Bound for Japan

I'm leaving for Japan with the Colorado Recorder Orchestra early Monday morning (Nov. 6) and I am so excited I'm bouncing off walls. I'll be gone 13 days. We have 3 concerts scheduled, a couple of receptions and several rehearsals. Most of our time will be evenly split between Tokyo, Yamagata and Kyoto and we'll be riding the trains. I love trains and am especially interested in riding the very fast and efficient Bullit. But it will feel real good to get some exercise and fresh air. So I have researched self guided walking tours in Kyoto and Tokyo.
Sadly I will not be taking my laptop. I hope to visit some internet cafes. If I can figure it out, I will post some pictures and remarks.
Otherwise don't look for anything from me until I return after the 18th.
Sayonara. Ja, mata.

Fall Festival

I'm off to the Early Music Fall Festival at Regis University today. The Colorado Recorder Orchestra which I participate in performs at 2:30. But I plan on attending many of the concerts scheduled for the day (and encouraging my fellow friends and enthusiasts).
Norbert Kunst a notable recorder player, teacher and orchestra conductor will be offering a workshop afterwards.
I'm taking my camera. So maybe I will have pictures as well as stories to share.

beta.blogger

Don't do it! I "upgraded" to beta blogger and have had NOTHING but problems...lost my links, my comments and all my buttons. It takes me twice as long to sign in because I have to sign in 3 times,( blogger id, confirming blogger id, google id)and it doesn't matter how many times I check "remember me". Sometimes, I can't sign in PERIOD. All this because I was curious...

Congress Passes Law to Curb Online Gambling

My poker card playing friends are crazed. My financial associates are dazed and my fellow free market advocates are outraged! Why? Because of the Safe Port Act Congress passed Saturday night (Sept.30). Embedded in this 244 page bill is a measure to curb internet gambling (starting on page 213).

First of all, the card players I know do not consider themselves gamblers. They study probabilities and human behavior. Some have advanced degrees in mathematics and computer sciences and many are lawyers, doctors, dentists and successful business people. Most recoil at the notion that they partake in "games of chance". Card playing is a practiced sport (if not a profession) for them. So why is the federal government involved?

Secondly, online poker sites are hugely popular. People from all over the world play a variety of games nightly. As a result, these poker sites are extremely profitable but most reside outside the United States. So why do the Feds care? Stock prices for these foreign companies have plummeted even though 80% of online players live outside the U.S.

I object to the government legislating morality. It has always been a terrible failure. Prohibition and "The War on Drugs" only created black markets, underground economies run by gangsters and thugs, governed not by the rules of law but by violence and deceit. Abstinence, moderation, restraint and responsibility can only be learned not legislated.

But something even greater is at stake here. Although this legislation targets online gambling owners and financial institutions, it is a thinly veiled attempt to regulate and control access to the internet which for me is totally unacceptable.

Bloggers and people who like to read blogs should be very concerned. The internet can be a wild and wooly place full of the fantastic and the fanatical, the divine and the disgusting. It is a self censored self monitored marketplace offering not only goods and services but ideas.

I have written my U.S. senator Wayne Allard to express my disapproval of the Safe Port Act (specifically the buried ban on online gambling) and I encourage any reader to do the same.