Barak Obama: This is the Day
I’ve been watching the coverage of Barak Obama’s Innauguration. I took notes as the pundits tonight on CBS said,
5:52 PM listening to the pundits on TV “a golden day for Barak Obama”
“Millions came to Washington… I’m glad I got to see it”
5:53 PM “The people were speaking to us and it would be prudent to listen to them”
5:54 PM “Washington can be a very corrupting place, I hope this signals a new era of honesty and authenticity”
Bob Schieffer said he had seen 12 Inaugurations and never seen one like this, “this was something special”.
Even the stolid Francis X. Clines of the New York Times was taken by the levity of the crowd:
‘Is there a problem in the nation? Hear ordinary Americans chant: “O-ba-ma!” One tedious, serpentine line outside the Mall, its restlessness surfacing, suddenly was prodded into happiness when teenagers broke into song: “We’re off to see Obama — the wonderful president of ours!”
Later in the article the ever-serious Cline’s joy starts to show through:
‘The Obama speech patterns became a separate source of celebration, the way John F. Kennedy imitators used to do “vi-gah” salutes. After the speech, a man happily walking a bridge back to Virginia as the best way home suddenly tried an Obama riff on his friends. “We must walk the bridge built by our ancestors! We will find it long and hard! And we will confront Exit 10 C — wherever it leads!” His friends laughed and shared the pleasure of having heard firsthand President Obama in his opening hour.’
But what brought tears to my eyes:
Actress Cicely Tyson, asked her reaction, bursting out with the words of the 118th Psalm: “This is the day which the LORD hath made: and we *will* rejoice and be glad in it.”
Communist folk singer Pete Seeger, 89 years old, belting out the words of “This Land is Your Land” on the steps of the Lincoln memorial with five hundred thousand people on the Mall singing along in such spontaneous, profound joy.
Pete Seeger Bruce Springsteen Obama Inauguration [Google Video]
Guardian Editorial, 20 January 2009: This week, the 89-year-old Seeger stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial singing Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land with Springsteen at the pre-inauguration concert. Seeger’s judgment on politics and music has not always been right, but he is a man of his times and he has been the troubadour of the American left for more than half a century. His return to the spotlight is another sign that things are changing for the better in America this week. In praise of … Pete Seeger
Rick Warren: “We know that today, Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting up in heaven.”
cf. Hebrews 12:1 (KJV): “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us…”
Aretha Franklin, whose fabulous hat looked like she was wearing a grey, diamond-studded clipper ship, testifying to all our hopes and dreams with her breathless rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”.
“From every mountainside
Let Freedom Ring!”
See:
In Washington on Inauguration Day
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead
Delicious Subversion
Reborn in the USA: America is great again
President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address by David Bergman
Copyright © 2009 Henry Edward Hardy
Yes, we can!
Yes we can!
Election night morning, November 5, 2008
I have never been prouder of my country than I am tonight.
I just watched Obama’s acceptance speech on BBC. How beautiful to hear the cadences of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King from this remarkable man. Yes we can.
God Bless you Barak Hussein Obama, and God Bless the United States of America.
Copyright © 2008 Henry Edward Hardy
OLPC-One
Here’s a new promotional slideshow/video from One Laptop Per Child:
NB: I am the sysadmin for OLPC.
Copyright © 2008 Henry Edward Hardy
Carbon/Silicon: Don’t Taze Me, Bro
Infamous Taser Incident Inspires Clash Rocker
By REUTERS
Published: April 24, 2008Filed at 5:30 a.m. ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – One of last year’s most infamous Internet sensations, the “Don’t tase me, bro!” arrest of an excitable college student, is getting a new lease of life from former Clash rocker Mick Jones.
He told Reuters on Wednesday that he has written a song by that name for his second album with Carbon/Silicon, the band he formed with fellow punk veteran Tony James.
“It’s gonna go like this, dun-dun-dun … Aaaargh!” Jones said backstage at the inaugural NME Awards in Los Angeles, after he received a special honor for his inspirational work and then played two songs with Carbon/Silicon.
Full article in the New York Times, Infamous Taser Incident Inspires Clash Rocker
See also: The Book That Got the Bro Tazed
Second day of protests at UF over tazing of Andrew Meyer; suspended officers named
Man tasered, arrested for asking good questions of Sen. John Kerry
Copyright © 2008 Henry Edward Hardy
Characteristics of internet organizations and corporations
We reject: kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.
David Clark
Former Chair of the IAB, forerunner of IETF, 1992
Characteristics of internet organizations and corporations include:
- Very flat organizational structure
- Lack of respect for traditional models of organization (nation-states,
for-profit corporations) - “Can-do” attitude
- Social mission
- Community
- Respect for internet traditions
- Computer-mediated communications
- Innovation
- Meritocracy
Examples of Internet-related organizations:
- Sendmail Consortium Administers a widely used internet mail server program called Sendmail. Partnered with for-profit Sendmail Inc., see Sendmail Inc. corporate fact sheet.
- Open Source Initiative A 501(c)3 tax exempt corp. Certifies open-source software.
- Internet Engineering Task Force Principle engineering and standards-making body, under the auspices of
- ISOC, the Internet Society ISOC sponsors the published internet standards, the RFC’s
(Requests for Comments). - ARIN, American Registry for Internet Numbers
Applying the principles of stewardship, ARIN, a nonprofit corporation, allocates Internet Protocol resources; develops consensus-based policies; and facilitates the advancement of the Internet through information and educational outreach.
ARIN assigns internet numbers to the US and parts of the rest of the world. Other Regional Internet Registries include AfriNIC, http://www.afrinic.net/, APNIC, http://www.apnic.net/, LACNIC, http://www.lacnic.net/, and RIPE NCC, http://www.ripe.net/
- Mozilla Foundation
- ICANN, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a not for profit Corporation which superrvises the Domain Name System under the auspices of US Department of Commerce
- IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority,
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for the global coordination of the DNS Root, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources.
IANA is now operated by ICANN.
- DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.
DARPA funded the Arpanet, forerunner of the Internet, and gave rise to much of the Internet’s risk-taking and out-of-the-box-thinking culture. Specializes in technologies leading to “disruptive change”.
We are helping make the Internet a place… where you and your neighbours build the world you want. that generates not only economic value, but also civic and social value. that is optimized for multiple languages and locales. that is trustworthy and has minimal risk for users.
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that sponsors the Mozilla project and devotes its resources to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet. We do this by supporting the community of Mozilla contributors and by assisting others who are building technologies that benefit users around the world.
Sponsors of Firefox, Thunderbird and many other projects.
Partnered with Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary.
The Global Internet is arguably larger than any corporation or nation in history, yet it has a very flat and dispersed implicate order. And it does work, most of the time.
Copyright © 2008 Henry Edward Hardy
See also:
Comcast versus the Net
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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