I don't know why my head is fudge as I did not get up at 4:30 am this morning. Yet it is Friday which has its delights and demands...including bullet point chitchattery.

• I did stay up to watch the Louisville v. Rutgers game which was amazing. The field goal kicker getting a second try at winning the game due to an off-side was hillarious. Rutgers is the state univerity of New Jersey so you can imagine this is a pretty working class team and crowd which you gotta love. You may recall last year a visit to Syracuse included skipping the game when it was 0-14 for Rutgers within seconds after kick-off.
• Remember when peole said they had a secret agenda and other people said "secret agenda?!? How paranoid is that?" Funny how the overlords now think 30% support from the population is the right time to alter the nature of the nation:

  Prime Minister Stephen Harper is discreetly sounding out some provincial premiers about setting formal limits on Ottawa's powers, even if it means possibly reopening the Constitution, sources say. While discussions are at a preliminary stage, officials in Ottawa and several provinces suggested constraints on the federal spending power could eventually take the form of a constitutional amendment explicitly restricting Ottawa to its own areas of exclusive jurisdiction — a move that would reshape federal-provincial relations.

  Remember that whole "Isn't Iggy losing it?" thing over his idea to reopen the Constitution over Quebec. This is Harper suggesting reopening the Consitution over everything as a practical matter. He is so half-a-term.
• The oddest thing I heard yesterday at the course was the term "privacy fundamentalists". This is the sort of throw away line that begs you to accept the underlying premise and challenges you if you don't. Seeing as it was stated by the privacy commissioner I was more than a bit concerned. I will have to think more about this but my immediate thought is that it smacks of short-sightedness, that there is a risk in the unknown implication of technology and, like it or not, McLuhan was right when he said the unanticipated consequences were usually the most important mechanisms of social change caused by new technology. This is compounded by the fact that privacy law is a shield. It protects us from intrusions. But for what reason? Under Canadian law autonomy of the individual and the right to things like anonymity are baredly on the radar and little discussed in the case law. That positive body of law about what we are as against the state is the absent sword that the law ought to be fighting for rather than creating a possible circle around, unaware of what is within and therefore unaware that all that needs to be in is within its circumference. So while we can be seduced by our own certainty that new technologies and those that introduce them mean no harm and, sure, it is good to work with those who work to bring these tools forward but there is a measure of hubris - of a splendidly guruiffic nature - to think that there is no unseen downside as there always is. Of all the things to be a funtamentalist about it is the fundamental constituional rights of the individual. Don't hand that over to the futurists if you have any respect for it.