Corcoran Brothers

So I just got into watching Grey’s Anatomy, based on the repeated exhortations of Kristen.  Last night there was a spiel about organ donation, getting permission from a John Doe’s theoretical wife/parents, et al.  So here’s what I posed to Courtney: Rather than requiring someone to say they are willing to donate their organs, why not require someone to say that they aren’t willing to donate their organs?  Shouldn’t it be someone’s responsibility to spell out their unwillingness to give up their empty husk in order to save lives?  I don’t have any statistics that say how many people are willing to donate vs. those who have a religious/moral/personal objection and that, but it seems to me that once you’re kicked, you don’t need that shit anymore.

The dilemma for me is, does this violate someone’s rights?  Do rights extend beyond death?  Is it the state getting the organs, or he hospital?  Discuss below. 

we all make ‘em. good ones. bad ones. distasteful ones. decisions that affect our health, wealth and everything else. here’s some stuff from the news and comments about the decision making involved:

1) (hat tip Drudge) “the saugeen stripper” is a student who did a bump and grind and gave lap dances for her dorm mates at the western ontario university. somehow (wink wink) photos of the event made the internet. bad decision on her part ? i don’t know, it’s really up to her. the toronto star published an article about the pics including the “saugeen stripper” phrase that guaranteed that everyone could find them. the amazingly named susan grindrod actually said something smart:

“We’re not the alcohol police and we’re not sex police, and I’m not sure we would want to be,” said Grindrod. “And we recognize that many young people in first year may try out new things that can lead to errors in judgment. I’m not sure some of these misbehaviours haven’t gone on in the past. It’s just that today, the images can get sent around the world.”

2) the nannies are at it again. remember when you didn’t believe that they would ever ban smoking in bars. after it happened, i warned you that they would be coming into your house next. you laughed. well.

3) howard stern has left the planet. to satellite radio. which, by the way, like your tv, radio, cd or mp3 player, or computer, has an off switch. if you are a parent, feel free to use it for your child.

4) as an aside, RIP john spencer.

And I think it is for everyone. Two things recently are first amendment related, both found via Ace:

Adopt a Chinese Blogger:

I am really hoping someone contacts me to get adopted. Textdrive kicks ass, and I have room for 6 more domains. My bandwidth use is negligable, so that wouldn’t be an issue. And if you have looked at Haiku Fury lately, you’ll see I have been using it as a sandbox to screw around with. (Wrong nationality, but if a chinese/iranian/oppressed blogger wants to take it over, I am more than willing to set it up with WP, textpattern, whatever they want.)

Spread the Freedom of Speech!

My Social Experiment:

As you all know, I am a 128 Warrior. I posted before about the Anti-Bush bumper stickers and homemade signs I see.

bq. I constantly see bumper stickers on my way to work, as a 128 warrior I have the time and lack of speed to observe my fellow travelers. This being Massachussetts and all, I see far more Democrat stickers than Republican. But the Republican stickers I see are the GWB2004, and Bush&Cheney type. I see few Kerry stickers. I see many “mission nothing accomplished” and “let’s not elect him again” stickers. No one is for Kerry, only against Bush.

Some of them do thier intended task, and raise my blood pressure. (Not the anti-Bush one’s, but the anti-troops ones.) But, being a big believer in the first amendment, I let it go. I neither honk the horn, nor flash lights, yelling my disagreement. I do not let go with hand gestures. I think, that person believes in something so much, they went to the trouble of marking up their car to let everyone no where they stand.

Well, I think I should too. So I am putting in my shiny new NRA Lifetime Member (finally paid it off) decal. I also printed up the bumper sticker on the link to Ace - I heart Gitmo - Lock the Terrorists Up! and hung it in the back of my window.

The experiment part comes in here - will the other freedom loving persons battling 128 return to me the same courtesy I give to them? I was anonymous before, no views on my car. Now they know I am of a different mindset. How long will it take for some one to flip me off?

