Technical Problems June 5, 2007
….I just noticed 55 messages that didn’t make it to the blog for some reason. I tried just now to mark them “approved” but I’m not sure if I succeeded. If you’ve been waiting to see your message or replies to it, including mine, this is the source if the problem, and we’ll get it squared away sooner or later.
…Believe me, I _relish_ taking on some of the criticisms I read just now. Heh, heh, heh …
- Posted in : Politics
- Author :Administrator
Comments
It is obvious that statist plot to silence L. Neil Smith by messing with his blog has failed. plan 2 must now be implemented. In essay titled “Rah, Rah, R.A.H.” Spider Robinson suggested that people hated and resented
Robert Heinlein so much that they were trying to cause demise by burying him alive in money. All ststist operatives are directed to buy so many books by Smith that he is too busy counting money to write more books.
May we all have this problem
So now I have to go back through Ghu only knows how many topics to see which ones have had messages added???? Topics long thought dead and purged from the disinterested corners of my soul?
Sheeeeeesh…..
All seriousness aside, I noticed that I had to try three times to get a comment through, I forget which one. Now I’ll always wonder if it was my lack of typing skills or the tech problem. Oh well, persistance paid. Catching up on “the lost comments” has been interesting as has been reading other people’s belated reactions/replies, and making my own.
Thanks for sharing them. I know it would have been easy to play dumb and move on, This willingness to put out the extra effort and the kindness and consideration (and patience sometimes) you’ve shown all but the greatest dunderheads also shows up in your work for money and is one of the reasons I enjoy your novels and too rare short stories so much.
Dear Administrator,
Hope I am not stepping on your toes jumping on this one. If I am please have one more attack of technical difficulty and make this note go away.
In the lost and recovered comments on One Born Every Minute a writer using the handle Pro-Gun made several objections to ideas stated in The Probability
Broach. I tried to not say anything but I “just couldn’t stands it no more (toot, toot),”
Anarchocapitalism and the TPB do not argue that people are too virtuous to need government. On the contrary, they, as well as Heinlein and Rand argue that people acting on enlightened self interest will behave appropriately in most case because it is more profitable than acting improperly. Get a rep for cheating customers and you have no customers. Cheat the wrong customer or too many customers and you will get lynched . Contrariwise a reputation for honesty for fair value given for fair measure received in business will get you more profit both economically and in prestige and getting laid than one for lying over time.
God (and I am a Christian believer by the way) does not own me, He gave me (and all of u a gift of my existence and freedom, posibly the only free lunches any of us ever get. He even died to free me from an enemy that depends on lies and force to enslave me. As I have written elsewhere, this enemy is seeking to subvert every nation state and make government a false god. Even if maybe humans can’t live without government we must keep the Beast strictly under control and bound to respect our rights.
It has been my observation over fifty three years of life plus studying history to keep qualified at my job as a history teacher that when people try to get other people to go along with things because God, the government, their families or their bosses “own” them the speakers are trying to get them to do something that goes against their consciences or their self interest to a degree that approaches suicide.
Neil, if you think this on is inappropriate and want it to go away I won’t feel slighted if it gets lost. This is your blog after all. It is just that it infuriates me that people don’t seem to value how absolute and precious is the freedom that defines our humanity (whatever its source is).
I think one of my comments was actually up for a while, then disappeared, and now is back. No big deal since it wasn’t anything profound - just thought you might want to know.
Are technical difficulties acting up again or did y’all just get an attack of the shies?
Uh, I did post a comment here about how my comments to the blog have disappeared then returned. That comment has since disappeared and not returned. My other comments appear to still be around.
And Al, I agree that libertarianism in general is often mistaken for (or falsely accused of) believing that everyone is 100% rational or will follow the ZAP 100%. Of course this is not the case, but enough people are good enough for liberty to work. If we weren’t then how would we survive with institutions like the modern state which encourage all kinds of evil? I think old Jefferson put it well though: “Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.” The government is run by humans after all and it has long been known that power corrupts. What doesn’t seem to be recognized so much is that when every aspect of life is dominated by political power, the incentive for corruption is everywhere. As the chief source of political power, the state encourages people to be corrupt.
I also believe that to coerce is to encourage a partial negation of self, as it forces others to not do and be what they want to. I believe this is similar to what your 2nd to last paragraph is about.
And after reading your comments here and on TLE, I really think that you could do well with a blog or site of your own. Think about it
okay this is really weird - the post that I just said “disappeared” is back
Shy, shy, shy, shy,
I’m so shy, terribly shy,
Shy, shy, shy, shy,
I can’t pass a dress-shop because I’m so shy.
I sincerely hope the replies start working… The replies are usually ALMOST as interesting as the original post.
Me, I’m natcherly shy. Also heap big busy at work — we kinda-sorta have some high-power (50 kW) coax that has prematurely reached the end of its useful life and it just so happens my paycheck runs through it.
–The initial failure created actual “heap big smoke,” and nasty stuff, too, with a nice whiff of fluorine from the PTFE spacers and just a hint of beryllium oxide from the burned-up contact springs. Headed out tonight for Phase Three of a project that, unless it gets worse faster than expected, will take about one weekend in three for a long, long time.
What riles me is this here is right next to spaceship tech (we’re churnin’ out high-power near-plasma in the UHF DTV rig, even); if there was the kind of *short-term* money to be made in space that there is in Tellyvision, there’s be a Hilton on Triton right now — probably infested by low-livin’ Hilton offspring, too. An’ I’d be fixin’ the boring tech-y bits. Not seeing any downside from here!