The Flow of Consciousness

Originally, this was going to be at the end of my 9/11 memory post. I split it in order to shorten the post and provide some Monday morning reading material for my audience (Hi, Mom, and you intrepid 30 RSS readers, plus Facebook and Twitter folks).

I want to believe that we were attacked, plain and simple. I want to believe that “they hate us for our freedoms” and all the other party lines we Americans are supposed to say and believe. I don’t buy it. That’s not enough. I don’t buy that “our freedoms” have anything to do with it. No group of people is going to start a war over their target’s propensity for debauchery or violation of archaic religious laws. Those pronouncements are reserved for religious courts, not some silly attempted gesture of genocide.

There’s a reason for it. There are lots of reasons for it. Oil could be one. Our interventionist foreign policy and a tendency to arm both sides of a conflict in an effort to win the hearts of the victor could be another. The loser would just stew and turn against us, having not actually been vanquished.

One might argue that the goal of the terrorist attack was to damage one of our primary financial centers. This succeeded, physically. Sure, our economy sucked for a year or two, but economies can recover. We can rebuild buildings, even iconic ones.

I think a wiser one would argue that the terrorists successfully achieved another goal, intentional or not. Our Congress’s reaction was knee-jerk. The PATRIOT act was passed within two weeks of the attack. This far-reaching legislation was aimed at domestic terrorists. I don’t blame Congress for this. It was the first time we’d been attacked in such a violent manner, and they didn’t know what to do, so they decided that we as a country should roll up like an armadillo and think everyone is against us, even those loyal to us and without reason to be against us. We reacted poorly and rashly; we blindly rallied behind this instead of recognizing the erosion of our rights.

The terrorists pulled down our pants when they noticed our belt wasn’t buckled. We armed ourselves in the sandbox and terrorized other kids in order to find the perpetrators and retaliate. We never did actually buckle our belt after pulling our pants back up. We’ve just pulled them up farther in hopes that our armpits will keep them up.

I also want to believe that it was a setup; that it was an inside job someone in power felt necessary for them to attain more power. There’s evidence out there, but it’s obviously not officially recognized. A day or two before the attacks, Sec. Def. Rumsfeld reported $2.3 trillion untrackable transactions (search the page for “trillion”). Is this related? I don’t know. I can speculate, but doing so is an exercise in futility. Nonetheless, I want the truth to be known. The real truth. I don’t know if it ever will be known, if it’s not already. I’m not even sure it matters. What happened, happened. We can’t go back in time. We can only fix our laws to respect our rights, equally enforce the laws already in place, and recognize that doing so may be a risk we Americans aren’t all willing to take. We can only elect the legislators we feel will represent our views and make the laws how we would if we were in the position.

I digress into areas I’m neither prepared or willing to discuss at length. I’m no conspiracy theorist, nor am I devout debunker.

Only recently has 9/11 directly affected me in a directly observable manner. I fly a lot now for work. I did the scanner once, and after sufficient research I decided that I’d rather not subject myself to its convenience. The price is too complex to calculate. The alternative is both less and more desirable.

I’m about to board a plane. Before I get on that plane, I’ll be searched in a manner formerly preserved only for audiences with drug lords and crime bosses, criminals under arrest, and hernia checks at the doctor’s office. I won’t feel any safer. In fact, I will feel less safe. I’ve never felt less safe than when I fly now, and it’s not because of threat of terrorists. It’s because of the threat that my rights can be abrogated with little recourse, unless I’m willing to miss my flight and engage the authorities in a battle of wits heavily stacked against me.

I could just take a train, I know. However, it’s not much cheaper and it’s travel time is clearly much, much longer.

Either way, I’d have to greatly inconvenience myself in order to assert my right to be secure in my person. It’s tremendously frustrating. I just want to exercise my right to travel freely among the several states, secure in my person and free of unwarranted search and seizure unless I am officially detained as a suspect of a crime or intended crime. Clearly, I’ll do neither, so just let me on my plane without inconveniencing me.

I offer my suggestions, as prayers for change are uplifted only by those who cannot conceive of a solution to their problems.

