I don't often post entire articles here, but I have to make an exception for this stinging review of the Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine":

Tim Blair: The awful truth? It's a crock
30dec02

CHILDREN'S television is quite an art. It's not just a matter of throwing together simple tunes, basic storylines and bright colours. Successful children's TV also requires the presence of a large, formless creature, an entity usually combining equal elements of human and bovine. The cow-beast is crucial.

So it is with Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's Cannes-winning documentary on the wrongs of guns, capitalism, and America, now screening in Australia. The simple tunes and basic storylines are in place. Moore himself plays the Dorothy the Dinosaur role, clumsily loping about in pursuit of Bad Guys. It's a kid flick for the adult anti-American market.

Moore manipulates this market so expertly that you anticipate fans squealing "Go Mikey!" every time he plods smugly into frame. Fans like The Age's Stephanie Bunbury: "Isn't that great, you think with a huge sigh of relief as you see him bearing down, amiable but inexorable, on the next feral gun owner or racist lunatic. Go Mikey!"

Yay! Margaret Pomeranz of SBS's Movie Show awarded Columbine five stars, and also got into the toddler spirit: "Moore shambles around with his baseball cap on, his stomach hanging out; almost a teddy bear figure, Moore seems to encompass so much that's terribly important in the world today with the United States on the brink of yet another international gun expedition." Movie Show co-presenter (and film reviewer for The Australian) David Stratton detected vast importance, too: "It's a sobering film, but never a dull one, thanks to the brilliance of Moore's sometimes scatological approach to a profoundly important subject."

The subject is obviously so profoundly important that no local reviewer has been bothered to report the controversy in the US over Columbine's inaccuracies and distortions. Journalists have a damned nerve charging people money for less information than is available free on the internet. Writing about Columbine without addressing its flaws is like writing about Michael Jackson without mentioning that these days he looks like an albino bat.

A mind given to conspiracy theories might conclude that an element of cover-up is involved. For the record, and because you apparently won't read it elsewhere in the Australian press, here is a brief list of things believed wrong about Columbine, from sources ranging from Salon.com and Forbes to London's Sunday Times (these and more may be found at www.moorewatch.com):


The title refers to two teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot up Columbine High School in 1999, killing 13 people and themselves. Moore asserts that they went bowling on the morning of the massacre. Police now say they did not.


Moore shows a television ad for the 1988 Bush/Quayle presidential campaign targeting the "revolving door" prison system run by Michael Dukakis in Massachusetts. Superimposed on the ad, as though there originally, are the words: "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." Moore added that line, which in any case is wrong; Horton didn't kill, but raped a woman while released.


Moore theorises that the Columbine killers were inclined towards murder because their town is home to a Lockheed-Martin weapon-making facility. The plant in question actually builds devices that launch TV satellites.


Moore implies that the US-led bombing of Kosovo on the morning of the killings possibly motivated Klebold and Harris. He doesn't mention their alleged Nazi fixation, or that they killed their classmates and teachers on Hitler's birthday.


A graphic superimposed over footage of the second jet slicing into the World Trade Centre reads: "Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to kill 3000 Americans." Sure, Mike. Moore wrote the day after the attack that the victims "did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him . . . Why kill them?" Soon afterwards he deleted these words from his website.


Although his film is about US gun violence, Moore avoids speaking to any black victims of gun violence – in a society where 55 per cent of gun murder victims are black.


Columbine spends much time praising peaceful, multicultural Canada, where everybody leaves their doors unlocked and nobody shoots each other. Moore doesn't mention 1989's Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, when gunman Marc Lepine killed 14 women due to his hatred of feminists.


Moore largely dodges the issue of gun crime in cities, where 70 per cent of US gun murders occur. A crime of the type that took place in Columbine (more than five dead in a mostly white suburban area) represented less than one-tenth of one per cent of murders in 1999.


Moore claims that the US provided tens of millions worth of aid dollars to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in 2000-01. That money was provided for famine relief and was distributed by the UN and non-government organisations.


No wonder Moore is so popular in France, where Thierry Meyssan's book Effroyable Imposture (which argued that September 11 was engineered by the American government) became a bestseller.

