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Net Neutrality

The current bill proposed by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), has failed in committee. Michael Grebb has a good story over at Wired about how the net has never really been all that neutral… certainly not in an attempt to dismiss ongoing efforts to prevent blatent segregation of information, but to place the situation in context. Definitely worth a read. It is going to be important to hold our politicians accountable for how they vote on increasingly complex issues of technology and science. Of course that assumes both an educated public and and educated congress. If you have ever watched C-SPAN’s coverage of special orders speeches, you wonder a) how these people got elected and b) if they could understand basic alegebra, much less stem-cell research, communications technologies, etc. Perhaps one of the reasons corporations have been so good and buying almost every single politician in the country is that at least cash-for-favors is something that the politicians can wrap their tiny little minds around.

Yeah, there are smart men and women out there who serve as public officials. But as the issues of our world become increasingly complex, we are going to need smarter people than, in the majority, we have right now. Especially because there is such an anti-intellectual bias in this country, we are breeding leaders who are not only ill-equiped to lead, but downright dangerous. Maybe we should start an Intellectual political party. We’d have to find a sexier name, but it would be dedicated to creating a politics of intellect and reflection and grooming leaders who are smart. Really smart. I mean, come on, our leaders should be smarter than the average bear.

Rather than dumber than a post.

On this day..