Matt Yglesias isn't buying my story that skyrocketing Wall Street earnings—and the skyrocketing incomes of the super-rich in general—are basically coming out of the pockets of the working and middle classes:

I think what Kevin’s story keeps missing is a plausible causal account of how a tiny number of financiers have been able to hoover up money from the median wage earner....I can tell you a story about how a tiny number of financiers have been able to hoover up money from the broad class of rich people in the 80th-99th percentile who own the bulk of the financial assets in the country by swindling them. I can tell you a story about how a tiny number of financiers have been able to hoover up money from the broad class of rich people via the income tax and “bailouts.” But the median wage earner seems harder to me.

The Great Middle Class Swindle | Mother Jones

Tote your Thinkpad and port your Apple in style with our custom TRON-inspired laptop bag tutorial. With a little soldering and sewing skills you can have your own light up satchel, sure to impress geeky friends. So grab your sewing needle and soldering iron and follow along

Make A TRON Bag - How to use EL (Electro Luminescent) Wire

Hiding in the shadows between the colors we see everyday are weird, impossible shades, colors that you shouldn't be able to see and generally don't...unless you know how. Here's a simple guide to seeing impossible and imaginary colors.nullnull

Train yourself to see impossible colors

France's second city, Lyon, undergoes a mind-bending transformation during the Fête des Lumières, an extraordinary festival of lights. null

Video: France: Lyon's dazzling Festival of Lights - Telegraph

I've changed by profile picture to support EFF's anti-censorship campaign, and I have donated $100 to their cause. This is a protest and I urge you to participate. We are protesting the use of political pressure by American politicians to shut down a website.

If you believe in due process of law and the right to freedom of expression you should join us in taking a stand. It is important that we take a stand right now.

It doesn't matter whether or not you support what Wikileaks is doing. If I were handed such a rich trove of private information I might have moral qualms about dumping the whole thing on the Internet. That is totally irrelevant.

In the United States of America we are a country of laws. If Wikileaks has violated a law than the appropriate way to respond to that is through the use of the legal system. In fact, like it or not, it is most likely the case that Wikileaks has not violated the law. Therefore, senior politicians in this country have taken it upon themselves to use their personal influence to shut the website down, and a number of corporations, large and small, have obliged them.

In a free country with a strong legal system and a tradition of upholding the right to freedom of speech, this sort of thing is not acceptable. Life, liberty, and property should only be taken away through due process of law and not simply because some powerful people desire it and present thin arguments in favor of it.

As The Internet Society recently stated in their newsletter:

[Wikileaks] must be subject to the same laws and policies of availability as all Internet sites. Free expression should not be restricted by governmental or private controls over computer hardware or software, telecommunications infrastructure, or other essential components of the Internet.

Unless and until appropriate laws are brought to bear to take the wikileaks.org domain down legally, technical solutions should be sought to reestablish its proper presence...

Anger about these events runs deep. Right now, many of the companies who assisted in cutting off Wikileaks have been subjected to distributed denial of service attacks. While I share the anger of those who are launching these attacks, I cannot condone... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Taking a principled stand on Wikileaks

WikiLeaks may well make us uncomfortable in some of what it does, though in general I believe it's done far more good than harm so far. We need to recognize, however, as Mathew Ingram wrote over the weekend, that "Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity." What our government is trying to do to WikiLeaks now is lawless in stunning ways, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald forcefully argued today.

These are also acts of outright censorship. No, Amazon is not bound by the First Amendment. But if it's bowing to government pressure, it's helping a panicked government tear up one of our most basic freedoms.

Defend WikiLeaks or lose free speech - Dan Gillmor - Salon.com

The US "IP Czar," Victoria Espinel, said at a conference this week that Homeland Security's seizure of a bunch of domain names was apparently just the beginning of a larger plan to go after such folks.

US Copyright Czar: Expect More Domain Censorship | Techdirt

HELENA — A 1.4-acre parcel of land in western Montana that was once owned by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is on the market for $69,500.

The property is listed by John Pistelak Realty of Lincoln. Pistelak said he was in a meeting Friday morning and couldn’t immediately comment.

The listing offers potential buyers a chance to own a piece of “infamous U.S. history” and says the forested land “is obvi-ously very secluded.”

The Lincoln-area property, which had been listed at $154,500, does not have electricity or running water. Kaczynski was critical of technology.

The property does not include Kaczynski’s cabin. It is on display in the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Kaczynski is serving a life sentence for a series of mail bombings over 17 years that killed three and injured 23.

Someone needs to develop this into a terrorist theme-park... or at least a wax museum.

Kaczynski’s Lincoln-area property for sale | greatfallstribune.com | Great Falls Tribune

EDITORIAL: Wave goodbye to Internet freedom
FCC crosses the Rubicon into online regulation
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
7:02 p.m., Thursday, December 2, 2010

With a straight face, Mr. Genachowski suggested that government red tape will increase the "freedom" of online services that have flourished because bureaucratic busybodies have been blocked from tinkering with the Web. Ordinarily, it would be appropriate at this point to supply an example from the proposed regulations illustrating the problem. Mr. Genachowski's draft document has over 550 footnotes and is stamped "non-public, for internal use only" to ensure nobody outside the agency sees it until the rules are approved in a scheduled Dec. 21 vote. So much for "openness."

EDITORIAL: Wave goodbye to Internet freedom

The US struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in reaction to heavy political pressure.

The company announced it was cutting WikiLeaks off yesterday only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.

WikiLeaks expressed disappointment with Amazon, and insisted it was a breach of freedom of speech as enshrined in the US constitution's first amendment. The organisation, in a message sent via Twitter, said if Amazon was "so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books."

WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US political pressure | Media | The Guardian