Pejman writes:

We want to pursue this particular dream that we have, and we would like it if the world left us alone to pursue it. We don’t particularly lust for an empire, or for hegemony – we take up the task of superpower out of a sense of obligation, not out of a desire to bestride the world like a Colossus. There is no song exhorting “Rule Americana.” Many of us would be perfectly happy to be able to drop all of this superpower stuff, and take our society closer to the principles and ideals that bind us as a nation.

Then, something invariably intrudes on that dream. Something inevitably threatens those ideals. Something unfailingly presents itself as a mortal peril to America.

Something inevitably gives the imperial politicians what they crave: a pretext to denounce those of us who’d prefer to shrug off the White Man’s Burden.

One doesn’t hear much on Memorial Day about the lies that Presidents told so that Our Boys could have an opportunity for dulce et decorum.

“I have never belonged wholeheartedly to a country, a state, nor to a circle of friends, nor even to my own family.”

Found in Quotations from Mathematicians

Joe Sobran: Addicts of the State

You might almost suspect Fukuyama of gallows humor when he says that only the government could be counted on to send firemen into buildings. We all know what happened to those firemen and those buildings. We mourn them, but we don’t celebrate the event as a triumph of government.

Libertarian Rant doesn’t exactly hear voices:

I’d be interested to see if other folks are getting cryptic messages from their voice recognition software. There may be something larger at work.

politechbot.com: Hollywood wants to plug “analog hole,” regulate A-D converters

The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again.

Which raises the question: if “they” couldn’t do that, how did they since get powerful enough that preposterously intrusive and costly anti-copying mandates are now debated seriously?

Mesh Radio. The idea is to link subscribers to each other with multiple tiny dishes, rather than all to a central station. I hope it works: existing schemes lack redundancy at the consumer end.

Later: It has been pointed out to me that each relay introduces a delay.

“Jane Galt” (Megan McArdle) remarks in passing that “our bodies aren’t really up to the strain of physical labor for our new, improved lifespans.” Which reminds me of a puzzler: In all those stories where a drug/virus confers immortality, what about wear on teeth? Do Tolkien’s Elves grow a new set every century or so, or are their teeth simply made of stronger stuff?