-jobs argument. Show me a prison and I’ll show you an overcrowded prison. No prison guards are going to lose their jobs because of a tiny drop in first-degree murderer inmates. If anything this will be welcomed by employees of the criminal justice system because if they’re unhappy with their current jobs, they can surely find work in the restaurants, bars, hotels, gift shops, gentlemen’s clubs, dueling schools, parking garages, international airports, and other businesses that will open near the dueling range.
Could it drive people to duel who may have otherwise settled their differences amicably? Maybe. Maybe not. But lets save that debate for a time when under-population is a problem on this planet.
If anything, dueling has the potential to spread goodwill. If you lose a loved one to a murder, you’re going to be angry, depressed, and left with a more cynical worldview. But lose that person in a duel and you’ll remember him as either a hero who stood up for his beliefs, or at the very least, someone who ended life on his own terms. And either way you’ll shake the winner’s hand and recognize his integrity.
And again, think of the tax dollars. Not only will dueling raise money for Medicare and Social Security, but every man who dies in a duel is one less person we’ll have to support with Medicare and Social Security.
Everyone wins.
(Almost everyone wins.)
Are we a free country or are we not a free country? It's a simple question.
...
Speaking of dueling. If you're a true believer in modern conservative politics, you've gotta hate what the Republicans are doing. They're killing each other.
Has a candidate ever come out of a primary this bloody and gone on to knock off an incumbent? (Clinton took it down pretty easily in '92. He had 80% of the delegates---compared to 15% for Jerry Brown and 5% for Paul Tsongas.)
I even read about a Gingrich attack ad that criticized Romney for voting for Tsongas in '92.
Although I can see Gingrich's point in being pissed about that. Newt was out there in the trenches fighting Democrats with the Contract for America and all that other bullshit, meanwhile Romney was sipping on white wine spritzers in Manhattan and voting for Paul Tsongas. I'd be pissed too.
Gingrich actually shut down the government in the name of conservative politics! People had to go home. Checks weren't getting written. Nights were sleepless. Meanwhile Romney's sitting on the couch with his wife watching Knots Landing and voting for fucking Paul Tsongas!
Now that I think about it, if I was Gingrich, every ad I ran would be the Tsongas ad.
The End.
If two Americans want to duel, they should be allowed to go to a sanctioned range, take a sobriety test, sign a waiver, pay a fee, and duel. And if we’re willing to tolerate one final act of paternalism, combatants can have the option of dueling with special holsters that lock in pistols until a signal releases them simultaneously.
When a disagreement rises to the level where participants are willing to duel, it is conceivable that one will murder the other if dueling is not an option. And when there’s a murder, who gets stuck paying the bill for the police investigation? And the trial? And the appeal? And how much more of our tax dollars are spent to imprison, feed, and clothe a murderer for the rest of his life? Or execute him?
Execution isn’t the swift, efficient remedy of the past. No more long-drop hangings with a second-hand rope on a judge’s whim the day after the victim’s funeral. The modern capital-punishment appeals process is so exhaustive that a majority percentage of death row inmates probably die of heart disease.
Why not let them duel like gentlemen? Like sportsmen. Because not only will it allow us to reapportion wasted tax dollars, but combatants will pay to use the dueling range, and we can tax that.
Give me one argument against it.
Give me one argument against it other than, "America should no longer be a free country."
Televise the duels.
Who wouldn't watch?
Ok, who that watches football or ultimate fighting wouldn't watch?
Make it interesting. Allow them to choose from a variety of weapons. If they agree to use samurai swords, then so be it.
What's the harm in a little ax fight to the death between consenting adults?
Imagine the spark to local economies. Tourists have been crossing the Atlantic for generations to pile into stadiums and watch sword-wielding men kill unarmed bulls. But where’s the drama in that? We kill thousands of cows every day. Give me a table full of spears and a red blanket and put me on a field with a bull, and we might give spectators an interesting show. But there’s no excitement in watching a highly trained matador methodically kill a bull (unless you enjoy watching large defenseless animals endure slow painful deaths.) But it’s not every day that you can step into an area and watch two human beings put each other to the ultimate test.
And don’t give me that bullshit prisons-create-jobs argument. Show me a prison and I’ll show you an overcrowded prison. No prison guards are going to lose their jobs because of a tiny drop in first-degree murderer inmates. If anything this will be welcomed by employees of the criminal justice system because if they’re unhappy with their current jobs, they can surely find work in the restaurants, bars, hotels, gift shops, gentlemen’s clubs, dueling schools, parking garages, international airports, and other businesses that will open near the dueling range.
Could it drive people to duel who may have otherwise settled their differences amicably? Maybe. Maybe not. But lets save that debate for a time when under-population is a problem on this planet.
If anything, dueling has the potential to spread goodwill. If you lose a loved one to a murder, you’re going to be angry, depressed, and left with a more cynical worldview. But lose that person in a duel and you’ll remember him as either a hero who stood up for his beliefs, or at the very least, someone who ended life on his own terms. And either way you’ll shake the winner’s hand and recognize his integrity.
And again, think of the tax dollars. Not only will dueling raise money for Medicare and Social Security, but every man who dies in a duel is one less person we’ll have to support with Medicare and Social Security.
Everyone wins.
(Almost everyone wins.)
Are we a free country or are we not a free country? It's a simple question.
...
Speaking of dueling. If you're a true believer in modern conservative politics, you've gotta hate what the Republicans are doing. They're killing each other.
