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Doug 2:38 am on February 28, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: Politics

I often don’t agree completely with the views Stephen Den Beste expresses over at USS Clueless, but I always respect the engineering-like rigor he draws on when formulating his views. He’s posted several thought provoking analyses of the Iraq situation over the past few days. Again, I don’t agree with everything he says, but I find he expresses himself a great deal more logically and rationally than much of the “no war, peace at any price” crowd manages to do.

This piece from today is possibly the best of the lot so far. If Stephen’s right, this explains a very great deal of what I’ve perceived as logical inconsistencies in the Bush approach to this conflict. Indeed, this is the only case I’ve read thus far that actually does make sense to me.

That isn’t to say I completely buy this argument, or have suddenly developed an enthusiasm for a war in Iraq. I think a lot of the other actions of the Bush administration on the international stage are inconsistent with the argument Stephen makes. I don’t see much evidence of this depth of strategic thinking on the part of the current U.S. government. I do think there’s a significant personal element in Bush’s desire to “get the guy who tried to kill my daddy.” I also don’t trust these assholes further than I can kick an anvil.

On the other hand, I feel a growing disgust over the antics of many in the anti-war movement. The “blood for oil” argument is totally spurious. The tactic of trying to silence Iraqi voices who are testifying as to the horrors Saddam Hussein has perpetrated on his own people because these voices detract from the political agenda of some of the far left is reprehensible. The anti-Semitism and hate speech from the anti-war crowd is every bit as disturbing in the cause of peace as it is in the cause of war. And please, people, can we knock off the pathetic street theater crap? It’s not only pathetic, it’s totally ineffective. Thank Ghu for voices like Senator Robert Byrd.

I’m deeply ambivalent about what’s going on. Saddam Hussein is clearly as crazy as a sack of assholes and the world would doubtless be a better place for his absence from it. Liberalization of Arab culture is something that needs to happen if we want to avoid a clash between their culture and ours that results in a whole big bunch of corpses. I’m just not sure that this is the best path. I’m not sure that this isn’t going to result in an increase in terrorism rather than a reduction. I don’t know that I believe that the end result of our current strategy will result in the democratization of the Middle East, even if we do end up with a more democratic Iraq.

I do want to go on record though, as having deep disdain for the French long before it was trendy to do so…
Doug 1:39 am on February 28, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: Personal

I managed to work the expression “crazy as a sack of assholes” into conversations twice today. Interestingly, although the conversations were with different people, I was referring to the same person both times.

This expression isn’t a part of my regular repertoire. I (re)discovered it last night while re-reading Virtual Light. It sounds enough like something I’d say, though, that I think I may adopt it as my own. Thanks, Mr. Gibson!
Doug 3:37 am on February 26, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: site news

The problem with trying to write code when you’re half asleep is that you spend four times as long trying to find and fix the little simple stuff that makes everything else break.

After futzing around for far too long with it tonight, I finally upgraded the RSS feed here to RSS 2.0. The damn thing even validates. If your aggregator supports it, you should now see subjects and publication dates for all posts, too.

I’m going to bed now…
Doug 1:35 am on February 24, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: Personal

I wanted to put up some pictures from our recent trip to Ireland, but since all I shot was video, I was faced with doing a bunch of frame grabs from the footage I shot if I wanted to pull a gallery together. The frame grabs don’t look that great, so rather than post a bunch of blurry photos, I opted instead to output a streaming web movie from iMovie.

The movie runs about seven minutes and is around 13Mb. Quicktime required.
Doug 3:33 am on February 23, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: Books

On the plane home last week from Ireland, I read Pattern Recognition. The week before last I re-read Neuromancer and Count Zero, and this week Mona Lisa Overdrive is on the agenda. Yesterday, I ran across this article that Dori blogged.

Adding two and two together prompted me to start thinking about Gibson’s writing and the worlds he portrays. Gibson writes like a poet, and I thoroughly enjoy his work, but there’s something really different about it that always gives me pause when I finish one of his books.

It struck me today that Gibson’s books seem to reflect a sense of introversion, particularly expressed through his characters. One of the criticisms I’ve read about Gibson is that while he’s hell on characterization, nothing much seems to happen, in terms of action, in his books. Gibson’s characters seem to do a lot of thinking, and are often portrayed as somewhat anti-social or solitary. Cayce’s “allergies” to popular logos and brands in Pattern Recognition could be interpreted as a form of introversion, I think.

What struck me the most, however, was how Gibson’s depiction of technology reinforces this feel of introversion in his work. Contrast Cory ~~Doctrow’s~~ Doctorow’s (Sorry Cory!) portrayal of technology in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom or Liberation Spectrum to Gibson’s, in either the Neuromancer or Virtual Light trilogies. Cory focuses a great deal on how technology facilities social interaction, from communications to social structure. Gibson tends to focus on the interaction between human and machine, on the internal changes technology provokes in his characters, or the evolution of the technology itself into something more than human.

I certainly wouldn’t draw any conclusions from any of this about Gibson himself; I have no idea if he’s particularly introverted. Nor do I want to overplay this idea into claiming that there’s some major central theme of introversion in all of Gibson’s work. It just seems like there is more of an introverted atmosphere in Gibson’s work than a lot of other SF.
Doug 2:34 am on February 23, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: Personal

After last weekend’s winter storm, we were up to almost 39 inches of snow for this winter. Today, after dropping a half-inch of rain on us this morning, the weather turned colder and we’ve had about an inch of snow an hour since around 2:00 this afternoon. Now the wind is kicking up, so we’re going to get plenty of blowing and drifting, too.

