UNR Students for Liberty » Absurd

Ah, Decency and Good Judgment, We Won’t Be Needing You Anymore

Barry Belmont — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:39:01 +0000

Sanctity of Squirrel Life Sunday: Jerk Cop Edition

Barry Belmont — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:17:38 +0000

Don’t you love when there’s no consequences for your actions?

Big, important police officer’s gotta show nature who’s boss…

In God We Trust

Barry Belmont — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:25:13 +0000

If you haven’t yet heard, Representative Randy Forbes (R-Va) has put forth a House Resolution to reaffirm the national motto as ‘In God We Trust’ by posting this motto on many public buildings including court houses, schools, and practically all governmental buildings. The bill has over sixty co-sponsors and is advancing to the floor of the House of Representatives for discussion and a vote. Forbes has declared that he introduced the bill (several times at this point) because:

This sends a clear message to all these government departments and agencies that it’s all right to put up the motto on our buildings and in our classrooms. And I think it will stop the tide of the chilling effect over the past several years.
[...] We’re not forcing anybody to do anything, but at the same time, we want to stand there to protect people who want to say God in a public building. And we don’t want some government agency telling them that they can’t put the national motto in their buildings or classrooms.

This should strike anyone with even a modicum of sensibility as a morbid idea. Not only should the ‘motto’ of the United States not have any religious connotations (whatever happened to the good ol’ E Pluribus Unum?) but there is absolutely no reason for it to be ‘reaffirmed’ except as a means do to some trolling for Christianity. But what about those 34+ million Americans who express no religious affiliation whatsoever? Put even more bluntly, what about those citizens who downright don’t believe in a god or gods, are they to be forced to endorse an opinion they cannot believe simply so they can enter a court of law? [Stay tuned for the article that follows, showing that in quite a few states, said individuals are not even allowed to hold office...]

All this bill does is reinforce the stigma of atheism, play up a religious streak which has no business in politics, and make its co-sponsors look like nuts. However, this stupidly divisive piece of legislation will at least be doing one good thing: wasting the time of politicians that might otherwise be doing other terrible things, like increasing tariffs or mandating healthcare.

Other than that silver lining this bill is still just a turd shaped cloud that’ll hopefully just go away before it makes a real mess of the place…

Intellectual Property, Insomnia, and Lulz

Barry Belmont — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:06:55 +0000

What happens when you combine eclectic, off-the-wall musical tastes, a healthy sense of mockery for intellectual property, and an unceasing bout of insomnia? Well…a post like this.

Some of you may recall from our (three?) intellectual property meetings that things can get awful tricky when trying to parse out copying ideas, borrowing themes, being influenced, and converging tracts of thought. How do you tell which is which? Where do you draw the line? By what criteria? What each of these rhetorical questions is meant to emphasize is the utter arbitrariness involved in such disputes.

So consider these two rather odd songs. The first is “Skah of Iran” by Canadian ska band, The Planet Smashers. The thing I want you to take away is the chorus/chant “Skah of Iran!” at 0:33.

Now, stomach as much as you can of the next song, “Trollhammeren” by the Finnish folk metal band, Finntroll. The important part for your consideration is the chorus/chant “Trollhammeren!” at 0:45.

The astute among you will notice that the dah.da.da.dan! in both is exactly the same. And that’s okay. However, if this were a Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber (sp?), or Kanye West (is he still popular?) song, people would recognize it immediately and no doubt a lawsuit would be drawn up by the record company to ‘protect’ the intellectual property of their artists. After all this is what happens all too often in the “real world.” But since these are two no-name bands, there is nothing that could be strong-armed out of either of them and hence, they are free to have the same chorus.

If this isn’t the hallmark of the arbitrary, I don’t know what is.

And there you have it, the absurdity of intellectual property summarized through Iran and trolls.

What a Concept…

Barry Belmont — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:18:31 +0000

The ASUN recently announced (though it was long rumored) that the final funding period for clubs would not be observed as the organization had run out of club funding. And in typical WTF GOVERNMENT? style logic, the commissioners in charge seem to glean over the point entirely, managing to not only not take away the key economic lesson (that public funds will always be at the mercy of the Tragedy of the Commons) but exasperating it more so (by seeking to impose penalties on those clubs that don’t spend the entirety of their allocation).

