E. Michael Harrington

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I LOVE BOSTON. I flew here on Monday night via United Airlines. I need to fly United more often -the chardonnay is excellent in comparison to that served on other airlines, the flight attendants - male and female - were fantastic and lots of fun - and they serve Starbucks on UA and not the normal atrocious stuff many Americans drink. (Americans' taste for coffee is often on a par with Americans' taste for "beer" - lite yellow-colored water-like liquid without taste. I'll never understand how a process that goes for thousands of yards through so many machines and chemical changes produced something devoid of taste.).

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Thanks to the Berklee College of Music (http://berklee.edu/), I got to stay at one of the best hotels I ever experienced - the Eliot Hotel (http://www.eliothotel.com/). My suite was amazing and looked like this: (http://www.eliothotel.com/rooms/index.html). I got to spread out and make a mess out of everything very quickly. I knew I'd regret that as I had to then find all of my things before I checked out the next day but I had fun making the mess, eating the special chocolates and cookies and stealing wi-fi from the Harvard Club of Boston (http://www.harvardclub.com/) [non-membership has its advantages], located next door to the Eliot on Commonwealth Avenue ("Comm Ave" to its friends and us locals). I got to steal wi-fi from another source as well - one I did not recognize - and I also had the option of paying for my wi-fi. But with two out of three options being free and not requiring registration and a credit card, I chose free. I read that police arrested someone who was similarly stealing invisible microwaves from outer space and fined him $200.00. So far, I am still criminal and freely roaming the streets.

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I spoke at Berklee on Tuesday, met great students, faculty and staff, ate at Steve's on Newbury St. and at the Cactus Club (http://www.cactusclubboston.com/) and saw hundreds of great looking people dressed in Red Sox green and Red Sox red and Red Sox pink as it was OPENING DAY at nearby Fenway Park, God's preferred choice of baseball venue. I'm rarely lucky enough to be in Boston for OPENING DAY so this was a special treat, and GOD's TEAM won. One of our great new guys, Josh Beckett, pitched very well and won, and another of our great new guys, Mike Lowell, got four hits in four at bats, aka "4 for 4" and performed much better than any of the overpaid tempermental divas from the New York Yankees.

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I HOPE THE NEW WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF, Josh Bolten (fortunately he is not "Bolton" as in "Michael," the assassin of music, or John, our infamous angry bully at the U. N.) does not get too crazy and make any more changes. It's sad that the White House has lost their sole Boston accent, the incompetent Andy Card.

I fear losing White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, aka "the quintessential frightened deer in headlights" get emotional and defensive at his daily press briefings. I also fear losing Donald Rumsfeld as I love seeing that very irritated very macho very elderly Secretary of Defense squint and get testy with the press. I am afraid they might get jettisoned - that would be cataclysmic for those of us who expect comedy from our elected leaders. And for those of us mourning the loss of Tom DeLay, we don't deserve any more chipping away of the comedy infrastructure of the White House.

My prediction - Rumsfeld will stay, McClellan will go, and Cheney will resign (I was wrong about Cheney resigning on a Friday afternoon in late March but I am convinced (and stubborn and thickheaded), that he will not last for all of Bush's term. Isn't Cheney overdue for a fifth heart attack and another shooting/maiming from out of a car window?

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Of course the Internet Archive and its "Wayback Machine" (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php) are too damn cool for words, and they are a non-profit. Non-profits, especially those that provide very valuable services and are benevolent by nature, should be left alone.

But of course there have to be bad guys lying in wait, in this case, HEALTHCARE ADVOCATES, Inc. of Philadelphia. Napster was extremely HELPFUL for the music industry and consumers and showed all of us how the Internet should work, and how we should be able to get what IP we want when, where and how we want it. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine shows us how the Internet has evolved by providing a fantastic living history of the Net's evolution. It does this by taking pictures of every website (reproducing it - yes, infringing every copyright in its path but for the right reason - to manifest "the progress of science and the useful arts," a phrase that is at the core of Article 1 Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution).

But along comes HEALTHCARE ADVOCATES, Inc. of Philadelphia, the bad guys, the COPYRIGHT THUGS. Like other useless thugs, they decided that it is time to show muscle and whack a little victim.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_Internet_Archive.html

I hope that the copyright bullies lose and feel shame.

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I now choose Panera over Starbucks. Panera's coffee is not quite as good but free wi-fi makes up for it. I'll miss my friends at Starbucks here in Framingham but I am glad to be out of range of one Starbucks employee. I have just learned Panera back in Franklin and this could be the start of something special. They serve a lot of food here. I'll have to learn what is good. Does anyone reading this have any recommendations?

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