[79281] in Cypherpunks
Re: Rejecting Dialog with Government Vermin
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim May)
Tue Apr 29 22:39:09 1997
X-Real-To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.970429200735.19641C-100000@cavern.uark.edu>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 18:50:40 -0800
To: Mac Norton <mnorton@cavern.uark.edu>
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Cc: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
At 5:17 PM -0800 4/29/97, Mac Norton wrote:
>Weather there sucks, about 48 weeks out of the year, and
>the four others aren't consecutive.
>
>Most people who live in DC don't live there; they're passing
>through for a few years, as Declan apparently is. When I
>"lived" there in the 70s the first polite question universally
>asked on being introduced to someone at a party or bar was
>not even "Where do you work?" but "Where ya from?" cause
>*nobody* was from DC or intended to be. From sporadic visits
>over the last twenty years, that situation doesn't seem to
>have changed appreciably.:)
>
>This "waystation" nature contributes to the artificiality of
>the town.
That's another good way of putting it. A wholly artificial town.
And some people are actually _from_ there! My mother was born there
(Lanham, Maryland), and I was born at Bethesda Naval Hospital (where
Forrestal took his leap into conspiratorial greatness), lived there 1951-5,
1961-63, and 1965-70, when I was able to escape back to sunny, laid-back,
high-tech, beautiful California!
(California has its weirdnesses, but I feel I'm a native Californian. My
earliest conscious memories were in San Diego, where I lived from 1955-61.
Since 1970 I've only spent 2 years outside California, in rainy, depressing
Portland, OR. Ugh. Everytime I leave I can hardly wait to get back to
California. Everybody should live where they think "home" is. For those who
think D.C. is home....I pity them.)
Mac, I've never been through Arkansas, at least in my adult memory, but I
have a feeling it's _got_ to be more natural, more comprehensible, more
_human_ than cesspools like Washington or New York City.
I predict Declan will "do his time" in D.C. for a few more years, then move
on. If he can actually escape to West Virgina, more power to him. (Harper's
Ferry seems like a nice confluence, literally.)
I'll stick to the Greater Bay Area. I spend part of every day watching
CNN-FN and CNBC, and it's truly astounding how nearly every high-tech story
they do comes out of their San Francisco bureau. Washington, D.C. is
actually a backwater. (A tidewater backwater, no less.) As I write this, I
can see the mountains behind Big Sur and Monterey. Amazing.
>> I repeat: legislators only make things worse.
>
>Worse than what? It might be more fair to say legislators
>only rarely make things better.
"Worse than what?" Worse than they would have been had Congress taken no
action at all.
They usually do make things worse.
--Tim May
There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
