duplicity

So, it turns out that Governor Mark Sanford has been stepping out on his wife for some time now. One could gather from e-mail correspondence the he might have actually fallen in love with the other woman. His wife put him out a while ago and he has been working on the "down low" as the kids might call it these days. While the likes of Governor Sanford are not so inclined, I believe that his marital issues are between him, his wife, and his family and friends as long as attends to his gubernatorial duties.

Unfortunately as far as his duties as Governor of the State of South Carolina are concerned, he seems to have been handling his business until this past week. This past week when commandeered a State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) vehicle, dodged his security detail, and left the country without informing the Lieutenant Governor, his staff, SLED, the State Cabinet, or anyone in the General Assembly. These actions are unacceptable for the top elected official of the State of South Carolina.

Commandeering a SLED vehicle was downright illegal. The vehicle in question was a armored sport utility vehicle (SUV) with blue lights, siren, and possibly a full compliment of weapons. Governor Sanford left this vehicle in the daily parking lot of the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. This was a major security risk.

The most egregious of these acts was leaving the country without telling the Lieutenant Governor, his staff, SLED, the State Cabinet, or anyone in the General Assembly that he was leaving or where he was going. If anything had happened in South Carolina, or to the Governor for that matter, the consequences could have been dire: who had the authority to declare a state of emergency, deploy the state national guard, etc? People could have died due to Governor Mark Sanford's negligence of his gubernatorial duties. This negligence and malfeasance comes from a governor who inconsistently preaches about personal responsibility.

Conjecture

This past weekend the Governor of the State of South Carolina went off the grid for four days after allegedly giving his security detail the proverbial slip:

• News from Columbia
• News from Charleston
  

It turns out he went hiking on the Appalachian Trail to clear his head. This impromptu, off the books excursion coincides with the so-called Naked Hiking Day observed on said Appalachian Trail:

• News from Columbia
  

Putting his rumored national political aspirations aside, one must wonder what a state governor is thinking when he "disappears" for four days. What kind of leadership example is he setting? This is the same governor who wanted to reject federal stimulus funds on principles in order to set an example.

UPDATE: Turns out that Governor Sanford was out of town with his mistress:

• News from Charleston
• News from Columbia

Observation

I have begun to wonder why the intersection of people afraid of big government and people afraid of big banks is so small. They seem to be relegated fringe libertarian type groups that come off sounding like anarchists. i.e. people who not only want to shrink the government, but also dissolve big enterprise and redistribute wealth without the rigors of socialism.

While I am a capitalist at heart and an anti-anti-federalist to boot, I wonder of monstrosities like the five largest banks in this country are really what the market demands and in service to the greater good. Regarding the former, it seems that the rise of the mondo-bank begat the hedge fund with fewer rules, higher risk, and greater returns on exotic financial instruments; the hedge funds grew and begat "boutique" hedge funds with yet fewer rules, higher risks, etc; the "boutique" hedge funds begat trillion dollar Ponzi scams which are just plain illegal. Is this not the same pattern of graft and corruption that opponents of big government fear from big government?

Opponents of big government would probably point out that this genealogy is the result of government interference in the free market. The rules and regulations put in place for "protection" and "insurance" are what caused the mega-banks. They would purport that in a truly free market banks would be just the right size for everyone to prosper and there would be no need for the kind of exotic financial instruments that could lead to widespread panic and long term recessions. This conclusion requires the financial arena has some intrinsic altruism and when self-regulated works like a fine-tuned perfect machine: people with money will make everything all right, because when everything is all right; people with money make more money.

The error here is that we are dealing with people and humans are not flawless, perfect machines. People lie, cheat, steal and manipulate for any of a number of reasons. Opponents of big government will point this out ad nauseum when confronted with any any government program that does not fall under defense spending.

Not all people are evil, villainous, creatures and humanity is not doomed, but there is enough "bad" out there that some things cannot go unchecked. Someone has to stand watch and someone needs to watch the watchmen. Nonetheless, I wonder why the intersection of opponents of big government and opponents of big banks is so small.

