Gratitude, Tacos, Expanding Networks, Dangerous Ideas

[tcpip]

Firstly, enormous gratitude towards those who expressed kind words over the little incident on NYE. I am indeed blessed with extraordinary and wonderful friends. A report has been made, our injuries have been photographed and the unfortunate fools have forgotten one slight issue with attacking people in the city - cameras. There's a very good chance the entire thing is on film.

Not one to let injuries impinge on my social life, caseopaya and I attended a fine Kerry Packer wake-cum-Taco Party hosted by rogue_scholar and dodgethis. Also had the opportunity to meet fryboy in person. An excellent night and I look forward to associating more with these bright young people. Later in the week we both had the great opportunity to visit splodgenoodes and briefly chat with tenbears

I have been having curious name resolution issues with my Red Hat/Fedora laptop. It has been very frustrating and time consuming to say the least. Actually Red Hat/Fedora as a curious distribution so I shouldn't be surprised. An odd amalgamation of the bleeding edge and conservatism. Whilst on topic, many of my half-alive boxes have been stripped and rebuilt increasing the size of the home network by another three machines; all currently running Windows 98. I am planning one Windows 98 box (lets face it, you only need one), and two FreeBSD installations. Why? Because they exist.

The Edge has come out with a "Dangerous Idea" competition (from fraerie) "The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

What should I choose? Jefferson's idea of confederacy of neighbourhood republics, Thomas Paine and Henry George's land tax or my own proposal of adulthood and citizenship being based on assessment of cognitive and moral reasoning?

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

1) Fair enough. You are quite right about this of course, and indeed there was almost a celebration of the diversity in the confederation. At least in theory one can have a confederation where membership is based on universal human rights.

2) Unimproved value is based on the rental value of a block without anything on it; thus the real value as estate agents always tell us is "location, location, location" - the value is very dependent on the surrounding infrastructure (it also includes natural resources intrinsic to the block).

I think it's very fortunate that telecommunications cost are low in proportion to other costs.