I’m going to put this bluntly: Go see the Aaron Swartz documentary, The Internet’s Own Boy. Freedom of speech, forward progress in science and technology, grassroots democracy, prodigious and passionate talent, this is an important film.

In the movie Swartz’s partner quotes him as asking the question, Are you doing what you think is the most important thing you can possibly do with your life? 

And speaking of NSA, think you’re not on the list? Corey Doctorow investigates how people like me, who read articles about online security on sites like boingboing, absurdly become targets of NSA surveillance.

Confused about Internet Neutrality? Boingboing presents a beautiful comic by Michael Goodwin, of Economix Comix, that explains it all.

When grief wraps too tight I have two reactions: paralysis, or stripping the gears. I don’t know why it bifurcates that way. Sometimes I desperately want to retreat to the elusive cave in the mountains and close out the world. Other times I get too fired up, like the other day, when I couldn’t sit still so I took myself walking through the city and apparently, my mind was not in precisely the same location as my feet, because they [my feet] missed a curb on Massachusetts Avenue and I went flying.

Coulda been worse (BTDT). Reminded me of what a shaman I know always says at the end of a journeying circle–which if you’re not familiar (and why should you be?) is a meditative activity that induces varying levels of trance states in participants. Neal likes to say, Be sure you get back in your body before you get back in your car.

So it turns out, it’s more than a Buddhist concept, the notion of being present to the moment. Sometimes it’s a matter of life and limb.

About Blooks: Discovering the book as object.

Did I mention how much I loved Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane?

Shall we talk about the heartbreak of the middle east? Guess what happened when Stephen Elliot wrote, in his Daily Rumpus email, that Israel should stop bombing Gaza.

Gaiman journaled about his trip this spring to a refugee camp in Jordan, on behalf of UNHCR, telling about a child-friendly space in Azraq camp where kids who had arrived traumatized and silent now played and laughed again: “That room full of noisy kids was the best place in the world.”