Outre SpaceBoard

Eldritch Empyrean wrote:

Hah. Bearzarro World is truly a bizarro world. Issue writers are often some funny people.

I've had half a dozen issues accepted into use myself (although none of those ones were among them), as Bears Armed, and am working on more.
A large part of the fun in running this nation is the opportunity that it gives me to try options -- and even issues -- that my more serious nations wouldn't go near...

^_^

I have just advertised the new poll in all of our embassy regions, except for Ancient which doesn't allow that, and in our thread in the NS 'Gameplay' forum.

Christian confederation wrote:

Love the new poll, Captian America said that I believe

Benjamin Franklin :)

I did not create the poll, but here's a quite interesting article providing some context for Franklin's words:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said

The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him.

So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.

What's more, the “purchase [of] a little temporary safety” of which Franklin complains was not the ceding of power to a government Leviathan in exchange for some promise of protection from external threat ... The governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes. And the Penn family later offered cash to fund defense of the frontier--as long as the Assembly would acknowledge that it lacked the power to tax the family’s lands. Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance--and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former.

In short, Franklin was not describing some tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade.

The new poll has been advertised, as usual.

_________________________________________

20 days ago: Following new legislation in Bearzarro World, a paperwork error has naval privateers being directed to attack land-locked nations.

27 days ago: Following new legislation in Bearzarro World, Ollie the Oiled Seal welcomes throngs of tourists to the newly opened Oil Oasis Water Park.
27 days ago: Following new legislation in Bearzarro World, every day at 4am Bearzarroes wake to pray for the sun to rise.

So today I received an issue relevant to the current poll, and now Bearzarroes wonder "if a tree falls in the woods with no credible witnesses, who wants to know?"

^_^

And I thought of another possibility too: “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.”

^_^

Greetings from The Planet X.

It’s time for the latest Versus Series poll!

Last week we saw Luke Skywalker vanquish Neo in decisive fashion.

This week we have two near omnipotent masters with

Yoda battling Magneto!

Will the Force be enough to defeat this metallic mutation?

That’s up for you to decide!

So hit the hyperspace drive and stop by The Planet X for this week’s Killer Poll !

Eldritch Empyrean wrote:

Had to vote for Yoda. Since he basically has magic powers, while Magneto is rather limited to physical reality with his powers.

Fair enough. The way I saw it was that Magneto could strip Yoda’s saber from his hand, then it would be a matter of powers. We known Magneto can literally pull all of the metal from the earth, whereas I’ve only seen Yoda move smaller objects.

Bearzarro World wrote:

"Bonus points" for the first person to post in Outre Space’s RMB identifying the source of the quotation...

Lois McMaster Bujold, in Brothers in Arms

Bearzarro World wrote:

Is it just me, or do other people initially read the first of those names as "Master Chef" too?

Ditto.

Regarding the poll, I think it's unfortunate there is no objective definition of justice. America practices retributive justice, for example, while other nations focus on rehabilitation. When applying that to genocide, there is no true justice. You can arrest and execute people directly responsible for murders, but how do you find justice for the other factors surrounding genocide? People ignore that it happens and fail to intervene. Do you punish them? What about the social or economic factors that contribute?