I just finished reading Little Brother by BoingBoing.net's very own Cory Doctorow, and I must say I was floored by the by the scope of this "young adult" book.

This is some of the best near-future sci-fi I've read in a very long time. The political tone of the book and the ideas about how technology enriches the lives of those who use it and transparency in government are extremely thought provoking.

I would recommend to anyone, even those over 25 (wink,wink), to go out right now and buy the book.

Believe me, you will not be disappointed.

For those of you who don't know, Brooke Oberwetter, aka The Jefferson 1, was arrested for silently bopping her head in the Jefferson Memorial on April 13 as part of the Thomas Jefferson Dance Party, organized by our friends in Liberty over at Bureaucrash, to celebrate the occasion of Thomas Jefferson's 265th birthday, and as a way to revive the dancing-as-freedom meme.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:Really!? Standing around bopping your head on "public" property (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) is an arrestable offense?! Don't Park's Department personnel have more important things to do? Oh, right, they work for the Park's Department, of course they have nothing better to do. My bad.

Fore more info on the Jefferson 1 and to donate to her legal defense fund, visit the Free the Jefferson 1 weblog here.

New York is trying to collect taxes from online merchants, even if they have no physical presence in the state and Amazon is suing, claiming the law is unconstitutional.

From the New York Times:

Amazon filed a complaint in State Supreme Court in Manhattan objecting to the law, which was approved as part of the $122 billion state budget that Gov. David A. Paterson signed last week. The law is expected to raise about $50 million.

The issue is not whether people should pay tax when they buy goods from out-of-state sellers like Amazon. For decades, the state has required them to pay sales or use tax.

The question is whether the vendors must collect that tax on behalf of the state. Generally, only those companies that have a physical presence — like an office or store — in the state where the purchase is made are required to collect the tax.

The new law is based on a novel definition of what constitutes a presence in the state: It includes any Web site based in the state that earns a referral fee for sending customers to an online retailer. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of affiliates — from big publishers to tiny blogs — that feature links to its products. The state law says that thousands of those have given an address in New York State, although the addresses have not been verified.

Shouldn't the state where the business was located have the most legitimate claim on sales taxes from transactions that took place with that business. I'm just sayin'.

More here and here.

Here's an interesting little piece about a handicapped man being tackled, arrested, and put on trial for recording a conversation with a police officer.

If the police insist on not being recorded, citizens will just get sneaky, and start recording them on the sly.

[R]ightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual

Thomas Jefferson.

Just had to throw that quote out there.

Here's an interesting story on the the current state of space law over at Transterrestrial Musings.

It mostly deals with space regulation and ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations).

A very interesting article that points out what happens when government gets involved where it shouldn't.

Would vegetarians refuse to eat meat if that meat came from a test tube rather than from a dead cow? Apparently not.

From wired.com:

In a measure to protect animals by any means necessary, PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the first scientist who can produce lab-grown meat in bulk.

For me, this is way better than the Ansari X Prize: Why visit space when you can just as easily take a trip to heaven with some cantaloupe wrapped in high-tech prosciutto? As a vegetarian and a biological scientist, I'm thrilled by yesterday's announcement and eager to start loading my plate with tissue-engineered bacon.

More here.

Mmmmmmm.......Test tube bacon.........

And, just for the record, I think PETA sucks. They use brute force and bullying to get their point across instead of using logic and persuasion to foster real debate.

Is it really all that bad to allow the free market to work it's "magic" when it comes to organ donation?

I guess to most people it is, but, I'm not the only person who thinks it could be a good idea. Stephen J. Dubner thinks it may be a good idea, too.

From the Freakonomics blog @ NYTimes.com:

Here is an oversimplification of a complex problem:

1. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, a sick or dying human being can receive a transplanted organ from another human being.

2. Some of those organs must inevitably come from cadavers: i.e., you can’t give your heart to someone else and still live. But some transplanted organs can come from living people. Chief among them is the kidney: we are born with two but can live with one.

3. As the science has improved, there has been a huge increase in demand for transplantable organs. But the supply has not kept up with demand. The kidney waiting list gets longer every year, and every year more people die while still on the waiting list. The supply of kidneys from both cadavers and living donors is insufficient.

More here.

Wow.

From the AP via AOL News:

Like hundreds of young men joining the Army in recent years, Jeremy Hall professes a desire to serve his country while it fights terrorism.

But the short and soft-spoken specialist is at the center of a legal controversy. He has filed a lawsuit alleging he's been harassed and his constitutional rights have been violated because he doesn't believe in God. The suit names Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Known as "the atheist guy," Hall has been called immoral, a devil worshipper and — just as severe to some soldiers — gay, none of which, he says, is true. Hall even drove fellow soldiers to church in Iraq and paused while they prayed before meals.

I must say I never thought I'd see the day.