I’m going to repeat that because it really needs to land for effect: Nathan Demuth, HeadHoncho of ASUN Clubbiwubbs said that “The fact that clubs don’t always spend all the money they are awarded often confounds accurate balance predictions.” And hence, “New penalties for clubs that don’t spend allocated funds will be imposed in the future.”

He seems unable to recognize that the problem is with the way clubs are funded, not with the fact that they don’t spend all their money. In fact, not spending all of their funds can only, only be seen as a good thing. It means more money in the bank, less wasted, more frugality. But with this new penalty to be levied on clubs in conjunction with the fact that late funding periods may not be held at all, you will see clubs hitting the funding hard, fast, and most importantly, recklessly. When punished for not spending money, it is only inevitable that people will spend and spend and spend.

Oh ASUN, when will you ever learn? Perhaps this recent comment from the Sagebrush website will give you the advice you need in starkly barren terms:

Breast Milk Ice Cream

Barry Belmont — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:19:35 +0000

Yep, you read right: breast milk ice cream.

While arguing about the more sensible issue of organ donation markets, my debating partner claimed that you are not currently legally allowed to buy or sell human breast milk because the FDA would have no way to regulate it (citing this as a reason why there shouldn’t be markets in organs — analogously, how would one regulate it?). Now, this didn’t sound quite right to me, but lacking knowledge of evidence in my favor I merely conceded the point.

But it turns out that with just a small amount of Googling one can find many sites to both buy and sell breast milk (like this one). In fact I came across this eccentric entrepreneur and his product:

However, with a bit more researching, it turns out it is in fact illegal to sell breast milk. The government has given a writ of monopoly to the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA), and made it an entirely donation driven operation. Can you guess what that has resulted in?

It seems to me sad that the government (through this organization) is reduced to begging and pleading on a site that I’m sure few have ever thought of visiting for more people to donate resources of which they have plenty, rather than simply turning over the whole situation to market forces.

Unfortunately for our side, the UK government appears to have shutdown the ice cream entrepreneur, citing the same arguments as were made in the debate I had which prompted the research. Even though many consenting adults wanted to supply, produce, and consume breast milk ice cream, government, as it always does, stepped in and fouled everything up.

It’s a sad day indeed.

Anonymous vs. Westboro Baptist Church

Barry Belmont — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:53:59 +0000

This is probably the hardest tangle of political philosophy as I can think of. Cyberattacks, theft, free speech, rules of decorum, and standing up for Truth and Justice… Who’s right and who do we want to be right? Are they different?

Anecdotes from the Abolishment

Barry Belmont — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 01:12:09 +0000

So today’s Abolish ASUN carnival was fairly successful. We demonstrated what government spending looks like, saw spontaneous order form from free individuals, and generally demolished Statist argument (much to admiration of onlookers, while those arguing in favor of the institution clearly backpeddled from position to position).

But I wanted to share some various anecdotes of what occurred and what each represents.

The Gluttonous Former Senator

A former senator of the ASUN stood in line and grabbed two whole boxes of pizza (while others around him gladly only took two or less slices of pizza). When I pointed out that we would donate the remaining food to a homeless shelter he merely looked up, smiled the shit-eating-est of smiles, and said “I paid my student fees, did they?” He grabbed three more boxes and waddled himself away.

The moral: 1. Coercive institutions can have some serious schmucks for employees (employees, I might add, that can’t be fired), 2. When resources are pooled, there is no incentive have ‘left-overs.’ 3. When people are forced to pay into a system, they tend to lose their humanitarian streak.

A ‘Prayer’ for Egypt (from the people you expect to spell it ‘Moslem’)

Barry Belmont — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:59:07 +0000

It’s remarkable that people can have literally the best intentions possible (for instance wishing to prevent WWIII) and yet with the wrong set of thoughts, facts, and theories about the universe come off as crazy, slightly prejudicial, and at the very least, a little silly.

This is a video of a Christian woman asking for prayers for the Middle East. She seems like she would be a nice lady, however, what she says throughout the video is a fascinating sort of “capture” of the rhetoric many (conservative, Christian) Americans use when talking about Islam and Muslims (or, as I pointed out, as they say, Moslems). Is this a facet of modern Islamophobia or something completely different?

Politics Through Facebook

Barry Belmont — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 07:26:44 +0000

Whenever someone shows me a political debate they’ve had on their Facebook I can’t help feeling it goes a bit like this:

Something like that at least…