Failure

failure0,
originally uploaded by wilmars.

Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic

This past week I added "Hot Buttered Soul" back into my music listening rotation. "Hot Buttered Soul" is part of the Soul music canon, and by extension a part of the Twentieth Century Black Music Canon. Most notably, the album makes me nostalgic for the era in Black music when the music scene was dominated by musicians who were also gifted instrumentalists. I often long to hear about the rise in popularity of five piece soul/rock/funk/R&B ensemble, or some gifted soloist who plays multiple instruments. To be more precise, I am waiting for the next James Brown, Otis Redding, or Marvin Gaye to make his way from the Chitlin Circuit to the mainstream and set the music world on fire.

Unfortunately, this kind of nostalgia can be dangerous. Waxing poetic about golden years long past can cause someone to loose sight of the present and miss out on the future. Additionally, this kind of nostalgia has its own brand of amnesia where only the positive aspects of an era are remembered. It is not 1967 and never will be again-- a good thing. Nonetheless, I do miss the music.

Progress and change beget innovation and invention. I will not pretend that I do not keep T.I. and Outkast in my listening rotation, or bob my head to Lil Jon. For all intents and purposes they are the rap era's version of James Brown, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye. Someday, someone might look back on "Atliens" with a similar regard as "Hot Buttered Soul."

mount (8)

/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.
/dev/hda1 is first partion of a primary IDE drive, not /dev/hda.

The Ballot or The Bullet

On or about this date in 1925, Malcolm Little was born near Omaha, Nebraska. He would go on to live an epic life that ended tragically a couple of months before his fortieth birthday. That short, epic life saw the worst of the Black American experience in the Twentieth Century.

While many dwell on his years of of affiliation with the Nation of Islam and his intermediate chosen name, Malcolm X, few consider the total of his life. A life that saw the effects of violence and racism in the United States. A life that took him around the world and earned him disenfranchisement by the Nation of Islam. A life that ended shortly after his true awakening to the implications of apartheid and racism and the self-hate it fostered in the so-called Negro in America.

Aside from encouraging Blacks in American to take responsibility for their destiny through enterprise and self-empowerment, one of Malcolm X's fundamental messages was for the so-called Negro in America to love himself. This came about because Malcolm saw in himself and his Black contemporaries a self-hate that lead to ignorance, crime, and social indifference. His conclusion was that changing the circumstances of Black America was to change this.

It has long confused me as to why teaching Black people to love themselves was so controversial. Another prominent leader who was a contemporary of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., based his message on everyone learning to love one another. These are not disparate messages but rather the latter relies on the former. Still, during their lives and long after, Malcolm and Martin were portrayed as adversaries. This, too, baffles me.

I would encourage anyone interested in American history in the Twentieth century to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. It provides a remarkable perspective on the American experience.

timing

20080426,
originally uploaded by wilmars.

It was not until after I got home and took a good look at this picture that I discovered its near impeccable timing. I somehow managed to snap this picture the instant before Carlos Delgado of the New York Metropolitans made contact with the first pitch he saw from Tim Hudson of the Atlanta Braves. Delgado would fly out to center on this pitch lowering his already embarrassing batting average.

props

Congratulations to Zetetical for finishing the Boston Marathon. He did it for the children.

uncertainty

Question: If the runner from second base passes the runner from third base en route to home plate and the umpires do not see it transpire, is the runner out?

Answer: Not necessarily. At least not if the all umpires are busy watching a fly ball in the outfield and miss the call on the fly ball. In this particular case, after the umpires receive a verbal lashing from the manager of the ball club, and then meet and determine the right call, the baserunners are put back where they would have been had the correct call been made.

Editorial: This missed call followed by a reversal ultimately worked in the favor of the Atlanta National League Baseball Club. Had the umpire made the correct call initially, two runs may have scored considering that the bases were loaded with players from the New York National League Baseball Club.

