meta-roj

so, who wants to take me to lunch with warren?

i’ll bring the heckle…

we should also bring bill moyers and walter williams.

… with whatever “sovereignty” means for now

i guess this is pretty much the message we’ve been seeing from the white house for a while… only simpler, for consumption in the senate?

Testy, Testy, Testy [washington post, june 25, 2004]

At a photo session on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Cheney ran into Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. That sparked an exchange about Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and the White House’s bare-knuckle tactics on judicial nominees.

Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank write in The Washington Post: “The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.

” ‘Fuck yourself,’ said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency. . . .

“As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the ‘Defense of Decency Act’ by 99 to 1. . . .

thanks, dick. i’ll take that under advisement.

[for the fox news interview version, read below]

update (9:10):
[more thoughtful thoughts from me on this at joi’s blog – see the comments here]
(more…)

the register is carrying a story from faultline on something called the networked environment for media orchestration (nemo), which hopes to be a universal drm for the new internetworked world.

Intertrust ready for DRM role

No DRM system can be made to communicate if it doesn’t want to, but if Microsoft has already paid much of its $440m in licensing fees to participate and if Sony takes the lead by letting its studios implement a Nemo system and if both Sony and Philips incorporate these agents onto consumer electronic equipment, we are going to have a new paradigm for content protection, with an irresistible powerbase and little resistance.

with the confidence from #1 positions for both the velvet revolver and beastie boys releases, i imagine there is even less resistance.

i’ve added a button for draft bruce over there on the right… and in good company, i think.

why, you might ask?

well, when i noticed that bruce was commenting on gore’s speech, i blogged it. and when someone stepped up and did something about it, i blogged it. and when the effort made the news wires, i blogged it. so with all those seconds of accumulated interest focused on bruce and draft bruce, i thought it was worth a more-permanent home.

it’s about doing something – and andrew has done something. i’m just here to help.

someone remind me to take it down after the concert 🙂

The Obsessively Annotated Introduction to the INDUCE Act

The cognitive dissonance of this speech is giving me a headache.

Bruce Schneier: Unchecked police and military power is a security threat [the minneapolis-st. paul star tribune, june 24, 2004]

Unchecked police and military power is a security threat — just as important a threat as unchecked terrorism. There is no reason to sacrifice the former to obtain the latter, and there are very good reasons not to.

geek

we like good stories about people doing good things, so the meta-roj blog introduces you to dazja gianessi and maya carey. dazja and maya are a couple of 11-year olds from weirton, west virginia, and they want some ice cream.

and this is only a big deal because all the ice cream shops in town have been replaced by slots parlors (and, i guess, 11-year-olds don’t have cars to get to the next town…).

in any case, the story is that these two young women have decided to start a petition to get their ice cream back, and they’ve landed nearly 600 signatures so far, which is something like 3% of the population.

if you’re in the neighborhood, swing by the millsop community center on june 26th around noon for the pro-ice-cream rally.

Girls lobby for ice cream shops in W. Va. [ap via seattle post-intelligencer, june 24, 2004]

Weirton, with a population of 20,000, has 81 licensed video poker bars.

…

Maya said grown-ups seem to have forgotten that children need places to hang out, too.

“I think they’re just being selfish, worrying about themselves,” she said. “They don’t think children will do anything about it.”

Slots are hot in Weirton [pittsburgh post-gazette, june 24, 2004]
Ice Cream vs. Slot Machines [wpvi, june 23, 2004]
Where’s The Ice Cream? [wtov]

yes, it was an optimistic statement, with just a couple tiny hints to go on, but… i guess it’s all too good to be true, because even when they try to clear things up then end up creating more questions than they answer.

trust us, we’re from the government.