[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

The Creative Commons licenses went public today. I've been looking forward to this. Essentially, they've created a boilerplate method of licensing your creative works into the commons. You retain copyright, and you choose from a menu of possible restrictions on the use of your work, and they provide you with an appropriate and reliable legal document. It makes giving away your creative efforts easy.

Not only does this tickle my interest in donating intellectual effort to the world, it satisfies one of my instincts. It minimizes the effort needed to take a particular action, which in my book is the best way to get people to take that action. You've got to cut down on friction if you want people to do things. Creative Commons makes the licensing process gut simple.

I expect to be licensing Population: One under one of their licenses soon, once I've mulled it over a little.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Conventional wisdom in the blogosphere is that everyone's up in arms about Trent Lott, with harmonious accord. At the worst, there's some confusion about which bloggers broke the story first. Well... I gotta kick that one around a little, and shed some light on the warblogger world.

Mischa says, "Listen, folks: If you wanna get rid of Trent, it's no skin off of my nose, I couldn't care less. I never liked the guy to begin with. But would you please, please, PLEASE try to come up with a reason that's even half-way intelligent?"

Cold Fury says, "I don't really think the man is a raving racist; I think he was merely spouting a little half-baked fluff to pump up Sperm Thurmond at his party, that's all. But the truth is, he simply has to know that he's under a media microscope, and as the Republican standard-bearer in Congress, our useful-idiot mainstream journalists are just waiting for him to make any stupid move at all that they can pounce on. If he doesn't know this, then it necessarily follows that he's too damned stupid to be allowed to speak in public, much less speak for the Republican Party on anything more pivotal than whether to have the fries or the baked potato with lunch." I.e., he needs to quit because he makes Republicans look bad. But he's a nice guy at heart. Sure.

So do a few quotes mean anything about warbloggers as a whole? Nope, not even close. The vast majority of bloggers on all sides of this issue think Lott should resign because he's an unrepentant racist. However, I'm trusting the rest of the warbloggers will remember that some of their comrades are on the side of the segregationists.