I don’t worry about that so much, it makes me laugh. I do worry however about parking my still new Jetta and leaving it unattended in a lot. Will it get attacked? Would people around here be so vile and hateful as to try and destroy my message? I don’t park in Cambridge often, so I should be ok. It is still a concern though.

If and when I get a reaction, I’ll let you all know.

I was going to comment on his site about Jake’s “Pry it from my cold, dead hands“, and was going to link, and tell a lil brutherly story, then I realized I had a full post.

First off, lil story. Kin Yah Brutha was anti-gun. Not rabid, but one of those, “I don’t need a gun, what do you need an AK for, 10 rounds is a plenty” type of folks. No desire to shoot, didn’t get the culture at all. Until one day, when we took him out shooting.

A couple of months later we got for him for his birthday a mannlicher .22. He cried like the wee girl he is. Today he is the most avid shooter in the family, belonging to the Braintree Rifle & Pistol Club, as well as their weekly shooting team. With his .22 he often shoots over 270 out of 300 in slow, timed and rapid fire. Kin Yah with his .22 will outperform and defend better than I with my Sig .45.

I would not say it is an exaggeration to say that shooting brought the brothers together in the first place. We are all ackwardly 3 years apart. Our outdoor interests greatly differ. We never all got along really well until we all went shooting together, leading to talking about other things, politics, etc. Our proudest picture is the one you see up top left. Shooting together is what brought Edo into the fold completely.

While Kin Yah shoots for sport, all my guns are defensive in nature. I have summer guns for no jacket and concealment, and larger guns, better suited for winter, or nighttime (night sites.) When I buy a gun, I spend as much on accessories as the gun itself. Good leather ain’t cheap, but better quality counts. I have no interest in hunting. I have no desire to kill any creature. I sure as hell don’t won’t to kill a person. But I am glad I will be able to defend myself and my family if I had to. Calling the police is always preferable, but they can not be everywhere. And mind you, you don’t have a right to police protection. You can’t sue if they don’t come. Protecting yourself is your own responsibility.

Now for some fun links. Second one is way long, but read all of the first. UPDATE - Another really good site.

What Jake now sees is the slippery slope. Gun owners saw this after watching smokers. It starts with, we just want a non-smoking section of the restaurant. And airplanes, just a few rows where there’s no smoke.

Now you can not stand outside the door of the building under cover, you must be 50 feet away from the entrance. If in 1970-whatever anti-smoking activists said, we want no smoking in any public place, any work place, illegal to smoke in a cigar bar smoking room, do you think the measures would have passed? Same with income tax, which started as 1% on the wealthiest citizens. If FDR said middle class would lose 33% of all their earnings to income tax, would it have been allowed? Once everyone is comfortable, it goes, what’s another lil bit? What’s 1 % more? That’s reasonable.

Slippery Slope ALWAYS starts and goes with what’s reasonable.

It’s like your mortgage. You can’t pay it off in a year, that’s impossible. But, you chip away slowly. At first you barely pay any principal at all. But you grind away year after year, until someday you own the house. That’s how those who wish to disarm you/save you/know what’s best for you view it. Chip away asking for reasonable things, until the only reasonable thing left is to end your “bad” behaviour completely.

So Jake it starts with people misusing knives, so we need to ban some of them. Cause shithead down the way can’t keep his Benchmade in his pocket, you lose yours. Until you register it. And get licensed. Here’s the fun part of that … you get to prove you are morally capable of carrying a knife, and that you have the need for it. Lost your job, no need for that knife now, give it up! Or when the new Edged Weapons Officer has a different standard of need than the old Edged Weapons Officer. Or when you come back to Mass, and your shiny permit is no good. Then it is decided that your old model you got registered and licensed for is still to dangerous, so they confiscate it. How? Well, as a good law abiding citizen, you followed the law and registered it.

Do I really think that’s going to happen? No. That’s what happened to us shooters. ‘Course, I can’t buy a switchblade right now either. They will ban some of your favorites. Ya know … “For the children.”*

I’m hoping by the time Jake and Hezzy get back to Mass, either I have joined up again at Braintree, or Kin Yah extends an invitation to Jake to bring him to the range. Mind you, I am certified as an instructor by the NRA, we could easily give you the basics and let you shoot some cool stuff.

