Month: August 2004

Preparedness

This Modern World has a nice item about the upcoming “National Preparedness Month”, scheduled to be kicked off by Tom Ridge on September 9th.

Per TMW:

Why September 9th? That’s awfully late, if it’s supposed to be the entire month. My guess, thinking like Karl Rove: this year’s 9/11 anniversary falls on a Saturday, so an announcement on the date or even Friday would only get a burst of free media on a weekend. But by timing it for the 6 pm news on Thursday, it’ll reach the Friday papers, and thus be fully-injected into all of the emotion-laden anniversary coverage, plus the Sunday morning talk shows.

The idea, obviously, is to throw a large amount of focus, possibly for weeks on end, on the only issue on which Bush outpolls Kerry. And of course this will come on the heels of the GOP convention. So where the Democrats’ post-convention media got blitzed with terror warnings based on years-old intelligence, the Republicans’ afterglow might well be favorably extended.

Indeed. But here’s the real point of the whole thing (emphasis original):

It’s three years after 9/11, and less than three months before an election, and now we get a National Preparedness Month.

And yes, let’s ask Bush and Tom Ridge the simple question: what the hell do these people think the previous 35 months were?

Those Who Fail To Remember History

In this case, the 2000 year old classic, Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War”. In Chapter 13 Sun Tzu discusses spies:

There are five kinds of spies used: Local spies, internal spies, double spies, dead spies, and living spies.

When all five are used, and no one knows their Way, it is called the divine organization, and is the ruler’s treasure.

This Administration, however, seeems to have created a 6th kind of spy – the spy that you burn to try to gain internal political benefit.

U.S. officials providing justification for anti-terrorism alerts revealed details about a Pakistani secret agent, and confirmed his name while he was working under cover in a sting operation, Pakistani sources say.

A Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters on Friday that Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested in Lahore secretly last month, had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al Qaeda operatives when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.

And this isn’t the first time – need I mention Valerie Plame?

Another lesson this administration should have learned about spies before invading Iraq but did not can also be found in Sun Tzu (emplhasis added) –

Only the wisest ruler can use spies; only the most benevolent and upright general can use spies, and only the most alert and observant person can get the truth using spies.

It is subtle, subtle!

PC Update

The computer is more or less functional again, although I have been dragging my feet reinstalling software packages. I’m only about halfway through that particular quagmire so far. I am very tired of reinstalling and resetting all the little settings and options and filters to get things the way I like them, but of course until I do get them all set just so, it doesn’t feel like I’m using “my” computer.

The only good thing about this whole mess is it has caused me to take a hard look at all the crap I have installed and question exactly how much of it I really need to have on my system. For example, do I really need WinZip AND WinRAR? Multiple FTP clients and HTML editors? Old games that I used to like but haven’t played in ages? Bottom line, NO.

Anti-semitism in SF

I’m in a pretty foul mood from trying to get my system rebuilt (have just a handful of programs reinstalled so far) and then I find this in my Gmail in-box: Hate Crime in SF

Swastikas were scrawled over as many as 50 campaign signs in a hate crime against an Israeli-American Richmond District businessman seeking election to the Board of Supervisors.

The target of the anti-Semitic vandalism spree was David Heller, president of the Geary Boulevard Merchant Association and first-time candidate for supervisor in District 1.

Upon arriving to work Monday morning, Heller was inundated with messages from business owners whose windows had been defaced with swastikas over the weekend. In each reported incident, the campaign sign, which features Heller’s picture, was taped to the inside of the store window and the vandal used a black marker to superimpose a swastika and a Star of David symbol in front of Heller’s face on the outside of the glass.

I lived the the Richmond district for 2 and a half years. It’s a great place to live and is arguably the most overtly Jewish section of the city; there’s three synagogues and one of the city’s two kosher butchers in the area where this hate crime happened. Anti-semitism is always upsetting but when it hits close to home like this it’s also scary.

What also concerns me is that a number of the businesses who were displaying signs for Hiller have now pulled then out of their windows becasue they’re concerned about the potential for further vandalism – which hurts his campaign. Now I don’t know anything about Hiller as a condidate but when people can be scared into not supporting a candidate for fear of violence there is something very wrong going on.

Bleh.

Back to rebuilding my system.

More PC Suckiness

As in computers. The hard drive Scott gave me to put into my rebuilt computer rolled over and died tonight. So tomorrow I have to go buy a new hard drive and start the tedious process of reinstalling my whole system AGAIN. 2 more days down the drain.

I think I sucessfully saved my most recent data before the drive completely died, but I won’t know for sure until I reinstall. At worst, I lost 2 weeks of work and emails, plus a few odds and ends like the 4 new iTunes I bought last week.

I am so very not happy right now.

American Newspapers

Sent to me by my sister. I have no idea who wrote it originally.

A Guide to U.S. Newspapers

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn’t have to leave L.A. to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country, and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority, feminist atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.

10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

My addendum:

11. New York Newsday is read by the people who used to read the New York Daily News but have moved to Long Island. They still don’t care who runs the country as long as they get a seat on the train, but now their commute is twice as long.