Day: <span>November 1, 2004</span>

I must say, as I’ve said again and again, most recently but not in so many words, over hereDude! It’s a small frickin’ world, man.

It turns out that I know the guy who runs Electoral-Vote.com. I met him in Amsterdam, while living my past life as a Rock-Star. He was in my ex’s Computer Science department. Check out what he wrote for his Electoral-Vote.com coming-out:

“My name is Andrew Tanenbaum. I am one of the 7 million U.S. citizens living abroad. I am a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Most of you have never heard of me but in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny corner of the universe I have done enough stuff that Google has somehow managed to dig up 10,000 pages referring to me…”

It must be about 9 or 10 years since I met Andrew. I wonder if he remembers me. I think we got into a rather deep discussion about whether there ever was such a thing as absolute right and wrong, i.e. the proverbial ‘Good and Evil’…

Update: Looks like I was wrong, and in fact I don’t know Andrew. I talked with my ex on the phone this afternoon, and she told me I had him confused with someone else that she studied with. Oh well — it sounded nice. Too bad it’s not true. Kind of like WMD in Iraq, or Osama being buddy-buddy with Saddam, only not so brazenly contrary to actual reality.

Politics

60 Minutes aired this story tonight. I’ve got the video here. [15.5MB, 13’03”]

The point they’re trying to hit home, though I’m not sure they entirely succeeded, is that while it’s widely accepted that we’re in a Heap-o-Trouble in Iraq, even the too-small force we have there is under-supplied, and in cases may be close to mutiny.

One of the people they interviewed is General Ray Byrne of the Oregon National Guard. Steve Kroft says to Gen. Byrne, “Your men feel that they’re dying over there because they’re not getting the proper equipment.”

After a few seconds, Byrne answers, “It distresses me greatly that they do not have the equipment. I don’t have control over it. The soldiers don’t have control over it. The question becomes, ‘When is it gonna to be available? When is it gonna to be available? When will they have it?'”

If Bush is re-elected on Tuesday — the prospect of which fills me with anger, dread, and disdain — if Bush is re-elected, I wonder how long it will be before Byrne is either in Falluja, or looking for a new line of work…

Politics