I'm not typically one to rave about TV shows. I cannot help but make an exception for The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. It airs this week on PBS, and is available to watch online until October 27.

The Most Dangerous Man in America is narrated by Daniel Ellsberg, a senior U.S. military strategist during the Vietnam War. In his own words, Ellsberg reveals how he became so disenchanted with the Vietnam War that in 1971 he leaked 43 volumes of classified documents — the "Pentagon Papers" — to expose how U.S. officials had systematically lied to the public about the conflict. Ellsberg's action infuriated the Nixon White House, and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America" for divulging the top secret files. Ultimately, Ellsberg's act of civil disobedience led towards the end of the Vietnam War and the disgraced resignation of President Nixon.

Watch The Trailer

I've already seen this film on video, and I can't praise it enough. Ellsberg's story is a highly inspirational example of standing up to tell the truth in the face of grave threats to one's job, reputation, and freedom. You don't have to take my word for the quality — the film has already been nominated for an Academy Award.

The feature-length documentary will air as part of the POV (Point of View) series on PBS, beginning tonight (October 5, 2010) in most markets. The Most Dangerous Man in America will be on Wisconsin Public Television tonight, October 5, at 7:00pm. WPT will broadcast a repeat of the program on Friday, October 8, at 9:00pm.

You can also watch the film online for free at the PBS POV website, but only from October 6 to October 27, 2010. The documentary is also for sale at its official site, www.MostDangerousMan.org. Do not miss it!

Engraving of James Gates Percival as a young man.

Buried deep in southwest Wisconsin, beneath a granite monument at the hamlet of Hazel Green, lies the body of a great nineteenth century student. His works in language, literature, and science have shaped our culture to the present day, yet these contributions are nearly as forgotten now as the name of their maker: James Gates Percival. As a poet, Percival was put to music by Edward Elgar. As a linguist, he was a leading contributor to the original Webster's Dictionary. As a geologist, he compiled the first surveys of two U.S. states: Connecticut and Wisconsin. These accomplishments are now lost among the tomes of dusty archives, for in Percival's own words:

What's earth, what's life, to space, eternity?
'Tis but a flash, a glance—from birth to death;
And he, who ruled the world, would only be
Lord of a point—a creature of a breath;

And what is it to gain a hero's name,
or build one's greatness on the rabble's roar?
'Tis but to light a feeble, flickering flame,
That shines a moment, and is seen no more.

James Gates Percival was born in Berlin, Connecticut, on September 15, 1795. He entered Yale College at age 16, already captive to the pursuit of poetry. Percival's early life, however, was seldom easy. His father had died before James reached his teen years, and at Yale, Percival was so derided by his peers for his poetic ambitions that he left the college in 1812 and employed himself as a farmer for a year before gathering the resolve to finish school.

Returning to Yale, Percival engrossed himself in his studies and avoided society. One classmate noted that "I never knew one who could acquire correct knowledge quicker than Percival," and another observed, "I think he had few acquaintances in college, though I never knew that he had any enemies. The fact that his intercourse was so circumscribed was doubtless to be attributed to constitutional reserve, and not to the consciousness of his own superiority. Everybody looked upon him as a good-natured, sensitive, thoughtful, odd, gifted fellow."

After graduating in 1815, Percival continued to expand his knowledge. He embarked as a private tutor; then sought and obtained a degree in medicine at Yale. The young doctor, however, found himself unable to cope with the emotion of his work. Percival felt a strong sense of empathy for his patients and an extremely self-conscious sense of responsibility to them. He could overwhelm himself with grief when he lacked a cure for someone in pain.

