The view from under my glass topped desk

Sovereign immunity has been a critical and criticized concept in common law. It has been a cornerstone of institutional and corporate (in a rather pure if problematic sense) autonomy. This is an imporant concept in a nation state. The Stencil/Feres doctrine holds that the sovereign can only be sued with permission of the sovereign and prevents people from suing the government in case of war casualties and death.

OK - Pay attention, because we don't have all the time in the world. If the American economy and, by extension, the global economy, requires a serious economic stimulus to keep from running off the rails into a deflationary abyss, why is the GOP continuing to talk about pork, spending and tax cuts? It's because they are politically compelled to protect the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Because, and this is serious as a heart attack, that's all they got left.

Yes, I am still enjoying saying, writing and thinking the words "President Obama". I may not agree with all his policies (though I am liking the first 11 days). And, yes, I may still have the sneaking suspicion that we'll have to revisit the economic stimulus approach. But I am still digging the words "President Obama" which, in my mind equate to , "You know, being thought of as the crazy, drunk bully down the street has been getting pretty old. Let's try sanity and a clean shirt and see how that feels."

Well I finally read the Informationalized Conversation post that I'd kept unread in my Google Reader and I'm glad I did. It cites Herbert H. Cook's book, Using Language to raise the idea of how we’ve internalized what Weinberger calls the information-based paradigm. According to Weinberger, this paradigm holds that "communication consists of the transfer of messages from one head to another." He summarized Cook's claim to contast with the informationalized paradigm:

Over the last few days, I've been thinking obsessing about how American neoconservatism has reveled in magical realist thought as a way of disempowering the American electorate.

The project of magical realism as a narrative trope has been employed by writers in post-Colonial societies to describe and highlight the contradictions in a transitional society. Quoting Bainard Cowan's Introduction to an issue of Margin:

Probably very ill-advised. I am exploring EasyWMS out of Stuttart University. At the very least, there may be the upside of ending my product of the American academe feeling of inferiority with regard to the German and French academies. So my personal development may move forward regardless of whether my GIS user story is fulfilled. That's not nothing I guess.

So all this talk about bailouts is frustrating me. Yes, the pissing an moaning about bailing out the US automakers is ridiculous in light of the apparently oversight-free give-away to Wall Street. But that's just the beginning of the debate we should be having.

T minus 40 minutes to the ONE/Northwest World Plone Day Event.

My colleagues from ONE/Northwest, Jon Stahl, and Sam Knox will be speaking as will Andrew Burkhalter, formerly of ONE/Northwest, soon to start and exciting new gig at Fischer Communications.

The beer is cold, the cheese platters will be picked up in minutes, the chairs are out and the projector is on.

Yes, Plone goodness is about to commence.

Today reminds me of the day after the fall of the Berlin wall. One day there was one reality, the next day that previous reality was totally ... irrelevant.