We’re here! until Match Day, and my blood pressure knows it.

Today brings us an incredibly well-written and well-thought out open letter from Jeff Bezos on the Amazon patent issue. I need a little time to think about it more, but my quick read is that he has a very strong argument, and I like that he is also willing to work to improve the system to make distinctions for business systems and to give public comment prior to the granting of patents some real value. Instead of being reactionary (like most of the blather on the web right now on this issue), Bezos put some real thought into the matter, and his answer is eloquent and on-point.

Peacefire has again entered the censorware fray with an app that decrypts the list of banned sites used by IGear, a Symantec product. And again, the list is amazingly broad, banning many, many sites that have absolutely nothing on them that could be considered offensive. My favorite examples of blocked sites: a milk pasteurization system diagram written in Portugese, Volume 4 of This History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a computer science PowerPoint presentation, and an 18th-century opera transcript.

I try so hard to be original, but Brig pointed to something yesterday that made my sides hurt I was laughing so much: Furniture Porn. (They even got their own domain name for it…. awesome.)

And from the other Jason comes the weirdest ass website I’ve seen in a while. This guy’s highly paranoid musings are going to be trumpeted all over the news when he sprays an assault rifle all over a playground, mark my words. A select quote:

You are a personified pyramid corner. Educated people are the evil empowerment of the self - the lowest form of humanity. Humans are brainwashed stupid and indoctrinated evil. A human will rotate around 4-corner lifetime stages within a family metamorphosis - baby, child, parent and grandparent. Name your 4/16 greatgrandparents.

Ummmm… my gawd, I wish that the New York Attorney General’s office had something better to do than spend my tax money to investigate Nintendo because its games are ostensibly responsible for blisters on people’s hands. I mean, this state has terrible problems with rent reform, landlord and tenant rights, police abuse of power, monopoly public utilities… and Spitzer’s investigating a video game company because people overuse their product? I am incredulous.

Another good mediator has popped up: The T’nator (inflicts Mr. T on any web page!). Here’s Q after Mr. T exerts his influence. Also, from Jordan (who I met last night) comes The Dialectizer.

Great Law & Order last night, but I’m unsure how happy I am with the animosity that they’re creating between Briscoe and Green. There’s no context to it at all, so it just flew up out of the blue last night. Harumph.

Last night’s IRC chat was a blast from the past — I haven’t been on IRC since college. Wow.

There’s something about a weblog with a corporate ad banner that makes me feel a little uneasy. Posting is such a personal thing for me; I wouldn’t want the implication that my personal musings were sponsored.