Craig’s Blog

I decided to switch from Movable Type to Wordpress — mostly because I like the look and I wanted the experience of moving all my old posts over and rearranging things.

Note: I submitted this letter to the editor at the Times Union. Apparently it was not picked for publication in the newspaper, so I’m publishing it here.

This week [late April 2005] the Times Union ran an article about how our military has been using equipment known to be faulty in the line of fire. This is just the latest in a series of stories about faulty or lacking equipment that has been coming in throughout the Iraq War. Many may remember the candid pow-wow Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld held with members of the armed forces a few months ago where soldiers pressured him to explain why they had to use scraps of metal found on the ground to patch up their “armored” vehicles. It’s bad enough that these men and women have been thrust into an unnecessary war, but it’s even worse that the richest military in the world can not keep them properly equipped.

At home, taxpayers must be concerned about what the $437 billion spent by the Department of Defense in 2004 is being used for. Does it really cost that much to run a force of 1.2 million soldiers? I doubt it — China, which has a force twice the size of ours and 4 times the total population, spends only one-sixth as much on their military. In fact, the United States spends more on its military than the next twenty nations combined.

So either the U.S. military is spending the $437 billion poorly or it is using the momentum of the fear of terrorism procured by 9/11 and the war to stock up on funds for the future. Either way, everyone has a reason to be outraged. American taxpayers should be concerned about the first scenario, while the second scenario paints the U.S. as a threat to the rest of the world. What must be the intentions of a nation who stockpiles nuclear weapons with the same aggression as people stockpiling food and water in the path of an impending hurricane? Does the U.S. military have a particular ‘hurricane’ in sight?

The MPAA is blaming the BitTorrent protocol for the distribution of Star Wars Episode III. It’s not the software’s fault, it’s the users’. As a Slashdot reader puts it, it’s like blaming Boeing for destroying the World Trade Center.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Too bad he was proven wrong.

Former RIAA head Hilary Rosen gripes about restrictions on music files from online retailers, saying “Steve Jobs, Let my Music Go.” Quite a hypocritical blathering. The RIAA is the whole reason that such restrictions exist and Rosen led the campaign that upending Napster and sued students and innocent grandmothers for their life savings nationwide.

I thought this Slashdot comment from Rei summed it up best:

In Future News today, the RIAA headquarters in sunny Washington, DC was completely destroyed when a large mass of irony accidentally fell off an aircraft and crashed into the building.

Rescue workers were quick to arrive at the scene, but surprisingly found no casualties.

“Apparently, the building was only staffed by vampires - bloodthirsty creatures who feed on the blood, sweat, and tears of the living - and they proved immune to the effects of such irony” said a broke-musician turned fireman that was among the first to arrive at the scene.

The irony broke free shortly after a Boeing-767 carrying lawyers to file papers against an entire sixth-grade class stopped at Ronald Reagan National Airport to take RIAA head Mitch Bainwol to a charity dinner for the school of the same children.

According to witnesses, the irony could be seen by bloody everyone; however, apparently it was not visible from within the RIAA headquarters itself. Washington DC mayor Anthony Williams has discussed potential legislation to force all employees of businesses within city limits to remove their blinders during working hours.