Nose against the grindstone

[nobody at pmantis.berkeley.edu]

X-Really-From: Dave Mandl (dmandl at lehman.com)

> From: paul at poboy.b17c.ingr.com (Paul Robichaux)
> 
> I assume everyone saw the message from Philip Mulivor here asking for our
> input on the issues related to anonymity and newsgathering. As of
> Friday afternoon, I was the only one to respond.
> 
> I can't help but think that we are being dissolute in discussing
> T-shirts, coffee mugs, et al when a *REAL* *LIVE* *JOURNALIST* came to
> the list asking for information and got almost zero response.
> 
> If we're looking at shirts which will raise people's awareness and
> provoke questions, that's great. Many of the slogans and designs,
> though, will be indecipherable to anyone who's not _already_ a
> cypherpunk. If these shirts are just a membership badge, like a DoD #
> in *.motorcycles, then IMNSHO we're wasting our time.
> 
> -Paul

I considered (for a couple of seconds) responding to P.M.'s request, but
then decided against it.  I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I generally don't
trust mainstream journalists too much and don't go out of my way to talk
to them.  People may have actually made a decision not to talk to him, so
I wouldn't assume it's "apathy" or anything like that.  (I'm sensitive about
this because people are always accusing anti-voting anarchists of "apathy,"
and that gets us hopping mad.)

On the subject of the T-shirts: I agree that they should not be too, er,
cryptic.  They shouldn't be just a way for us to pat ourselves on the
back and be in-group-ish, but a way to spread the word.  I also think we
should try to accommodate the different political views in the group (which
are not all that different anyway) by avoiding use of the American flag,
references to Jefferson, etc.  We should stick to issues we all agree
on, which there are plenty of: Anti-Big Brother, Anti-NSA/CIA/FBI,
pro-privacy, libertarianism (capital or small "L"), freedom of information,
etc.

   --Dave.