Kos gets permission to repost an article from the DC-insider Hotline (which costs huge amounts of money... kinda weird) about my man Howard Dean, the Chairman.

For those of you who splash around in the pisspool of politics, it's a welcome change. Surprise surprise, he's doing what he set out to do and build a much more comprehensive human infrastructure for the Democratic party, and surprise surprise it's getting people involved.

That's a Good Thing.

Identity is a bitch. I was just about to apply for a new passport (my old one was lost in a move a while back) to travel to Vancouver BC next month, and discovered that sometime in the past few weeks I lost my drivers license. The last time I know I had it for sure was when I faxed a copy to Oregon to get a copy of my birth cirtificate for the passport application. Now it's gone. I never need it, so I'm not sure when or where it was lost. I'll ransack my room tonight, but I have a bad feeling that it's gone.

I can't get the passport without the drivers licence. To get a new drivers licence I need "six points" of identification, of which I have one. Apparently I am joining the ranks of uncodumented American citizens. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Actually, this is sort of serious. I cannot travel by airplane or drive a car without having my papers in order. One more reason to retire to the State of Jefferson.

Microsoft is participating in Chineese internet censorship. Not really surprising. A number of large American companies are complicit in helping Red China turn the internet into a state-run media.

So it's worth noting that there's nothing magical and free about TCP/IP networking (the tech that powers the net). If we let it happen, governments and corporations will ruin what we've potentially got going here.

The more I think about it, the more I want to get an organization together to take a stand on these kinds of issues: internet freedom, outsourcing, open-sourcing, etc.

Burroughs was never into drugs simply for a good time. Despite his psilocyben bummer he agreed to go to Cambridge to participate in further experiments in consciousness alteration. Burroughs looked forward to working with sensory deprivation and submersion tanks, stroboscopes, machines to measure brain waves, and all the technologies and wonders that a prestigous university could supply. But his hopes were dashed as soon as he arrived at Harvard. All he found was a semiperminant cocktail party with a bunch of starry-eyed intellectuals talking some half-assed jive about brotherly love.

From Acid Dreams, which is a cracking good book.