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The Book of Laurence - 10 -
- 10 -
Conor Cruise O’Brien wrote:
``Admirers of Thomas Jefferson have long quoted his statement
about black men and women that is inscribed on the Jefferson
Memorial: 'Nothing is more certainly written in the book of
fate than that these people are to be free.'
But they and the inscription, omit Jefferson's subsequent clause:
'Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot
live in the same government.'"
18
VIII.
Don’t be too reasonable. Just because an issue has two
sides does not make them both worth arguing.
19
Pick your
fights carefully, but do pick some fights. And swear a bit.
It will make you feel good and is much better than kicking
to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire,
expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which
we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive
appropriation. [4] Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
(Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas, Random House, 2001, p. 94)
Pretty good, eh! I’ve adopted this as my intellectual property position, throughout the
Universe. (See also |www.ceic.math.ca.)
18
As Conor Cruise O'Brien goes on to point out in “Thomas Jefferson: Radical and
Racist” (Atlantic Monthly, October, 1996) there are well established copyright notions of
"paternity" and "integrity" in the use of material--the later which the inscription clearly
violates! I’m a Deity that cares about such intellectual property matters. Architecturally, I
do admire the University of Virginia.
19
Intelligent Design is a fine example of an opposing position without content. Charles
Krauthammer wrote in Phony Theory, False Conflict. 'Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits
Evolution against Faith: "How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be
more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine
than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from
accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us
mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of
Education, too." (Washington Post, 18/11/2005)
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