Give pilots and flight crews, if not licensed individuals as well, the tools they need to protect the plane and its passengers from would-be terrorists. It’s the Wild West up there, so those folks can only protect themselves. There’s no law in the air; the law exists only on the ground. There is still good. There is still a right and a wrong. There are good, honest people hamstrung by a suspension of their rights because they might not be honest and good. There must be here a balance, and we have to find that balance in order to address this one aspect of safety.

Adapt the security model to those widely adopted outside of the US. I reference a security model which replaces invasive personal inspection with close behavioral monitoring. There still is a metal detector. There still is X-ray screening of baggage and the occasional private screening when absolutely necessary. Given the choice of a “freedom grope” or heavily armed, highly training guards patrolling the airport, I’ll happily take the latter. Neither should be necessary. What a terrorist has on their person between the outside world and the security checkpoint is nothing compared to what they can acquire and use between the security checkpoint and the gates. Any person with a modicum of security knowledge can understand this.

Openly allow public video and audio recording of security checkpoints. Accountability is the only way to ensure that those in the first line of defense are respecting the rights of travelers. Documenting transgressions and establishing a public way of filing these recording is important, but it must be done in a way so as not to subject the perpetrator of the crime to the court of public opinion before a real trial is held. Security checkpoint cameras are unreliable and poorly placed.

I might have some others rattling around in my head, so I urge you to comment, to engage me in discussion. I won’t hold back, but please engage me with citations.

White blood cells destroy disease, but they can also destroy healthy cells. I want us to be safe from terrorists, but I also want us to be safe from our guardians.

No American alive and aware of the world at the time will forget September 11, 2001. It was my generation’s Pearl Harbor moment; a JFK Assassination moment, but the news spread faster than 60 or 40 years earlier. We can thank the Internet and the 24 hour news cycle for that.

Everyone remembers where they were. I’d venture to say that most Americans watched it live on TV. Those not near a TV turned on the radio when someone told them. I remember where I was.

I was in 11th grade, and it was during my homeroom period. I was in another teacher’s room counting money from our class fundraiser. On my way to class, a little late for first period English, shortly after the first plane hit the first tower, I stopped by my gifted teacher’s office. She received a call and had a look of terror on her face.

“A plane just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers! My son’s OK,” she said in her thick Brooklyn accent. We turned on the TV and watched the confusion. A few minutes later — I can’t remember if I was in the gifted office or my English classroom — we watched the second plane hit.

I believe it was between periods or shortly after the start of second period when a plane hit the Pentagon. Ironically, my second period history teacher wouldn’t let us turn on the TV. He basically didn’t believe us. I think he actually apologized to us a few days later. He was a great teacher and model historian, and recognized his error in not letting us observe history in the making.

The second tower hit was the first to fall, at around 10 a.m. I was still in that history class. The plane which crashed in Shanksville, PA — approximately 140 miles from my high school — did so a few minutes later, but we didn’t hear about it for approximately another 45 minutes.

I do distinctly remember watching the second tower — the first to be hit — fall around 10:30, while I was in third period Latin class. The eerie buckling that preceded it is unforgettable. It was like watching a tower of toothpicks fall when someone blows ever so slightly at its side. Obviously, this blow was a ~350,000 pound missle going 466 mph to a tower of steel sticks.

The rest of the day is a blur. There was some resistance by teachers to turn on the TVs, but our principal was a wise one and recognized the importance of the event. He directed all teachers to turn on the TVs.

I don’t remember the falling of WTC building 7 around 5:20 pm, the one which seems to be at the center of the 9/11 conspiracies. I’m sure a simple web search can turn up video of building 7 clearly still standing when a CNN reporter claims it’s fallen. I’m not going to theorize here, and I’m not going to beat a horse not yet dead.

I do remember President Bush’s address to the nation at 8:30 p.m.

