Hey, I'm quoted in "The world's first newspaper on the Web"

“It was kind of weird, because they told me they had hired a team at MIT,” said Robert McMillan, a correspondent for the IDG News Service. “And then they kind of backpedaled.”

Guns don't kill people. Surprise parties kill people.

The man found out about the party in a forest cabin in south Norway beforehand and hid behind trees nearby with a shotgun as about 30 guests turned up on Saturday night, hoping to turn the surprise on his friends,


He blasted off one round in the air, meaning it as a joke to shock the partygoers. But when he came out from his hiding place, he tripped and the gun went off again, badly hurting one woman in the legs and slightly injuring five others.

Got Mojo?

Maybe Bush's biggest problem with the War on Terrorism is that not enough Americans have willingly died for it.

Why are the police and the firefighters the heroes of the September 11th and not the working stiffs and security guards who were already there?

I watched that Gedeon and Jules Naudet documentary about the attack on the World Trade Center a few weeks ago, and it left me thinking some seriously politically incorrect thoughts. The documentary follows a rookie NY firefighter in the weeks before the attack, and contains some astounding footage of New York, and of the work of firefighters on September 11th 2001.

At one point, both towers have been hit and fires are raging out of control 80 floors up, and the firefighters start trudging up the stairs to go do their work. You can tell they're scared, and yet they do it, because that's what firefighters do. I wish I had a better idea what was going through their minds, because it is obvious that they are never going to put out this fire. It was a terrible sight, and as I watched it, I thought, "This is just like World War I. These guys are being sacrificed for no reason."

So when I read this essay about the need for nationalistic sacrifice, written 5 years before the attack, I finally understood: Willing victims are more meaningful than unwilling victims.

For example, we tell ourselves that the purpose of war is to kill the enemy. And it is. But what keeps the group together and makes us feel unified is not the sacrifice of the enemy but the sacrifice of our own. If the ritual purpose of war were merely to kill the enemy, the deaths of some 40,000 or more Iraqis would have made a lasting contribution to American national unity. During the Persian Gulf war, notable for the ephemerality of its unifying effect, only 147 Americans died, a poor totem sacrifice.

The really interesting thing about this essay is the way it invites a re-interpretation of the current Administration's religious fundamentalism. Forget about Christianity. Only armed religions count for shit. And the armed religion of this country is US nationalism.

Of course, the problem with this essay is that it feels as if written in a vacuum, or some alternate universe where aggression is something you do for religious reasons, not something that wakes you up at 4 am and ships you off to the gulag or rolls on tank tracks into your town square, unbidden.

RECALL STEVE WESTLEY

So we all know, as sure as Bush will be a two-termer, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to be running California. People on the street say it, and they laugh, because they know that the level of honest representation that they'd get from machine politicians like Davis or Simon is laughable anyway.

Maybe its our own fault, for perpetrating the myth that a career in politics can be something closer to a personal quest than a corporate merger?

I know that most people think that Schwarzenegger is a joke, and some even believe he won't be elected, but I believe that his lack of qualifications for this job are part of his appeal. He already has fame and money and after relentlessly pursuing it for his entire life, maybe he will find himself in a position to, for once, do something real and meaningful. Maybe he will be a real outsider leader like Jimmy Carter, and stand up to the special interests and make real decisions with clarity and perspective.

Or then again, maybe he will be like George Bush and, realizing that he is in so far over his head, he will abdicate thinking and suround himself with learned sons of bitches who will stroke him behind the ear and whisper, again and again, what strong and righteous decisions he has made.

Oh, and why recall Steve Westley? Well, the state's in a mess and we're recalling Davis. Who's really in control here, I say? Why not blame the "Controller?" It's just common sense.

Should we have freedom of speech on Airplanes? I think so, within reason. I mean, I don't respect anyone's right to say, "I am a terrorist, fly this plane to Cuba," but I do respect John Gillmore's right to point out that we are all suspected terrorists and this kid's right to leave a sarcastic note in his bag. Gillmore explains his reasons for wearing the button here and his Quixotic fight against the airline's ID requirements here.

I admire Gillmore's struggle, but sometimes I think about what his Sun Microsystems co-founder has said about privacy: You have none. Get over it.

This is one of those debates where very little time is spent analyzing the assumptions of the participants. In what way does showing an ID really make an airline flight more secure? Explain that? And why is a loss of privacy a bad thing. Certainly the white pages represent a loss of privacy, but it's not such a bad thing that people who I want to find me can actually find me using them. In fact, it's a benefit.

I feel bad that the airlines don't trust me enought to just fly me based on my trustworthy eyes, but I'm more concerned about this loss of privacy than anything that's happened so far in air travel.

I drove down to San Jose recently for a couple of computer conferences. I'm always driving down to San Jose in my new job, and I love it. Sitting on that plush leopard skin bench seat, Scary Monsters blasting away, my cell phone, unheard, ringing along in the briefcase at my side, the Sun slowly blistering my skin as I slowly wind my way through the peninsula hills.

These are the special moments. The private moments on the great highways of our nation. I wonder how many others, like me, have felt this sense of satori, of being in the right place at the right time and moving just a little too fast. I think the highway is a fucking fantastic public space, where people would come for fun and amusement, if only we didn't drive on them with such crushing regularity. I wonder, are there more highways than parkland in America, and I think of the genius of a public space so thoroughly committed to individuality. Where a man can be a man, and mix with his fellow men -- and the automobile seems to be within almost everybody's grasp in this great gas guzzler of a country -- and somehow retain a total and complete sense of isolation. Different models, different music, different interiors. We are all the same and somehow it feels completely unique.

I've lived in California for eight years now and for most of that time a buzzing sense of otherness has kept me inspired and happy as though living a dream. This will sound strange, but some of my happiest moments have been on the 280, driving south to San Jose. With the top down, stuck in traffic, or flying faster than the Cutlass's wheels can rightly take my, that's the one place I've consistently felt in communion with this California fantasy.

I've noticed that in the last few months, California hasn't felt so much like an "other" place. It's been very much the here and now and that sense of California fantasy is receding from my life.

Perhaps I need to spend more time on the 280.