Percival also thirsted, quietly, for companionship. Those who knew him remarked on his sensitive and amicable nature, but they could rarely penetrate his reserved demeanor. Friendships for Percival were often fruitless, and his one cautious letter of love was met with steadfast rejection. As grief stacked on grief, Percival penned a long, rambling, maudlin poem entitled "The Suicide." The work is frenzied and inconsistent, at times unreadable, at times presaging the later vivid imagination of Edgar Allen Poe. A few stanzas follow:

How easy, O! how trifling, with the steel
To pierce a heart that loves no scene below,
To wound a breast too callous e'er to feel
A pang less cruel than a demon's woe.

Does not the smiling surface of the wave
Kindly invite to take my endless sleep?
How sweet to rest within a watery grave;
How soft those slumbers—that repose how deep.

The death-winged ball—can pierce my phrenzied brain,
The knife—can loose the shackles of my soul,
An opiate—that can ease my every pain,
Smiles, how inviting!—in the poisoned bowl.

And thou, sweet drug!—can'st shed the balmy dew
Of sleep eternal, o'er my wearied eyes,
And give repose, as calm to mortal view
As when the infant wrapt in slumber lies.

Still thou art slow though sure—ah! can I wait
A single moment, ere I sink in death;
Perhaps I may lament it when too late,
And struggle to regain my fleeting breath.

Give me the knife, the dagger, or the ball—
O! I can take them with a smile serene;
Then like a flash of lighting I may fall
And rush at once into the world unseen.

Percival made a number of chaotic attempts to take his life in 1820. He bashed his head with stones; he overdosed on opium; he invested in a brace of pistols. In time Percival recovered from these incidents, but he never overcame their scars. He briefly resumed practicing medicine far from home in South Carolina after 1820, but the doctor remarked in one conversation, "I had got my name up for writing verses, and found myself ruined. When a person is really ill he will not send for a poet to cure him."

More a poet than a doctor, Percival withdrew from society, and he spent most of his life in seclusion. He never married. The pathos that marked his early years forever overshadowed his later achievements.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Copyright Symbol

We live in an Information Age. The laws that govern how people use, share, and interact with information are more deeply entwined with daily life now than ever before. As citizens of this era, we have a duty to understand these laws, their applicability, and their problems — and we can profit by our knowledge. Whether we like it or not, copyright law is as fundamental to life in the Information Age as the right to free speech. Like free speech, copyrights in America have a basis in the U.S. Constitution. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gave Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Congress used its power to enact Title 17 of the United States Code, which deals with copyright law. Unlike the right to free speech, however, copyright law is far from commonly understood.

At its simplest, a copyright is the right to copy, modify, and/or distribute a piece of information. That information could be a painting, a film, a software program, a textbook, an email, or any number of other things. As the U.S. Constitution stipulates, it is also an "exclusive right." Copyright law in the United States essentially states that the only person who has the right to copy, modify, and/or distribute an original work is the person who created that work. Anyone else who wishes to copy, modify, or distribute a copyrighted work must get permission from the copyright holder, or they can face legal repercussions. Copyright holders can demand special conditions or royalty payments in exchange for sharing their rights with others. This much, I hope, is common knowledge.

Excerpt from the U.S. Constitution laying the basis for copyrights.

The purpose for copyrights, as the Constitution puts it, is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Giving authors the sole right to copy and distribute their creations gives them an incentive to create, for if anybody could copy works freely from the moment they were created, it would be very difficult for creators to earn any credit or rewards for their effort — and therefore, little reason to undertake the effort at all. Copyrights ensure that people have a reason to exercise their freedom of speech and push forward public knowledge and culture.

At the same time, excessive copyright exclusivity can hamper progress. Restrictions on copying, changing, or distributing original works could bring the flow of information to a standstill, or limit the spread of information to elite circles. Those things would hardly be good for a democracy. As a result, the U.S. Constitution stipulated that the exclusive rights that Congress could grant to authors were "limited." They are limited in time, but they are also limited in terms of what kind of information can be copyrighted and by the "fair use" doctrine, which allows exceptions to copyright exclusivity in order to promote the fair flow of information. The result is that copyright law is far from straightforward — it is a balance between rights for creators and the rights of the public. Title 17 is today over 300 pages long. Here are some of the most crucial points of Copyright Law in the United States today: Read the rest of this entry »

Flowers in the Woods to celebrate 50 posts.

