The Vietnamization of Iraq

One of the things I've done in my past is teach special education. One of the pitfalls of special education that we were trained to carefully watch for was "learned helplessness". Children could get addicted to the attention they got from being helpless, and genuinely become helpless. We were taught never to do for children what they could do for themselves, even if they did it very badly and with much effort.

Looking at the events of the last two years of the Republic of South Vietnam, I am reminded of that training. For almost ten years, American soldiers had fought along side of and in place of South Vietnamese soldiers. For almost ten years, American air power, American maintenance resources, American logistical transport resources, American Herky birds and choppers, and, most importantly, American leadership, had been available to the South Vietnamese government. Now those were gone, a casualty of Richard Nixon's failing presidency and a hostile Congress. Yet... yet... the South Vietnamese just kept along the same way they'd been keeping along, as if the Americans would intervene and bail them out yet again. And when the Americans didn't, in early 1975, then President Thieu swiftly fled the country with most of the South Vietnamese treasury packed in his luggage and bitterly blamed the Americans for "betraying" South Vietnam.

But did America "betray" South Vietnam?

Much is made of the fact that South Vietnam had only half the number of tanks that North Vietnam had when North Vietnam invaded. But South Vietnam had a significant and powerful Air Force that could -- and did -- offset that numerical disadvantage in tanks. Tanks are necessary for offense, but as defensive weapons they're not as useful. Much is made of the fact that major formations of the ARVN literally ran out of ammunition. But in many cases that was because of logistical issues caused by poor decisions on the part of the South Vietnamese government, rather than because of lack of ability to buy bullets.

In the end, South Vietnam had the means to resist the 1975 invasion. They had fewer means than the North Vietnamese had, but they had more compared to North Vietnam than the Confederacy had compared to the Union during the American Civil War, and the Confederacy successfully prevented the Union from capturing their capital for four long years of continuous warfare with no significant outside assistance. What they lacked was the mentality. They were still expecting the Americans to bail them out all the way to the end. In the meantime, the North Vietnamese were proudly pointing out that not a single Soviet or Chinese soldier fought on their side during the entire war. As a result, once the NVA was re-equipped with modern weapons by the Soviet Union, they knew how to put them to effective use. They weren't waiting for anybody to bail them out. They were going to war, and they were going to war to win.

In the long term, South Vietnam was doomed anyhow. Logistics in South Vietnam was always a nightmare due to settlement patterns -- the majority of South Vietnamese were either stretched along the coast or in the Mekong delta, leaving the sparsely-populated central highlands as an easy avenue for infiltration of major NVA military units capable of striking at Highway 1 and cutting off the northern regions of the country from the southern regions. Furthermore, South Vietnam had a smaller population than North Vietnam. But in the long term, we're all dead. In the long term, Israel is doomed for similar reasons, but Israel has successfully held off multiple invasions by numerically superior and often better-armed forces during the course of its existence, and if South Vietnam had possessed the proper mentality, they could have done so too. But they did not. Ten years of American assistance had trained them in learned helplessness -- had taught them that they were helpless without American assistance. When the request for massive B-52 bombing along the lines of what ended the 1972 NVA invasion was turned down by Congress, the streets of Saigon were swiftly lined with the cast-off uniforms and rifles of ARVN soldiers who literally ran for home in their underwear, and South Vietnam collapsed.

What brings this to mind is what's going on with the Iraqi Army. The ARVN was actually quite effective against an invasion just as bad as the 1975 invasion while led by American military advisors in 1972 and given massive bombing assistance from hundreds of B-52's flying round-the-clock bombing missions. General Abrams proudly proclaimed that the policy of Vietnamization was a success. Well, it was a success while ARVN soldiers were being lead by American leaders, and while American logistical supply trains were keeping bullets in the guns of ARVN soldiers, and American bombers were dropping tens of thousands of tons of bombs onto NVA heads. But at least it was ARVN fighting and dying by the thousands, not American GI's.

