A life in words

  • The Spotlight

    I answered these questions for a “spotlight” section in the ward newsletter. Understandably, my lengthy responses were pared down prior to publication. Here I give you the original, uncut spotlight. I’m quite proud of it. Here goes…. Where are you from? Kennewick, Washington — the bone dry, brown, not-ever-green part of the Evergreen State. If…

  • Official Announcement and Official Request

    Announcement I’m starting the Master’s program in computer science at BYU in the fall! That means I will be taking some spring and summer classes in preparation for the program’s beginning in fall. Request My dad gave me an Amazon.com gift certificate and I want to use it to broaden my musical horizons. I’d like…

  • Quixotesque

    Don Quixote was published something like 400 years ago in archaic Spanish that I can only understand by looking up every other word in the Royal Academy‘s online dictionary. And yet, I find that the delusional knight is part of my daily thought and discourse. Yesterday a programmer in his blog compared his crazy project…

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another: and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. … A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their freedom of speech. … Freedom of speech is ever the symptom, as well as the effect of a good government. … Guilt only dreads liberty of speech, which drags it out of its lurking holes, and exposes its deformity and horror to daylight.Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood no. 8, 1722 (orthography and spelling modernized)