The Sh*t L*st

Greetings. Am chiming in to fulfill my promise to vent my increasing hatred of life and the universe on these pages. It seems pretty clear to me that the infrastructure is already in place to turn file swapping into something good for we merry capitalists, even if that isn't in line with the spirit of complete and utter online liberty that seems to prevail among users of limewire or whatever other software, myself included. Why is no one talking about this? Walker is right when he says it shouldn't break down into an either/or moral & legal issue, but that's what seems to be happening, which is really dumb because the "problem" doesn't seem that hard to see around. It's clearly a case of the industry trying to protect its existing interests instead of following the scent of the money, which is what its job is in the first place. Tell me if I'm wrong. Another thing--file sharing can be made legal without giving the FCC or whatever federal body knowledge of what kind of music you listen to; right now music licensing is handled by "middle man"-type companies, and there's no reason that this couldn't continue to be the case. So why can't we just do that? Your credit card gets charged twenty five cents every time you get something off kazaa, so what? This is a clearly superior technology, one that's better harnessed than quashed, and there's no reason everyone can't be more or less happy.

Arnold was on tv today lying again. Straight out of Shrub's book, seems like. Blah blah I'm for the environment, blah blah I'm for education. He was actually talking about building a "hydrogen highway" for hydrogen-powered vehicles while letting the economy trickle down. I think that's what the Simpsons would call a "Crazy Promise."

Everyone in my family and half of my friends are teachers. Here's a report from the homefront: every child has been left behind. Here's another: since poor schools are now punished for being poor, and since immigrant children are punished for being immigrants, it is a given in many schools that teachers will nod their heads or do something to indicate a certain percentage of the right answers on standardized tests that are administered out loud, as is the case I think in 3rd grade and below. Otherwise their funding gets sucked away to districts whose property values are high and stable to begin with. Doesn't it. Yay for educational accountability. Don't give me any oh the morals! crap either. Tests are good. But Bush-mandated standardized tests have become an obstacle to teaching because they are punitive rather than evaluative. Everyone who has failed and then worked hard to pass knows the difference.

Someone shoot Paul Wolfowitz in the face with a shotgun before he becomes secretary of state. Maybe he, Bush, Cheney, and Rice will fall down the stairs and end up in a circle with their heads up each others' asses and die. Elaine Chao too. Powell at least has the sense to get out before god strikes him down with lightning bolts like the rest of them. 60 minutes reported tonight that Haliburton got a still-classified, non-bid, purportedly 7 billion dollar contract to clean up Iraq. You don't fucking say. How's this for investigative reporting: water is wet. Fire is hot. Wind is windy.