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     Veterans Day 2000:
A Lesson In Duty, Honor and Country

By H.P. Barrett III

This column appears in the November edition of the Lake Minnetonka Navigator (MN):

General Columns Index

Lost Roads — Lost Horizons The paving of American leads nowhere.

In the Rocker-Chair A look at bigotry too close to home.

The Hacker Wars There may be hope, yet!

News On News Do you really get your election coverage on Letterman?

R-Rated Church Services Children must be accompanied by an adult!

Discipline News: Kids, Schools & Home Headlines

Our Kids, Ourselves Headline reflections of  cloudy skies

The Y2K-Bug has arrived! Not what we expected, but were we really listening?

Oops...OSHA in my bathroom? Would "big brother" really go this far?

Cloning Redundancies Again  A look at cattle, sheep, pigs and politicians

First Christian Church Invasion  Sorry, but I gave at the office!

by Haskell 
February 17, 2000

    The early February "denial of service attacks" on major e-commerce sites such as Yahoo, eBay and Amazon.com may be the talk of the town, but like the weather, nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Computer hacking remedies may be few and far away, but at least two diverse voices in the wilderness have now spoken words of hope.
     Financial loss estimates from these breaches of computer system security are now in the millions of dollars. Loss of sales revenue, shaken consumer confidence, and costly, new security requirements all contribute to these highly publicized figures. But what the general public does not fully understand is, in many cases, it is the independent (affiliate), e-commerce entrepreneur who will greatly suffer out of public view.
     Wednesday's Associated Press reports informed us that FBI Director Louis J. Freeh urged Congress to consider use of federal racketeering RICO laws to prosecute "persistent hackers."
 Web-based, small business practitioners, also, may find some hope for justice in the fact that the FBI also urged lowering the $5,000 minimum in damages a company suffers before the government steps in waving RICO warrants. This would then open up possibilities of civil redress.
    This is good news to those directly impacted by such vicious activity, but the same article also displayed another other view of the same problem with, "'RICO was intended to get gangsters,' said Jennifer Granick, a California lawyer who has represented hackers. 'Now, it's getting a bunch of kids in black concert T-shirts.'"
     Congressional hearings and the White House "summit" meetings on Internet security may leave a bad taste in mouths of many.  Government can and should prosecute guilty by all available means whether they wear T-shirts or three-piece-suits, but they can not solve the root problems of security. Our government computers obviously have problems of their own.
     Then into the fray jumped Argus Systems Group President and CEO, Randy Sandone, who issued a somewhat self-serving but stark message on Thursday, challenging the computer security industry.
    "In terms of its security infrastructure, the World Wide Web is rotten at the core," he said. "The only way to truly secure the system is by deploying a secure operating system." In other words, go back to square one.
    I suppose now, as in the infamous Y2-K affair, product ordering sites will contain "alert statements" trying to reassure the buying public. But providers should also apply patience, wisdom and technical knowledge to any solutions they might offer and be offered.
    Sandone also warned, "Disappointingly, yet not surprisingly, the market is now being bombarded with ambulance-chasing security vendors irresponsibly claiming to have the one-size-fits-all answer to Internet security woes."
    Both sellers and consumers are justifiably worried and feeling like a one-legged man in a sack race, but under the circumstances, "let the buyer beware" is one shoe that will fit either foot.

Back to the Index

NEWS ON NEWS
by Haskell 
February 9, 2000

The Associated Press has just told us what we already thought we knew: "Americans Use New News Source."

The mid-January telephone survey of 1,091 adults (at least they said they were adult) showed, since the last national campaign in 1996, only 24 percent of us cite network television as our main election news source.  This is down from 39 percent almost four years ago.  Local television news reflected the same decline.

According to the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, our nation's newspapers, once the primary source of campaign news for half of us, also now have dropped to less than a third for the informed electorate.

During this period, it was cable news that jumped from 23 percent to 31 percent, and our beloved Internet rose from a meager 2 percent in April of 1996 to 6 percent today.

The fact that cable television and the Internet are growing as sources for election information and coverage is not surprising.  Unless you live under a rock, or in a White House press office, this is what we should have expected, although we may be surprised that the growth of these media was not greater.

What is sad, however, is the fact that approximately 10 percent of potential voters found Jay Leno, David Letterman, and MTV as a primary information source, and even greater numbers cited late night talk and comedy television as their information wellspring.

But consider this, "Political endorsements by leaders or celebrities mean little to most Americans." This, of course, comes from the same public that will remain obese rather than have Monica Lewinski tout the virtues of Jenny Craig's weight loss plan.

Yes, our information resources are burgeoning and while this should make us a better-prepared electorate, we need to worry about what we do with what we have.  Yet, history shows, with the likes of Doonesbury, 50 years of bland network television, and the crush of talk-radio, today we really are no better or worse off - by choice - than we were.

