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This post has no meaning for anybody but the people involved – so, if you are not one of them – please move on…

Still, here?

OK, a blast from the past in form of a  very early picture of my good bud and his little sister.

(Click for bigger image – real big – a few MB)

Damn, time is an interesting phenomena!

In my inbox I found the following video, promoting to always wear your seat-belt…

This reminded me of my own experience with seat-belts and what effect the government had on my usage.

Up to the time of my first cars. back in the old days in Germany, there were no seat-belts. Surprisingly I am still alive despite the fact that I, even as a kid, mostly rode in the passenger seat next to dad while mom and little sis were in the back.

So I grew up without seat-belts but when seat-belts went on sale, during my second or third junk car, I thought they were so cool that I actually retro-fitted my old clunker with them – at very high expenses relativ to my meager money supply as a student. And believe me, I wore them all the time – no trip without strapping in. I would have preferred those race-car 4-point belts, but could not afford them. This was the time when those belts actually saved my life when I had a tire blow on the freeway at 140 kmh (about 90 mph for all you imperialists.)

Then the well-meaning government stepped in with the attempt to save us all and made use of seat-belts mandatory. And what happened? I, young and full of opposition to anything exerting authority, suddenly stopped to use them.

I know, it’s silly, they had saved my life before, but it’s not an uncommon behavior. Try it yourself when you get a chance: find somebody doing something he or she likes and order them to do it. Guess what will happen?

I finally got over that and now wear seat-belts whenever I believe it’s the right thing to do to protect me from harm. The biggest harm these days, I believe, would be suffering at the hand of a cop who catches me not using the belts and presenting me with an invitation to the local court house; but, hey, that’s a harm and so wearing the belt protects me from that harm.

But I also know that in a crash of only 30 miles I would not have the arm strength to keep me from flying through or at least into the wind shield, and that also effects my decision to click it.

This reminds me of this cute slogan you see on free and high ways

Click it or ticket!

Am I the only one being appalled by our masters to now package their threat to do violence against us in cuteness? You wonder – what violence? Just try to play it through:

1. you don’t click it
2. you get a ticket
3. you throw it away because you have harmed nobody
4. a warrant for your arrest is issued
5. you ignore that because you have not harmed anybody
6. cops try to arrest you
7. you resist because nobody has been harmed by your actions
8. you get shot

I know, you can avoid all that by just doing what the master tells you – and enjoy the cuteness of “click it or ticket” without thinking of the implied “and then I kill you if you don’t do as I tell you to…”

Back to the beginning – wouldn’t it be much better if companies would just offer the belts and make them so good and comfortable that you just want to wear them?

Do you sometimes have the urge to run around the house with some scissors in your hand? Are you sometimes so fed up with all the well-meaning advise to be safe?

Here is an article that gets to the crux of it all, and article that I found (again) in the deep crevices of my hard drive, and who’s author I do not know. Sorry, author, that I can not credit you, but these words need to get out, so here they are…

People over 35 should be dead. Here’s why:

According to today’s regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, or even maybe the early ’70s probably shouldn’t have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, … and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to forget the risks we took hitchhiking.)

As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the  garden hose and not from  a bottle.

Horrors!

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.  No one was able to reach us all day.     NO CELL PHONES!

Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.  They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren’t as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.

Horrors!

Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And if you’re one of them, congratulations!

Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good!

People under 30 are WIMPS!

Something I found when cleaning up the hard drive. I think a better place is here than hidden deep in the bowls of my drive D.

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just leave me the hell alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
3. It’s always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the time to do it.
4. Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
5. No one is listening until you fart.
6. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else.
7. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
8. If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
9. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
10. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
11. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
12. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
13. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
14. Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windshield.
15. Don’t worry; it only seems kinky the first time.
16. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
17. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
18. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
19. Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
20. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
21. Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your lips are moving.
22. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
23. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
24. We are born naked, wet, and hungry, and get slapped on our ass… then things get worse.
25. The most wasted day of all is one in which we have not laughed.

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I have been intrigued by the story of Miles O’Brien, when I first heard about him being fired by CNN after 16 years of reporting about technology in general and space in particular.

I believe I heard about it on BoingBoing in a report that he is still doing the same job but now on his own. It was so fascinating for me because here was somebody creating a new business model for the dying news business. It all fits in nicely with my quest to understand how a stateless society can work were interactions happen on a voluntary, more individual, basis.

I had looked at the extreme example of a teacher in public school. Here you have somebody who is hired and most likely will remain hired unaffected by the satisfaction of his customers – the students. The money to pay him is extracted, if necessary by force, by the population at large.

Contrast this to a society based on voluntary interaction where the teacher has to provide a good product with customer satisfaction in order to be paid. How much better would the product, education, be!

Back to our journalist in question. Here we certainly do not have a case as extreme as the school teacher, but his job is definitely detached from his clientele, as he is employed by a very big news organization that, by its sheer size, obtains government properties. After being ‘let go’ (a nice way to say ‘fired’) by CNN there is probably not too many other employment opportunities. Here is where I admire Mr. O’Brien’s handling of the situation – he just went into business for himself. There is not much precedence for this at the tier of Mr. O’Brien. Sure, many bloggers are small-time journalist, but I don’t know of any case where a high-profile news man went into business for himself.

And what a good job Mr. O’Brien does! His video blog – or news-cast – This Week in Space – is something I am now looking forward to. It is interesting to see how creative use of modern technology makes up for the high budget of CNN. Instead of sending a crew with two cameramen and a lighting crew, Mr. O’Brien interviews Buzz Aldrin over Skype.

