Post Thanksgiving Roundup

So Thanksgiving is over, and Lisbeth and I have returned from San Antonio. It was about 12 hours each way, but we made more stops and drove more slowly on the way back, so we think the return path may be a better on to take next time. Don’t ask how we went, I don’t really remember.

We had a lot of fun in Texas. Lisbeth’s cousin, Jennifer, and her husband Jeff, recently had a baby. She’s their second, and we kept her for a few hours so they could have some quiet time. Jennifer went with Lisbeth’s sisters Lindsay and Annalise to see Pride and Prejudice. Jeff hung out and relaxed. We enjoyed her a lot, and hopefully have had our baby fix for a while.

I was pretty stoked to hear of a press conference to be held by Dan Glickman and Bram Cohen, but the end result is a little less than I hoped for. I thought it would be a revolutionary content-delivery system, probably based on BitTorrent, but it was really more like a cease-fire of sorts. Still cool, and Bram is a mad genius regardless, but I thought I could finally find that middle ground, where my hard drive is filled with Xvid movies, (more likely DivX, H.264, or some sort of crippled deal like WMV,) but I pay someone for them, and the person I pay has the legal right to take money for them, and I don’t have to bother ripping DVDs or risking a C&D letter.

Even though this is coming at the end of this post, it is the most significant thing here. For everyone who doesn’t believe this nation is going to hell at the hands of the Bush administration, I present Deborah Davis. Please, please visit http://www.papersplease.org/davis/ to get the full story. Here’s the short version, though. Deborah Davis was asked by a security guard to show her ID because she was on a bus. No reason stated, except that he was ordering it. She refused. This was a warrantless search, devoid of just cause, reasonable suspicion, or due process. He ordered her off the bus as punishment for her lack of compliance, but she again refused. So he got a fed to retry his failed attempts for him. Fed one called fed two. Then they arrested her. She is being charged criminally with federal misdemeanors. I have the utmost respect for this woman and her refusal to show her papers. We could all do with a little civil disobedience like this, and maybe some paranoia when we find out this kind of thing actually happens in the “land of the free.”