* Much like quotes for the bible, anyone who uses as an arguing point “for the children” loses all respect and I stop listening. (Unless it’s a school bus issue, or peewee football.) I also do not care for law’s named after victims. They are generally ill-conceived, purely emotionally based and unconstitutional.

While we are mostly right leaning, pro business folks here, once in a while we find a good social cause to get behind. A co-worker filled me in on this cause. I had seen info on it previously, on Showtime, where a libertarian or two helped get a petition signed.

Please, read up on it, do something. And for goodness sake, if you have this horrible stuff in your house, contact your local waste management company to get rid of it.

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division - dihydrogen monoxide info

News
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said on Tuesday he would push for applying broadcast decency standards to cable television and subscription satellite TV and radio.

“Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area,” the Alaska Republican told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents most local television and radio affiliates. “I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air” broadcasters.

“There has to be some standard of decency,” he said. But he also cautioned that “No one wants censorship.”

No there isn’t. There do not have to be standards. There does not have to be decency. It does not apply. The government claims the public airwaves. Cable and Satellite are not over the public airwaves, hence, no claim on them. It is not an incidental, I turned the channel and there it was …

You go out of your way to purchase the equipment and services. You know what you are getting. Do not try to take away what I want to listen to, just because you’re a pedaphile and any impure expression drives you to extreme frustration. Make the world a better place, kill yourself, let go of the pain, stop the bogus crusading for my soul, and let me make choices for myself. Douche.

It looks like the Democrat Party is preparing a shot of hemlock with a rat poison chaser. I like the two-party system since too much power invested in one party leads to nonsense (cf. Democrat Party before 1994, Republican Party since 2002). Maybe the Libertarian Party can exploit the gap and pick up some Dems who are turned off by the stridency of the lefties coming to power?

Nah.

A Salem, South Dakota man has become my newest libertarian hero:

The mix of nude dancers, orange juice and black-and-white independent films wasn’t in Bob Rieger’s original business plan.

But it has helped his Racehorses Gentlemen’s Club survive amid the cornfields of McCook County and fend off a two-year barrage of challenges from politicians and outraged members of Citizens Against Nude Juicebars and Pornography.

You know they’re out to get you when they name their little club “Citizens Against (Highly Specific and Ludicrous Description of Your Activity)”.

When the county denied Rieger a liquor license for a bar, he opened a strip club with a juice bar in 2003. When it served a stop order saying a commercial business could not operate in an area zoned for agriculture, Rieger went to court and won.

And when 74 percent of the county’s voters passed an anti-nudity ordinance in June, Rieger found a loophole that exempted movie theaters. After a two-week hiatus, the club re-emerged as Racehorses Gentlemen’s Club and Adult Movie Theatre and has been operating ever since…

The 15-member Citizens Against Nude Juicebars and Pornography has organized protests outside the club and filmed patrons in the parking lot to discourage them from entering.

I haven’t passed the bar or anything, but that seems like harrassment. Not the videotaping, but the specific attempt to pass laws aimed at one person. I say “Good on you” to Mr. Rieger.

Isn’t it unfortunate, though, that the most noticeable way we libertarians defend individual rights always seems to involve “vice”? Porno, nudity, drugs, liquor, swearing…

As usual, my erstwhile political party is on the wrong side of the issue and sounds silly about it:

Republican state Sen. Clarence Kooistra plans to take the fight to the next level and propose a state law that would require Rieger’s dancers to cover up.

“We do not want the Salem area and McCook County to be known as Sin City, South Dakota,” he says.

I want a federal law making it illegal to be my socialist high school teacher who thought that spanking children was immoral, and had a bratty child because of it. Is that too specific?

Good thing President Bush opened up the strategic petroleum reserve to lower gas prices! What, you mean he didn’t? Then how come prices are falling, during the summer no less?

Free market forces, you say?