Toyota just announced a recall of more than 650,000 cars – for potential problems with the air bags.
“Improperly manufactured propellant wafers could cause the inflator to rupture and the front passenger airbag to deploy abnormally in the event of a crash,” the company said in a statement.
Now, the relevant question to ask here is not whether Toyota is guilty of endangering the buying public – and what should be done about it. It is how come the government gets to endanger the buying public – and what do we do about that?
Consider:
If air bags were not mandatory, people could weigh the potential risks against the claimed benefits – and come to a decision they were comfortable with. In exactly the same way people consider whether to sky dive, or any other such thing that entails both potential risk and potential reward. If something goes awry, they at least can take comfort in the fact that no one forced them to do “x.”
Certainly, Toyota is culpable for selling an apparently defective part in its cars. But at least, no one was forced to buy Toyota’s cars.
On the other hand, everyone who buys a new car – any new car – is forced to buy an air bag. And thus, forced to assume all the risks – in addition to the claimed benefits. 
While the pro air bag crowd can point to “lives saved” – which is true enough – people like me (weirdoes who believe in adults deciding things for themselves) can point with just as much truth behind us to the deaths and injuries air bags have caused.
And will cause in the future.
Whether air bags have saved more lives than have been lost is not the issue. Even if they have, there is an effrontery that boggles a sane mind when it comes across a person presuming to make life and death choices for another human being – at gunpoint, never forget.
I realize I harp on the “at gunpoint” qualifier. But it’s necessary – critically necessary – to not permit these creatures who would control us to soft-sell the violence that underlies everything they do.
And, the hypocrisy.
You’ve no doubt heard the bleat – If it saves even one life! – as the justification for forcibly imposing “x” (or not allowing “y”).
Why is this bleat never applied when lives are not saved as a result of these violent interpositions? When a life would have been saved absent the violent interposition?
Silence.
The ugly truth is that the people killed (and maimed) by air bags don’t matter to the control freaks. To them, these deaths – the deaths they caused – are incidentals, the cost of doing business.
It’s DSM psychopathy.
How would you feel if you had forced another person to to do something and it directly led to that person’s death or mauling? Would you ever presume to make such a choice for someone else, knowing that choice might result in that person’s death or injury?
No, of course not. Because you – like most people – are not a psychopath.
Normal people feel extremely uneasy at the prospect of making life or death decisions for others. But the two-legged things that issue regulatory decrees are not normal people. They don’t feel anxiety or angst – much less regret – over what they do to other people. It’s all in the “public interest” – as defined by them. If it ends up costing the lives of some of the public, oh well.
This “public” they constantly refer to is an abstraction to them. It is not flesh and blood individual human beings. The pain and suffering caused is therefore easy to not think about.
Or not care about.
Stalin once reportedly said: “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths, a statistic.” This is the sort of mentality were dealing with. It’s not on the mass-murder level. Yet. But the attitude is exactly the same.
We’ll decide; you’ll obey.
Or else.
If there are negative outcomes, it will be your problem; all for the greater good. We – your betters, the social engineers who pull the levers (and hold the guns) know best. And you’d better do as we say – though the latter is rarely said openly.
This attitude now suffuses American society – and has become glib, commonplace. It’s routine for politicians of either party (Team Red and Team Blue) to cavalierly banter about the disposition of other people’s lives, as if this were perfectly reasonable.
I say it’s time to put an end to this disgusting routinization of playing with other people’s lives. No one has the right to do it. Whether you believe air bags – or whatever it happens to be – pose an “acceptable risk” is entirely beside the point.
The point is, it’s not up to you to make that calculation for anyone other than yourself.
Your job – your obligation – is to mind your own business and leave others free to mind theirs.
Throw it in the Woods?
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There is a great deal of intrigue afoot in British spellings and UK spells in general. Here are in process beliefs much in need of winnowing and organizing into factual premises
or being altered or dismissed:
This world still turns under Pax Brittanica (or perhaps Pox in the eyes of some) Much of the old powers have been swallowed up and spit back out by jolly old Pirhanic Britain.
“The Great Game” was a term for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia.
The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. A less intensive phase followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
In the post-Second World War post-colonial period, the term has continued in use to describe the geopolitical machinations of the Great Powers and regional powers as they vie for geopolitical power and influence in the area
Is not the War on Terror, just the latest name for this very same great game. American resources and efforts directed, expended, and consumed by London fiat bankers, and propping up their multi-national satellite banking networks.
The Nazis railed at the treacherous Jews. But was not Israel a fiat creation of Britain? Is not the center of so-called Zionist power, the Zionist Banking Power, at its very strongest in London?
Do not the brilliant Jewish minds all speak of the time when America will “dry up and blow away” having served its purpose for the British Commonwealth flagship creation known as Israel?
Should not Americans rail fearfully at the Brits? The Brits have integrated religion, language, world economics, history, nationalism, supranationalism, socialism, monarchism, and all kinds of other valuable weapons into its formidable arsenal. America struggles to remain coherent and lucid with none of these issues solved.
Did the Brits not invent Palestine. Saudi Arabia. Partitioned India. Oversaw the dismantling of the Austrian Empire. And of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. And so much more of the globe.
Is the UK not now keeping the EU, Japan, China, and so much more of its global endeavors alive through frequent donations and transfusions of American economic lifeblood?
The UK encourages lumbering Beverly Hills Ninja Americans run in its pack of hounds for now. But at some point, overextended, overexerted America is going to grab a hold of its enlarged heart, limp to the side, and quietly lick its wounds and rest its weary bones, it is too tame and docile to run with British hounds forever.
http://www.blinktankfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Beverly-Hills-Ninja-721×1024.jpeg
Do not all the other great powers, France, Germany, Portugal, Russia, Spain, and Japan, all keep wisely to themselves? Keep their heads down and their mouths shut? Wall off their cultures and limit outside influences.
It is only the US, China, and India who remain wide open to the world. Probably at the insistence and effort of the British. India wisely stays away from military adventures. China is quite a homebody and keeps all soldiers close to home. Seeking instead to trade and build relations with everyone, because it too knows that America will soon “dry up and blow away.”
India and Britain are in a long friendship together. China’s on a treadmill now, and have to keep all its mouths fed and its officials heads intact.
The United Kingdom, is after all a Kingdom. And will always have a more comfortable kinship with Arabs, and Muslims. Even in London, a form of Island Islam is taking solid root.
There are many mosques and churches there that cooperate with each other. It remains a distant third of less of a perceived enemy of radical islamists. Steadily it spreads its Pax/Pox even across the stormy lands of the caliphate.
What would be best for geopolitical US, I think, is to form one giant Superpower with Russia. A superpower of autonomous phyles and self selected assemblies. And in the Russian half, a much closer relationship with China.
There are only a handful of nations that run on capital. That produce huge quantities of goods and need to continue doing so. The other Great Powers are all planning to stagnate, or to grow very slow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game
Netanyahu – the US can dry up and blow away
http://middleeastatemporal.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/netanyahu-once-we-squeeze-all-we-can-out-of-the-united-states-it-can-dry-up-and-blow-away/
I didn’t know they already had air-bags for Goldwings.
September 8, 2005
Honda Develops World’s First Production Motorcycle Airbag System
http://world.honda.com/news/2005/2050908.html
And then there’s this? I thought eric was kidding about the bubble-wrap suit:
Airetronics Motorcycle Air Bag Vest
Hi Helot,
Yup. Depressing, eh?
And: Try to find a new sport bike without ABS or traction control. Even more depressing. The Clovering of bikes is well under way.
Indeed me hearty. To arrrr! is pirate!
time flies
http://www.ultimateflags.com/images/P/buy_time_flies_rum_pirate_flag-01-01.jpg
why is the rum gone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JImcvtJzIK8
Dear Ozymandias,
I appreciate Eddie’s art and music. And Gary’s prose is a decent read.
But by what authority are either of them allowed to tell a woman what to do?
Do you agree, that a part of a woman can be so sacred, as to be prioritized above her own life?
So is she to be a slave to the sentiments of others?
Surely an in vitro genital mutilation is a nasty and desperate choice.
Perhaps you can hire some Islamists to enforce your conception of Western Sharia? They are quite adept at bringing a woman to heel.
Abortion is a great innovation above what was previously done, when government and the mob made most of the decisions.
When woman injested poison. Or threw themselves to the ground from a dangerous height to end their maternal dilemma.
Why not leave the free market in peace for a time. Why not get to work in a laboratory of your own. Surely there awaits us all abortion 2.0 and abortion 3.0. And perhaps stratification 4.0 revolution.
http://forestry.about.com/od/plantingandreforestation/a/seed_guide_2.htm
Under stratification 4.0, the tiny ball of cells might be refrigerated much like acorns can be and left to hibernate. Then, 10 years later, when the woman is ready to have a baby, the little acorn taken out of the biological fridge and planted in her womb, and 40 weeks later, a new life emerges and begins to finally pursue its happiness which has been deferred for so long.
Why is everyone so smug about assuming market failure, and so snuggled up to governmental obliteration. What is wrong with people?
My theme song on the topic.
http://youtu.be/wWKvpCuCz2s
It sounds like this Paul tried to give the object of his affection all a woman could need in general
What is required is not to know in a general sense what the average woman needs.
What is required is to understand specifically what this unique specific woman needs. Not necessary even what she she needs.
This harkens back to the difference between episteme and knowing. And of techne, and applying said knowledge correctly to gain an understanding.
Even worse, to compound his error. He seems to be giving up on the market approach of understanding.
And adopting in its stead an irrational approach, of looking for a sympathetic ear to listen to his mewlings about social justice and egalitarianism.
The next relationship, if there even is one, will be an utter disaster. He is a stopped clock now, and the time’s never going to be right for him again until he learns the right lesson.
Run away ladies.
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that a woman is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching emotional looter.”
His approach is the din of the looter’s bell
“To much information coming from everywhere
Ooh but there’s no one who can tell me why life can be so unfair
I try to give you all a woman could need
But if it’s not enough
Will you be so kind won’t you tell me please”
His voice is great, and the complex harmonies in this song are exquisite. But oy vey, the lyrics. F*ck Paul Carrack or whoever wrote these lyrics, F*ck him and feed him fish heads!
