Hard to know where to start or what to say. The Onion ran the headline, Nation's Poor Elects Nation's Rich. That summed up for me. The mind boggles.

It was gratifying to hear this morning that former Pres. Clinton joined Sen. Kerry for a rally in Pennsylvania. I still think that VP Gore could have won . . . by a larger margin . . . if he had requested help from Pres. Clinton. Now if Sen. Kerry heads for Florida with the campaign crew he's assembled and sets up camp, he'll win.

These are two of my favorite words to see linked together. I like logic in connection with polis becaue it reminds me that I don't think that logic is the tool for doing the work of a city. That work is conceived differently by different people, but I think of it as the work of giving substance to the social contract, i.e. tuning the economy to feed, clothe, shelter, heal and educate.

I like polis in connection with logic because it reminds me that the most interesting questions to me are humane questions. Moral and historical problems are ghastly when stripped of human concerns or framed for cynical objectives. Within the community of the polis we are more likely to remember that we are not alone and that others depend on us.

Here is a sample from a speech which expresses these ideas for me:

. . . For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but most importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love --- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. . . .

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

RFK 4/4/68, Indianapolis

Having just watched debate no. 3 (held in Tempe, Arizona), I have grown tired of trying to anticipate whether other viewers will or will not evaluate issues on whether the candidates seemed "likable."

With respect to any reasonable measures of competency and performance, Senator Kerry spoke more intelligently and is more experienced than President Bush with domestic policy questions. For the record, Senator Kerry was also more likable, particularly when he spoke about the proper relationship between religious belief and works.

Senator Kerry clearly "won" the debate in the sense that he answered the questions with a better command of facts, a better understanding of policy and better ideas for the economy.

It was not even a close call.

I'm getting exercised by the media failure to challenge Bush's denial of income from what factcheck.org called a "timber growing enterprise."

When Kerry pointed out that the definition Bush used during the debate of "small business owner" included anyone who reported even a dollar of income on their Fed. Income Return, Schedule C, Bush mocked Kerry for suggesting that he had a timber company.

Bush has a credibility problem because he did report an ownership interest in a timber company. Clinton and Gore had to answer the press for far less severe misstatements. This is an example of Bush going out of his way to overtly mislead viewers away from a very valid criticism of his second tax cut.

Media must call upon Bush to answer the substance of the claim: Kerry's tax-rollback will not hurt small businesses.

This is to note the arrival of the new, new science fiction.

The new science fiction was new in the sense that stories focused on human rather than technical changes in a futuristic context of humans interfacing with electronics.

The inspiration for the new science fiction was presumably drawn from personal computers and the beginnings of the internet. The writers were Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Greg Bear, Rudy Rucker, early Neal Stephenson and others in the same genre. Proto-examples of the new science fiction were Dick and Farmer.

The new, new science fiction is typified by Neal Stephenson in books like Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver. The interesting moment of those books comes in not asking the question of what will be? The interesting question is what could have been different? In that respect, the new, new science fiction goes further than the new science fiction in exploring the practical possibilities of human existence.

Human history is better distinguished from nature in the new, new science fiction. Rather than a presentation of an inevitable progress of the human spirit as expressed by better and more refined technology and scientific knowledge, the new science fiction looked more often at how humans were changed by technology or used technology to change themselves. The technology did not by itself signify anything unchanging or superior about human nature. The technology enhanced the human choices in history --- sometimes in the context of a dystopian near-future preoccupied with pirated software and consumer-driven applications for new technology.

In the new, new science fiction, Stephenson looks back and asks whether human choices could have been different. For example, what if humans had made different choices and invented a computing machine earlier? Would our current society be more humane? Would human nature look different than it looks now?

More popular forms of science fiction are reviving and exploring these approaches. In Enterprise, the third season was largely about a temporal cold war in which warring factions battle for colonization of space and time as opposed to only space. In the opening episode of the 4th season, World War II is revisited with the Nazis having advanced to North America thanks to assistance from a temporal cold war faction.

The new, new sci-fi comes closer to literature status than previous versions of sci fi. Critics have given generous praise to Stephenson as not only a great sci fi writer but as a great writer. The characterization is certainly more complex in Stephenson's writing, and his grasp of history is superior to many fiction writers. I wonder if the incorporation of history into Stephenson's narrative may influence and transform other literary writing which focuses almost solipsistically on individual characterization and "universal" human themes. To the extent that happens, sci-fi will have transcended literature by entering popular fiction and incorporating a historical sensitivity into a speculative outlook which was previously unique to non-literary forms like sci-fi, comic books and similar forms.

Okay debate no. 2 from St. Louis ended a couple of hours ago. My vote for best line was (surprise) Kerry's about generals winning the war and presidents having to win the peace. Its mind-boggling to me that anyone can take the current administration seriously on any issue. That said, I think Kerry won the exchange on two points. The first was the Canadian drug import question. Kerry said he was for it, and Bush tried to say he wanted to make sure the drugs were safe first. The second and decisive question was on abortion. Kerry's answer was nuanced, and Bush chose that moment to give one of his famous unequivocal simple answers, and it sounded to me like he ended up opposing all abortions under all circumstances. To the extent that position is aired, I don't believe his campaign will win support from swing voters.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a great story on debate no. 2 called Darth Cheney meets Luke Edwards. I think Luke Skywalker is a poor fictional avatar for John Edwards. Darth is fine for the VP though. It can substitute my former favorite nickname, Dick I-hate-puppies Cheney. I will be glued to the set!

