Maybe not enough people understood what you were doing — maybe not enough appreciated what was at stake.

Maybe you can communicate your vision more clearly now.

Maybe you have refined your vision or your methods.

Keep pushing, and keep reflecting on your aims, your method, your motivations.

“I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one’s neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.”

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In this, a lesson for the Digital Excellence movement, not unlike Daniel Burnham’s call to make no small plans.

From the pain come the dream
From the dream come the vision
From the vision come the people
From the people come the power
From this power come the change

Peter Gabriel (Fourteen Black Paintings)

One may fail to see the humor of the situation for want of experience, another may fail to appreciate the experience (in a joke) for lack of humor.

It’s funny, this occurred to me on today’s road trip… and all these variations are playing off of each other. Some stress the situation experienced, others a statement on the situation. I’ll leave it to the reader to play with the permutations. Drop the parenthetic remark above, and some aspect of the sense changes, but both carry meaning, multiple meanings for me. The abundance and joy of polysemy.

I’ve got a new adage, based on reading Sascha’s brief note on what the Australians are investing in their broadband infrastructure, by comparison with our meager and near meaningless investment.

The new adage: Bad Government is a Tax on a People (Who are Bad at Math)

The adage may seem out of place given that our friends in the Southern Hemisphere are investing close to $1,400 per person, whereas in the USA it would be closer to $25 per person, but my point is that we just don’t understand the math, first of relative speeds provided by our infrastructure compared with those being deployed elsewhere, and second by the relative costs per bit/transit of any data we are passing over our networks (compared with relative cost/speeds elsewhere) and third, the real costs necessary for a meaningful investment as opposed to either lip-service investments or sweetheart deals for selected entrenched interests.

The heart of the adage is this: we really need to understand relative scale, scope and value when we make any collective judgment or investment. (And likewise when we foreclose any option.)

Personally, I’m a bit more cautious when it comes to the notion of national broadband strategy. I want more freedom for diverse range of actors ranging from community to local government to private sector.

THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). On Liberty. 1869.

The State is neither the sole nor the principle threat to the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.

Is it unlikely that corporate media, focused on profit, often owned by or in ownership of conflicting economic interests will serve this function? What must change? The media must serve a public duty untainted by impulse to self-censor when truth must be spoken. Report. Let the people judge.

The people must show some spine if we are to be free.

I’m pointing you to Sepp’s blog entry, but using that as a spring board to my own musings.

It’s better to give than to receive? We’ve heard that, and we can contemplate its meaning. We’ve also heard that there is nobility in receiving a gift well, with respect, humility, or better: generosity. We’re recipients of the gifts of nature, of life. How well have we received them? Receiving well involves stewardship – it involves valuing the act of generosity and the gift received.

We’ve been gifted a gift economy. Have we received it well? Two aspects of reception here … one is bound in attitude, relation and perception – the other in our stewardship as recipients.

When we hear about the gift economy, do we give it it’s proper due? When we receive from the greater gift economy, are we thankful enough to participate with generosity ourselves.

There are ways to receive with generosity, we should endeavor to live that way.

as I become I, I say Thou

Martin Buber expressed this point many ways. Our human nature is grounded in an intersubjectivity where we deepen our humanity only with the other.

The Bill of Rights is not a “suicide pact,” but an expression of courage and knowledge that courage is what it takes to keep a people free.~~From Ellen Gill’s letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun Times, December 29, 2005.

Wendell offered a comment that if working with XSL is hurting, you are probably approaching it in the wrong way. This applies to many other things in life, certainly.

In the Mumonkan – the Gateless Gate – a collection of 48 koans, the second koan is known as wild fox koan. Having recently reflected upon that koan at some length while thinking of the a-temporality of xslt, I’ve been reading some Zen into the programming philosophy behind XSLT. I’ve applied my own transformation to the question posed in the Wild Fox.

Shall the XSLT Master, applying templates with devotion, escape the law of temporal-causality?

It is worthwhile to think more about the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) context in relation to the Gateless Gate.

Did any member of the press ask Nader which he meant? (I assumed the former, myself.) They were probably too sure about what they heard and what they understood.

I enjoy polysemy, and find that both terms actually work. What did you hear? assent? ascent? a scent? a cent?

Surely, in our history we as a people have committed grave errors, and errors and crimes have been committed in our name, even when without our consent (and sometimes without sufficient protest).

Our public servants, our brave citizen-soldiers pledge their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. The Constitution is not “my country right or wrong” – the Constitution, and the processes and balance of structures it defines (not enshrines) are founded in values. They are an expression of values – they contest with each other to guard against corruption and to establish firm foundation for the rule of law. Extension and upholding of the rule of law is the deeper question of our global civilization.

Dissent, it is said, is the mother of assent.

We must retain the freedom to criticize our government. These freedoms are enshrined in the founding documents of our nation. This is the deeper love I have for my nation, my people. This is what our soldiers defend, This is the love our people must share with the peoples of the Earth.