Delaware Supreme Court didn’t actually give a blanket protection for the anonymity of abusive speech, though that’s how the decision has been portrayed on NPR. Biz Report says it found that Smyrna town councilman Patrick Cahill needed to make a stronger case that he and his wife, Julia, had been defamed before forcing Comcast Cable to disclose the identity of an anonymous blogger.

A blanket protection for anonymous abusive speech is not what we want. We all have to accept harms to our own interests to protect the good of our common interest, and the harm of personally admitting to abusive speech is a small price to pay for protection from abusive incitement from secret sources. Continue reading The right freedom to protect →

Islamic Terrorists – 60’s Radicals – Neo-conservative fundamentalists

These three great mass movements, as strangely different as they are, each multiplied from almost nothing to represent huge open communities of interest only because they struck some true chord in human experience.

It’s an obvious fact.  Actual fraud by an evil wizard wouldn’t have the success each of these have had, because huge cross sections of people are just not that stupid. Continue reading Three Mass Movements, 60 years →

One of the strange long held ideas of the conservatives is that if you take money away from the federal government it will help restore old ways and simpler times.

The supposed connection is that “tax tax spend spend liberals” were inventing needless government activity to meddle with business and private lives. The solution? Give away the money and budget pressure will force reducing the needless expenditure. Giving away money is always popular anyway.

I’m an architect and loose money every day providing mandated services I can’t sell, so you’d think I’d be jumping up and down in support. What I think kills the design business these days is redesign. The requirements are so complex that the solutions are less and less flexible and small changes force rethinking complex issues. We can’t sell that. Continue reading Real Complication →

Call this a draft, maybe I’ll come back to smooth it out.

I try to be daring, pure in heart and completely honest. It’s not easy, but it sure does feel good when I am able. Some people seem to have chosen to simplify the problem, to have either their faith or their reason shut out the other half. I find each needs the other, without reason, faith has no relevance and without faith reason has no purpose.

My dad was a physicist, the ultimate staid rationalist and a very regular old fashioned Protestant. Life was rather dull, and then I smelled a rat, actually lots of them, conventional thinking that simply didn’t have the ring of truth. That was a long time ago.

Trying to be considerate, of course, there’s now no idea I wouldn’t still gladly smash to bits if it does not have it.  It’s not, for example, quite truthful to harden individual sites to protect them against terrorism. Continue reading Why I’ve been so quiet →

It’s curious that the Republican’s new twist on the Social Security reform ignores both the long run solvency of the system and the long run solvency of the people who rely on it.

Yes, the new idea makes a tiny bit more sense than for the federal government to borrow the life savings of its citizens (that was the last great idea)! Now the idea is to give away the trust fund surplus that future generations will need. Fortunately people are really stupid and it endears them to you to abuse their trust.

Once upon a time if you wanted to be taken seriously you’d try to actually address the problem. Continue reading Just making up the losses on volume! →

I’d really like to apologize to him for arguing with what he thought Senator Durbin meant about torture at Guantánamo recalling Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.

He was in such anguish, a passer bye on the sidewalk who challenged me with his feeling of insult while I collected signatures to put a slate of local candidates on the upcoming primary ballot in NYC.

Even if I think being inhumane to prisoners harms our cause, not acknowledging his life changing experience with real torture was a mistake. I have a lot of radical ideas, easily misunderstood, and I’m in awe of how the worlds we create within our minds bounce off reality and each other, sometimes shaking us to the core.