Kevin's Weblog

I did my first practice talk today. It was fairly productive at finding the points in my talk where I didn’t actually know what I was going to say. I went back this evening and polished up a couple points and I’m feeling a lot better about it now.

I’m still stressing a bit about this whole summer adventure, but I’m hoping that once we actually get on the road I’ll relax a bit.

BTW, you have about 15 minutes left to get early bird registration for OSCON

These two essays thoughtfully and powerfully dissect the White House’s National Security Strategy and the “justification” for war against Iraq.

“A Citizen’s Response” follows the finest tradition of democratic patriotism, by taking apart the propoganda of a government that has declared itself unique above all others. Uniquely in possession of the truth (and knowledge of what is evil). Uniquely trustworthy (and, therefore, immune from criticism and even international law). Uniquely possessed of good judgement (and so able to stockpile and use weapons that no other nation may be trusted with). By examining the hypocrisy that suffuses the whole document, Berry exposes it’s ultimately self-destructive nature.

“When Compassion Become Dissent” compels us to ask how it is that we, parents and children, brothers and sisters, can be convinced to wage war through a campaign that reduces 22 million mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters to a single psychopathic dictator. He wonders how it is that we can once again give free reign to a government and military that coldly calculated that the destruction of Iraq’s water treatment facilities would lead to the deaths of half a million children under the age of 5, then went ahead and did it anyway and in the aftermath denied it happened and demanded sanctions on the chlorine that could make the water clean again and on the simple medicines that could cure the disease. The only excuse seems to be that it’s less painful to look away, but Duncan urges us to confront the emotional response head on.

It took me something like 3 years to read this book, which collects an on-again, off-again set of essays together with the pivotal novella by Vinge, although once I finally got to the story itself I ripped through it in a single day. While the intent seems to be that people read the essays first so they can appreciate the context and impact of the story, that wouldn’t be my recommendation.