Never mind that Swartz is a researcher, JSTOR makes it difficult for users to download articles to which they have rightful access and the government (your taxpayer money) pays for much of the research that ends up in journals not made available to you. Culture is anti-rivalrous as the great Nina Paley likes to point out. “Anti-rivalrous goods increase in value the more they are used.”

Boston Globe: Activist charged with hacking

Aaron Swartz, a Cambridge web entrepreneur and political activist who has lobbied for the free flow of information on the Internet, was charged in federal court with hacking into a subscription-based archive system at MIT and stealing more than 4 million articles, including scientific and academic journals [while a student]. Swartz already had regular, licensed access to the database through his work at Harvard. But prosecutors said he was so committed to the immediate acquisition of materials that he used special software to enable the quick downloading. He changed the Internet protocol address on his computer several times to circumvent security guards, according to court records.

The American Prospect on this matter

It’s easy to forget that there’s something at all controversial or oppositional about accessing information, or that some people really, really want data to be free — and others don’t. Open data has been mainstreamed. Whatever hacker-culture roots the free information movement might have are subsumed by the idea that simply everyone agrees that data is meant to be free, and the struggle is over the mechanics of freeing it. That’s never really been true, as Swartz’s case makes plain.

The Huffington Post:

JSTOR’s the one that should be in prison, man, for locking up knowledge.

Note that JSTOR has no issues with Swartz and that is the government coming down on him for what they argue is felony computer hacking. Reminds me of War Games. “I mean have you gotten any insight as to why a bright boy like this would jeopardize the lives of millions?”

Map of French Québec City's fortifications on bedrock relief (North is conveniently to the bottom right)

Québec City sits between the Laurentian highlands of the southeastern Grenville Province of the Canadian Shield and the Appalachian Mountains that were formed during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies. Bedrock here is the Upper Ordovician Utica shale that “overlies the predominantly shallow marine carbonate facies of the Cambrian-Ordovician St. Lawrence Platform” (or St. Lawrence lowlands).The adjacent St. Lawrence River, which I gather formed post-Pleistocene glaciation by cutting into the relatively less-resistant sedimentary rocks sandwiched between the Laurentians and the Appalachians, is part of the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway system.

As a sign by one of the many higher-up river outlooks explains, the land beneath Quebec City was not chosen by the French because of the overwhelming tectonics over an equally stupefying period of time that created it but purely for defense strategic reasons. To each their own time scale.

In a time-traveling nutshell: Canadian Shield forms the core of the North American continent –> happy passive margin forms with the buildup of a carbonate platform and the transgression of the sea –> BAM BAM Taconic and Acadian continental collision events creating the Appalachian mountains –> some quiet time as the Atlantic Ocean forms to the east –> glaciation from the north –> glacial retreat –> uplifted Québec City and associated river –> some French dude named Samuel de Champlain surveys the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence area, claims the high cape of Québec City and territory all the way from north of Minnesota down to and including Louisiana for New France in 1608 and his people put up a bunch of ramparts against, well, everyone –> the Brits take over in 1763 –> Canada forms in 1868 and tells everyone to sod off in exchange for putting limey monarchs on its currency –> Canadian geologists find economic natural gas in the Utica shale. (Someone call They Might Be Giants and set this to music.)

Related reading:

• The Utica Shale Formation
• Geo-Atlas of the St. Lawrence River Basin
• American Treasure of the Library of Congress: Samuel de Champlain’s 1607 Map
• The Utica’s shale gas potential

Yesterday’s Houston Chronicle:

Texas“ main electric grid operator is warning customers to reduce their usage during the peak power demand hours of 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. today as high temperatures and unexpected power plant outages will stretch supplies.

Today on Capitol Hill:

An amendment from Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) defunding the Energy Department’s standards for traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient starting next year was approved rather anticlimactically by voice vote.

Cut off nose, meet spited face.

There’s a very high probability that all of you who read this blog know about the IED blasts across Mumbai yesterday that claimed 18 lives, injured many others and has understandably increased the stress levels of an already put-upon city. Just imagining a surviving Mumbaikar thinking “It could have been me or someone I love” and “When will it happen again?” makes me want to turn off this computer and go hide in a cellar for the rest of my days. They’ve been through five bombings in the last fifteen years and could just as easily flip out like we have and would. But, the resilience and the way they’ve come together in the last 24 hours. It’s humbling.

I am so glad my fellow Vatul, Harini, and hers are safe. She writes:

Near my house a little shop open. Most businesses were. Even those that didn“t need to be. When terror strikes and I have been back in Mumbai since 1994 and have lived through quite a few there is this really inexplicable sentiment that kicks in I won’t let the Bastards cow me down. It is not just me every one I knew was out and about. And not strangely, not many of us got too much work done. The turning up was the symbolic F*** U both to the terrorists and the system.

Sepia Mutiny has a collection of reactions to the blasts. Here are some that stand out and give Americans perspective, especially considering that happenings east of here are more crucial to our future than our all-Casey-Anthony-all-the-time “news” cycle provides. Some of it also sounds remarkably familiar in terms of how the government-public safety apparatus of some American cities work.

… Now that the USA and the west have come to their senses with regard to the reality of Pakistan, now that the USA will not pour more and more billions into Pakistan, now that the USA will no longer cover Pakistan“s back at the United Nations, now there is hope that slowly but surely the world, and India, can take action against Pakistan without having to worry about the reaction of the USA, the great protector of Pakistan for the last 50 years and more. The pusher to Pakistan the addict.

… Please remember that India has more than 140 million Muslims. For a Muslim population of that size, India is remarkably free of terrorist attacks.

… A lot of it has to do with the underworld take-over of Mumbai politics and even the police … Summary: a non-functional police and intelligence operation, mostly focused on extracting rent from real estate transactions, which are otherwise all “illegal” due to various bizarre rules and laws.

… the point is unless people get to know that region better, they are in no position to judge our 2012 [candidates’] readiness in combating foreign problems.

Also read: The online samaritan who tried to help Mumbai