I am thinking about abandoning this site. I’ve made four posts here in 2010. Two of them have been about politics. One of my earliest memories is of watching some coverage of the 1976 Democratic convention on TV with my dad. As a four year old, my fascination was with the hats they were wearing. It’s not exactly a political memory, but is something that I feel shows how early in my life I found myself influenced by or focused on something related to politics. I’ve been pretty well obsessed with politics ever since elementary school, though. I volunteered for my first campaign at 15. For the next decade, I volunteered for all sorts of city, county, state, and national campaigns. I was pretty sure that I wanted to run for and serve in elected office. That changed when I was struck with depression at 25. I emerged from that experience as an introvert. The outgoing, energetic me that relished the idea of campaigning was dead. I switched from a poli sci focus to a history focus for grad school partially as a result of that, but I never lost the interest in politics.

In the last year, I’ve found that I’m losing that interest. The environment is so toxic. The structure has been so altered by recent supreme court rulings that I don’t think we’ll have a functional political system again in my lifetime. I no longer really believe that much good can be done through the political system. At best, you can stave off some of the bad, maybe even roll some of the bad back at times. I think there are ways to do good and I’m kind of actively looking toward figuring one out that will work for me. I also kind of feel like blogging about politics is just an enormous waste of time. Unless you’re famous for doing it, I don’t think your words can ever establish a meaningful reputation or track record by which you’ll be judged. In a medium that is only words, your actions outside of it don’t matter either, again, unless you’re famous for them.

For the last six months, the fact that I actually use some email addresses associated with this domain has been the only thing that’s kept me from letting it expire. If I continue to feel about this site like I’ve felt for a while, this may be my last update. The domain expires in a couple months. I may renew it for one more year to have time to switch out the email addresses and archive some content. If I don’t see you here again, thanks for reading. Hopefully, I’ll see you somewhere else.

Stephen A. Smith starts this column by saying “If one thing is clear about Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, it is that it invites stereotyping and racial profiling…”, but then goes on to say that Major League Baseball should stay out of it. He, like every sports writer, is aware of the stand that the NFL took in Arizona over the MLK, jr holiday a couple of decades ago. It took some really tortured arguing to come up with a way of saying that the NFL took a stand over civil rights, but that “stereotyping and racial profiling” by a state government isn’t somehow a civil rights issue. This is the dumbest thing I’ve read today, for sure.

I’m pondering whether or not Stuart Green from Rutgers Law is a moron, a liar, or a hack. It may not be possible for me to know which category he falls into. His opinion piece at the Monitor is so full of errors and distortions that it certainly seems as if it could have been his intent to be dishonest. Though the simpler answer is that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Based on the accounts that I’ve read Brian Hogan went above and beyond the call of duty in trying to return that iPhone prototype. He had absolutely no way of knowing who the person who left the phone at the bar is. It’s pretty damn reasonable to assume that a person who leaves the phone they’ve been using at a bar is the owner of that phone. It’s not so reasonable to assume that the owner is the firm that manufactured the device. Mr. Hogan originally believed the device was an iPhone 3GS. The device had been disguised to give that appearance. When Mr. Hogan later examined the phone closely and found that it wasn’t a standard 3GS, he took the step of contacting Apple and telling them what he’d found. How much struggling to notify someone at an enormous multinational corporation do you have to do to have satisfied Stuart Green’s standards?

Mr. Green’s assertion that this is a clear case of theft couldn’t be more wrong. I see neither an intent to steal nor an act of theft. I see a young man who made reasonable attempts and then some to notify the owner of this property that he possessed it. If Mr. Hogan isn’t guilty of theft, then the entire “case” that Stuart Green makes against Gizmodo and Jason Chen falls apart. The California shield law should have applied to Mr. Chen’s home. He should not have had his home searched by the police. The judge who issued the warrant to do so and the police who served it, after being informed of the shield law’s validity in this case should be disciplined.