Matt May and I, as well as a few others, have been talking about the new campaigns, Dean, open source, and other things.#

Matt May replies to Ryan Overbey's criticism of his style of writing and argumentation.#

Okay, here's where I have to come clean. I'm a sarcastic bastard. I'd registersarcasticbastard.com if it weren't already taken. You can call me a sarcastic bastard to my face, and I'll probably still buy the next round. If you don't like my writing style, no hard feelings. I wrote a column for a magazine for three years, during which time I was called both a "Misinformed Minion of Microsoft" and an "anti-Microsoft Linux bigot." In consecutive issues. The point being, I know how to piss off a diverse range of people simply by saying what I'd ordinarily say. I discovered early on that my penchant for getting people's blood boiling translated well online. Woohoo, I thought, this Internet thing is for me.

[...]

Okay. I am, technically, an academic. And I do, from time to time, write academic-ish papers. But outside of work, this site represents what I choose to write and how I choose to write it. Some people like it, and add my RSS feed. Others don't, and go away. This is the marketplace of ideas, and I as idea vendor get to choose how I offer my wares.

Matt May next replies to my response to him. The introduction game is so fun.#

One of the fundamental things that runs through this discussion is whether we are (and should be) talking about how things are now, how we'd like to be soon, or what the ideal would be. Both of us mix all these things together and not necessarily in a very clear way.

I feel that I focus much more how current trends are failing to properly assemble the ideal that I see in my dreams. (NB: The ideal is not a situation, it is a process to come to that situation. See Karl Popper and the idea of an Open Society.) So much of my approach is to point at how people who seem to promote the ideal are being hypocritical with the vast difference between their words and their actions.

It seems, on the other hand, that Matt focuses primarily on how great the incremental steps taken recently are compared to the past. While the vision is on the horizon, it is a mere backdrop that is not given much focus and is not something that people must be held accountable for.

Neither of these approaches is "better" than the other. They are both essential for the proper balance and proper end. As Matt May said, he is looking at now out of fear and I am looking at the future out of hope. Some quantities of these two will render the elixir... what ratio is unknown.

 

On the nature of politics...

The thing is, few of us are lawyers, and even fewer of us subscribe to the Congressional Record. We do not know -- we cannot know -- the content and context of the laws being proposed, not to mention the agendas of those involved. Things get twisted around. That's politics. What we can do, realistically, is follow the people and organizations who represent themselves to match our individual politics. That includes aligning oneself with a candidate, or, say, the Sierra Club, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, etc., in order to have a better grasp of things. Simply reading the paper, or watching TV, is insufficient. I think Jay will agree with me on that. But the point I'm trying to make is that politics are complex by nature.

This is a prime example of looking at the present and near future. The old system is confusing and the politicians and organizations currently in power have a clear advantages. Thus, the best solution is to work within that system by making organization member easier and more efficient as well as figuring out more "grassroots" ways of funding candidates. So, in this case the new strategy of many campaigns is great because it tries to make the best of a corrupt system.

But, when Matt says "we cannot know" I take great issue. It is not okay, in my opinion, to just say "Oh that's politics! They're going to screw us and we know it so just relax and take the chains with a smile." The only reason that it is hard to know the content and context of laws or that politics is complicated is because they do it on purpose. The political system is setup in a way that allows "stealth legislation" techniques; that makes it very difficult to get that Congressional Record without paying nearly $500 a year; that supports a media monopoly that would report whatever the politicians want to report; etc.

The system is not open enough and not good enough because the people in power did and we let them. This is the system that many believe is based on the "neo-con's" faith in the ideas of Leo Strauss: (whom Wolfowitz and Shulsky took doctorates under)

Something of a cult developed around Strauss during his later years at Chicago, and he and some admirers figure in the Saul Bellow novel, "Ravelstein." The cult is appropriate because Strauss believed that the essential truths about human society and history should be held by an elite, and withheld from others who lack the fortitude to deal with truth. Society, Strauss thought, needs consoling lies.

He held that philosophy is dangerous because it brings into question the conventions on which civil order and the morality of society depend. This risks promoting a destructive nihilism.

