Applied Indifference

Read this.

Then ask yourself this question:

How could anyone conclude that BUSH AND BLAIR DID THIS FOR MONEY?

Does this man truly believe that his son died for someone else’s pursuit of money? Is this grief talking, or is he serious? Has he been paying attention?

500,000 slaughtered in Rwanda, and we did nothing. And the left criticizes the US (but not too harshly, after all, Clinton was in office, and the UN said not to do anything anyhow) for allowing the slaughter.

11,000 Iraqis dead? Saddam was killing them at a rate of what, 300,000 a year? So do we get any credit for saving 289,000? Nope. Just a bunch of murderous greedy cowboys out to get contracts for Halliburton, no matter the cost in lives.

Some people really need to open their eyes and see what is going on in this world. We are on the cusp of a war of civilizations. A war that has been brewing for 700 years. And our enemies don’t have the words “peace” or “surrender” in their vocabularies.

Nick Berg was murdered in cold blood for one simple fact. He is not a specific flavor of muslim. All the rhetoric was simply convenient for the terrorists to use to manipulate the stupids around the world in the hopes that they’d commit suicide and save Zarqawi the trouble of personally cutting each and every one of their heads off.

We don’t get any options this time, kids. It’s kill or be killed. Detente is not an available solution. I suggest that anyone who believes that the invasion of Iraq was about anything other than mopping up the cesspool of islam in the middle east start reviewing some history. Start with what happened in Spain in 1492.

Hint – it didn’t involve an Italian and three boats.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Finally, something GOOD to write about.

Slackware 10 is out! Slackware 3.4 (or was it 3.3… have to dig it out) was the first linux distro I ever used (Kernel 1.9!).

Then there was Red Hat, and SuSE, and Debian, and…

But I’ve always held a special place in my heart for Slackware. Back in the good old days of dialup, and Walnut Creek (ftp.cdrom.com, now Digital River), and FLOPPY INSTALLS! Ahhh, memories.

So, I’ll probably buy it just to put my coin in to keep the project alive. You should too.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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One more, then I’m done. (does that statement qualify me as a political junkie?)

It seems there is no lack of opinions on why Iraq was the wrong place to attack, or why we shouldn’t be attacking anyone. But nobody seems to offer any intelligent plans for solving the problem of terrorism in the world. In fact, the only “solutions” that I’ve heard offered are actually infantile.

• We’re to blame because of our interference in the Middle East
• Why didn’t we attack Saudi Arabia/Yemen/Algeria/Syria/Iran first? The terrorists were all from Saudi Arabia, you know

Simple answers to those criticisms – if “interference” in the area is the problem, then why wasn’t London hit first? After all, the Brits were there long before we were. And as far as why not Saudi Arabia first? Simple – they have nothing to attack except civilians, oil fields, and camels. How much of a message does THAT send?

Look, the simple answer is this: We are not to blame for this, any more than we are to blame for World War II. The terrorists declared war on Western Civilization back in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella kicked the Moors out of Europe. The particular extremist sect called Wahhabi, which originates in Saudi Arabia, has picked up on the mother of all grudges and decided to run with it.

So, we need to clean out these terrorists. How do we do this? We need the people in the countries where the terrorists currently roam free to actually care enough about their own hides to root out and destory the terrorists. When they are ruled by a thugocracy that gives free passage to terrorists and slaughters their own citizens (that would be Iraq), or a Mullarchy that actively supports and promotes terrorist goals, and slaughters its own citizens (Iran) you gotta clean them out. Nobody else in that region has a military or infrastructure that can really threaten anyone. We just happened to have a cease-fire in place with Iraq that they had been wantonly violating, so there was a ready-made excuse to blast them.

And from the way the winds are blowing, I see us fixin’ to flatten Iran next.

If the Saudis haven’t cleaned their room by then, then Uncle Sam’s probably going to have to clean it for them. And they won’t like it.

Before you start shouting “What about North Korea” – we have something in the Pacific Rim that we don’t have in the middle east – a nation with a vested interest in stopping North Korea from going nuclear. China will act long before we do if North Korea ever lights off a nuclear test. And it won’t be pretty. But then again, war never is.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Yup. another one.

Governor John Rowland (R) has resigned from office after being dogged by scandals because he thought he was Bill Clinton. John – nobody can lie like Der Schlickmeister. You shoulda just come clean, paid the fines, given back the stuff, and taken your lumps. Instead, you wound up like so many other Waterbury Politicians.

