2006.01.27
A. If the law outranked the president we'd never get anything done! The president would go toss Osama bin Laden through a plate glass window and the law would call him into his office an go "Dammit president, you're outta control!"I also liked "You don't go to war with regular laws, which are made outta red tape and bureaucracy and Neville Chamberlain. You go to war with great big strapping War Laws made outta tanks and cold hard steel and the American Fightin Man and WAR, KABOOOOOOM!"
Q. And then the president'd be all "You're outta control, chief! The whole freakin system's outta control!"
A. And then the president would totally turn in his badge and quit the force to fight crime!
Q. Fight crime... with mind-powers.
But, and maybe I'm kind of naive, but I'm not all that fired up against the wiretapping as I might've expected myself to be. Maybe it's kind of a sort of dumb trust in the system, or just general anxiety about terrorism, and/or the idea that "well it won't likely bother ME...", but I I'm guess more flexible about the balance between seurity measure and personal freedoms.
Birthday of the Day
Happy Birthday Mozart! For some reason it's kind of odd to put his birthday up againt Ben Franklin's, 50 years and 10 days earlier. Mozart, and I guess classical music in general, just feels like part of the cultural cosmos, versus my knowledge of the founding of my country, so that the "World Before Mozart" seems like it should be older than the "World Before Benjamin Franklin".
Doing some googling...the two men died within a year of each other, reflecting Ben's longevity and Mozart's young death. Plus, Ben made a new instrument (inspired by the classic "running fingers along the rims of wet glass goblets" trick) called the Armonica for which Mozart wrote some pieces. I found one site with a virtual Armonica... though judging by the movie of "Ben" playing a real one, it sustains the notes a bit too much.