Jake Allen’s Ockhamist.com

I’ll be moving off the main page of ockhamist.com, leaving movable type and my bloated mess behind.

Madness! 

This took some doing!

I plan on using a domain forward to get the main page here when I am ready.

Oh, yeah, and I am going to go to Hong Kong in three weeks!

Madness!

I went to Morocco in 2004.  Here is a partial record:

All of the Morocco Pics. Some of the code is bad.

Best Pics of Morocco, part one, part two, part three, and part four.

I went to Ireland in 2005.

I went to Italy in 2004.  There is sometime problems in some of the galleries.

Madness!

Refresh the page, and new chins appear.  I’ve never been so proud.

Really, try it!

Madness!

Do we value our freedom?

The easy answer is yes.  We certainly do not like people telling us what to do.  A slightly more thoughtful response is that we like some of our freedoms.  We like to get Burger King at 2AM, but are willing to put out our cigarettes to do it.  We like to wear clever sayings on our T-shirts, but only during socially appropriate times.  That’s the key to the matter, I think. We don’t really like freedom.  We like certainty.  Like the Hebrews escaping slavery, we prefer the security of the known, rather than the freedom of the unknown.

There are some very good things to our common position toward freedom.  Without guns, there is fewer gun deaths.  It’s true.  In the long run, restricted access will result in fewer gun deaths.  Freedoms represented in the Second Amendment are costly. Further, the Fourth Amendment results in more crime.  If police were able to search our homes and our persons without restrictions, overall crime would reduce.  If the Eighth Amenment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, were removed, then Americans could enjoy the same security from violent crime that totalitarian countries enjoy.

Of course, we value the protections of these Amendments, and that security contained within these freedoms.  It would seem, then, that as a society we value freedom very little at all, except when it provides more security  or constancy than the alternative.

When do you value freedom over security?  Sure, you’ll say you value freedom, but in your choices, when have you sacrificed for freedom.  I’m sure you’ve sacrificed for securtiy.

 Maybe we shouldn’t value freedom.  Let’s be honest.  Isn’t the certainty of being average better than the possibility of being great?  Should we even teach children to be free?

Madness!

I have much to do to get my site where I dream it to be. For the time being, you may visit me at my old site. This new site is getting to be harder than it looks.

Um, I have this shiny new website, and um, no great post to kick it off. The last few days I have been holding off all my great ideas (great? you ask) until I get this thing working, and now all I can do is barely hum the theme to Hunt for Red October.

Yet the die is indeed cast. Live it up, friends, enjoy.

Let us remember that philosophy is not an idea, a concept, or a theory. Philosophy is an activity. The goal of philosophy is the logical clarification of thought. Let us nominalists clarify thought.

I hope that this page clarifies thought. Whether I write about Charlemange or David Letterman, I hope that I do not posit plurality without necessity.

For the first time since 1945 (and therefore the first time in history), Japan’s voters may vote in a truly free election Nov. 9th. That may be overstating it a bit, but Japanese politics in the 20th century may be characterized by monarch transforming to oligarchy from start to finish.
Japan’s ruling party, officially part of a three party coalition, has been ruling Japan for more than a decade. This economic agendas in this election may make history.

Iraq may be fifty years out from our egalitarian dream for it.

~gauche and Metzger have shaken the “greater Hillsdale blogging community” to the core, first with the LXB. Unfortunately, I was not included (jerks).

Now, ~gauche has compiled a list of Hillsdale bloggers. It has been very useful, and is getting much press in the community of sites. It would be most kind of ~ to update my link to my new domain, but he included me, and I thank him. Check it out if you ever went to Hillsdale.

A strange sidenote, some of the neatest people have bad sites. Can you be cool in the real world and a nerd on the internet? We already know that people who are “cool” on the internet are often social misfits in the real world . . . ahem . . . but can we create an alternate society where new categories of interpersonal skills are required to become, say, alpha male? Does the Hillsdale Blogging List constitue hard evidence that we live in a brave new world, or rather, two brave new worlds- one biological and one electronic?

That is perhaps silly today, in 2003. Will it be silly in 2006?

So I have to ask myself, who am I here, and who am I there?

The war has started . . . are you ready?

I have been declared arch-nemesis of the League of Extrodinary Bloggers, and my rejection only fuels my twisted scemes to destroy you all! Whaa ha ha haa haa!

My friends are few (shall I add Krupa? He opposes the rhetorical tyranny of the so-called Logocentrist, known more famously as quinefan45!), yet truth is on my side, and I shall not be faint.

Blandus, are you with me? The Greeks do oppose the League, true, but they prove unreliable.

I am Reformed, indeed, and your Madness will have to face the sharp edge of my Razor!

. . . a long night of uneasy sleep . . . my enemies are ever surrounding me . . . waiting, waiting . . . soon.

Hey guys, do not forget about larknews.com.