KPAO by Dave Cortright

I'm proud to have done my part in getting congress to delay SOPA and PIPA

Thanks to everyone else out there who stepped up and made their voice heard as well. It's nice to see that democracy can still overcome the best lobbying efforts of big industries desperately clinging to outdated business models.

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The Internet Wins: PIPA & SOPA Delayed

The writing has been on the wall for a long, long time, but now it's finally official. Harry Reid has announced that he will not move forward with PIPA and Lamar Smith has announced the same thing about SOPA. Both are listed as "delayed" and there's always a chance that they will come back in some form (potentially even nastier), but hopefully those on Capitol Hill have learned a big lesson about trying to mess with the internet... and what happens when you cut backroom deals to help one industry at the expense of the public.

I called my congressional representatives to protest SOPA/PIPA

I recommend that you do as well. These bills are poorly written and they allow censorship of the Internet in violation of the First Ammendment.

While an email is better than nothing, I strongly suggest you call. It has the most impact.

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

http://www.senate.gov/ (Click "find your senators" in the upper-right corner)

Scott Adams on "The Yoke of Credibility"

This blog post resonated with me. In addition to Richard Feynman and Richard Dawkins, I'd definitely count Scott Adams as one of my heroes.

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Ideas are the most important force.  Humans merely serve as incubators, filters, and transmission facilities for the ideas. It's a symbiotic relationship because wherever you see the healthiest environments for ideas, humans are usually thriving too.

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The ideas I unleashed yesterday are already waging a guerrilla war with the status quo. The ideas are hopping from host to host, and if any are worthy, they will evolve and survive. Change doesn't happen quickly, but I guarantee that any good ideas generated by this blog—if there are any—will find their way. The weak ideas will fade to backup storage, as they should.

I see life as a process, not a goal. If my goal had been to create world-changing ideas that worked right away, I would be a complete failure. But I don't have that goal. Instead, I have a process that involves seeding the universe with ideas and waiting for the strongest to evolve and make a difference. The worst case scenario is that my ideas cause the eventual best ideas to compete harder and evolve to even better forms. When you use a process that makes sense, even the unanticipated outcomes are good.

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King

And recognize that there are ties between us

All men and women

Ties of hope and love

Of sister- and brother-hood

Chana Masala

I cooked this recently for a friend of mine and he asked for the recipe So I thought I'd put it out there for others who might be interested as well.

3 tbsp oil
1 onion, diced
1 can of tomatoes (15 oz)
3 cloves of garlic, finely diced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, finely diced
1 tbsp cumin powder
1 tbsp coriander powder
2 tbsp chana masala spice mix
3 cans of garbanzo beans with water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar 
Chili powder to taste 

In a large saute pan, cook onions in oil until soft and golden. While onions are cooking, blend tomatoes, garlic, and ginger with a hand blender. When onions are ready, add tomato puree and dry spices to the pan. Mix and let cook for a minute or two to allow the spices to bloom. Add the garbanzo beans (including their liquid) to the pan with the salt and sugar. Mix, then cover. Stir occasionally to prevent a crust from forming on the bottom of the pan. Cook until the gravy is thick enough to leave the pan showing for a second or two when scraping the spoon through it.

Optionally garnish with fresh chopped cilantro.

I may need the services of a good lawyer

The last 36 hours have been very difficult for me. I'd rather not get into the details again; it's all covered in my previous blog posts.

As a result, I've been stressed and anxious, worried that the Bullis board will not only continue to deny my experience, but will follow through on their threat to seek legal action against me. Though I've been trying to put on a good face for my friends and co-workers, I haven't been sleeping well, and it got bad enough yesterday that I felt the need to schedule an emergency session with my therapist for this morning to talk it through.

So if any of you can reccomend a good lawyer to me—especially one in dealing with SLAPP—I would very much appreciate the referal.

