Up In My Grill...

Remy at Reason.tv mocks the nanny state:

Rachel Takes Bloomberg to the Woodshed...

Ah, Rachel.  She's not happy about Bloomberg's nanny-state silliness.  Here's the beginning of her (patent pending) rant:

...The point is that you can’t demand we see you as a grown adult if you’re perfectly happy for low-IQ, power-hungry bureaucrats to tell you what to do, to help you protect you from yourself as though you are a 3-year-old who just shit himself and needs to run to the potty to change his Pull-Ups.

Some questions you might want to let roll around in your mind between trips to the bathroom:

If the government is right to limit the size of certain sugary soft drinks that you may purchase – for your own good – why is it not right to limit the total amount of food you may purchase? Please be specific in your answer. Eating too much leads to obesity and its harmful effects just as well as drinking 20 ounces of Pepsi. Surely, then, you support a prohibition against consuming more than survival-level calories per day...

You most definitely want to go read the whole thing...

Ode to the Incandescent Lamp...

I detest the light emitted by fluorescent lamps (including the very best CFLs) and by the top-notch LED lamps.  Even more, I detest the loss of freedom that occurs when the government takes away a choice of mine.  I like incandescent lighting, and I'm willing to pay extra to get it.  I just placed an order for a stockpile of 100 watt and 250 watt lamps, and I will use them with pleasure until we run out of them.  By then I'm hoping that either new technology for broad-spectrum lighting will be available, or the nanny statism we're current suffering under will be reversed, or that there will be an established black market for incandescents.  Meanwhile, I can entirely sympathize with the viewpoint expressed here:





By the way, Reason magazine is one of the very few periodicals I still subscribe to. I get the same sort of joy from its arrival that the heroin addict gets when his next nickel bag is in his hands...

Ode to the Welfare State...

Note the date.  Via my mom:

Nanny Statism...

Jeremy Clarkson (a Brit writing at the London Times) is a bit peeved about creeping nanny-statism (an arena in which the U.K. is far ahead of the U.S.):

What good did all the airport legislation achieve? None. It simply means that you and I now must get to the airport six years before the plane is due to leave and arrive at the other end with yellow teeth, smelly armpits and no nail file. Did it prevent a chap from getting on board with exploding underpants? No, it did not.

His two-word punchline is perfect, and something the nanny-staters seem to reject.  Read the whole thing.

U.S. Government Poisoning Program Kills 10,000 People...

I'd never heard of this before.  Apparently during Prohibition, the U.S. government deliberately poisoned industrial alcohol supplies.  The idea was to discourage thieves from stealing and selling the industrial alcohol alcohol to drinkers – but they did it anyway.  Some estimates place the resulting death toll as high as 10,000 Americans.

Yet another reason for citizens to keep their right to bear arms...