January 2003
2003.01.09
Here we go...
11:00 AM PST :: comments: 1The semester starts up again today. I'm looking forward to my classes this semester. They should be fun and interesting, though difficult. Hopefully I can avoid low grades. Doing all of my assignments would help, I guess.
-wink
2003.01.06
Thoughts and links on war and security
02:06 AM PST :: comments: 2Tom Friedman is doing some good thinking in his article A War for Oil? I don't agree with him everywhere, but he has some keen analysis and observation going on there.
And to re-iterate my position: I tentatively support war against Saddam, but I do not support our Administration's reasons (neither the stated reasons, nor the suspected reasons) for going to war.
Oh, and this article starts off too extreme...until you finish reading the artile and realize that "too extreme" is "just about right". I don't like the idea of anyone (including the government) having "total information awareness". I downright hate the idea of anyone having "total information awareness" without public oversight. And the plan of designating US citizens as "enemy combatants" in order to circumvent constitutional rights is brilliant in the "evil genius" kind of way.
Surely there must be a way to increase security without heading towards totalitarianism (i.e. ubiquitous surveillance, the power to imprison without due process, and no public oversight). I understand the totalitarianism is the easiest way to achieve security. I know that I'm asking the police/FBI/NSA/etc to do the nearly impossible. But I never promised that their job would be easy, did I?
The best that I can come up with (and this isn't all that great) is to have ubiquitous surveillance, and totally public oversight. All information collected is released to the public. Nothing is held back. All actions taken, and the reasons for them, are also made public. The gap between collection of information and its release to the public is short: long enough for the law enforcement agents to use it without giving their quarry a heads up, but not long enough to allow those in power to abuse it too badly. Say a week. Make everything accountable to the public. That way an agent can't decide that his ex is a terrorist and throw her in jail for a week without repercussions.
It would suck. There would be security at the cost of privacy. But it doesn't lead to totalitarianism because there is accountability. Public oversight.
Of course, given the way the administration is going, even that won't happen any time soon.
-wink
New Fishies
12:45 AM PST :: comments: 0After killing most of our old fish (our beta is still holding on somehow, despite not having eaten anything for a week), we cleaned out out tank and went to the petstore to get some more. The helpful guy at the petstore informed me that we shouldn't have cleaned out our tank. All those bacteria that we just bleached away are vital to the ecosystem and now we have to wait for them to regrow before we can get new fish.
So, I set the tank up again, filling it with water and running the filter, etc, with no fish to get things started. I stocked the tank with new fake plants, a new filter, a new aerator, and a new heater. Then I let it run for 48 hours with no fish in it.
Today, I released three tiny fish into our tank. I hope they don't die.
-wink
Owning a house means never having to say "I have free time"
12:36 AM PST :: comments: 0Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I didn't have as much free time during vacation as I thought I would. Turns out that "vacation" means "home improvement time" to Tree. So we painted and installed and repaired and organized and cleaned. We actually got a lot of stuff done and saw some good movies to boot, but there has been little time for the blog.
I hear that having children means even less free time. Why do I want one so badly?
-wink