In Defense of Father Pfleger

O.K, I guess I do not understand what the hue and cry is all about. Father Pfleger basically makes three points 1) that white America today is the beneficiary of several centuries of oppression of black Americans (i.e. slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, lynching); 2) that Hillary Clinton felt she was entitled to the White House as a former first lady, and 3) that Clinton has a sense of entitlement because of her race. The first of these propositions strikes me as undeniable. The second seems debatable but plausible. Only the last point seems questionable to me, but even on that last point Clinton has opened herself to the criticism by her claims to be more electable than Barack Obama because she appeals to hard working white people with no education. Frankly, we need to continue the debate in this country to which Father Pfleger has contributed, rather than sweeping it under the rug because an uneducated white majority cannot bear to confront the crimes in this otherwise great country's past.

Social Networks' Sway May Be Underestimated - washingtonpost.com

The Washington Post writes:

Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace. But at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave.

The study apparently show that smokers very often quit in groups in response to changing social pressures in a kind of wave or chain reaction. At the same time, die-hard smokers can become quite isolated.

The Contender

The New York Times heralds a new browser war as Firefox reaches 18 percent market share and plans a new release in June.

After Offensive Remark, Clinton Cannot Muster Decent Apology

In a race where Barack Obama's safety is a particular concern, Hillary Clinton's remark that by June 1968, Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated was appalling. As one commenter put it, the remark was eerily reminiscent of Henry II's "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"



The fact that she later, in the face of popular outrage, apologized to the Kennedy's but apparently not the Obama's is bizarre. See Clinton Sorry For Remark About RFK Assassination, The Washington Post (Friday, May 23, 2008).

Update: Keith Olbermann's commentary.

Hillary Sews Up the Redneck Vote

"Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." Hillary Rodham Clinton


Hillary Clinton won Kentucky by a double digit margin among "white working class voters who have been her biggest supporters." New York Times

In-Zane

The family and I just got back from a rockin' concert by Dan Zanes and Friends at Strathmore Hall. Besides playing such favorites as Wabash Cannonball, House Party Time, and All Around the Kitchen, Zanes announced his new album Nueva York!, which will be available in June. Styled a "pro-immigration" album, Nueva York! is a collaboration celebrating the rich variety of Latino music in New York City, where Zanes is based. Zanes' offhand anecdote about listening to Pete Seeger at an anti-war rally in Brooklyn left no doubt as to where his politics lie, but kids and parents of any political background cannot fail to enjoy Zanes' infectious brand of family-friendly folk rock.

Bush League

That our current president is beneath contempt almost goes without saying, but his comparison of Democrats to Nazi sympathizers marks a new low.

A Long Way Gone

I am half way through Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone, which I purloined from my wife before she had a chance to read it. The prose is crisp, but the writing has a nightmarish quality both because of the horror of its subject matter and its remove from ordinary experience. Watching a man's eyes give up hope before they roll back into his head as you cut his throat, seeing the mud shift and bubble as a man buried alive struggles to free himself, or viewing the ashes of the house in which your family was burned alive are scenes most of us will not have to face and which it would be easier not to imagine. The obverse of our privileged lives is all too easy to ignore, but it commands our attention.

Forgotten but not gone . . .

One reason that I have been away from the blog so long is that I have been pursuing my own minor, personal version of the Holy Grail of office computing — the universal address book, with partial success. (Are quests ever really achieved?)

One of my ambitions has always been to link a universal address book to my Palm Pilot, my email system, and my word processor/office suite and to be able to share it with my family. To that end, having tried a number of alternatives, I am currently attempting to configure OpenLDAP, Horde, and OpenOffice.org on my Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon system — soon to be Hardy Heron if all goes well. For extra good measusre, I have been experimenting with O3spaces and webdav for document management as well.

So far, I have mainly concluded that while LDAP may be very powerful, it is a beast to configure. And syncml is no walk in the park either.