Some of his reviewer/fans share Moore's accuracy problems. Bunbury claimed that "he bails up the entire management of Kmart and confronts Charlton Heston on his own front veranda" although he meets only a few Kmart management types and interviews Heston inside his house; and The Australian's Jane Cornwell wrote that Columbine's vile three-minute cartoon history of the US, written by Moore and made by animators FlickerLab, was produced "by the guys from South Park".

Just as wrong are reviewers' standard lines about Moore "taking on big business" and "standing up for the little guy". Moore usually stands up to the little guy, bullying sales staff and humiliating small-town folk. At the cinema where I saw Columbine, a typically open-minded and compassionate inner-city crowd giggled indulgently as Moore (aided by sneaky editing) made fools of police, PR flacks, the unemployed, the undereducated and the working class.

Millionaire Moore – who is to working class as French is to resistance, despite once spending one entire day on the Buick assembly line in his hometown of Flint, Michigan – is waging a class war, but it's against the rubes and hicks he claims to represent. They are mere joke fodder in his deceitful Playschool morality play. Go to hell, Mikey.

We got back today from a weekend at French Lick. For those of you who are not Hoosiers, French Lick is a little town about 60 miles northwest of Louisville. At one time, it was the Baden-Baden of the Midwest with a spring and plenty of hoity-toity hotels. The French Lick Resort is the last of these grand destinations and a great place to go if you enjoy massages and doing NOTHING for a weekend. Due to work, I was unable to join Kelli and her family until Saturday afternoon. The evening was filled with drinking and cards, something that we don't do very often. It was fun to not be constantly bombarded with information for 36 hours or so. My only problem was the lack of sleep, a constant problem when I go out of town.


North Korea is rearing its ugly, cultist head again. For a good tourist's view of the inside, check out Simon Bone's website. He traveled there in 98, and his observations on the cult of personality that is North Korea are interesting and free from bias. Information on the Hermit Kingdom is scarce; this is by far the best site I have ever found. By the way, MacArthur was right about Korea.

We survived another Christmas. I dread the holidays now; essentially, the time has become meaningless to me. I enjoy spending time with family and friends, but the core of the holiday and its religious significance has left me. If Kelli and I had children, I might look at this time differently; however, should it take children to keep us centered?


So I have been thinking about Pax Romana----The Peace of Rome. Father Troy, one of the Franciscans in residence at St. Anthony of Padua, used the term in his homily during Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. If you read the account of Jesus' birth in the Gospel of Luke, it refers to the world being "at peace" during that time. This is a vague reference to the fact that Rome controlled most of the Europe and the Middle East at the time of Christ's birth; their grasp would remain firm and essentially unchallenged for another three centuries. The peace that the world knew came at a price: domination and oversight by a few far-away politicians who knew nothing about the cultures they suppressed and cared even less. They made Roman culture dominant everywhere the Legions tread.

Those of us born in the second half of the twentieth century have known a peace, too: peace brought on by mutual assured destruction, the concept that held a total war too costly and horrible to ever be waged. There were brushfires, certainly: Korea, Viet Nam and the many African liberation wars just to name a few. But the global conflagration we all dreaded never came. It is my belief it never came because the Soviets, although ideaologically opposed to the West, were Europeans at heart. Our cultures were not that different and they had known true death and destruction at the hands of the Nazis only a generation earlier. Despite their cruelties, they were civilized.

With two superpowers, there was balance in the world. Now, that has changed. We are the only name in the superpower business, and business is bad. The tightrope act of democracy and communism that kept so many splinter groups in line has fallen away, leaving a world that is full of extremists. Some would argue that this is a situation of our own making: for years, the enemy of our enemy was our friend. It didn't matter if the friend was a radical Muslim or a dictator. If you were anti-Communist, you were in the club. Of course, the Soviets did the same thing: their partners in Asia were communists in name only; their actions were those of despots interested in their corner of the world, not in spreading the teachings of Marx and Lenin.

And so, I believe that our own Pax Romana, held tight by two nations capable of destroying the world, has been shattered by, in some ways, our own successes. Every day that goes by convinces me more and more that we are heading for a dark age of constant, low-intensity warfare without borders, frontlines and surrender documents. No one reading this will live to see the day when the American military is not engaged in combat somewhere in the world.

