I let the dogs out a little while ago. Then went to let them in. No dogs.

“That’s odd, I thought, did they get out? The GPS tracker says no” then Basil bolts by me with a chew toy in his mouth.

“Oh,” I thought “He must have grabbed it on his way out and I missed it….wait…we don’t have a grey chew toy”

Lucien ran by in full rage mode.

“What the hell?” I thought.

Turns out Lucien had killed a rabbit from the warren in the grove. Basil then did his retriever thing and grabbed it to carry around. Lucien was furious his kill had been stolen by Basil and I am standing on my deck watching Wild Kingdom unfold.

So I put Lucien in the house by enticing him with treats, then get Basil to drop the rabbit by enticing him with treats and put him in the house. Now I have a gorgeous 2 pound dead bunny. Fresh kill no blood. I examine him to make sure he’s actually dead not just gone tharn (yup dead, neck snapped) and I have a choice to make. Butcher him, bury him, or get rid of him.

Butchering him requires I get out the knives and block, skin gut and clean him. a 40 minute process done properly. Burying him, take him out on the land, dig a hole, and put him in and fill. Same time.

It’s 1am. I’m already super tired. Walking the carcass out to the edge of the land and tossing him into the brush and let nature take its course: 5 minutes.

Sorry Mr. Bunny no tombstone for you. But if I had, it would say “Here lies Bunny McRabbit. Too dumb to know a fenceline with a Mini Aussie in it”

** Yes the dogs are rabies up to date

There’s a lot of silly opinion on those who comment on things. I think Youtube comments have a lot to do with that but smart funny commentary makes better art or can cast art in a completely new way. These things are valuable to our culture.

The top three things I pay attention to, and I am saying this because if you don’t know about them they are worth your time:

Movies with Mikey

A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume

We Got This with Mark and Hal

In no particular order,

Movies With Mikey

It’s probably no secret I love Mikey Neumann. His humor and insight blows me away. He’s one of the few people who killed me in a book he wrote. And I’m fine with that. It was a good death. Unexpected. Much like the one I actually had once.

What Mikey does is he takes a film, it could be a good film a bad film whatever, and Mikey CELEBRATES it. Let’s set aside his big brain analysis of story points or shot angles or holy shit he once celebrated COLOR CORRECTION.

That shit is Ebert level.

What Mikey does is make you feel, at the end of the episode, great. You just feel good. And you wanna go back and watch that film again to apply some of what he said but you will do it with a smile on your face. It’s quite literally not possible to watch Movies with Mikey and feel crunchy about it. Some try, but they reveal in their “I have opinions” level meta critique their failure to understand the entire point of what Mikey is doing.

The episodes have amazing production value and his opening theme song I don’t know why, just sings to my heart. He makes movies more fun to watch. Mikey has actually made me go pay for a movie I skipped just because of his analysis and passion for celebrating it. HOLLYWOOD DMCA LAWYERS LISTEN UP HE MADE YOUR CLIENT MONEY.

I adore this show.

A Bit of A Chat with Ken Plume

I bounce off Ken pretty well. Often when we have a phone call it goes 2 hours because we can disagree so easily and agree so hard on so many things.

But the reason this show is a favorite is that he is a master interviewer. He’s smart, funny as hell and brings a deep level of insight into nerd topics but that isn’t the best part.

A good interviewer isn’t afraid to take a strong counter position and challenge the other person. And a bit of a chat is A) well named and B) well done on that specific point.

And it’s its all improv. Ken isn’t afraid to let the conversation happen organically and man, he gets your favorite geeks and internet people to be unhooked and free to talk about things. It’s high value and some are really long but wow are they worth the investment.

Ken takes commentary to a great level. Sometimes it’s crunchy and it forces self-reflection but it’s always done with heart and love. This is a must listen for anyone interested in the things I am interested in.

We Got This with Mark and Hal

This one. Oh, this one. What a great premise. Let’s take a geek/nerd/Internet argument and actually argue it. It is so much fun. I was present for a live recording with Adam and Hodgman in San Francisco with Mark and Hal and holy shit it was a Star Trek vs Star Wars argument.