Has a candidate ever come out of a primary this bloody and gone on to knock off an incumbent? (Clinton took it down pretty easily in '92. He had 80% of the delegates---compared to 15% for Jerry Brown and 5% for Paul Tsongas.)
I even read about a Gingrich attack ad that criticized Romney for voting for Tsongas in '92.
Although I can see Gingrich's point in being pissed about that. Newt was out there in the trenches fighting Democrats with the Contract for America and all that other bullshit, meanwhile Romney was sipping on white wine spritzers in Manhattan and voting for Paul Tsongas. I'd be pissed too.
Gingrich actually shut down the government in the name of conservative politics! People had to go home. Checks weren't getting written. Nights were sleepless. Meanwhile Romney's sitting on the couch with his wife watching Knots Landing and voting for fucking Paul Tsongas!
Now that I think about it, if I was Gingrich, every ad I ran would be the Tsongas ad.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
legalize dueling
I have an idea for a game show. You give someone a choice of items: either a new iPad or laptop.
Then they have to use their item while riding the Red Line from Howard to 95th and back. If they can make it though the ride without getting the items stolen, they can keep them. (Same could be played on the Green Line)
...
Watch the two-part PBS documentary on Bill Clinton. If you think you might have any interest in Clinton, I highly recommend it.
Cindy missed parts of it, so she'd come back in the room and I'd want to fill her in on what she missed, but it was so efficient that I never had an opportunity to stop paying attention and talk.
Lots of great stories and one-liners. Even the cinematography for some of the interviews is great (loved the shot they had during the interview with Linda Trip's literary agent.)
...
Check out this short film / Chipotle commercial if you haven't already seen it.
It's taken a while for me to get behind the concept of free-range livestock. We're still killing them and eating them, do we really have the right to be outraged when they're not given optimal living conditions? Maybe. But I'm still not completely sold on the idea of "lets let these chickens have happy little chicken lives before we chop their heads off and eat them."
...
This is a great story about the brawl between the Pacers and Pistons back in 2004 (and here's the video)
To sum it up, every single word of the story furthers the point that this was an extremely crazy, chaotic, violent and frightening scene.
And then there was this quote from the Piston's play by play announcer:
...
If you like books about politics/economics but don't have time to read the entire books, check out this guy's blog. I haven't read much because I stumbled upon it recently, but his output is impressive.
...
If you're in the mood for something long, here's a great story about mass incarceration in America. He touches on a lot of issues that I'm not gonna getting into (although for-profit prisons may be a sign of the apocalypse.) He also argues that the next steps to lowering the prison population in America are decriminalizing marijuana, ending prison sentences for all drug misdemeanors, and giving trial court judges more discretion.
I agree with the first two.
Decriminalization of marijuana is going to face strong opposition from at least four powerful lobbies: alcohol, pharmaceuticals, prisons, and religion. And I don't think those in favor of legalizing marijuana have enough fight in them to stand up to those four, at least not anytime soon.
...
Speaking of decriminalization.
Did you hear that they decriminalized murder in Juarez Mexico?
There's also a guy running for governor of Texas who wants to legalize prostitution and dueling.
In a recent speech he said, "There's only two things that matter to every red-blooded Texas man: whores and settling scores."
Then they have to use their item while riding the Red Line from Howard to 95th and back. If they can make it though the ride without getting the items stolen, they can keep them. (Same could be played on the Green Line)
...
Watch the two-part PBS documentary on Bill Clinton. If you think you might have any interest in Clinton, I highly recommend it.
Lots of great stories and one-liners. Even the cinematography for some of the interviews is great (loved the shot they had during the interview with Linda Trip's literary agent.)
...
Check out this short film / Chipotle commercial if you haven't already seen it.
It's taken a while for me to get behind the concept of free-range livestock. We're still killing them and eating them, do we really have the right to be outraged when they're not given optimal living conditions? Maybe. But I'm still not completely sold on the idea of "lets let these chickens have happy little chicken lives before we chop their heads off and eat them."
...
This is a great story about the brawl between the Pacers and Pistons back in 2004 (and here's the video)
To sum it up, every single word of the story furthers the point that this was an extremely crazy, chaotic, violent and frightening scene.
And then there was this quote from the Piston's play by play announcer:
Bill Laimbeer and I were broadcasting the game down by the Pistons bench. Everything happened on the other end of press row. And the reason I wasn't particularly shook up about it is because Bill Laimbeer didn't seem to be particularly bothered by it. He was kind of nonplussed by the whole thing.They just don't make them like Bill Laimbeer anymore.
...
If you like books about politics/economics but don't have time to read the entire books, check out this guy's blog. I haven't read much because I stumbled upon it recently, but his output is impressive.
...
If you're in the mood for something long, here's a great story about mass incarceration in America. He touches on a lot of issues that I'm not gonna getting into (although for-profit prisons may be a sign of the apocalypse.) He also argues that the next steps to lowering the prison population in America are decriminalizing marijuana, ending prison sentences for all drug misdemeanors, and giving trial court judges more discretion.
I agree with the first two.
Decriminalization of marijuana is going to face strong opposition from at least four powerful lobbies: alcohol, pharmaceuticals, prisons, and religion. And I don't think those in favor of legalizing marijuana have enough fight in them to stand up to those four, at least not anytime soon.
...
Speaking of decriminalization.
Did you hear that they decriminalized murder in Juarez Mexico?
There's also a guy running for governor of Texas who wants to legalize prostitution and dueling.
In a recent speech he said, "There's only two things that matter to every red-blooded Texas man: whores and settling scores."
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