An excellent and compelling college commencement address ...

An excellent and most compelling college commencement address - that never saw the light of day on a college campus - fortunately is available on the Internet.

The speech is "Living in the 51st State (of Denial)" by Tom Engelhardt

If you care at all about America, you really, really should read this speech. Tom captures the moment as few writers can.

He concludes that we must act. Each of us must do *something*. I'm trying, by reading and reporting some of the better articles I come across.

In my spare time I've been building a design for an Internet based election process that I'd like to actually create a prototype of at some point. It's just so completely obvious to me that the way to gut Washington is to vote them all out of office, and elect people WE actually select from the grass roots up, based on an agenda we also decide.

I have a conceptual Internet based system that will make this possible. Moreover, I fully expect, and very much want, competition. Let the best program win! I don't give a hoot if it's mine or someone else's, just that the job be done.

Just as Tom's speech wasn't delivered in a single university, I don't think a single university is working on a competitor for this concept. Now if I'm wrong, and there are all kinds of development going on in this area, wonderful! But if nothing is being done, now is the time to do it. My own work on this effort will proceed, but slowly because I've got numerous obligations (as do we all!), but I've been thinking about it for years, and being well thought-out is the most important part anyway.



Bill