The Legal Janitor

He is gone.

I may not know him personally, but I know him to be a kindred spirit, a fellow skeptic of state power.

I have been following his ordeals in Perth, through his blog, vicariously experiencing the roller-coaster that was his life in Perth. Regardless of whether he found solutions to overcome his obstacles, or not, he was happy. He was free. Many people speak about life, about ideals. Knight of Pentacles lived it.

Now he is gone.

It just got a little colder, a little darker, a little more lonely.

Calamari For Thought: Bad News… and a Tribute to a Friend
Singapore Serf: Disenfranchised.
Singapore Serf: E Pur Si Muove.

Even as the Singaporean mainstream media tries to condemn blogging as the playthings of the idle and stupid, wiser and more perceptive minds elsewhere have grasped the opportunities provided by this new platform.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is holding a symposium on how blogging is transforming legal scholarship. The list of papers submitted can be found here on SSRN (Social Science Research Network), and the agenda can be found here.

Look at the paper submissions and commentators appearing on the legal symposium, one would quickly realise that these are not just superstar blawggers, but also superstar legal scholars and law professors. For all that they might say about blogs, the journos working for our local information cartel are like amoeba compared to Glenn Reynolds(Instapundit) or Eugene Volokh(Volokh Conspiracy), intellectually speaking.

Journalists in Singapore like to ask why don’t we see more serious and thought-provoking blogs in Singapore. The answer is simple. Its not that Singapore is full of stupid people, its more like we are all encouraged to be stupid, because if we think too much, ask too many questions and start thinking for ourselves, we get slammed.

Of course, there ARE some who are truly devoid of anything resembling sentience. Even broccoli’s got more brain cells than Raymond Ng Chay Boon.

PS: Professor Ann Althouse of the University of Wisconsin Law School is liveblogging the symposium. Intelligence, wit and wisdom aside, she’s hot too! (the faculty photo doesn’t do her justice. plus shes a mac user)

Bloggership Symposium, April 28, 2006 - Berkman Center for Internet & Society
SSRN – Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship
Althouse: Live-blogging the Bloggership conference!

Some people claim that recording industry executives are greedy crack-snorting assholes who would kill their own grandmothers if they found her downloading music. I disagree.

You see, today I realised that executives in the copyright oligopolies are all saintly people, with kind hearts and loving natures. They’re the ones who go rescuing kitty cats trapped in trees, produce charity shows for the NKF, and even fund research into the cure for cancer. Hell, I even heard that the female executives donated their own milk to starving and malnourished children who survived the tsunami.
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