A nice Sunday afternoon treat from Halley.

Our Job.

Our Job

Thanks to John Perry Barlow for ending his email with this great quotation.

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.

-- Thomas Merton

[Halley's Comment]

3:51:32 PM •  • comment  

As you would expect, Lessig neatly wraps up what ought to be going on in the campaign in lieu of what has become the typical behavior we see. And we will likely get the representation we deserve rather than the representation we need.

yet more irrelevant questions.

So, shamefully, I've contributed to this irrelevant question blog ("Mr. President, how many times have you been arrested?"), but I can't begin to describe fully how depressing this presidential campaign has been.

Why do we waste attention on these ridiculous questions?

I'm sure Mr. Bush's record was nothing to be proud of -- his drinking problem is well documented, and these things go together. But I'm also sure he is no longer that man -- and for anyone who has seen someone overcome that demon, you know the courage this requires. So I really don't care how many times he was arrested, I don't care if he used power to escape his obligations in the Reserve -- whether he should be our President depends only upon whether the policies he will pursue are good for this nation.

Likewise, re Mr. Kerry: I am sure he demonstrated unimaginable courage in volunteering to serve his country in an unpopular war, and then mustering the courage to articulate brilliantly the reasons why that war was wrong. But we're not electing a captain for a military unit -- if shots are fired, he will follow orders, not give them -- and while it would be great if he could find a way to articulate why this war was wrong, the presidency is not a reward for great Senate testimony. Whether he should be our President depends upon whether the policies he will pursue are good for the nation.

So why can't we actually talk about the conflict in these policies? I'm confident about that choice, but I would love my view to be challenged by real arguments, and a focus on real issues. CBS almost seems proud of their idiotic story. Shame on CBS. Shame on us. [Lessig Blog]

3:05:25 PM •  • comment  

Don't tell my 15-year old who's been lobbying for HDTV, but this is the sort of thing most likely to get me to act sooner rather than later. It strikes me that the efforts of industries to preserve themselves by criminalizing behaviors are more likely to lead to widespread civil disobedience than to anything helpful to their cause.

[foo] Endangered Devices - Buy an HDTV for Freedom! (Offer not good after 7/05). Wendy Seltzer, lawyer for the EFF (join here), talks about the drive to mandate building restrictions devices into hardware that plays media content. The broadcast flag requires HDTV devices to check for a "do not redistribute" flag in the content they receive. With the flag, they can't output high-def digital or record it. She says that this mitigates against open source software since it is modifiable; all tuners would have to be closed source. "In the post broadcast flag world, no one can bulid a TiVo without first asking permission from the FCC." Until July 1, 2005, it's capable to... [Joho the Blog]

2:53:11 PM •  • comment  

McCloskey's logic nicely summarizes my thinking on this topic.

If you're a true Republican, you'll vote for Kerry. I don't know what has happened to moderate Republicans, but one of them, former Rep. Pete McCloskey, had this commentary in Friday's San Jose Mercury News: If you're a true Republican, you'll vote for Kerry. Although I'm a lifelong Republican,... [New Media Musings]

2:42:19 PM •  • comment