Category: Personal

Is a third front opened?

This is scary. Workers found enough C4 to blow up the Philadelphia Greyhound Terminal. All they found was a block the size of a bar of soap, one third of a pound, and this would have been enough to destroy the bus terminal and, I expect, kill everyone inside. There was about 1,000 feet of detonation cord in the luggage but no detonators. I tried to find a good link for C4 but mostly turned up sites explaining how it’s used as the explosive inside landmines all over the world.

Fortunately the explosive was not rigged up as a bomb and in fact was found by terminal maintenance workers who clear out expired storage lockers. The luggage the C4 was in was apparently taken out of a locker two weeks ago and left in a closet until today. This link goes to a local Philadelphia TV station and the page includes the video clip with their story as well.

Studying emotional response to the Attack on America

The Stanford University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences Center on Stress and Health is conducting a survey on Coping with the Stress of the Terrorist Attacks. The survey took me less than 20 minutes to complete and is easy to complete–other than identifying information, all the answers are checkboxes and radio buttons. I think this research should be supported, scientists rarely have such timely, large scale opportunities to collect data.

Happy Birthday Chuck!

Would rock and roll be rock and roll without Chuck Berry? I don’t THINK SO! So let’s all do a duckwalk and sing a song to celebrate the man’s 75th birthday. And the man is still going strong, with four concerts in the next 10 days. Back in the USA should be playing on all the rock radio stations these days, just an amazing celebration of Americana with the classic Berry solo guitar riff. Jam, man, jam! Go, Johnny B. Goode!

See Bill Type

We had the first Webloggers User Group meeting Tuesday night here in Mountain View and it was a big success with over 40 people showing up only two weeks after the group was announced. Kudos to Scoble for a fine job! Jay, among others, took some snaps including one showing me playing secretary (my meeting notes). Tom has photos and a cool logo for the group, including a good one of my back.

Surprise! Being in the Army may mean going into battle

Steven points out that if you enlist in the armed forces, there may come a time you have to fight. Some people clearly do not understand this simple concept, or do but have low ethical standards, and so the number of Active Duty ‘Conscientious Objectors’ [is] On The Rise. American military personnel have been sent to many different parts of the world, even since the end of the Vietnam War, so to say they never expected this possibility is either foolish or disingenuous. There is no way any of them should be given an honorable discharge; most of them should be required to stay in but in non-combat assignments and if allowed to leave, given a dishonorable discharge (no pension or other veteran’s benefits) and forced to repay any college tuition paid on their behalf to date.

Legislating political correctness

These are sad and painful times, no doubt. But politicians will be politicians, in the U.S. and in England as well. Tony Blair, who is doing so much good as GWB’s junior partner, has allowed his government to introduce legislation that could outlaw comedy. Rowan Atkinson, one of the funnier men in Britain today (although he’s done some terrible American movies), has responded with quite correct outrage to a proposed anti-terrorist bill could lead to the imprisonment of those who satirised religion.

A vacation story

When I was 19, my family went on vacation in December to a little island in the Caribbean called Bonaire, which is part of the Netherlands Antilles. This is a very small, very friendly island, only a couple of hotels on it at the time, and it’s shaped like a banana. They have some of the best scuba diving and snorkeling in the Western Hemisphere, though. On the side of Bonaire that curves in was our hotel and about a half mile off the coast is an even smaller island called Kleine Bonaire (Little Bonaire), which is uninhabited. Every afternoon at this time of year, around 4:00 in the afternoon, a very quick but intense rainstorm comes through for about 15 minutes. One other piece of setup information: when I was 11 and 12, I went to sleep away camps for the summers and had a few lessons on how to sail a very small (one person) boat called a Sailfish.

One afternoon in Bonaire, I decided I would like to rent a Sailfish and take it for a ride. The boatman offered to give me a lesson but of course I did not need that! So I took off and boy did I need that lesson. I could not keep the boat upright and kept capsizing it. Finally, after about 40 minutes, I tried to turn around and head back to the hotel’s beach but I got myself farther away from the shore when I did this. And still the boat kept turning over. Then out of nowhere the afternoon storm came in and I couldn’t see the beach, the rain was too hard, but I could see that I was over half the way to Klein Bonaire. I gave up trying to keep the boat right side up and just sat on it. I was not too afraid of drowning but I was afraid of the boat’s centerboard or my glasses (I forgot to pack a spare pair and without them I’m nearly blind).

Back on shore my parents where having a great big laugh watching all this, up until the time the storm came. When my mother realized she couldn’t see me, she went looking for the boatman. He was in the beach bar, out of the rain. She asked him to go get me but he said not until the rain ended. She was insistent but he just kept saying no. Then the rain ended and he got in a little motorboat and came out for me. I was just totally worn out by this point so when the boatman got out to me and took hold of the centerboard, I slipped off the boat and grabbed on to his boat.