It is so simple now – there is the guy who delivers something I want and I, voluntary, give him money for it. The only thing we have to get rid of is the notion that we now have to pay for something that we previously got free. We actually did not get it free, we paid with our time and attention by watching commercials on CNN. If I put a high value on my time I might even get it cheaper now. If, as an example, I value my time at about $100 per hour and I watch commercial on TV for 10 minutes out of very hour, I paid more than $10 for watching that show right there.

I paid Mr. O’Brien $10 today and feel that I got a much better deal as I feel I’m good now to watch his shows for a month or two.

To sample his work, if you are interested in space flight, take a look…

By the way, another advantage of this closer relationship is that comments have a much better chance to get to the person they are intended for and have an effect.

For years now I have this little music video Apache in my collection of notable cultural pieces. This was a version with very low volume so I always had to crank up the speakers to enjoy it. I actually considered downloading it, plugging it into Premiere and cranking up the volume.

Today, when cleaning up my G1 I ran into that little musical jewel again and decided to find a better version of it. And, sure enough, there were plenty of version on Youtube and by going through those I learned a lot about the artist, Tommy Seebach, and the long history of the song Apache.

I had the feeling that this master piece would fit right into my exhibition of visual and auditory gems from around the world that I started with Japan, continued with a stop in Germany and arriving now in Danmark.

Without further ado, here now the Danish contribution to the culture of the world…

It appears that I am not the only musical connoisseur, judging by some of the comments on Youtube:

• Strangely fascinating.
• The bass on this music rockss!!!!!!!!
• Epic music video, I wish I was in this band.
• The biggest artist Denmark ever had.
• RIP Tommy bommy
• very nice!how much??
• those apache girls…

Speaking of “those apache girls:” When I watched them my aging music teacher in high school came to mind. He was actually so old that he had manned the piano in the movie theaters during the era before the talkies. I still see him making fun of female dancers during my high school days and calling them ‘hupp Dohlen.” Sorry, if you are not a native German speaker you will miss the comedy in this. An attempt to translate would result in something like hopping jackdaw, with hopping pronounced as in the deep south; but this translation will not do “hupp Dohle” justice. Gustav Rinke must have seen exactly these apache girls in his mind when he coined his unforgotten expression. I am sure, Gustav Rinke, you have left this sphere by now – fare thee well, your creation lives on!

Just ran into the wordpress app in the android market, installed the app while I am waiting for my oil change – more correctly, the oil change for my car – I am creating this post here on my G1.
By the way, the OS update this morning was not to 2.0, just to 1.6!

In some blatantly slick advertisement the Sandorian Grove tells us about the Brazilian Prisidente, a man of the people, and how he is attacked by the ruling elite and how the latest attempt badly back fired.

I could not help teasing my good friend Max there with my remark about his blatant advertisement and started to write a comment pitching in my ideas about rulers in general. Half through that I realized that this subject would make a good post all by itself and so I copied all that here and just left a link at the Grove.

Here is what I had to say…

… I get an opportunity to spread the word of anarchy (not in the meaning of chaos but in the simple definition of stateless society): In our last election here in the US I actually did something very out-of-character – I campaigned. For Ron Paul, obviously. It was only later that I understood than there might well be a rule of the few over the many that is less burdensome or more just than another, but it is still the rule of the few over the many. All these will eventually end up being tyranny.

So, yes, I can see that it seems encouraging if an outsider beats the current ruling class, but eventually we will end up with the same whoever the ruler is initially. Here in the US we are the example standing it right in front of our eyes. Some 200+ years ago a group of renegades threw out the ruling class and established a new rule based on personal freedom. Yeah right! Now we know, at least those who can still look, that we just replaced the royal family with the wannabes that call themselves sometimes Esquire (doesn’t that sound like nobility?)

It is just amazing how the new ruling class modeled it’s system after the old – in scientology terms a dramatization.

• King v. Supreme Court Justice (they even kept the word ‘court’!)
• Barons v. Appeal’s Court Justices
  and all the way down the the
• Lords v. Small Claims Court Judges

And fear stayed the same as well – have you ever been served with a complaint by a member of the current ruling class? The same as being summoned by your Lord.

I don’t want to bitch about kings and justices, lawyers and Lords, though. I just want to turn your attention to the fact that any rule over the many by the few is the wrong path. What needs to be taught is that only voluntary interaction can lead to a free society – if you still want to call it that way. Know that you own yourself and don’t make any compromises in that department. Anybody who wants to tell you how to live your life is a suspect.

For many years I have lived in the Los Angeles basin and I had to learn that the song with the line “it never rains in California” is not quite true. I have been drenched, in fact, rather solidly.

So done with that myth. But at least I don’t have to deal with snow and scraping windows and shoveling the driveway.

Let’s dispense with those myth as well.

First, there is no snow in (Southern) California…

Yes, that’s icicles in the foreground – nice, huh? But “no snow”-  that’s debunked.

Next one is scraping windows. I did when that above happened, but I have to admit that it was not really necessary, as there was no way to get out of that drive way even with a 4×4 and I had still enough food and water so there was no need to get out.

No scraping windows – kind-of debunked.

Then shoveling your drive way. See, there California is different. I did not shovel my drive way when I had to get out eventually – I called somebody to do that for me. That myth is not debunked but confirmed.

That snow, and here Southern California is different, did not stay very long. Initially it was just too deep to do anything useful with it, except maybe sit inside next to the roaring fireplace and enjoy the view. But when it got a bit more slippery and wet it became great to exercise the sledge and practice some death defying jumps…