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Bob Wallace
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Joined: 2009-08-30
Columns on STR: 89
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ProfessorBrains@gmail.com

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Name: 
Bob Wallace
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Short bio:

Bob Wallace is the author of I Write What I See. Please visit his Shameless Book Promotion Page. And here is his Page Full o' Fun. And this is where he blogs.

RECENT COMMENTS BY Bob Wallace

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Columns by Bob Wallace

Mad Scientists, Traps & Tortures, and Skull Island
0
Bob Wallace 2004-06-14 16:00
I consider the State to fit the archetype of the horror story: Evil intruding into Good, Chaos intruding into Order. In the State's case, it is the Political Means (theft and violence) intruding into the Economic Means (peaceable free trade). The State intrudes into Society and always damages it. As The Simpsons' Chief Wiggum so perceptively noted, "I didn't say the government couldn't harm...
Neo-Satan Mini-Mees
0
Bob Wallace 2004-06-10 16:00
I wish it was possible for someone to turn me upside down and shake out all the nonsense I still have in my head. It's been there since I was a kid. Sometimes I don't even know it's there until someone says something and I have no answer except a dumb one that was taught to me a long time ago. The way things stand now, I'm having to remove all the silly stuff neuron by neuron, in hopes of...
Four More Years of Funation
0
Bob Wallace 2004-05-31 16:00
Well, folks, I don't know about all of you, but I suspect George W. Bush will win the election. I'm not going to vote, because my .0000000001% of it won't do the slightest bit of good. I am not looking forward with any eagerness to another term for Dubya, but there are some minor pluses--specifically, four more years of funation and incomprehensile talking from our illustrious if squished-...
On Not Saving the World
0
Bob Wallace 2004-05-27 16:00
I don't think it's possible to "save" the world. I don't think it's a good idea to even try. Usually--maybe always--it involves wars and other destructive coercions of the State. "Saving the world" is just a rationalization for trying to conquer it. As both an Aesop's fable and the Bible points out, tyrants always call themselves benefactors. The closest anyone can come to saving the world...
Books That Will Never Be Written
0
Bob Wallace 2004-05-20 16:00
Bringing Jesus Back by Killing Palestinians, by Hal Lindsey and Jerry Falwell. Smoke, Booze, Gamble, Stuff Your Fat Face and Stick Your Nose in Other's Business!, by William Bennett. As Short and Ugly as Simon Bar Sinister, by William Kristol. A Dumb, Cowardly Mouse, by Douglas Feith. How a Pimple on My Butt Saved My Ass, by Rush Limbaugh. Souffle' Restaurants for Ex-Cons, by Richard...
My Libertarian Totem Pole
0
Bob Wallace 2004-05-16 16:00
A woman I know recently told me her totem was a cat. I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. A totem, like a totem pole?, I wondered, my brain locked in puzzle-mode. A totem pole with a cat as part of it? What? I realized I didn't exactly know what the purpose of a totem pole was, even though, like everyone else, I knew of them. I could see one in my mind, although in her case I...
Satan Disappointed in Neocon Spawn
0
Bob Wallace 2004-04-28 16:00
His Satanic Majesty Satan, aka Lucifer, aka Beelzebub, has recently expressed great disappointment in his current quasi-humanoid offspring, commonly known to the public as "neoconservatives." "I have been trying for thousands of years to get humanity to follow the Left-Hand Path, and these guys are the pits at helping me," he said disgustedly, in a recent interview. "I've been behind some...
Puny Warmongers! Bob Will Smash!
0
Bob Wallace 2004-04-26 16:00
It is true the amount of comic books I read as a kid weighed more than I did. It got to the point where I couldn't lift the box in my closet in which I stored them. I wish I had kept them. I wouldn't be able to retire on their sale, but I wouldn't have any more car payments. Comics, for me, were just way cool. I was fascinated by the multi-colored drawings depicting things impossible in...
They"re Insane, I Tell You! Completely Insane!
0
Bob Wallace 2004-04-22 16:00
Even a stopped clock is occasionally right. I am of course referring to Chief Wiggum of "The Simpsons," when he said, "I didn't say the government couldn't hurt you. I said it couldn't help you." I have decided to elevate his saying to the status of a Natural Law, inherent in the universe and human nature, and unalterable no matter how many law books politicians and lawyers beat it with....
They"re Insane, I Tell You! Completely Insane!
0
Bob Wallace 2004-04-18 16:00
Okay, after listening to Bush babble about "changing the world for the better," I've finally been pushed over the line, just the way I used to swing back and forth in my swing-set when I was a kid until it tumped over: oops, here I am on the edge! Oops, now here I go! Bam! I've now decided Bush is insane. I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt: He's just dumb because his brain is...
Mommy at Home, Daddy Abroad
0
Bob Wallace 2004-04-04 16:00
I can't get Star Trek's Borg out of my mind. They're a horror always there, pestering me, always asking me, "What do we mean?" At least I don't dream about them telling me, "Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated," and then holding me down and using nanotechnology to drill all those contraptions into my skull and brains ("Here, you don't need these frontal lobes." Splortch.). If I did...
Half a Brain Is Better Than No Brain
0
Bob Wallace 2004-03-30 16:00
