I saw it all, as a precocious four-year old glued to a small black & white television set. I'm sure I saw the assassination, though that memory is not as clear. I remember most my dad coming home in the middle of the day, and seeing him cry, along with my mom. That scared me some. I knew they were both very sad, but didn't quite grasp the reason.
"A bad man shot the President," said my dad, "and he is dead." Wow. This was heady stuff for a little boy. So we watched together, steadily over the next two days as Walter Cronkite revealed the details of the great tragedy that had befallen America. Mom had a rosary, of course, and we may have prayed, but mostly we watched TV and tried to learn who, and why.
Oswald was caught shortly. Like the Lone Ranger serials I was so fond of watching, "they" had "gotten the bad guy" and were going to bring him to justice. Dad explained that this skinny man on the television was the bad man who shot the President. It seemed quite neat to have "wrapped up the case" so quickly.
Then it happened. The moment is crystalline, etched, no burned, into my memory cells. The scene was cartoonish, almost archetypical, perfect for my four year-old mind. Monochrome television suited it perfectly. The bad man was scraggly, unshaven, wearing black, in handcuffs. The sheriff was tall and in a white suit, with a white hat. Then another man (Dressed in black! With a black hat! He must be a bad guy too!) bursts into the frame, arm extended, gun blazing. Oswald crumpled, and fell amid screams and shouting.
"Yay! They got the bad guy!" I shouted. And dad said simply, "that's not the way it is supposed to work. Two wrongs don't make a right."
I learned that simple, important truth that day, perhaps the first lesson I can recall learning from a man who has taught me so much over the years. To this day, whenever I hear that phrase, I am transported to that chilly Autumn day, in my parents' living room, where Dad taught me what was right.
For the poor Windows users among you, Microsoft has once again disclosed a Security flaw in Windows in the 65th security bulletin of the year. That's one every five days.
This particular alert spares XP users, but for all other versions of Windows it is termed "critical" in severity. According to this new security alert, an "identified security vulnerability could allow an attacker to compromise Microsoft® Windows®-based systems and then take any of a variety of actions, such as changing Web pages or reformatting your hard disk."
This is the first bulletin issued in Microsoft's new simpler to understand format, introduced after user complaints that its all-too-frequent bulletins were overly detailed and confusing. What sort of users are most at risk, according to Mr. Gates? "Computers that are used to browse the Web or read e-mail." (I am not making this up).
The Myth of Potent Pot - U.S. Drug "Czar's" Latest Lies About Weed
Danile Forbes reports in "Slate" that our esteemed "drug czar" John P. Walters is perpetuating a Myth of Potent Pot as a scare tactic, or perhaps to justify the huge expenditures in the war on weed and pro-pot legislation.
An excerpt:
"Pot is better, just not the 30 times better that Walters cites to scare today's voters. Walters is disingenuously comparing the best pot of today with the worst of yesterday, rather than comparing average marijuana of a generation ago with average marijuana now. He's ginning up the figures he wants by contrasting stuff you might line your cat's litter box with to the alleged 30-percent pot—the likes of which a lucky (or rich) smoker might encounter once every several years."
In case you were wondering how the war is going, police arrested an estimated 723,627 persons for marijuana violations in 2001, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report. According to NORML (the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws), that number breaks down like this:
"Of those charged with marijuana violations, 88.6 percent - some 641,108 Americans - were charged with possession only. The remaining 82,518 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses - even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.
The total number of marijuana arrests far exceeds the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
Since 1992, approximately six million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges, a greater number than the entire populations of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined. Annual marijuana arrests have more than doubled in that time."
So the Gores have come out of hiding and are promoting their new book, making sure to hit all the popular media outlets. My TiVo caught him on Friday on Letterman, and I was sort of late to work today because he was on the Today Show, being interviewed (or "softballed") by Katie. He's due to be on NPR's Fresh Air With Terry Gross later today, also.
He's not saying whether he's going to run or not, but he's acting like a presidential candidate. He was wearing a "flag blue" solid tie, and seems to have lost that creepy beard and "depression weight." He looks really good, truth be told. He's also speaking out about Bushie's policies, esp. regarding the economy.
So... Gore in '04? It rhymes, but does he have a chance? The Democrats are not kind to their candidates when they get defeated, but he can circumvent that because he won the popular vote. He's the only person right now that I can imagine getting behind, so I'm all for it.
For the poor Windows users among you, Microsoft has once again disclosed a 
