On the Road I am reading Nicholas Shakespeare's fascinating biography of Bruce Chatwin, who went everywhere worth going, saw everything worth seeing, and knew everyone worth knowing.  Even this early in the book, however, one has a sense of Chatwin as a lonely and tragic figure.  I have just reached the point at which Chatwin has quit the University of Edinburgh in disgust over its rigid notions about archeology, and is about to embark on his writing career spurred by a fascination with nomadic culture.  I regret now that I have left my copies of In Patogonia and The Songlines moldering on my bookshelves for years without having so much as cracked the spines.  Sometimes, however, I think that books come to us when we are ready for them, and perhaps I am now ready for Chatwin.

10:58:45 PM    

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Big Brother is Watching 

From Doc Searls: William Safire in the New York Times: You Are a Suspect:

If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

[The Doc Searls Weblog] Normally I don't care much for William Safire's political opinions (though I like his columns on the English language!). But this is solid, hard-hitting stuff and perhaps finally a wake-up call to US citizens who have not really questioned the rights and capabilities the govt and surveillance agencies have demanded post 9/11. [[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]]

My senators (Mikulski and Sarbanes) know how I feel about this, do yours?

7:01:36 AM    

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 Bracing for MS Patent Suit Attack. With the Microsoft antitrust settlement more or less settled, open-source advocates worry the company may renew its assault on free software by filing patent lawsuits. By Robert McMillan. [Wired News]

6:59:18 AM    


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