Tensegrities

Here’s a good idea: a site that streams documentary films for free, at the expense of watching a few commercials. In other words, snagfilms is like hulu, only with an emphasis on documentary films.

This is really good news, and it makes me just a tiny bit more hopeful that we might get there in the foreseeable future.

At what point do we decide it’s necessary to take public stands against the actions of our government? I read this essay this morning, talking about a recent court decision, and realized that the situation is rapidly becoming worse than I could have imagined:

It is indisputable though that the slow but steady erosion of liberties and Constitutional protections are setting up a situation where one day our deepest fears may become reality. If someone had told you 10 years ago that the US would be locking up legal residents indefinitely without trials, that we would be allowing our government to spy on us without warrants, that Congress would be passing laws to retroactively pardon crimes by members of the government, that we would be adopting China’s old torture procedures and throwing out the Geneva convention and other international treaties (the list goes on and on), would you have believed them? So going down the slippery slope we are currently on, who can say where that will lead us in another 10 years?

Clay Shirky’s new book, Here Comes Everybody (which I HIGHLY recommend), talks about the ways in which our emerging digital communications technologies (the web, email, mobile phones, etc.) are changing the ways in which we organize (the subtitle of his book is the power of organizing without organizations). His book reminded me of a lot of hopeful signs that are emerging, and this blog post does, too. It was written in response to the same article I noted a few days ago. Like that article, this post (and the woman it’s about, because I know her and totally agree with the writer’s assessment of her) INSPIRES me!