Meta Commencement Speech
Allen May 28th, 2004
iowahawk has a meta-commencement speech available at iowahawk: Hail To Thee, [Name of College].
Classic stuff.
Archive for May, 2004
The Drunk Down the Street
Allen May 28th, 2004
The thoughts expressed by Stan Coerr in No One Asked Us are rather liberal. But not the “no-blood-for-oil” variety. Liberal in the sense of a person who sees an injustice and wants to correct it.
The analogy is simple. For years, you have watched the same large, violent man come home every night, and you have listened to his yelling and the crying and the screams of children and the noise of breaking glass, and you have always known that he was beating his wife and his children. Everyone on the block has known it. You ask, cajole, threaten and beg him to stop, on behalf of the rest of the neighborhood. Nothing works. After listening to it for 13 years, you finally gather up the biggest, meanest guys you can find, you go over to his house, and you kick the door down. You punch him in the face and drag him away. The house is a mess, the family poor and abused, but now there is hope. You did the right thing.
I can speak with authority on the opinions of both British and American infantry in that place and at that time. Let me make this clear: at no time did anyone say or imply to any of us that we were invading Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction, nor were we there to avenge 9/11. We knew we were there for one reason: to rid the world of a tyrant, and to give Iraq back to Iraqis.
None of us had even heard those arguments for going to war until we returned, and we still don’t understand the confusion. To us, it was simple. The world needed to be rid of a man who committed mass murder of an entire people, and our country was the only one that could project that much power that far and with that kind of precision. We don’t make policy decisions: we carry them out. And none of us had the slightest doubt about how right and good our actions were.
This war has many mothers. One of those is the simple desire to free people from a tyrant. I wonder how many people would have supported this war had it been Al Gore championing it?
RIP Sam ‘n Max
Allen May 27th, 2004
I just noticed today that Lucas Arts will not be developing a sequel to the Sam ‘n Max computer game. This was a wry adventure game with lots of great humor. One of my Lucas Arts favorites along with the Monkey Island series and Grim Fandango. Read LucasArts | Press for the bitter details.
As a note, the network here at work has been incredibly bad lately, so I haven’t been blogging as much from work during lunch time. Given that I’ve just now recovered from the problems with the Master Boot Record at home and am in the process of re-loading the home computer, blogging will be light from there as well.
I’ve got lots of bookmarks to catch up on, but it will be spotty for a while.
Let There Be a Thousand Blossoms
Allen May 25th, 2004
Thomas over at Oklahoma Wine News as some good news. Well, I hope it is good news. In Supreme Court to Rule on Wine Shipments Across State Lines, he notes that the conflicting appellate court rulings has caused 39 states to ask the SCOTUS to review the ruling.
At stake is the ability of vineyards to ship wine directly from the vineyard to the consumer. While this probably won’t cause the cost of your wine to go down, it will allow you more choice in what wines you choose. Now people in California can sample Oklahoma wines (coals to Newcastle?) and Okies can sample California wines from small winemakers. While I don’t see it as a breakthrough for Okie wine makers, it is the start of something promising.
The Ultimate War Sim
Allen May 24th, 2004
David Wong details his requirements for The Ultimate War Sim.
This War Sim is a bit more realistic than the current crop.
Example?
1. …where I spend two hours pushing across a map to destroy a “nuclear missile silo,” only to find out after the fact that it was just a missile-themed orphanage.
I want little celebrities to show up on the scene and do interviews over video of charred teddy bears, decrying my unilateral attack. I want congressional hearings demanding answers to these atrocities.
2. On the very next level I want to lose half of my units because another “orphanage” turned out to be a NOD ambush site. I want another round of hearings asking why I didn’t level that orphanage as soon as I saw it, including tearful testimony from a slain soldier’s daughter who is now, ironically, an orphan.
From A Position of Strength
Allen May 24th, 2004
Proteus over at Eject! Eject! Eject! has a series of articles entitled Eject! Eject! Eject!: STRENGTH (part 1) and Eject! Eject! Eject!: STRENGTH (part 2).
Proteus’s forthcoming book of essays are something I look forward to purchasing, even though they will continue to be online for free. His essay Power was my introduction to Proteus and I’ve been a big fan ever since.
His latest essay is a worthy read as well. I’m tempted to quote it, but every section I clip is just too big. I hate to chant the standard mantra of bloggers, but Go Read The Whole Thing.
Done?
OK, the heart of the essay (which does tend to ramble a bit) is:
Because we, the American people, are the only ones who can decide whether or not to give up in failure and defeat or carry on to the victory of a free and stable Iraq, we find we ourselves – the common, average American – are to be the battleground. We are the soldiers. We are the weapons. We are the targets of the enemy strategy. Our hearts, our spirit – that is the front line. All the players know this, too. This is our war, more than it is the Marines’ or Al Quaeda’s.
Our war. Ours.
So we need to find the strength to fight this war. And this search will not be a quick or easy one, for our strength lies both obvious and on the surface in some places, and in other places, very, very deep.
This is a critical, essential search, for the manifest strengths and beauty of our Western Society have been under such sustained attack, for so long, that we are beginning to believe this parade of lies launched against us. We have to stop it. We have to fight it. And we have to beat it. On this everything else depends.
This will be a long and circuitous journey. I’m sorry; I wish it were not so. But we must, we must find the strength we need to sustain our spirits against an onrush of negativity, pessimism, defeatism and despair that is so deadly precisely because it is so antithetical to the natural character of the American people.
In the beginning God create the Binary and the Assembly
Allen May 21st, 2004
And the net was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the core of the lightguide. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the Usenet.
And God said, Let there be Fortran: and there was Fortran.
O’reilly has a PDF entitled The History of Programming Languages. It starts with Fortran and traces the development of over 2500 programming languages.
Whether you agree with Fortran as the original language or not, it’s still pretty cool.
More of Life’s Painful Lessons
Allen May 21st, 2004
Jay Tea over at Wizbang! has a list of Life’s painful lessons.
I’ve shared several of Jay’s experiences and I can add:
Bernard Lewis for Dummies
Allen May 21st, 2004
Findlay Dunachie examines two of Bernard Lewis’s books and synthesizes their arguments in a short essay entitled Bernard Lewis on what went wrong in the Middle East | Samizdata.net. I have Bernard’s The Crisis of Islam and find Findlay’s summary to be spot-on.
Do yourself a favor. Read Findlay’s essay and then read Bernard’s works as well. Those who are Islamic apologists will not like Bernard, but he has valid criticism of the Islamic world.
You See a Bright Glowing Ball in the Distance
Allen May 21st, 2004
And hear the scream of a meteor as it tears its way through the air. You see a giant cloud of dirt and smoke rise up, strangely silent. About 20 seconds later, a giant wave of sound slaps you backwards. After the initial “whoompf”, you can’t hear anything because you have gone deaf.
That is what it would be like to view a meteor impact a ways away.
Here is what it would be like to view a meteor impact at ground zero: You See a Brig…
So where is the nearest meteor impact for you? View Earth Impact Database to learn where on the globe you can find meteor impact craters.
For me? Oklahoma?!? You mean there is a meteor impact crater in Oklahoma?
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