June 2004 Archives

So, Jack Ryan was accused by his wife of taking her to a sex club with his wife, where he got drunk and acted in a crude manner, including asking her for public sex at *gasp* a sex club.

Now, according to
CNN.com
he's considering dropping out of the Senate race in Illinois.

Hey, you know I don't want any Republicans in public office, but this is ridiculous. First, he says it never happened. But, second, even if it did happen, he didn't force her to do anything. Third, they were married at the time. Last I heard it was okay, even with conservatives, to proposition your wife for sex.

Come on people! He's a young, good looking guy, married to a young good looking woman. They had sex. Probably a lot of it (after all, they had kids). He wanted to do something that she didn't do. They worked it out. That's between them. It does not, in any way, make him a poor choice for senator. The fact that he's a conservative, pro-life, gun lover, homophobe should be the real reason to keep him out of the senate.

In my continuing quest to blog more easily using my PDA, I'm trying two new programs - Spell5 (a spellchecker) and SiED a text editor.

I still think Sony's MemoPad is the best tool for writing on my PDA. The great thing about it is auto-capitalization and full screen mode.

Spell5 is a great tool, though. Put text on the clipboard, open Spell5, check the spelling, go back to your application and paste.

On the November ballot in Berkeley will be a measure to decriminalize prostitution. Criminalizing prostitution does nothing to stop it, and promotes violence against women.

Although the vote is symbolic (anti-prostitution laws are set at the state level), if you live in Berkeley, please vote for this measure.

The American Bar Association (ABA) released a study that says the U.S. Justice system relies too heavily on imprisoning people and needs to consider more effective alternatives. You can see a synopsis of the study at the Arizona Central (actually written for the LA Times, but I couldn't find the article there).

The Washington Post has a bunch of the Bush Administration Documents on Interrogation (washingtonpost.com). Take a look. Read the real documents. Then see what you think.

A Swiss court has cleared the way for Gypsies to sue IBM for its involvement in the Holocaust. I feel for the pain that the survivors and descendents of Holocaust victims have, but this is foolish. Some IBM computational machines were used by the Nazis, so what? I bet they also used other tools (like hammers) made by other companies. Oh, and don't forget the farmers that grew the food that the Nazi's ate. You see how far this can go, right?

Even beyond that, I believe that individuals should be held responsible for their actions during war, not corporations.

IBM can't use that argument, though, because corporations depend on being legally defined as individuals. It helps them in many ways. For example, since they are treated as individuals, California Prop 9 applies to them. You don't have to look any further than that to see why California's budget is such a mess. The longer a company owns a piece of land the lower its tax bill will be.

Okay, I think George Bush is a bad president, but I have to be honest and admit that he approved policy that said all prisoners should be treated humanely even if they are not covered by the rules of the Geneva convention.

That doesn't, however, excuse him from the blame of the torture and mistreatment.

The prisoners were tortured under his watch. The Bush administration knew about it and didn't stop it. In the end, he must either accept responsibility, or admit that he cannot control his administration.

Richard Cohen has a great op-ed piece - Ideology blinded Cheney that sums up what I believe about the Bush administration. They aren't evil. They haven't intentionally done wrong. What they have done is blindly followed their ideology, and thus, missed the true picture.

It's a good lesson for all of us. Next time someone you don't agree with is trying to tell you something, listen closely. The higher the stakes, and the more you feel yourself resisting, them more you should listen. They might be right. Even if they aren't, if you listen to them, they might listen to you. It'd be nice to have less shouting and more listening.

Jesse Jackson's article Abuse of power makes U.S. weak in the Chicago Sun Times is a very interesting read on what we've lost by going to war with Iraq.

Were there valid reasons to invade Iraq? Sure. There are valid reasons to invade nearly every fascist state. However, the Bush administration told the US public there was an imminent threat from Iraq, both directly (weapons of mass destruction) and indirectly through its connections to al-Qaida. Neither of those are true.

Did we defeat Saddam Hussein? Sure. Have we helped Iraq? That's yet to be seen (look at what happened when we helped Afghanistan defeat the USSR). What we do know now is that America has, for the first time since the Spanish-American war, engaged in a large scale military attack without provocation.

It's going to take a long time to make up for this. I just hope that when John Kerry gets elected he starts this country on the right path.

