Free as in Freedom

Resources for Free Culture.

http://creativecommons.org/

Creative Commons is devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share. ... Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain Ñ or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. ... Creative Commons licenses are not designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc.

http://www.gutenberg.org/

Project Gutenberg is the home to one of the largest public domain texts on the internert.

http://www.gnu.org/

The mission of the Free Software Foundation is to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of Free Software users. The majority of software that runs the internet is under GNUÕs GPL or similar free software licenses.

http://ocw.mit.edu/

With the publication of 700 courses, MIT OCW offers educational materials from 33 academic disciplines and all five of MIT's schools.

http://cnx.rice.edu/

Connexions is a Content Commons of free, open-licensed educational materials in fields such as music, electrical engineering and psychology. Mostly college level, but some content for younger students too. Connexions is a place for communities of authors and instructors to create, find, and share content.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/

Wikipedia.org, Wiktionary.org, Wikiquote.org, Wikibooks.org, and Wikisource.org. The goals of the foundation are to encourage the growth and development of free content, Wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge and without advertising.

http://www.ibiblio.org

Ibiblio is a conservancy of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. ibiblio.org is a collaboration of the Center for the Public Domain and The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

http://www.lessig.org/blog/

Standord Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has written many books on issues related to freedom of expression and copy right laws. He has aurgued copyright cases before the Supreme Court, and is major player in the Creative Commons movement. His most reccent book is ÒFree CultureÓ and can be purchased as a book or downloaded for free under the Creative Commons.

http://www.joramo.com/freedom/ccmessage

A copy of todayÕs Message released under the Creative Commons License, additional information and all of these links may be found here.

It's Happy Fun Ball

I ran across one of my favorite Saturday Night Live skits, a fake commercial about a cool new childern's toy.

Just remember kids, Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Dick Rove Bush

Wow!

Draping yourself in the image of Richard Nixon. Now that is sleazy. Hell, that is even sleazier than Nixon himself.

In a Salon opinion piece entitled More vicious than Tricky Dick, from which I got this image, John W. Dean writes that "Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means."

Wow!

Now yes, Nixon is the Macbeth of American politics. A great man whose over arching desire for power corrupts ever thing when just a little restraint would have allowed him to avoid self-destruction.

I for one do not believe the Junior Bush, has the complexity of the failure of Nixon. Junior is banal.

Nixon went to China. Can you envision Junior Bush going to Tehran?

Candidates Blog HowTo

Dave Winer has an excellent introduction on how to run a web log for political candidates. This is good info for anyone who is starting a blog, and are ideas that I am including in gjActive.org.

Western Colorado Gardening Foundation

I found a very cool website that focuses on gardening in the Grand Junction area. The Western Colorado Gardening Foundation is an umbrella organization that supports and build connects with other gardening clubs. From the GCGF's Vision Statement:

"To promote funding for the edification of residents of Western Colorado in matters pertaining to horticulture in order to foster successful and environmentally sound gardening practices that protect and beautify neighborhood environments in Western Colorado."

The Foundation will raise money to carry out qualifying, gardening related projects and to provide educational programs for members and the general public.

A primary objective of the Foundation is to cultivate cooperative, mutually supportive relationships with other gardening organizations and to pursue possible "partnership" opportunities in planning and completing projects.

If you go to the WCGF's web site, you will find that they are provding web hosting services for a variety of other local gardening groups. This is the first truely community building web project covering Grand Junction that I have found in my current searches.

Arnie Terminates the Christian Republicans

The current California governor recall is a disaster for the christian dominated Republican Party. If they had left Gov. Gray Davis in office, the Republicans would likely have been handed a state wide sweep in the next general election while voters blame the Democrats for the States problems. Now, no matter what happens the Republicans will be held accountable for a portion of the state's problems.

• If Gray Davis survives the recall he will be re-empowered to stomp on the Republicans and blame them for many of the problems.
• If Gray Davis loses, but a democrat wins the Governorship, the new Governor can absolve themself of Gray Davis' sins and paint the republican's as equally responsible for the problems.
• If a Republican wins, but the California economy does not recover before the next election, the Republicans will get a high percentage of the blame. The Republicans will be thinking "If only we had sat on the side lines".
• If Arnold wins, a major crack will open in the GOP's foundation. Arnold is a libertarian republican, not a christian republican. He is pro-choice and pro-domestic partnership. And unlike the current Bush administration, Arnold believes in free-markets. Arnold will not cowtow to the fundies. He doesn't have to give in to the fundies for crass political reasons. Arnold will never have to worry about building a national political base. Since the U.S. Constitution prohibits him from becoming President, he only has to focus on being electable in California. Arnold could be the spring board for the return of the libertarian wing of the Republican party.

In any case, the current California governor battle is shaping up to be a disaster for the Christians Republican.

Hatched

Most people really don't have a clue about computer and internet technology, much less the related security issues. And that is okay. And most people make occasional extreme statements about different topics. And that is okay too.

But when you are a powerful Senator who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, maybe you should gather information and think before you speak. According to the Washington Post:

I am willing to give Hatch a short grace period here to gather his wits, realize what he said is bone head stupid and issue retraction. Of course, I am being more generous than Hatch. Wow, any copyright holder would have the right to destroy someones computer without even due process.

Hmm, lets see Al Qaeda could seed the world with a hip hop song by Bin Laden and then claim justification for destroying all of the computers that illegaly boot legged a copy... NICE IDEA HATCH

Journalistic Threat

Thank God Almighty that we have the Department of Homeland Security to protect us honest Americans. Reason magazine reports that but for our courageous DHS Nazi Pimps, treacherous foreign journalists would have been able to report from a video-game industry conference.