I do not want my government to think it is okay to lie to me, pat me on the head, and say, "You couldn't possibly understand the content and context of the laws being proposed, so just sign up with this focus group and one of us will take care of you."

 

I can agree with most of this comment about the Internet and technology not being panacea...

I don't think that putting everyone in front of a message board is a solution, either. Half of the country still doesn't use the Internet regularly, and even fewer use it daily. Jay, you and I are the exception. People will not on the whole voluntarily make time to argue politics on a Web site. Remember also that pegging participation in anything to the Internet is a heavy burden for those who can't afford computers or, say, free time, which means the current state of discussion skews rich. The use of technology and community in the 2004 election is a good sign, but not a panacea.

Technology is a tool and like any tool it matters how you use it. So if we want to continue using this tool then we have to protect it and promote its use. To me this is a core of some of Dave Winer's arguments and suggestions to the candidates:

• Keep the Internet free from the Media Companies
• Support the industry that provides the tools (and the first)

The point being, if a candidate really believes in the vision but has doubts about it working today so they don't pursue it, then what they should do is support policies to make it a reality. I don't seem them making a stand for the future and would love to be proved wrong.

A few subtler points in this paragraph I want to underline. Just because the Internet is skewed towards the rich, it is important to note that old system is skewed towards the super-rich, and it is thus an improvement. Also, based on my Libertarian-ish ideas, if enough people do not feel an policy is important enough to "voluntarily make time to argue" about it, then maybe it shouldn't be a policy? Why are we happy with a government that does things to us we don't want it to do, and why do we let it do things to others that we could care less about?

 

Related to the tail of the last paragraph, but sufficiently distinct, is the discussion of how involved the people should be in the running of the country.

The entire purpose of representative democracy is to ensure that the will of the people is done in a calm, reasoned fashion. People get to make their elected officials listen at the rate of once every two to six years. Certainly, officials who doesn't listen at all while defying the will of the constituency will be removed in due time -- or immediately, if their offenses are egregious. [...]

But laws of physics, specifically relating to space-time, limit the ability of humans to listen to everyone around them. There comes a time when a politician has to make a call, and that's what we elect them to do. The best we can ask of candidates who need to reach out to voters is that they be honest, confident, and have some convictions upon which we can rely. We can give candidates our opinions, and vote on their stances on them, but eventually, they have to make decisions on a day-to-day basis, and each one is going to upset some group of constituents.

So this is the distinct between Delegate and Trustee, and further -- at what level should we delegate? I agree that there should not be a vote about every single issue. The best solution, in my opinion, would be to allow a vote whenever the people cared enough to make one. Currently, you can contact your representatives is a very ad-hoc, unreliable, and unresponsive way. I can call and get put on hold, email and not get answered, mail and get a template letter back, protest and be hidden from sight. This is not representative democracy. This is "electing" dictators.

I want to have a say. I want people who claim I'll have a say when they get elected to give me a say right now. I want to be more than a vote for an idea, I want to be a generator of ideas. I want to be more than a source of money. And I want all of you to be too!

 

Matt's closing comment on a 'direct democracy'...

I have a laundry list of problems with the social dynamics of the political scene. Many of them go away when the money is taken out of politics. Some do not. But on the whole, I'm happier with this than I would be with a direct democracy of 280 million people. If everyone voted on September 12, 2001, the entire Middle East would today be a sheet of glass.

This is probably a joke, but I comment regardless. Protecting ourselves from that sort of result is what a division of power and mutual restraint would be effective at. If the country had the right amount of information and foresight, I don't think that would even be proposed. But if it was, and if it was past, then that horrible country would deserve whatever they got.

The central concern of this whole thing is our values. Do we value personal freedom? Do we value human life? It seems to me that those who accept the chains of "our democracy" do not truly value freedom and Liberty, or else they would not accept such coercion. I think that in our hearts we care for our Liberty and the people have simply been enslaved and battered for so long that hope has been lost. But hope can be restored and I believe it will.

 

I'd like to thank Matt for providing a framework for me to think about these things within.

