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The Open Source Party Proposal

Oct 23

10 Zen Monkeys, November 2007

The duopoly will have its way again in this year’s election.

Ralph Nader and whoever the Libertarians and Greens nominate as their candidates will drag their asses around the country, sometimes saying interesting and important things, sometimes not. Many of us will wish, once again, that there could be a dynamic discourse about the many real issues and problems that get ignored; and then we will vote (or not) for the one who has at least a fingernail grip on sanity, or for one of the sad and hopeless alterna-candidates.

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Catching Up With An Aqua Teen Terrorist

Oct 23

10 Zen Monkeys, November 2007

January 31, 2007: a day that will live in infamy. The great city of Boston was brought to its knees by the appearance of unexpected L.E.D. placards in places where they didn’t belong. Alert to potential connections between terror and anything a wee bit unusual, stout citizens and government officials alike in the land of the free and the home of the brave peed their metaphoric pants. The L.E.D. character was described in a CNN report as “a Mooninite, an outer-space delinquent… greeting passersby with an upraised middle finger.” Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley was quoted in the same piece as saying, “It had a very sinister appearance.” The horror. The horror.

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Don’t Go There: Top 20 Taboo Topics for Presidential Candidates

Oct 23

10 Zen Monkeys, August 2007

They call it retail politics. It’s a politic that has to appeal to an awful lot of people, but it doesn’t have to appeal to them all that much.

The successful presidential candidate wants to establish just enough passion for their political stances that voters will waddle down to the polling place on the first Tuesday of November and vote for them (or send in the appropriate form). Too much passion could be a dangerous thing, because it probably indicates that the candidate has moved off of the acceptable boilerplate messages of the retail campaign and has introduced ideas and possible political solutions that are both novel and challenging. Winning presidential candidates don’t want to be any more challenging than blockbuster movies.

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Senator Vitter’s Suppressed Statement

Oct 23

10 Zen Monkeys, July 2007

10 Zen Monkeys received the following document from a friend who works as an aide to Republican Louisiana Senator David Vitter. It is the handwritten draft of the statement Senator Vitter planned to give before the press conference about his involvement in the “D.C. Madam” scandal.

Members of Vitter’s staff talked the Senator out of his planned line of discussion and convinced him to go with the more conventional apology combined with partial denial. We are certain of the authenticity of this document, because we slipped it, along with a crisp Jackson, to our friend, Dolores “Bambi” Malone. Bambi has spent several weekends in Ibiza partying with the Senator, and she told us, “Yep. That’s David. That sounds exactly like David. Hey! That’s his handwriting!”

Here, then, are the notes for the statement Senator Vitter planned to deliver:

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Homeland Security Follies: Bruce Schneier Interviewed

Oct 21

10 Zen Monkeys, April 2007

According to the sleeve of his latest book, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security, “in an Uncertain World, Bruce Schneier is the go-to security expert for business leaders and policy makers.” If only the policy makers would listen, we’d be safer, happier and still free.

Other books include Applied Cryptography, described by Wired as “the book the NSA wanted never to be published.”

Beyond Fear deals with security issues ranging from personal safety to national security and terrorism. Schneier is also a frequent contributor toWired magazine, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and many other fine periodicals. He also writes a monthly newsletter, Cryptogram.

I interviewed him on The R.U. Sirius Show.

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