stray bits...

Recall Pearce campaign - no, campaigns!

1 min read

Tucson's Future Mayor?

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Animal care by difficulty level

2 min read

Project Links

1 min read

Moderate Republicans support Jan Brewer campaign

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bandersnatch and brain child

Made a good haul at the Book Stop on 4th Ave recently - they have an excellent collection of classic sci-fi, as well as really good kids authors like Avi and Roald Dahl.

Bandersnatch by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.  A first novel, which I generally like - fresh if sometimes rough.  Here's a book-length fable to go with Hillel's "If I'm not for myself, who will be?" - in Bandersnatch's world, if you don't stick up for yourself you become a target fast.

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1 min read

How do we help?

On a more serious note, what should us comfortable Western folks do to support democracy protesters risking their lives to eliminate dangerous dictators?  I don't really know.  Its their revolution, not ours, but it seems like we should somehow offer non-directing friendship or support.

We can 'friend' their sites on Facebook and make links to their pages, and attend virtual protests.  We can sign the page on Access now asking Facebook to hide protesters' identities to protect their lives.   Find a way to get funds to Abdul (no last name) to get medical aid to injured protesters.  More ideas here.

But long term, democracy means building up a whole new culture.  For a while I've thought that sending books is a very simple and powerful thing.  Books are deeper than fragments of text on the web, and many accounts of individuals breaking away from controlling mentalities start with books (Infidel, for one).   I would like to see a site that facilitates individuals sending books to other individuals, without going thru a central organization.

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1 min read

Why the Truth Shall Set You Free

Did Wikileaks trigger events in Tunisia?  Not to devalue the efforts of the Tunisian opposition, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi's sacrifice or in any way minimize the real problems with the government; just the opposite.  But it could be that Wikileaks publishing a 'truth that everyone knows', was just the consciousness-raising event that needed to happen to get to critical mass.

I think that Vaclav Havel wrote about this, that publishing something that everyone knows, does change things.  It makes it so everyone knows that everyone knows.

There is even a mathematical proof that such an event can trigger a chain reaction.  Its a silly old sexist problem, but this is how I was taught it:  on an island, there is a tribe where everyone is married, everyone cheats, and no one has ever been is caught; but if anyone is caught the wife will be tied to the Hoorah tree in the middle of the island for the night.  One day, the visiting minister, who was the only unmarried person on the island, announces "there is cheating going on" and leaves.  Now, since everyone is cheating, everyone already knew this.  Yet on an island of N couples, you can prove

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1 min read

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