Eddie Slovak was one of the 16 million men who served in the U.S. military during World War II. Like most of his comrades, Slovak didn't want to be in Europe in December, 1944. Unlike most of his comrades, Slovak refused to fight. Not once, but twice. On December 23, 1944, Eddie Slovak was sentenced to death by firing squad, a sentence that was carried out in January, 1945. What's so important about this? Because, even though thousands of men deserted their posts during the war, Slovak was the ONLY man put to death for it. Just something to ponder.


So today is Christmas Eve. Most of us will celebrate Christmas in some way, either with religious observance, gathering with friends and family, or both. But during the next 48 hours, please take a moment and think about the nearly 200,000 American serviceman and women who will be overseas for Christmas. You didn't ask them to be there and all of them volunteered. But they know that some things, some precious, timeless ideas, are worth defending against those who would destroy them. Whether you love or loathe or don't "get" the military, they are doing it for you. So take a moment and say a prayer for them, and hope that they will be here next Christmas and thank God they're there.

Eddie Slovak? Yes, a little later.

Kelli and I went to see "The Two Towers" tonight. If you are into the genre or just into epics, it's a great film. I didn't read all three books in the LOTR trilogy, so I don't know how close it stayed to the book. One of the amazing things I noticed was how diverse the crowd was: young, old, black, white. There is something about that story that touches people no matter where they are in their lives. I would like to think it's because the story is not really about wizards, orcs, dwarves, elves and hobbits; it's about friendship, loyalty, devotion, and sacrifice for a common good.


I love reading the North Korean news. Here is their take on the "piracy" that took place off the coast of Yemen early last week:

Pyongyang, December 20 (KCNA) -- We have never seen such piracy as that committed against a peaceful trading vessel with the involvement of huge troops. This was robbery which could be committed only by the U.S. and its followers keen on isolating and stifling the DPRK. The captain of the DPRK-flagged trading cargo ship Sosan said this at a press conference held aboard the ship on Dec. 17 after entering Mukalla Port in Yemen.
He continued:
When the ship was on its voyage in the open sea on Dec. 9, Spanish battleships and planes encircled the ship all of a sudden at the U.S. instigation. They indiscriminately fired guns at equipment of the ship, severely destroying them. Then, two helicopters and a speedboat brought more than 60 commandos on board.
After occupying an engine room and a steering house, they fired thousands of large and small-caliber bullets, thus seriously threatening the lives of crewmen and putting the ship under their complete control. They even kicked sailors and beat them with butts.
On that afternoon 18 crewmen of the ship were taken to a Spanish warship and transferred to the U.S. warship later.
The pirates committed such unimaginable inhuman acts as inhibiting the Koreans from talking and allowing them to go to toilets only under armed pirates' escort.
They searched the cabins several times and robbed them of valuables and money.
The U.S. mobilized a destroyer, a cruiser, an escort ship, a carrier and huge troops to carry out the piracy.
The U.S. must apologize for such brazen-faced piracy, own full responsibility for it and make a compensation for the mental and material damage done to the ship and its crewmen.
The participants in the press conference looked round the ship to learn about the damage.

John Hawkins put in his two cents worth on The 20 Most Annoying Liberals in the United States for 2002. Sean "Wifebeater" Penn got a nod, as did Jesse "Is That Your Baby" Jackson. And what list would be complete without rambling blowhard Norman Mailer? However, I am greatly disappointed that Alec Baldwin only received an honorable mention. After the election in 2000, I e-mailed his publicist and offered to help him and his then-wife move to North Korea, a nation with a robust film industry. I have yet to receive a response, but I'm sure he's been busy finalizing all those movie deals.


One of the Twenty is my least favorite fellow fat guy Micheal Moore. Finally, someone has started documenting everything this asshat says. Enjoy. Hey, Mike, PLEASE go have another Whopper. Or ten.


George Patton died today in 1945 from injuries received from an auto accident in Germany. Conspiracies abound as to the real cause of the accident, but anyone who has read about the occupation of Germany by the Allies after the war knows that car wrecks were very common. The reasons? Drunkeness (they were in Germany, after all), narrow country roads, and young kids driving big trucks.

