The Daily Diversion Archive For March, 2003

Monday March 10, 2003

My friend Mike's mom died last week. She was in her early '60s and probably should have lived longer. I can tell by the way Mike looked that she will be missed greatly.

As for me, it's been a week. The weather has been cold. Brutus doesn't want to stay out in it. He starts to limp and hold paws out of the snow after just a couple of rounds of fetch. Although we got some snow, it has just been too cold to go out and romp around in it.

Not that I do too much romping, I'll have you know.

I had a rather large windfall of music last week. It's nice to have some new tunes to listen to. I also found out that my music share drive on my server downstairs was in quite a messed-up state. It took a couple of hours of matching tunes with properly labelled directories to get it all ship-shape. What's the point of having tunes when you can't find them to listen to them?

I'm coming close to being able to record LP records to mp3. This should be big fun to dust off the old LPs. I'm going to start with the stuff that I just won't be able to find anywhere else. Then I'll catch some of the more readily available albums. Then most of the collection will be going somewhere else. It's not that I want to get rid of these albums, it's just that I no longer even maintain a record player so it's kinda tough to justify having all these records lying about taking up space.

Monday March 17, 2003

So it's been a pain to even update this blog thing even weekly. I just don't have much to say these days. I had a lot to say in the past, but I find myself in a lather about something fairly rarely these days. I have a few ideas why.

It could be that I'm getting older. I am 35 years old. It could also be that I'm happier. I would agree to this. It is probably a combination of reasons, but the primary reason I have less to rant about is that I'm not getting pissed off daily by my surroundings. We have a nice house. It needs nothing. We have nice cars. They're not new and not super-fabulous, but they certainly get the job done. We have a nice yard and I'm not out getting exposed to the 'hood with the dog 3 times daily. No, we have all these wonderful things to be thankful for. The biggest thing on this list is that I'm no longer living in a neighborhood where people aren't living by the same rules as I am.

I don't think I can stress enough how much stress this causes. If you're sitting in your living room, reading a book and a BOOOOOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOOOOOOOM sound comes in from a car passing by in the street, it can really get to you.

Here's my perspective:
I wouldn't put that kind of money into a car stereo. I have better things to do with my money than give myself the ability to simultaneously broadcast my musical tastes to an unwilling world and to make myself deaf. I just don't see any value in that decision at all. I have other hobbies. I am not my car. I don't care what my car says about me. I don't like to foist my tastes/opinions/beliefs on others. I don't feel the need to broadcast my lifestyle. I'm not lookin' to hook up. I do care about not pissing other people off (mostly). If I'm going to pick a fight with someone, it sure as hell isn't going to be about music. If I want to drive around my neighborhood, I'd much prefer to not even be noticed. Being invisible is cool.

There are lots more things that I could name that piss me off about boom cars and the lifestyles of their owners, but it's not just about boom cars. I'll say this: The right of other people to broadcast their music in the audible airwaves stops at my front door.

It should be obvious that a person who wants a boom car is operating under a far different set of rules than the ones I'm following. Where in "do onto others" is there room for a boom car?

There were other issues about the old neighborhood that I didn't care for as well. Most of these things had to do with the way people raised their children, but there were other issues that drove me nuts as well. If you want examples, dig through the archives on this site. It should cough up plenty.

My point is this: I don't have to deal with that crap anymore. Where we live now, there isn't anywhere near as much annoying shit going on as there was back in the old neighborhood. The old 'hood made me cranky.

That's not to say that I don't have a lot to write about still, it just seems less urgent to write about it.

That could change, though.

Wednesday March 19, 2003

So I was thinking the other night about how cool it is to have DSL. It's cool, by the way. I know that all you folks in dial-up hell think the broadbanderati suck a boatload of ass for our huge pipes to the internet, but let me assure you that DSL is the shit. Guarandamnteed.

It has come to my attention lately that it is possible to have too much information flowing through the broadband pipe so that one could want and need more pipe. I'm not thinking seriously about upgrading my service, but it could happen someday. I was playing CounterStrike last night and I got totally lagged by some web bot spidering my site. It took a huge bite--my connection was fragged for at least a minute--so that I got bumped off the server I usually play on. This is not acceptable. I may have to start telling the spiderbots to chill out during the prime time hours. It's just not convenient for me to have to deal with getting my gaming interrupted by some bot scanning my website.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Piss and moan. Children in Africa are starving and all I have to bitch about is an over-used broadband connection. Blah, blah, blah. Well it is a pain, although not in the same league as hunger pain.

We've got to keep a level head here.

Any bets on how many hours Saddam has left?