In Iraq, there isn't even an attempt at that kind of Iraqization. Most American soldiers in Iraq are conducting combat operations, not leading Iraqi troops. Most military operations have American soldiers fighting and dying, not Iraqi soldiers. President Thieu of South Vietnam at least held his capital city up until the last day of the war. Can anybody say that the Iraqi government controls Baghdad, when American soldiers are still being killed there and major portions of the city are "Indian country"? While you could get mugged in Saigon in 1971, it really wasn't that dangerous for an American soldier to walk around the city with a few of his friends. Any armed civilian you ran into almost 100% certainly was one of Thieu's very effective secret police. In Baghdad, if you see an armed civilian there is a 50-50 chance that he's an insurgent and is about to kill you, and in certain areas that certainty rises to 100%. If Iraq is Vietnam on crack, the effectiveness of the Iraqi army and police forces is Vietnam on methamphetamines. If learned helplessness were water, Iraq would be drowning in it.

South Vietnam's government fell because, unlike Israelis, the South Vietnamese had become accustomed to being bailed out by the Americans and literally didn't know what to do when the Americans were gone. Iraq's government will fall for the same reason -- but much faster. Vietnam on crack. No kiddin'. When will we ever learn that giving too much help can be worse than giving no help at all? How many Americans fought on Israel's side in the 1973 war? How many Soviets fought on North Vietnam's side in the 1975 invasion? Who won? Hmm?

-- Badtux the History Penguin

Pizza for breakfast

So last night I get home and go to the mailboxes. I look to the side at the trash can and... what's that? Pizza coupons? I frantically open my mailbox and yes! Pizza coupons for Premier Pizza, a local high-end pizzaria!

So I hurriedly snarfed up all the pizza coupon fliers that were scattered around the mail area until I had a card deck of the things, and right there, on my cell phone, without even waiting to get home, called Premier Pizza and ordered a two-topping pepperoni and jalapeno for $10.95.

So after I get changed into more comfortable clothes I head over to Premier and pick up my pie. On the way out I see the cheese and pepper bins by the door. So I open up my pie to add some red pepper and... OMG. There is SOO much jalapeno on this thing! Okay, so no pepper needed. So I open up the cheese bin and... OMG! *real* freshly-grated parmesan cheese, not that powder crap! I hurriedly scatter some on my pie, close it back up, and head home.

Verdict: This is an excellent thick-crust pizza. The crust is light and wonderfully bread-like and obviously rose properly before having the toppings put on it. There is a *gigantic* amount of toppings on this thing to balance out the crust. The only weakness is that to avoid being soupy, it's a little light on the sauce to balance out the crust. Even with that limitation, this is a delicious and wonderful pizza.

And yet... yet... the frozen pizzas have gotten so good, that even this very worthy pizza is not going to get regular chew-downs by me. The Freschetta Brick Oven pizza is just as well balanced and its crust is even yummier, having a pleasantly toasted taste to go with the bready taste. And at the regular price of $21.95 for a large two-topping, vs. an average of $5.50 for the Freschetta, no WAY am I buying this pie at full price. It's good, but it's not that good. Even with the coupon, I think I prefer the Freschetta, though granted part of that is because I prefer thinner-crust pizzas. Still, if you are in the San Jose area and like thicker pizzas, Premier Pizza is definitely a great place to get some really yummy pizza...

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Still swamped...

At some point in the past I mentioned the deer-in-the-headlights look that our programmers in China got when expected to do anything involving original design or creative thinking. Well, two things happened. First of all, our long-time engineering manager in China abruptly resigned and fled the country (indeed, he now is somewhere in Europe). Secondly, our VP of engineering went over and kicked some butt and told the senior Chinese engineers that they needed to step up to the plate and take ownership of the codebase that respective teams were assigned, or else why were we paying them senior engineer salaries?

And, oddly enough, they listened. Oh, they still can't design their way out of a paper bag. Their objects know intimate details of the internals of other objects in much the same way that half the males on earth knew intimate details of the internals of Anna Nicole Smith. But that isn't stopping them. They got the directive "Design!", and, by jove, that is exactly what they are doing, crap or no!

Anyhow, I'm currently overflowed with architecture and design proposals from China along with significant chunks of code supposedly implementing prior design documents that I'd signed off on, and am in the process of editing/re-writing/re-designing so that they aren't crap. So that's why you haven't heard much except the occasional snark snack or stream of consciousness navel gazing blog. Sin, redemption, salvation, and B.F. Skinner are still waiting for the significant amount of time needed to do the appropriate research for the "history of evangelicalism" part of the essay.

