What to Tell the Truant Officer

Some years ago, my daughter was asked by a woman in a shop why she wasn't in school. She gave the answer I had previously suggested, half in jest. "My daddy doesn't believe in your schools. He says they're controlled by the communists." Further deponent sayeth not.

Religious Oaths for Computer Security and Digital Commerce Applications

"I swear by Almighty God that I have not given any cryptographic keys or other electronic access devices under my control to any other person or entity including government employees."

-- Suggested oath from the forthcoming paper "Religious Oaths for Computer Security and Digital Commerce Applications" by Duncan Frissell, JD and Robert Bader, DD.

Back to the '50s

Register Communists not Firearms!

-- Courtesy of the National Commission for the Preservation of Ancient Right Wing Slogans.

Committing an Unknown Crime & an Unknown Sin

Now legalized by Lawrence v Texas (but still sinners) young ladies of the '90s discover that they have committed a Sin, But Cannot Speak its Name:

"My mom went down to the library and looked [fornication] up in the dictionary," said Amanda Smisek, a 17-year-old-girl recently charged with the crime along with her boyfriend. "Nobody ever told us it was illegal for two people of the same age to [have sex]." "Forn-if-cation?" asked another puzzled 17-year-old. "What's that?"

-- Emmett, Idaho teens discussing jurisprudence in the wake of a prosecutor's decision to prosecute fornicators who apply for public assistance (with children).

An Anarchist Lawyer

Q. How can you, an anarchist, be a lawyer?

A. My father was a physician. That doesn't mean he believed in disease.

Love in the Naughties

Police work in the new age:

Journal of Forensic Sciences -- Autoerotic Fatalities with Power Hydraulics

Abstract

We report two cases in which men used the hydraulic shovels on tractors to suspend themselves for masochistic sexual stimulation. One man developed a romantic attachment to a tractor, even giving it a name and writing poetry in its honor. ...

Such behavior has constitutional protection under Lawrence v. Texas, does it not?

Thanks (I think) to Eugene Volokh.

Great Moments in American Cinema

Susan Sarandon (as Sally): "You're so smart. I can't remember my Social Security Number. I bet you can remember your Social Security Number."

Burt Lancaster (as Lou): "I don't have a Social Security Number."

--Atlantic City (1980)

January 1, 1965 in New Jersey

Moderns will find it hard to credit that the sun rose on the Garden State on January 1st 1965. Why will they be shocked? Because on that day New Jersey had neither a state sales tax nor a state income tax.

During that first month of 1965, schools opened and closed, streets were filled with the flow of traffic, crimes were committed and punished, people were born and died. And all of this occurred in the absence of state sales and income taxes.

How was it possible?

That's not important. What is important is that it happened. It was possible. It is possible now (in Alaska & New Hampshire for example). It could even happen again in New Jersey or in your state.

All you have to do is imagine it.

And while you're imagining that, imagine how the United States managed without a Federal Income Tax from 1789 until 1916!

School Principal Says Gays are Violent

In a visicous slander on the alternatively sexed, San Diego School administrators called homosexuals prone to violence.

Gay, straight teens polarized; suit filed

By Onell R. Soto UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 22, 2004

The animosity between gay and straight students at Poway High School was so
volatile last spring that school officials said they had to prevent a teenager
from wearing an anti-gay slogan on a T-shirt in class.

Administrators feared that violence might erupt over the shirt, according to legal papers that for the first time detail the school district's side of a controversy that has spilled into the courts.

Mods vs. Trads

Mods are much less likely than Trads to form lasting family relationships, they kill themselves and others much more frequently, they suffer more from drug and substance abuse, they are more prone to disease, they even have a higher accident rate, they have lower family incomes, their MMPIs are much more jagged, their life expectancy is shorter, and they score lower on tests designed to show levels of personal happiness or satisfaction.

Sounds like a maladaption to me.

Law Schools and the Solomon Amendment

Good Slate article on the Pentagon vs. Law Schools over invidious discrimination against the alternatively sexed.

Too bad the schools' adhearance to priciple doesn't extend to eschewing government funds. They were warned in the 1950s by a gathering of university presidents that federal funding would bring federal control. I guess they didn't believe the obvious.