@Tor – said “What is required is to understand specifically what this unique specific woman needs. Not necessary even what she she needs.”
That is usually the problem. They don’t even know.
Exactly what I’ve concluded, except that you wrote problem when the correct word is reality. – “They’re not chimps, waiting for a banana. They are waiting for: elle ne sait non quoi: – she knows not what. Your last sentence, now corrected:
“That is usually the reality.”
What I was trying to write:
Not necessary even what she she needs.Not necessarily even what she thinks she needs. Need to slow my roll and improve post quality -less shitposting.BTW – I’m just typing in a blog, by no means is any of my shit in close vicinity to my other shit. There’s just less macular degen and an unobstructed view when looking backwards at other peoples’ problems.
I’m not sure I’m even a thousandaire anymore!
Perhaps the market has a product for sale that will help?
http://www.quizz.biz/uploads/quizz/443830/15_cYY63.jpg
Excuse me while I sit down, I am getting dizzy.
I sense that you have a pirate’s map and a solution to living with “They are waiting for: elle ne sait non quoi: – she knows not what” for 30, 40 or 50 years without going mad. Yes?
Carrie’s 57 and will be 58. She was born into Hollywood Babylon Entertainment Agora Royalty. Daughter of Eddie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds. Once married to Paul Simon. Her looks are merely incidental, she was always already in.
She’s been a performing artist since age 12 in Las Vegas
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Carrie_Fisher
The agora of arts is legitimately a free market of producers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Fisher_(singer)
Her father or mother’s voice wasn’t handed to them by some king or countess. They are not mere fiat and fog. There has to be talent, and skill thrown somewhere in the mix.
They can be co-opted. Infiltrated. Hammered on the anvil and beaten into archetypes that serve the state. But too much of this and there is no art. There is only the desolation of government.
Skin changes as we grow older. Perhaps for most, young and new is the most valued. But not for all certainly. I’ve always found certain older women still kinda hot. To each his own, I guess.
Jennifer Tilly 55
http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2012/06/six-older-women-more-f-ckworthy-than-madonna#page/2
Valerie Bertinelli 54
http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2012/06/six-older-women-more-f-ckworthy-than-madonna#page/4
Older chicks are cool. If you want to be a self-owner with sufficient free time and wealth to pursue such melliferous mavens of happiness, such heavenly comforts of high mileage hotties, what should you do?
Adapt these to needs of NAP’d self-owners. Eschew movements where individuals are cogs, and all trappings and boastings of group accomplishments and identity.
Affinity groups: Phy1es: an introduction
http://libcom.org/organise/affinity-groups-an-introduction
anarchist organizing manua1
http://zinelibrary.info/files/anokorganman.pdf
Dear Tor,
Jennifer Tilly. Yes. She’s hot.
By the way, did you know she and her younger sister Meg are Chinese on her father’s side?
Most moviegoers don’t notice it at first. But once they realize it, they see it in the shape of their eyes.
Tilly was born Jennifer E. Chan in Harbor City, Los Angeles. She is the first child of Harry Chan, a used car salesman, and Patricia (née Tilly), a Canadian schoolteacher and former stage actress.[3] Her father was of Chinese descent and her mother was of Irish, Finnish, and First Nations ancestry.
I noticed the name chan, but didn’t even think about it. Yeah, I can definitely see it now.
Another such person is Keanu Reeves. Hawaiian-born American, English, Native Hawaiian, Chinese, Irish, and Portuguese
I am quite intrigued by race. But only within the confines of the self-ownership framework.
Check this out. Amazing really.
Human Pantone Project. Brazilian artist and photographer Angelica Dass sets out to record all possible human skin tones
Humanae
http://humanae.tumblr.com/
Be a master race if you wish, but only via mastery and optimized purity of those voluntarily participating in your endeavour.
I think there’s much more variance than commonly known. Underpinning race, you find genus. Without coercion, the genus of Sapiens will probably diverge once more.
Sapiens means sensible after all, and who wants that? Not me. Their skeletons look unnervingly symmetrical. Ewwww. Cookie cutter I-robots under their flesh.
They’re now saying loner un-domesticated Neandertal valley man was simply absorbed into the farming, religious, village homo sapiens people. He couldn’t beat them, so he joined them. Fuck ’em, he decided(literally)
Ancient plaque DNA exposes the changes in oral microbiota driven by dietary shifts
http://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/press/2013/130217.html
Modern Humanity ~ Mapping Global Migration of Anatomically Modern Humans
http://www.maximizingprogress.org/2012/10/modern-humanity-mapping-global-migration.html
It is unimportant the exact sequence, but general principles you can extrapolate. Forget eugenics, what of pangenics? What can we breed for. Breed against. Can we Self-breed?
Breed: Old English bredan “bring young to birth, carry,” -cherish, keep warm – brood – hatchlings – grow up, be reared” as in a clan,
I would jettison all current conventions of place. Instead of name, rank, serial number, address, physical descript, age, birthplace, and so on, one could give only their source of fresh water and unique alphanum. ~I am node Ys23M Colorado for instance.
Maybe other geomorphology referents. What is the nearest intersection of public transit routes. Say I’m near airport LAS at bus routes 109&212. A know rendezvous, but just enough askew and inconvenient from their view.
Were I to call out to a forum member Formosa V. wouldn’t you be the only possible member of this domain. Call me Sin-city-The-Onion-Router if you will. Scrambled ciphered speech, but only once over easy.
Unique biological anthropological stats: My Red/white/platelet blood ratio eB.3u.x8 using base 64. Ave. Telomere length= 5W8 microns. Blink speed 5.7 secs. Breath speed 8.2 secs. Metabolic rate 445 joules/min. Density 1.74. Spec gravity 14/mm^3.
– tried to sort this from speckled, to muddled, to mudslidden, so you can give up when it gets too gnarly to go forth for too little in substance.
When in college back in the late 90’s, a group of friends drove out east for spring break. For one friend, she discovered a new health problem, seizures. Unfortunately, she discovered that when driving (a rental car, ever wonder why they don’t like renting to anybody under 25) about 75 on the Pennsylvania turnpike in the middle of the night. She passes out, everybody else in the car is sleeping. The car flips 6 times but somehow stays on the road. Imagine waking to the car rolling over…….
No injuries for any of the six people in the car, side from bumps and bruises, (amazing) except for the two people by the air bags………….. Both had to have plastic surgery to repair scarring from the deploying airbags that caused burns and cuts. The seat belts probably saved all six, but those stupid 1990’s airbags caused the injuries.
Remember that other stupid “safety” requirement back in the 1990’s? Those stupid “automated” seat belts (for those cars without airbags), that didn’t actually put the belt on, but did all it could to annoy the hell out of you.
Oh, that friend had to give up driving. Still has a seizure from time to time.
That’s it exactly, Rich.
Life involves variables. Bad – and good – things happen. But it’s not anyone else’s right to make life choices for others. It’s important to ponder – and then get really mad about – the gall, the effrontery of anyone who so asserts.
Who the hell do these people think they are? They think they own us – literally. They regard us as not-so-bright pets who need “direction” . . . from them!
The irony (leaving aside the morality) is that most of them are utter nothings unqualified to do anything. Consider examples: The Chimp, Obama, Hillary. What skills have they got that anyone would freely pay for? What have the contributed to the proverbial agora?
Nothing. Just violence, done by proxies – because of course they themselves (like almost all such people) are poltroons of the first order who would never dare to go “one on one” in a fair fight with anyone.
Really, you really have only yourself to blame. Because you are the only one you can control. If you have been in an accident, you focus on what you did wrong, and how you could have avoided it.
You purchased the vehicle. You chose the road to drive on. You are responsible for maintenance. For choosing a car that has the capabilities required. You are at the wheel and can steer, accelerate, break, pull over, abandon the car in a dark alley and walk away never looking back, whatever is appropriate.
If your house is robbed, you are the one who failed to protect your property. If you’ve failed to find an alternative to dropping your kids off at the local public school, you are the one to blame for the irreparable damage done to their developing minds and the nipping in the bud of their blossoming humanity.
If you live in police state, you are the one who must develop necessary defenses. Learn to be stealthy. Learn to steal from your plantation owners. Whatever you must, except for initiate aggression against another innocent victims who are not a part of the oppressive police state.
It’s rational to spend time improving things which you have control over. It’s irrational to waste too much time worrying about whether the stars are in alignment, whether your government is just, whether your fellow citizens are good or evil people. To wast time worrying about honor, or the flush of embarrassment because you have to beg, to lose hope because you must continually degrade yourself further and further, merely to remain free and to survive.
Humans are rational above all – we each pursue our own interests as we see them, using reason to make our choices, 100% of which we have, as self-owners, an absolute right to make.
In complete opposition to humanity, government is in its essential nature an irrational institution because everything it does, it does by force; over-ruling the wishes of those within its grasp or domain. Hence it is always and everywhere incompatible with human nature.
There is a healthy natural way in which we humans can interact with each other – it’s called the Market, Market Arena, Free Market, of Agora. It is in every part voluntary and is therefore fully consistent with human nature – with the axiom of human self-ownership. The market is all that government can never be:
it is governed by voluntary contracts between individuals
it is characterized by voluntary exchanges to mutual benefit
it is closely and rationally conforming to human nature
Never agree that sometimes government is preferable to the market. That is a lie. In a market society, nobody compels anyone to do anything; hence, everyone’s self-ownership rights are intact.
We’ve all witnessed for far too long what happens in a society when, despite the simple and adequate principle of the free market, somebody does impose his will upon someone else. For a moment at least, let’s assume nobody does.
It follows that if you want to live in solitude and grow your own food, make your own shelter and clothing, etc, nobody would stop you. You don’t need a free market to live. Probably though, most of us wish to enjoy a higher standard of material life, and enjoy the company of other human beings.
To enjoy a high standard of living, and to enjoy the comfort of our fellow human beings, we’ll need to interact with others. What rules are to govern such relationships, if no government is there cocooning us like flies in its web, defining our every moment and every law of conduct, until it gets around to finally making a meal of us?