The only good news is that they can't keep this pace up forever. Sooner or later, their well of crappiness is going to run dry. On the other hand, that's what we thought about Danielle Steele too. That was 70 crap novels ago.

The final solution, though, is the usual one: Penguin cloning. Or at least hiring another penguin to help oversee the overseas. Now I expect to hear from the "cloning is immoral!" crowd, who tend to be either tighty righties or loonie lefties... sigh!

-- Badtux the Design Penguin

Reminder: Anything you read here about my personal life may be fictional. Heck, you don't even know the real names of my cats -- yep, even my cats blog under pseudonyms! So if you're looking for clues as to who I work for in the above message, be aware I may have set some red herrings for you and that things may not have gone down exactly as I said. Herring. Yum. URRP!

Cleaning house

It takes exactly four hours to clean this 1 bedroom apartment. And in the 1 1/2 weeks since the carpet people shampooed my carpet, my cats have shed a vacuum cleaner container full of hair. And some people say my cats are lazy and don't do anything? Hey, if there was an Olympic contest for shedding, they'd win the short-hair category paws down!

Went to Wally World because they have a 30 day supply of my allergy medicine for $6. Near the medicine area there was a small skinny Asian girl, around 9 - 10 years old, wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed "Give me chocolate". Now that is a sentiment I can agree with. So after I got my medicines I headed over to the chocolate area to stock up on some Ghiardelli's. She was already there, of course, enthusiastically educating her bemused parents about the various chocolates. This old penguin can appreciate folks who know the important things in life, of which chocolate decidedly is.

Downstairs trailer trash continues being trailer trash. The (illegal) daycare kids she is paid under the table to watch are leaving trash all over the place and she never budges from in front of her television where she is watching the telenovelas at high volume in order to police the tykes. She treats her patio like a redneck treats the front porch of his trailer house, complete with sofa with stuffing poking out of the cushions. AGH! The only good news is that the "Affordable Housing" voucher people don't last long here, so I'll get another trailer trash neighbor downstairs soon enough. In case you're wondering, landlords are required to set aside a certain percentage of apartments for "affordable housing" here in order to get a building permit, it's a deed restriction that goes with the deed forever even though my apartment complex is on its third owner, and there's a whole mini-industry built around certificating and vouchering the lower-income folks who qualify for the "affordable housing" apartments. Oh well, at least it's just one apartment being trashed, not the whole complex. But now I understand why low-income housing projects always look so trashed. I'm sure she's a perfectly nice human being, but pride? Nope, she ain't got none of that.

One of the things I've figured out about The Mighty Fang is that he has no fear. None. Nada. Whatever I'm doing, he's underfoot (or worse) trying to "help". He just "helped" me make my bed, to the point where I had to pick hi up bodily, put him out in the hall, and shut the door. WHich brings up an other issue. My grandmother sewed quilts. She must have sewn over a hundred quilts between age 55 and 70 which she slowly gave away over her last 15 years of life. If you remember the photo of the cats on my bed, you may have noticed the colorful quilt. That is not one of her quilts. I have a couple of her quilts, but they are carefully stored in my closet because they are irreplaceable and cats tend to be hard on quilts. Still, I want a quilt on my bed because, well, because. Even if it isn't one of hers, it's right. So anyhow, I need another quilt. The cats have pretty much shredded the one on my bed. But I checked out a few places where you might expect to find a quilt, and nada. Does anybody know where to get a reasonable-priced quilt somewhere in the San Jose area?

And now I lay me down to sleep...

-- Badtux the Meandering Penguin

Bubble Boy goes to Australia

And in order to protect him, a black helicopter will jam all cell phones within a quarter mile of him. Because he must be protected, regardless of the harm that it does to the business district of Sidney. Just as the poor innocents of Hong Kong must be protected from the beastiality and incest of a certain dirty book that was much beloved by the late Jerry Falwell. Ah, I do enjoy reading the tabloids! BTW, now that the terrorists know that cell phones are going to be jammed, I'm sure they'll just use another frequency. Like, say, the same one that the Secret Service uses?

