There's a libertarian argument which has turned into a talking point against the American Civil War which posits that slavery in the South would have ended naturally of its own accord as it was an economically non-viable practice; thus, the deaths of nearly 600,000 Americans were wasted in this regard. Putting aside the point that libertarians are attempting to have it both ways on the Civil War -- that it wasn't really about slavery (I agree with this, by the way -- it was about money), yet it took a war to end the practice -- I think the evidence is indisuptable that slavery is indeed economically viable, even controlling for fugitive slave laws and the like. In other words, even if the state did not legislate to the benefit of slaveowners, the practice would still have been viable.

Now, it may well be that in the theoretical Ancapistan/Libertopia, social norms and conventions would make owning slaves unendurable, but this doesn't have to be the case. It could well be that someone made his fortune and built a self-sustaining compound (food, water, energy, etc.) and then engaged in slaveowning such that shunning and ostracization would have little to no negative effect from his point of view. Depending of course, on the demographics of the slaves, it's conceivable that he'd actually be seen favorably by racists or bigots and such. But the empirical evidence is all against the libertarian argument about the economic viability of slavery.

Firstly, we have the fact that slavery was widely practiced throughout history, and still is in practice in some places today. It's as though libertarians mean to say to plantation owners of the Old South, "Hey, you guys were terrible businessmen!" Really? So those family fortunes were built despite slavery, not with the help of slavery?

Secondly, slavery has had to be outlawed even in places which did not fight wars which resulted in the end of the practice. What's the point of legislating against an activity which is economically non-viable? It would be like saying that the prohibition against drugs is just a theoretical exercise because no one would use them anyway. This is demonstrably false. Forced labor of varying stripes always appears to require legislation to end: child labor, indetured servitude, slavery, etc.

In short, libertarians should not promote economic arguments against slavery. They should stick to the moral arguments against slavery.

I like this cartoon a lot. I like the narrator even more.


Though the dot is kind of horrible.

Why does this seem like the perfect TV show? Why does it seem like any child exposed to this show has approximately a 60% chance of becoming an artist or gay/sexually ambiguous?

today i just made the script cause creatures and the player to stop moving after character 20, as per wynand's / fenrir's suggestion

i've also been forgetting to count line totals! here's today's: 11169 (11142 was 2 days ago, so over the last two days, i added a paltry 27 lines)

http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2009/07/04/from-predator-to-plant-in-one-gulp/

"Two researchers have shown a striking example of endosymbiosis forming now: in 2005 Noriko Okamoto an Isao Inouye reported on a unicellular organism called Hatena. Hatena (”enigma” in Japanese) leads a curious life cycle. Hatena is a single-cell organism, swimming around in the water, using a little feeding apparatus to eat cells and organic material smaller than itself. At some point, it would feed on another unicellular algae, the Nephroselmis. Once Hatena swallows Nephroselmis, it does not digest it. Rather, Nephrosolmis makes a rather comfortable home inside Hatena. Actually, the algae starts growing inside Hatena: it grows to about 10 times its original size, filling up most of Hatena. The alga also seems to lose most of its own organelles, except for the chloroplast. The chloroplast actually grows bigger.

"Hatena changes too as a result. Before ingesting the alga, it has a rather complex “mouth”, or feeding apparatus. After ingesting the algae, this mouth disappears. Instead, it is replaced by an eyespot from the algae. The eyespot is a light sensing organelle, a very primitive eye that guides algae to light sources. In this case, it also guides the host, Hatena, to light. Hatena has obvioulsy stopped feeding, and least through its mouth. It is now swimming to the light, letting the alga photosynthesize its food for both of them.

"Hatena reproduces by binary fission. So once it splits itself, what happens to the symbiotic alga? Well, one daughter cell gets the alga, and the other gets ot be a predator.. at least until it eats another alga. So here we are, looking at a fascinating evolutionary snapshot: two creatures, they can live apart or together. One is not quite an organelle yet, but definitely on its way."

Hey Geoff:

Is this Kirby, or is this fake Kirby?

My suspicion is that it's Kirby pencils, some mysterious no-namer's inks. Probably a lot of art corrections on faces and sometimes positions. I'd bet that office on page one was a lot more full of stuff initially. Do you know anything about this?

Not riches exactly, but I was rummaging around video.google.com and youtube for some diversion or other and came across a couple of Cyndi Lauper videos (I love her forever) that I really liked. They are from an album called The Body Acoustic. I was thinking I'd like to listen to that, I'll bet it's good. Then I remembered I downloaded a bunch of Cyndi Lauper from alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 a few months ago. Lo and behold, I have it. I'm finally listening to it. It's really good. I love you forever, Cyndi.



( She Bops below the cut... )

So yeah I was in #niffchat and I was really tired and CPW and koromi were there and we came up with many game ideas.

THESE ARE AWESMOE IDEAS:

Captain Sully: The Game
crash into the Hudson or lose
ridiculously complex controls
figure out the controls
controls and labels change every time
five lives
labels in faux-Japanese (meaningless)
fiery bunny death if you miss the Hudson (the plane is full of bunnies)
alarms lights sirens- panic

Daddio the Dodo
fifty levels
you are the last dodo
kill Dutch sailors
final boss is ship cook
ending: sail to Netherlands for revenge

Daddio the Dodo 2: Sim Brothel
Daddio reaches Amsterdam
teams up with a pimp to get far ahead enough to exact revenge
manage a brothel
refurbish rooms
decide pay
"This whore has asked for more pay. Pimpslap? Y/N"
pimpslap animation
ending: Daddio drives up to the docks of Amsterdam in a pimpmobile with a pimp hat on and slays all the sailors

THEY ARE MINE DO NOT STEAL THEM

HERE FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY

( FURTHER )

I'd like to search for Facebook friends who are in the Bay Area.

I'd settle for friends who list themselves as in "San Francisco", etc. But if I type this in the search for people, it finds people who are named "San Francisco".

Phew. Seems like I am constantly on the edge, but I keep passing, so I guess I'm doing something right. I even got honors in a couple classes, including the one in which I was shaking so hard that it was really tough to draw blood. Phew. Now I'm officially an ND3. I am still on the 4 year track, slated to graduate in 2011 with a lot of clinical experience already under my belt. I can't relax yet. I'm studying biochemistry today, in preparation for the Basic Science Boards. August 5. I'll get to relax after that.

I will be taking the first ever case-based NPLEX exam for ND's. What this means is that instead of having five sections (pathology, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, microbiology) it will have many cases each with 5 questions relating to the case. This makes it more interesting to me. I am studying biochemistry by looking up metabolic dysfunctions and understanding their chemical pathogenesis.
( biochemistry nerdiness: mucopolysacchariosis nutshell )

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IndependentGaming/~3/KvOhCOGQYgs/preorder_machinarium_save_3.html

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/07/preorder_machinarium_save_3.html

Amanita Design has started taking pre-orders for their upcoming 2D adventure game Machinarium, and customers who purchase it early will get a three dollar discount off the regular price of $20. Buying the game before it is launched also entitles you to a pre-order pack that comes with songs from the Machinarium soundtrack, among other things.

Machinarium is scheduled for a release this October 2009, and will be available for both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. (source)

Amanita Design blog