What puzzles me is why Angel Pagan of the New York Metropolitans, who was the runner on second base, took off running on a ball hit in the air with less than two outs. The reason he passed Ryan Church, who was the runner on third base, was that Church went a third of the way to home and looked back to see the umpire's call. Church was running the bases like a professional baseball player aware of the game and inning situation. Pagan seemed to make a bush league base running error. Had a center fielder with just a little more range than Mark Kotsay, e.g. Andruw Jones, made the catch cleanly, Pagan would have been out and the Mets little rally would have been no more. Now, if the umpire had made the right call initially and Pagan run the bases like a professional, Church would have scored the second run of the play and Pagan ended up on third base with less than two outs.

Misdirection

From The Beaufort Gazette:

"We've had 4,000 soldiers killed in Iraq as of last week. Since the start of the Iraq war, we've had 30,000 American children commit suicide, get murdered or die from child abuse. Yet you haven't heard a word out of Washington."
-- Michael Petit, founder of Every Kid Matters, a Washington advocacy group

I am glad to see that someone is paying attention.

Oops! Pow! Suprise!

C:\>java
Registry key 'Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\CurrentVersion'
has value '1.5', but '1.3' is required.
Error: could not find java.dll
Error: could not find Java 2 Runtime Environment.

Conduct Unbecoming

Recently, a video taken from the dashboard camera of a South Carolina State Trooper captured a disturbing incident. After a traffic stop and a rudimentary car search, a trooper found an open container and firearm in the backseat of a vehicle. When he instructed one of the three suspects to place his hands on the car, the suspect fled on foot. During the ensuing chase, the trooper yelled, “You better run, nigger, because I’m fixin’ to kill you.” [Article from The State] Now, there are two key problems with he trooper's outburst: One, there is no place in law enforcement for derogatory racial epithets; two, there is no place in law enforcement for death threats.

The use of a racial epithet by a law enforcement agent while in uniform doing official business is deplorable. It reflects poorly on the organization, the political entities they represent, and most importantly the judiciary. Even if an incident like this is handled summarily by supervision, damage is done to anyone who wears the uniform of the agency in question. Put into question is their ability enforce the law without regard to race, class, religion, etc.

Furthermore, a death threat made to a suspect during the course of an investigation is absolutely unacceptable. Citizens need to able to trust and respect law enforcement. Without that trust and respect how are citizens expected to pull over for a blue light and cooperate with authorities? How can citizens be expected to trust that law enforcement has the greater good in mind during the carrying out of their duties?

The fallout from this incident demonstrates impact of one trooper in uniform with blue lights flashing saying, “You better run, nigger, because I’m fixin’ to kill you.” First, the governor, Mark Sanford, has replaced the top two officials responsible for the South Carolina State Highway Patrol. This move was applauded by current and former troopers of both races who were tired of the nepotism and corruption they perceived as infesting state law enforcement.

Subsequently, since the poor actions of one trooper in uniform reflect poorly on the entire agency, all the practices of the Highway Patrol have come into question. Video of troopers using their vehicles to chase suspect who are on foot have surfaced. While this may be standard procedure of many law enforcement agencies, an agency where a trooper says, “You better run, nigger, because I’m fixin’ to kill you,” this practice begins to look like a human rights violation. As a result, the state senate and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has become involved. [Article; Article; Article]

Ultimately, the South Carolina State Department of Public Safety and its subdivision, the South Carolina Highway Patrol, have a lot of work to do to clean up after this, but this incident is not endemic to the highways of South Carolina. Law enforcement everywhere has to understand that while there are many good men and women with uniforms and badges the sinister proclivities of a few tarnishes the image of the majority who perform their duties with professionalism and respect.

sans nostalgia

There is some music for which I have no nostalgia:

Onomatopoeia

Currently I have the album 10,000 Days by Tool in heavy rotation. After being introduced to Lateralus, Tool's previous album, by Zetetical when we shared an office, I have continued to follow Tool and count myself as a fan. I cannot seem to get enough of their brand of progressive metal. Who can argue with exquisitely crafted music with thought provoking lyrics written in un-common time signatures?