Since the temperature is still not far below freezing, the snow is very wet, so the roads are a complete mess. From what we can see on the news, it looks like more cars are off the road than on it. Driving right now is hazardous to your health.

I took advantage of being cooped up inside to edit the video I shot in Ireland. I ran up a couple of Video CD’s of it (damn, I wish I had a DVD-R drive!), as well as spooling out an archival copy to video tape. If I get ambitious I’ll make a streaming copy to post here.

The best part? They’re forecasting another storm for Sunday night.

If any of you Westerners that are desperate for moisture can figure out how to truck any of this crap out your way, you’re welcome to it.
Doug 2:23 am on February 21, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: computing

Konfabulator rocks. I may have to take the time to learn how to write widgets for this thing. Uber-cool. Nice to see Arlo Rose back in the saddle again.
Doug 2:04 am on February 21, 2003 | 0 | # |
Tags: Personal

Terri and I just returned from a weekend in Ireland. Actually, we returned Sunday, but I’ve been so jet-lagged and bogged down at work that I’m only just now getting around to writing about it!

It was a quick trip, just a couple of days, but I put it together for her as a sort of combined Valentine’s Day/birthday/Christmas present. We stayed at Ashford Castle. It was definitely a neat experience, combining the weekend in a castle with a 350 acre estate and the nearby village of Cong, where the John Wayne film The Quiet Man was filmed.

We both thoroughly enjoyed the trip, even though driving on Irish roads for the first time in one’s life after being stuck on a plane for 11 hours is a bit of a harrowing experience. The weather was actually quite nice the entire time we were there, though it had been raining just before we arrived, and resumed raining shortly after we left. The countryside is beautiful, and I was overwhelmed by the palpable sense of history that pervades the land. It was quite the experience to stand in the ruins of an 8th century abbey in Cong, and realize that the stones I was standing on were hundreds of years older than the oldest European structure I’d ever seen back home. Seeing a stone circle and cairn that were 3000-4000 years old was even more intense.

As I’d always heard, the Irish themselves were some of the most friendly people I’ve ever run across. People will stop and talk with you at the drop of a hat, and are clearly pleased that you’re interested in their country. The Irish were clearly nervous though about the geopolitical situation; nearly every conversation turned to Iraq. It was also a little uncomfortable at times, seeing the front page of every paper covered with stories about the UN, NATO, and the peace protests.

I only wish we could have stayed for a couple of weeks rather than a couple of days. We’ll definitely go back.
Doug 12:52 am on February 2, 2003 | 0 | # |

I couldn’t agree more with the sentiments expressed by Glenn Reynolds in this post. The greatest positive outcome that could come from the loss of Columbia is the re-doubling of our efforts to push forward the frontiers of space exploration, and through that human understanding of the Cosmos. Indeed, post-Challenger, we have become too cautious, too willing to focus only on the short-term, practical, and “safe” aspects of space exploration. Perhaps this disaster can act as a spur to overcome some of the inertia created by the Challenger disaster. In this time of world-wide horrors and fears, we all need something to inspire us. Peaceful, multi-national exploration of space could be that thing.

I find the appalling reaction coming from certain international sources simply unacceptable. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to hear such rhetoric from Iraq, given the current situation. That doesn’t make it acceptable, just unsurprising. I find myself agreeing with Mr. Reynold’s take on it:

Iraq — whose rocketry program aims not at the stars, but at lobbing anthrax toward Tel Aviv — felt differently, expressing pleasure that many Americans may decide to hold against them later.

As for the asinine comments of the CBC interviewer, well, I can only hope that she’s sacked so fast it gives her whiplash. Her approach of politicizing a completely apolitical tragedy reeks of the worst sort of insensitivity and unprofessionalism. Canadians frequently criticize Americans and America media for what we say and do. I sincerely hope we start hearing some criticism of the CBC from Canadians over this incident.

Other comments and speculation that I’ve read to the effect that somehow Bush contrived this whole thing, or that somehow we “deserved” this (but which I won’t dignify by linking to) are enough to make me sick. It’s a fair call to criticize American political actions if you don’t agree with them. I could even deal with the attitude among some non-Americans that 9/11 shouldn’t have been surprising, tragic as it was. These comments today though - well, what they reveal is that misguided, sick and pathetic people aren’t an exclusively American commodity. I pity the people who are making these sorts of remarks today. Clearly, their friends should help them get some psychiatric treatment soon.

This wasn’t an American loss - it was a loss for all humanity. The loss of human life itself was a terrible thing, made worse by the fact that it was televised world-wide, and repeated ad naseum. It was no worse though than the constant and senseless loss of life nearly every day in Israel and Palestine or the terrible train crash today in Zimbabwe. The deeper tragedy here is the loss of opportunity for all humanity that will undoubtedly result from halted Shuttle missions, lost and delayed experiments, perhaps even the temporary closure of the International Space Station. The deeper tragedy lies in the potential for those who have always opposed human exploration of space to strengthen their case in the name of “safety,” practicality, and cost savings. The deeper tragedy lies in the death of dreams.

We must push forward. The greatest tribute we can pay to those who died this morning in the skies above Texas is to allow their hopes, dreams, and memories to spur us ever onward in our quest for the stars.
Doug 8:42 pm on February 1, 2003 | 0 | # |

Jack Cluth of the People’s Republic of Seabrook has a particularly moving post. His son Adam is close friends with the son of Columbia’s mission commander.

I’m devastated by this. I can’t imagine the grief of the families involved. Listening to the grief in the voices of the NASA shuttle program administrators giving a press conference right now is excruciating.