I had my first truly horrible night at work last night. The evening started when I walked into the IS department and found it totally silent. This is unusual because, normally, the room is alive with that electrical "buzz" that you don't notice until it's not there. As I feared, every server in the room was dead. As it turned out, the power had gone out at 7pm, causing the emergency generator to come online. When the power was restored, the generator shut off as it is designed to do. However, unbeknownest to anyone, the sub-breaker for the lower level of the building had tripped, meaning that the entire IS department was left running off of our APC UPS (a giant battery of sorts). The UPS is only meant to last for a few minutes,. so it ran down and caused everything to shut down abnormally.

This can cause problems, but not insurmountable ones. The problem came when I had to call my manager concerning a file that I create nightly for one of our clients. The file must be created by midnight, but I knew that the AS400 would not be up by then. Needing a mission in life (and knowing that our network manager was on his way in), he came in and stayed ALL NIGHT. His evening consisted of pacing, fretting and looking over my shoulder at every opportunity. Of course, I understand this is his right. However, his level of professionalism and competance is poor under the best of circumstances; when he has to move off of the written instruction page, he is completely useless. As a result, I had to stand around for part of the evening while he "checked things out", which consisted of looking at a bunch of spool files that told him nothing. It was his attempt, I believe, to impress me with his knowledge and command ability. It finally convinced me that he is a blithering idiot. Fortunately for me, everything else went smoothly and he left around 5am. I'm now more glad then ever that I work alone.

Bill Clinton was impeached today in 1998. No, it wasn't about sex; it was about lying under oath.

Dennis Prager, my favorite radio talk show host, had several guests on yesterday who were members of an unnamed "peace movement". Prager, who is moderately conservative and very pro-Israel, did his best to engage the three ladies for the better part of an hour. I came away from the encounter with several observations:


1. If you are going to protest any act of war, please learn the history of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. One of the ladies, when asked whether she would have fought against Nazi oppresion, replied that there WAS non-violent protest in Nazi Germany and if more people had participated World War Two would never have happened. She was ignorant of both the impact of the Versailles Treaty on post-World War One Germany and the events leading up to the Nazi takeover of the German government in 1933.

2. Most of the people involved in the "peace movement" do not believe in evil and/or bad people. To them, there are only people: some do good things and some do bad things. To them, the idea is not to punish the evil-doer, but rather understand his pain so as to avoid angering him in the future. I have heard many, many people put forward this idea since September 11: "Why are those people so angry at us?" I don't care. Their pain, whatever it is, means nothing to me. Their actions removed any compassion or understanding I may have had for them and their cause. They are heathens and behave like animals; therefore, the Western world needs to destroy them AND their culture. If this makes me a monster, so be it. The world is better off without people who wish to see a return to the 13th century.

3. Very few people who oppose violence subscribe to any concept of morality. To them, values are not society-wide but very personal; if it works for you, do it. No civilization has thrived under those conditions. Our laws, our customs and our traditions are all based on common conceptions of right, wrong and what it means to belong to a community. With no baseline from which to judge what is "common good", civilization will soon collapse.

I am no lover of war, but I understand that it is a brutal reality of a sinful world. Peace is NOT the absence of war.

Texas is a big place. From Texarkana to El Paso is over 900 miles, which is further (by air) than the distance from Louisville to Dallas. Everything they do there is big. Big lakes, big cities, big linebackers. Of course, there is a downside to this: when Texas produces idiots, they are huge idiots. A case in point: Anne Richards, former governor of Texas. As I write this, she is being interviewed on Larry King's Alive. I can, for a time at least, overlook her white-trash, I'm-one-of-you accent. What I can not overlook is her blatant ignorance on so many issues. She compensates for this by making earthy, down-home statements that are designed to make us see her as stern mother-type. The end result is not so nice, but rather "old, cranky hag". Of course, she is a liberal Democrat, so I can't expect too much. But when she attempted to link the current controversy in the Church with the Church's opposition to abortion, I not only lost her train of thought, but any understanding I may have had. I am only consoled by the fact that a) W. beat her in Texas and b) he is now the President.

Ben Stein spells it out for us. Outstanding. Take a minute and read the column. For those of you allergic to capitalism, please know that the link goes to Forbes magazine. You have been warned.


