Department of Good Rants: Jim Henley (Unqualified Offerings) chides libertarians who thought good things would happen if they supported a party to which they are irrelevant.

Someone wrote to my favorite list,

I received this spam today. Does anyone know what language it is? (And is there a tool, pref. on the web and free, that can take a piece of text and guess what language it’s written in?)

I’d never have thought to look for such a tool, but Lance Nathan came through with three:

• ¿Qué?, the System for Identification of Language and Character Encoding
• Système d’Identification de la Langue et du Codage
• Content Analysis Language Identifier

John Rosenberg (Discriminations) writes:

There is indeed a tension between equality and liberty, especially when equality is thought to mean equality of condition. The characteristically American solution to this tension is the concept of equality of opportunity, which draws on both equality and liberty. In practical terms, debates usually occur over how much state intervention is required to “level the playing field,” and how much collective responsibility to take for the clear and persistent losers.

The thought is not original, but it is neatly put, and I value that. I seem to have reached the above-excerpted item indirectly from Dodd Harris’s (Ipse Dixit) essay on the same subject(s), which in turn was linked by Susanna Cornett (Cut on the Bias).

. . . for the right car. Monday I learned that Acura Integra and Infiniti G20 have too little headroom, and that I’m not quite satisfied with the 1.8 engine of older Camrys. But I might buy the Acura TL.

I found him! THE MAN IN THIS PICTURE IS BIN-LADEN.

Harry Potter – Pampered jock, patsy, fraud. By Chris Suellentrop. (Thanks to Michael Travers for the link)

Oddest junkmail of the month:

The Illuminati Order would like to invite you to visit with us at:
http://www.illuminatiorder.org

This invitation is at the request of someone who cares about you but she wishes to remain ananymous.

Kind regards,

Grandmaster
The Illuminati Order of Bavaria

P.S. as a special gift, invest in [censored]. It is an illuminati stock which will make you a great deal of money if you buy while it is under $1

The website does not exist, though the domain is registered to someone named Allah Satan’s Bitch.

Another odd one:

Hi my name is Angelica Lyximboorg; I am 22 years of age.
I am new to the internet, and I found your e-mail on one of the news groups.
I was just wondering if you would be kind enough and walk me thru on how to post a massage on the board.
I heard it’s to do something with outlook express or something, I am just a little bit confused and all =)
If you can explain to me how to use the news groups forum that would be great.
Here is my e-mail address which I use daily Angelica22_aAfjGf@hotmail.com