Stock in words mean things is now available on Blogshares for the bargain price of 5 cents a share.

It is not my function as a citizen in a participatory democracy to question our leaders.

After 9/11, I worried a little what The Onion would do with the situation. I think most people agreed that they ended up doing some of their most brilliant work as a result. Now that the Iraq stuff is coming out, I’m thankful again that they’re out there.

“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center-stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.’ You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.”

-Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), “The American President”

“We must become the change we want to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

Watching and thinking about and even writing about this war has been like eating poison. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get past the polarization and the yelling and the name-calling. Finally I decided what I wanted to do was focus on how we could change our society to model the principles we say we love so much – to “become the change.” Here are my initial ideas:

1. Mount a massive get-out-the-vote campaign between now and next fall. Shouldn’t we put as much effort into spreading democracy at home as we do abroad? Voter turnout is pathetic in the U.S. compared to other industrialized countries. Every one of us has a stake in this – let’s act like it. To paraphrase my friend Mr. Kusch, if you don’t vote, you get the government you deserve.

2. Get serious about human rights around the globe. Why not, alongside Tom Ridge’s terror alerts, have human rights alerts? There are a lot of places in the world where people face abuses equal to or worse than the Iraqis. If we truly care about them, we should be doing everything politically and socially possible for a superpower to help those people.

3. Take tough steps to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Don’t we agree with the idea of making sacrifices during wartime for the greater good? Shouldn’t we be willing to cut back on our energy use across the board? I’ve written about this before and got royally flamed for it. But I still think this is a crucial way we can turn this crisis into something positive.

Aren’t these things that every American, no matter what political persuasion, can get behind? I’m going to be writing more about the three principles above in the coming months. No, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how to magically make all this stuff come true. But I think we need to come up with some common ground pretty quick, or we’re going to tear ourselves apart in the name of “freedom” and “democracy.” I love this country, and I don’t want to see that happen.

Around the neighborhood

I’m thinking about sending out some postcards to help drum up business for lucky8ball. I’ve always driven by these giant pool balls and meant to come back and photograph them. Today I did.

Everyone’s talking about BlogShares, the fantasy stock market for weblogs. In some ways it is just another online popularity contest, but that doesn’t stop it from being fascinating. For me, what’s most interesting is how a little homegrown project like this can capture the imagination of the weblog community (whatever that is). I hope to do the same one day.

I’m listed on the system, but I can’t “go public” until my site is valued at at least $1,000. Right now, it’s $547.11. The way you increase your value is by getting valuable weblogs to link to you. Chris Pirillo, are you out there? I love you, man. 🙂

It is a popularity contest, but they got one thing extremely right: links are crucial. They’re also artificial, since a lot of great weblogs toil in obscurity, and a lot of mediocre ones are famous by virtue of being famous. But the “real” stock market is pretty artificial anyway, so it fits. (Please don’t let that stop you from linking to me.)

My outgoing link value is artificially inflated, since unlike most people, I have only one entry in my “links list” for each time you view the page. But that’s OK. It means if I link to Arthur, for example, he gets a much-deserved boost (I hope). The same goes for Haidi, Tuesday, Mike, Maurice, John, and all the other great people who deserve recognition.

UPDATE: Apparently now my weblog has plummeted in value to $261.04. And that’s less than the value of my incoming links. So I’m not sure what’s going on. 🙁

Melissa calls God on the God Phone. And they have quite a conversation.

What, that custom version of Halo didn’t help?

“The enemy we’re fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against.”

-Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the Army’s senior ground commander

All of these “Oh my god! They’re fighting back!” reactions make me think of the Revolutionary War, when the British were running around saying stuff like “They’re fighting in the trees! They’re not in formation! And they don’t even have uniforms on! What sort of barbarians are they?”

(I just remembered: in fact the U.S. military does have a custom version of Halo. It’s called “America’s Army,” and it cost more than $6 million to develop. Your tax dollars at work.)

Because who am I to refuse to participate in a meme?

The Snow Queen and the Knight Before Christmas sounds like the start of a Bulwer-Lytton sentence. But it’s not.

The Core

One of the best things about “The Core” is how it packs in just about every cliche of the action/disaster movie genre (disgraced hero who comes through, irritating know-it-all who redeems himself in the end, anti-social computer nerd, herd of military/official types who won’t let the heroes do their jobs) and makes them work. The movie has a sense of humor about itself, but it’s just serious enough to make the action involving.

It has problems. It’s too long, and the effects are somewhat cheesy – although with a movie like this, a little cheese actually helps with the ambiance. The “science” is laughable at times. But for a non-summer summer action movie, it’s a great distraction. Recommended.