A safer world

In an effort to make us safer, some in government are finding new and exciting ways to scarily put information about you and me into a database for cross referencing. Washington, DC's mayor, Anthony Williams has jumped onto this bandwagon and wants four states on it with him. Hmmm.....this is all very scary. Florida has a crazy cross-referencing "counterterrorism" database and guess what they want to call it. Yup, you guess it, the Matrix, and the Fed is backing this program. You would have thought when they were naming it, they would have not named it the Matrix, a movie that had it's sequel released this year and is about computers controlling humanity. And they named it the Matrix. And no one thought it was a bad idea.

Let's not forget in our headlong dive to be more safe that we not give up the rights that we and everyone before us fought hard to get and keep. This is very well said on Chris's page:

The following is taken from George Lucas, Filmmaker and creative genius behind the Star Wars saga. The following quote is transcribed from the "Star Wars Episode II : Attack of the Cones" DVD Commentary, concerning the origins of Senator, Supreme Chancellor and Emperor Palpatine / Darth Sidious:

Lucas: This idea of a democracy being given up [during Palpatine's rise to power] and in many cases being given up in a time of crisis; you see it throughout history - whether it's Julius Ceaser, or Napoleon, or Adolf Hitler - you see these democracies under a lot of pressure, in a crisis situation, who end up giving up a lot of the freedoms they have and a lot of the checks and balances to somebody with a strong authority to help get them through the crisis. It's not the first time a politician has created a war to try to stay in office.

Pay attention to Mr. Lucas, people - he's right on the money.


Speaking of giving up freedoms, Phil has thrown his hat(August 6th entry) unofficially into the govenor's race in California. If you're there, be sure to vote for him.