Sunshocked

This weekend I finally bit the bullet and jumped into Ruby on Rails. The experience blew the dust off old memories of writing BASIC programs with my dad on our Commodore, which inevitably got me thinking about human evolution.

The legalization of marijuana is on the ballot in Nevada, stirring up the amount of controversary expected from a state whose biggest export is nothing because what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. However, U.S. Drug Czar John Waters recently broke a Nevada law (which are hard to find) by actively campaigning against the dreaded Question 7.

It was neither High Fidelity nor Merlin Mann that inspired the following very important list of why lists are very important, but the surfeit of posts on Digg, Tailrank, and Reddit that are merely compilations of things already known—and, specifically, that these posts are wildly popular. Here’s why.

I should be happy about people adapting their buying habits to incorporate solutions to the world’s problems. If you’re going to buy an iPod Nano, why shouldn’t you get the red one for the same price and help fight AIDS in Africa, right? Still, the whole thing puts a really bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve never really thought of myself as a nationalist. Sure, the United States of America has been good to me, but I’ve avoided any jingoism over my 29 years. It wasn’t until yesterday when our president signed into law legislation that allows torture and eliminates habeas corpus that I realized how much I loved our country—and how much it hurts to see it destroyed in my generation.

This Friday the 13th, my website went down. But just like Jason, it’s back from the dead stronger than ever and ready to cause some damage thanks to the fine folks over at DreamHost.

Copyrights are a lot like fraternities. At their core they have a good intention, but over the last 100 years things have gone awry. Now, more often that not, copyrights (like fraternities) are exclusive, abusive, and collusive. It’s time to put copyrights on double secret probation.