The longer you live, the more stories you collect that help prove points (and that make for good entertainment at parties!). I have a bunch of ‘m (many — but not all — thanks to the Navy). Here’s one of my favorites. It may just be the ultimate tale of government inefficiency, and it is a guaranteed 100% true sea story! [Spoiler alert: Scroll down slowly, so you don't see each photo until necessary!]
I can’t help but join in whenever this issue comes up. From the comments at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXu9C6rdDYs:
theshaggyshow (3 weeks ago)
he said we are a democracy… he is wrong… we are a REPUBLIC…
Bartleby1701 (1 week ago)
Yes! Which is a FORM of DEMOCRACY pinhead! Read the rest of this entry »
Now this is hot:
Come on, Baby, bite my (Cat 5) wire!
I left this comment in the HMS Broadsword guestbook: http://pub47.bravenet.com/guestbook/4010309441. Any Reeves sailors reading this who worked in CIC or the radio room and remember what I’m talking about? 
Yes, sailors who’ve been at sea for months get a little weird:
LordJeb just posted a paper that talks about the adverse effects of the Seventeenth Amendment. In his intro, he touches on a topic near and dear to my heart — the tyranny of majority, and how the US founding fathers hoped to protect against it by establishing our country as a constitutional republic, not as a democracy. The definitive document on these concepts is Federalist No. 10, which it just so happens I wrote a (shorter) paper on when I was taking political science classes back in the previous century. So in the interest of discourse, here is my little piece on Federalist No. 10, written May 23, 1995:
Read the rest of this entry »
Today I’m going to take a pause from discussing SVS and will write from the perspective of an ex-Novell employee and as a citizen of the world.
I heard the phrase “the Great Firewall of China” this week on an NPR report about US technology companies doing business in China. It refers to the government-imposed Internet filters between China and the rest of the world. I had not heard the term before, which surprised me. From my perspective, it is disturbingly apropos and more than just clever word play.