Easy: if two or more wish to enter an agreement, they go ahead and enter it. That agreement will describe certain benefits expected by each from the other, and define certain obligations each undertakes in return. The agreement must be explicit and voluntary – if either is dissatisfied with the terms proposed no agreement is consummated and no obligations will exist. Nor, of course, will any of the anticipated benefits result.
If the deal is of more than trivial importance it should be written down, or perhaps recorded by a webcam so that misunderstandings and disagreements are avoided later on.
The genius principle of the market is that all relationships between individuals that truly exist, are those which exist only as a result of such a voluntary contract having been made. No customs, protocols, or diktats are enforced upon anyone else without their consent, ever.
@Tor – Been hitting that bottle of “Poor Richard’s Almanack” again, haven’t you?
http://internet.savannah.chatham.k12.ga.us/schools/DeRenne/staff/gelagay/Shared%20Documents/The%20Hobbit%20Plans-Units%201-3/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack_by_Franklin_Benjamin.pdf
very cool, Garysco. I like Ben. Men of public concern such as he wouldn’t be so objectionable.
A lifelong polymath, it is said “he was drawn into politics”
admired on two continents for his scientific accomplishments, wit, unpretentious manners, diplomatic ability, and kindly personality
tenth son of a Massachusetts soap and candle maker. Largely self-taught, Franklin displayed an intellectual ability, readily apparent to those around him, that would earn him an international reputation in various fields
elected a member of the Royal Society for his study of electricity. His scientific renown earned honorary degrees from Yale and Harvard and William and Mary
He went to London as an agent representing Pennsylvania, then later as agent for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts
Beginning as a contented Englishman who favored Royal rule and distrusted popular movements, he emerged as a leading spokesman for American rights.
When the Stamp Act crisis arose, he demonstrated his new political sentiments by speaking out against the Act. He gradually adopted the theory that Parliament did not have the power to tax or to legislate in the colonies, and that the colonies and Great Britain were united “as England and Scotland were before the Union, by having one common Sovereign, the King.”
none of his major ideas, including a single-chambered legislature, an executive board rather than a single President, and service in public office without pay, was ever adopted
Franklin’s last public act was urging the abolition of slavery, he became the first president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery
As Final Authority has devastatingly noted, this whole freeing slaves ruse, was nothing more than a pretense for Northern Assholes to trounce on down to Dixie and homestead every acre and auction of every ingot.
Must ensure America too is every bit the Carpet Bagger Douche Circus of Jolly Raping Pillaging Rogering that Mary Old England has ever and always been.
God save these quisling queers, should we ever get our fair chance at fisticuffs with the revolving door artful dodger darlings of Natives, Womenfolk, Africanfolk, Queerfolk, and each and every other Motherfolker they can invent.
They never cease scheming to steal and resteal every parcel of property and everywhere and to exhale new governments and stifle old markets.
Never forget who Zionists Khazars are mere branches of, which Hitler never understood, the good old UK.
Israel was once Palestine Mandate, and always a false flag faux nation from the get go. Exactly like the grand old united State.
This time its not the jewish question, its the Greater India question, all those South Asian English speakers ready and able to outwork and outperform us all for a mere tenth or less of what we expect to be paid.
Anyway, this is all vainglorious basterd crap, its self-ownership or bust. You can’t hate and castigate yourself into freedom and sovereignty, now can you?
@Tor – And quite the lady’s man in his old age too. As I recall he had some younger hottie at court taking good care of him over there.
Giggity giggity goo! – Glen Quagmire.
To clarify, in my estimation, women are sex objects in the right moment.
And then a few minutes later, also a unique class of humans with aspirations, skills, preferences, tendencies and all the rest.
They see us too as personalities. And support and security objects. Mere machines who bring them things. Sled dogs in their iditarod. Things they can blame for everything and all things. And give credit to as well.
There’s something primal about sleeping with one. Waking with one. Householding with one. Captaining one. Riding one. Living within one. Inhaling the essence of one. Exhaling the essence of one. Abandoning one. Reaquiring one. Locating one you thought was lost.
You can dig a chick cause she’s funny. Or she’s always hooking you up with her friend, and life opportunities. Because she’s wise. Nice to look at. Pleasant to be around. Does the stuff you like to do.
Has words to say when you’re mostly silent. Is all ears when you’re full of yourself and can’t shut up. Mirror. Echo chamber. Mother of you. Dependant of you. Yang to your Ying. The Yung that Yongs your Yeng.
pre-8-year-old-girls, 8-until first menses, puberty until family emancipation, or new domicile residence. Young woman until first child. Woman of child bearing age. Menopausal. Post menopausal. Geriactric.
There are many seasons of women. And roles they fill. Some are carers. Pleasers. Accolytes of chosen father figure. Pioneers of their own path.
Womenly weather. Like pins in the map of your life. The victor to your vector. The sybiotic scalar to your angular directional force energy.
Artists. Scientists. Layabouts. Bon Bon devourers. Painted ladies. Sporty babers. Outdoorsy types. Kept women. Ladies of leisure. Debutants. Debauches. Devotees. Divorces.
Ben was a rake – even in old age. I think he’d have been a lot of fun to hang around with.
An Open Letter to Eddie Vedder
When is a woman not a woman?
Therein lies the only clear refutation of a woman’s rights.
A woman’s rights —
seems a mere tautology, a redundant catch phrase.
Are not rights self evident?
Intrinsic assumptions of the inalienable?
So, when is a woman not a woman,
a right not a right?
When she doesn’t exist.
When does a woman become a woman?
Is it when
her first ballot has been cast?
Or when
she graduates from her class?
Is it when
she makes a wish on her sweet sixteenth?
Would I be amiss if it were her first kiss?
Is it when
she’s diagnosed by the boy next door?
Or as ambiguous as the cutting of the cord?
Is it the time
it takes to travel the distance through the canal?
Or when
she’s kicking and becomes viable?
Is it when
her sex is discovered by a sonogram?
Or after eight weeks when
the changes in her body will be mainly in dimension?
Is it when
her brain waves are detected after 40 days?
Or is it around three weeks when
her primitive heart beats?
Can there be only one true line of demarcation?
One finite measurable point in time that differentiates
life from non-life?
Womanhood from non-womanhood?
Rights from no right?
Is it the moment of conception —
that point when all of the above is set in motion?
That precise moment when
“a separate human individual, with her own genetic code,
needing only food, water, and oxygen, comes into existence”?
Indeed,
It is at that point,
“like the infant, the child, the adolescent,
that the conceptus is a being who is becoming,
not a becoming striving toward being.
She is not a potential life,
she is a life with great potential”.
She is not the mother,
she is an other —
a somebody other than the mother.
A woman,
however beautiful, however complex when fully grown,
begins life as a single cell, a zygote —
that stage in human development through which we all pass.
She fulfills “the four criteria necessary to all life —
metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.
Her genetic makeup is established at conception,
determining to a great extent
her own individual, physical characteristics”:
her eyes, her hair, her skin color, bone structure, her gender.
So let us not be confused,
“she did not come from a zygote — she once was a zygote.
She did not come from an embryo, she once was an embryo.
She did not come from a fetus, she once was a fetus”.
She did not come from a little girl — she once was a little girl.
When is a woman not a woman?
The answer is absolute, non-negotiable.
To argue against would be to ignore the innate,
the fact of the matter.
The answer can never be a matter of opinion or choice.
This is not a metaphysical contention.
This is biology 101.
The answer is scientifically self-evident —
as inherent as the inalienable.
Therefore,
the ability to pursue happiness
is contingent upon liberty —
her liberty,
and her freedom is solely dependent upon
the mother of all human rights…
the right of life.
Respectfully,
Gary Cherone
(June 1999)
Hate to admit it ,but I am a bigger fan of Ben then Abe,the one thing I didnt particulary like about Ben was His promotion of this farce called DST.
Ya know … there a people who make a living stealing airbags out of cars for resale … if you can find one, I’m sure he would be willing to “steal” your airbags for free …
Turning the TCS in my Eldorado off was pretty easy. I just picked up a known bad traction control computer swapped it in, and sold the good computer ( a $2500 unit when new ). Instant ABS shutdown.
There’s an agorist idea. Thwarting safety devices. Creating a secondary gray market for prole control devices outside of their designated crony corporatist providers. Once you become comfortable making even small but satisfying strikes at the root of their tyrannical prisons, you’ll find it is something you’ll want to do as often as you can get away with it.
What do they care? You complied with the mandate when you purchased the vehicle, let us not forget. Their friends made their money. What you do after that, they don’t give a rat’s ass about, unless they can steal more money in the form of fines, if you get caught.
Unless you can successfully import a vehicle configured without the mandated equipment, then they are smiling as they count “their” money.
INC,
Buying used does not comply with shit, which most of us do or try to do. I agree with Tor, the aftermarket for reprogramming automotive computers will be a boon for some guy willing to do so. Just think! all safety devices disabled but the car’s computers report they are in optimal working condition! LOL! F the state at all levels. Hell! I’d pay for that Mod on my truck and car both! Why? so i can use it in a court of their law. You know make the cop look like he was lying. Judge, I say, my car’s computer says I was wearing that belt when he pulled me over! LOL! To Rich!
@David Ward – Like Han Solo’s highly modified YT-1300 light freighter, the Millennium Falcon.
According to Star Wars creator George Lucas, the Millennium Falcon’s design was inspired by a hamburger, with the cockpit being an olive on the side. The ship originally had a more elongated appearance, but the similarity to the Eagle Transporters in Space: 1999 prompted Lucas to change the Falcon’s design. The original model was modified, re-scaled, and used as Princess Leia’s ship, Tantive IV.
The sound of the ship traveling through hyperspace comes from two tracks of the engine noise of a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, with one track slightly out of synchronization with the other to introduce a phasing effect. To this, sound designer Ben Burtt added the hum of the cooling fans on the motion-control rig at ILM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Falcon
Dear Gary,
“the Millennium Falcon’s design was inspired by a hamburger”
And Princess Leia’s hairdo was inspired by two cinnamon rolls!
https://www.attendly.com/the-ultimate-analysis-of-where-princess-leias-buns-came-from/
@Bevin – Since you asked, yes and no.
