I stopped by the Trammell Crow Asian art museum today during a break between a downtown Dallas business meeting and a court hearing. It's so peaceful there, and all the art interests me so.
I'm very interested in the request for proposal process for CCmixter.
It's gotten me thinking about the core values of creative commons, which I continue to believe is a force for good side journeys in an overly-mapped intellectual property landscape.
I read this morning about Jenny Block, a local writer whose book on her own "open" marriage is gaining traction. I looked up her website, which linked to the original magazine article she wrote, so that I could understand her point of view directly. I suppose I should have some really pithy thing to say about someone whose choices are different from my own. As it happens, though, I tend to think that life is sufficiently complex without spending one's time criticizing people who make non-violent choices different from one's own. The post World-War-Two era proved to be a tremendous debate about how people should live, with a lot of social sturm and drang from every point of view. I'd rather see people focus more on living their own values and being kind to one another, and less time in championing or pillorying the choices of others. In point of fact, I am more in need of a book called "Living with Insomnia: a User's Guide" than with a tome extolling or condemning what other people do in the privacy of their own homes. I think that when most of the world lives on a dollar a day, there's time enough to focus on other things than l-u-v. Still, books are for writing about things people find interesting, and I must admit that reading an alternative point of view was intriging, even if it was not life-changing or idea-altering. Maybe if we all had more dialogue and less screed then we'd live in a more unified society.
My own point of view has always fallen along the lines of thinking that monogamy offers the advantage of having at most one person angry at one at any given period of time. There my wit exhausts on the subject.
Tonight it appears that Senator Obama clinched the Democratic Party nomination. Now, after all these months of admirable campaigning on all sides, the campaign begins.
Listening to FM public talk show chat about carbon emissions reminded me how much of our lives are controlled by lobbyists and ideologues who lack the courage to deal with problems. If the Battle of Britain were beginning, these folks would worry about whether taxes should be increased just to buy Spitfires. We are in a major energy and environmental paradigm shift, and it's time for those who care to pull together.
I'm intrigued, also, by the Scott McClellan matter, Mr. Bush's former press secretary who wrote a book critical of the Bush administration. Much has been made of his contradictory statements, many caught on video. But in this youtube era, we have already seen that everyone has such contradictory moments. We are all curious and fragile and contradictory souls.