Year: 2002
Intellectual Property Deserves a Fence
Posted on August 25, 2002 in Liberty
The copyright pirates were whining again on #politics. So I proposed something: let’s treat all property like you want to treat copyright. I want to be able to drive whatever car tickles my fancy. Let me just walk up to any one on the street and drive it away as it pleases me. I want to live in whatever house appeals to me. Let me just move in. The rules the copyright pirates want for the world might work well in the wake of a nuclear war or a lab-spawned plague when all the copyright holders were dead and didn’t care.
Dream
Posted on August 24, 2002 in Dreams
I am a witness to a peculiar kind of play, with many scenes that happen in different places, all at the same time. You choose where you want to be and just sit there watching the actors. I choose to observe a scene that takes place in a bedroom on the second floor of a long cottage. Some lord is dying in bed. The emperor, who is also dying, comes to see him. They carry the emperor up the stairs on a white canopy bed. When they get to the dying lord, they force the emperor’s bed down on top of the lord’s bed, presumably crushing him. The heir to the throne, a middle-aged man, comes to talk. He wears an silk indigo turban. He’s clean shaven. Some great scene, crucial to the plot, is taking place here and I am the only witness. They ask me to move some props for them as the actors move off to play their parts somewhere else.
A Defense of Cultural Relativism
Posted on August 23, 2002 in Thinking
I don’t think Franz Boas and the other founders of cultural relativism meant to let evil persist uncriticized and unchallenged.
A Suggested Amendment
Posted on August 23, 2002 in Peace
I think perhaps it is high time that we add a new amendment to the constitution.
Prologue to the Zoo
Posted on August 23, 2002 in Zoos
“There better be something GOOD, causing this,” I raved.
Sustained Personal Involution
Posted on August 23, 2002 in Attitudes
Sometimes I think that I’m the most interesting character I know. At least I try. Maybe it is because I have this thing against gossip and against projecting my thoughts on other people. IRC people and bloggers tend to put their thoughts right out there for people to see. So I can easily speak mind to mind. But when I see someone on the street, I tend to avoid projecting my thoughts on them. If I find myself doing it, I make a note in my other notebook, the one I use for fiction. That way I can honestly say that this is not the person I saw, but someone who I styled after their looks, the way they talked, etc.
To tell the truth, it might also be because I live in the illusion that I understand myself far less than I understand other people. I think this is because all you really ever get to distill of other people is their actions and their words. The view I have of myself is different: I’m not just watching my actions, but I am also able to see those endless involutions inside my brain. I have the power to generate my own story and it’s fun to play around as a fictional creation that I weave. I can make this puppet dance, which is something that no amount of cajoling, yelling, screaming, bribing, begging, threatening, or politely asking can I use to cause with certainty in another person.
Bloggies
Posted on August 22, 2002 in Misc
I’m in the running against a least a dozen other sites. Sites that have more pictures to catch the eye, certain strong rivals to my words. Nevertheless, I am in it. Vote for Pax Nortona as Best New Blog.
A Clue for Certain Friends
Posted on August 22, 2002 in Peace
It’s not just our boys. It’s their boys, too. And their girls, their old grannies, the pale women secreted in their harems, and their sun-wizened men who sip syrupy coffee and play backgammon.
Moral Decline
Posted on August 21, 2002 in Peace
It’s about ridiculing saints. It is about pressing people who could be saints to ignore their consciences and their rational minds, to give in to hate.
Possessed
Posted on August 21, 2002 in Courage & Activism IRC/Chat Peace
Joel the Angel of Wrath came out swinging the terrible swift sword of invective.
Exclamations
Posted on August 21, 2002 in Humor?
I’ve been in dirty Batman mode lately:
Great sacred coprolite of Damascus! Holy Shit!
Most Divine High Priestess of Aphrodite! Holy Fuck!
OK, it’s out of my system. Been one of those days.
I think we’re there….
Posted on August 21, 2002 in Site News
If you can read this, you are now at my new web host. We had a few problems getting here — a few people almost certainly ran into 403 errors earlier today. I’m still putting together the site and haven’t fixed the form mail, but I promise to have that done by the weekend. You should see the Moveable Type version of this site coming up on September 1 after I’ve tooled around with it a bit, set up a few templates, and gotten up the courage to stick my little toe in the big cold lake called uncertainty.
