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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Friday, February 28, 2003
Nice Column About the Iraq Matter by Christopher Hitchens As you may be aware, Hitchens is a long-time British leftist, strong opponent of U.S. foreign policy for decades, and no friend of the Bush Administration. His column makes some very good points about the sudden change in tone concerning Iraq--why the oilmen around Bush wanted to drop sanctions in early 2001, and why Bush decided that there are things more important than oil: Feb. 24 — When George W. Bush was running for president, he campaigned energetically against Al Gore by objecting to the idea of “nation-building” (and, incidentally, to the Clinton-era practice of employing “secret evidence” in trials of suspected terrorists). After taking office, he opened an early discussion on the possibility of lifting Iraqi sanctions, which had obviously begun to suffer from diminishing returns. He even considered reviewing the “no-fly” zones that, for a wearisome decade or so, had placed an Anglo-American protective shield over the Kurdish and Shiite zones of Saddam’s awful dominion.Interesting claim that Hitchens makes about France: Even the jackal Jacques Chirac has more sense than this: His only useful aircraft carrier is already in range in case he needs to switch sides. Why France Is So Concerned About Upsetting the Arabs This story, like a number I've read recently, is a reminder that France is being held hostage by a powerful fifth column: VITRY-SUR-SEINE, France (Reuters) - Dressed like boy rappers, four young women scurry toward their apartment tower home, and try not to think about the 17-year-old girl burned to death in a nearby garbage depot by a local teen-age boy. Kings, Queens, & Thugs Rich People From the Forbes list of the wealthiest people. Look at Arafat's wealth. I didn't realize the salary for terrorist leader was so high. I obviously went into the wrong line of work when I was young. Using Weapons That They Don't Have, Doubtless... From the Telegraph: If war comes to Iraq, the Kurds of Kifri will be right in the line of fire. Iraqi officials have threatened that the moment the first American bomb lands, they will reply with a chemical assault on the town. Thursday, February 27, 2003
Tired of Being An Unemployed Firmware Engineer? Would you like to live in a place where wages are nearly California level, but you can buy a new house (not a condo, but a real house) for $120,000? My current employer (whose name I dare not speak here) has a couple of positions open for experienced firmware engineers. One of the slots requires knowledge of Linux, source configuration management systems (ideally, ClearCase); the other requires hardware debugging of embedded firmware (ideally, strong knowledge of C++). Email me your resume; no promises, but it's very hard to get firmware engineers to move to a state with almost no gun control laws, almost no crime, cheap housing, and cheap car insurance. Black Members of the Sons of the Confederacy Interesting article, originally from the Washington Post, on History News Network's site: John Wayne Holland was one of the thousands disappointed when Alexandria's George Washington Birthday Parade was canceled for today. He would have been wearing a Confederate uniform in public for the first time, representing his great-grandfather, who went to war as a slave in 1863.Some Southern nationalists have exaggerated the role of blacks in the Confederacy, attempting to reconstruct a non-racist, or at least, no more racist than the North, Southern past. I can understand why some historians get uncomfortable about bringing up that blacks fought on the Confederate side--but while most were slaves, and not allowed to carry weapons, some definitely were soldiers in every sense of the word. It's important to understand that the oversimplified model of the South, with all blacks as slaves, and all slaves on the edge of revolt, are almost as misleading and destructive of a real understanding of history as the whitewashed model that tries to pretend that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Excitement in Moscow, Idaho--and Our Correspondents Are There! You probably saw the news coverage of the arrest of a University of Idaho grad student on charges of having raised funds and provided technical assistance to terrorist-involved groups: Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, was arrested Wednesday in Moscow, Idaho, and accused of supplying money and computer expertise to the Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America.My daughter, who is attending University of Idaho, tells me that it is really quite exciting up there: her usual parking lot was occupied by the bomb squad (apparently while they searched the grad student's van). She tells me that the town is awash in police officers, guys wearing dark suits who clearly are not local, television camera crews, etc. She also says that the arrested grad student was head of the Muslim Students Association. It would appear that many of the Muslims there are of a fundamentalist bent; my daughter tells me that some of the Muslim women there wear burkhas. Australia's Prime Minister Showing Great Courage See this Wall Street Journal opinion piece by him: Not one person wants war. We all abhor it. Those who marched a week ago in the cities of the world do not have a mortgage on detestation of military conflict or of human suffering. They do not exclusively occupy the moral high ground. Have they seriously addressed the human suffering that could flow from the world's failure to deal once and for all with Iraq's 12-year-long defiance of the community of nations? How the Other Half Lives... Someone is trying to sell their telescope on Astromart. But this isn't your run-of-the-mill sort of telescope: I am selling my Parallax Instruments 20" Ritchey Chretien Cassegrain.Gosh, even if I was as fabulously rich as my average Sonoma County acquaintance, tying up this much capital in a telescope is something that would give me pause. Standing in the Shadows of Motown Soundtrack Wins Grammies! Ordinarily, I wouldn't care about the Grammies at all, especially since they received an $800,000 grant from the federal government, but one of my friends co-produced this documentary, so it's kind of nice to see the soundtrack win an award. Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Too Many Lawyers? Or too many people too stupid to buy bread at the market without assistance? I really like DiGiorno pizza: 
Please explain these instructions on the back of the box: 
Do not eat pizza without cooking? Remove pizza from box, overwrap and cardboard? There are people that need instructions like this, and we let them vote? Monday, February 24, 2003
Sorry For the Lack of Activity Here... I've been very busy corralling penguins at work, have no spare time during the day, and have no energy by the time I get home. (Those of you who are software developers will know of what I speak.) |