According toNew Scientist if you smoke, you'll die 10 years early.

Hey, I don't care if you smoke, it doesn't bother me. Just realize what you are giving up.

I've been using mo:Blog on and off for a few months now, and I figured it was time to buy it.

There are a bunch of missing features, but it's the best thing available for writing blog entries on my PDA.

Here are my feature requests:

• Spell checker
  
• Work with Blogger title tags
  
• Support Sony HiRes+
  
• Support "View Blog" using PDA browser
  
• Better list support
  
• Include "Post" (not publish) option
  
• When trying to connect to the network, if the hardware needed for the network connection (like Bluetooth) is off, offer to turn it on.
  
• An option to auto-capitalize the word after line breaks and end of sentence punctuation.

Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has got to go. Now he admits that he personally gave the order to hide an Iraqi prisoner so deep that even the International Red Cross wasn't notified.

This has been suggested before. The thing that makes this violation worse for Rumsfeld is that he is admitting it was his action, not some general, or poor soldier.

More from the Washington post, David Cole, shows the parallels between the Palmer raids of 1919-1920 and the Bush administrations attacks on the civil liberties of Arabs in the US sine the attacks on September 11th, 2001.

Read it. Let's not slip back into McCarthyism. Vote against George Bush this November.

I've stayed away from this issue for a while because I'm engaged in an intellectual and moral struggle over it. I know torture is wrong, yet I am realistic enough to understand that one person's torture is another's tough interrogation. I also understand that it is not uncommon for individuals to either exaggerate or make out whole cloth stories that are negative about their enemies. Now, though, it's gone beyond that. It's not the pictures that changed my mind (I've purposely ignored the pictures because they can be so misleading), it's the memos.

In an oped piece in the Washington post, Anne Applebaum does a great job explaining four damning memos.

Our president may be able to plausibly deny understanding the implications of his daily brief on threatened al-Queda attack on the US, but, in my opinion, no capable chief executive/commander in chief could be so out of touch with the workings of his organization to be able to deny understanding that government policy towards prisoners had become one that suggested torture. My conclusion is that either George W. Bush is incompetent, or he knew that prisoners were being tortured.

A vote to re-elect Bush is a vote to re-elect an incompetent administrator (quite likely true when you look at his history as a business man) and/or a vote to re-elect a shrewd international criminal who isn't afraid to flaunt national and international laws and treaties to accomplish what he believes to be just results.

So, if you want to vote for Bush, I want to know, which do you prefer - incompetence or legal and moral corruption?

The Globe and Mail has a very interesting article on the how Ronald Reagan contributed to the end of the cold war.

If you think that Reagan did much more than slow down the end of the cold war, you really should read the article. I'd forgotten about some of the details like Reagan's refusal to sign the arms reduction treat at the famous Reykjavik.

According to a study commissioned by the New York Nightlife Association, the ban on smoking in bars in New York has had a negative economic impact on bars. [You can see an article about the study in the Business Review.]

It may or may not be true (seems to the that the association that commissioned the report might be a bit biased), but so what? Government regulation, especially when it comes to public health, shouldn't be affected by economic pressures. Think where that would take us.

Restaurant owner: If the government forces me to buy quality ingredients, and store them safely, I'll lose money!

Landlord: If the government forces me to clean out that lead paint and asbestos before I rent an apartment, I'll lose money!

PG&E: If the government forces us to clean up our spent nuclear waste, we'll lose money!

Look, some things mean more than money. Public health is clearly one of them. Employees in bars have been shown to be healthier in a smoke free environment. Stick to your guns, New York. Take care of the health of your citizens.

Turning on Blogger comments threw off my templates, so I'm using a stock template for now. Once I get some time to figure out what I have to change, I'll be switching back.

Blogger now supports comments. This is a test to see how they work.

For my birthday I got a bluetooth earpiece for my mobile phone. It's great, but there's a lot of static. I contacted the manufacturer who knew what my problem was - the firmware on my Sony Ericsson T616. I need to upgrade the firmware to use my phone well.

Fine. I know updating firmware is easy. I've done it on lots of electronics, from my PC to my router to my DVD player. No stress.