Next up: Because of the possibility that someone might send poison gas towards the Holy New Roman Emperor's person, all air shall be banned from a half-mile radius of His Holy Eminence The Bush. Want to breathe? Tough! The Bush must be protected from that aweful "air" stuff!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Ubuntu Studio rocks!

So I installed Ubuntu Studio after I installed my Ubuntu 7.04, but I didn't do anything with it because I was still setting up my system. I decided to install Skype, and tracked down a version for Ubuntu 7.04 and installed it along with the software upgrades needed to play DVD's (which I own, but which the MPAA says I can't play on my computer because, well, just because they're assholes and don't want me to). I plugged my little desktop microphone into the microphone jack on my console switch, and tried to make a sample call. Eh. Nothing. So I fired up my old favorite audacity (an Open Source hard drive audio recording program) to see whether it was a problem with the audio system or with Skype. Still nothing. Okay, so my Soundblaster USB is also plugged in, hooked up to my Behringer mixer which in turn is hooked up to a couple of recording mikes. So I swivel the boom with a Shure SM58C to in front of my face, turn on the mixer, and tell Audacity to look at the Soundblaster USB instead of the internal sound card. I successfully record my voice with Audacity, then switch to the Skype window, tell *it* to use the Soundblaster USB for recording, and successfully make my test call.

Then I switch back to Audacity, flip through the menus, and ... OMG! This thing already has over 500 plugins installed! Whoa, no need to go look for a tube amp simulator plugin, it's already there! No need to go look for a good compression plugin, a half-dozen compressors are already there!

Somehow, I think I'm no longer going to be hooking my Soundblaster USB to my Windows laptop for my sound recording purposes... although I need to go out and get more CPU and memory because my Linux box was my file server, not my recording workstation, thus has an emphasis upon fast disks, not upon lots of CPU power. Oh well. For a computer geek, any excuse to buy new hardware works :-). (To be fair, I need more memory to run Ubuntu Studio, and the kind of memory my old motherboard takes is no longer cheaply available, so might as well get a new motherboard and processor while I'm at it... one of those new Intel Core 2 Duos sounds like just the trick!).

- Badtux the Computer Penguin

On the move

The curmudgeonly Mencken says, "I'm outta here!" and stalks off in disgust.

-- Badtux the Curmudgeonly Penguin

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day

... and this apparently was World Nut Daily's time to be right -- about how the Busheviks are stripping Homeland Security in order to feed the Iraq quagmire.

Of course, it took them *years* to notice that the Busheviks were doing this, while those of us in Blogistan have been ranting about it since, well, since a few months after Mission Accomplished Day when it became apparent that the Busheviks weren't getting us out of Iraq anytime soon including all the firefighters and cops who were in the National Guard in Iraq instead of here protecting us. But hey, they're tighty righties. It takes a while for the thoughts to ooze around in their heads and get to where they can do some good. So let's give'em some slack, eh?

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Note: yeah, just got home *again*. The treatise on behavior modification and the notions of "sin" and "redemption" is hereby delayed yet another day. Here, have a snark snack.

Stupid spammers

Anonymous posting temporarily disabled. If necessary, I will turn on comment moderation, but I doubt it'll be necessary, turning off anonymous posting usually whacks them.

-- Badtux the Spammed Penguin

Democracy

In a democracy, you may believe that it's the people who choose their leaders. But that notion is as quaint as the Geneva Conventions. In a democracy, who really chooses our leaders is... Rush Limbaugh.

Huh? Rush Limbaugh?

Yes, Rush Limbaugh. (Warning, link goes to World Nut Daily, you may wish to wear surgical gloves and mask and place a condom over your computer before clicking).

Methinks that Rush's happy happy penis pills have been swelling his head, not his penis. What ya think?

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Note: Essay on sin delayed due to necessity to earn six-figure salary. Have a snark snack instead. Less filling! Tastes... uhm... like Viagra! Yeah!

Answers Part II

In which this penguin discusses easy answers vs. simple answers -- and why they're not the same.

