During the recent earthquake here in Los Angeles, I found myself mildly spooked.  Not because of the quake itself, nono – after all, I had, since I moved to LA, wished for exactly this kind of quake.  “I want a quake,” I told friends, “just strong enough for me to experience one [I'd never felt one before], but mild enough so no one gets hurt.”  The quake of a couple of weeks ago was exactly what I’d ordered.

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Chief Bratton, who feels the Paparazzi Task Force is a waste of time (I agree with him), just said on MSNBC:

“Since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving, Paris is out of town not bothering anybody anymore – thank God – and evidently Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don’t seem to have much of an issue.”

Hey, man, don’t blame me for Linsday – I tried.

Leo Strauss, the GrandPa of neoconservatism, spoke of stealth ideology when he talked about “noble myths” that leaders needed to use in order to rally the masses around a common purpose.  Now Len Hart at the Existentialist Cowboy describes how Bush and his men used stealth ideology to turn the Constitution into an ash heap.  Read and weep.

Robert Scoble suggested today that if he could make one rule about the Internet, it would be “no anonymity.”  I like Robert but I don’t like his idea.

Laura Fitton asked: “What one ‘rule’ would you make about the Internet?”, and in the thread that resulted, Robert replied that he’d eliminate anonymity. Read the rest of this entry »

I think the FairTax is worth talking about.  J00?

I am very unhappy about this so-called “compromise” and am still fantasizing that Feingold and Leahy succeed in removing the immunity provisions from the bill.  Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, speaking on MSNBC’s Countdown tonight, offered this assessment:

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A year ago I wrote about the findings in the Johns Hopkins psilocybin study:

“a third of the participants in the study described the psilocybin experience as the single most significant experience of their lives and about three-quarters ranked it in the top 5″.

Pretty remarkable stuff.  Even more remarkable is that a year later, the experience has “stuck:”

“Even at the 14-month follow-up, 58 percent of 36 volunteers rated the experience on the psilocybin session as among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives and 67 percent rated it among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives..”

And I’m again pleased to see the mainstream press giving it fair, non-hysterical coverage here and here.  [Thanks, Chris.]

Good TIME piece exploring the stupid goings-on about pot in LA.

At TIME.

Great article by Bruce Schneier.  Also recalls my own photographer harassment.