The anti-waristas are working themselves into a lather over this, but I've yet to hear anything constructive from their camp as to why we shouldn't go to war. The slogans are trite and don't really mean a lot when you consider that there will be people dying in this operation.

No blood for oil. Fine. But this war really isn't about oil, is it? It's about performing an assholectomy on Iraq. Oil will be a nice by-product eventually, but we won't own it, we'll just be consuming it as always. After we put out the oil well fires, that is. I'm sure Mr. Peaceandlove will do his level best to put his fields to the torch just like in '91. No need to leave well enough alone. Anyway, oil revenue will rebuild Iraq. Yes, their production may drive prices down somewhat, but who does that benefit? Well, you and me and the SUV driving suburbanites. Oh, and the oil companies. Oh, and their stockholders (you and me again, I guess). Oh, and it may do a bunch of good toward destabilizing the House of Saud so that we can finally start going after the folks really doing the dirt and supporting the bad guys.

War kills people and other living things. So do dictators. As a matter of fact, I'd bet if you added up all the people killed by dictators in the 20th century, there are probably more dead at the bottom of that column of death than in the total for all wars in the 20th century. And you can surrender in war. What removes dictators? War. Sometimes war is better than the alternatives to war.

George Bush is not an elected President. This may well be true. However, he'll get his in another year and change if he fucks this up, so be patient. I don't like the man, his beliefs, his party, his morals and his home state, but he does currently hold the Office of the President of the United States of America and as long as he does, he gets the respect the Office deserves. At least from me.

War is not the answer? Well this is wrong. War is an option. It is the last tool in the diplomacy bag. If all else fails, then war it must be. Some folks just don't negotiate in good faith. If you don't have war as an option, then you just keep on having to remind the little stinker you're dealing with to "play nice" and come to the bargaining table again and again. They will keep on saying "we'll play fair, we'll follow the rules...", but in reality, they have no intention on voluntarily stopping whatever it is that they're doing. Iraq and Saddam Hussein's dealings with the UN are a perfect example of this. Iraq was to disarm 12 years ago. We have a treaty signed by their government that says that they will disarm. There have been numerous UN resolutions and sanctions in these 12 years all to get him to do what he has yet to do. That's to hand over the goods. With non-rational actors, the benefits (stoppage of conflict) can never precede the requests (to disarm). Once the bad thing stops, they've gotten what they want and it doesn't matter what they were supposed to do so we don't start again. We stopped and it's funny how the games started at that point starting with a cease-fire agreement negotiated in bad faith. War, not the threat of war stops this shit cold.

Give Peace a Chance. Peace doesn't happen in a vacuum. What's the definition of peace? Is it the absence of war? Is it a world-wide mind set that war can't happen? I think that most folks around these parts would agree that giving peace a chance is a pretty cool idea. I think the US could be safely labeled as the peacemaker of the world. Who brokers peace treaties? We do. The UN does as well, but when the peace needs to be enforced, who gets that nasty job? We do. Who got attacked in Somalia trying to feed the people there? We did. We fed people who other people wanted to be starving. In other words, feeding people in Somalia intruded on certain warlords' turf who wanted to use food as a weapon. They got nasty and then our humanitarian effort turned into some kind of god-awful we're helping them but hey don't want our help thing. We gave peace a chance. They wanted nothing of it. That's the problem with simple phrases like these: It's all very good to want these lofty goals. It's all very well and nice to be able to think this way. However, lots of people don't want these lofty goals and lots more want nothing but leverage over the bad guy on the other side of the river.

Think of Communism as case in point here. In theory it's very attractive. Everyone gets what they need. Nobody goes hungry. Everyone works for everyone else and everyone else benefits. There's no property to fight over because we all own everything. When it all fits together and when everyone participating is on the same page, it works. Unfortunately all it takes is for someone to perceive that someone else isn't pulling as hard as they could to bring this whole house of cards down. People aren't ready for such lofty goals as this. People like stuff. Their own stuff. I like my stuff. I AM a materialist to a certain extent. Why would I work hard if everything was handed to me whether I worked hard or slacked off? Where's my motivation here? There isn't any. It's just a lofty goal.

The real problem with Communism is how it's going to be implemented. The benevolent dictator thing just doesn't work because power corrupts. Here's Mr. Benevolent-Dictator: Gee it'd be nice to achieve this goal of everyone working for everyone else, but it really sucks to live in a cement-block housing unit. I think the Dictator-For-Life's mansion should look nice so as to impress visiting dignitaries. And I really shouldn't be wearing a Peoples' Uniform. How 'bout a nice tailored suit? I'm a busy guy, too. I'm just too busy to make Peoples' food at the Peoples' Nutrition Center. I need me a cook.