Robert Scoble writes about religious persecution and theocratic aspirations of Americans.#

Rob does have some other points. For instance, he says that we should consistently deal with all religious displays. Implicit in his arguments is an "display them all, or display none" point of view. I totally agree with that, although I'd take the "display none" point of view. Governments should not establish religion. At least that's what our constitution says. So, government officials. You know, teachers, staff, mayors, senators, etc should not do anything that favors one religion over another. And, yes, I include Atheism in that bunch.

The problem with the "all" answer is that it gives the power of deciding what is a valid religion or not to the bureaucrat who puts up the displays. This is a problem with religious institutions and tax exemption as well as the better treatment (more access to books) of religious prisoners.

Our society is best served when we have the freedom to explore ideas without the worry of reprisals of government interference. In Iran, for instance, can you really be a geek? I say no. You aren't free to dream and come up with a wacky idea.

It's the wacky ideas that will cure cancer. Improve our lives. Get us to Mars. Feed the world's people.

In America we've watched what happens when we have a population that's free from religious persecution. We've become the richest and most powerful nation on earth.

But Rob's idea wants to turn us into the Christian equivilent of Iran. That's repugnant.

Jim Wallis in the New York Times on religion and politics.#

President Bush and the Republicans clearly have an advantage with people of faith as an election year approaches. Republicans are more comfortable talking about religious values and issues, and they are quick to promise that their faith will affect their policies (even if, like their Democratic counterparts, they don't always follow through on their campaign promises).

President Bush is as public and expressive about his faith as any recent occupant of the White House. Among his first acts as president was to establish the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helps religious and community groups get federal financing for some of their work. Although the "faith-based initiative" has turned out to be more symbolic than substantial, symbolism matters — in religion as well as politics.

Curmudeonly and Skeptical links to Henry Lamb who says "When you log onto Democrats.org... you log onto COMMUNISM!"#

Socialists believe that the marketplace should be controlled by government, to ensure the equal distribution of the earth's riches. Capitalists believe that individuals should be free to accumulate their own wealth without government confiscation and redistribution.

Socialists believe that people are empowered by government. Capitalists believe that government is empowered by the people.

Socialists believe that the entire world should be governed by the United Nations, through a system of selected "stakeholder councils" at the local, regional, national and international levels.

Virtually every Democratic presidential candidate says the U.S. should have gotten approval from the U.N. before removing Saddam Hussein. Virtually every presidential candidate, and the Democratic leadership in Congress, says the U.S. should submit to the Kyoto Protocol. Virtually every Democratic presidential candidate, as well as the Democratic leadership in Congress, denounce the Republicans' efforts to protect national sovereignty as inappropriate unilateral "cowboy swagger."

Notes... Protectionism is obviously not managing the economy, nor is denying certain countries access to Iraq's economy. Is it better for the world to be controlled by the UN or US? The Bush Administrations protects our own national sovereignty but does not respect other countries'. The article does suggest these things in a nonspecific manner by writing that it seems the Republican Party is "socialist-lite." Neither major party truly believes in liberty or capitalism.

John on Dean Esmay's blog writes about evolution and vegetarians.#

Agriculture and its concomitant boost in the food supply led to a lot of sweeping changes in the way humans developed as individuals. A better food supply means that people live longer, children have a better chance of surviving in to adulthood, and those same children can probably have more children with a better chance that they will survive as well. This isn't anything new in the way of theorizing, by the way, and it's all pretty general, but then so is evolution.

So for ten thousand years or so humans have been living within a food supply system that is unlike anything they have experienced previously. We eat tons of carbohydrates and processed sugars that simply were not a part of the diet as we evolved. The result is that a new evolutionary pressure is being placed on Man- we are slowly sorting out the species on the basis of who can easily handle a high carbohydrate diet, and who cannot.

In The Third Chimpanzee (link to my notes), Jared Diamond writes about how this isn't entirely true. Before agriculture, humans had small and very healthy tribes where they could live -- but afterwards they had very large and not as healthy tribes. Read about how Native Americans started to get terrible teeth and bones and start to have higher and higher infant mortality rates when they started to grow and consume corn.

The other comments John makes are very interesting... the idea seems to be that vegetarians are doomed to extinction because they are purposely going against evolution and not using all the resources available to them.