Sad and Anxious, Dejected and Overwhelmed

My interactions with the Bullis board last night have left me sad and anxious and dejected. I was only trying to bring a logical and reasoned perspective to the discussion, and the response has emotionally overwhelmed me. I need to take a break from this issue for a while and focus on more positive things. When I do return, I will focus my efforts on communicating with LASD and SCCOE. I don't want anything to do with the Bullis board anymore. It's just not worth it.

Corey Doctrow's excellent essay: the war on general-purpose computing

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

Some highlights:

We don't know how to build a general-purpose computer that is capable of running any program except for some program that we don't like, are prohibited by law, or which loses us money. The closest approximation that we have to this is a computer with spyware: a computer on which remote parties set policies without the computer user's knowledge, or over the objection of the computer's owner. Digital rights management always converges on malware.

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Regardless of whether you think these are real problems or hysterical fears, they are, nevertheless, the political currency of lobbies and interest groups far more influential than Hollywood and big content. Every one of them will arrive at the same place: "Can't you just make us a general-purpose computer that runs all the programs, except the ones that scare and anger us? Can't you just make us an Internet that transmits any message over any protocol between any two points, unless it upsets us?"

Here's how the Francis LaPoll from the Bullis board responded to me

Sigh. It stuff like this that really makes me wonder why I'm bothering to engage on this issue. I don't have kids in the Los Altos School District. Now that the PTAs are ramping up their efforts, perhaps it's time I stepped aside and let them carry the baton. It would give me some time to go get my newly diagnosed "Asberger's" looked at. :-)

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Anne Marie,

May be best not to respond to him. In any case, I suggested in all seriousness that we seek a restraining order.

Perhaps Arturo [the lawyer BCS has retained at Morrison Foerster] can advise. He now has both Cortright's allegation and your disinterested recounting. 

Perhaps Arturo can follow up with Janet. 

Arturo, this guy is stalking board members.. He also has a nuisance pseudo Bullis Charter website that is drawing community members.

He spent a year or two focused on our wiki page, putting in fake items. We would correct and he would immediately change it back.

In his various blogs and websites one learns: he has Asberger's (which is relevant in that it goes to fixation and intensity) and acknowledges his own anti-social behaviour and an inability to work or play well with others.

Francis

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

The Bullis board member who address you tonight lied to you

From: Dave Cortright
To: Santa Clara County Board of Education
Cc: Santa Clara County Superintendent and Staff
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 7:53 PM
Subject: The Bullis board member who address you tonight lied to you

Members of the Santa Clara County Board of Education,

I understand you are currently still in session, but I wanted to send this to you while it is fresh in my mind.

I unfortunately don't remember the name of the BCS board member who addressed you tonight. I do, however, remember that she claimed that BCS never asked LASD to close a school. Here is the direct quote from the 3rd paragraph on page 17 of Bullis' 2012-2013 Prop 39 request that was sent to the LASD board last Oct 31:

The District's Gardner Bullis site would best serve the needs of the in-District students attending BCS.

Perhaps she is trying to be clever with semantics. It's not a direct request that the district close the Gardner Bullis site, but it certainly strongly suggests that's what Bullis wants the district to do.

[Update Jan 13, 2012: I wonder: how it would be possible for the Gardner Bullis site to best serve the needs of BCS' in-district students without closing Gardner Bullis? Would it be possible to have BCS in a camp school on the site to allow the two schools to function side-by-side? I doubt it, and I certainly can't see BCS agreeing to such an arrangement.]

As a side note, when I approached the BCS board member to discuss this point with her at the meeting, she assaulted me. I think this is yet another data point that strongly suggests you should appoint someone to the BCS board ASAP so you can be more in touch with what they are doing, and to provide guidance to them.

As always, thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
·Dave Cortright

[Update Jan 13, 2012: As one astute reader noted, I already addressed this very issue in detail in my letter to the SCCOE board one month ago entitled Bullis charter is asking Los Altos School District to make the same mistake twice.]