lexicography.com

Acidman has passed away.

I do not remember how I discovered him. He was a daily read. Someone described his life as a “slow train wreck”, but arn’t our all.

Most describe Acidman as an SOB or a “person with demons” or someone with many obvious faults but a sterling core, and they are not just talking about substance problems. When I read Acidman my inner head was nodding up and down in agreement more than usual.

One of my old Philosophy professors said something about public and private moralities. No one grants an interview on TV and says that he enjoys a good viewing of pornography now and then. Yet many upstanding citizens do enjoy a good view of porn. To me, Acidman simply spoke private truths publicly.

ABDOMEN,

n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world’s marketing the race would become graminivorous.

ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.

Poor Isabella’s Dead, whose abdication
Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
For that performance ’twere unfair to scold her:
She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.
To History she’ll be no royal riddle —
Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.
—G.J.

ABATIS, n.
Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.

“Net Neutrality” is a concocted phrase with no intrinsic meaning.

If you applied the ordinary meaning of the words it is made up of, you might imagine that it requires entities on the Internet to treat all peers (other entities on the Internet) equally. It is supposed to mean no such thing. Advocates of Net Neutrality, such as Google, block access to their sites for some and expunge other sites from their database.

The whole concept is a political construct. Its foundation is a pre-net infrastructure.

When cable TV started it offered a better picture and more channels to subscribers. Technical limits of the time dictated that only a few channels could be delivered by cable to any given home.

As in accordance with the Coase Theorem, soon television networks were paying cable systems to carry their channels. The cable system had the superior pipe to the customer and the sellers of entertainment had to pay for use of the pipe.

Today, the Internet pipe providers envision a similar world. Charge Google to get a channel on our lineup. What fun. If they do not pay, Yahoo gets the coveted low number Channel 3 where viewers start.

“Net Neutrality” is the resulting volley back by the content providers (the TV networks or the Googles). Let us obtain a law that prevents the pipe owners from favoring the websites of one or another contact provider. They hope to use the power of the US Government to prevent them from ever having to pay for transit of the packets they send out.

The sad part is that their money spent on lobbying the government is a failed enterprise.

Let us set aside the failure of their analogy. The local cable had to shut off many channels because of technical limits on cable. Internet providers can and do provide connections to everywhere, it is the definitive feature of Internet connectivity.

Any Internet service provider that turns off any destination for its customers will soon be out of business. Suppose your Internet service provider slowed down Google and sped up Yahoo because Yahoo paid the provider money. Google could offer an attractive site and a notice that “Provider X’s customers will not be able to use the site properly because provider X is slowing down your connection to our free site.”

Today, all packets have the same priority - it was not required by anyone and is an accidental feature of the protocols developed. No one dictated equal packet treatment. At one time “mbone” was available and consisted of packet priority for audio-visual sites. It was free agreement - just as free agreement of new standards should not be blocked.

Here is the kicker. If the forces of keeping money in the hands of search engines and content providers prevail in the halls of Congress, we can all move to a new Internet in days. I can set up a high speed sound and picture preferred alternate Internet in days and give consumers the choice of joining the new network with a click of a button on their desktop that changes their nameservice to new roots.

Congress cannot understand this. You might have trouble understanding it. If the Internet is regulated, Internet2 could be available on your computer with one mouse click. It could even be backward compatible meaning you loose nothing from clicking. Congress would have to legislate to prevent any new network from being created with features contrary to their old regulation. Even Congress could not be so stupid.

ABASEMENT, n.
A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.

The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
Text by Ambrose Bierce, 1911; copyright expired.
Etext version by Aloysius West, 1993 Apr 15.

I lifted the idea of reprinting experts from The Devil’s dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, in my blog from The Anal Philosopher. A Visit to his site is highly recommended.

Many people arrive here from search engine requests indicating an interest in language. I try to make the site of interest to the visitors.

The United States is drifting into a Fascist State. Until recently the left was the greatest threat to freedom.

Let me try to parse this out. The left believed in socialism or communism. It believed that property should be owned by the collective (embodied by the government). The reason that collective ownership of property was better than individual ownership was social justice. People saw great disparities in wealth and debilitating poverty everywhere. At all times some people managed to have great wealth and lived in luxury among this general poverty and great want. If the distribution of societal wealth were more fair no one would be rich and no one in poverty.