No population in a closed environment can expand forever and humans will eventually have to accept this somehow. Similarly, eventually the environment will be completely destroyed and we'll have to accept that as well. And there is also the concern that is an unethical life worth living?

I have only questions, no answers.

Adam Yoshida on why Dean cannot win, or any other democrat for that matter.#

Frankly, I suspect a Howard Dean being presented before national audiences launching hatred-filled tantrums against the President will come off, more than anything else, as a little nuts. Yet, if Dean attempts to move towards the middle now, he won't be able to win the nomination. But, if he doesn't start to move towards the middle, he won't win the general election.

What is shaping up now, especially as Dean seemingly begins to bleed momentum, is the worst-case scenario for the Democrats. Dean will probably win Iowa and New Hampshire but, I suspect, with less support than expected. The question of whether Dean is electable will nag at voters as they step into the booth. Dean will manage to limp through the rest of the primaries in the lead, but fail to win enough delegates to take the nomination. Other candidates will limp along as well, but not with enough to win even if they combined. A furious Dean and his enraged supporters will move into the summer, confused and lashing out. The Democratic National Convention in Boston will be the most exciting (and damaging) in memory. Either the party will manage to nominate a badly-wounded Dean, or it will manage to anoint someone else, to the fury of Dean's supporters.

Gina Smith on her reviewing philosophy.#

I reviewed software and hardware products for a few years, mostly for industry pubs like PC Week and PC/Computing. PR people besieged me with samples, my office, trunk and home garage were filled with every version of TurboTax, every make and model of hard drive, you get the idea.

How to decide what to review? I had a philosophy. I automatically reviewed a product in print only if 1.) It was hyped in the news and everyone was waiting for word on how it worked. OR 2.) The product was great, even if it was obscure. OR 3.) The product was just piss-poor, even if it was from a major company known for good products.

Gina Smith quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn.#

"Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing." Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Toby Stern links to The Stealth PATRIOT Act II.#

On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday.

By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.

[...]

The Bush Administration has yet to answer pivotal questions about its latest constitutional coup: If these new executive powers are necessary to protect United States citizens, then why would the legislation not withstand the test of public debate? If the new act's provisions are in the public interest, why use stealth in ramming them through the legislative process?

Wirearchy writes about the transformation and the abysmal road ahead.#

Anyone elected in 2004 who is not Bush does not have the time nor the constituency to deal with what has been put in place since 2000 (or, consider the cumulative effects of Reagan, Bush I, and the current administrations, in toto). Efforts to undo all this will just make things more divisive, and stranger.

Looking to organizational change theory and evidence, fundamental change does not occur until a true crisis happens - an existential crisis that threatens the identity and life of an entity. I don't think that crisis has happened yet, although I do think that the core elements for such a crisis are in place. I think George Bush should be re-elected and "we" should bear witness to the unfolding of a truly unequal, dispassionate and cruel buggering of a society (and world) in which the poor, the ethnic, the intellectuals are ushered to the cheap seats, and then are locked into the cages that were installed in the stadium the night before.

It takes a long time for change to happen quickly. I think that trying to set out on a path to a more sincere and real democracy, a more just society, is a Sisyphean task in the current environment of disinformation and rigged influence. It's thankless, and more importantly, probably impossible. The dishonesty, corruption and moral bankruptcy that passes for leadership now must become so clear, so evident that even the blue-collar good ole boys start saying "waasssuup?"

The Black Saint writes about Dick Gephardt.#

I've found it difficult to take Gephardt seriously ever since I watched this C-SPAN interview with Tom Daschle, in which he revealed that Pres. Bush once had forbidden Gephardt from entering the Oval Office until he put on his suit jacket. Now, that was probably humiliating -- like the snooty host at some fancy restaurant forcing you to wear the germ-laden coat they keep lying around for whenever someone from the lower orders wanders in off the street.

Whenever Gephardt lays into Pres. Bush, I just want to say to him, "This is really about the suit jacket, isn't it?"

