New Blog for "Those Midnight Blues"

In case you didn't know, I host a radio show on a local college radio station here in Colchester, WWPV 88.7 FM. My show, "Those Midnight Blues", is a late night Blues show featuring local, regional, national and international Blues music.

I just started a new blog to cover any pertinent news and schedules. I hope you get a chance to listen and don't be afraid to call in.

Holy Smokes?!?! People read my writing?!?

It has been brought to my attention that some people actually read my blogs. I had recently contributed a column to the Saint Michael's College student on-line publication, The Echo. I will post the unedited version to this blog if anyone is interested.

Senate's Report on Pre-War Intelligence Assessments of Iraq

For those of you that know me, you know that I am very adamant about reading the original sources and making my own decisions.

On the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence website, there is the July 7, 2004 committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community Pre-War Intelligence Assessments of Iraq or the much shorter Conclusions Excerpt.

Do your best. Sadly, there are no longer any easy or short answers to problems. The easy problems were solved by the people before us.

Enduring Images Exhibit in Fremont, OH

While I was in Fremont, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the grounds of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. The exhibit, "Enduring Images", just became available to the public recently but I was most fortunate to see many of the images prior to opening. My sister-in-law, Holly Elder, contributed her considerable framing expertise to several (maybe all) of the pieces. Her husband, John, and I made the only contribution we could have to such a learned and distinguished endeavor. We loaded up to the pieces into a van and transported them to the Hayes Center. I am reminded of an often paraphrased Marxist tenet, "From each according to their abilities..." (see note 1)

In addition, The Elder Family celebrated the 50th Wedding Anniversary of Steware & JoAnn Elder of Fremont at the Dillon House adjacent to the Presidential Center grounds which was purchased by the Presidential Center in 1962. The restoration of the Dillon House was wonderful and provided a perfect venue for the celebration.

Not only are the grounds of the Presidential Center very pleasant, but the library itself has several informative exhibits as well as "Enduring Images". It will make a good low-key & pleasant family outing.

References :
note 1 (some interesting paraphrasing of this quote including one by Normal Rockwell)
note 2 (interesting computer science application of this tenet)
note 3 (more actual quotes from Karl Marx...lots of them interesting)
note 4 (a generic Karl Marx reference page for the historical minded)

David Brin's Blog

One of my favorite SciFi authors, David Brin has a blog on the same service as I do. He makes some very good comments.

Just returned from Fremont, Ohio

We just returned from Fremont, Ohio where we celebrated the 50th Wedding Anniversary of JoAnn & Stewart Elder. Congratulations!

Yup...Still around...

Yes, I am still around but just can't find the words. Hardly. Actually, truth be told, I have found that Blogger was just too slow to be useful to me for blogging. Given my brief return here at this moment, the speed actually feels tolerable.

Don't worry I am still around.

Hello All -

Don't worry, I am still around. The muses just hasn't spoken to me lately. Maybe, once Spring arrives.

Information Assurance, What the Heck is That?

I had the great opportunity to attend a discussion of "Information Assurance" hosted by Saint Michael's College this past Wednesday evening. The speaker was Professor M. E. Kabay of Norwich University. It would be easy, but wrong, to equate information assurance with computer or network security. When as Dr. Kabay asked us to consider the tenets of information assurance, it is quite apparent that concepts or issues like digital signatures, cyptographical methods, and biometrics (to name a few) are mechanisms within the information assurance framework.

In addition, I was particularly gratified to hear Dr. Kabay ask us to fully consider the psycho-social aspects involved in securing information which is often ignored by computer security specialists.

I hope to have another opportunity to hear Dr. Kabay speak again in the future.

Doing some testing at LiveJournal

I have been doing some testing at LiveJournal...JohnCVermont LiveJournal

So far, the testing has been interesting. More on that later.

But why am I testing LiveJournal when I already have a perfectly good Blogger account? It is a good question.

I am testing LiveJournal's blogging software because Blogger's performance is terrible.

So far, the designs and UI for Blogger are somewhat better and more free styles to choose for the free account but the performance of just publishing a single simple blog entry in Blogger is very disappointing.

Although the Blogger UI has a better look and feel, the LiveJournal performance is much better.

I have encountered some problems with actually composing the entries such as inserting a hypertext link which is probably the most common blog publishing action.

Another Conversative Perspective Worth Reading

www.professorbainbridgec.com

Again, anyone who knows me will realize what my political views are. More importantly, I believe it is important to read for yourself the views expressed by those you agree with and especially those who you may disagree.

I came across Professor Bainbridge's blog completely by accident. I was reading reviews on alternative history books by Harry Turtledove. One of the reviews stuck out from the rest I had read up to that point which was written Professor Bainbridge. I went on to read some more of his reviews on corporate law texts and decided to visit his blog.

Good reading & writing. Agree or Disagree, what is important is to have each side of each side of each issue be presented in a thoughtful, coherent, rational and objective fashion (at least, as objective as possible). I always try to find the good arguments for each side of our political issues. Not the usual three to five paragraph op-ed piece, but actual arguments with references, footnotes, and original sources of data cited. Naive...I know.

Each side of our various political debates seems to be dominated by the Uber-Partisians. It is time for the name calling, baiting, sound bytes, half-truths, and electioneering to cease and time for serious thoughts, debates, and discussions on the serious topics facing our respective nations.

Where have I been?

As some of you have noticed, I haven't been posting as often as usual. Well, no good reasons, just oddly, I got very frustrated with the Blogger software and its complete lack of performance. It actually got quite unnerving.

I understand better than most how difficult it is to make web & internet applications run. It is exceptional difficult to make them run fast all of the time. Because of this understanding, I tend to be very tolerant of minor performance issues as well as the occasional outage.

Blogger.com was just terribly slow or inoperable for much of December. At least, for me, despite having a very good high speed connection at work and a solid DSL link at home.

Was it just me or Blogger.com, I don't know, but I intend to investigate.

I will keep you posted.

Let's Pass on the Inaugural Celebration!

A recent article in Citizen-Times got me to thinking about the money our government spends to celebrate itself. I have always thought the inaugural Celebrations were always a bit excessive for my tastes but perhaps I could be convinced that they were even needed at the beginning of a new President's first term. However, I have always felt the these types of celebrations of a sitting president's second term was wasteful and redundant especially considering our current and increasing national debt, tens of thousands of service members in combat areas overseas constantly in harm's way, returning veterans and their families who need our support and Indian Ocean tsunami tragedy.

I intend on writing our Vermont congressional delegation and expressing my opinion that we should forego the celebration and get back to work on the urgent and immediate problems at hand.

If you support these inaugural celebrations, you should write your congressional delegations and tell them.

Whatever your thoughts or opinions, you should participate in the various political processes in a respectful & thoughtful manner.