On the upside, Moira Lyons will be on Advanced Suicide Watch soon, as our new Governor (Governess?) Jodi Rell is going to prove to be far tougher to muscle around than her spaghetti-spined former boss. Mrs. Rell is also more predictably conservative than Mr. Rowland, which should irk Ms. Lyons to no end. And although I’ve not met her, I’m told she is a genuinely nice and decent person. Which puts her several rungs above the rabble in the General Assembly.

Well, the last time this state ran right we had a woman in charge, maybe that’s what it’s going to take to straighten it out again.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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I know, I said no more politics. But between blogs and boards, I can’t get away from the stuff. And there’s some particularly egregious stuff here.

You are no longer entitled to be secure in your person against unreasonable search.

The basic gist of this is: if a random police officer asks you for identification, you do NOT have the right to remain silent.

This is a Bad Thing. I’m not sure where it will lead, but this is just crying out to be abused.

What’s next, armed checkpoints? Oh, wait – we already have those.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Go on, get your screams of “Luddite!” and whatever else you want out of your system now. I’ll wait.

Ok, feel better? Good.

Here’s the deal. I look at the debates over human cloning and stem-cell research, and I see a unique opportunity. This may be the first time where we have the technological ability to pursue something that has tremendous moral and ethical impact &emdash; and we know at least some of the moral and ethical issues that need resolving up front.

This was not the case at the dawn of the nuclear age. I know that nobody stopped to consider the moral implications of what they were doing. The attitude was “It’s science, it’s morally neutral”. We now know that was not the case.

So too with the concepts of cloning, and to a much lesser extent, stem-cell research. I’ll admit, I’m not up on what the state of the art is in stem-cell research. I know that there have been limited trials in animals, but if there are any major successes or breakthroughs, I’ve not heard of them.

I’d like to see, for once, science take a break from progress to really analyze the impact of what they are studying. Simply saying “well, someone else will do it if we don’t” is not sufficient to absolve the scientific community of moral and ethical responsiblity. That we can do something does not imply that we must, or even should do it.

Tags: Technology by Brian Corbino
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Seriously. Reagan’s death kinda pushed me over the edge. Actually, the coverage of his death did that. I pretty much don’t care about politics right now, and I’m not too keen to read or watch the news either.

Which is fine, I’ll probably get a few hours a day back to do something useful and/or productive.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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A thought occurs to me (it happens on occassion).

Humans have been fighting wars for what, 10,000 years? Why?

The big wars have always been fought for territory (pretty much every war during the expansion of the US was like that), or wealth (what the Spaniards did to pretty much every place they went), or religion (The Muslim conquests of the 10th and 11th centuries, the Crusades after that). Or so I always believed.
[Read more →]

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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Granted, it’s not techincally D-Day yet (for a few hours anyhow). But, I’m up, and writing. It occurs to me that I have never given proper thanks to those who came before me, and offered themselves up so that I could be born into a free world. I’m quite certain that no amount of words could ever begin to repay that debt. So, here we are, sixty years hence. Young men stormed beaches in the rain because a madman wanted to take over Europe, and then the world.

What was accomplished on D-Day was, by all rational accounts of the time, impossible. Which is why it happened. Free people do impossible things all the time. Americans and Britons cooked up this incredible plan to push Himmler back to Berlin. It couldn’t possibly work, could it? It did, and it worked because failure was not an option. Thanks to technology that at the time couldn’t possibly work (the Colossus, which nobody would even know about for nearly forty years after the war’s end), the dedication and leadership of men who knew what was at stake (Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Montgomery, Churchill), and above all, the bravery and the will to run headlong into the belly of the beast (men whose names I could not list if I were to try).

And, though this day be darkened by the passing of one who served in that very war, and went on to lead this great nation for eight years, it seems almost fitting that he be given the last word here:

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we can always be free.

-Ronald Wilson Reagan 1911-2004.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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I can’t describe what I’m thinking or feeling right now. I am saddened by the loss of this great American. However, I am happy that he is finally freed from the chains of Alzheimer’s. I know what Nancy and the rest of the Reagan family went through. Alzheimer’s dreaded disease took my beloved sweet grandmother from me, a piece at a time, for 11 long years.

Rest in peace, Ronaldus Magnus. I fear we’ll not see your like again.

And so the world becomes less than what it was.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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