Essay

Timothy, Theadore and Karla

We the people of the United States in order to form a safer and more perfect union are no longer burdened with the keeping of a murderer. Karla Tucker was the center of much attention as the first woman to be put to death in Texas since the Civil War. Much was made of her subsequent conversion to Christianity and the "goodness" in her heart.

Little was made of her choice to leave a pickax through the heart of her victim. Few likely remember the twelve citizens who were faced with making the decision about Karla's fate. No contrast has been made between those twelve and the twelve who, in choosing not to make a decision, spared the life of Terry Nichols.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. Tucker was a cold blooded murderer. Was she beyond reform? People will argue this for years. Should George W. Bush have spared her life? Should any single man be given this power or responsibility?

Every couple of years as November rolls around we are inundated with cries about candidates who are "soft on crime." To date no candidate has run based on their having administered the lethal drug mixture to a condemned prisoner. Plenty have been run about an opponent's being soft and releasing prisoners early.

Dead Men Walking was an excellent movie. Anyone who unequivocally says we need the death penalty should see it. The ending was too much for me. I haven't seen it and I won't.

April 19, 1995

Few events of this decade will touch us like what happened this day.

Submitted by Joshua Brauer on October 2, 2004 - 10:46

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Independent counsel report

Independent Counsel Report on the net today

Today is the big day. The independent counsel's report on President Clinton. For the first time the people and the president will see the allegations being made against him. Months of speculation will either be proven correct or forgotten. In a meeting with fellow doemocrats yesterday Clinton is reported to have said there will me no more surprises.

I was asked by a friend this morning if I was going to mirror the documents on one of my servers. At the time I thought sure, it's simple enough I can do that I went on to tell myself that it would be a help to people trying ot access the information. You'll notice however that is is not linked from here. There was a fairly low profile story about the President's request to have 48 hours to lok at the report first.

48 Hours

The congress denied the President's request for 48 hours. In their eyes this information is critical enough that we must all be able to read it before we go home for the weekend. Perhaps they think we'll have a better weekend because of it. Perhaps they're forgetting the skeletons in their own closets. But more importantly they are subverting the very processes that cCongresses before them have found so important. Due process is so fundemental, yet currently being ignored by Congress.

Due Process

Yes, our system is slow.

Submitted by Joshua Brauer on October 2, 2004 - 10:43

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Doubletalk

Think, but not too much. Think different, but not too different

Dave Winer, in his DaveNet site, asked last week about where the thinkers are. In part he suggests this conventional wisdom (Earth's Website):

Thinking isn't important, feeling is what's important.

Logic isn't important, intuition is what's important.

Science isn't important, perception is what's important.

This is pure bullshit!

As I often do, I found myself agreeing with his ideas. Why then, if somebody is really interested in thinking would they post a link to the story I'm about to talk about. It baffles me. Dave linked to Fred Langa's opinion piece on Apple's Heavy Hand Strikes Again as if it were news worthy. The irony of the whole thing is that both a reference to wanting people to think about technology and the link to Langa's piece were posted on the same day and appear a few lines away from one another.

In fact it is little more than uninformed mac-bashing. Why are windows advocates so scared of the little iMac? Maybe it's just too much to handle having a highly useable, highly customizable computer that most second graders can set up.

Point by point

Let's look at Langa's points (or misinformation) one at a time.


And now, Apple appears to have planted another anti-clone land mine in the new Mac OS 8.5, which mostly plays cosmetic catch-up to Windows, adding features that have been in the Microsoft OS for years.

Submitted by Joshua Brauer on October 2, 2004 - 10:40

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One sided stories abound

Think, but only about one side

In my rambling over the web I recently encountered an internet I came across an article with an interesting title. Gambling Lobby Stacks the Deck, which came from a page about Indian gaming had all the appearances on another article about the powerful Nevada gaming lobby taking on the Native American interests in California.

A couple of parts of the article by Dr. James Dobson read:

The recent national elections paint a clear picture of how gambling money and influence are overrunning the democratic process...

In California, Indian tribes used $70 million of the billions they have earned from casino operations to end-run the political process and obtain voter sanction for their activities...

Certainly one could be concerned with the huge price tag of the California election. But, nowhere in his article does Dobson mention that most of the opposition to the Indian tribes was from Nevada gaming interests. In fact the opposition spent more than $100 million of the trillions they have earned from casino operations in an attempt to end-run around the rights of Native Americans.

Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, seems to take a one-sided stand on this issue. As there are with most complex issues there are many sides that need to be considered in making a judgement about the merits of any industry.

Catching a Dream, an article in the Albuquerque Journal shares some of the merits of gaming.

Submitted by Joshua Brauer on October 2, 2004 - 10:38

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The value of a link

Two days ago I wrote Doubbletalk about the irony of a couple of links on the Scripting News page. Dave Winer was nice enough to link to my piece yesterday with some clarification that got me thinking. First, Winer said:

Josh Brauer comments on my linking to a story about Apple a couple of days ago. I asked him to post this to the web, and I thank him for that. There is a misunderstanding. I point to pieces from Scripting News only because I think they're interesting. I often point to pieces I disagree with. A link from Scripting News says nothing more than I thought it was interesting. No other endorsement.

I'm intregued by this as it has me thinking. Winer and I both have pages we call "News" pages. Winer's is much more robust and has a more defined purporse and audience than mine.

Value The Oxford American Dictionary says value is the amount of a good or service that is considered to be equivalent to something else for which the thing can be exchanged. What is the value of a link on the web? In my case it's a few hundred hits. I give somebody links and they get a hundred or so more hits than if I hadn't. Winer gives me links and a few hundred more people come my way and get my spin on life.

Like so much of the web it's hard to place value on electrons.

Submitted by Joshua Brauer on October 2, 2004 - 10:34

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Submitted by Joshua Brauer on October 2, 2004 - 10:33

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