I however have not given myself over to the progressive metal genre completely. While I appreciate the energy and complexity of the music, when I listen to a group like Mastodon; the vocals bug me. Maybe I am off base about (prog-)metal, but I do not think that vocals need to be screamed all the time. Sure, you can scream some, or even a lot, but not all the time. The screaming detracts from excellent musicians playing intricate, complex rhythms and melodies in the rest of the song.

Refraction

Considering that this is Black History Month, it may be appropriate to commemorate a couple of interesting, but over-looked anniversaries that occur in February: The Battle of River's Bridge and The Orangeburg Massacre. These are two events separated by over one hundred years took place in the backwoods of South Carolina not far from my home.

The Battle of River's Bridge

The Battle of River's Bridge took place in the first week of February 1865 along the Salkehatchie River in near the border of Bamberg and Colleton Counties. After burning Atlanta to the ground, cutting a swath of destruction to the sea, and taking Savannah; General William Tecumseh's forces split in two to ravage the heart of secessionist movement, South Carolina. The next stop after Savannah would be Columbia, the city where infamous meeting to form the Confederate States of American took place. By cutting inland and moving due north, Sherman's forces could irreparably sever the supply lines between the coastal and inland cities.

The left (western) flank made its way north and was met by part of the CSA army entrenched with the primary objective of preventing the US army from advancing beyond the Salkehatchie River or at least delay them long enough for reinforcements to get to Columbia. Legend has it that it was a particularly cold Southern winter in 1865 and no one expected the US troops to wade through the cold, black waters of the Salkehatchie swamps; but they did. The US army fought the CSA across a series of trenches, laid down corduroy roads, and slashed and burned their way through the CSA positions. Next, they would rendez-vous with the right (Eastern) flank and take Columbia on 16 February, 1865, and subsequently was burned on or about 17 February, 1865. It was the right flank who, during the early stages of the Carolinas campaign started redistributing abandoned lands along the coast to former slaves in what would become part of the "forty acres and a mule" reparations directive/legend.

Sherman's "scorched earth" approach to war, while dehumanizing to those who stood in the way, was integral to defeating the Confederacy, re-unitining the states, and freeing many a Negro slave. The best practice Sherman employed in this approach was the "Sherman Necktie." Knowing that railroads were crucial to the CSA's infrastructure and that iron was in short supply, General Sherman had his troops not only tear up railroad tracks, but also heat the rails to warp and bend them sometimes leaving the iron tied around trees.

Some may weep at the torching of Atlanta (1864) and Columbia (1865), or cringe at the melted rails and incinerated fields. Not I.

The Orangeburg Massacre

A little more that one hundred years after General Sherman's troops marched through the sea islands, swamps, and pine forests of the South Carolina Lowcountry and three years after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965, there stood in the city of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a whites-only bowling alley. During the first week of February, 1968, a small number of college students from the two historically Black colleges in Orangeburg, Clafflin and South Carolina State, decided to take a stand against this illegal establishment which operated with impunity.

Each night the number of students protesting grew as did the law enforcement agencies mis-handling the situation. On 8 February, 1968, the youngsters started a bonfire. That evening after allegations by law enforcement that the group was armed and detritus was thrown at law enforcement, law enforcement opened fire at what was actually an unarmed crowd. Three young men, two of whom where students at South Carolina State-- my father's alma mater-- died as a result of law enforcement shooting bullets into the crowd. This dark night in Black Civil Rights history is often over-looked or omitted.

It terrifies me to look back at this incident considering that it took place less than forty miles from where I grew up. To think that only forty years ago my parents, who graduated from college in 1963, were teachers in so-called "separate but equal schools," is sobering.