Among his statements: “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts,” “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve,” and “The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts…we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

I got home around 4 p.m. Soccer practice was canceled, so I headed for the Internet. I played Ultima Online, an MMORPG, on a player-run server called “Dragon Shadow”. Several of the well-known players and administrators lived in NYC. One of them, an accountant by day who in game went by the name Shadowfax, worked in a high floor in one of the towers. Nuit, the wife of the owner of the server and one of the main administrators, posted something to the effect of “SHAD ARE YOU OK?!” He responded a few days later. He’d called in sick that day and couldn’t get back to the ‘net, and didn’t have anyone’s phone numbers.

That’s my memory of it. I might have a more detailed account written somewhere, but I unfortunate don’t recall where.

References:

• Timeline for the day of the September 11 attacks

Boeing 767 767-200ER

At last night’s Pittsburgh Ruby Brigade meeting, I and two of my coworkers (Jean and Carol) performed with Rubyist Jim Weirich (jimweirich his Ruby song, “Has Anybody Seen My Code?” Weirich gave new lyrics to the 1920s song “Has Anybody Seen My Girl?”, telling how Ruby programmers enjoy sharing their code with others.

After the performance, Jim gave a great talk entitled, “The Polite Programmer,” giving tips in a Dear Abby fashion about how library developers and users alike can write code in a way which is polite to implementors and future-safe.

I apologize ahead of time for this video. I’m out of tune a bit and I messed up here and there. Not too terrible for not having played at all in the past four years!

Olli Salonen made a PPA on Launchpad yesterday, following my request for btnx in a PPA.

There are two ways to get the repository configured: the GUI way and the command line way. I think the command line way is a little quicker, but I’ll give you both. Remember, if you are not running Hardy, you will need to change all instances of hardy throughout these instructions to feisty or gutsy, whichever you are using. Olli did packages for all three versions. If you don’t know which you’re running, go to System > About Ubuntu and read the window that spawns. Your version will be in there somewhere.

First the command line way.

echo -e "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/daou/ubuntu hardy main\ndeb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/daou/ubuntu hardy main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/btnx.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install btnx btnx-config

Then, I’d recommend using btnx-config from Applications > System Tools > btnx to configure the tool. You could also do gksu btnx-config at the command line to bring it up.

Next, the GUI way.

If you already have btnx installed, go to System > Administration > Software Sources. Go to the Third Party Software tab. Click +Add and paste the line for each of the two APT lines: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/daou/ubuntu hardy main and deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/daou/ubuntu hardy main. When you click Close, it will ask if you want to reload the sources. Confirm the reload.

If you do not already have btnx installed, go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Go to Settings > Repositories and follow the above instructions. One the list finishes reloading, Search for “btnx” and the two packages will be shown in the main screen. Click each to mark it for installation, then click Apply. When it’s finished, you can access btnx-config through Applications > System Tools > btnx from the top panel.

Check out my prior updates on btnx for more information, including how to compile btnx and btnx-config from source.

I wish that there was a more appropriate day before February 5—Super Tuesday—to do this. The day prior, February 4, seems to be the best.

I want to urge all of my readers to spread this word to all of their readers and as much of the Internet as possible.

On this day, Monday, February 4, let we, the bloggers, columnists, and fellow citizens of the United States of America, remind our readers of the contents of the United States Constitution, the document which is the highest law of the land and the document which the every president swears to preserve, protect, and defend. Let us do this by posting the entire contents of the Constitution to our blogs and any other public forum which allows us to do so. Readers may then read the entire document, something which takes no more than fifteen minutes. It may be the first time some readers have ever read the Constitution.

On this day, Monday, February 4, we post the entirety of the United States Constitution, herein contained.

I’m working on a decently postable HTML version based on the transcriptions provided by the National Archive:

• U.S. Constitution
• Bill of Rights
• Amendments 11-27

It will be available at http://www.cad.cx/docs/constitution.html before the end of the night, Feb 1. In the event you’d rather post a version from a more official source (is there one?) or don’t trust me, then please, by all means, find another way to post the entirety of the Constitution to your blog and forums.

Update: My formatted version is posted at the URL above. If someone wants to make a BB code version, I’ll host it or link to it.

