Paul M. Jones

[T]he bearing of arms functions not merely as an assertion of power but as a fierce and redemptive discipline. When sudden death hangs inches from your right hand, you become much more careful, more mindful, and much more peaceful in your heart -- because you know that if you are thoughtless or sloppy in your actions or succumb to bad temper, people will die.

via Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun.

Why have driver’s licenses at all? ... Does the licensing process really do much to weed out bad or irresponsible drivers? Enough to justify the expense and irritation of the DMV? After all, if you drive badly or drunk, the DMV doesn’t have to pay out any damages for licensing you.

via Instapundit » Blog Archive » DRIVER’S LICENSE REVOKED because facial-recognition system thought he looked like someone else. H….

The drug war inevitably leads to corruption in the forces recruited to fight it.  It erodes civil liberties.  It diverts law enforcement resources from other tasks.  In a society which believes that lap dancers in strip bars are exercising their constitutionally protected right of free expression and that virtually any government interference in the termination of unborn life is an obscene and inexcusable violation of the right to privacy, it is hard to find good reasons why government should have the right to tell us what chemicals to put in our bloodstreams.

via An Unhappy Ending To The Drug War? | Via Meadia.

The only thing about an ounce of pot that puts your kids in danger is what the government will do to you if it finds out you have it.

via Drugs The Drug War Ruins Antoher Family | The Agitator.

Jeremy Kendall is blogging on PHP now. It's great stuff. If you find yourself doing the things he has mentioned so far, stop immediately and re-evaluate your approach.

There is a great coffee mug that reads: “Multi-tasking, the best way to screw up both jobs.” Yet, many of us walk around with our chests out looking for a Foursquare badge for our multitasking promiscuity.

...

According to Josh Waitzkin, “A study at The British Institute of Psychiatry showed that checking your email while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment 10 points. That is the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours – more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana.”

Hat tip to Travis Swicegood; via Social Media Multi-tasking Worse than Marijuana | Socialnomics.

We should never again hear anyone declare that Marilyn Monroe was a size 12, a size 14 or any other stand-in for full-figured, zaftig or plump. Fifteen thousand people have now seen dramatic evidence to the contrary. Monroe was, in fact, teeny-tiny.

The 15,000 were the visitors who turned out over eight days to oooh and aaah at the preview exhibit for the June 18 auction of Debbie Reynolds’s extraordinary collection of Hollywood costumes, props and other memorabilia.

The two comments heard most often in the crowded galleries were (to paraphrase), “Wow, they were thin” and “It’s such a shame. These things should be in a museum.”

via Hollywood Auction Ends Myth of Zaftig Marilyn: Virginia Postrel - Bloomberg.

I went over to the U-Haul folks this morning to pick up my moving truck. The reservation I made 3-4 weeks ago turns out to have been worthless; not only was there no 20-foot truck at that establishment, there were in fact no trucks to be had anywhere in the city. After some back-and-forth, the reservation folks got me a 17-foot in Dickson TN. My brother will pick it up and drive it here to Memphis tonight.

Add to that, on my moving day tomorrow, there is a U2 concert about 1/2 mile from my new rental house, and some streets have been blocked off. Thank goodness there's a back way in to my new address.

File under "The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum." Or maybe under "No plan survives initial contact with the enemy."

I'm down to all the miscellaneous stuff that can't be categorized, as well as the stuff I need so I can actually live here before moving day. I suppose I should not be surprised, having moved the dog treats to a different room, that the dogs still know exactly where they are.

Without seriously drastic cuts -- cuts that would make Paul Ryan blanch -- we can’t fix this economy without wrecking the government. ...

Can we tax our way out? Back to Lindsey:

The tax-the-rich proposals of the Obama administration raise about $700 billion, less than a fifth of the budgetary consequences of the excess economic growth projected in their forecast. The whole $700 billion collected over 10 years would not even cover the difference in interest costs in any one year at the end of the decade between current rates and the average cost of Treasury borrowing over the last 20 years.

Clinton-era tax rates won’t even begin to cover the spending problem. Not even close.

That leaves us with three possible outs: Cut the budget to the bone, hyperinflate away our debts, or default.

The most serious budget-cutter we have, Congressman Paul Ryan, is not nearly serious enough about the disaster we face. Or if he is serious, he doesn’t have enough of his party backing him up. And even if he had that, Ryan still would face a public too uninformed to understand or tolerate what must be done.

Option One, in other words, is off the table. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.

So how about Option Two, Hyperinflation?

Inflation only as high as eight or ten percent is harmful to a nation’s economy, its savings, and even its social fabric. Hyperinflation destroys all of those things. It’s no remedy; it’s a cure worse than the disease.

That leaves us with Option Three: Default. Simply put, the government of the United States simply refuses to honor its debt obligations. It’s called “sovereign default” because you can’t take the government to its own courts to make it pay up.

Default would be terrible. The dollar would cease to act as the world’s reserve currency and that inflation we’ve spent the last forty years exporting to the rest of the world, would come flooding back to our shores all at once. Can you imagine how expensive a barrel of oil would be, if we had to scrounge up enough euro or yuan from our meager reserves, to pay for one?

And what about our budget? It would still be seriously out-of-whack -- but Washington would lose the ability to borrow from overseas to cover the shortfall. Washington would either have to balance the budget -- and right then, buster! -- or start rolling the printing presses again. Call it “The Mother of All Quantitative Easings.”

Or just call it Option Two. We’re back to hyperinflation.

Read the whole thing. There's a bad scene coming. Via Vodkapundit » It’s Delightful, It’s Delicious, It’s Default.