Food for thought…

Niek Hockx points to a link that links up with Blackwater, the apotheosis of free marketry really.

Artie Shaw died.  Who knew he was 94?  Decline of the licorice stick…

Amy Wohl may be giving Jaron Lanier more credit than he has coming.  Based on what I heard at Accelerating Change, and what I’ve read most recently, I think the lad has stagnated.  The "debate" with Will Wright really wasn’t, and Wright would have eaten poor Jaron alive had they engaged in a clash of ideas.  Fortunately for all present, the exchange was mild and boring, a chance for the audience to bask in the presence of the cultural icons, a chance for the icons to chill and collect (one assumes) a decent honorarium for the chillage.

… and that Helen Keller, what a rabble rouser:

We are not free unless the men who frame and execute the laws represent the interests of the lives of the people and no other interest. The ballot does not make a free man out of a wage slave. There has never existed a truly free and democratic nation in the world. From time immemorial men have followed with blind loyalty the strong men who had the power of money and of armies. Even while battlefields were piled high with their own dead they have tilled the lands of the rulers and have been robbed of the fruits of their labor. They have built palaces and pyramids, temples and cathedrals that held no real shrine of liberty.

Read this for a better understanding of visually dominant cultures.

And then as homework, prepare and present a paper on the importance of standards and why XML is a standard but RSS is not.