"The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's a helluva lot better that
what the government's using these days."
- anonymous, quoted in _GovAccess_ #119, May 18, 1995

The pollution is horrendous. The rich have withdrawn into fortress-style towers. The avenues teem with unruly, eccentrically dressed immigrants who speak a rough street language instead of English. References to these scenes show up everywhere, from books about politics to civic-planning documents like "L.A. 2000," a look at the future commissioned by Tom Bradley, when he was mayor of the city in the 1980's. The report warned that the region might deteriorate into a scene from "Blade Runner": a featureless sprawl seething with class and ethnic hostilities. In "A California State of Mind," the public-opinion analyst Mark Baldassare writes that Californians who were asked about the future "presented an image more like a nightmare than a utopia" — descriptions that recalled a certain science-fiction movie.

Even Raymond Chandler painted an ugly picture of California. Everything moves faster here, technology and politics, qnd also all the problems that threaten to turn the entirety of the Western world into miserable scifi scenario. Yes, we're afraid of the bad bits. who wouldn't be?

Viewing California Politics Through the Lens of a Science-Fiction Movie

] NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Now that the national
] do-not-call list makes it impossible to reach millions of
] potential customers, some marketing companies are
] returning to an old-fashioned alternative: door-to-door
] salespeople.

Oh god no... Please....

CNN.com - Do-not-call list revives door-to-door sales - Nov. 10, 2003

] Musician/producer/artist BRIAN ENO
]
] will be giving a rare free public lecture next week at
] Fort Mason in San Francisco on Friday, Nov. 14, in the
] Herbst Pavillion. Coffee bar opens at 7pm, lecture at 8pm.

If you live in SF and you miss this, you are incorrect.

On Lisa Rein's Radar: Brian Eno Lecture For Long Now On Friday November 14 In San Francisco

] TiVo is the cellular telephone of television. TiVo does
] to time what mobile telephony does to space. To argue
] against the inevitability of TiVo is to deny the proven
] successes of Nokia, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, and the
] rest. The broadcast flag is but a finger against the dam
] that is the Internet.

JLM on the mic.

[[ MemeStreams ]] CBS Cancels 'The Reagans'

] If someone like Karl Rove had wanted to
] neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and
] passionate members of his opposition, he'd have a
] hard time coming up with a better tool than
] Burning Man. Exile them to the wilderness, give
] them a culture in which alpha status requires
] months of focus and resource-consumptive
] preparation, provide them with metric tons of
] psychotropic confusicants, and then... ignore
] them. It's a pretty safe bet that they won't be
] out registering voters, or doing anything that
] might actually threaten electoral change, when
] they have an art car to build.

No one has ever expressed my thoughts on burning man more accurately.

[BarlowFriendz] 9.8: Spectacles in the Desert

] Cryptome received a visit today from FBI Special Agents.
]
] SA Renner said that a person had reported Cryptome as a
] source of information that could be used to harm the United
] States. He said Cryptome website had been examined and
] nothing on the site was illegal but information there might be
] used for harmful purposes.

FBI Visits Cryptome

Top 10 reasons why British people think poorly of American visitors:

...

8. They don't know who Guy Fawkes is. ("Who? Guy Fox? Nah, don't know him... Is he from New Jersey?")

The Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes

An encyclopedia that is created and alterable by everyone. I've found myself using this more and more recently.

wikipedia

Your holiday moment of zen...

Happy Halloween!!!