Leia’s well-known hairdo in A New Hope has been affectionately dubbed the “doughnut hairstyle”, or “cinnamon buns”, by many science fiction fans. Carrie Fisher, in an appearance on the UK TV show Bring Back Star Wars, said she hated her character’s hairstyle; she felt it made her face look rounder, and it took two hours every day to style. Miss Piggy of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies copied the hairdo with doughnuts in a Star Wars-themed episode of the series. Also, in one scene from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, Princess Vespa also appears to have the hairstyle, but reveals that she is actually wearing a large pair of headphones. In the parody film Thumb Wars, the role of Leia was filled by a character named Princess Bunhead, who, as the name implies, had two cinnamon rolls for hair.
Lady of Elche
The hairdo has also been compared to the Iberian sculpture Lady of Elche.
Hopi girl, 1922. Young marriageable Hopi Indian women wear a very elaborate “Squash Blossom” hairdo that superficially resembles Princess Leia’s. George Lucas, however, has denied a connection, saying: “In the 1977 film, I was working very hard to create something different that wasn’t fashion, so I went with a kind of Southwestern Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look, which is what that is. The buns are basically from turn-of-the-century Mexico.”
All I know is I preferred this look much more.
http://entertainment.ie/images_content/PrincessLeiaGoldBikini.jpg
@Bevin – Old man wolf whistle.
Sad to say, time has not been kind to her or her costar Mark Hamill.
I assume you’ve seen pics of how they look today. Fortunately Fisher has lost 40 pounds and looks somewhat more credible for her upcoming role.
The rebooted Star Wars will be interesting to see just from that perspective alone.
As the Chinese expression has it, “The years spare no man.”
Morning, Bevin!
Yeah, “Luke” is almost unrecognizable now. “Darth” is far too fat to light saber fight. “Han” is flying the Milleniums Geritol these days…
I don’t know what they’re thinking. Or why they do what they do. I admit to an utter incapacity to stomp on human faces and goosewalk a mile in their jackboots, so to speak.
But I do for the most part understand what most here wrongly do, when they imagine they are thinking. And why they do the same foolish things over and over.
I’ve walked many a mile in the very same shackles and can still remember. Sometimes I get lost in the moment and catch myself slipping the cursed irons back on myself.
I’ll debate with you. Unwind from the state with you. If it takes forever…
I will wait for you – Astrud Gilberto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz88w-LsIc0
> “… politicians of either party (Team Red and Team Blue) ”
I like that simple description.
Makes it more obvious they are players in their own game of power, politics and rule. The Republican establishment has nothing to do with the principles of our constitutional republic; likewise, Democrats have nothing to do with democratic principles.
Both parties seek oligarchic rule over the citizenry and closely cooperate to that end… their success has been spectacular. They are truly factions of the same political part — the “Ruling Party”. They swap official government name tags periodically and have little family squabbles, but their yoke on citizens gets only heavier.
Since they are really both the same from the citizens’ perspective, just use the color-wheel to combine Team Red and Team Blue into “Team Purple”.
That’s an apt description since Purple was the color worn by Roman Emperors and magistrates, and later became the standard color of royalty. Royal American rulers are what we now have– Team Purple
Right you are, Saab –
A key step on the road to ending the long con that’s been perpetrated on the people is to make them aware of (and angry about) the false “left-right” (and red-blue) dichotomy.
It’ll just take about 20 percent of the public for a critical mass to develop. And the truth is, we’re not all that far from that goal.
Coercion is a dead end. it just doesn’t know it yet.
Eric at best what you at the end of the day will manage to effect is a change of rulers. Masters and serfs at root is what is normal for humans at anything beyond the most rudimentary tribal level & even there you sort of utopian ‘freedom’ you long for is non-existant. The ‘best’ you are ever going to get is wolves who strive to be paternal in their relationship with the pooch bulk of humanity.
BTW, there is absolutely no disparagement in using a dog analogy for the domesticated bulk of humanity. A dog with a good master is a loving critter loyal unto death and a fine companion.
Mike,
You’ve got a negative and defeatist view – which I will admit is not unjustified given the historical record to date.
But, just because something sucked yesterday – and today – does not mean it has to suck tomorrow.
And, regardless: I will never cede the ethical ground to coercive collectivists. They’re wrong. The fact that they’ve won so far doesn’t change that at all.
And my hope is that, one day, they’re gonna lose!
most of your perspective rationalizes trespass, but you’re correct about the dogs…(& sheep, bovines are regularly, correctly, invoked here too…milgram’s pilgrims plump for the pogroms).
bodhi the big dog
Dear oz,
I for one have often invoked “sheep” and “sheeple” in my comments.
The difference is that when I did, the solution I proposed was that the sheeple be awakened from their trance, from the Spell of Authority, so that they could become dignified, self-respecting sovereign individuals.
MFW on the other hand, holds the opposite position. He revels in the human master/animal servant relationship, misapplied to fellow human beings. He wants to perpetuate it, exploit it.
I’m sure you’ll agree that the two attitudes are like night and day.
bevin…
“sheeple” is a good, accurate, portmanteau for conformity, the herd behavior of people. or of most people. or of a particular stretch of the non-conformist–conformist continuum (which just happens to also be the fat part of the curve). this behavior is not sleep, or entrancement. there’s nothing to wake from, or snap out of. at least not on the part of the sheeple. bio-alchemists, otoh….
sheep are social ruminants. & prey animals. internal (social) & external (food chain) hierarchies. this analogizes to people. that it “shouldn’t” is some kin relation to egalitarianism (that revolt against nature thing that you’re probably not typically a proponent of)….
predator/prey, whether the usual caloric aspect people reflex to, or the social “predation” pecking order aspect, is a system. the system. vertically integrated. predator & prey need each other, want each other.
napancaps, rejecting predator/prey, reside way out in the thin tail interstice. but some of them are not happy out there in the boonies. or secure. or something. interstitial cystitis, maybe. they want that ancient, massive, vertical to collapse downward into a horizontal, maximally distributed spandex of sovereigns. some may actually be true believers that it’s going to happen – if only they keep writing about it. mighty pens will out against the swords, & all that.
“He revels in the human master/animal servant relationship, misapplied to fellow human beings.”
simpler: he revels in being a part, player/spectator, of the “superior firepower” side. but…he’s not happy, either, & won’t be until that napancap infested nano-interstice crack in “his” foundation is sealed up.
symmetry. a system.
Dear oz,
It may turn out that most sheeple cannot truly be awakened.
If so, that need not be an insurmountable obstacle to the realization of true freedom.
We do not need a majority, only a “critical mass.” What percentage is a critical mass. Hard to pin that down exactly. But history has shown that it is a merely plurality, not an absolute majority.
Bottom line? It can be done.
When I see someone say, “They are sheeple” what I think has happened is: individuals are ACTING like sheep. The reason is, is because they cannot, or refuse to, break free of The System they know.
Everyone has the potential to break free. -Everyone-
But like a rusted & frozen bolt, some people won’t do it without a tremendous effort, and they might break in the process. Like with the Union fella I encountered the other night, some might say, “It’s not worth the effort” “Scrap it and find a different one.”
For every rusted bolt you encounter, it just depends upon how much effort and Time you’re willing to put into it. And in the end, it might break anyway (go fascist blind? Or is that, blindly mindlessly fascist?). …Something like that.
Ha! anyway, ericpersautos.com and LRC are like the PB Blaster for those sheeple acting rusted bolts. Most of ’em anyway, the rest,… they have to learn the hard way, the gooberment will come along and use a hack saw blade on ’em.
Now that i think about it, this kind of relates to the difference as to how I see things and how Jean sees things.
Jean wants to be like the gunverment: get out the cordless hack saw, cut off the bolt head, drill out the rusted bolts and then tap the threads and forget they were ever there or even existed. Just throw Them away.
Me. I want to coat shit in PB Blaster, wait, add a slight bit of torque, then try to get the bolts to go counter-clockwise.
I can understand the desire to use jean’s approach.
But it’s just not my style.
Jeans approach is a last ditch maneuver.
I want to re-use the bolts. Mang.
In a positive manner.
Does that make sense?
Like it took thousands of years to domesticate dogs, it has taken that such time with man.
Dogs revert to dingos in short order and man will revert back to individualism and voluntary cooperation without all the state institutions that domesticate him.
Dear Brent,
Exactly.
For Homo Sapiens, individualism is the natural state. Collectivism is the artificially conditioned state.
This assertion is not rooted arbitrarily in ideological bias. It is rooted objectively in man’s biological nature.
Human beings survive by first ensuring their own individual survival. They do so by exercising their individual judgment about what it takes to survive. After they have succeeded in doing this, they can then help fellow humans survive. This is entirely different from how bees and ants survive.
Human beings are not bees or ants. If human beings were bees or ants, then socialism might well be the proper system to ensure their survival.
Since human beings are not bees or ants, but have evolved to act independently, according to their own best judgment, individualist anarchism, which maximizes human creativity by protecting individual thought and action, is the proper system to ensure human survival.
brent…
“domestication” is nothing more than a rolling up of dominance hierarchies. bigger packs.
there are lone wolves (mcquades?). there can be small, loose associations of lone-ish wolves (jeremiah johnsons at the annual rendevous?). but these are, have always been, exceptions to the rule. waiting, if not pining, for the day anarchic individualism (the real stuff, proved out by real circumstances, as opposed to the teensy emboli of conversational assertions/characterizations coursing within the prevailing beast of hierarchy) is no longer exceptional, well…godot will likely arrive much sooner.
a rousseauian reversion after shtf would mean, at most, smaller packs. & smaller does not necessarily, or even probably, mean small. & the roll-ups would show up again, too; always again. it’s the nature of the social beast. rousseau was full of “noble”* savage shit, hobbes was full of savage savage shit, the latter wanted to force-feed shit, the former wanted plat-o’s full of shit buffets, all you could eat & nothing else on the menu. both were trying to “solve for” human nature (along with innumerable others before, during & after them). & if $ was to be made while “doing good”, who could argue with the bas-turds?☻ but human nature is not a problem to be solved. not in these ‘new soviet man’, megalo project engineering, ways, anyway. states don’t “solve it” – or create it, either – they’re social harnesses deployed by alphas to salivating betas; statelessness wouldn’t poof(!)away alphas, betas, or demand from both for harnesses.
i really have to wonder about some of you’se folks understanding of those “other” human animal folk…(well, not really. psychology….). if you can face it facebook friends, you may live longer – & even prosper. (that’s the real, individual, solution..but its only ever just one possibility).