Sean Penn says that war with Iraq in unavoidable. Thank God we now have his input! I mean, where would we be without commentary from Hollywood? Who would shape American foreign policy? Such clarity! Such morality! Such bulls**t!


I know it's been a couple days since my last post, but Blogger has been throwing out SQL errors and not taking my posts. Oh well. Today in 1944, the Battle of the Bulge began. It was Germany's last offensive as they attempted to break through the Allied lines and recapture the port of Antwerp. However, the Germans were down to old men, young boys and fanatical SS loonies. However, they made amazing advances (mainly due to bad weather that kept Allied planes on the ground) and surrounded the railroad junction at Bastogne. The city, defended by the 101st Airborne Division, held out until some time after Christmas, when George Patton's 3rd Armored Division broke through the German lines and relieved the tired paratroopers.

Peggy Noonan has an excellent column at opinionjournal.com. Rarely have I agreed so completely with someone else’s observations on an issue. It’s pretty long, but worth the read.


Today in 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people must receive a hearing before property linked to illegal drug sales can be seized. Wow, an assumption of innocence? Gee....thanks!

Today in 1941, the U.S. Navy seized control of the French ocean liner Normandie in New York Harbor. When France surrendered to the Germans in 1940, the Normandie, then in U.S. waters, was put in “protective custody” by our navy. The fear was that the liner, which was the largest ship afloat at that time, would fall into German hands if she returned to France.

The navy intended to use the liner as a troop ship. It was not to be. In February, 1942, while undergoing conversion, she caught fire and sank at the pier. Originally, sabotage was suspected. However, it was later learned that a welder’s torch most likely started the fire. The wreckage was eventually cut up and sold for scrap.


One of the reasons I mention this is because of current controversy over the North Korean freighter carrying Scuds that was seized by the Spanish Navy on its way to Yemen. Most early reports stated that seizing a ship in international waters without an expressed blockade is a violation of international law. However, for some reason, all is fair game if the ship in question is not flying a flag (the North Korean ship was not). However, seizing the cargo without cause (or, I think, “cause bella”, or during time of war) is still considered piracy. So let’s sum up: a Spanish ship stopped a North Korean ship not flying a flag in international waters because it was carrying Scud missiles. The ship was then turned over to the U.S. Navy, which intended to take the ship to a British base in the Indian Ocean. However, Yemen, who had bought and paid for the missiles, complained and wanted them delivered on time. So the U.S., being a good ally of Yemen, let them go. This, my friends, is how international law works. My head hurts.


George Noory, the guy who is going to replace Art Bell after the first of the year, had a very interesting guest on last night. If you don’t know who Art Bell is, don’t worry; it has nothing to do with the rest of this post. Anyway, the guest was talking about the early universe when he made a statement that I had never considered: if current theories are correct, there was no light in the early universe. In fact, for about the first hundred million years, there was no fusion going on anywhere. It wasn’t until the material in the universe began to congeal and form stars that any light existed.

So move from there to the book of Genesis. Isn’t there a part in there about the world being a dark, formless, void? And then, “Let there be light”? Was this a way to explain the time after the Big Bang to the ancients? It’s something to think about, anyway.

DLP links us to a Snopes article concerning Attorney General John Ashcroft's supposed fear of calico cats. This is entertaining on many levels, mainly because it's hilarious how desperate the liberals are when they're not in power. They become kind of a circus sideshow, throwing out any idea that comes to mind, no matter how ridiculous. After all, if you throw enough mud against a wall, something is going to stick.

My favorite pet of all time was a calico cat named Kelly that my parents owned from 1980-1997. That's right: the cat lived to be over 17 years old. And she was smarter than many human beings I have known. Evil? Possibly. But the lack of an opposible thumb really limited her plans for helping to usher in Satan's Kingdom.