All of the research I've seen over the past several years claims that men only use half their brain, while women use all of theirs. This I believe, since I can drive and listen to the radio simultaneously (obviously men use the same side of their brains for driving and music, meaning driving a car is like listening to music!) but if I have to look for an address, down goes the radio volume,...
The Truth Is in Here
0
Bob Wallace 2004-03-25 17:00
I never cease to wonder how artists always seem to be one step ahead of everyone else. Oftentimes, several steps and several years. Sometimes, several decades. Ezra Pound, too, noticed their perplexing ability to be ahead of everyone, which is why his most famous comment is, "The artist is the antenna of the race." Since artists are antenna, I think it would be a good idea if the government...
Safe, Effective and Illegal
0
Bob Wallace 2004-03-22 17:00
For the record, my drug use consists of a German white wine called Auslese. That's it. I don't even use aspirin, because it doesn't work on me. Minimum, I need Tylenol with Codeine, which can legally be bought through the mail from Canada . I'm too lazy to get some. However, unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale as a teenager, from ages 15 to 17, on weekends. Then I quit. Some years later, I...
Between Monsters and Gods
10
Bob Wallace 2010-12-17 04:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   "Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts," wrote Plotinus. A similar theme runs through most of the older mythologies: Did we come from the beasts or from the gods? Are we merely more evolved animals or fallen angels?   The answer, refined through millennia, is this: We're part beast, but far better...
Where’s my Flying Car and Disintegrator Ray Gun?
10
Bob Wallace 2011-02-16 04:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   I’ve been a little miffed since I was 12 years old because I didn’t have a flying car, and most especially, a disintegrator ray gun.  They existed in the movies, books, and on TV, but as for real life, forget it.   I can’t remember the first time I encountered both of them.  I do remember a TV program about...
The Purpose of the State is to Turn You Into a Machine
10
Bob Wallace 2011-02-28 04:00
Column by Bob Wallace.  Exclusive to STR  A few months before I turned 12, I read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. I was never the same. Since at that age I was very susceptible to science-fiction, the novel had a profound effect on my 11-year-old sensibilities (you should have seen what Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Fighting Man of Mars did to me – I read it at least...
The State, Hubris and Obscenity
10
Bob Wallace 2011-03-10 04:00
Column by Bob Wallce. Exclusive to STR Richard Weaver once pointed out that the original sense of the word “obscenity” meant something that “should be enacted off-stage, because it is unfit for public exhibition.”   He wrote, “they included intense suffering and humiliation, which the Greeks, with habitual perspicacity and humanity, banned from the theater....
Rule by Children
10
Bob Wallace 2012-02-06 01:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   Of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, all of them, except for Ron Paul, are whores and puppets for international bankers and international corporations (I call them Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporations). And Paul doesn’t stand a chance, because he is an adult. It doesn't matter if Obama is re-elected, or...
The State Against Families
9.66667
Bob Wallace 2011-02-01 04:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   It’s impossible to choose any exact point when the State started destroying families. I’d say it’s been more of a slippery slope than anything else, so you can’t choose any point and say, “This is where it started going downhill.”   But one watershed moment was in 1943, when Americans started...
Hubris Followed by Nemesis
9.6
Bob Wallace 2011-03-29 03:00
Column by Bob Wallace. Exclusive to STR The worst problem in the world – the one that causes more violence than anything else – is the revenge created by feelings of humiliation. Thousands of years ago both the Greeks and the Hebrews noticed that pattern. The Greeks called it Hubris, the god of arrogance, lack of restraint, insolence and wanton violence, followed by Nemesis, the...
Koros to Hubris to Ate to Nemesis
9
Bob Wallace 2011-05-04 00:00
Column by Bob Wallace. Exclusive to STR “The fear of humiliation appears to be one of the most powerful motivators in individual and collective human behavior.” ~ Donald Klein There is no light on human nature more pitiless and perceptive and accurate than mythology. Through hundreds if not thousands of years all the dross was burned away, leaving some very acute observations...
The Narcissism of Politics
9
Bob Wallace 2011-05-12 00:00
Column by Bob Wallace. Exclusive to STR “Nowhere are prejudices more mistaken for truth, passion for reason, and invective for documentation than in politics.  This is a realm, peopled only by villains or heroes, in which everything is black or white and gray is a forbidden color.”  ~ John Mason Brown, Through These Men (1956)   I sometimes entertain...
American Christian Fascists
9
Bob Wallace 2011-10-03 00:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   If fascism ever comes to America, it won’t be through insignificant groups such as American Nazis or the KKK, both of which together could field a couple of softball teams. It’ll come through “Christians,” specifically the blood-thirsty ones who support war.   This kind of Christian supports the State, and...
Kids Teaching Kids
8.66667
Bob Wallace 2010-01-08 04:00
Exclusive to STR   Several years ago I was bamboozled into babysitting one evening for a seven-year-old girl and two boys aged five and three.  Since one of my main purposes in life is to lie on the couch and dream of partially-clad women feeding me grapes (as Bob Hope once said in a movie, "I've had women chase me before, but never when I was awake"), I had to figure out how...