Interestingly while the nasty journalistic terrorists were rebuffed, noble foreign Public Relations spokespeople from various video game firms were wisely allowed into God's Country.

Bravo Bill Owens !

Here in Colorado, Democrats, Greens and Libertarians love to slam State Governor Bill Owens (one guess as to his party affiliation). However, Owens recently vetoed a Super-DMCA bill.

This is IMPORTANT. Way to go Bill!

While many of my friends are focused on the PATRIOT Act, I feel that they should have at least as much concern for the various DMCA's that are out there.

ERA

Interesting.

The ERA is still kicking. The Illinois House passed the ERA. If ratified by the Illinois Senate, only two more states will be needed to get enough states to support the ERA for it to become a Consitutional Admendement.

But there is a complication, the original authorization for the ERA had only a 7 year period to be ratified by the states which expired in 1982. However, due to the away the Congress worded the authorization, it is:

1) Not clear that this time limit is valid.

2) Congress can choose to exend the authorization period at any time.

PATRIOT not that bad, yet...

In this Plastic discussion about a New York Times "Patriot Act" article we learn that the Justice department claims that the Patriot Act has not been as bad as its critics fear.

Well, DUH!

I for one believe that if the Patriot Act is allowed to stand as is, we will not even begin to see how bad it really is for at least 5 to 10 years. All of the bad things that I fear about the Patriot Act will occur after it is a well estabished law with a few minor test cases under its belt. Then future generations of goverment officials will have a proven law and a population that has been slowly groomed to accept highly reduced freedom and still think they are a Free people.

Puritanical Injustice

I really have a hard time believing this story that I found on several blog and discussion sites this morning. In Dallas, a family has been broken up because they took some pictures of their childern bathing and breastfeeding. They have been charged with a slew of child abuse violations and the creation of child pornography.

After months of such state abuse of power, the Dallas Observer investigated the story. The Observer's questioning of the District Attorney ultimately led to the DA to drop the charges, but the state is still refusing to return the childern.

I agree with one of the assessment of commentors on kuro5in:

Okay, I don't know if these bastards are pediphiles. But I would say that it is highly likely that they have some huge issues with their own sexuallity. But surely Wakefield and Hill are already preparing to raid that notorious porn ring the La Leche League.

Their all Dead

In a massive die off of important people, CNN reports on the deaths of Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, and Gerald Ford.

Ooops! Hold on. They are still alive. As is standard policy for all news organizations, CNN prepares obituaries in advance for famous people. What is different, is that CNN accidentally provided web access to these obits before the fact. CNN has since taken down the stories, but you can sill see them at TheSmokingGun.com.

Hmmm, of course this could all be a practiccal joke by TheSmokingGun.com

UPDATE: Chilling

Wow, it looks like CNN (and no doubt other news sources) have some major ethical problems. Eugene Volokh digs into CNN's past and finds some very unsettling comments that are difficult to reconcile.

Still, while much attention has been paid to the not easily resolved ethical dilemmas of embedded journalists, we have not been considering the dilemma posed by covering an evil dictator. You choose:

• Don't report from the dictatorship, keep everyone safe, but no on the ground reporting.
• Cover the dictatorship, report fully, and blame the dictator for the bloodbath.
• Try to find a balance between Journalistic ethics and Humanitarian Ethics, accepting the grayness.
• Take the path of being purely Ethical in all regards. (I don't see how you can do it, but I am willing to listen.)

BTW, thanks to Scripting News for links to all of these CNN related stories. (For you literary types: that is scripting as in computer programming, not play writing.)

Chilling New York Times Editorial

In his New York Times editorial piece The News We Kept to Ourselves, Eason Jordan describes a terrorfiying account of what we have not been told about Iraq for the past 10 years.

Yes, I worry about the quality of our news sources. I worry about the corporate overlords who twist the news. I worry about the dumbing down of news to the "average" of the demographics. I worry about reporters who become in awe of their star power.

But before today, I never worried that a organization like CNN was withholding information because their reporters were being tortured and murdered to prevent stories from being run.

School with the wacked

According to Fox News,It looks like I attended a University with the guy who started killing his commrades in the 101st Airbourne:

Mark Fidel Kools came to the University of California, Davis, in 1988, school spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said. He was a double major in aeronautical and mechanical engineering, and graduated with a bachelor's degree as Hasan Karim Akbar nine years later, apparently because "he stopped and started several times" with his classes, Lapin said.

Anti-War marches

Looks like today was a big day for anti-war marches. I had friends in Grand Junction who particpated and John Gilmore in Seattle was in the lines too.

marilyn manson, American Hero

I should have mentioned that in Bowling for Columbine, the people who had the most intelligent things to say were:

• the District Attorney for Flint Michigan
• the Sheriff for Flint Michigan
  
  . . . and . . .
  
  
• Marilyn Manson

I was surprized at how intelligent and thoughtful Marilyn Manson was in the film. You know it is really obsence that many people across the social and political spectrum want to blame Marilyn Manson for the Columbine killings. As the title of the movie implies, you can build as good of a case as any that the killers were influenced by "bowling".

As impressed as I was with Marilyn Manson, I have to say that I was deeply disappointed in Charlton Heston. Heston's explaination for why we have so much gun violence in America sure sounded racist to me.