First, though, a slight digression as I start installing Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn onto the /new4 partition of my server... check back in a little bit... GAH! I need to download a "server install" rather than the "workstation install" that I downloaded, the "workstation install" has a brain dead idiot stupid retarded installer on it that only works with a single IDE hard drive. Be back in an hour or so... sorry about that. Had to reboot my laptop into Linux to burn a new CD with k3b because HP doesn't include CD burning software with their el-cheapo consumer laptops (what a buncha jerks!). The KDE CD burning software is easier to use than anything I ever ran under Windows anyhow -- just click the 'open', select the ISO, and it automatically knows you want to burn a disk with it and gives you a 'start' button to start the burn. Click the start button, watch the progress bars go, and it's *done*. Anyhow, I was on my Windows laptop doing the blogging but had to reboot it to get into a real OS. Anyhow, where was I?

Oh yes. Answers. One way you can tell an easy answer is that it doesn't require much of you. All easy answers are simple answers -- do bad things? Why, just bend the knee and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and all is forgiven, you can go out and do more bad things and still get into heaven! That's a simple answer. But it's also an easy answer. Because it doesn't require anything of you except babbling some meaningless words in the church-house. We have a word for those kinds of people, BTW. We call them "hypocrits". Accepting Jesus into your heart is something that you live, not something you say. Kurt Vonnegut always said he didn't believe in Jesus or God. Yet he lived every day as if he did, indeed, he once said that he would not want to be part of a race that had never produced the Beatitudes. Vonnegut is an example of a man who had Jesus in his heart even if he did not have Jesus in his head. What matters is that you follow Jesus, not that you say you do.

Anyhow, back to where we were. So all easy answers are simple answers. But are all simple answers easy answers? Well, no. As Bryan mentioned in Answers Part I, there are simple answers that are far, far from easy. For example, Bill and Ted's Most Excellent Commandment: "Be Most Excellent to One Another" (a re-statement of Matthew 22:36-40) is simple. But is it easy? Well, Jerry Falwell died today of heart failure. I'm finding it very, very difficult to avoid expressing amazement that he even had a heart, given the hatred that he has spewed over the years. Being most excellent to Jerry Falwell might be simple, but it sure isn't easy.

Okay, so we've established that all easy answers are simple, but not all simple answers are easy. Now hold on, I need to reboot my laptop back into Windows and resume posting from over there, now that my CD is burned... okay, I'm back. Feisty went on just fine with the 'server' disk, now I have Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio downloading. The latter of which being why I wanted to upgrade to Feisty, except you couldn't upgrade to Feisty from Dapper, but luckily I keep a couple of spare root partitions hanging around because my server has five SATA disks in it (three 160gb disks, two 80gb disks) set up as MD RAID arrays, thus I have no shortage of disk space, so I just installed on one of my spare root partitions after making sure the whole system was backed up first (!!!! Very important !!!) but it looks like it went on real slick. Anyhow, it's downloading so where was I?

Oh yeah. Easy answers vs. simple answers. Now, here comes the kicker. A youngster says, "well, that's the wonder, that God set out easy answers for us in the Bible! And I arrived at this all on my own without anybody giving me easy answers!"

Uhm, no, child, No you didn't arrive at that on your own. A pastor used the exact same words you used, and while you may believe you arrived at them on your own, you didn't. You're repeating what someone told you. I know because a pastor used those exact same words with me thirty years ago, when I was your age. Of course, at 14 years of age I was full of piss and vinegar and thought I knew everything. Now, thirty years later, I just have to laugh. The more I know, the more I know that I don't know shit, and never will, because the universe (God) is just too big, and I'm just a limited hunk of meat.

And when I was 18, I thought I knew some wise things. But I didn't. Like most youngsters that age with any kind of luck, I'd been shielded and sheltered from the realities of life. All I knew was what the people around me knew -- people just like myself, the same race, general income level, religion, and so forth. I'd never met a gay couple, indeed, the first time I met a gay couple I didn't recognize them as gay until it was pointed out to me, "hey, stupid, they have a two bedroom apartment and the second bedroom is used as a computer room!". I'd never walked into a crack house and talked to a gang-banger. I'd never rebuild an engine, or welded a shock tower on, or taught a classroom full of troubled youth in a behavior center, or lived with a Hindu, or worked with someone from a foreign country, or ... well, you get the point. I thought I knew something. But I didn't. I still don't, thirty years later. I can't. Nobody can. The universe is too big, and we're too small. We can know parts of the universe, sort of, somewhat. But we will never know the totality of God's creation, the totality of God, because we are finite and God is not. Heck, even knowing the totality of Man's creation is far beyond any one of us nowdays.

