No on 8

...from Lawrence Lessig and his blog

Political Antidote

The election is less than a week away, and whatever happens is going to happen.

I know there's people on both sides that are still working hard to get their side heard, and my hat's off to them.

But I'm feeling a little burnt out, and I suspect a few of you are as well, so take a moment, step back from it all, and watch this clip:

For everyone who finds air quotes repulsive anyway...

Have some more.

Couldn't your day be a little stranger?

Good morning, Turkey

So this is the word on the street

I don't know how that theory holds up, just as I don't know how I came to be. There's some theories that seem plausible to me, but I think what stands up above the rest is that I've had the chance to hear all sorts of ideas, and can postulate my own.

If the article is correct, you don't get to read this anyway. I just thought I'd throw in a few cents.

Thanks, Ron

I wasn't so sure, but hell, if Matlock's on board...

Angry.

So I just read THIS

I guess it's just one perspective, but it strikes me as the same symptom of the crap I've been railing about for years: our culture has opted for short term profit over long term health and it's going to bite us in the ass.

Dot-com economics: Who cares what their business model is? Their stock is hot! Let's get it now and cash out at the peak..er soon...er...crap

Enron: Everyone I hear says great things about them. They're the hottest investment around..er..they did what to their numbers?

Housing Market: Oh, everyone knows that housing prices will never go down. This is why you have to buy now because if you don't buy now you'll miss out on your chance to ever...oh...crap...

As far as oil goes, I have no direct experience in petrology (AND NEITHER DO MOST OF THE PEOPLE INVESTING IN IT), but what little I do know is that as we know it today, it is not a readily renewable resource. It's just a gamble, do we run out sooner or later, right?

So, hey, can we just stop thinking a bit about tomorrow and start thinking in terms of next year? I'm certainly glad that gas has gone down from ~4.50/gallon to ~3.50 (as of the last time I filled up a few days ago), but is that temporary relief really so anesthetizing to say "Oh, good, it wasn't a problem after all."?

Really?

Not to cause a panic or anything...

But please, if you are registered to vote somewhere in the US, become aware of THIS now.

If it really is as serious an issue as the article suggests, then awareness and corrective action should be put in place as soon as possible. If it's overblown, then hey, you're a little better informed, yeah?

This is me freaking out about disenfranchised voters (and I could be one of them having moved this year, and I've not yet found a clear way to check my own name,) I figure that regardless of your political ideology, if you're a registered voter, you deserve your vote be counted.

It's all a part of the plan.

Tonight after work I'll be picking up my nice lady friend from the bookstore near her job, and then I get to have a proper weekend. Maybe I'll take pictures or something.

The last debate of 2008

Ok, I'm fine with you saying I cherry-picked a moment, but I think this kind of summed up the experience for me.



My take is that Obama did no better or worse than he did in the first two debates...pretty consistent. McCain went for a more feisty approach, but it struck me as pandering to his base.

In modern politics, though, image is everything. I can't believe that both candidates haven't been coached endlessly on kinesthetics and appropriating the correct posture/reaction/whatever at all times.

This was not it.

UPDATE:

This certainly did not aid in my opinion of Senator McCain:


UPDATE 2:
And, of course, a study in taking it seriously

Yup, that's right.

When I hear that the rest of the world is somewhere between angry, laughing, or completely perplexed by America, I remind myself that many Americans' only source of news is a comedy program.



And then I'm sad because the comedy program seems to get it right way more often than any of what passes as "respectable news outlets"

Ok, so the pundits don't like him...

When Team Butt Boy has turned on you, maybe it's time for another political stunt. Maybe if McCain stages a premature inauguration, people will forget about the election, right?

The internet keeps getting dumber.

Subway must've stopped endorsing Jared Fogle, as it is clear that the Acai lobby has stepped in.

Hello, friends.

For the next month, heading into what I consider to be an important election, I'm going to see what I can do to share everything I can that I think is interesting.

There's a little box in the sidebar, or you can keep up with it here (it's also got its own RSS feed if you're into that sort of thing.)

It won't all be political, but I figure if I can crank through over 13,000 news items in a month, I'll probably find all sorts of things that might interest you, too.

Something To Think About.

Thank you.

It has been noted that 17 years ago today the world first saw Linux

Almost exactly five years after that, I installed a linux distribution for the first time.

I just want to say thank you. Thank you, Linus, for giving us this thing, and helping care for it all these years. Thank you to the early adopters for helping it be something a little bit more than other similar projects. Thank you to the people that started making linux distributions and packaging things such that they were all in one place. Thank you to all the developers that have contributed over the years. Thank you to all of the users that found bugs, made requests, advocated to others and trudged on even when it seemed rough. Thank you to everyone that's contributed to documentation. Thank you to the people that have kept a wary eye in the name of legal concerns.

Thank you, all.

Linux has taught me much about how my computer operates. Linux has given me an amazing toolchain for building new things. Linux introduced me to Free Software and Open Source.

These things helped me land my current job. They make me a better programmer. They solve problems for me.

Thank you.

And I'm back.

I'll round up some of the highlights a bit later, but clearly my RSS reader was not ignored.



I blame the upcoming election for giving me too much stuff to read.