goings on in the Middle East

. . . prompt talk of an 'internet revolution.' Apparently an internet revolution won't work, or hasn't yet worked in Egypt, because the internet can be seized by the thugs who'd be displaced by the revolution.

So maybe there needs to be development of a revolutionary internet. Hinted at here.

Small, low power, short-range digital radios that relay a short packet one to another. Make them small enough, and cheap enough, that they can be stuck quietly to motor vehicles, even those of the thugs, so they circulate. Each radio repeats a message until another radio gets it.

If enough of them are in close proximity, they can either speed up bandwidth to relay files (photos, for example), or dice up transmission timeslots smaller so more stations can participate. Or both.

Allowing a huge number of hops is acceptable.

The thugs would spend valuable time finding or jamming enough radios to impair the network, while you're deploying more.

For those of us outside the isolated country, we can smuggle or airdrop more of them in. Hell, fasten them to migratory waterfowl. This is something we could already have done for our liberty-minded friends in Egypt.

It's not the internet you grew up with. It won't be internet protocol at all, in fact. But it beats being deaf and blind.

recreational Facebooking, and more

We do maintain a Facebook account, connected to our real-world identity. Recently, it has provided me some amusement in the form of interacting with the metrosexual people I knew in my teen years.

They spasm at the very mention of Sarah Palin. So I defend her often, by linking to or 'liking' the articles that refute her post-Loughner accusers.

It makes them only more deranged. I giggle.

But then I remember it isn't funny. An innocent person is accused of fomenting hatred and inciting violence. A mentally-ill man is ignored by his local elected peace officer, and his sworn deputies, who could have initiated court proceedings against him. He could have received treatment; at the very least, he could have been kept away from firearms.

No, it isn't funny. And it isn't about a former governor of Alaska either. Nor about talk radio.

I take some comfort from the observations that the psychotic's target, a legislator, lives and struggles to recover; the sheriff, whose badge clots with the blood of the psychotic's victims, may answer for his failures by facing a recall; the nation seems to reject idiotic calls to punish the weapon. Some comfort, not much.

I also think of the torture that the shooter must have felt, years ago, as he sensed that his grasp of the world was failing. The greater torture of realizing that people around him notice that he has changed, but have done little or nothing to help him. What of the abandonment, the isolation, as friends, classmates, employers, even family gave up on him?