Day: September 11, 2003

Went out and bought a digital camcorder recently and now I’m doing a full-blown video project on the Left wing folks here and their response to 9/11 and the war on Iraq. As part of that, tonight I went and videotaped a panel hosted by a student group that was about Bush’s policy responses to 9/11. Except for one gentleman (a former professor of mine), it was mostly standard Left wing claptrap including conspiracy theories galore.

What really struck me, however, was the professor they had on the panel to discuss affirmative action. The prof. made the mistake of addressing Bush’s cabinet, which has been touted as having more minorities than any other cabinet in history.

To which our speaker — who is a professor mind you — noted a specific objection and a bizarre meandering observation.

The objection was that while Bush claims to have more minorities in his cabinet than anyone else in history, the reality is that people like Condoleeza Rice are conservatives who oppose affirmative action. Apparently being black and liberal are supposed to be synonymous or there’s something wrong.

Even more bizarre, however, is the professor actually digressed for several minutes about Labor Secretary Linda Chavez. Of course, Elaine Chao is actually the Labor Secretary. Chavez was nominated, but withdrew her name from consideration in January 2001. (And this wasn’t simply a mix-up of names — the context of his comments were clearly about Chavez and her Hispanic heritage).

Oy.

AlphaSmart has introduced a wireless (802.11b) version of its Dana laptop alternative.

The Dana is essentially a portable keyboard running Palm OS 4. You get a compact keyboard with a 7.5 inch x 2.5 inch screen plus wireless in a package that weighs only 2 pounds (and, of course, will run a lot longer than a laptop on its rechargeable battery back . . . and can run off of 3 AA batteries).

I used an AlphaSmart 3000 for awhile, but was disappointed by the screen on that machine, which only allowed for a 4-line, 40 character screen. And, not surprisingly, my attempts at using a Palm IIIx for word processing were abysmal even with a portable keyboard due to the small size of the Palm screen. The Dana Wireless looks like it might be the perfect match of the two technologies, with wireless to boot so you could do web surfing (albeit not in color), e-mail and chat.

The Dana Wireless also has two slots that can accept SD or MMC cards. I hate transferring data between portable devices and my laptop using anything but flash memory cards, so that’s an excellent way to move files back and forth from my point of view.

I know there are a lot of situations where bringing along my laptop is either overkill or simply not feasible, but where a lightweight portable keyboard that can do basic word processing (and doesn’t have me searching for an outlet after a couple hours at most) would be a godsend. Throw in the ability to connect to the university’s wireless network, and the Dana Wireless is a bargain at $429.

Pictures from the September 7, 2003 anti-war protest in Kalamazoo:

“Violence is no solution” has to share the stage with . . .

“War is the worst solution.” War and violence are certainly not the
best solutions. But sometimes, they are solutions.

“End Violence,” on the other hand, is sloganeering at its worst.
It’s like those “Cure AIDS Now” signs and bumper stickers.

“Bush is losing the peace”? Since when? Last year some of these folks
were talking about massive American casualties, massive uprisings against the
U.S. in the Middle East, and an increase in terrorism. Now all they seem to
have to hold on to are some Saddam loyalists and terrorists who seem to be killing
one American for every book W. has read.

“Nonviolence gives hope” and “War is murder, nonviolence can
win.” Right because nonviolence really worked effectively in Iraq. Presumably
if the U.S. had not attack, all of those acts of nonviolence by latter day Gandhis
and MLKs in Iraq would have already brought down the regime without loss of
life (hey, it worked on the British, right?)

The guy on the left is holding a sign reading “Read The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy by Greg Palast.” Okay, first Greg Palast is an idiot and a liar. Second, this is way too verbose and hard to read. At
least the people going buy immediately know what point the woman on the end
is trying to make.

“Think global, Act local, work for peace and justice!” Uday, Qusay
and company are now at peace and that’s justice. Next.

“Instead of weapons, invest in people of Israel and Palestine.” Frankly,
I’m sick of investing in the people of Israel through my tax dollars, and I
certainly don’t want to give anything to the Palestinians.

Finally, someone who gets it. The sign is boring, “A Veteran for Peace,”
but he’s actually holding it so the people driving by on this one way street
are going to see it.