It began, as most insights do, as a comedy routine. Noel Paul Stookey did a riff on the self-centeredness of our culture, beginning with the magazine “Life” which was expansive and covered all of life, then “People” which had a narrower focus, then “Us”, which covered people, but not them, only us. (The routine was before the magazine “Self” existed. Ironic, as the punch line of the riff was a magazine entitled “Me.”)
Cable TV grew, promising hundreds of specialized channels. And the Internet boomed. In time, the wide array of choices began to bother me. Not the possible choices; the ones being made.
(more…)
OK, not all that mixed, but still….
Fannie Mae hit a little trouble recently with a contractor. I’m glad they caught him in time. But…
(more…)
The election is over. The campaign was the easy part. Gary Kasparov’s new editorial, though, underscores the biggest problem our freshly-minted President will have to face.
It’s not the economy, or the war, or terrorism, or taxes, or the deficit; these all look simple when compared with the real problem. The shortage of patience.
(more…)
OK, the election is upon us. It’s the only time our government is required by law to listen to us, yet so few of us take advantage of it. One reason may be the success of negative campaign ads. According to the latest numbers from the University of Wisconsin’s Advertising Project (and injecting my own reasonable assumption that negative ads cost the same amount of money to make and broadcast as positive ads) in the last full week of the campaign, John McCain spent just under $6M just to convince me not to vote for Barack Obama. During the same time period, Mr Obama spent about $13M (a little over twice what Mr McCain spent) just to convince me not to vote for Mr McCain. (Based on 63% negative ads for Mr Obama and 79% negative ads for Mr McCain – Story Source – Advertising Project Home Page)
The process reminds me of a story from Wisconsin’s history, a story about two frontier towns: Sauk City and Prairie du Sac.
(more…)
I’ve got some real mixed emotions about the Boucher decision.
I mean, I’m all in favor of the Fifth Amendment. I think it’s necessary to preserve our liberties, especially today when the federal government seems intent on taking them away in the name of security.
I just don’t see any sort of meaningful difference between a password and the key to a locked room/box/safe. If I’m the target of a legally obtained search warrant, I can be forced to provide a key for a strong box. How is that different from a password for an encrypted file?
Even more to the point, the judge can compel me to provide the combination for a safe that might be the legitimate target of a search. Tell me, please, just how that possibly differs from the password for a computer file.
I’m definitely not in favor of giving the government carte blanche to search everyone everywhere. There are specific tests they must meet in order to be granted the right to search, and the warrants have to be specific about what they can find and take away.
But given those measures are satisfied, I’m completely at a loss how any reasonable judge can draw a distinction between the combination to a safe and the password to a computer, saying you have to divulge the one but not the other.