Jonathan’s urban planning post, and comments by Tatyana and others, reminded me of an interesting passage in Visions of Technology, by Richard Rhodes. Writing in 1902, at the dawn of the electric trolley era, Charles M Skinner recorded his impressions of that technology in an essay titled The American Will Not Live Near His Work. Some excerpts:
David Foster
At the Stroke of Midnight
At midnight on Saturday, certain statutory authorizations for the interception of terrorist communications were allowed–by congressional inaction–to expire. See the National Review article with the headline: When the Clock Strikes Midnight, We Will Be Significantly Less Safe; also President Bush’s radio address here.
A couple of months ago, Shannon Love addressed some of the issues involved in commuications intercepts. This seems like an appropriate time for some additional discussion on the topic.
Some other useful resources:
1)The White House fact sheet
2)A fairly long article (PDF) which discusses some of the technical complexities which affect this debate.
Thoughts?
UPDATE: Robert Novak says: The true cause for blocking the bill was the Senate-passed retroactive immunity from lawsuits for private telecommunications firms asked to eavesdrop by the government. The nation’s torts bar, vigorously pursuing such suits, has spent months lobbying hard against immunity.
The recess by House Democrats amounts to a judgment that losing the generous support of trial lawyers, the Democratic Party’s most important financial base, is more dangerous than losing the anti-terrorist issue to Republicans.
I’m not much of a Robert Novak fan, but in this case, I’m afraid his statement contains a strong element of truth.
UPDATE 2: William Kristol on Orwell, Kipling, and the responsibilities of governing, with particular reference to the communications-intercept issue.
See also this post and discussion at Neptunus Lex.
A Marketing Challenge
If the marketing class will come to order, we have an interesting case study today. We’re going to focus on a product, the market penetration of which is being limited by an attribute that–on first glance–would seem to be a good thing.
CPAC
I was down at CPAC today, where I had the pleasure of meeting Pamela and Eric and of renewing an old acquaintance with Little Miss Attila. The highlight of the formal program so far was the talk by Mark Steyn–there are a lot of people who write very well but are mediocre or worse at public speaking, and I was pleasantly surprised by his excellent presentation.
If anyone is going to be there tomorrow and would like to get together for a drink or something, leave a note in comments.
UPDATE: Congratulations to Ace on winning the CPAC Blogger of the Year Award.
I enjoyed meeting Karol and Skye, both of whom have CPAC pictures up–also the famous N Z Bear, who doesn’t look much like the picture on his blog.
(cross-posted at Photon Courier)
John McCain: Victorian or Elizabethan?
About a week ago, William Kristol suggested that John McCain is in many ways a man of the Victorian era. (Via Erin O’Connor) Comes now Withywindle, of the fine blog Athens & Jerusalem, with the suggestion that–in view of his expressed contempt for economic motivations–McCain is actually an Elizabethan.