It's hot. It is really hot here. Not quite as hot as in New York City, allegedly, but still there are reports that it has unofficially hit 100°F in "downtown" Provincetown. Apart from some morning swims we have kept Frisket inside most of the day, much to her chagrin.

Tonight we plan to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at the Wellfleet Drivein, keeping up our tradition of seeing a Johnny Depp movie at the drive in (last year was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

I finished Ender's Game and zipped through The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey between Worlds. I thought I'd read it before, but hadn't, now that I have, it's not what I thought it was. It's more of a meditation on the talmud with occasional correlations drawn to the 1990s internet, but it's not the in-depth study I thought it was (apologies to Alex).

I think a follow-up book should be written: The Talmud and the Wikipedia.

After an argument with my late mother, I stopped posting and writing about politics here. I'm going to break with that and call everyone's attention to a mid-summer move by Senator Arlen Spector to bless the administration's spying on U.S. citizens. More details are here at the Electronic Freedom Foundation site. The argument that the only people who need to fear are those who are doing something wrong is facetious: another bill pending in the Congress pretty much authorizes the President to designate anyone as an enemy combatant and strip that person of all civil rights: no courtroom, no prosecution, no judge, no jury, no defense. To those who would retort back: Again, the only ones who need to be concerned are those who mean us ill, and we trust the President to determine that, I retort would you trust President Clinton (either past or future) to make that determination? I suspect not.