My Scattered Thoughts

The first pro-tax weblog I have ever seen.

I’m not one of these tax-hating people–there seem to be so MANY of them these days!–and I tend to think that the government (local AND federal) does many useful things, in spite of occasional excesses. (How occasional, of course, depends on your attitude and feelings about government.*) Irrespective of that, this fellow, Josh Kornbluth, is quite cogent and eloquent in support of his thesis that taxation is a civic duty and a civic virtue.

*Well, um. Let’s just say that my political upbringing, as it were, was probably about as confused and emotionally weird as my religious/spiritual upbringing was… Maybe I’ll go into it sometime.

You know, one of these days I will have time to go back and read these things that whet my interest…

Anyway, it’s well-written. Talks about how removing civility from the public discourse damages us all (among other things).
Quite well done, I thought.

mark ye, that fine grain weave….

UPDATE: The link that was broken should now be UNbroken. Thanks, T.

i say!, WHAT-NOT, eh?

Loca Records: you can download all of their music, they encourage distribution, you give them money if you want to buy the music. Once you’ve done so, you can do ANYTHING with the music you like.
Check it out.

get yer paws off that keyboard!

Vik Muniz–if you would to the gallery, and find those pictures of thread, i can assure you, you will not be missed….

lines beyond grieving…

Mitch Ratcliffe: What is the Net, marketplace, commons or temporary autonomous zone?

Anyone who cites Oliver Wendell Holmes, is fine by me… and to invoke taxation, no less: you know, taxes being the price we pay for a free society and all that.

Mr. Ratcliffe is proposing that, instead of regulating the internet “commons”, we should actively set out to broaden that idea… oh, but he says it better anyway:

The Net is a means to increased freedom and free communication of ideas and opinion is an end in itself. Without the wider context of the question of an American dream of a better world for our children and an international dream of a better world for everyone’s children, free of hunger, ignorance and dogmatism, among a whole slew of human suffering that we might inflict on one another, the Net is just a distraction from the serious issues of policy that are reshaping the world as one where competition exists without cooperation.