It has been a little more than two years since I started the Acceity.org blog. This marks my 50th post. I know, it took long enough. Acceity is like a tree (the site logo should be a clue), and it is growing at about that pace. I strive to keep the site rooted in Southwest Wisconsin, where I live, but I also work to send out branches to other places on whatever topics strike my interest. I make no effort to stay on topic. I know that many blogs work to give their readers what they come looking for. I try, instead, to give you knowledge and ideas you would never have otherwise thought to think.

I hope I am sometimes successful in my goal. I was very glad to hear the reactions to my September 5 post. Eric commented "There is so much out there of which I have never heard," and another reader emailed me saying "I had no idea." Thanks for your comments! I am glad to introduce people to things they didn't know, and I hope that you can do the same service for me with your blogs and your comments here.

The World Wide Web is wonderful tool for organizing and rapidly finding information on a topic. It is a marvelous environment for building communities around shared interests and common knowledge. Those things are amazing — I adore them passionately. The WWW, however, holds the potential for much more. The true beauty of the Internet is its ability to connect people and ideas that are not related: to challenge our predispositions, to expose us to new things and other ways of looking at familiar sights. That is how we as individuals can grow, can learn, can become more than we already are. It does not happen automatically. The web is what we make it: we can use it to retrench ourselves in our preordained cliques, beliefs, and interests, or we can use it to expand horizons and connect to things that would otherwise be out of reach. I am a firm practitioner of the latter, and while the depth of connections I've found to things that are utterly different from me can sometimes be overwhelming and even terrifying, I have no doubt that they have made me a deeper, more intelligent, and more creative person than I would otherwise be. Let's work together to fuse our diverse ideas and bits of knowledge for a smarter, savvier, more sensitive community.

Enough rambling. Thank you to everyone who reads Acceity! If you enjoy what you find here, remember to share this site with your friends and introduce them to something new. You can also (now) follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/jWachuta) for shorter, slightly more frequent updates — I'm really just trying it out now, so there's no telling how long I might stay. Finally, feel free to leave your own reflections on Acceity, or any other new topic, by commenting on this post. Thanks again!

"You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. Though you may have to reprove your fellow man, do not incur sin because of him. Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countryman. You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

- Leviticus 19:17-18

"He said to Jesus, 'and who is my neighbor?' Jesus replied, 'A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, «Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.» Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robber's victim?' He answered, 'The one who treated him with mercy.' Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'"

- Luke, 10:29-37

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect."

- Matthew 5:43-48

Construction at Ground Zero, New York City, Summer 2010.
Photo © 2010 Antonio Rosario, Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License 2.0

The September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington were acts of hatred. The perpetrators died by their deed. Their supporters and financiers have since been hunted down and cornered or killed. I am sorry for them: sorry that they gave their lives for hatred, sorry that they took others' lives in hatred, sorry that they fell to violence instead of reaching for the rewards of peace and love.

It is crucial to remember the human victims of tragedy. Some had no time to choose what befell them. Some chose to risk their lives in love to save others. I am grateful to them all: grateful for the good that came of their lives, grateful for their good intentions cut short that day, grateful to those who survived and pressed through trauma and injury to keep on in our world. I look up to the families of every victim for bearing hardships that I have never known. We might rebuild a fallen tower, but we can never replace the people who were lost that day.

In a world of six billion people, it took only a tiny band of extremists to unleash the horror that took place nine years ago this day. I regret that their act of hatred has drawn more people around the globe towards malice, anger, and division. I regret that so many people today, as the terrorists did on 9/11, direct their outrage at the innocent. I cannot stop them, but I know that there is time to change, and I know that love is stronger than hate. For the sake of those who died, we can make a better world.