*yeah, it’s shorthand….
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/02/david-deming/the-noble-savage/
Social behaviour
The dingo’s social behaviour is about as flexible as that of a coyote or gray wolf, which is perhaps one of the reasons it was initially believed that the dingo was descended from the Indian wolf.[41] While young males are often solitary and nomadic in nature, breeding adults will often form a settled pack.[42] However, in areas of the dingo’s habitat with a widely spaced population, breeding pairs remain together, apart from others.[42]
Where conditions are favourable among dingo packs, the pack is stable with a distinct territory and little overlap between neighbors.[43] The size of packs often appears to correspond to the size of prey that appears in the pack’s territory.[43] Desert areas have smaller groups of dingoes with a more loose territorial behaviour and sharing of the water sites.[44] It has been noted that the average monthly pack size was between three and twelve members.[45]
Similar to other canids, a dingo pack largely consists of a mated pair, their current year’s offspring, and occasionally a previous year’s offspring.[43] There are dominance hierarchies both between and within males and females, with males usually being more dominant than females.[43] A few exceptions have been noted in captive packs, however.[43] During travel, while eating prey, or when approaching a water source for the first time, the breeding male will be seen as the leader, or alpha.[46] Subordinate dingoes will approach a more dominant dog in a slightly crouched posture, ears flat and tail down, to ensure peace in the pack.[43] Establishment of artificial packs in captive dingoes have failed.[43]
It – Is – all about waking people Up! This is something I learned from a management perspective. There are no human dogs, no human sheeple, much as it might seem so. There are only people within systems,and those who yearn to be outside them. Imho, you’re still stuck within the system if you think people are the same as dogs.
“Systems allow people to see and also make them blind.”
Beyond all structures
Also, RE: “domestication” is nothing more than a rolling up of dominance hierarchies. bigger packs.”
I can’t see any truth in that.
Have you ever spent some time with a wild animal and it’s equivalent domesticated version?
Packs and ‘dominance hierarchies’ have nothing to do with what makes an animal wild.
If anything, the Dingo link backsup the claim that it’s more about systems and breaking free from them than anything else.
“Establishment of artificial packs in captive dingoes have failed.[43]”
So much for, ““domestication” is nothing more than a rolling up of dominance hierarchies. bigger packs.”
@helot – There is a flaw in your management training. The majority just want drone on in their own world and take their blue pill. You scare them with the red pill story.
Ozy I am not sure what you are trying to say, but what I’ve learned about the schools and the media is how very hard the ruling class works very hard to create domestication. If something takes that much effort to bring about, it’s probably not human nature.
But we are then talking revolution rather than gradual change.
No government program EVER goes away, if they can help it.
Achieve objective, the gravy train stops. (Which has me wondering about HAARP and chemtrails, but I digress.)
UNCF —-FastForwardTo–> NWA [Yeah, THAT was Dr. King’s dream.]
Now, United Negro College Fund might not be the best example, not being a real GOVERNMENT agency… But look at ATF, BATF, BATFE… Or, EEOC, or OSHA, or FBI, or SS (and how those job descriptions have suffered mission creep from Day 1.)
Man won’t revert too well. Man LIKES being domesticated – he’ll DIE rather than admit he’s been poisoned, or – worse – domesticated.
It’s just NOT RIGHT that a man whould WANT To be alone. WANT to be self-sufficient. (And when you look at The Female Imperative, you realize who is master and who is truly slave… But I digress again.)
Most men will die rather than return to feral living. It’s too painful, too much work. Men are too smart for THAT…. Dogs, OTOH, realize they need to get food. If Alpha is dead or doesn’t feed them? “Well, _I_ am Alpha now. Get: food. Good thing other animals are made of food.”
Man isn’t that smart. “I’ll go to the store. And get gas. Wait, there’s no more gas. Car won’t start. Ok, walk to store. [everyone else thought the same thig and store is empty.] No food! Need to get food! Eat: Red Berries.
I don’t feel good…. ”
(Dead man.)
If we toss in a little more variety? Too slow to catch rabbits, squirrels, maybe even mice. Dogs aren’t stupid, they’ll sense when you’re aggressive, and they fight. Cats are FAST when they choose to be, and nasty all the time. (Sometimes including when they want to sit in your lap.) Foxes are sort of small dogs… And harder to find, for that matter. Coons? Good luck! VICIOUS when cornered, able to hide better than we can. Deer? Can’t catch that without tools. Moose, Elk? BEARS? Only if you’re CRAZY…. Not too tough with guns, but our Liberal Loon who thinks he’s Tarzan? HAH!
I know people – including bow hunters – they see a bear, they WALK. AWAY. Bear is big, nasty, strong, and doesn’t need to mean harm – an errant “pat on the back” can kill you. Moose and Elk are not nearly different enough. (Up in NH and even MA, the deal is: AVOID Moose. If you hit a moose, YOU are dead. The moose will walk away. You will not. Your car will be demolished. The moose will realize you and tha car are not edible, and go on his/her way. Moose will not even dial 911 for you. Nor is there a need, really….)
Anyway, I’m droning away. I’ll stop. Dogs? Easy to revert. Man? Too smart for his own good, especially once domesticated. Government packs up tomorrow, there’s rioting in the streets, and jungle law, and domesticated man? He dies.
The dogs form packs and go hunting…
You really, really ought to read up on some of these things before you come up with stuff like that.
Even at “the most rudimentary tribal level” there are already always three major demarcations: senior people, junior people and complete outsiders, i.e. non-members of each particular tribe who it is acceptable to attack as unpeople (their own tribes have them as insiders, though). In the more “primitive” versions (which doesn’t mean cruder, it means nearer the origins, like “Primitive Christianity”), seniority is just that: you get to be an elder if you live long enough and don’t get driven out first. In more advanced versions like Scottish Highland Clans the demarcations had become somewhat hereditary, so it was more a matter of an inner group and an outer one. Many systems had elements of both. (Other distinctions and relations with outsiders could and did occur, but these were the major ones that stratified most people most of the time.)
All the systems that superseded that sort of thing did so by adapting it rather than replacing it wholesale. They always ended up with an upper class replacing the senior/inner group and a middle class replacing the junior/outer group, with a “new” underclass taking the position of outsiders relative to the others, though they were no longer physically outside. These systems all needed a middle class to work at all, just as the backbone of any army is its N.C.O.s, even though, again, there was much variation I need not go into here. Even Sparta wasn’t just Spartiates and Helots but had Perioeci too.
So, no, never, not nowise, not nohow, has it ever been anything like your imaginary “[m]asters and serfs at root is what is normal for humans at anything beyond the most rudimentary tribal level”. That simply does not work, because it’s just too hard to keep the underdogs under with nobody else to help (middle classes always gained from helping the upper classes, since they stayed above the bottom that way and individuals always did have some chance of rising themselves).
Now, there is vastly more I could tell you along those lines if I had world enough and time, but for now you should learn this beginning of wisdom: you do not actually know what you are on about, so it behooves you to listen more than talk.
Interesting/thought provoking read. I took the bother to gather some actual numbers regarding the lives saved vs cost by the auto airbag.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1293/we-know-air-bags-can-kill-people-do-they-actually-save-anybody
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-01/esv/esv18/CD/Files/18ESV-000500.pdf
Turns out that if a person routinely uses seat belts that the airbag has very little additional utility. The issue then revolves around the ethics of compelling folks to not stupidly kill themselves. For me it boils down to the utility (net lives saved, health preserved) vs level of intrusion upon those with sufficient wit to not need the paternalism of the Community. Is anyone at this point going to step up & insist that the NAP forbids protecting children from their own ignorance/immaturity? IF NOT, then why would it be unreasonable to protect the mentally feeble from themselves?
Back to airbags- On the assumption that arms are going to be twisted in support of auto safety no matter what I tend to go with ‘you WILL wear seat belts’, period and return the rather ineffective airbag to an area of 100% choice based on the not at all insignificant risk to kids and significant cost without benefit to the economy.
MFW in his infinite wisdom and compassion declares that
“The issue then revolves around the ethics of compelling folks to not stupidly kill themselves.”
Wow. Such noblesse! Thank you massa for your benevolence.
Here’s a clue:
Other peoples’ lives belong to them. Decisions about what is or isn’t safe will be made by them, not you.
You have no say in the matter. None of your FUCKING BUSINESS.
GOT IT???
Mike,
The utilitarian/paternalistic argument is dangerous because almost all of us do (or don’t do) something that could arguably increase our “risk” of some sort of harm.
You cannot – as a matter of principle – insist that other adults wear a seat belt (and threaten them with assault if they disobey your order) and then object when someone insists that you lose 20 pounds – or else. Exercise – or else. Not exercise “excessively” – or else. Only eat “in moderation” – or else. Not get “too angry” – or else. Abjure kayaking – or else. Not work “too hard” – or else… and so on, ad infinitum.
It’s a recipe for the suffocating busybody society we have today.
I’d rather people leave one another be until someone’s actions result in a tangible harm to others.
Each of us has an absolute right to risk harming ourselves, if that’s our choice. Whether some other person is uncomfortable with or disapproves of our choice is not our problem – because our choices with regard to our personal affairs are no one else’s got-damned business!
This keeps the busybodies off our backs – and leaves us free to live our lives as we see fit.
Ultimately, it’s a question of ownership.
Do you own yourself? Or are you owned by others?
Eric asks: “Do you own yourself? Or are you owned by others?”
Of course the answer is that you most certainly don’t. You are owned by the collective known as an insurance company.
Absolute rubbish. Each individual remains completely responsible for their own lives, actions and choices. They remain responsible for the consequences of those actions and choices. Trying to palm off responsibility onto someone else is very tempting to a lot of people, but they WILL reap the consequences ultimately, one way or another.