It goes on from there. Soon you have a bureaucrat class and the proles. People want to be in the bureaucrat class because then they can swing deals with people they need in their camp to get them nicer than Peoples' level housing or better than Peoples' level food.

So.

I'm not convinced war is bad. I am convinced that Saddam Hussein will use WMDs if he can to achieve his goals. I'm convinced that he will use them for terrorist blackmail. I'm convinced he'll use them again to put down any threat to his power. I'm convinced he'll go on killing his people and anyone who would oppose him. At this moment in time, to oppose a war in Iraq is like saying that this is their problem and not ours to fix. It's our problem now and it will be a far bigger problem if let to run its course.

Sunday March 23, 2003

So it's war.

I've been watching a ton of TV and listening to the radio and surfing the 'net. I've been astounded at how much information is out there on the war and how much that information doesn't say. Everyone has the same line on news, everyone's saying it, and nobody has any in-depth coverage. Sure, there are talking heads on every network punditing their heads off, but nobody seems to be asking what this stuff really means.

Another thing that's really pissing me off is the different standards news organizations have in the middle-east compared to the west. Sure, Al Jezzera Abu Dhabi TV and Arab News are the official mouthpieces of their respective countries, but it would be nice if they'd check their "facts" before splattering them all over their outlets. Iraq (a notably trustworthy source) says they've downed a coalition plane over Baghdad. The coalition says it didn't happen. Who do you believe? I'd tend to believe the coalition because they've pretty much assured us they'd be shooting straight throughout this war. Sure, that's not much to go on, but given they have to protect their assets in the field, they're still going to tell the world when they've lost a plane.

Iraq, on the other hand, swears up and down they didn't have any missiles that violated their arms restrictions. Yet they've been able to fire a certain missile at least 110 miles--20 miles more than what's allowed. They swear up and down they have no chemical weapons plants, but it seems that the coalition have just overrun one near Basra. They claim that Basra is still under their control. Basra fell. They claim they will beat us. Exactly how are they going to do this? They claim to have some US troops in custody. This may be true, yet Saddam purchased a bunch of US uniforms before the war. I'm going to trust the coalition forces in what they say. Bank on the fact that emanations from the old Iraqi regime will get more and more hysterical and shrill as the parts of the country they control get smaller and smaller.

Neil Conan, NPR host, tipped his cards yesterday. When a person was reporting that there had been some 200 injured in Baghdad and that most of those injured had been injured by falling AAA debris, he pointed out that the AAA guns wouldn't be firing if there weren't planes bombing overhead. This is true, but it just exposed his true feelings on the matter. It's our fault these people were hurt. It's not the Iraqi's fault for shooting metal into the sky and it's not their fault that they didn't plan ahead enough to issue hard hats and to aim the AAA so that their debris would fall in relatively unpopulated areas. No, no, no. That just won't do. It's the US fault for making those Iraqi AAA gunners shoot at the sky to try to shoot down precision-guided bombs that, if they hit their target are likely to kill nobody as nobody in their right mind would be left in those buildings. Nope, they're going to try to shoot one of those things down so that it falls somewhere it's not supposed to go and perhaps kills a bunch of people it wasn't meant to kill.

Neil, you're an ass. Just report the news, willya? What we're fighting here is a diseased regime and a diseased culture. We care about people. We care that as few people as possible will die in this war. That's why we have not turned Baghdad into a Dresden-like fire storm. Do you think that if it were Palestinians attacking Tel-Aviv they would be taking such care? Even though Palestinians live in Tel-Aviv, they would likely be 'martyred' by their brethren behind the trigger because their brethren do not care if people die. They simply do not value life as much as we do. We do not groom our children to die in senseless suicide terrorist attacks. We do not rape and kill our sisters and daughters because they may have brought some kind of disrespect upon our family unit. We do not feed our political opponents into large shredders feet first so that we may delight in the screams of the dying. We do not ululate in the bazaar because a bunch of twisted fucks have flown airliners full of innocent people into skyscrapers full of innocent people. I do not accept this bullshit. For that is what it is. Bullshit.

The middle-east is a toilet and we've just pulled the chain.

So, if you're black and really fucked up, become a Muslim. It seems to make killing other people far more acceptable. It was widely reported before it was whitewashed over that the fellow who fragged and shot is commanding officers with the 101st Airborne in Kuwait was a black American Muslim. Worse, they're also holding a couple of translators as well. Nice. It seems that John Mohammed Dipshit Sniper in DC had similar problems in Gulf War I. This guy will probably get the needle for his efforts.

In less weighty news, the Broadmoor Trophy is back where it belongs today. The University of Minnesota men's hockey team beat CC 4-2 last night for the WCHA title. On to the NCAA tourney! Look for them to get a #1 seed today at 5 when the field will be announced. Go Gophs!

