A life in words

  • There is no fear in love

    You might say I’m something of a late bloomer. At least, that’s how I feel sometimes. As a teen and through much of my twenties I was so hunkered down just trying to survive that I never really learned how to thrive. Still trying to figure that part out. In any sort of love story…

  • A Fig Leaf

    There is a major separation of powers issue with the current surveillance arrangement: The standard for permitting a query of the database of internal US phone calls is a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” of terrorist activity, Inglis says. Only 20 analysts within the NSA are empowered to approve targeting US-based phone conversations, he says. One of…

  • Decentralizing the Web… Again

    …cloud computing represents centralization of information and computing resources, which can be easily controlled by corporations and governments. [Jaeger, et al. Link] In the wake of Prismgate or the Snowden Affair or whatever we’re going to call this kerfuffle, I’ve been struck by how the current centralized nature of the World Wide Web has facilitated…

Of a commonwealth, whose subjects are but hindered by terror from taking arms, it should rather be said, that it is free from war, than that it has peace. For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character….Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus V.4, 1670, trans. A. H. Gosset 1883