Anyhow, I just have to laugh at running into another 18 year old full of piss and vinegar who thinks he knows all the answers and trots out the same old easy answers that I accepted as true back when I was a kid his age. But life isn't easy. And while there are some simple answers in the Bible, like "love thy neighbor as thyself", they aren't easy either. They may be simple, but they aren't easy. If you're pulling easy answers out of the Bible, answers that don't require anything of yourself or that even require you to impose your will at gunpoint upon another human being, then you need to quit talking and start living and listening. The Quakers know this. That's why the Quakers don't go out evangelizing their religion. They live it. They show people by example how a man or woman of faith is supposed to live, through charity and good works and advocating for peace whether in the neighborhood or amongst the community of nations. When they pray, they don't talk. They listen. Their prayer at the meeting house on First Day is completely silent. God is out there. Are you listening? Or are you repeating what others have told you, and closing your ears to God in the process?

And that's a simple answer. But it's not an easy answer. We monkeys do love to natter away...

Anyhow: faith is a journey, not a destination. If you believe you've arrived at a destination, it is time to close your mouth, and open your ears, and listen. Because easy answers aren't part of God's creation. They're part of Man's.

-- Badtux the Nattering Penguin

Random picture blogging

This guy was buzzing the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday. I don't know why, they have security cameras all over the bloody bridge. Training mission? Joy ride? Hmm. The bridge is showing distressing signs of age and poor maintenance. Bare rusty rebars have popped out of a lot of the concrete on the pillars and such too. I wouldn't say that Golden Gate Bridge is falling down. But it's showing the same signs of distress as the rest of America's infrastructure.

Note: As usual, clicky on the pictures to embiggen them... but that photo of the chopper don't get that much bigger. I tried, but that's the best photo I got, he was moving *fast* and by the time I zoomed further he was gone.

-- Badtux the Golden Gate Penguin

Yes, back in the traces again

The Employer(tm) is paying the penguin an obscene amount of money to hack Linux. So the penguin is back in the traces again. Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho! No no, not the ten dollah type, penguins have a different way of doing things.

Will be back home tonight. The results probably will not be posted until tomorrow though.

Meanwhile, consider the Canadian Quarters of Mass Destruction, which is surely as evil a story as the cowboys of mass destruction one. It's surprising that Canada's dollar coins are called "loonies" when that should more properly apply to our politicians in Washington. We are truly ruled by idiots. Insane idiots, at that.

That is all.

-- Badtux the Working Penguin

Traumatized in Detroit

A horrible, horrible thing happened in Detroit recently, that horribly traumatized an innocent little 12 year old girl. What was it? Did someone blow off her foot with a bomb with the markings "U.S.A." on it? Or maybe U.S. soldiers shot and killed her parents in front of her wide eyes? Or maybe a car bomb blew up outside her school and there was blood and dead bodies all over the place?

No no, it was none of those. It was something far, far more horrible, something so horrible that a lawsuit had to filed, had to, I say, because this girl was horribly traumatized for life by: Yes, gay cowboys. Oh the horror!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Note: Serious post coming tonight. Enjoy the snark.

Reminder

I'm out of here. I'll discuss a couple of things religion-related when I get back. Don't tear up the place while I'm gone, and Grumpy? Can you please not be mean to children while I'm gone? It's wrong and you know it. Sigh.

-- Badtux the Gone Penguin

Answers

The most endearing, frustrating, and horrifying attribute of the human race is the search for easy answers to complex problems. Whether it is the easy answer of "kill the Jews" for the complex problem of Germany's poor economy in the 1920's, or the easy answer of "kill the abortion doctors" for the complex problem of abortion, or the easy answer of "conquer their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity" for the complex problem of maniacs running airplanes into skyscrapers, Mankind will never stop searching for the winning lottery ticket in the answer sweepstakes.