Wednesday March 26, 2003

Should we take a little more care preparing our protest signs, hmmm? This American wants a Mercedes, too.

Somebody finally got me ticked off enough to write into a site to yell. This fella seems to have a problem with the U.S. There are a lot of these folks around and I should have had the presence of mind to not take his bait, but I did. It's hard to hear this stuff, but I guess everyone's entitled to their opinion. I shared mine. Is that so wrong?

We went out to dinner at The Modern again last night. It was excellent as usual.

I'm going to be providing the host machine for an install of FreeBSD 5 at the next TCBUG meeting. The dualpro machine will be getting its install to be the new server. I'm getting pretty psyched up as I expect to get a ton of knowledge out of this meeting. It's gonna be good.

Thursday March 27, 2003

Just thought you all would like to know that the college hockey tourney will be this and next weekend. I've picked the Gophers to take it all again. They may just. I guess we'll see.

I also have tickets to the Twins' home opener against the Jays. It's gonna be a good year.

I also have a huge couple of weeks coming up. I'll be busy as all heck. I'm going to make it, but the distractions are mounting.

Monday March 31, 2003

It will be the Gophers vs. CC for the next game of the NCAA Men's Hockey Tournament. It's in Buffalo, NY. Just so you know.

So Peter Arnett got himself canned, eh? It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I also hear that Heraldo Rivera got himself an escort to the Kuwaiti border and a huge kick in the ass from the 101st Airborne after drawing a map and naming names regarding current and future positions of the 101st. You just gotta know that the trip to Kuwait was a long one for Mr. Rivera. I'd be willing to bet that none of the troops he was with were all that happy about him disclosing their present and future positions.

There's a word I reserve for events and people like this. The word is
DUMBASS
Yes, that's right, DUMBASS. DUMBASS because they just weren't using their brains when both of these guys did what they did.

We had a nice weekend going out for Dim Sum with our friends Susan and Jim. I also spent some time tossing stuff out in the basement. I know I've said this 100 times already, but this time I'm serious. I'm going to be selling the Toshiba Tecra laptop I've had for better than a year now. The new one I bought has completely replaced it and I can't imagine using the other one for much of anything. Sure, the second I ship it off I'll find a usage for it, but I'm hoping that the upcoming server swap will free up the server that served you this page so that if I need a little help running a process, I can give it to this box.

I read this article in this week's City Pages and I found that my take on this war of ours is all wrong. Apparently I've bought the party line that this war is good for the US. This isn't the REAL reason we're at war right now. Nope. We're at war now to extend our empire (?!?). We're at war to annex Iraq. I guess we're an imperialist power and this war is to extend our empire.

When did all this happen? When did we become an imperialist power? I guess I missed that memo. I guess we are thoroughly loathed around the world because we subjugate our conquered peoples, rape their economies and forcibly occupy several countries. I can see how some people might think this is the case, but it just ain't so. People buy our stuff. People want to come here. When they get here, they shoot their mouth off about how bad it is here, but they couldn't even do that in their own countries.

Here's the thing: The U.S. Government doesn't have an empire. Right now the war we're fighting is a war of many ends. We're there to dump Saddam. We're there to eventually stabilize Iraq. We're there to destabilize the surrounding dictatorships. We're there to put teeth in U.N. resolutions. We're there to stomp a regime that would likely traffic in WMDs.

Some folks think our military is the force behind our corporations. In a way this is true. However, once the shooting stops and Iraq gets rebuilt, will they be in better shape? You bet they will be. They will still be a sovereign nation, they will be able to trade with France again, they will be free to practice whatever religion they want and they will be able to stick their thumb in our eye yet again. We will get a nice military base in Iraq for our troubles--much like our bases in Germany. This is hardly going to be an occupying force.

Anyway, no. We don't have an empire. We are THE dominant military force in the world, but America has a strong aversion to staying in places it isn't wanted. We give Puerto Rico opportunities every once in a while of cutting the tie with the U.S. and going it alone, but they never take us up on it. The same goes for Guam, and a bunch of our territories in the South Pacific. I doubt that any of these places really minds being a U.S. territory. Iraq will not be the 51st state. We no more want that than we want Afghanistan. Notice too that Panama and Grenada are still their own places and not part of the U.S. Empire.

Just as it'd be nice for everyone in the U.S. to take responsibility for their actions, so to is it our current policy to leave other countries alone once we're done with our actions there. South Korea is its own state. We have interests there, we sell our goods there, but they don't have to have us there and they don't have to buy our goods. It's as simple as that.