Every Shadow of a Shade of an Idea...

Just so, 126 years later:

U.S. Supreme Court
Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192 (1883)
Decided March 5, 1883
MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY delivered the opinion of the Court.
It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to [...]

I Do Want to Write!

I love Brenda Ueland and her book, If You Want to Write. Her passion is so infectious, and she inspires me every time I read her encouraging words.
As I think about what I might write on this blog and what I might do with my life, this passage seems particularly helpful right now:

I tell you [...]

The strong would be fretted by an energy for which there was no outlet...

I'm reading H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. In the early going, it appears to have aged well. For a 111-year-old book, it still reads like good science fiction to me.
Not long after The Time Traveler's arrival in the year 802,701 A.D.:

'I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of intelligence, [...]

Police guitarist Andy Summers demonstrates Thomas Jefferson's point

After reading Sting's memoir recently, which ends just as he is starting to find success with The Police, I read Andy Summers's One Train Later: A Memoir, mostly wanting to learn more about The Police. From his younger years, there was this passage which made me think of the popular Thomas Jefferson quote about ideas [...]

Roxanne

While in Paris we play the Nashville Club, a seedy velveteen music hall in St. Germain, and are staying for a few nights in a flophouse behind the Gare St. Lazare. The entrance of our hotel is in a narrow and fetid alleyway off the main boulevard. In early evening it is flanked by the [...]

Mako: 'Taking a Principled Position on Software Freedom'

Great post today from Benjamin Mako Hill about free software advocacy and principles. It's not very long so you should just go read the whole thing for yourself, but here are a couple of choice parts:

One reason I tend to stay away from "open source" claims in my own advocacy is that I'm worried [...]

Kevin Kelly: Evidence of a Global SuperOrganism

Haven't read the whole article yet, but good stuff so far:

I am not the first, nor the only one, to believe a superorganism is emerging from the cloak of wires, radio waves, and electronic nodes wrapping the surface of our planet. No one can dispute the scale or reality of this vast connectivity. What’s uncertain [...]

Free Software and 'Politics,' a Comment by Rufus Polson

A couple of Augusts ago, back in 2006, Keir Thomas wrote an article about switching his office computer from GNU/Linux to Windows and then a follow-up article about the resulting criticism after the post made the front page of Digg and LinuxToday.
(What is it with web sites that don't publish the year as part of [...]

Randy Pausch on the World Book Encyclopedia and Wikipedia

Some or many of you have probably heard about Randy's Pauch's "Last Lecture." Randy is a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He gave a stirring and inspirational talk on September 18, 2007, titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." I was emailed a link to [...]

Power of Example (and the Long View)

Martin Sexton
Power of example
My mama said it and I heard
She says one ounce of action
Beats a ton of words.
-- Martin Sexton, "Hallelujah"
Richard Stallman

[...] I didn’t write a whole free operating system, either. I wrote some pieces and invited other people to join me by writing other pieces. So I set an example. I said, “I’m [...]