But sometimes there aren't any easy answers. Sometimes there aren't even any answers at all. Why did my father have so much sorrow in his life, and such a horrifying end? Why do some men turn to lives of violence and hate? What is going to happen to me in the near future? The easy answer, "it was God's will", is just that -- an easy answer. The universe is infinite, and the notion that we meat animals with our limited grey meat brains are capable of comprehending more than the tiniest part of the infinite is so staggering an act of hubris that it is a wonder that the Creator does not just strike us all down with a blazing series of lightning bolts.

Back to thinking bloggers. This is It may be a blog by a sloppy dog lover, but that's okay, this cat lover reads it anyhow. Why Now gives a nice perspective on the news. And then, hmm... ah yes. I suspect I need to narrow down a representative of that mighty supervillain The Gay Agenda for the final candidate, but which one? A distressing number of blogs on my right margin are created by The Gay Agenda with his evil gay ray gun of gayness that, like, shoots out of television screens and TURNS OUR CHILDREN GAY !!! OH THE HORROR!. Shall it be Mustang Bobby? 42? Hmm...

But there are, unfortunately, several bloggers who have fallen prey to the easy answers fallacy who have fallen off the list of thinking bloggers. There is one ornery old coot who goes around snorting "Who cares, it's all monkeys." Yes dear. And you're a monkey too. What's your point? More distressing is a blogger who is a co-blogger of mine at another site who is much more thoughtful person, except he is always falling for easy answers too. Autism on the rise? Easy answer: It's the vaccines! The 9/11 attacks were awefully convenient for the Bush Administration? The towers were brought down by explosives! Early-onset Alzheimer's runs in the family? Here's some magic herbs that'll stop Alzheimers! Sadly, his once-vibrant blog has become almost unreadable as his quest for easy answers to complex reality removes all skepticism and willingness to consider alternative points of view.

Which reminds me of another young man. This youngster has fallen for easy answers also. He spouts the easy answers given to him by his elders, generally in the form of a simple statement that over-simplifies a complex issue and a scattering of Bible verses that "support" that simple statement, yet refuses to consider the wonder that is the Infinite. He, too, has fallen prey to the fallacy that there are easy answers to life. In his case, the easy answer is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, at which point everything becomes simple and you do not need to consider the complexities of the Infinite any longer, you simply act as a soldier of Christ bringing a scattering of simple statements issued by your elders ("the Truth") to the rest of the population. But the Infinity that is the Creator is far vaster than the contents of any book written in human language. The notion that the bags of water and meat called "humanity" could begin to comprehend more than a tiny portion of the Infinite is such an absurd notion that it doesn't survive the giggle test. One day this young man will find out that reality cannot be encompassed by easy answers. One day this young man will discover that what he thought was "The Truth" is just a small part of the Infinite, and that the faith that he professes encompasses only a small part of the infinity that is the Creator. Then what? I don't know. What, you thought I had easy answers too?

- Badtux the Not-easy Penguin

On the other hand...

there is this beast. PLANAR PL2010M Black 20" 16ms DVI LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 1000:1 Built in Speakers. This is what is on my desk at the office. It does 1600x1200 resolution, which is a *bunch* of open Emacs windows or browser or EMAIL windows. Of course, the slow refresh rate would make it suck for games, and I'm not even sure it would *fit* on my desk at home (due to the shelf over the monitor area) whereas the widescreen definitely would... would also not be as good for watching DVD movies.

Choices, choices...

-- Badtux the Consumer Penguin

Should I buy this monitor?

When women get down, they buy shoes or chocolate. When Linux penguins get depressed, they go buy new tech geek toys.

Should I buy a wide-screen LCD? I'm looking at the SAMSUNG 226BW 22" widescreen (1680x1050 resolution). They appear to be pretty popular, Fry's is out of them and sells them at $349 list price when they have it (which, BTW, is only $50 more than I paid for my current 17" LCD monitor five years ago). And being able to watch DVD movies without windowboxing (the black bars at top and bottom that appear on full-width theatrical movies shown on a regular-dimension screen) would be nice...