The State as Machine
8.66667
Bob Wallace 2010-06-14 03:00
Exclusive to STR   "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies...." ~ Henry David Thoreau   "All machines are amplifiers" ~ Cooper's Law   That's a true saying: Machines are amplifiers, amplifiers of our inherent abilities.  Machines are not moral or immoral; they're amoral.  They can be used for good or...
The Four Cardinal Virtues and Government
8.2
Bob Wallace 2010-06-15 03:00
By Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR     The Four Cardinal Virtues are not what most people think they are. Justice and Courage sound like good things; Prudence and Temperance, don’t, not really, to many people.  The idea that many people have of them, they sound like they take a lot of the fun out of life. But in reality they are good things. It’s just that...
21st Century Paranoid Guy
8
Bob Wallace 2010-05-10 03:00
Exclusive to STR   I once received an email which read, in part: "Charles Lindbergh was a traitor who tried to sell out his country to the Nazis just as many leftists today would sell us out to the Islamo-Fascists."   The letter was in response to my review of Philip Roth's libelous (and boring) novel, The Plot Against America, an odious attempt at an "alternate history...
The Producers and the Parasites
8
Bob Wallace 2011-03-01 04:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   I have expended several thousand brain cells – which now means I am pretty much out of them – trying to figure out who are the producers and who are the parasites.   Are firefighters parasites? They don’t produce anything, but they are necessary. Are the police necessary? They don’t produce anything...
The State as Morality Play
8
Bob Wallace 2011-04-08 03:00
Column by Bob Wallace. Exclusive to STR I look at life in the aggregate, that is, when you include the whole human race, as a tragicomedy. I don’t look at it as morality play, which I define as seeing life as a contest between Good and Evil. In fact, life is a tragicomedy because so many people see it as a morality play!   Here is an example. The State has defined drugs...
Discovering True Laws
7.75
Bob Wallace 2011-07-01 00:00
Column by Bob Wallace. Exclusive to STR It is unfortunate there has to be a distinction between “true law” and “false law.”  True law is discovered; false law is made up.   No one trained in any hard science believes law can be made up.  None of them will tell you that you can take cyanide without harm, or jump out of an airplane without a parachute.  ...
The State Will Never Win the Drug War
7.5
Bob Wallace 2010-01-19 04:00
Exclusive to STR   There are several reasons why the State will never win the Drug War, but one not often discussed is the Arndt-Schultz Law. It is a biological law that states, "Small doses stimulate, medium doses poison, and large doses kill."   Probably the best-known examples of this law are vaccines. They are small doses that stimulate the body's immune system to defend...
Libertarians, Marriage and Children
7.5
Bob Wallace 2011-01-04 04:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   A pure, “Big L” libertarian doesn’t believe the State has any business being involved in anything. They’d like to see it gone because of the horrors it has perpetrated throughout history. Fair enough. It’s a legitimate philosophical position, and one that I am very sympathetic to. But I am more of a...
Was Ayn Rand a Proto-Fascist?
6.14286
Bob Wallace 2011-04-26 03:00
Column by Bob Wallce.   Exclusive to STR   What a philosophy claims and what it delivers are often two different things. Marxism was supposed to create a heaven on earth but instead created a hell. I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, would also create a hell on earth.   Rand divided people into two groups: her perfect John Galtian heroes, and everyone else...
The Good, the Bad and the Half-Asleep
6
Bob Wallace 2011-06-27 00:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   It was Aristotle who observed there are two kinds of ignorance: when you’re ignorant and know it, and when you’re ignorant and don’t know it. The second kind of ignorance is the dangerous kind, because people who are ignorant and don’t know it usually think they’re smarter and more knowledgeable than everyone else...
No One Believes in Equality
5.66667
Bob Wallace 2010-09-09 03:00
By Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   No one believes in equality, no matter what they claim. To be totally equal, people would have to be totally identical, the way two quarters or two nickels are identical. And being identical, they’d be interchangeable.   The closest to total equality and total identicalness in nature are bees and ants, but even they are not...
Lustful Money and Hateful Religion
5
Bob Wallace 2009-12-21 17:00
Exclusive to STR The United States is a empire. Some cheer that fact. I'm not one of them, and I consider such people deluded, since all empires fail, and it's going to happen to the United States , too. There are several reasons why all empires fail, but there are two that stand out: the financialization of the economy, and an intolerant "us vs. them" religion. Those two reasons...
It's Not All That Hard
5
Bob Wallace 2011-07-06 00:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   “The opposite of war is not peace; it's creation.” ~ Jonathan Larson   Back when I was in college (close to worthless then and even closer now, except for the hard sciences) I realized none of my classes that I was really interested in were logically connected to each other, so that I could come up with an accurate model of...

 

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