Graduation Speech from T-Nation

TC Luoma writes this fantastic speech at the new T-Nation website that while hacing blogs and more info than the original t-mag website, is not the most user friendly of sites.

Before I begin, I’d like to explain the oratory format I’ve chosen this afternoon. While unorthodox, I’ve decided to make two speeches. The first one is targeted towards the majority--the 99% of you who are little more than sheep that will keep this country economically strong for years to come by dispensing Slurpies and fries and tearing ticket stubs in half at the local Cineplex.

I thank you for your lack of intelligence, ability, and ambition.

The other half of my speech is targeted towards the 1% of you that will truly reflect whatever integrity our society retains. You’ll forgive me, of course, if I first address the 99% as their attention spans are woefully unprepared for anything that doesn’t involve Play Station, bitchin’ music, blood, fast moving objects or fellatio, hardly any of which are part of my planned speech.

So, let me begin by quoting one the troubadours of the sheep generation, Eminem

TheAgitator.com: Sullum on Teletubbies: Comments

The Agitator has become a weekly read and Radley Balko has been banging on the food police of late. Today he quotes Jacob Sullum of Reason mag fame.

Since rising weight trends appeared in adults before they showed up among children, it looks like kids are imitating their parents' habits. "For better or worse," Zywicki said, "kids eat what their parents eat."

In his book Food Fight, Yale obesity expert Kelly Brownell—who, like Kunkel, wants to eliminate advertising to children—says, " It is easy to blame parents." No, it's not. It is easy to blame big corporations. Blaming parents means expecting them to take an active role in monitoring their kids' diets.

The Economist on the Housing Bubble

I've been banging on this topic for sometime now (is it cause I still rent and don't own...naahh), and the Economist tackles this problem head on this week. The bubble will pop, the only question is how quickly and how much pain will it create. The 50% of new mortgages from quarter one of this year that have ARM's will probably feel the most heat. Good luck to those folks...

The drop in house prices in Australian cities undermines a popular argument heard in Britain and America that even if house prices do look frothy, they are unlikely to fall unless there is a big rise in interest rates or a jump in unemployment. Neither has been needed in Australia. Interest rates have risen by only half a percentage point during the past year, to 5.25%—less than half the level during the previous housing downturn in 1990. Meanwhile, unemployment is close to a 20-year low.

Reason magazine -- July 1975 Interview with Ronald Regan

Why Ronald Regan was the best president of my life time in one of the few magazines that I think is actually worth being a subscriber (add the economist to that list also) and appears to have been just as enjoyable back in '75.


If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Well, the first and most important thing is that government exists to protect us from each other. Government exists, of course, for the defense of the nation, and for the defense of the rights of the individual. Maybe we don’t all agree on some of the other accepted functions of government, such as fire departments and police departments–again the protection of the people.