It's 8:22 am and I am in Seattle for the second weekend in a row. Sitting in Tully's at Alki Beach as is my want (is that a real phrase?). It's grey, cloudy and 39 degrees but so still it feels warmer. McMurdo Station was like that, 30 degrees outside and you are running around in shirt sleeves because there was no humidity and no wind. In other words it's actually a pretty decent day and I got in a nice walk; the only real downside is that I am still reading "No Place to Hide" .
Ok, we might as well get to it. I am now about 1/2 through the book and it continues to be mainly Greenwald praising himself for his utter fearlessness in opposing the U.S. Government in all it's manifest evil forms. The high points from this section of the book are that a) anyone who disagrees with Greenwald is both evil and an idiot (I freely admit to being an idiot, but since I haven't actually eaten a small child yet and dogs like me I am reserving judgement on my evilness), b) Every member of the traditional press is a stooge of the U.S. National Security Apparatus, and c) only Greenwald and thru his inspiring writings Edward Snowden possess the guys to challenge the status quo.
That literally is as deep as the book gets. Everything else is tangential. For example Greenwald discusses publishing the FISA court order that compels Verizon to surrender vast amounts of metadata, but it is all in relation to how he can't understand why the editors and lawyers need to vet the material and his frustrations. Amusingly after becoming frustrated with The Guardian who he had earlier praised for it's "fearless" reporting he contacts The Nation and some other magazine and they immediately offer to publish and offer assistance with editorial and legal vetting. If he noticed the humor (which I doubt since Greenwald strikes me as a humorless tool) he never lets on in the book. He also continually talks about how important these revelations (Verizon, PRISM, Boundless Informant) are but only a minuscule amount of discussion is devoted to them.
So far this book has been a lot like my blog - a giant exercise in self-aggrandizement. It gives me hope for my future as an author, but that is really it's only purpose so far. I figure I will finish it up by Monday evening.
(It's now 8:56 and an incredibly hot girl just sat down in my eyeline. My writing may be distracted for a bit. Seriously she is breathtakingly good looking... except she just picked her nose and wiped it on her pants. Fantasy destroyed)
On to other stuff -
Ars Technica - If the Supreme Court tackles the NSA in 2015, it’ll be one of these five cases -
Endgadget - FCC plans to vote on new net neutrality rules in February
That's all I have time for this morning. Maybe more later.
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