Admiral Grace Hopper was born today in 1906. She held many firsts: the first female Admiral in the navy, the first person (male or female) to create a compliler (a program that translates a programming language into machine code) and one of the first people to program the Mark 1, a true precursor to the modern computer. She worked with many private corporations during her time in the navy (she joined the naval reserve in 1943 after working for fifteen years as a math professor). She retired in 1971 and, after a seven-month break, was called back to active duty by the navy, where she served until 1986 (that's right: she was 80 when she retired for the last time). She often said that her greatest accomplishment was "all the young people who I helped learn something". Often, during her many public speeches, she would hold up a short piece of wire that was representational of how far electricity would travel in a nanosecond. She would then point to a spool of wire nearly one thousand feet long; that represented a microsecond. Her point: don't waste even a microsecond of time. Grace Hopper died in here sleep in Arlington, Virginia in 1992. For a look at the more technical aspects of her work, click here.


I mention Grace Hopper for two reasons. The first is personal. When I was a child, "60 Minutes" was a staple of Sunday night. This was because a)we only had four channels or so and b) until I was in high school, we only had one TV, which meant that, if I wanted to watch TV, I watched what Mom and Dad watched. Anyway, one Sunday when I was twelve or so, Mike Wallace interviewed Grace Hopper. Here was this wrinkled lady in an admiral's uniform who could be someone's grandmother. She was sharp-witted and dealt with several of the questions by saying, "Mr. Wallace, that's not the right question. What you mean to ask is...". It struck a chord in me, as much as anything can in the mind of a pre-pubescent boy. I didn't change my life or anything, but I never forgot the interview.

The second reason I wrote about Grace Hopper today is more political. Many women today have no idea who she was and that's a shame. She was never heralded by the feminists as a breaker of glass ceilings or a leader in a discipline that, until she came along, was dominated by men. Why? Because she spent her life in service to her nation, an act that automatically assigned her to the dustbin of feminist history. Modern feminism needs to be about victimhood and "rights"; Grace Hopper just went and did it. No victimhood. No marches. Just brains, guts and a desire to help her nation and make the world a better place. She could and should be a golden example.

The UFO survey is coming along well. I am surprised at two things: no one has said they believe in vampires and many people believe in intelligent life in the universe but do not believe they are or have visited here. When the survey is over, I will do a little post concerning my own beliefs.


Kelli's company Christmas party was tonight. I took my own liquor supply (I get more like my father all the time) and tied on a pretty decent buzz. We only stayed long enough to eat and find out who won all the door prizes. I have found, having been to many, many corporate Christmas parties, that it is much more fun to watch the crowd than to actually dance and b.s. all night. I've discovered that, at least here in the midwest, the crowd falls into a few distinct catagories. First, there is the Executive Board. They are wearing their best suits, glad-handing with the proliteriate and talking about how next year could be even better if we all got on board and came in for the big win (thank you, Stanley Kubrick). These group includes people in upper management and people who want to be in upper management but are generally seen as asskissers. You work with them, too.

The second group is best described as the Drunks. They, well, drink. And then they drink some more. And, by the end of the night, they end up praying to the toilet. Many of these people do not practice drinking during the year and, thus, are caught unprepared. Experience teaches that, to be a good drinker, you must do it often and in moderation. We could learn something from the Europeans in this regard.

The third group are the Showroom Girls. This group is almost exclusively female, but does have a small minority of male adhereants. They arrive dressed for a royal ceremony or a night as a paid "escort"; nothing is too flashy, gaudy or obscene if it will generate conversation. The single members of this group can also be seen towing a very good-looking f**k buddy, mainly as an accessory.

The fourth group are the Out From Under Clan. (This is about to get incredibly shallow). This Clan rarely socializes in public places; somehow, their sense of style is stuck in 1978 or so. If you are seventy and wear one-piece jumpsuits and the like, you can be forgiven. People under fifty should, if at all possible, try to at least buy clothes that are style-"neutral"---you can't go wrong with a dark, two-button suit or a nice pair of khakis and a solid, button-down shirt. Boring, but safe.

There are more groups (mainly subsets of the above), but I won't bore you. In fact, I'm still fairly drunk, so I'm going to bed. Say goodnight, Gracie.

At 7:55AM, December 7, 1941, the first wave of Japanese torpedo bombers broke out of the clouds over Oahu and began America's involvement in the Second World War. Fortunately (or by design if you buy the conspiracy theories), all three aircraft carrier in the Pacific Fleet were gone that morning. Those three ships, small by today's standards, formed the core of our Pacific defense in those dark early months of the war. And now, like never before, those of us who were born after 1941 know the feelings of the nation that morning because of our own experience. Shock, anger, fear; they have been ours.