And again the trend here of their commentary is they come from love not “I HAVE OPINIONS’. This one you can really feel the love. Even when the argument gets down to absolute positions the other side gets its proper due. This podcast probably makes me laugh more than the others solely because Mark and Hal are so sharp. if you can see them live DO SO. Hal and Mark are great folk. And you know what? They got this.

So those are my go to items that give me faith when I read the youtube comments a little too close. There’s lot’s more quality stuff out there I could mention I don’t want to give short shrift to them by any means. These are the ones I think, if you were looking to spend some time you would be so well rewarded and I want to support them and help them continue.

I think we all need a little support and continuation of the things we love right now.

Having said that Let’s get cracking!

Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl is a song from 1972 (my birth year!) performed by Looking glass and somehow, SOMEHOW James Gunn plucked this song from obscurity to serve as a primary narrative point Guardian’s of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

I cannot possibly fathom the level of creative genius that resulted in this and am awestruck.

The film presents Kurt Russel’s performance as Peter’s father from a story construct that seems at first heavy handed. THE GUY’S NAME IS EGO. but it earns every beat because of the use of Brandy as his explanation for his one flaw: He fell in love. Love is, when pure, the least Ego thing.

The lyric used in the story for Ego’s justification is interesting to me, “My life my love my lady is the sea”. Turns out that wasn’t true and he killed Peter’s mother because of it. And he betrays the other line in the song that he attempts to use as an excuse: “He was an honest man.” He wasn’t.

Her eyes stole a sailer from the sea.

He wanted Peter. He needed to create Starlord and in the process revealed something incredibly vulnerable about himself. He was lonely. He was not honest about that.

And thusly it is revealed through this use of Brandy as the opening song that everything you really need to know about Ego is played out over the next two hours. And Peter is the ultimate victim of this seemingly trivial tune about a ship port waitress because his mother was the single most important thing to him and there, right there, is where the small exhaust port weakness of Ego’s entire plan results in detonation.

He underestimated Peter. He overestimated his designs. And he callously threw a life away and Peter’s redemption in this moment is so righteous because he has a new family. And they have his back. And he has theirs.

The film earns this beat so hard that I actually have a crush on a piece of art.

I unboxed the thing and again marveled at the fact the entire console is just the little iPad mini sized touchscreen. It puts out roughly Xbox 360/PS3 style graphics when you dock it to the HDMI enabled mount at 1080p. It’s, like most Nintendo stuff except the Wii U (which felt plastic and kinda cheap), an impressive piece of kit.

Gaming around the house is fun and easy, even though I can already do that on my iPad mini. Late night Mariokart is going to be a big thing for me I think.

Zelda. I’m only partially into it and it’s such an amazing game. I actually am now putting off Horizon on PS4 to enjoy Zelda fully. By going stylized in terms of art they really maximized the look of this title either playing it on a 65-inch screen or on the console’s touch screen. Again I would rate the graphics on Zelda as very close to high quality Xbox 360/PS3 level in this tiny little thing. I can’t wait for some more optimization work that will probably yield stylized looks exceeding PS3 level quality.

I want every console maker to consider making a “previous gen” type experience like this. I can’t wait for Scorpio but man if you could give me an Xbox 360/Xbox One experience in this form factor I think you could still hit the consumer level 299/399$ price point pain for the fact it’s tiny, sits in an entertainment center like it’s hidden, and enables mobile experiences better than any second screen experience I have had to date on iOS or Android.

I worry Nintendo will orphan it.

The battery life sucks but I cannot really complain because it’s working pretty hard.

While the Vita promised this type of experience, the Switch is everything the Vita should have been. I love my vita but this is the new hotness.

I still think Nintendo should port all their titles to other platforms and charge a premium for the software. But hey what do I know, they seem to be doing pretty well without doing that.

“Nintendo Switch” is still sort of a weird name. But not as weird as “Wii U”

I don’t think I’ve been this pleased with a Nintendo device since my ex camped out to get me a Gamecube or I got my DSi.

Zelda. Wow.

