OneMind

There was a big scary story in the San Jose Mercury News this morning headlined, in something larger than 72-point type, “Virtual voyeurism.” It provided a Big Scare Tactic warning readers that, as the lead paragraph said, “Big Brother and his buddies are watching what you do online.”

Most of it was rehash. Warnings about cookies (almost none of which is practical or real), a pointer to an anonymous browser masking tool. But one of the warnings caught my eye. Here’s the operative paragraph:

“When accessing Web sites, browsers typically reveal users’ Internet addresses, which can be tied to particular geographic locations or workplaces. They also often divulge other information about users, sometimes including their name and email address.” I thought to myself, “Really? I wonder how that could happen?”

The article pointed to a Danish site that can help you determine your browser’s vulnerabilities. So I went there on my OS X system with both Safari and Firefox 2.x. I was amused to find that a significant number of potentially worrisome-sounding characteristics it could test for your browser applied only to Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows. Color me unsurprised. Unfortunately, their ability to check mail safety has been temporarily disabled for some reason, so I couldn’t see if my browser was violating any privacy principle. Somehow, I doubt it.

Cookienoia (a word I think I just coined) is really pretty silly for the most part. Cookies are deliberately small, deliberately tied only to the site from which they were issued, and in 90% of cases are really designed for your convenience. Without cookies, e.g,. you’d have to log in every time to your favorite sites, re-enter your membership information, re-visit message threads, be unable to find out what is new on a site since your last visit…a whole host of things that make the browser experience seamless. Can cookies be exploited by nefarious developers? Probably. But an intensive search on the Net reveals very little chatter on the topic and almost none since 2006. I think this is a leftover from people who hear one time that something is frightening and then go through the rest of their lives believing it.

Sen. Barack Obama, who is all but the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, has been running a new ad claiming that he doesn’t take oil money and therefore won’t let the oil lobby stand in the way of changes he sees needing to make in energy policy.

But FactCheck.org, one of my all-time favorite objective sources of information on such topics, says Obama’s ad and related statements are “misleading.”

The full article is worth reading. Obama has taken in about 2/3 as much money from people connected to the oil industry as has his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The funny thing is, I’m disappointed in Obama making this sort of typically same-old, same-old political statement whereas if Hillary said it, I’d chalk it up to politics as usual. By setting a higher bar for ethics and values, Obama has put himself into the spotlight and become a magnet for criticism of even lesser offenses than we might accept as normal for his opponent. This could become a real problem for him come the general election.

My friend Ted Lane called my attention to this story reporting that the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has been outsourcing the key security component in the new electronically protected U.S. passports to a Dutch company which does part of its manufacturing in Thailand.

The outsourcing raised security concerns among some experts who point out that Thailand has a history of political instability and “Muslim discontent.” Apart from the fact that that last is code for the less politically acceptable Islamofascist term and that it represents an ugly attempt at using fear, this outsourcing does seem to me to be problematic on at least three fronts, with what scant information is now available.

First, there is a legitimate security concern here. It seems the Dutch are putting the chips into the passports and then sending them to Thailand for assembly. This means blank but secured U.S. passports are traversing numerous international borders and ending up in a country with lax law enforcement and the constant potential for a regime unfriendly to the U.S. taking power. How many thousands of passports could be confiscated in the process and what would the consequences be?

Second, the GPO says the Dutch firm Smartrac Technology Ltd., “was the only company in the world that produced a chip to store passport information that met the State Department’s standards.” Having been around the block a few times, I can tell you what that means. It means that some lobbyist convinced the GPO and/or the State Department to issue a specification that only Smartrac could meet. Bureaucrats love those kinds of situations because it saves them the hassles associated with a competitive bid. I can’t tell you how many times I saw that happen in my years in Silicon Valley.

Finally, it means that a technology that really should be developed by an American technology company will now probably not be. There wouldn’t be a market for it. And you can bet your last tax dollar that somewhere in the U.S., more than one company was working on this problem because its solution was mandated by Congress in a piece of 2002 legislation.

The Bush Administration has been particularly inept at keeping American technology competitive as it has sought to run the government like a business. That is a favorite refrain of conservatives: run the government as if it were a business and things will be less expensive. Sure, and the only real beneficiaries will be those who run the businesses who get the juicy contracts — many of them no-bid deals — with the Feds.

Just another reason we have to rid D.C. of this corruption.

My good friend Donna Briley passed away suddenly and unexpectedly this week. I am sad at the loss and bewildered by the inexplicability of the passing of one so vibrant and health-conscious.

Donna was much too young to leave us. She was a bright light of healing wisdom in a world too often filled with fear and loathing. Her bright smile and constant willingness to help were signatures of her life as a model, actress, healer, teacher, mother, friend and leader. She was also a great hugger.

It is of course always difficult for those of us left behind by such a passing to grasp the meaning and the significance of the transition itself. We feel only loss, where our friend feels unbounded joy and peace and light. We see only what is not, while they see only what is and what will be. We feel pain where they feel only well-being and health.

So I bless Donna on her way as she reunites with so many loved ones who have preceded her. Knowing she is back whence she came is great comfort to her even if it doesn’t make the gloom of that empty place she leaves behind any easier for us to bear.

This video clip of an August 2007 comment by Newt Gingrich is filled with the word “fear” and its variants. Believing as I do that fear is the opposite of love, I found his comments revealing but perhaps not quite in the way he intended.

I am as disturbed by the atmosphere of fear being created by many of our national leaders, including Gingrich, as a way of keeping the people at large from seeing the larger truth: that war is not an answer but a mind-set, that terrorism is not an enemy but a tactic used by many different groups for many centuries and that you cannot, therefore win a battle against terrorism any more than you can win a war on crime or drugs or disease.