Update 2: I put a version without any newlines in it at http://www.cad.cx/docs/constitution-nonl.html.

Update 3: Here’s what I did: I post in HTML mode in my blog. I copied an pasted from the post page the bold block. Then, I went to http://www.cad.cx/docs/constitution-nonl.html and viewed the source, Ctrl+A to select all, then pasted that into the blog post. I put a short message in small and strong tags at the top saying, “Kopimi. Please post this article wherever you are able.” Linking back to me is not necessary, but a trackback would be nice so I can see who all did it. If you are unsure of what to do yet, wait until midnight EST—that’s when my post will go live and you can simply copy it. I’m still looking for someone with strong regexp-fu than I to make a proper BBcode version of the post. I tried, but I can only get a few elements with my skills.

Update 4: Digg. Newsvine. Slashdot.

I’m blogging from BlogHaus at the Bellagio. I met and spoke briefly with Robert Scoble, the (in)famous blogger who was recently kicked off of Facebook for scraping information with a script (Google it if you’re that interested). He and I have very, very opposing political views (he’s a Clinton fan apparently, given his reaction to the news that Clinton won New Hampshire’s primary election [I could be wrong, though], and I’m a Ron Paul fan). We did agree that Ron Paul does have a long shot now—Iowa and New Hampshire have spoken—but have differing views otherwise.

One person, Xavier of Notebooks.com, explained to me why the gold standard doesn’t work. I’m still trying to digest it, though.

In a nutshell, he explained that the reason the gold standard (or any other commodity) doesn’t work in our current economy is that its doesn’t take into account how we create wealth. The creation of wealth deals with assigning value to new creations. For example, if I create a web site and someone is willing to pay me $10M for it, then, essentially, I’ve created $10M worth of wealth—a lot. In a gold standard economy, or any other commodity, I’d need a lot of gold or that commodity. Even if there was, multiply this by a couple hundred web sites, or perhaps houses on beachfront property, and there’s not enough gold to match the value. If the value were instead matched to the available gold, then its value would be much, much less and everything would have a much, much lesser value. On the gold standard, the dollar would buy a lot more, but there would have to be a lot more smaller denominations in order to make up for the increased value of the dollar.

Essentially, the current monetary system is based on debt. If someone wants to mortagage a $1M house, the bank, the mortgage originator, and all other parties have to agree that that house is worth $1M, even if it was built for $1. If the bank gives the mortgage, it’s essentially created $999,999.

I’m finding it hard to digest, but I don’t have the base of knowledge to be able to dispute nor naivety to blindly accept. I need to investigate this more so I can better understand why Ron Paul is a proponent of it. I can understand if the reason for the gold standard is because the current way of doing things has some unconstitutional basis, but I need to understand why he wants it this way.

I’m posting using my XO from the hall out side of where Showstoppers and the PC Race for Charity are going to shortly occur.

CES has been a blast thus far. There’s so much cool technology here! My feet hurt like the devil (WPAYL people: worse than seminar!) and my back is a little maligned, but I’m in cheery spirits.

I haven’t had time to check my mail and such until now, as every spare moment I’ve had has been spent typing things for ThinkComputers.

Vegas is a beautiful city, too. The nearest similar experience of which I can think is Clifton Hills, ON just across the Canadian border from Buffalo (where Niagara Falls is).

Here are two pics I took with the XO’s camera.

Happy New Year!

I’m going to share my professional goals for 2008 with you, interested reader, but before I do so, I need to revisit last year’s list.

