Cat Sanding Many years ago, I volunteered a few hours after work to help the wood shop teacher at my son’s school.  The children had carved various hardwood animals that all needed edges honed with a belt sander the kids were too young to use.  I was just supposed to smooth out the marks left by the gouges and create ...

“The more speech the merrier,” was the central argument made by Justice Scalia in writing the majority opinion on Citizens United, but that case suggests, at least to many of us, that the mechanism of the speech matters a great deal. Yes, in many ways, money can be speech; but at the same time, I think Scalia conjured an illusion ...

I have so far refrained from saying anything about the Charlie Hebdo murders.  For starers, I don’t like bandwagons and don’t feel a strong urge to restate the obvious. Naturally, we abhor this kind of violence and stand in solidarity with any creator, who at this moment is considering his/her own position on controversial free expression in the wake of ...

Can you hear the bells?  They’re not Christmas bells, I’m afraid.  They’re Pavlovian bells, the ones that Google loves to ring whenever the company sees an opportunity to rally the faithful to the cause of “internet freedom.”  They sound like this:  SOPA…SOPA…SOPA. The Sony hack is a bloody mess, the effects of which have yet to be fully realized.  So ...

From Redditor yishan: “…we consider ourselves not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community. The role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers.” Shh.  I won’t say anything ...

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