It was 2004 and I would get these requests often in my part time role as communications person for Microsoft’s Security Response Center. The PR team and I would weigh who the request came from, their audience, and several other factors in deciding who we would get on the phone with as opposed to responding in email. Not for spin or positioning purposes, (you can’t really spin a security vulnerability although many have tried. They tried and failed? No. They tried and died) but more use of time vs. how many people would be reached.

“Sure.” I said. “What’s the outlet?”

Waggener Edstrom has served as the major PR firm for Microsoft for such a long time. There’s a reason for that, they are whip smart and I knew that if they were asking for my phone time it was worth doing.

“It’s a gentleman who runs a fairly well-subscribed newsletter, he’s written for Byte and a lot of other publications back in the day. His questions are mostly technical about the attack vector, it seems like a good place to get any additional information out.”

It was a slow day for me, a Thursday as I recall and our monthly release had happened that Tuesday so most of the pressing outlets like CNN or the LAtimes/Boston Globe/NYT gamut or Wired or whatever had already had their calls with me, so I said sure let me set up a 30 minute block of time and give me five minutes prep for us to decide whether or not to do this or over email.

I stupidly never asked who the gentleman was who I would be talking to.

Ok prep for the call time. I’m in my office which back then was decorated in what my Wagg Ed support team referred to as “affluent freshman college dorm room” style. I had cool lava lamps and a projector with a liquid oil pattern cast on the wall, blacklights, a nice futon etc. Meetings all over the MSRC were sometimes held in my office just because. Once, our fearless leader kicked me out of my own office to have a meeting, but that was before we started pranking his office with greek architecture. I digress.

I picked up the phone for the prep, keep in mind my role here in my life was directly communicate guidance for Microsoft customers in regards to security threats and vulnerabilities and patches. We’re 60 seconds into the prep discussion when I finally open the newsletter and look at the web page and find out the caller is going to be

Jerry. Fucking. Pournelle.

*record scratch* *narrator voice* This is me, you may be wondering how I got here.

Well let’s start with The Mote in God’s Eye. The Niven and Pournelle team-up was formative for me because their voices were so interesting individually, but that story meshes so seamlessly (unlike say a Peter Straub/ Stephen King mashup which worked so brilliantly *because* of the slight tonal discord) that it made me seek out all of Pournelle’s other work. I had already consumed Niven’s.

“We’re taking this call” I blurted. “We are taking this fucking call. We are sooooo taking this call.”

I think I freaked the PR team out a little bit.

So now I’m 60 seconds away from speaking to Jerry. Fucking. Pournelle. In some random space in my life where his interests and my role collided and neither had anything to do with the fact I was a huge fan. I knew about his newsletter and website and his interest in computers and tech, I just had no idea *that* was the person I was going to talk to. And now it was my job.

Be cool man. Be cool.

Now I’m on the phone with him. He asks how I am and how my day is. I managed somehow to hold it together and chat like all this was perfectly normal but I didn’t trust myself to not screw it all up so I just said “before we get to your questions, if I may, your fiction has been a huge influence on me. I’m a fan and I’m a little weirded out that I’m talking to you”

I know that’s what I said, verbatim, because I had it typed in notepad to read from so I would not screw it up.

He laughed and spent like the next two minutes just sort of shooting the shit with me. Then he delved into his questions which were clearly from someone who wasn’t just a hobbyist, he understood the ins and outs of the threat and he wanted to articulate why applying the updates was important in the newsletter.

At one point I got bold. I said, “Well on the one hand the attacker could do X but on the gripping hand the patch does Y.”

He stopped me. “If I were to use that, there would be three elements, with the “on the gripping hand” being always the third. That’s how moties work. It helps see past a binary choice!”

I still use this today. I say things often like so: “On the one hand X, on the other hand Y. But on the Gripping hand….” and when it gets spotted by people for the reference I usually get an email or nod to the effect “I got what ya did there” and when people are confused I get to explain it and introduce them to The Mote in God’s Eye.

I have Jerry to thank for that. The call was simple and perfunctory, we got his questions answered, he was gracious and kind with my fanboyism. But that moment where he took an element of such a foundational influence that he and Niven had written and riffed it as “No no no say it like this, and people will get it” was one of those moments in my life where I was flummoxed and not at the same time, and won’t ever forget.