My Samsung ML-6060 laser printer is now seven years old and works as good as new (albeit with a new toner/drum cartridge in that time period of course!). So I know Samsung can build good sh*t. Heck, I am not even *thinking* of replacing my ML6060, even though, in computer years, it's 70 years old and ready for a nursing home. It's a workhorse, with low per-page costs, reasonable speeds (hey, it's an old printer with a 160mhz processor and 16mb of EDO RAM, there's limits imposed by the technology available at that time), and good resolution for a laser printer (1200x1200).

- Badtux the Linux Geek Penguin

Flowers for Algernon

For some reason, I am thinking of that oft-banned book. I wonder why.

-- Badtux the Connections Penguin

Mortality

I have another birthday in a few days. This birthday will be special. I will be the exact same age that my father was when he first displayed symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer's.

Within two years he was unable to work. Within five years he was in a nursing home. Within ten years he was dead. He was 54 years old when he died. Not much older than a cousin of his who similarly died of early-onset Alzheimer's.

I might hope to have inherited my mother's genes here. All of my mother's relatives remain clear-headed until within a year of death. But I don't know about that. I inherited my father's quick mind -- my mother and her relatives have heads of wood. Did I inherit the defective gene that makes the brain suddenly disintegrate in an otherwise healthy man? I don't know, and that gives me yet another selfish reason to wish for a national health care system that actually works. The only reason my father got the care he got, which was as good as was possible with the knowledge and technology of the day, was because he was a Korean War veteran and thus could use the VA system. If it happens to me... Louisiana's public health care system is a shambles due to the loss of 20% of its beds in the Great Katrina Flood, Medi-Cal is a disgrace, and besides it would be a year before I received any care due to disability and might very well be dead in that time. Perhaps that would be better. I don't know. It certainly would not be very dignified, in any event.

Of course, the right wing's answer to this is, "if you're no longer capable of working, you should just shut up and die." The notion of We the People getting together and in a spirit of Christian charity taxing ourselves in order to provide care for the least amongst us does not appeal to them at all, because the only moral value they truly hold, in their tiny little bitter hearts, is "I got mine." The spirit of Jesus Christ, who once famously said that a rich man could no more enter Heaven than a camel go through the eye of a needle, does not live in their hearts. Their other answer is that you should join a church and receive care from your church. That is just another way of saying "I got mine", since these people rarely join a church themselves, and if they do, never donate much of their income to the church. Most church-goers that I know are solidly working class, just poor schmucks going through life thinking they're middle class even though they aren't. It is sad, but true, that the lower one's income, the larger the percentage you donate to charity. A person with $10 is more likely to donate $1 to charity than a person with $1,000,000 is to donate $100,000, even though he can afford it least. But the working class schmuck knows, "there but for the grace of God goes I", and gives what he can. The person with $1,000,000 says, "suckers! I got mine, I'll never be a charity case!", and gives $1 just to say he gave.

In other words, I do not think you can be rich and truly a Christian. Because if you were truly a Christian, you would have given it away to those in need, as Jesus counselled doing.

A week ago someone nominated me as a "Thinking Blogger". I am flattered. I am also supposed to nominate other bloggers as "Thinking Bloggers". That will require some thinking on my part. There is the Quaker Agitator, of course, who is always thoughtful. But he has already been nominated by so many different people that he must be tired of it. There is the warrior bard Minstrel Boy who is thoughtful in a different way, the thoughtful of a man who has seen and done many things in his life, learned many things about himself over his lifetime that he perhaps does not necessarily want to know and acquired wisdom the hard way one scar at a time, and spends his time trying to do the right thing despite his uncertainties about the existence of a Creator. Beyond that... I am not, tonight, doing too much thinking I guess. Too much thinking about mortality, and the transcience of human existence.

There is a place Minstrel Boy went for his own birthday. I have been there, a place where there is water in a desert wilderness, the remnants of old orchards, a few relics of an old ranch hidden beneath the brush slowly decaying into nothing. It is the perfect place to ponder the transcience of human existence while alone with nothing more than your own thoughts. This weekend, though, I think I will take a different trip. I will drive to the Caltrain station and catch a train to San Francisco. I will walk the streets and watch the people. And in the end, I will be no less alone.

- Badtux the Older Penguin