You can attempt to give ownership of your life to someone else, some “government,” some “insurance cartel,” but in the end you remain responsible for the consequences. None of those “others” can retain control without the cooperation of most of those they attempt to “own.”
If a thug attempts to mug you, he doesn’t therefore “own” you… unless you submit.
But Mama, the choices always end up in the same place: You can play ball and have all that human beings have created, or you can opt out and have nothing. Living “off grid” sounds romantic until you actually do it for a while.
Eric_G, not even close.
Everyone has a choice – to own themselves or to be slaves. Right now, too many people think yours is the only choice, unfortunately.
I love technology, and embrace as much as I can of it to live better. The “grid” might be a viable thing if everyone was free to choose… and might not be viable after all, of course. I know a lot of people who live “off the grid,” to one extent or another, and are very happy and productive.
I’ve “opted out” as much as is possible for my age and condition, and nobody can say I “have nothing.” I have a home, food, good neighbors and friends, a dog and lots of guns. I also have no debts and few things left in life that I need yet to obtain. What more could I want? 🙂 And what could any bunch of slave masters contribute to that? All they wish to do is rob and control me and you.
“Ultimately, it’s a question of ownership.
Do you own yourself? Or are you owned by others?”
You keep dancing around this so lets try again-
Is anyone at this point going to step up & insist that the NAP forbids protecting children from their own ignorance/immaturity? IF NOT, then why would it be unreasonable to protect the mentally feeble from themselves?
The NAP rests upon a false view of human nature- that humans are universally free and independent like a wolf. In the Real World most humans are more like a dog- happy and content in the service of a good master and prone to a nasty brutish short life in the absence of a benign master. Among the masters NAP may well be a proper ground rule for social interaction but try to apply such to humanity as a whole…………………lunacy.
Straw Man Alert!
Straw Man Alert!
Straw Man Alert!
Children are the responsibility of their parents until they reach maturity.
Is it even necessary to say this?
Sheesh.
“In the Real World most humans are more like a dog”
Wow.
“Children are the responsibility of their parents until they reach maturity.
Is it even necessary to say this?”
Certainly, as your sort are under the self-imposed Illusion that the majority adult in size/age but child in mental maturity population which makes your intensely desired mode of social organisation impossible does not exist.
Above MFW demonstrates how people’s views are shaped through the institutions established by the ruling class. It’s an expression of the late 19th and early 20th century views of why the ruling class must shape and control society.
Much like “climate change” data was altered to fit theory. In this case it has been done to break people of their independence. That is to domesticate them. Like dogs.
One of the key aspects of doing so in the US of A was the establishment of the “public” school system. Prior to that schools were established and run very locally at the smallest level. The way children were taught did not condition them into being dependent. That all changed with the public schools.
These being top down and centralized where kids were sorted by age, responded to bells, etc and so on. Education was largely replaced by training and conditioning. See John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Iserbyt for I cannot condense thousands of pages of their work into this space.
But let us for the sake of argument say there are some people who are of this nature, again we see what we are told, what we are conditioned to believe leaking through in MFW’s comment. One thing about government schools is teaching people at young age that things should move at the pace of the slowest ship in the fleet. MFW articulates through his justification that because some people need to be ruled, all should be.
But, MFW or someone else would point out to me that MFW says it is human nature, not that some are slow, but its human nature. Well quite obviously if we are to be ruled, to have a master, these humans who are masters, must not suffer from this condition. They must be independent. Every wolf pack has an alpha male. So clearly it is only some people that need a master, not all, because the masters aren’t of a different species… or are they?
Putting the idea of earth being ruled by shape-shifting lizard people aside, our turn of the century ruling class had and likely still has the belief that they are a different species. From this we got stories like HG Wells’ “The Time Machine” where two species develop along class lines. The working class becomes the morlocks and the upper class the eloi.
That’s why we are considered animals. Human resources for them to do with as they please, no different than any other livestock. That we need a master as MFW puts it.
I realize this a long post, but I felt it necessary to explain in as little space as I could what MFW puts forth, like most cloverian thought isn’t original. It’s what we are shaped into believing so the ruling class can go about doing what they want to us. There’s no unique insight into human nature here, it’s the false premise that the rulers intentionally condition us with so we won’t act independently, so we don’t develop independence.
Mike,
The only one dancing here is you – in your flat-footed attempt to discredit non-aggression.
Children are the responsibility of their parents or rightful caretakers until they reach the age of emancipation. (When is that? It varies according to the child, on a case-by-case basis. There are very mature 16 year-olds fully able to function in the adult world; and there are 25-year-olds who are the very definition of “childish,” notwithstanding that biologically, they are adults).
You do not anyone’s else’s kids, in any event. Therefore, you have no right to control them.
No harm necessarily comes from riding in a car without air bags. Generations grew up riding in such cars. Your predictable Cloveronian premise – “someone” might get hurt, ergo it’s justified to violently interfere pre-emptively with everyone – is one I’ve already dissected several times before and won’t bother to do again because your uneducable. You believe you own other people; you feel you have a right to do them violence not because they’ve done you any violence – but because you don’t like what they are doing. It annoys you. It alarms you. But until it hurts you in some tangible way, it ain’t none of your concern, son.
Your comment that humans are dogs tells us much about your contempt for others – and also for yourself.
PS: I’m also intrigued by your British-isms. No American I’ve ever met spells organization “organisation.” Or behavior “behaviour.”
I mentioned this because another recurrent troll/government shill who plagues these pages is also an auslander. Curious, that.
Two Cheers Eric!!!! You are able to acknowledge that children really aren’t capable of self-rule. NOW…….why are you unable to admit that there are many , many, many folks who at 35/45/55/……105……….will STILL be incapable of self-rule. I wager you know personally dozens of such people just as do we all.
‘PS: I’m also intrigued by your British-isms. No American I’ve ever met spells organization “organisation.” Or behavior “behaviour.” ‘
Started doing that in the Hannity Forums about 8 – 9 years ago. It made the regulars angry to be told that the Bush Wars were criminal. It stroked them out to think that they were being told such by a Brit or worse yet a Canadian.
Mike,
Your argument is a straw man argument. Children are not adults – and vice versa.
And, moreover, it doesn’t make it right to treat 35-year-old “Smith” as if he were an idiot 12-year-old, because 40-year-old “Jones” has acted like an idiot 12-year-old.
The bottom line remains: No one has the right to initiate aggression against anyone, ever – for any reason.
Right on Eric ,the disrespect inherent in modern society norms are at the root of a lot of societal problems now.I have noticed (possibly its me ) that the johnny come lately people that are joining our society have a lot of disrespect or is it a morally superior attitude ,not pointing fingers (there are bad apples in every bushel ) ,the problem is this ,I hail from a time when the customer was right ,not someone to be sassed and thrown from the shop.
Stand back a little and think this through. Those British spellings are the ones that that very U.S. educational system stole from you. They actually make far more sense once you know why they are the way they are and what they are derived from. Also, any crack about “auslander” is revealing, too: it shows just how much your culture drew from Germany as it distanced itself from its origins, albeit covertly (just like that educational system, taken from Germany).
Hi PM,
Certainly! I wasn’t casting aspersions … toward Brits (or British spelling). Just trying to suss out a Clover!
Common Mike, admit you are really Valerie Jarrett on coffee break.
“… the Obamas’ pit bull, a woman loyal only to the president, first lady and her own image.”
From an online article on Jarrett.
Since we’re talking dogs, pit bull seems appropriate.
Had to look it up. I confess I didn’t know who she was. Been away from ‘Murca too long I guess. No idea who all these Very Important People are.
@Bevin – All you need to know is that she writes, edits, proof reads then uploads to Pinocchio’s teleprompter. Susan Rice is another winner he has to make his non golf & basketball decisions for him. But the poor girl has been having some problems lately.
“It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.”
— Ayn Rand
“Mike From Wichita” speaks to us of dogs and masters, and intends to be the master.
So says the self-appointed Gauleiter of Kansas, from beautiful downtown Wichita.
Ya gotta laugh. After all, the real “Masters of the Universe” in MFW’s mental universe, are the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, the Illuminati kingmakers who control the central banks of the Western world.
Where does this Hayseed Hitler from Kansas rank in this PTB hierarchy? I’d say closer to “dog” than “master.”
LOL.
http://blog.screenweek.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/masters-of-the-universe.jpg
Sorry… couldn’t resist.
He-Man!
No one in Eternia ever noticed that he’s Adam with a tan and a loincloth…
Hey, don’t apologize.
That’s actually not far removed from how the PTB think of themselves — and look!
http://www.hangthebankers.com/photos-from-a-1972-rothschild-illuminati-party/
Did you ever see “Eyes Wide Shut?” Scary film.
“Hayseed Hitler” . . . just spilled my eff’ing coffee, Bevin!
Dear Eric,
Glad you liked it!
Fantastic comment!
I’ve tried to argue that there is no such thing as the public good, only opinions. The control freaks don’t get it. They cannot accept that someone would think differently than them.
Remember if it saves one life we must have the mandate. If the mandate kills a few people, well…. doesn’t matter. It’s truly a sick mindset and I am afraid it is a conditioned one.
” …there is no such thing as the public good, only opinions.”
Exactly. A very important to harp on. Just as we ought to harp on the violence Clovers insist on to impose their opinions.
Brent, “public good” is a key word sorta like ‘national security’ in my view, total bullshit. Last week four of us drivers piled into a crewcab. When we got to the highway, the driver started grousing and so did the rest since we’d all been pounding the pavement hustling 80,000 lb loads all day without seat belts, a case the NHSTA could never make for big rigs since it’s a 50/50 deal whether you want to be INSIDE one or thrown out when they wreck. Lots of drivers would be dead if they’d been belted in when the rig did the upside down thing.
Indeed, and if they “save lives,” why no seat belts on a bus, even a school bus? The lap belt in an airplane is also silly. You are crammed into such a small space, you can hardly get OUT of the seat when you want to anyway. And the old fashioned buckles… what a joke. No seat belts on motorcycles, bicycles? Do golf carts have seat belts? It’s been 50 years since I rode on a train, but I’ll bet there are no seat belts even now, on any sort of train or subway. In fact, I heard folks have to stand up in the subway cars. How can that be “safe?”
