People occasionally accuse me of being a sensible liberal, or likely to lose my liberal blogger badge (original). This is pretty warming, since I don’t really think of myself as a liberal; I think of myself as an anarchocapitalist hampered in his desire for untrammeled freedom by the practicalities of realpolitik. I.e., if I could push a button and remove all government from the world, I wouldn’t do it. I think that, unpaired with some serious education about enlightened self-interest, the results would be very bad. In the interim, I tend to lean towards the left, because I think the left is somewhat more likely to preserve the freedoms I care the most about without imposing the restrictions I find most distasteful. ...

I always approve of primary sources. Here’s a great place to get them: DoD News. It’s the central page for Department of Defense news items, and most interestingly includes email lists for DoD press releases and so on. I get the transcripts of all the DoD press briefings. It’s always interesting reading.

Mister Sterling isn’t bad. I was kind of expecting something more draggy, and it is a touch preachy at times, but as TV dramas go it’s not bad. I like the cast, I like the characters, and I was OK with the setup. I can say that last mostly because of the nice little twist in the middle of the first episode, which I personally took as a metatextual zing at everyone who thought the show would be The West Wing II. ...

Cory Doctorow has another story, “ Liberation spectrum (original),” up on Salon. It’s most definitely Transhumanist: deeply rooted in today’s technological culture, set in a fairly near future, and so on. It doesn’t have the body modification elements I’d been thinking were a key component of the subgenre, although I think there’s one or two offhand references to the concept. I like this story more than “ Jury Service” or “ 0wnz0red,” possibly because the conflict between the techie founder and the need for business oversight is something that crops up all the time in my day to day work. The characterization rocks too. Lee-Daniel’s got personality, and he’s real, not just a carrier for the thoughts on technology. Same goes for the other characters. I’m really impressed with how much Doctorow was able to say about Mac in so little room.

I just implemented this tip. Someday I’ll be the kind of person who meticulously adds titles to my links by hand, too.

Lessig has posted the opinions in Eldred vs. Ashcroft. Here’s the majority decision, here’s Stevens’ dissent, and here’s Breyer’s dissent.

This post (original) does an excellent job of summarizing and linking to various reactions to Lessig; I recommend keeping an eye on it over the next few days.

Lessig reports that the Supreme Court has rejected the Eldred challenge to the Sonny Bono law, 7-2. John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented. More details as this develops.

The blogosphere is all excited about moblogging, which I guess is the neologism for mobile blogging. I am too, actually. Mobile blogging is cool. But I had another thought, which I think was triggered while I was driving around with my brother looking at all the pretty 802.11b networks the other day. What about a non-mobile collaborative blog? What if I stuck a wireless access point somewhere in Harvard Square, and set up a weblog for people using the access point, and only let people post to it if they were coming from the access point’s IP? ...

Another interesting DoD briefing yesterday, this one on the all-volunteer armed forces. Obviously, this was prompted by Rangel’s draft proposal. Worth reading, for some interesting statistics. The most interesting point is that black Americans join the military in a proportion roughly equivalent to the proportion of blacks in society as a whole; the 30% number we’ve heard a lot about is due to the fact that blacks tend to remain in the military at a higher rate than do other ethnicities. Seems to me that the question to ask, therefore, is not “why are there so many black people in the military” but “why is the military such a superior alternative to the rest of society in so many cases?” Maybe it’s something the military is doing; maybe the rest of society just sucks harder. Probably a combination of both. I’d like to see more investigation of this, in any case; I bet there’s something to be learned there. ...