We never spoke again, I cannot claim to have known him or that we were Facebook friends or anything. I doubt he would have even recalled the conversation within a month or two of it just because he probably had lots of conversations like that with people.

I am just one more of millions affected by his work in some way saying, thanks Jerry. Thanks for the stories.

Hospital stays suck, even when you are in MCU not ICU. The last time I was there was for three weeks and for 90% of it I was under a strict “no Internet” policy.

So for this stay I decided to do the same thing even though it wasn’t mandatory.

Our bodies are capable of an infinite amount of energy along a timeline that ends when we die. However, we cannot just create infinite amounts of energy at once or on demand. During my last stay, it was explained to me that despite my protests that being on the Internet and being able to interact would help me mentally, physically that would divert energy my body needed to heal.

After I left the hospital (I’m fine by the way, everything got fixed up and I feel pretty good!) I felt so good mentally I decided to continue restricting my Internet both for my mental health as well as I ended up getting busy with work.

I am happy to report it was great.

I love the ability to interact with anyone at any time of day online. I love Twitter’s capabilities and Facebook and reading the web and basically just sucking up communication like a vacuum. But at the same time, it comes at an energy cost and a mental health one. There’s only so many new terrible Trump stories you can read each day and stay happy.

I turned off my phone this past weekend and took Basil to the beach. It was marvelous. I’m slowly learning you don’t have to respond to every text, read every headline, respond to every Facebook post, or feel bad about just unplugging for a bit.

I would not say I’m shutting down on Internet usage or that it is bad. But except for short bursts like live snarking something on Twitter or engaging in conversations on Facebook I do plan to spend less time reading the Internet and more time watching a TV show (American Gods is astoundingly good) and writing than feeling like I have to be up to speed on all things at all times.

I’m just closing the aperture a little bit more and trying to be more focused on being online.

I did not mean to worry anyone, rest assured that I have some protocols in place since I live alone that if anything happens certain people get “activated” for help if I need it.

In the meantime, I highly recommend the occasional Internet break. Try to go a couple of days of it. I found that I stressed less, was more relaxed and had a lot more creative thoughts than just sitting down and making hashtag jokes on Twitter. :>

Except it’s not.

But now you can’t get it out of your head.

This is how the current presidential administration operates to the average person. They take a statement that in and of itself is at least reasonable to consider: “surely all these illegal people here are stealing jobs” or “The middle east is filled with Islamic terrorism and they already hit us once” and, from there policy is made without actually considering the data.

And the media has failed us by refusing to use plain language to call it out because it’s too busy inside a bubble of its own creation to speak plainly for fear of appearing adversarial. They would be better served by simply not reporting the administration at all, or at least stop giving it front page treatment. But they are addicted to clicks.

If you don’t believe me ask yourself, who, outside of the media and some West Wing fans, even understands the obsession and meaning of the word “Pivot” right now?

A pivot in the current environment isn’t truth, it’s lying with style. Not much thinking required on that.

Now to be upfront, I am not a lawyer. That sentence is usually followed by a “but, I blah blah blah might as well be” bullshit justification for being an expert, even if on the layman level.

I am not a constitutional law expert either.

I’m a weird bird. I consume trial transcripts. There’s probably half a dozen cases where I have read every brief, motion transcript or filing. US v Microsoft is probably where I got the bug. Such a fascinating case from end to end.

BUT

That doesn’t make me a lawyer.

I do, however, have opinions on the law. I also where possible, repeat guidance that learned lawyers have stated publicly.

With that, let us examine the 4^th amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is a good amendment, and very important. It essentially is the protection in our society from the government simply looking at whatever it wants to on a fishing expedition and it has served us well to date.

But then 9/11.

I’ve stated it before, but there is an old joke that a liberal is simply a conservative that has never been mugged. On 9/11 our entire country got mugged. To put it succinctly: We lost our collective minds.

Shrouded in cries of “Never forget” and “Protect the homeland” we quite simply did shame to our founding fathers by agreeing to give up many of the things that make America unique. All in the interests of thinking we could prevent another 9/11 from happening.

