What if The Matrix was guarded by Homeland Security? (Linked by Paul Hsieh, whom I don’t read nearly often enough.)

I’ve just received a request to exchange links with a site promoting tourism to . . . well, to a country whose name has been mentioned thrice in this here blog. Frankly I don’t think that’s enough common ground for a meaningful relationship, do you?

I often hear it argued (usually by tax cranks) that where the law says something like

As used herein, the term “United States” includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and other territories and possessions

it means that the law does not apply to Illinois. I wonder whether any of the twenty people who read these humble rantings can point me to any ruling in which the word include was held to be exclusive.

I’ve occasionally seen this language in contracts and/or regulations:

The masculine includes the feminine, and the singular includes the plural.

Am I to understand that such a clause redefines he to mean only the feminine they?

Why do gun-grabbers hate people so much?

2006: The link is now stale. I don’t remember the item, but I’ll bet it was a piece of hate mail from someone who hopes advocates of RKBA are gruesomely murdered.

Received this morning:

Subject: bronto turn back time
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 07:26:35 -0500

I read long ago (probably more than once) a short story that goes like this.

A man of a certain age (let’s call him Bob) mysteriously receives, unwanted, a subscription to Hereafter magazine – all about death: funerals, estate planning, that sort of thing. He angrily contacts the publisher, who explains that a crack team of actuaries has predicted that Bob will die within the next two years and is thus a prime prospect for Hereafter‘s advertisers.

Bob gets the wind up, resolving to prove the actuaries wrong, and triumphantly outlives the Hereafter subscription. But what’s this? It’s a subscription to Senility.

I was reminded of that story by a couple of spams for diabetes products.

Someone or other (oops!) reminded me of Matthew Hogan’s essay “Mesolibertarians: Are You One? Have We a Home?”. For the record and for whatever it’s worth, in principle I don’t quite agree with every plank of Hogan’s platform but it is a compromise well within my comfort zone.