good news at last

Some evidence that God still exists. Now those shystering, crap-producing, freedom-hating, audience-cheating fucks in LA can join the poor, the lovers of peace, the African-Americans, and everyone else Obama made promises to during his campaign but whom he has since let down. Of course, unlike those groups, the producers of excrement like Jack and Jill don't have a legitimate complaint, but it's hard to see how this isn't good news.

If both SOPA and Obama lose, we might wake up in a slightly better (i.e. more American) country. I'm in a patriotic mood tonight:

lawyers for sopa

Guess who supports SOPA? In addition to the obvious suspects (e.g. Time Warner or the Screen Actors Guild), there appear to be a large number of law firms. I guess that tells you who's really going to benefit. The culprits:

Baker & Hostetler LLP
Covington & Burling LLP
Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Irell & Manella LLP
Jenner & Block LLP
Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
Kendall Brill & Klieger LLP
Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP
Lathrop & Gage LLP
Loeb & Loeb LLP
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP
Morrison & Foerster LLP
Phillips Nizer, LLP
Proskauer Rose LLP
Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP
Shearman & Sterling LLP
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
White & Case LLP

Do what you can to stop SOPA, however insignificant.

ghetto d ~ master p

After SOPA, gems like this will be lost forever, like tears in rain. Do what you can, however insignificant.

sane approach to terrorism

I'd never really believed in terrorists before—I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me—starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia—that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worry about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.

~ Cory Doctorow (2008) Little Brother

don't worry

~ paper rad

christopher hitchens, rip

Passing of another great orator / writer / reformed-communist-revolutionary.

I strongly recommend Hitchens' biography, Hitch-22. In all likelihood, given his slow death from cancer, Hitchens will be remembered most for his vocal pro-atheist stance, and his consistency in maintaining and defending his beliefs even in the face of a fatal disease. For me, however, the more interesting and compelling side of Hitchens was his political metamorphosis from left-wing radical to staunch pro-interventionist supporter of both Iraq wars. Like great left intellectuals of the early 20th cent. (e.g. Aldous Huxley or George Orwell) Hitchens gradually grew to realize the inconsistency between the rhetoric of the left (pro-worker / underdog) and its actual policy choices and implementation of those policies (Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or take your pick of any practicing communist country out there). Amongst many other amusing anecdotes and diatribes, Hitch-22 details Hitchens gradual realization that the libertarian and collectivist tendencies of the "left" (communist?) ideology were in profound and inherent conceptual conflict. Facing a choice, he chose liberty, freedom, and the autonomy of individuals over the dogmatic adherence to collectivism, developing a surprisingly (disappointingly!) idiosyncratic, but internally consistent and well-motivated, stance, unique on the political scene.

He will be sorely missed, both for his courage to hold consistent and reasonable views, and for his eloquence in defending them.

Explaining what the "left" would have to be like for me to identify with it.


If there is a heaven based on merit, Hitchens will go there; and if it is based on faith alone, it won't be worth going to . . .

tabula rasa