• Graduate
  • Mission accomplished. I graduated in May with a Bachelors’ Degree in Computer Science and a minor in Writing, focusing on journalism.
• Go to grad school.
  • I’ve got one semester remaining at Robert Morris University before I finish my Masters’ Degree in Business Education, and another year before I finish the teachers’ certification.
• Keep writing
  • I haven’t written as much as I would have liked, but I did keep momentum on this blog. Actually, I’ve been doing more reading than writing, mostly on political things. I read Lew Rockwell columns daily and find myself on Wikipedia and other sites researching politics. I’ve written a number of letters to my senators and congresspeople regarding various bills and whatnot.
  • I’m still writing for ThinkComputers.org and other sites operated by Bob Buskirk. I’m going to CES under the ThinkComputers banner on Sunday.
  • Obsidian and I got BIOS LEVEL off the ground, and we’ve had a lot of traffic as a result of the review of the OLPC XO and the articles on uShare and the Xbox 360 and extending uShare.
• Keep coding
  • I did not code as much as I would have liked. I worked heavily on a web site design one night this month, but even then it was just modifying someone else’s design and implementing a few small WordPress plugins. I did, however, learn a lot about MVC from Jon, so I hope to use that this year. Hopefully, Jon and Zack and I will get back into development when we work on our replacement for Autonomous LAN Party, a once-great GPL project which recently went Qt-licensed and is a terrible mess of coupled and incohesive code.
• Learn more Esperanto and German
  • My Esperanto vocabulary is growing, and I’ve joined Esperanto-USA, a group which fosters Esperanto advocacy in the United States. As for German, I’ve picked up a little bit here and there. I’m not able to speak much of it, but I can read a little. I may be headed to Germany, Norway, or Sweden for a part of my student teaching in May 2009, so I’m sure that I’ll pick up even more if that becomes a reality.

Now, this year’s list.

• Keep writing
  • I love writing for ThinkComputers and BIOS LEVEL. I’d like to get back into fiction writing, but we’ll see where that goes. I’ve also had a little bit of interest in playwriting, but I’ll have to hold off on that until I make a Debian package of Celtx, an open-source screen/play-writing package.
• Get move involved in the open source community
  • I recently joined the ubiquity team for Ubuntu. Ubiquity is the live CD’s installer tool. I don’t like it very much, mostly because of its network usage and silly crashes without decent error messages. I’ve also said that I’d package a few things (celtx, firefox-sqlitemanager). I’ve been using Ubuntu nearly full-time since the end of October—I never realized the awesomeness of the product which I’ve been pushing for years.
  • Hopefully, Jon, Zack, and I will resume work on the Pittco LAN Administration System, which will be open-sourced.
• Improve social networking
  • CES will be a great opportunity for me to network within the computer and consumer electronics field. While I don’t intend to make my career in this field, I do plan to keep writing about it and maintain my enthusiasm for it. Perhaps if teaching isn’t what I thought it would be, I could make it my career.
  • Grad classes at RMU have built my professional educator network, and I’m sure it will continue to grow as I meet more people.
  • Unfortunately, the New Castle/Youngstown area isn’t wonderful for this, so I may consider moving toward Pittsburgh if I can find a roommate or a job which pays enough for me to afford it without affecting my graduate studies.
• Lose weight
  • I lost 30 pounds in the spring of 2006. I’ve regained 10 of that, and I hope to lose 25 this spring, putting me at an even 200 pounds. Living at home hasn’t helped, but I’ve advised my parents of my wish to lose weight, and they pledged their help.
• Read more
• I need to read more often. I have a book list longer than I’d like to admit.

I participated in the Give One Get One program earlier today. For $399 + shipping, I get an OLPC XO laptop and finance one for a child who would not otherwise be able to experience a computer.

If I, a virtually unemployed grad student, can afford to donate to this cause, I’m sure moguls such as John Chow and Shoemoney can afford to, as well.

Imagine if every employed computer enthusiast could find it in their budget this holiday season to participate in this program. Imagine the number of children who would benefit from this program and experience something of which they’ve never even dreamed, yet something with which we komputeristoj interact daily and of which we may own a multitude. $199 of the $424 total cost is tax-deductible, so that could help come April 15.

So, go, and donate to the OLPC project via Give One Get One.

Update: I want to thank John Chow for accepting my challenge by participating in G1G1 and posting about it on his blog, which has an immense readership. John is an incredible authority on search engine optimization and making money online.

I’ve finally finished my Ontario Linuxfest review.

It’s on BIOS_LEVEL, Sean’s and my Linux advocacy and hardware review site.

Check out the Ontario Linuxfest review!