AKMA on his lurid past and fun hobbies since departed.#

I'm not even a good amateur type designer, though when I'm in a whimsical mood I play with others' designs to add ligatures or other useful alternate glyphs to typefaces that lack characters I need. It's fun, but I don't have the hand with beziers that digital design requires. Nor, for that matter, do I have any real type design tools; whereas PC users have (or used to have) at least one highly functional freeware type design application, Mac uses have always had to rely on commercial wares. Fontographer hasn't been updated in years, doesn't run under OS X, and still costs more than I could possibly afford — even if I had time to use it. So for the time being, I've given up type design. I have way too much to do, to indulge that particular distraction.

Strange Women Lying in Ponds on rampant and illogical ideology in Iran.#

But certainly the Iranian people deserve better than what they are getting from their government in this. Jeff Jarvis has more, including a link to a report that the mullahs are accepting aid from all countries except for one. That is, in and of itself, a terrible injustice, not against Israel, but against the Iranian people who need the most competent and logistically convenient assistance available.

Israeli expertise in rescue operations would be a natural choice, if it were not for the mullahs' intractable philosophy of hate against the Jews. The mullahs' political position on Israel is indeed to fundamental to their philosophy that any acceptance of Israeli aid would seem to largely negate their raison d'etre, and therefore undermine their authority. After all, where would the mullahs be without their enmity toward Israel? What would they have left to burnish their Islamist credentials? They would probably be in danger of being marked for assassination by their own hard-line radicals.

Don Park on the impermanence of "permalinks."#

An irony of the blogosphere is that permalinks are not permanent. Whenever a blog changes service or software, its permalinks breaks. While breaking of permalinks is not worth crying over, it's pretty annoying because internal links break as well. [...]

Having your own domain name doesn't protect you either if you decide to switch blogging software. This is why bloggers are leaving a trail of blogs behind them like a breadcrumbs. Nice huh?

Adam Gessaman writes about the emptying and destruction of blogs as a tangent to this.

This applies to bloghosting as well. I don't really talk about it a lot here, but I run a little blogging collective which houses blogs for my friends and some of their friends. Although I don't believe that I've ever explicitly stated that I will keep the site running forever, there is an implicit understanding that as long as they are interested in using it, I will provide the space. The catch, however, is the emphasis on the word friends.

I have a fairly loose definition of 'friend' in this context, but situations do arise where I have been forced to decide between my inherent liberal idealism — and its associated belief that everyone deserves the right to be heard — and my definition of the word 'friend'. In one situation, a former girlfriend felt that her blog (which I will not be linking here) which I hosted out of my own pocket was the perfect platform to fire back at me for all of the wrongs, perceived and real, that I had done to her. The second situation was less of an overt act and more of a subtle slap where an individual with whom I had a temporary falling out deleted her journal entries, presumably out of spite.

He offers some suggestions for questions and policies to ask and have if you are a blog hoster.

Steve Friedl has an interesting article called Reading C type declarations. I think it is funny that C programmers feel it is okay to NEED such a guide.#

Thomas Friedman on the cure to Anti-Americanism.#

After two years of traveling almost exclusively to Western Europe and the Middle East, Poland feels like a geopolitical spa. I visited here for just three days and got two years of anti-American bruises massaged out of me. Get this: people here actually tell you they like America — without whispering. What has gotten into these people? Have all their subscriptions to Le Monde Diplomatique expired? Haven't they gotten the word from Berlin and Paris? No, they haven't. In fact, Poland is the antidote to European anti-Americanism. Poland is to France what Advil is to a pain in the neck. Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world — including the United States."

What's this all about? It starts with history and geography. There's nothing like living between Germany and Russia — which at different times have trampled Poland off the map — to make Poles the biggest advocates of a permanent U.S. military presence in Europe. Said Ewa Swiderska, 25, a Warsaw University student: "We are the small kid in school who is really happy to have the big guy be his friend — it's a nice feeling."

Lisa Williams on how the blogosphere really is an exchange of ideas rather than a battle.#

One of the things I really enjoy about blogging is that you actually see people change their minds online (I need to start collecting examples of this phenomenon so I can point to them easily). It's not like AM radio or cable news shows, where you have host plus two talking heads, one pro and one anti and no one ever changes their mind, they just holler at each other in a display of rhetorical ping-pong that we are all supposed to find fascinating. The best thing about the blogosphere is that it isn't this kind of deathlike media stasis, a sort of Tombs of the Emperor Kings Media, which is what I think of every time I turn on the news or a talk show: it's not an exchange of ideas, it's two sarcophagi with dead, unchangeable ideas in them put next to each other in a ceremonial display of Journalistic Balance.

