Amazon as Big Brother
In Ray Bradbury’s book, Fahrenheit 451, the society at the time has been out burning different books in an attempt to quash contrary ideas and exalt the trivial:
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don’t put out fires–they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury’s vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal–a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs…. Don’t give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy." [Amazon.com review]
When Amazon’s Kindle removed illegal copies of Orwell’s books (like “1984” and “Animal Farm”), many were likening it to Big Brother behavior found in “1984”. I would liken it more to Fahrenheit 451.
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Time for a Reboot
It never fails. You’ve been plugging away, working on your budget, writing that blog post, or just surfing when your operating system claims that it’s installed some new software and you need to reboot your system for it to take effect. Or an application stops responding, and you find that the best thing that you can do is to end the offending program and start fresh.
The interesting thing is, despite how much we don’t like restarting an application or an operating system, it’s perfectly natural. You see, all systems have built within them the need for change, because we are far from perfect.
Whether it’s your computer, the seasons, or the economy, all of these complicated systems occasionally need a reboot, and our current situation is no different.
President Obama and Good News
In an hour from now, this country will have a new President. President George W. Bush will no longer be in power, and the decisions that face the nation will no longer be his to make.
In some ways, I’m sure that he’s thankful for leaving his post. I can’t imagine the amount of stress that a President has in making the decisions he makes, and we tend to get stressed when the coffee doesn’t come out just right!
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Should Everyone Have a Vote?
Yesterday we considered the Electoral College, but in order to fully appreciate the discussion, I think we need to look into the system that was set up by the Founders. When we look at this question, however, we have to start with voting, and what we find may be shocking to some of you.
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Presidential Qualifications
If President-Elect Obama does well in office, what does that say about the qualifications to be president?
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Stimulus Package as Socialism
So, the Democrats are discussing having yet another stimulus package to help us through this crisis. We have come a long way from when stimulus packages were just a gimmick when Pres. George W. Bush had one in his first year in office.
However, I think that this is a bad idea.
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Would You Know What Hard Lemonade is?
Again, what justifies the government taking a child from their parents? Could it be as simple as not knowing what “Hard Lemonade” is?
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte’s ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.
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