I do use the seat belt in the car when I go out onto the highway. I put the upright belt under my holster. Keeps it from riding up to choke me, and leaves the gun clear if I need to draw quickly. Not what the “safety nazis” had in mind, perhaps… 🙂
Mama, let me add “anti-lock” brakes to that too. I had a car pull out right in front of me when going 40mph, the PSL. I whipped into the other lane of stopped traffic to avoid killing at least the driver of that little car, and probably his GF too. My brakes decided when I nailed them hard to stop behind traffic it would be entertaining to thwart my efforts and just barely let any pressure go to the brakes. After all the explosive noise was over, my Chevy one ton had totaled a new Chevy pickup in front of me and damaged one in front of him. Everybody walked away but I noticed the new pickup didn’t deploy and air bag even though the headlights and parking lamps were hanging out the front on their wiring. When you can’t get a vehicle to reproduce that, they tend to blame it on you since blaming it on GM would cost them money. 4 years later that rebuilt pickup did the same thing twice in one week pulling a trailer leaving me to slowly run through two intersections thankfully with no accidents. I pulled the wires for the brakes and that pickup stopped like it had anchors after that.
What’s bad about it, GM still makes the best truck out there(I use them every day for various things and all three brands that come with diesels. Unfortunately, neither Dodge nor Ford compares to GM and that’s a shame.
I once tried the Nissan thing but the skin was so thin and the engine so prone to blowing head gaskets as were Toyotas, I had to give up on them.
If any of the Japanese pickups would make a big frame and diesel power along with 8′ beds, like the big 3 do, I’d give them a try.
I drove a big Dodge Tradesman van for many long years and the only complaint was that the engine was underpowered pretty badly. We put in a V8 (and boy, was that fun), then ran the tail off it for a lot more years.
No “anti-lock” brakes on it, since this was in the ’60s, which was a very good thing. One late evening I was returning home with a big load of feed and hay in the van, and started down a steep winding road into the valley where we lived. I must have run over something sharp (never saw it) and the right front tire blew out. Thank goodness there was no other traffic because I was suddenly on the other side of the road, fighting the steering wheel and praying hard. I knew better than to stand on the brakes, but it was hard to resist as the edge of the road, and the drop off beyond that, came rushing toward me. The miracle was that there was no spin, and the whole thing stayed upright. The weight in the back may have been a deciding factor, I guess. I don’t know enough about it to say.
I finally wrestled the van to a halt, too near the edge for comfort, and sat there shaking like mad for a while. Then I set the hand brake, climbed out and walked to the nearest house to call my husband. He came and changed the tire, then got the beast home. At that point I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to drive anything ever again. 🙂
We discovered that the tire was completely trashed, and so was the rim. It was a miracle I survived.
Now, add anti-lock brakes to that mess. You all probably have a much better idea what the outcome would have been then. I don’t want to think about it. 🙂
Yep, Mama, sometimes there’s just no alternative to heavy duty. I don’t ever argue with those who point out I drive a huge pickup with one person in it(I take umbrage though when they don’t take Cholley Jack into consideration, hell, he’s more civilized than lots of people I know and fully appreciates the extra cab or crewcab
Mama, not make sense? We call that “kitty” computer control since I had my reply “sent” by an errant paw. I guess I’d made my point though and he was simply keeping me from dragging on.
I have an old college buddy with a Prius he bought for his wife and himself simply because it was the PC thing to do. He lives on the Tx. plains where you can see a flashing light at an intersection for literally 30 miles, maybe further. His ugly ass Prius got beaten to nothing in a big hail storm and I told him he had the perfect opportunity to trade it for a long legged diesel car that would return good mileage, just ignore the hot Tx. sun(no way in most vehicles, Prius included)and last forever. Another old buddy cut in since his wife has a Prius too and accused me of wanting to be a high school diesel racer. Stupid is as stupid does. I committed the unforgiveable sin of saying Prius’s are butt-ugly though and I had offended him even though I wasn’t even speaking to him. He took me to task over a diesel not capable of understanding I suppose that dragging 25,000 lb trailers wasn’t something you want to do with even a gas engine pickup much less a Prius or his fav, a Toyota pickup. These guys are so caught up in their own PC world(both wives are school teachers and so was the guy who had the beaten Prius, never mind he’s dyslexic and only approves of things other people like him approve of). Sure, diesel stinks, almost as much as gasoline I pointed out. Some people simply never get it. Just think how happy you’d have been to have a diesel in that Tradesman (some people used to install Perkins diesels in those things and they were great). Something both never considered though, I rarely see a diesel pickup burnt to a crisp and commonly see all sorts of gasoline cars that seem to just catch fire and burn for reasons I’m sure I don’t know.
Now if I could only figure out how to get that 14 L Cat into a pickup……..
Eightsouthman wrote on June 23, 2014 at 9:46 pm:-
I have heard that biodiesel exhaust smells more like the animal fat or vegetable oil used to make it, and that some people find it quite pleasant.
The seat belt in a plane is so you don’t get tossed around in turbulence. That’s its value. I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t want my head crashing into the overhead bin.
It’s always a balance between the risk and convenience and cost. If we really wanted crash safety in cars we’d have survival cells, roll cages, and proper harnesses. Not airbags. Racing technology instead of airbags. I’d probably pay for the racing stuff if the airbags could be deleted.
The seat belt is usually a mandated piece of safety equipment. Whatever its history is irrelevant. In cases where it is a government mandated device, it’s inappropriate to speak in terms of risk, convenience, cost and other market variables.
You can’t mix and match. Something is either offered up for sale to potential buyers as something they may or may not want to purchase. And things like convenience, risk, and cost can be discussed. Or something is decreed to exist.
If something is mandated by government. Every other consideration is incidental or irrelevant. Because now there is no market. Government always in all cases means the total absence of a market.
Speaking in other terms would be no different than cotton plantation slaves discussing what kinds of crops they are best at harvesting. And why their master is preferable to the cruel and violent master down the lane.
It’s just idle chatter, of no real consequence one way or the other.
Slaves are outside of the market. They have no choice or input. In any case where you are forced into using government mandated capital, you are for all intents and purposes, a complete and abject slave. Don’t flatter yourself as being anything more.
Dear Tor,
“Government always in all cases means the total absence of a market.”
Correct. That may sound extreme, but it is in fact dead accurate.
Societies will never be truly free until the “public sector vs. private sector” dichotomy becomes an obsolete term.
The so-called “public sector” can only exist by virtue of goonvermin coercion. That is why people will be free from goonvermin coercion
only when the dichotomy is eradicated entirely, and everything under the sun is “private sector,” without being labeled as such.
The airbag approach is one giant farce.
We already know the best way to ensure maximum crashworthiness. We’ve know for decades, from race car experience.
If one is really determined to maximize passive safety in a motor vehicle, simply replicate the roll cage and safety harness found in a rally car.
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQll8eF8Z_ucKY54uMP3WdeVVsySoag18MpJkFtB0dZZkfKrqP2QQ
Obviously for an ordinary street vehicle, one would dial this down for the sake of space efficiency.
Morning, Bevin!
Indeed.
Of course, the best way to survive a crash is to avoid crashing!
On the street, this is eminently feasible. A crash is still possible, certainly. But one can reduce the odds of it happening to almost nil by being an attentive, skilled driver. Just as one can dramatically reduce the chances of ever developing diabetes by not becoming a disgusting fat body and avoiding certain foods/habits.
I’m comfortable without an air bag (or seat belt) in a street car because I am confident in my ability to avoid a serious accident. I assess the risk to be low and regard the cost of air bags to be excessive relative to their benefit – which (for me) is negligible.
But the bottom line here is (as you know): Free choice.
Each of us has a different comfort level with regard to risk. Each of us differ in terms of our abilities as drivers. We each have varying financial means and priorities.
It’s our business – as individuals – to decide how much “safety” we wish to have built into our vehicles. The notion that some Clover (Clovers) have any business dictating such things to us is risible as well as extremely offensive.
Dear Eric,
Yes! Absolutely! The bottom line, as always, is that the individual must decide for himself. Nobody has the right to override the individual’s decisions about his own life.
I was merely pointing out how the clovers don’t even know how to implement safety even though they yammer on about it ad nauseum.
If they bothered to educate themselves first before ramming counterproductive “solutions” down other peoples’ throats by force, they would realize the solutions have been staring them in the face.
Car buffs have seen how astonishingly survivable horrendous crashes can be, with genuine safety equipment. Rally cars in particular race along ordinary roadways at breakneck speeds. They occasionally roll over multiple times or slam into immovable objects on the roadside. Yet the drivers and navigators often emerge from the wreckage with only a few bruises.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g81TCS1NMaU
Thanks for the confirmation and exposition, we each must affirm endlessly in a thousand variations of these until such time as it becomes de rigeuer.
No one now in control of the means of production, nor in command of the commons, is going to say what should be said to us. Or tell us what we should do to regain self-ownership and full title to our bodies, minds, possessions, and lives.
We’ll all have to be our own damn John Stuart Mills, and Tune Out all their insipid GotDamn decoy Stuart Smalleys!
Minor correction, mandated seatbelts aren’t capital, self-service shackles is a better term for them.
Maybe most of you want to sing White Negro spirituals about divine glory hallelujah shackles of safety, and shared greatness of the self-service plantation innovation, and by all means have at it.
Just don’t expect us all to join in like Uncle Remus in Song of the South with you: “Plenty of mandates coming today. My Oh my, what a wonderful way…” That’s never going to happen.
Eric you say that your superior driving will keep you away from accidents? What about that big 4 wheel drive truck that was behind me last winter and passed me on the interstate, I called him an idiot and seconds later he went flying through the ditch. Eric he could just as well lost control and smashed into me and I do not care how good of a driver you are if a guy loses control on poor roads right into you it is impossible to do anything. What if you are driving along a highway and with poor lighting or if you came flying over a hill in such a way that the guy did not see you coming at 75 mph in a 55 mph zone and pulled out in front of you. Good luck with that one.
Yes accidents can happen to anyone. Just like the race car driver killing himself and another person driving 90+ mph in a 45 mph zone. You could just as well have been driving where he lost control.