The Washington Post carried an editorial confirming my firm impression that Kerry decisively won the first debate this past week. Newsweek also published poll results showing that Kerry has pulled ahead of Bush in the overall race.

Bush may have slipped into a risky rhetorical stance by attacking Kerry as a flip-flopper, etc. As pointed out in the Post editorial, if the electorate decides the situation on the ground in Iraq is worsening, Bush has left no room for changing directions.

Its one thing to be resolute (and that would be giving the current administration the benefit of the doubt). Its something entirely different to ignore evidence.

I struggled with math and science all of my life. Now that I'm done with school, I've been able to go back to the many, many topics that stumped me and explore more slowly. Its been wonderful. HP Friedrichs wrote a pair of books that have really brightened my existence. The first is Voice of the Crystal, and the second is Intstruments of Amplification. In both books, the writer tries to isolate key aspects of electronics to build homemade components. Its very fun, and he's an exceptionally good writer. Here's a link to the book on the Society for Amateur Scientists page. http://www.sas.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SMO&Product_Code=IOA&Category_Code=Instruments

This is to surface after a long, enjoyable spring and summer. The weather feels to me like autumn this morning, and I realized I had written nothing in my Slashdot journal since winter.

A friend of mine loaned me Barrel Fever, and, after a slow start, I was entertained. Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day followed and got me past entertaining and into edifying.

The writing reminds me of another close friend who suffered a brain aneurysm on the threshhold of law school graduation and a federal clerkship. Her personality "changed" and friends exhausted themselves speculating about "cognitive deficits" and her loss of inhibitions.

Over a period of years, she did not simply resume her previous type A life and transform the experience into yet another glittering and inimitable asset for her resume. Instead she lost all interest in practicing law, dieting and social justice movements.

She rediscovered an interest in writing, eating, sex and Rolling Stone magazine. Her writing reminds me a little of the fantasy chapters in Me Talk Pretty One Day but otherwise its hard to describe except that it yields no evidence whatsoever of brain injury.

If you were told that the author holds degrees in economics, philosophy and law, you would not be surprised. Yet her boyfriend and fiance never adjusted to the "new" personality. He waited a decent interval and sold their house out from under her and married someone else.

Knowing both of them, I'd always thought the boyfriend would have preferred the "new" version of his girlfriend. Who knows what went on in his head? She was devastated though and moved home with her mother where she remains today.

My brother is helping me learn how to do a command line application to produce legal documents. The final product is intended to run with a minimalist Linux distro on a floppy. Lawyers and advocates can use it to produce legal documents in remote rural offices with old computers.

Today I recopied his C code into a text editor on my Linux partition. When it was done, I emailed it to him for further instructions. Next I need to compile it and (I'm expecting) debug, debug, debug.

One thing I've done is insist on using Linux or Linux compatible applications for every phase of the project. So before I started copying out the code, I had to figure out how to switch the loopback settings on my Linux partition to settings that let me email over my satellite modem. That took awhile.

When using Linux, I still rely heavily on the GUI. The command line is not familiar enough to me yet. During my normal work day I use a wysiwyg word processor (Openoffice), keep Mozilla open and play mp3's.

I'm going to need to transplant all of these activities to the command line before I can work easily over a period of hours as I do in XP.

Today my Slackware 9.1 partition is operational --- finally! This time three years ago, I had no idea what a partition was let alone Slackware. Slack was dispensed only by Bob Dobbs.

Its a banner day for this tech newbie.

The next step is to add Linux at my office. I already use Mozilla and Openoffice. Time to learn how to give WinXP second chair.

-- This Way Comes.

As a small town divorce lawyer, I occasionally hear other lawyers speculate about where they went wrong on their career path. Sometimes, on a particularly stressful day, this takes the form of joking about wanting to run a plant nursery. Other times, too often, I read in the obituaries about an attorney who unexpectedly took his own life.

Many jobs are stressful. Life can be stressful. I don't know that attorneys get more stress than others. I'm not sure it matters except that some non-lawyers claim that lawyers originate rather than ameliorate conflicts. Accordingly its no surprise that lawyers reap a harvest of stress, and, by the way, who cares? It may be my imagination, but I think divorce lawyers even hear this claim from other attorneys.

I became an attorney almost accidentally.

My other jobs have been anonymous, low-level customer service jobs with considerably less responsibility. Do I miss those jobs? Do I sometimes wish that I could go back to being a video clerk? Yes. Were those jobs less "stressful" than my current work? Hmmm. Not really.

I am certainly concerned that current culture of the profession of law --- even in small town Montana --- too often degrades the socratic method to a Superbowl Sunday sort of spectacle. But the sort of unpleasantness that is of greater concern is not so much the technical rule, the posturing opposing counsel or the willful ignorance of the impact of intimate partner violence on kids.

The greater concern is that once something "unpleasant" appears on my horizon, regardless of my employment status, more and more often I notice an accompanying feeling of too familiar inevitability --- like the arrival of Christmas muzak, but more insidious.

In those moments I feel identified by convention of belief that a terrible day of reckoning must arrive --- and that it will be preceeded by a large number of small, moderately less terrible days of reckoning.

Its a convention that changes history and politics into a force as immune from human influence as a hurricane or an earthquake.

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