So, I contacted my cell phone provider, AT&T Wireless via a live tech support chat (BTW, major kudos to AT&T Wireless on this tool). They don't do firmware upgrades. If I really need one (which they doubt), I need to contact the phone manufacturer.

Okay, that's lame, but I can understand it. After all, I didn't go to Best Buy to get the new firmware for my DVD player.

So, I spent about 20 minutes on the web trying to find a contact number for Sony Ericsson (BTW, if you have a business, and you have a website for that business, put your phone number on every page). I finally did find one and called. Out of service, but the recording did give me another number.

I talked to a nice woman with a light Scandinavian accent. Based on when I purchased my phone, she told me I had the latest firmware. I didn't. I already knew that. The T616 has hidden service menu that allows you to see the firmware version. To find it and other nifty things, see Howard Forums.

Then she told me that the manufacturer of the Bluetooth earpiece was wrong. Maybe, but there's no way to know until I try what they told me to do, right? So I still want to upgrade it.

Then she said, "We don't certify our phones to work with non-Sony Ericsson Bluetooth earpieces, so you'll have to pay $37 for us to upgrade your firmware". Ouch. But I'm a geek, and I want my earpiece to work, so I asked her where I could go to get it upgraded. She told me I had to mail it to them, and they would do it.

Hmm. That didn't sound good to me. I asked her if there weren't some other way to do it. She said that their only service center is in [South|North] Carolina.

So I'm thinking, okay, two days to send it overnight, a couple of days for them to work on it, and then another couple of days to get it back. I'm without my phone for a week. "Let me call you back", I said, and hung up.

I still couldn't believe anyone would run a company like this. So I spent some more time looking around at Howards Forum. Lots of info on firmware upgrades, everything from home brewed solutions to mail in centers. Then I saw a post claiming that the backlog at Sony Ericsson for upgrading the firmware was over two week! No way am I living without my phone for more than two weeks.

I've since found someone in Oakland that will upgrade my firmware, and unlock it as well for $25, and he'll do it on a walk-in. So, I save $12, get more help, and get it faster.

This is, of course, shady. This guy probably doesn't have any legal right to use the tools or the firmware to flash my phone. I'm probably going to (gasp!) void my warranty.

Here's each point where my problem could have been solved without me having to resort to this:

• The Bluetooth headset should have worked without my phone needing an upgrade to the phone. If it doesn't, they should list that as a known problem and provide a solution.
  
• AT&T Wireless should have upgraded my flash or offered me a new phone (at a discount)
  
• Sony Ericsson should make it easy to upgrade their phones, and they should encourage cell phone providers to do it for free by giving them training and equipment.
  

I'm not a crook. I tried to get help from everyone. I'm willing to pay for it. This is the thing that so many companies don't get - people are willing to pay to get what they want. Take our money, but give us what you promised us. Make it easy for us to solve our problems. Don't pass the buck.

In today's Chronicle, Sutter Health Care has an advertisement with the heading "Everyone Agrees the Health Care Financing System is Sick". One of the points they make is that they are "... working with our elected leaders to press for universal health care coverage".

It's odd, yet refreshing to me, to see a insurance company (albeit, a not-for-profit insurance company) pushing for universal health care. I hope that more health organizations and professionals start doing the same.

Health care is an important piece of a society. When people are healthy, society benefits. There are great examples throughout history, including England's fight against cholera in London. Let's make health care a basic part of life, like education, not a luxury.

I feel for the family and friends that were close to Ronald Reagan. Losing a loved one is always a difficult thing.

Along with stories mourning the passing of the man, are stories about his political legacy, many of them full of glowing praise. The praise usually centers around three things - lowering taxes, ending the cold war, and integrity. I want to talk about those things.

First, taxes were not lowered during Reagan's eight years in office. Instead, the tax burden was shifted from the wealthy to the middle class.

Second, Ronald Reagan did not end the Cold War. He, of course, was involved in ending it, just as every American president since Kennedy has been, but he also prolonged it with his saber rattling and bullying.

Third, although he may have had personal integrity, Reagan did not have political integrity. For example, he ran on a platform of lowering the national deficit. Instead it ballooned from $910 billion to $2.6 trillion. He told people to trust him, then he illegally funded the Contras.

Let's be honest about Reagan's true legacy. His legacy is style over substance. The country loved his public face and ignored the reality of his presidency.