This is all old-way thinking and it has gotten us where we are. The way to peace and freedom and success is not down the road labeled “war”. Einstein said no problem can be solved with the same mind-set that created it. We’ve got to find some new ways of thinking and reacting to this or we will destroy ourselves as a race.

I believe the current Administration is doing what it sincerely believes is the right thing to do to address the threat it sees as it understands that threat. I hold no ill will against them for it. But it is absolutely clear, at least to me, that their approach is not only not working, it cannot work. It will not work. And in the process of trying so hard to make it work, they’ve ripped some things in our national fabric, perhaps beyond repair.

According to press reports today, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah has proposed a sort of world religion summit among the three largest monotheistic faith groups, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It was reportedly the first time any Arab national leader had made such a call.

This is tremendous news in the circles in which I travel and hang out. I am heavily involved in interfaith activities on the Monterey Peninsula and a long-time advocate of tolerant and appreciate coexistence among the world’s religions. Virtually all of the violence in the world since the end of World War II can be traced back to some religious intolerance, even though that attitude often manifests in disagreement over what appear to be political and cultural concerns.

“There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions,” famed theologian Hans Kung has said. I think he’s absolutely right. Because of this among many other things, I welcome King Abdullah’s invitation to dialog with open mind, open heart and joy.

If there’s one thing the current resident of the White House has demonstrated it’s that he knows how to take time off. By the time he leaves office, he will have taken almost 500 days off. That’s 17% of his presidency and more than 60 days more than the previous record-holder, the equally useless GOP President Ronald Reagan.

If you took the same amount of time off as the President, you’d have 62 paid vacation days per year. My guess is you don’t get that much.

Barack Obama, in the midst of a tight campaign for the Democratic nomination for the White House, must think that demonsrating that he understands the power of a vacation. He’s taken the last couple of days off and remains on vacation while his opponent Sen. Hillary “Whater it Takes” Clinton is campaigning hard in a state she needs to dominate.

It’s not that I begrudge Obama his vacation. It’s just odd for a guy to take time off in the middle of the fight.

Sen. Clinton and Former President Bill, if you can’t win this election based on your own merits, then get the hell out of the race. Continuing to skewer your opponent, who has beaten you fairly and squarely and often roundly, is tearing apart the party to which you owe so much and providing ammunition for Sen. John McCain (aka Bush III) to win in November.

Enough. Enough negative campaigning. Enough lying about your “experience”. Enough cheap-shot remarks that even your Republican opponents won’t stoop to when it comes to Sen. Obama’s pastor’s comments. Enough, enough, enough.

I’m not calling on you to drop out of a race I don’t see how you can win. You’re entitled to stay in as long as you can afford to and wish to do so for whatever indecipherable political or personal reason you may have. But please, please stop all of this crap that is destroying the party and its chances of winning in November. This election is bigger than you. It’s even bigger than your combined ego.

Focus on what you think you do well. Tout your advantages. Court the Superdelegates. But stop attacking Obama. If that’s all you have left, then get out.

Enough already.

Let’s play “what if” for a minute.

What if there was a way to get free energy to your home or business in such a way that no carbon footprint was created? Just what if it were possible to eliminate, as quickly as appropriate, all use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy and furnish power for every home and village on the planet with zero impact on the planet?

Just play along for a minute. What would happen? Could such a technology actually disrupt the $20 trillion energy business with a technology suite that nobody could put a meter on? Would the existing energy infrastructure, on the brink of collapse, find a way to prevent this from happening? Should the inventor(s) of this brilliant new theoretical energy source be allowed to bring his product to market? Or is the worldwide socio-economic impact of such a plan so disruptive that it ought not be allowed to see the light of day regardless of its potentially world-changing impact?

If Dr. Stephen Greer has his way, we may face that decision within the next 18 months. Greer, who is (in)famous for having brought the glare of publicity to bear on the UFO question by means of his highly successful Disclosure Project over the past few years, has just launched a new effort called The Orion Project. His goal is nothing less than to “inform, educate, and help supply all peoples of our planet with sustainable, non-polluting power.”

Without going into details — I encourage you to visit the Web site to read as much as you like — Dr. Greer’s first effort is to raise $3 million to put the first phase of this effort into place. He doesn’t see this happening through the usual high-profile investment sources because they’re all tied into the group he calls the “petro-elite.” He’s asking ordinary people to donate $30 or more to his 501c(3) non-profit foundation to fund this first research.

I don’t know if any or all of what he says makes any sense. But I like his approach. I like his attitude. And I like his cause. $3 million is nothing. I’d like to see him have that chance. How about you?

Sen. Hillary Clinton is blustering about challenging Sen. Barack Obama to agree to the conduct of two new primaries in renegade Democratic states Florida and Michigan. She’s calling his refusal to accept her lunacy “wrong and frankly un-American.” You should pardon my French, but bull-puckey.

You can bet your sweet bippie that if the shoe were on the other foot, if she were leading Obama in delegates, popular votes and states won, she’d be standing on her high horse of pride and demanding that these two states remain on time-out by the Democratic National Committee. But, as Obama’s team repeated yesterday for the umpteenth time, she will do anything to get elected.

Of course, so will Obama.

The difference is, when you’re leading, when you’re as good and solid and attractive a candidate as he is, when you’re a uniter with a message of hope rather than a divider with a platform of “realism” (which is actually despair in patched clothing), you don’t need to resort to such unseemly tactics to win.

The fact that she has to take such a low road tells me enough about her stability, her honor, her integrity and her electability.

Every day that goes by and Obama gives brilliant speeches bordering on the historic (as his Tuesday speech on race was) and she whines about not getting her way on some petty point of party discipline, the more she drives me into his camp and he magnetizes me to his cause.

I bet I’m not the only one.