There is big, big trouble brewing in Louisville. On Friday night, two Louisville police officers shot a man who came at them with a knife. Supposedly, he had been drinking vodka and smoking crack all day and was pretty far gone. Here's the problem: he was handcuffed when the cops shot him. Handcuffed. Handcuffed. One of the officers fired twelve rounds. To be fair, there were four other people in the house at the time (the cops were responding to a domestic violence call) and details are still pretty sketchy. The dead man was black. Both cops are white. Both of them have been cops for less than four years.

I have never been, nor will I ever be, a police officer. Their work is often thankless and they are paid far less than they should be for the work they do. When they respond to calls, especially violence in a home, they are often confronted immediately with two sides of a story and must make very quick judgements as to who is telling the truth and who just wants to stay out of trouble. There have been a few times in my life when I have broken up or finished fights. Every time, I knew at least one side and had the advantage of knowing the root cause of the problem. It's still a tough situation to be in.

Having said this, I think this incident points to a much larger, nationwide problem---the caliber of people who become police officers. All my evidence is anecdotal; please feel free to hit me over the head with your opinion. I know five men who are police officers; four are local and one is an Indiana State Trooper. I have known all of them since childhood. Two of the them (including the trooper) are standup men who, in my opinion, became police officers because they heard the call of public service. The other three are thugs: guys who were losers in high school, had no other opportunities, liked guns and became cops. And, to be honest, with what cops are paid, who would want to be one? I make more than most of the Jeffersonville Police Department and the only thing I have to worry about is one of the servers crashing while I'm running a query.

I am starting a UFO/vampire survey. I know it sounds crazy, but I have always wondered how many people really believe that there are aliens and how may people believe in the undead. I have already received a few response in the first twenty minutes of the survey. My hope is to receive 1000 replies; we shall see. If you don't receive an e-mail, feel free to drop me a line at UFOSurvey@insightbb.com and answer the following questions:


1. Do you believe that there is intelligent life on other planets in the universe?

2. Do you believe that intelligent beings are visiting or have visited the Earth?

3. Do you believe in vampires?


All you have to do is answer the three questions in the subject header of the e-mail ("yes, yes, no" or "no, no, no" or whatever) and sent it on. You will receive a response on or about January 7 with the results of the survery. So far, the aliens are at 100% while the vampires have yet to receive a nod. Time will tell.

The Irish Free State was declared today in 1921. It comprised four-fifths of Ireland (everything except modern day Northern Ireland). Interesting note: until the last peace accords, the IRA received more money from Americans than from the Irish. Somehow, this went unnoticed by our media. If any other terrorist group was receiving most of its funding from the American public, the outcry would be echoing off the hills. It makes me wonder if, just maybe, the IRA was comprised of people who were the right color and, therefore, weren't "really" a terrorist group, but rather a group of misunderstood freedom fighters. Ted Kennedy, call your office. Oh, and have another drink.

Louisville is snowed in this morning. I left work early so as to avoid the morning rush hour. A trip that would have taken 20 minutes took 90. And before I forget, I have a message for SOME SUV owners:


Moron,

You are driving a large, heavy vehicle. While this fact may give you a greater sense of safety during dry weather, it does NOTHING for you when snow and ice are on the roads. In fact, if you start to slide, you will actually travel further than me at the same speed because your truck is so heavy. So as you blow past me, bear in mind that, since you have pissed me off, I am NOT going to stop and help you when I see you stuck in the median. This is a sign from God that you should learn how to handle your penis-compensator before you drive it. Have a nice day and let's be careful out there.

Susan Sarandon is calling Henry Kissinger a war criminal. I would assume that she is referring to his activities during the Viet Nam war. Is she aware that H.K. was the guy who started the negotiations with North Vietnam in 1968? Does she know that he was the first Nixon Administration official to reach out to China? Of course she knows these things. After all, she, unlike many in Hollyweird, is not stupid. However, facts don't make for good sound bytes. And when your fading career needs a boost, there is nothing better than a cool anti-Bush comment to turn the fickle crowd back to you.