But the boatman would not let me in! He said I had to flip the Sailfish back over first. I told him to do it himself but he said no and literally kept me from climbing into the motorboat. I went back and flipped the Sailfish over, and climbed into the motorboat with the last of my energy. I was crying, I was so exhausted. This guy was laughing! Of course, it was my own fault for not taking the lesson he had offered me in the first place. I have never tried to sail a boat myself ever since.

The Mirror Project

The web is spawning some interesting group projects. Quite a few revolve around photography, including the Mirror Project, which “is a growing community of like-minded individuals who have photographed their likenesses in a variety of reflective surfaces.” I was amused by the concept and had a photo available, so I decided to participate. There are quite a few interesting shots and at least one to avoid (just kidding, Marc).

American Record Industry: Fascists at heart

I feel really strange calling an entire industry, particularly one I wanted to work in when I was younger, fascist. However, as an old friend points out on O’ReillyNet (RIAA Threatened By Anti-Terrorist Law), the Recording Industry Association of America is really pathetic. Not to mention stupid and fascist. They want to send out a virus that erases files on our computers, whether they’re there legally or not, and they want Congress to pass a law that says this is okay. As Dave says, let’s cut off their air supply by just not buying their product. Bruce, I love you baby, but I can’t stand the company you keep.

Morality is in the eye of the beholder

To some people, drawing a line between good and bad behavior is very simple. Sometimes it is intuitive but wrong. Some behaviors are so wrong, in the eyes of certain groups, it justifies any action to prevent these bad behaviors from happening. Since protests, letter writing campaigns, and even murder have not gotten anti-abortionists to their goal, one cannot be too surprised that they would attempt to piggyback on current terrorism (since what else can these extemists be termed?) to achieve them. Of course once more they will fail.

Capitalism at the edge

Have you gotten spam lately advertising gas masks or Cipro? garret reports getting spam touting Viagra as “the most powerful anti-anthrax agent available.” I dislike receiving spam certainly but I also don’t mind too much getting it, since we live in a capitalist society and these people are simply taking advantage of the system as it exists now. I would like to see some improvements in the system, like a real opt-out/remove function. Still, spam is a small price to pay for so much functionality for which I pay so little.

Someone else’s work hell

Not for a moment did I ever think the stress and pain we went through after the Sun acquisition was unique, but I have never seen a similar experience written up quite so well as Jeff does in hell. Be sure you read the two paragraphs the author has formatted in extra-tiny font size.

Microsoft still aiming at J2EE

Many observers have said that a target, perhaps the main target, of Microsoft’s .Net web services strategy is Sun’s Java. In the most clear indication yet that this is indeed true, Mary Jo Foley writes that Microsoft Readies “Indigo” for Web Services. Indigo is the next generation web services, developer-oriented platform from MS; the article says that the company plans to include it in a version of Windows expected to be released in Spring, 2003. Services planned for the platform include common naming, addressing, security, event and messaging using XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI. A very early test release is likely to certain development partners next week at the Professional Developers Conference.

Indigo compliments the other .Net initiatives: .Net My Services (also known by the code name of Hailstorm) for consumer-oriented functionality and Blizzard for B2B/ecommerce functionality. Blizzard is also far from release and analysts do not expect a public announcement of it until next year.

Ode to America: not a hoax

Lonna Beers, Librarian and Administrator at The University Center, reports that the Ode to America is not just another web hoax: check out the research at Snopes’ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War (Romanian Editorial). Thanks, Lonna!

Today’s book: Section 31: Shadow

This is the fourth and final book in the Section 31 sequence. Trek novel veteran co-authors (and husband and wife) Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch had the toughest assignment, in some ways, since how do you get Section 31 into a story set tens of thousands of lightyears away? Their solution is simple enough, they just have a prologue showing an operative getting assigned to the ship prior to Voyager’s relocation to the Delta Quadrant. They pull it off well by using the classic Trek two substories that crash together formula. I think the whole series is worth reading!

Story A is the work of the Section 31 agent and story B has Voyager investigating a pair of stars that are about to collide. Sure enough, there is trouble found, in the form of a slower-than-light generation ship carrying the 800 million survivors of a planet that used to orbit one of the colliding suns; the ship and all its inhabitants will be destroyed in 24 hours by the force of the explosion if Voyager cannot save them.

