Maybe it's just the backache, but I am a hostile man this morning, and the thing that's cocking my hammer is the concept of zoning laws. Why the Hell should should a blob of politicians and their hired hands assume full authority over everything a home owner wants to do around the place?
Answer: Because the local political blob listens to unfulfilled little old people with nothing better to do than vote and bitch about the way other people live.
I propose a better way. End all zoning codes now. Create one single replacement sanctioning Prolonged Gross and Insufferable Prickishness in Violation of Contemporary Community Standards. The penalty for petty complaints would be high enough to discourage Aunt Tilly from calling the mayor in a fit of pique about the neighbors' yard-mowing habits.
The new law might also stifle these expensive and endless squabbles about whether your new storage shed will be six inches too close to the property line. What sentient life-form really gives a sweet rat's ass?
(No, nothing personal going on here, though if I decide to publicly explain the back ache I may have a bit to say about a strange disease wherein the mention of docks sends politicians into paroxysms of applied idiocy.)
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 11, 2010
He Speaks
He can be forgiven the pompous tone. Today's commemoration justifies a measure of formality. But words represent ideas, and ideas have consequences.
"If there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: We are one nation — one people — bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals," the president said Saturday ....
...eine volk, eine reich, eine fuhrer, Mr. President?*
"One nation" is all right, but, Sir, we are not "one people." We never intended ourselves to be a blob of metabolizing protein.
The United States is the idea of 320 million discrete, individual human beings, united by the beauty and the logic of personal sovereignty and voluntary cooperation. The result of that interaction among free men and women is the nationhood you speak of.
---
*Objections to premature Godwinisms duly noted.
"If there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: We are one nation — one people — bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals," the president said Saturday ....
...eine volk, eine reich, eine fuhrer, Mr. President?*
"One nation" is all right, but, Sir, we are not "one people." We never intended ourselves to be a blob of metabolizing protein.
The United States is the idea of 320 million discrete, individual human beings, united by the beauty and the logic of personal sovereignty and voluntary cooperation. The result of that interaction among free men and women is the nationhood you speak of.
---
*Objections to premature Godwinisms duly noted.
Sep 10, 2010
Sep 9, 2010
Only in SUX
Sioux City folks announce this year's Kingdom of Riverssance.
It's a festival down by the river -- the Big Sioux or the Missouri, don't know or care which.
As a public service I report a suspicion that "Riverssance" is a Chamber of Commerce guy's brainstorm. "Hey, y'know, Riverssance, like we combine river and renaissance, y'know."
And everyone on the committee agrees it is a really fun name.
Blecchh. SUX
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