How about if you are driving down the highway and a car is coming the other way. He looks fine until you almost get up to him when the drunk pulls into your lane. Good luck with that one. Yes Eric a good driver can reduce that chance of an accident but there is still a good chance you could get into one some day. Just like the tree that you hit.
What I “say,” Clover, is that my “safety” – my life – do not concern you. You are not my parent, not my master.
You therefore have no business – no right – to force me (or anyone else) to buy an air bag.
That’s the issue here.
Eric you are right that I could care less what happens to you. I flat out don’t care. I do care that if you buy a special order car without any safety devices and you later sell that car to 16 year old kid. Eric I care about that kid not you. He does not know any better but you are supposedly an adult that should know better.
Tell us Eric what is the cost going to be for everyone else if a hand full of your friends decide there is a need to change the entire auto production line to leave something out for a few stupid people?
That kid is none of your business either, Clover. Unless he’s your kid.
If not, he is his parent’s business. Not yours.
What you really want, Clover, is what you’ve admitted: To force others to subsidize things you want.
And of course, to control others.
Again, I realize this analogy is wasted on you – because you’re unintelligent (or simply dishonest), but:
I really like the Mercedes S550 I am evaluating this week. I think you and all your friends should be forced to buy one so that the cost comes down and I can then afford to buy one myself.
How about it, Clover?
Eric you missed the point. A production line and designs were done with safety devices that 99.9 percent of people want and which have proven to save 10s of thousands of lives. The cables were set up for it, the computer is set up for it, the assembly line is set up for it. Tell us with your world of wisdom what it is actually going to cost extra to redesign and change out the line so that Eric and a couple of his friends can have what they want eliminated? Are you willing to spend the extra 100 thousand dollars so you can have the car the way that you want it or are you going to make me pay for the added costs? I already know that you would not pay my higher insurance cost for every car that does not have safety devices. If my neighbor has the same insurance company that I have and they happen to hit a person like you that does not have any safety devices and is in the hospital for weeks, then my insurance costs go up. You would be making my costs go up.
Tell us Eric if 99.99 percent of people want power windows and you do not then who is going to put up the bill for the cost of the redesign and assembly line changes just for you?
Yes Eric I know you do not give a rats ass about a 16 year old kid. Libertarians care for no others besides themselves. I know, you do not donate or volunteer for anything to help others. I am very glad I do not have any family members or friends like you.
Clover,
Even if “99.9 percent” want air bags – which is utter bullshit – they still don’t have the right to force the remainder to buy them.
Get it?
Utility is not the issue. Economics (economies of scale) is not the issue.
The issue, Clover, is whether you or anyone else have the right to forcibly impose your wants on others.
You don’t.
PS: Power windows are not mandatory, by the way – and you can still buy a new car without them.
And: If air bags are so wonderful, so desired by “99.9” percent – why must they be mandatory, Clover? How come they could not succeed in the market when they were not mandatory?
PS: I care about that 16-year-old’s rights. His parents’ rights, too. Their right to not be dictated to by you.
PS: That wreck I was in back in ’87? No air bag in my ’78 Camaro. Walked away with cuts and scratches. Objective proof I did not “need” an air bag.
As if that’s any of your business, regardless.
Except, Clover, your ilk is determined to mandate that motorcycles have air bags, too.
PS: One rides bike and drives a car.
Poor ol’ Clover… .
Eric, it seems to me you waste a lot of precious time and words on this imbecile. It’s obvious to me he is only here to disrupt. From his typing style, I’d guess he’s probably in the 14-18 age range. It may be time to give up on him. He may find his way on his own someday, (one can hope) but it’s not going to happen here. He has too much invested in opposing you in this forum. Let’s have some fun with him on occasion, but I think it’s time to stop trying in vain to reason with him. He has some maturing to do before he is ready for the ever so frightening concept of freedom.
Clover, I’ve had your ilk pull out in front me, forcing me to take evasive action, when I am doing the PSL. You’ve defended this behavior. Repeatedly.
The problem is not the speed of the driver on the road, the problem is the attitude of the person pulling out who demands others take evasive action for him. A selfish person who cannot wait for a gap in traffic. Another thing you argue for, that a person should not have to wait when pulling out into traffic. Why not leave earlier?
Hi Eric,
Thanks for another excellent article. To bolster your point about the sociopathic nature of “regulators”, the Fed gov and the NHTSA were well aware of the dangers posed by airbags (at least two decades before they were mandated). Yet, they conspired with automakers to keep this information hidden from the public. Their concern was that airbags would not become “normalized” if the public knew that they posed a significant safety risk (especially to children). It was not until after airbags were mandated (and normalized) that the NHTSA came clean about the risks. Of course, to these deranged lunatics, a few dead children is an acceptable price to pay to make these “safety” devices standard. After all, to a regulator, telling people the truth and letting them decide for themselves is unthinkable.
As to ML’s point, according to a mechanic friend of mine, when airbags were first introduced, it was illegal to disable them (I’m sure Eric knows more about this). It wasn’t until after people started dying in sufficient numbers, that a disabling mechanism became available. Although, I still think this is not available for the driver side airbag (again, Eric probably knows more).
Jeremy
Actually the risks were brought up by the automakers in the debate to mandate them. Or specifically the unbelted male standard. It was the last mandate the automakers put up a real fight against.
The claybrookians and naderites portrayed the automakers as liars that cared more about their bottom lines than people. The regulators knew best and the result was people being killed in minor collisions. Then we ended up with convoluted set up we have today because the regulators could not admit they were wrong.
I have still never figured out how to disable the air bags in my 13 year old Saturn. If the one in the steering wheel hit me, regardless of whether there was a crash or not, it would probably kill me. I’m only 5 ft. tall, and sit very close to the steering wheel because my legs are short. It is a real worry to me sometimes.
But excellent additional incentive not to hit anything, of course. 🙂 For whatever that’s worth.
Hi Mama,
Do you have your owner’s manual? It probably has a a diagram for the fuse box. If the air bag is on its own circuit – no other accessories on that circuit – you could pull the fuse, which would de-power the air bag and render it inert.
Yes, I have the manual. It lists a “minifuse” for the “Air Bags, Sensing & Diagnostic Module (SDM). Supposedly marked inside the fuse box.
I did ask my mechanic and he about swallowed his gum… doesn’t want to be involved, to say the least… which made me very nervous about it. I have been too chicken to attempt anything, but really think I must just cowboy up and get ‘er done.
Hi Mama,
The mechanic is just covering his ass. First, it’s illegal for him to disable the bag. A serious bust if caught. Second, he probably worries about the chance that if he did disable the bag and later, the person wrecked and was injured or killed, they’d come after him for disabling the bag.
Here’s the skinny: If the fuse is just for the air bag, pulling it will not in any way affect the rest of the car. It will simply de-power the bag. The “SRS” fault light might come on – but it means nothing. Well, it means nothing in so far as how the car runs and drives. IF you have “safety” inspections in your area, the car will fail if the “SRS” light is on.
Of course, you could always re-install the fuse just prior to inspection….
Yes, the mechanic told me that he was very fearful about disabling the thing and we live in such a lawsuit happy world that I don’t blame him for being cautious.
No, we don’t have any idiot “inspections” here, thank goodness. I’ll go out this evening and see if I can find the fuse thing and pull its tooth. 🙂
What’s amazing is that I can’t ever remember having a fuse go bad in all the years I’ve been driving. Sort of funny to have the first one go deliberately. Maybe I could “fry” it a little and then put it back? LOL Then, if anyone ever gets nosy it just “failed.”
Hi Mama,
It should be easy to find the correct fuse – and remove it. I would not replace it with a “fried” (damaged) one. Just leave it out.
If the air bag is on its own separate circuit, nothing else ought to be affected. It’s an easy and completely free way to disable the filthy thing.
Just read about a new, advanced “knee airbag” on the 2015 mustang…
Hi Fritz,
Yup. Several new/2014s have them also.
The S Class Mercedes I’ve got this week, for one.
But it’s not just high-end cars. Several on the “bread and butter” level also have them.
Six or more air bags is becoming very common.
Well, I refused to buy a new 06 Tacoma until they found one with the optional side curtain airbags. Gladly paid the extra price. So when airbags are new, in correctly operating condition, the risk/reward ratio is very attractive to me. Your mileage apparently varies.
But one of the side issues you raise, does concern me. How long will correctly functioning airbags last? 5 years? 15 years? Does it totally vary, depending on the design, and materials used? Do you have any source of reliable info about this?
Now you have me wondering if the full set of airbags in my 10 year old Acura TL might deploy incorrectly….or not at all! 😉
Hi Mike,
I was reading through the owner’s manual of a then-new Range Rover about two years back and found – under “air bags” – that the manufacturer recommended replacement of the bags and propellant at 12 years. You can imagine what that would cost…
Especially since some of the newer luxury cars come with as many as 11 airbags.
I agree with Mike – when they work, they work well. The problem is that people’s expectations are all out of whack. They think that they’ll be surrounded by a comfy pillow, when the reality is that they explode with the force of a 20ga, and their purpose is to be a last-ditch effort to save your life.
Hi Chip,
Except, of course, that there have been instances when the bags did not work – or “worked” when they should not have (deployed for no reason while the car was being driven with the result that the driver wrecked and – in at least a few cases – ended up dead).
Are these “just a few” cases? Relative to all the “lives saved” – as Clover would put it?
Perhaps so. But it’s utterly beside the point. The dead people are dead – because some other person arrogated to himself the power to place them in what turned out to be harm’s way. By what right does one man assume power to dictate life and death decisions to another man?
Again: I have nothing against air bags as such. Just as I don’t “hate” diapers. I just don’t feel any need for either and so – weirdo that I am – would rather not be forced to buy them.
“If there’s even one thing we can do, if there’s just one life we can save—we’ve got an obligation to try.”
— Barack Obama
The Naderite clover approach to safety.
But when their one size fits all “solution” goes awry, suddenly that “one life” counts for nothing.
Then it’s “You can’t make an omlet without breaking a few eggs,” and “It’s all for the Greater Good.”
Sickening.