The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did.
Even more striking is the fact that our “high speed” connections are painfully slow by other countries’ standards. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours. Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much cheaper in both countries than it is here.
As a result, we’re lagging in new applications of the Internet that depend on high speed. France leads the world in the number of subscribers to Internet TV; the United States isn’t even in the top 10.
What happened to America’s Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the United States made the same mistake in Internet policy that California made in energy policy: it forgot — or was persuaded by special interests to ignore — the reality that sometimes you can’t have effective market competition without effective regulation.
You see, the world may look flat once you’re in cyberspace — but to get there you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.
America’s Internet flourished in the dial-up era because federal regulators didn’t let that happen — they forced local phone companies to act as common carriers, allowing competing service providers to use their lines. Clinton administration officials, including Al Gore and Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, tried to ensure that this open competition would continue — but the telecommunications giants sabotaged their efforts, while The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ridiculed them as people with the minds of French bureaucrats.
I am a paradox—both initially shocked by the United States' role as follower, but yet not at all surprised that our country, especially under the Bush administration's "leadership" (or should I say "followship?") has fucked this up. The irony of the WSJ calling telecomm regulation the work of "French bureaucrats" is probably my favorite aspect of this column (purely looking at it as a writer).They aren't.
Consider the Rev. Ferroll Robins, above. She is the head of the nonprofit Loved Ones Victims Services, formerly Loved Ones of Homicide Victims, an organization that provides grief counseling for people whose family members are murdered in the Los Angeles area.
It's not a job for the weak. Ask any police officer, detective, trauma surgeon, or prosecutor in this city: Nothing is harder to deal with than grieving families of the murdered.
Families who scream when notified that their loved one has been killed. Families who remain mute through bewildering proceedings, politely offering thanks from behind blasted eyes. Families who call detectives for years on end asking about languished cases.
Loved Ones Victims Services focuses exclusively on this difficult work, an island for the grieving, an organization that wades into the messy aftermath of homicide when everyone else seems to want to look away. Among charities, Loved Ones is "the only one I know of" with this mandate, said Capt. James Craig of LAPD Southwest Division--the reason its link is on this site.
Fingerprint smudges inside Loved Ones' Culver City offices offer a clue of what such work is like: The paint is sullied by a parade of clients who have quite literally staggered in, bracing themselves on walls to avoid collapsing from grief.
Robins is the force behind Loved Ones. She stepped in in 1993 and eventually took over the organization. She has given much of her adult life to it, scrambling for funding year after year, always on the brink of closing.
For years, the group has struggled to get so much as a single, tiny, community-development block grant from the city of Los Angeles. The city freely doles out such grants to scores of arts organizations and service groups of all stripes. But not for homicide. Loved Ones went at least three years without a city grant before its recent move to Culver City.
I just finished the sixth book and am caught up and indescribably awaiting the end of work Saturday.
My country turns 231 today, well sort of. Though we declared independence that many years ago, we didn't adopt the Constitution for another 10ish years. I should know but don't feel like looking it up right now. Blog going quiet for a few days, or at least until my wrist is healed.IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
IF SNAPE IS GOOD ... how is the greater good served more by Dumbledore getting killed rather than Severus, which would have happened had Snape not honored the unbreakable vow? I am still debating very tightly whether Snape is bad. iIm still at about 55 percent bad. But I'm coming from a spot of 85 percent good. That's a big swing. And while Dumbledore is rarely wrong, he said himself that he has been wrong and because of his brilliance, when he's wrong the consequences are BIGTIME WRONG. I forget which book that's in, but I remember that distinctly.
And Snape has never exhibited any signs of love or even respect particularly for Dumbledore so if he was hating himself for what he had to do, it seems like Rowling failed as a writer to provide a single clue about that. Then again, the entire victories in Books 1 and 2 were not foreshadowed in the least.
But regardless, I feel like Severus' tale is the biggest loose end that had better be tied up save for the big stuff.
as for Horcruxes ...
1. Locket, which is in the hands or R.A.B. (could be destroyed). Is this Regulus Black? Could be.
2. Diary, destoryed
3. Hufflepuff cup (MIA). Given that this was a Pensieve memory seems for sure that this must come up again.
4. Nagini (alive and kicking). Wonder what special circumstances warranted Nagini's getting so honored? since Dumbledore conjectured that Voldemort's horcruxes were significant.
5. The Ring, destroyed. That's why Dumbledore's hand was fucked up.
6. ???? Seems like it's gotta be a longlong Ravenclaw object, since Godric Gryffindor's sword it's not.
Btw, Harry says at the end of six that he's going to head to Godric's Hollow, where his folks lived, right? That's also gotta be named for Godric Gryffindor, right?
Are we gonna learn that Harry is a Gryffindor heir? I don't think so. And the true story of the breakup of the original four? I hope so. What choices did they all make that led them to our current circumstances? Less likely.
And lastly, I would prefer Snape to be good ... but it seems like in writing these books evil needs someone else besides Voldemort to counterbalance how many protagonists and protagonists' assistants we have. And Draco clearly seemed too much the pussy to be the other evil, which to me is Rowling's biggest flaw with these books. Draco should have been a kick-ass villain who grounded some of Harry's and Ron's and Hermione's travails in a more relatable reality.