We can’t. Another major terrorist attack will happen on American soil. If you count domestic terrorism, many already have. It is not a “solve for zero” problem. The safest society in the world is one that chains everyone in the country to their beds 24/7. The greatest victory Osama Bin Laden achieved is our own violation of our principles. Every shoe taken off at an airport, every email read by the NSA, every time a TSA agent violates someone’s body in the interests of the greater good of security is in the final analysis, a victory for those who attacked us. They terrorized us.

So why does this bring me to the 4^th amendment?

The word “Warrant”.

We put a lot of stock in that word. I don’t know an American who would not say “well if they had a warrant then…”

But here’s the thing. It’s trivial to get one. It is the linchpin of the entire 4^th amendment. It is the very due process we trust. That a judge considered the arguments and, having weighed the impact and risks, issued the command that bypasses the amendment.

How many warrants are denied? Less and less I fear. I am concerned that in the post 9/11 world no judge wants to be the one to deny a warrant if the word terrorism is involved. I am concerned the process of obtaining a warrant, often on very tight timelines, has been so diluted as to make the 4^th amendment itself useless.

Let us consider a hypothetical. I tweet to Edward Snowden. He replies. Because his twitter stream is followed closely by law enforcement, and I am a well-known member of the security industry, how difficult would it be on the part of a judge to issue a warrant to search my computers and phone due to Snowden’s status as a fugitive whose actions have (according to those pleading the warrant) materially affected the security of the United States?

I see struggles like this all the time. Thanks to the Patriot act one need simply find some way to invoke terrorism in the application for a warrant and many safeguards that might give a judge or controlling authority pause simply melt away.

This problem is not related to political administrations. It existed under Bush, Obama, and now Trump.

Armor is only as strong as its weakest point. In the case of the 4^th amendment, the strongest link is now made of brittle, poorly cast metal.

Teaching Toward Bethlehem

The air was crisp and cold, and smelled strongly of smoke. To be more clear, it wasn’t the smoke smell of destruction nor the smoke of a pipe of herb. It was hearth fire smoke. Wood smoke. A smell of comfort, and Nathanial Boren inhaled it deeply and held it inside of him for a moment. He exhaled and watched his breath float away into the night sky, imagining for a moment it was smoke itself. It was a childhood play act that even at the ripe old age of fifty-one he indulged in.

His wife was fast asleep in the settlement behind him, his children were grown and had hearth fires of their own. Nights like this he could stand out near the perimeter, see the stars in the winter night air and just be. For a moment he wished he’d poured a dram of the spiced cider on the stove before he went out, then decided that tiny imperfection made the night somehow better.

Sometimes just being meant feeling a slight pang of regret.

The grassy hills that rolled over the landscape were dusted in a bit of light frost and the dark outline of the old city structure could just be made out against the far mountains under the light of the full moon. The perimeter was set up to prevent raids from there, but the grand old Vancouver skyline still stood proud if inert. Nathanial’s reverie was broken by Old Messy goat, the cranky one, who bleated from her position at the center of the flock and that’s when little Rhiannon scared the living shit out of him.

“Caught ya dreaming!” she shouted, slapping him on the backside.

After the shock wore off “Sweet Christ child, you’ll give me a heart attack!”

Rhiannon cocked her head, dark skin and eyes bundled up in her little parka, “You weren’t tending the flock. I get spanked for that.”

All of nine years old, his granddaughter was already a taskmaster at settlement responsibilities, and yes, he had been musing instead of watching the herd. For a moment he was doubly grateful for not having the cider, as she startled him so badly he would have either dashed it on himself or on her.

“Fair point. What are you doing out here? The perimeter isn’t safe at night.”

A shrug, just like her mother would, “Yeah well you guys say that, but no one has come from the city since, you know, I was born.” She put a sarcastic emphasis on the last word and Nathanial’s heart soared because that part, that part was just like his wife.

“All right little one, look and tell me what you see.”