Grassroots

Today on the A train, I was approached by a young brother attempting to sell his rap CD. "Excuse me. Do you listen to rap music?" he said in a very respectful manner. I nodded. He then went on to explain how he was selling his CD: "No bootlegs, all original tracks, laid down professionally in a studio." While impressed by his professionalism and modesty, I turned down the $5 U.S. CD. My annoyance with having my asocial commute interrupted precluded my from giving the kid a real chance. Not to mention is was the second time I had see this aspiring rapper on the subway humbly peddling his wares.

Afterwards, I realized that I should have shelled our the $5 U.S. and purchased the CD. This young man was doing something that seems to be lost in modern rap music: working the streets the hard way. I miss the days when popular rap was the voice of the people and MCs earned there "street cred" by getting play on student radio and doing shows on the rough side of town. When there distribution came from spending a day on the A train trying to get people to give their tape a listen. This young man was helping to put the grassroots back into rap.

I am not going to pretend that I do not bob my head of tap my feet to the latest one hit crunk wonder put out by an Atlanta based record label with a main line to Viacom. I do. But I miss the days when rap music was about more than champagne, automobile customizations, and mansions. I am not saying that a Negro cannot dream, but do we really need to "make it rain"? Is the value of a Colored man really determined by his "ice"?

pkgadd -d /var/tmp

Few things amuse Systems Administrators more than double entendre:

[edited for length and content]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Black Wilmar wrote:

...I thought you were going to insinuate that I used a pkg to install Samba. I laugh at your package, and substitute my own! ....

Black Wilmar

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Ranting Nerd wrote:

Don't pkgrm me, bro!

Ranting Nerd

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Zetetical wrote:

This is making me very insecure.

Zetetical

Setting up Java. Please wait...

I have recently been going through the exercise of installing Solaris 10 08/07 OS on an x86 system. In my line of work, it does not hurt to practice working with different operating systems on various hardware. The desire to be frustrated, bewildered, and enraged prompted me to do this on a work issued Dell Latitute D620 running Dell A08 BIOS with an Intel 945GM Graphics controller.

The most challenging part of the install for this and the previous release of Solaris 10, is figuring out the proper BIOS settings to prevent the install/OS from getting wedged on start-up. The combination for a Dell Latitute D620 running Dell A08 BIOS is to disable multi-core support, turn off speed step, and disable the PCMCIA port.

The true beauty here is that when you go back and boot to Windows XP SP2 from the GRUB menu, the laptop proceeds to run like the bits have been dipped in molasses. This begs from the BIOS to have multiple hardware profiles to choose on start up, alas the Dell Latitute D620 running Dell A08 BIOS does not contain this feature.

A little poking around on the internet and a well crafted web search yields the solution to the multi-core and speed step problem: Add "-B acpi_user_options=2 kernel/unix" to the kernel line in GRUB, /boot/grub/menu.lst. Most directly, it is a user added comment to the official Sun hardware compatibility list (HCL) for the Dell Latitute D620.

Ultimately, the point here is that I do not recommend multi-booting very different operating systems in general and on laptops in particular. I do this to occasionally practice installing, configuring, and manipulating operating systems not necessarily running operating systems for any kind of mission critical services. All in all, it makes for an interesting, quiet Saturday night alone.

Promptitude

Today, for the first time in 2007 my flight from Charleston International Airport (CHS) to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) departed on time, if not a few minutes early, and arrived more than thirty minutes early. For anyone who has flown anywhere this year, this is a bit of a rarity. Between snow, thunderstorms, wind, and ice, this has been an unpleasant year for the friendly skies; but on 31 December, 2007, I was given a glimmer of hope. Imagine my surprise when not only did the cabin door close before departure time, but the jet taxied to runway 33 and the wheels were up before departure time. I almost forgot about the front end of my Thanksgiving trip being delayed over eight hours because my flight got canceled; the back ends of my West Coast trips having three to four hour delays; or my family reunion trip almost not happening. Kudos to my default air carrier for letting my 2007 air travel experience end on a good note.