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I just signed up for Change Congress… Lawrence Lessig’s (of creative commons fame) new initiative to change the way congress operates. From their site:

About Change Congress

Our Principles

Change Congress is a national movement to end corruption in America’s
congress. We’re organizing citizens to push candidates to make four
simple commitments:

1. No money from lobbyists or PACs

Congresspeople should be beholden to citizens, not special interests.
By committing not to accept money from lobbyists or PACs, candidates
give us confidence that their votes won’t be swayed by big money. This
pledge was most prominently advanced by Senator Edwards in his
Presidential campaign. To read more, click here.

2. Vote to end earmarks

Earmarks allow congresspeople to explicitly decide who should get the
money our government spends. Because of the earmark economy, money
that is supposed to go to our schools, our soldiers, and our citizens
is instead diverted to political donors and pork-barrel projects like
the “Bridge to Nowhere”. We can’t clean up Congress until we end this
blatant system of corruption. Republicans have recently pushed
prominently for changes such as these. To learn more, click here or
here.

3. Support publicly-financed campaigns

It’s not enough to just push particular candidates to stay out of the
system of corruption; we have to reform the system itself. Publicly-
financed campaigns will stop the cycle of campaign finance reform
loopholes and ensure that big money stays out of Congress forever.
Public financing has been supported by both Republicans and Democrats.
For prominent campaigns, see here and here.

4. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we would all benefit from a
cleaner Congress if more of its proceedings, and the proceedings of
its members, were public. This pledge calls for changes in the law and
rules of Congress to get all members to be more public about meetings
and contacts, including changing the rules so lawmakers post weekly
updates of their campaign contributions, meetings with registered
lobbyist, their latest earmark requests and significant changes in
their personal wealth. To learn more, click here.

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This is Barry Schwartz at the TED talks series explaining the idea behind his book “The Paradox of Choice” A pretty interesting idea, and a good talk. His whole point is that we are in a world that presents us with too many options, and that constantly worrying about what choice we make actually detracts from our overall happiness. I’m not sure I buy it, but it is something interesting to think about. What do you guys think? Is there such thing as too much choice?

If you are interested in the book you can check it out below:

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This video is the highlight of Al Gore’s testimony before congress on the issue of global warming. He brought with him over half a million signatures from the email that he sent out earlier in the week. Time will tell if our Government (well, US really…you know, We the People) has the moral courage and dedication to do the right thing. This is not an issue that will just go away, and will involve making some really tough choices. Below is one of the highlights of the speech:

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Well, it seems that one of my new addictions is already in trouble! The list of songs in my sidebar comes from a music service called last.fm They take info from what you play in itunes to make the list, but they also offer a very cool internet radio service based around the tracks you like. At least they do for now…here is the lowdown from www.savethestreams.org:

On Friday March 2nd, the U.S. government (specifically, the Copyright Royalty Board, or “CRB”) announced its determination of the royalty rates Internet radio webcasters must pay the owners of sound recording copyrights to license the music they play for the years 2006-2010. The owners of these sound recording copyrights are, in the vast majority of cases, recording companies (”labels”).

While successful webcasters which have built loyal audiences can usually cover most of their costs from their revenue (and sometimes even make a little profit), these new rates will almost certainly destroy the Internet radio industry, as they amount to well over 100% of even the most-successful webcasters’ online radio revenues. In other words, these fees are grotesquely disproportionate to any other expense a webcaster would normally face, and certain to bankrupt him or her.

There are several things you can do to help save internet radio. The best site to get info is www.savethestreams.org. You can also read up on some thoughts about next steps, see why it’s important to keep around, and hopefully start to understand why this is so important. We have already lost independent radio over the airwaves to the likes of clearchannel (I know I stopped listening to New York City radio stations about 5 minutes after I first got here). Lets not let this happen with internet radio!

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Well here it is, my very own Blog!  Hey wait, what is it for you ask?  I have no idea really… I guess we will all find out as we go along.  Mostly my intent with this blog is to give updates on my life and whereabouts to anyone that has a reason to be interested.  I am also using it as a kind of test zone for learning how to use wordpress (blog creation software), so don’t be too surprised if you see lots of stuff here that seems a bit pointless, or if things randomly appear and disappear.  This also seems as good a way as any to keep a “journal” of sorts for myself…every other time I’ve tried to keep one I have gotten about 3 or so pages in before tossing it aside.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by…if you have any suggestions on improvements I could make to the site please let me know!

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