The Land Before On-Line

• What I'm Watching/Listening To/Reading:
• I'm mostly watching the insides of boxes at this point, with a lot of unpacking to do.
• Tonight was fun as we unpacked and organized books. I suggested that we have a "Classics" section aside from regular fiction, which brought up some interesting questions. Does Richard Matheson go in the Classics if he's only the master of a certain genre? Is it ok to put Kavalier and Clay in there but not High Fidelity? Does one great book mean everything by the author has to be a Classic (The Natural by Malamud comes to mind)?
• I did catch "Seinfeld" for a second and "The Contest" was on. It's still remarkably ground-breaking, even for our time now.
• Random Thoughts/Links:
• It looks like Appalachia might be jumping towards Obama. Maybe it really was fear of an unknown and not straight racism during the primaries. To some (very small) degree though, are fear of an unknown and racism essentially the same thing? I may have been very wrong.
• It's the classic story: Camel gets hit by car, camel shakes it off, people run in fear of apparently bionic camel, camel says, "Screw you guys, I'm going home."
• I think it's perfectly okay to shrug off habeas corpus. Just because it was first cited in 1305 and has stuck around for about 700 years doesn't mean it's worthwhile. I mean, they thought the sun revolved around the earth (7th paragraph) back then! There are plenty of more important things that make America great like big cars and the right to do whatever the f*** we please!
• Daily Rant:
• You know what? Public financing is a dinosaur. In 2007, fewer than 8% of Americans checked off on their tax return that they would like their $3 to go towards campaign financing. The program began in 1976 and even almost thirty years later (prior to 2004 at the latest to give Dean some credit), there's no way that anyone could have envisioned the great tool we have for politicians to reach out to more than just the usual big donors. The internet allows for millions of people to finance who they wish at what level they wish. If McCain were a true conservative, he would be for smaller government, for letting the people choose to fund a campaign as little or as much as they choose. I want to give my chosen candidate as much money as I want and I want him to be able to spend it all. It makes him accountable to me to some extent and it makes me part of this grand process. We're in a new era where people can form communities and movements faster and larger than ever before. Let the candidates be truly financed by the public and leave the ancient behind.