Rhiannon dutifully gazed over the perimeter fence line for a moment. Nathanial could see her mind working on the proper response. She was analytical. Businesslike. It hurt somewhat to realize she was not whimsical, and that this world had by necessity made her that way.

“There’s no tracks in the frost, no one has been in the crossfire zone. Old Messy is cranky because none of the males want to fuck her.” She said plainly.

“Hey! Language!”

Rhiannon rolled her eyes, “Owpaw I know all about fucking. That’s how we get more goats and babies.”

“Language! I should speak to your mother about her teachings.”

Again with the rolled eyes. “You guys tell me how important words are, then spend a lot of time telling me not to say them.”

Nathanial took a deep breath for a blistery comeback and exhaled slowly instead. The air still smelled of burning wood and comfort.

“Yes. Yes, sometimes we do that. We’re not perfect. But while your eyes caught much, you missed my point. Look at the sky.”

She cast her eyes up at the stars then shrugged again like her mother.

“It’s clear. No glowy fog or clouds tonight.”

“But do you see that star?” he pointed.

“The brighter one?”

“Yes, that one.” He said.

This time there wasn’t a shrug. Now, she was listening.

“I see it.”

“That star is Polaris. It is the northern star. It’s one of the brighter stars in the night sky. It is said that Polaris guided the shepherds.”

And yet again with the eye rolling. Nathanial wanted for a moment to chastise her but Rhiannon wasn’t one to be silenced or interrupted.

“Oh not the Christmas story again.”

“It’s winter little one, and the time when we used to mark this time with great celebration.”

She pulled the hood of her winter coat back, her dander up now, which again gave Nathanial great delight. Rhiannon had a sharp mind. He had much hope for this young generation.

“Stupid! Owpaw no one tends flocks in the field in desert winter. And wise men don’t need a star to guide them. The whole story is dumb. Why would a god fuck some woman—“

“Language!”

“—to create another version of himself to die but not really die so everyone here could hurt people then feel bad and feel ok about it later because they think they get to live forever?”

Rhiannon’s blood was up he could see, Nathanial changed his mind and wished for a moment he had that cider. He looked back up at the sky.

“I suppose you’re right.”

Rhiannon blinked, unsure of herself. He shifted slightly and put his arm around her.

“I like the story though,” he said, “It reminds me of generosity. It reminds me of sacrifice. It reminds me of the fact even if we worship something, that doesn’t mean it didn’t face struggle too. All we have in the end, are our stories. Isn’t the message of the Christ worth that? Forget the main parts, think about the message. Of love and sharing it. Doing something to help everyone. Yes, the story is a myth but all stories are. We can take the lessons even if we don’t buy the story right?”

Rhiannon hugged her grandfather tightly around his waist. “No. It’s silly. But I think I know what you mean?”

He did. They stood like that, enjoying the cold for a moment.

“There’s a hymn I like,” he said.

“The holy night one?”

“It’s fun to sing isn’t it?”

“I guess,” she said.

“There’s a line about fall on your knees, hear the angel voices.”

“That’s dumb. You can’t fight back on your knees.”

“That’s not entirely true, but also not the point,” Nathanial said. He didn’t feel the need to further it.

There was a moment again with just the two hugging each other in the cold. The goat bleated.

“I think you’re right about Old Messy,” He said.

“Yeah. I am I think,” came the small reply.

“Go to bed little one.”

Rhiannon hugged him tight and breathed in deeply. Nathanial realized for a moment that perhaps he had imparted some wisdom. He also realized that having an impact on her was a life experience few and far between. Rhiannon let him go and trudged off but then turned for a moment.

“Owpaw, what is the point though? Why even bother with these people you made if you’re a god? Make them think they can be bad but feel bad and be forgiven?”

Nathanial smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe people should try harder to avoid being bad.”

Rhiannon frowned. “Wait. This is you telling me again I can’t tease Nat Jr? Owpaw he is so lame.” Again she emphasized the last word with sarcasm.

Mission accomplished, her brother might experience a little less torment.

“Merry Christmas, Rhiannon.” It was an instruction not a wish.

And she rolled her eyes, shuffled back to her cabin. Nathanial took a deep breath of the night air, and watched the flock.