Fantastic Mr. Fox and Wiretapping

Inside AT&T TSD-3600E Telephone Security Device (Clipper Chip)
Originally uploaded by mab @ flickr

We went out for pizza and arcade games and air conditioning tonight, and brought our books.

Moomin described his book, Fantastic Mr. Fox. “The farmers are SO DUMB. They wait and wait and wait by the holes and they will probably wait there until they die. But Mr. Fox and all the animals are just going to keep living underground and they have everything they need, practically a whole world under there.” I broke into an enormous grin, happy that Roald Dahl has subverted my child. That’s right honey, the state will just wither away while we make our underground “redistribution networks”!

Rook’s book was Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold. Moomin was intrigued by the spaceship on the cover, and liked the ideas Rook described of a mystery novel in space, about people who don’t have any legs and instead have 4 arms (the “quaddies”).

I explained my book, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government as true history, not fiction, about people inventing secret codes to use on computers and phones, and about the government wanting to keep the keys to all those secret codes so it could make sure no one was doing anything bad. I wasn’t sure how Moomin would take this. He hates the idea of anyone being bad. We got into an argument the other night about whether Loki was cooler than Thor, for example. I like Thor but was rooting for Loki, thus pissing off my child; why would I like a Bad Guy? So while he can tell which side *I* think is right, he is not swayed by me from what he thinks.

His response to my description of Crypto: “WHAT!! They can’t do that! The stuff on our computers and cell phones should be PRIVATE! It’s like the government wanting to watch you go to the bathroom! ” He shook his fist angrily at the ceiling, the TV sports game flat screen tvs, and the pizza parlor hanging lamps in an impassioned way. Wow, it was awesome !! I love to hear his opinions!