My faith in government (and thus, in humanity) is routinely and repeatedly crushed and restored, but rarely does that cycle run its full course within an hour, let alone a few moments. Tonight, I was pointed to this post by Lawrence Lessig, alerting me to the existence, now snuffed out, of Aaron Swartz. As the friend who linked to the post commented, “Morally complicated and sad.”
Within the hour (and just a bit further down my Facebook wall) I was pointed to this official White House response to one of the many online petitions they host, many of which are patently absurd and nonsensical, but, if they reach the required threshold of 25K signatures, get a response.
It just occurred to me that not only are these prime examples of the things government and the people who make it up are capable of, for worse and better, but that they’re both STEM-related. Whatever that implies.