IBM shipped OS/2 today in 1987. For those of you who are not geeks, OS/2 was a graphical operating system that was on its way to being "the next big thing" before Windows 3.0 debuted in 1990. It offered true multi-tasking and was very, very fast on the systems of the day. Had they played their cards right (and if Bill Gates had decided to go into botany), we would all be using PCs running OS/2 today.

Rampant un-Americanism is growing in South Korea. This is nothing new. The latest problem centers around the acquittal of two American soldiers who hit and killed a Korean girl in their vehicle. Regardless of how you feel about this case, I find it strange that protests are organzied so quickly in a nation with a relatively large population. Of course, I shouldn't see it as strange; North Korea plays a large role in the "student" demonstrations in the South, just as the Soviets funded many of the anti-war protests here during the Viet Nam war. What bothers me is that there are Korean Catholic priests on a hunger strike to protest the acquittal. As a Catholic (a marginal one, admittedly), I find this ridiculous. The Church, throughout its history, has stood strong against Communism and totalitarianism. We have a presence in South Korea because the Korean War has never really ended and the North has one of the largest armys in the world. Don't these educated men of the cloth see this? Or is their "nationalism" clouding their judgement?


Today is Ozzy Osbourne's 54th birthday. Hey, man, don't say I don't have the 4-1-1.

A term for your consideration:


SEDITION-1. The raising of commotion in a state, not amounting to insurrection; conduct tending to treason, but without an overt act; excitement of discontent against the government, or of resisitance to lawful authority. 2. Dissension; division; schism.

(The above courtesy of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)


With that in mind, please check out this speech. Thanks to DLP, who kept me from completely forgetting about her.

The Boeing 747 made its first public flight today in 1969. Now, 33 years later, it is still the largest commercial airliner. The Airbus 380, still in development, will be a larger aircraft, but it will never match the unique look of the 747. When I worked for UPS, I had the opportunity to look inside an empty 747 cargro aircraft. The space was amazing; it looked like an indoor football field.

Bill Maher has written a book. It's called "I'm a Second-Rate Unemployed Asshat" or something like that. Maybe, if we're lucky, he'll go soak his head and leave us alone for a while....or maybe forever. I'm not going to post a link to his book because I don't want to promote traffic to it. You know how to find it if you're interested.

For those of you who write off NASCAR as a white-trash bubba sport, know that Windell Scott won his first Grand National race today in 1963. Why is this important? Because Windell Scott was black.


Early last week, 100 midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy had their laptops seized because they reportedly contained unauthorized copies of copyrighted music and movies. This was in response to a letter sent to 2,000 university and college presidents across the country by music and movie trade groups asking them to crack down on peer-to-peer file sharing. They could all be court-martialed.


I have mixed feelings about sharing music and movies online. On the one hand, any work that is copyrighted has certain restrictions placed on it by law. These restrictions exist for very good, practical reason: artists and the companies who promote them need to make money. While some artists would perform for free, it is unlikely that the music or movie industry would thrive if everything were given away. I know it's a cute concept, but it's hardly one that would work in our world. Thus, the dollars we spend on CDs and DVDs and movie and concert tickets go to help produce more of what we love (or loathe).


But I also believe that we are witnessing the death of "fair use". Napster and its successors have laid several salient question before us: when we buy music or a movie or software, do we really own it? When does sharing become thievery? If the RIAA and the software companies are worried about piracy and copyright violations, why are they not pursuing their case in China and other Asian countries as hard as they are in the United States? All of these will be answered in time, either to our long-term benefit or detriment. As with anything else, some people will obey and some will seek to subvert. And life will go on.


One thing is clear: the music industry and Hollywood missed an opportunity that could've made them solvent for a long, long time. Simply put, they did not seek to legitimize the online distribution of music and movies. Imagine paying a small, per-song fee for truly CD-quality tunes that you select from a record company's entire song catalog. Imagine downloading and watching movies on demand---not just the movies available at your local video store, but ANY movie ever made. It may seem like a fantasy now, but the technology exists to make these things possible. I could also be made profitable.


What is lacking is imagination. The music and movie industries are the buggy-whips makers of the twenty-first century: their time has passed, but they hang on. They are only limited by their ability to pay for legal representation.