This was the formative period of socialism and communism. They believed that all distribution of wealth was due to societal power and the people getting little were being cheated and in response they would use force to more equalize society.

In some gross ways this view was right. In Europe, wealth was most often the product of aristocracy - brute power of the warrior class over subjects, only Aristocratic Europeans were allowed to bear weapons - they had societal power. As capitalism spread the power of the landed aristocracy waned. Falstaff is an example of the new merchant class gaining wealth and political power over the old aristocracy.

The great theoretical equalization was tried in about 40% of the surface of the world and led to people getting poorer, their countries going from world powers to also ran’s, and death by vodka while other people prospered.

Contra the capitalistic view: allow people to make arrangements that each believes benefits him. We did a good deal of that in the USA (not pure at all) yet everyone became wealthier in America.

In reality, classical liberal progress of the 18rt century led to undreamed of wealth for all in the 19th and 20th centuries in the west. No one now in America even knows of the great material wants of the past.

Capitalism did not lead to impoverishment of the working class. It lead to Walmart and material well being of everyone. It seems now that the poor in America have more access to air conditioning than most of the middle class of France (which lead to a lot of middle class deaths in France).

What’s going on today? No one talks of socialism or communism (even Russia and Communist China gave up on those in the face of reality). We do have, however, fascism. Fascism is the political control of the free exchange aspects of an economy by law or dictact.

You know, ten years ago Congress or any State legislature would not dream of regulating any industry absent a special reason. Maybe the phone line running to your house or the gas utility would require Federal Regulation because they were a “natural monopoly”.

Nowadays there is no requirement of any showing of any cause at all. Net neutrality? Let us not ask why in God’s name any government regulation of private computers connected by private freely purchased data lines should be regulated?

Let us ask what regulations you, and you and you prefer!

By the way, this article will change nothing and the regulation of all private business activity to meet the goals of the government is the same as ownership by the government.

I ain’t going to write something about someone without an honest followup.

Virginia Postrel wrote me back and her response indicated clearly that she had read and considered my points. I am so impressed. It is exactly what you would expect from someone who would donate an organ to another person with no personal gain.

My suspicion is that she is simply a nice person.

My Most Important Post, found directly to the left, is a mess.

I just sent it to Virginia Postrel, the Internet’s most famous organ donor, and I have to admit I was not on my game when it was writ.

Leg one: Private contract (agreement) allows anyone to donate an organ not required for the donor’s life to any other person. I suppose there is a prohibition against receiving compensation, but a pure donation is legal and binding.

Leg two: After you die you may leave your body/organs to anyone you determine. This is simply your legal right. Eyes to eye bank, rest to Harvard Medical School for the younguns to cut apart for their education. Valid bequest.

Leg three: Powers of attorney are so strong that they can give someone else the power to refuse lifesaving efforts on your behalf. A properly drafted power of attorney could govern the disposition of your organs after your legal death.

A trust that was established to benefit its members could provide that each member’s organs were available first to other members of the trust (organ donaters) and second to all other people waiting for a neede organ. The advantages of such a trust are obvious. When you need an organ to survive - nothing else will do.

A trust that benefits the members of the trust is pretty good.

The organ trust, joining is totally voluntary. If you join you stand first in line to get all the other member’s donated organs. If you do not join you wait in line like all others.

The legal details are in the most important post at right.

Lets take a page from France.

I propose that we allow citizens under 21 years of age to contract for work as undocumented aliens do.

That is, if you are under 21 years of age you may agree to work for an employer, and the employer may employ you, totally freely.

There will be no Federal income tax withheld from pay, there will be no social security withholding or employer payments, there will be no unemployment benefits and more importantly no unemployment premium to be paid by employers. There will be no minimum wage and no overtime regulations.

Kids, 18 to 21 will get every cent of their value to employers in cold hard cash.

I will bet we will soon see that US citizens are as motivated as undocumented aliens to work - as long as the citizens get to keep the fruit of their labor. Ann Coulter said that she would clean her neighbor’s apartment if she could live tax free. Well, our kids would go to work if they could get, keep and spend the fruits of their labor.

As a side benefit, when they turned 21 and got the deductions and taxes and social benefits, they might see it all as a negative.