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years. A *larger* market than before the prohibition. Hugely
lucrative profits for anyone with the moral stomach to violently
scale newly-legislated "barriers to competition" imposed on them by
the state. Increasingly violent attacks by the government on users of
those substances. And, finally, the ultimate in evil -- the kind of
evil this country actually fought wars to end -- increasingly
coercive axe-handle beatings, by our own government, of the sacred
liberty of the average, but now unavoidably-law-breaking, citizenry.

As Ayn Rand cynically observed a long time ago, you don't need
government if nobody's breaking the law. In some twisted corollary to
Parkinson's Law, governments, to survive, *need* more people,
breaking more laws, or they can never justify the money they
confiscate at tax time.

And, to bring us back to the point, David Friedman would probably
echo here his father Milton's famous observation that government
regulations only benefit the regulated sellers in a given market, and
never the consumer, much less the economy as a whole. Even,
*especially*, if those sellers are *breaking* the law, as they are in
the increasingly ubiquitous prohibition of risky behavior that our

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>That means *you* can't say anything may not be FoRKed or printed or 
>whatever. You have the choice to ignore it


That's not what the First Amendment says at all. It says that Congress cannot 
say what can't be FoRKed. FoRK can establish any rules it wants. Similarly, 
The New York Times gets to choose what news IT thinks is "fit to print." If 
the Times chose not to print anything about, say, Rosie O'Donnell, it would 
be exercising its First Amendment rights, just as much as it would be if it 
chose to print something Rosie O'Donnell doesn't like. The necessary 
corollary of the freedom to say/publish what one wants is the freedom to 
refuse to publish or say what one doesn't like. The alternative is a 
state-controlled press that reprints government press releases and calls them 
news.

The question of what is or is not FoRKed is (except for libel or other 
specific exceptions) not a matter of law, but a matter of what the 
"publisher" (if any) decides or the "community" (if any) negotiates or does 
as a matter of custom.

For my part, I'd rather people didn't use FoRK as a place in which to dump an 

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URL: http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2002/09/25#medicalNotes
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 12:49:48 GMT

Mixed news from yesterday's heart checkup. 

First, I went seven minutes on the treadmill. That was pretty good. My heart 
was racing like it hadn't since I was in college. They also did an extensive 
ultrasound on my carotid arteries[1], they're in the neck and supply my head 
with blood. More good news there. They're clear, free of plaque, healthy, not 
diseased[2]. So it appears I just have coronary artery disease, not general 
artery disease. That's good because there would be a risk of stroke if they 
were sick, and not a whole lot they can do about it (as they can with the 
heart). 

Now there was some not-good news. A small part of my heart isn't working very 
well. There are a few possible reasons for that, some fixable, some not. I 
asked the doctor, does this mean I'm going to die sooner, and he said no. Does 
it mean I have to restrict what I do, he said no. So what does it mean? Really 
not much, other than I should watch, as before, for recurring symptoms, the 
ones that brought me into the hospital in June. If they come back, we'll do an