Ryan Overbey posts new pictures. My favourite.#

Matthew Gross posts an email from Joe Trippi that has a link to the contribute page FOUR times and is a desperate cry for money.#

Everything you've worked for is at stake right now. Everything we've fought for and everything we believe in comes down to these last four days of this quarter and then the last nineteen days before Iowa.

We need to raise $1.5 million before midnight on December 31 so we can win Iowa. With just four days left to go, we're $1.2 million short. Please take action right now, because these are the most critical days our campaign has ever faced

They acknowledge that you need money -- not people -- to win.

AccordionGuy writes that it is the declaration that counts.#

Rich: So what makes a date a date, say rather than going out with a bunch of friends?

Kate: You have to call it a date.

Me: Yeah, I think you actually have to say "I would like to go out with you on a date."

Rich: So it's the declaration that makes it a date?

Kate: Yes. It's like the military. You have to declare a war, otherwise it's just a police action.

Richard on "hooking-up."#

AccordionGuy says he prefers dating to "hooking up". Up until a couple of years ago, I thought "hooking up" meant getting a phone number at the bar. My friends, just before we were heading out, would tell me such things as "Richie, you're going to hook up tonight!" (To women who go to bars looking for some hot lovin': everything else being equal, would you prefer to "hook up" with a guy named Richard or Rich, or Richie? The question is half-honest, half-rhetorical.) Anyway, guys who are self-conscious about how they look in social situations find it more difficult to get laid when they're told they're gonna get some than if they're not told so. Same goes for "have you hooked up yet?" Hopefully that information comes in handy for your self-conscious friend that you wish the best for.

Richard links to Anne Kingston on television as drugs.#

Such is the world in which we live that there was little surprise last week when Paris Hilton, star of Fox's The Simple Life (a television program so dumb it makes Green Acres seem like it was written by Edward Albee) drew more television viewers than George W. Bush's interview with Diane Sawyer. Think of it. A bratty rich girl best known for her contribution to Internet porn is of more interest to the North American public than the leader of the free world sharing his vision in these dangerous times.

Perhaps we should question whether one of the dangers facing that free world resides within the paunchy body politic itself, couch-potato comatose as it appears to be. But we don't. Fascination with Hilton is merely chalked up to the seemingly endless appetite for the stupid, the titillating and the trivial, that TV triumvirate that tends to breed more of the same. Or, as network executives spin it, they're only democracy's pimps, giving the public what it wants.

Kaye Trammell on blogs and gender.#

One of the first pieces of advice I give to anyone who asks me how to create a "secret blog" (the anonymous kind where you can write evil things about your best friend) is to engage in a little gender swapping. I tell such bloggers that they should pick a template that is very gender opposite. So if it is a frilly girl who likes pink & flowers then I tell her to pick the navy blue & black template. Then, I tell the new bloggers to try to avoid referring to friends as "him" or "her."

Being gendered can help or hurt you. For Tracy, she was interested in Dinky's content especially because she thought it was a mom blog. Others might be drawn to Tony Pierce because he's a "lady's man - man's man - man about town."

Kristin is the new Martha Stewart sans-criminal impulses.#

so this semester, i set out to make snickerdoodles at the home of tim, conner, and matt. with the recipe before me, i carefully measured out each ingredient and stuck the perfect little balls of dough in the oven with complete satisfaction. a satisfaction that lasted exactly 10 minutes and 15 seconds, when my cookies emerged from the oven as little round disks of death.

those cookies sat in the kitchen all evening, the boys eyeing them suspiciously after conner nearly lost a tooth to his first bite. they gathered dust for the next couple of weeks until the boys decided to test their capabilities. after throwing several of them into the street, the guys informed me that not only did my cookies sustain massive impact at high velocities, they would also likely be preserved fossil-style in their front yard until the end of time. thanks guys.