General

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14522 ª February 6 9:29 AM. Not Flying Down To Rio For The Carnival? Never mind! Beat the crowds but catch the beat by listening to this year’s terrific sambas before the rest of the world can. This is the real shanty-town stuff, not the watered-down touristy rubbish[WindowsMedia required]that passes for Samba. This year my favourite for first prize is Mangueira. What’s yours? The Brazilian Carnival[learn all about it here] starts Saturday and goes on straight through to Tuesday. For the latest inside information – including the Bin Laden Mask controversy – O Globo’s special web site[In Portuguese]is unbeatable. Enjoy! [MetaFilter]

Cool! It takes really long to load on a Mac, though

I've started to tackle the

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I’ve started to tackle the closet of doom. I packed one big box with old electronic equipment and a shoebox with papers, CDs, etc. It isn’t finished, but it doesn’t look quite as daunting any more.

Among other things, I found two hockey puck mice (from my G3 & G4 minitowers), an old Logitech Mouseman Wheel, a broken USB CameraMate SmartMedia/CF reader, and an old cell phone.

Flaws of Libertarianism. Libertarianism is

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Flaws of Libertarianism. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that has great appeal in the United States of America.  It promotes freedom of the individual, and a reduced role for the government.  While the success of its flagship political party has been limited, it has undoubtedly influenced the political scene throughout the world.   Many of the founders and early adopters of the Internet held libertarian beliefs, and many Kuro5hin readers self-identify as libertarians (over 25 readers self-identified in the Who Are You series).  The purpose of this article is to demonstrate some of the flaws of this political philosophy in terms of logical fallacies, and by taking their philosophy to its logical conclusion. [kuro5hin.org]

I consider myself a ‘small l’ libertarian (as opposed to an orthodox Libertarian, even though I do belong to the LP). I just believe the government should stay out of people’s private lives. Anything an individual choses to do, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, is his or her own personal choice and the government has no right to interfere. The government has no right to dictate morality or beliefs or control what chemicals a person choses to put into his or her body.