July 8th, 2010
San Francisco considers banning all pet sales (except fish)

Is there no limit to the desire of San Francisco’s many-tentacled government to control every aspect of human behavior?  None at all?

So let’s walk through the logic here: I shouldn’t be allowed to buy a rat because, hey, I might not know what I’m getting into and the rat might thereby suffer ill treatment.  On the other hand, if mice infest my home, I’m (still) allowed to buy mousetraps, glue traps, or rat poison.

And we haven’t even mentioned people with pet reptiles who buy live rodents because their pet python just won’t sign on to the whole vegan scene.

Were San Francisco’s real problems all solved sometime last night?  Am I behind the news cycle again?

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Thoughts, en passant:

"No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think." —John Stuart Mill

"Earnestness is stupidity sent to college." —P.J. O'Rourke

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." —H.L. Mencken

"This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there as no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men." —C.S. Lewis

"Politicians taking credit from what they’ve done for the economy are like little kids working the controls of video games without putting any money in. There’s all kinds of stuff happening on the screen of the video game and they think that it’s all due to the frantic work of their fingers." —Tom Foreman

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." —Ed Howdershelt

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big." —Daniel Burnham

"Careless exaggerations are a million times worse than the Nazis." —Merlin Mann

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