Historical roots of al Quaeda

garret points to a very interesting NY Times article titled The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror by Robert Worth, which the Times oddly published in the Arts section. Worth explains the key concept behind the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and bin Laden’s group is that the Saudi royal family and Egyptian politicians, among others they target, are no longer Muslims (because they do not observe the Koran correctly) and therefore are legitimate targets. This way of thinking builds on the writings of the 1950s Egyptian revolutionary Sayyid Qutb and reaches back to a revered medieval intellectual named Ibn Taymiyya.

Arabs and Americans

I had lunch with a close friend today who had a long conversation last week with an American who was in Saudi Arabia teaching English to Saudi military on 9/11. I have no reason to doubt my friend’s account in the least.

This teacher said that his students simply hate Americans and don’t understand us. For example, in the days immediately after the al-Quaeda attacks, his students drew pictures of planes crashing into buildings, showing them to the other students, and laughing. This meshes with other accounts I’ve read. The teacher pointed to two examples that help explain their hatred:

The American military forces stationed in Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, of course include women. The American women go out in public dressed in military clothing, shop and drive, and in other ways do things that Muslim women simply are not allowed to do. The Saudi (and other Arabic) men think of women as objects, to be treated and to act in certain specific ways, and nothing else. The Taliban give an extreme example of this way of thinking of and regulating women but do not doubt that women face similar strictures in most countries where Islam is dominant. Americans think of women as people, same as men, and will not allow them to be treated otherwise regardless of local custom. This is just to great a disconnect for Arab men to handle; when talking about women with this teacher they generally giggled and acted the way American teenage boys do since their minds have no other context for it.

The Saudis and other nationalities of the Arabian Peninsula think of themselves as warriors. Notice the scimitar on the Saudi flag (the other element on the flag is a shahada, profession of faith meaning “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet”). Yet they needed American and other western nations to protect and liberate them from Saddam Hussein 10 years ago, even though it was less than 100 years ago that the Saudi’s Bedouin great-grandfathers were the scourge of Arabia and finally conquered the area that established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. This is a source of shame and self-loathing and since we put them in position to feel such emotions, not surprisingly they are thrown back at us. How does the old saying go, don’t expect thanks for a favor? No good deed goes unpunished is another spin on the same sentiment.

I’m listening to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s amazing concert on HBO as I write this and I can’t help but think that this is one more thing such people probably hate. Springsteen, since the name sounds Jewish even though it’s Dutch; the music, which is raucus and free and all too often about love and sex and even society’s ills (how many Arab nations have freedom of speech and protest?); and even HBO itself, which is constantly broadcasting images and messages that violate taboos. To go deeper into why Springsteen is a good representation of the target of this hate, consider Cornel Bonca’s essay published in July of this year, in the wake of the HBO concert, in which he describes Springsteen’s oeuvre as “dramatic enactments pitting a Dionysian spirit desperate for release against an equal and opposite force desperate for moral containment.”

In Badlands, Springsteen sings “You got to live it every day, let the broken hearts stand as the price you’ve gotta pay, we’ll keep pushin’ till it’s understood and these badlands start treating us good.” We’re in the Badlands now.

Worth reading

Sometimes I run across material and wonder if I should blog it. Often, I’ll take a pass, especially if the site is a weekly and I would have to link often. But this stuff is worth a few bytes of storage:

The Onion claims to be “America’s Finest News Source” although funniest might be more accurate. Finest is so, well, vague. Just funny, nasty, no respect humor. Don’t miss this week’s job hunting tips.

Back of the Envelope is Christopher Byron’s forum for dismantling the pretenses of corporate America. Unfortunately publisher New York Observer does not post permanent links until the next column is published, so look for the 10/15/01 column on Gateway Computers.

Joel on Software is Joel Spolsky’s part one of a look at his own company’s software development process. Spolsky, author of User Interface Design for Programmers is quickly becoming an important voice on the state of the art in development.

Proud to be a voice for peace

[The following entry is a letter to the editor I sent today to the San Jose Mercury News, my local newspaper.]

Becky Hobson (Letters, Oct. 11) suggests that “only by living our lives in peace will that peace spread out and ‘infect’ everyone around us.” This is typical of the pacifist responses I have read in the past four weeks and frankly I’m fed up. There’s one big thing wrong with it: the terrorists who claimed over 5,000 lives last month aren’t get infected and more likely have taken a vaccine to inoculate themselves. All my life I have been for peace and against violence in all forms from the personal to national, but there are times when violence is necessary, specifically when a person or country needs to defend themselves against attack.

In the face of this, protestors continue to speak out but I have two questions for them: Are you ready to sit still while al-Quaeda delivers the next killing strike to America or one of our allies? If you’re not, how do you suggest we prevent that tragedy?

[I would link to Ms. Hobson’s letter but this paper does not provide free access to their permanent archives.]