Me & Dolby

I've got a couple months yet to assemble myself a 5.1 surround stereo system. April 18th is the release date for the SACD version of Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Unfortunately it seems that Deadwing has been pushed back until April 26th.

My downloading progresses. On a local note, I've got David Bowie's appearance here in Madison back in 1974, Pink Floyd's Camp Randall gig from 1988, the demos Nirvana made over at Smart Studios in 1990, and Tull's show from November of last year. Speaking of the Tull show, here's a couple snaps from it:







Work was quite busy today. A network volume was unavailable for a large chunk of the day and people continued to complain even after an e-mail was sent out explaining the problem along with an ETR (Estimated Time of Repair). And then there was an e-mail problem. So I alerted the womyn in charge of the mail server by sending her a case with one complaint from a user who couldn't email Kenosha county users. In the case I documented the sender's and recipients' e-mail addresses, the error message in the rejection notice, the times, a Kenosha county contact - all the relevant information. A couple minutes later, I get an e-mail from the head of the mail team asking for the e-mail addresses, the error message, and a contact name. Does she not bother to read what I send her? My reply indicated that all of that info was in the case and I even specified where in the notes to find the information. And what does she say? "OK".

Being in the middle of a one, there's always lots to be said about war. But I'm sick of the talking heads on the news and the talk shows. They tend to bandy about terms like freedom" and "democracy" as if some grammarian in the sky was about to remove them from the English language. While we do hear about soldiers being killed, we really don't get to hear the soldiers' stories. The stories of the people whose lives are in danger everyday. The Library of Congress is attempting to remedy the situation. Check out the stories of America's veterans. Hear the stories of the men and womyn in the thick of it instead of the politicos with their banal hyperbole.

Now to answer my anonymous commenter's comment. Let me clarify the question. I did not mean to ask if it was OK to invade a country ruled by a dictator to bring democracy but rather if the imposition of democracy in general were morally just regardless of the current ruler. Would it be just to invade a socialist country? A communist? Anarchist? Or how about a country with no government at all? If we were to say that it is justifiable only if the war were to be brief, then democracy is cheap, is tawdry because it isn't worth a long conflict. Why bother to spread something not worthy of sacrifice? Wasn't our own struggle to be freed from the English monarchy "long"? And how are we to determine overall good and overall harm?

Let's agree that democracy is the best form of government. So what kind of democracy should we impose? What should the voting age be? A unicameral legislature? Looking at the recent election in Iraq, just how "democratic" was it? If you've got a ballot with dozens of candidates on it and the voters know anything about only a few of the candidates, just what was accomplished? (And how is it that they had more choices than we, the paragon of democracy in the world, had on our ballots in November?)

Personally, I don't think invading a non-hostile country explicitly to make it democratic is morally just. Invading a peaceful socialist nation to impose democracy would be wrong for the same reason invading peaceful dictatorship to only impose democracy for the same reason. In the real world, of course, there's lots of nuance. There's human rights violations, weapons of mass destruction, threat to allies but not ourselves, et al. Lots of grey in this world.