Hero

On occasion, I research and read about Medal of Honor recipients. I consider this a civic duty. More often than not, they were ordinary men who did extraordinary deeds and many of them didn't live long enough to find out they were heroes. I suspect many of them weren't trying to be heroes but rather felt they were just doing what anyone else in the same situation would have done. I ran across a Marine named Robert Miller McTureous, Jr. I linked to his accounts
here.

This young man, classified 4F (meaning unfit to serve), went out and worked harder in order to pay for an operation to fix whatever ailment he had so he could serve. His desire to serve vanquished any obstacle that came his way. His battlefield initiative was simply amazing. I can't even imagine being shot in the stomach then crawling over some island terrain (rocky? sandy? muddy? bloody?) for 200 yards; all while being under fire in a combat zone.

I can't help but think of people who think they are entitled to everything without having to put forth any effort. I wonder how they would handle being in Private McTureous' shoes, shoes he put on by choice.

Reorganization

I recently organized my home office a bit. Since I have a small network here (2 PC's, 2 servers, [three monitors total for those], a laptop, plus a router, hub, and a WAP) I needed a space to stack the equipment. One PC is my wife's and it's housed in a computer cart which also holds our printer and scanner. For my computers I needed something to hold everything. I priced those nice LAN racks I see sometimes and they start around $300. So, that option was quickly dismissed. My second option included a trip to Wal-Mart and to the local thrift store.

At Wal-Mart I found a four-shelf, 900 lb max weight, shelving unit; Made in USA, too (Hirsh Industries, Des Moines, IA). Cost: $21. Then, at the thrift store I found a small folding table for $7. The latter is perfect to do PC repairs or spread out my school work (I teach comp. sci. courses at two local community colleges). I now have a nice little work area. I have a desk with my main PC's monitor on it, some sturdy shelves holding most of the equipment, then the folding table - all in an "L" shape. It's not perfect but the price was right and it's a significant improvement over the previous arrangement.

The Ultimate Reality TV Show

The major cable channels continue to wait for the "most talked about woman in America since the woman they talked during the summer of 2001" to die. I'm waiting to see a guesstimate countdown clock to appear on the corner of the TV screen to appear (similar to the DOW ticker most show). Leave the woman and her family alone already. For the people who eat this stuff up, get a life. Read a book. Read to your kids. Go to Parent-Teacher night. Join a club. Just tune out from the "reality TV" shows - this includes the fiction and the non-fiction varieties.

YADDIPA

Yet Another Dreary Day In Pennsylvania. Locally, it seems like the weather in March has been well below average temperature-wise. Average high this time of year should be around 51 F. I can recall only two or three days all month where we were over 50 F. Currently, it's 40 F and raining. I think the newspaper mentioned March has been 8 degrees cooler than normal. Brrr. The Lehigh Valley finally just got a stand-alone Starbucks and it's rumored a Hooters will be coming too. Just as we seem to be the last metro area in the U.S. to get a Starbuck's and a Hooters, we also appear the last to get global warming.

Blogs

I decided give blogging a go. Sure, I have a few domains I manage but a blogging is a little different. One difference is the publishing. I chose to try Blogger just because of the ease of publishing. In other words, it looks easy. Blogger is owned by Google, a search engine I try not to use. Every time I hear someone use 'Google' as a verb I cringe. Do we really want one company to monopolize how the Web is searched? I prefer Yahoo!

Anyway, some debate has ensued over bloggers due to their role in the 2004 election and their role in exposing Dan Rather's attempt to show some Microsoft Word documents as proof of George W. Bush's lack of commitment to his National Guard duty in the early 1970's.

Some claim bloggers are not legitimate journalists. I ask, then, what makes a legitimate journalist? Working at a company that has a printing press the size of a small house? Working for an entity that has a call letter beginning with a 'W' or a 'K?'

If newspaper reporters and TV anchorman say something is true should be believe them? Are they less likely to tilt the truth or spin an opinion then a blogger?

An example: if I go to a local public meeting, and the events at this meeting are covered and published by a newspaper reporter, we tend to believe it, right? If I go to the same meeting and publish a story on my blog about it, do people believe it? Maybe. They might believe the newspaper account as accurate. People might think that, as a blogger, I am putting my own personal spin on the story. How do we know the newspaper reporter is not doing the same? We don't.¹

What I think is happening is that people see something on the Web and now they realize just because it's on the Web, doesn't mean it's true. However, that thinking has now trickled down to the TV newscasts and newspapers. If it's published or reported by a stuffed shirt, people are beginning to realize it may not always be true. The big news companies are beginning to worry about this and will lobby Congress more aggressively to monitor the bloggers.

We must remember that Freedom of the Press cannot exist without Freedom of Speech yet both are intertwined. A restriction on one is certainly a restriction on the other. People have the right to find out any information about any political candidate at any time; be it two weeks, or two minutes before we cast our vote.

As a people, we need to preserve the right to search the truth and expose inconsistencies, be they from the government or from CBS News. Blogging will enable us to do so. Intelligent people are able to gather news from the press and from blogs and decide what is true and what is false.

That's all for now.

Back to Google, here are some links:

http://www.google-watch.org
http://oak.psych.gatech.edu/~epic/

For the latter, it requires Flash.



Brian


1. However, many people think that the only reporters capable of spinning a story work for Fox News while totally discounting the possibility that reporters for other news stations cannot ever spin a story to the left. This is a two-way street, people.