Back to the Index

R-Rated Church!
Children Under 17 Not Admitted Unless Accompanied By An Adult

by Haskell 
February 8, 2000

    GAINESVILLE — The Super Bowl, icy weather and presidential campaign politics were not the only stories dominating the front pages of Monday's local newspapers.  Depending on where you live and what you read, there were differing local, state and national headlines that made their way into print, but in The Times, of Gainesville, there appeared a story that will have this community buzzing and agog probably for weeks and months to come.
    The headline: "Baptist church to review four R-rated films."
    In the byline story by staff writer Anne  Madison we learn that the four films – "Sling Blade,” "Amadeus," "The Apostle," and "The Last Temptation of Christ" – will be shown in the New Century Baptist Church sanctuary on Friday evenings, free of charge. And the pastor there points out that following the viewings there will be "a discussion of religious implications," and strongly defends his church's decision "to explore things like this on behalf of the community."
    The pastor, Reverend Matt McEver, is a relative newcomer to this community, but needs to understand that he brings his enlightened, liberal theology to a community (Gainesville/Hall County) where you can not purchase an adult men's magazine from behind a convenience store counter, and many still remember when a couple of local, upstanding, otherwise law abiding citizens were arrested for gambling after drawing straws at a popular local diner to decide who was going to pay for coffee one morning!
    Showing R-rated cinematic offerings depicting violence, bad language and nudity in the sanctuary of one of the community's churches is not likely to go over very well here at all.
    The news story did elicit response from other church leaders including the obligatory negative comments from a Southern Baptist minister who said folks shouldn't see R-rated movies anywhere, especially in church. New Century Baptist Church belongs to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which split from the Southern Baptist Convention about 15 years ago over doctrinal issues.
    By far, however, was the intriguing response from an area Catholic priest who expressed concern especially about "The Last Temptation of Christ." In this film, there is a scene in which the character of Jesus enjoys fellowship of a sexual variety with Mary Magdalene, and was found offensive to Catholics and Protestants across the religious and political spectrum.
    After admitting that he had not seen the movie, it was pointed out to the good Father that the scene in question was "intended as a fantasy, not reality." Not exactly cinéma vérité.
    No one can be certain why, but for whatever reason, the priest responded to this demythologization by saying, "a clearly-identified fantasy would be less objectionable."  He was then quoted, "I hope an adult, with an adult faith, could see this." Local pundits know that if "adult faith" is a prerequisite for seeing any of the films, attendance will be severely limited.
    Gainesville/Hall County is a proud community and does have much to be proud of, but one benchmark of its identity is "We're not Atlanta."  The big city life of politics, economics and social problems exist in abundance, but residents resist the image in every way possible.
    While it's been about ten years since the local conservative religious leadership sought its ordained mandate of influence, the churches and concerned citizenry of this area can not be expected to let something this brazen slide by without challenge.
    Several of the old church leaders left town just in time, or they are doing time for legal offenses like drug possession and child sexual molestation, but the remnants, although not necessarily moral, and certainly not a majority will find a way to be heard.
    What frightens many people too, is the fact that this is also an election year.  If you can be arrested for drawing straws for a dollar's worth of coffee, what could happen here with the youth group selling "concessions outside the theater?"  And who could possibly go to jail for allowing someone under the age of 17 to enter without a legal parent or guardian?
    For the next month at least, Saturday morning reading of local headlines could become interesting and entertaining.

Back to the Index

Discipline News:
Kids, Schools & Home Headlines

by Haskell 
January 28, 2000

    This week, four separate and seemingly unrelated minor news items from around the world managed to capture in whole, or in part, the attention of parents, educators, and hopefully ordained religious and self-appointed social guardians everywhere.
    Singularly, each has nothing to do with another, but together they might as well be a quatrain of social commentary.  Each story in it's own right, or taken as one, invite comment, question, complaint and even a nod of encouragement, but sadly, as 1-2-3-or-4, they answer nothing— neither solve anything nor heal anyone. Perhaps that little bit of encouragement is enough on which to cling in today's uncertain and irresolute atmosphere.
    First the frightening: "Rural Teens' Drug Use Grows," this according the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University who released their findings on Wednesday, as reported by the Associated Press (AP).
    "Eighth graders in rural America are 104 percent likelier than those in urban centers to use amphetamines…50 percent likelier to use cocaine….(and) 83 percent likelier to use crack cocaine…" the story read in part.  All of the numbers were alarming and prompted the research group's president, Joseph A. Califano Jr., to urge President Clinton and Congress to appropriate $1.6 billion in "emergency aid" to combat the problem at home.  One day before, Tuesday, the president proposed the same amount of money in aid to Columbia to assist with the drug problem there.
    Story number two: In Britain, youngsters in that nation may soon, by law, be exempt from most forms of corporal punishment and discipline. A 1998 case heard by the European Court of Human Rights, has given the English Parliament cause to unveil proposals to curb parental spanking "with anything but their hands or (from) smacking a child's head, eyes or ears," the article stated. British law outlawed corporal punishment in public schools in 1986, and according to the article it was not until two years ago that the practice was halted in the private school sector.
While the new proposal is intended to strike down the Victorian-era notion of "reasonable chastisement," deplored by the court, many in that country do not feel that the parliament is going far enough to curb such methods of discipline.
    Health Minister, John Hulton, only noted that "Good parenting is vital, but it can be a demanding job."
    From Miami, Florida, came the story of a mother arrested for contributing to the delinquency of her children and refusing to comply with compulsory school attendance.  Miami is just one jurisdiction in many across the nation who are threatening parents with jail time in order to get their children to attend classes.
    Finally, in Japan, the story was a bit different.  The Japan Teachers' Union "adopted an appeal" calling for educators to become more interactive by "fully heeding the views of students," stated another AP story.
    Citing "bullying, students' refusal to attend school, and so-called 'collapsed classes' as challenges to be tackled by teachers," the union said that the members should "carefully listen to what children think, and feel that they have won students' approval, instead of deploring that children have changed."
     The outcome, results and impact of these stories will not be known for years to come, and probably argued and debated to death even before any real good or harm can actually be done. Corporal punishment, listening to our kids, legal threats against parents, and the sad reality of increasing rural drug use among our teens all made headlines this week.
     What finally happens with any or all of this is largely dependent on our individual internal and public reaction.  But one thing that we've learned as parents and educators is that no response and no reaction has a far greater potential for catastrophe.
     Oh, yes, one more story made the headlines this past week.
In April of last year the clouded issues of violence in the schools, discipline, education, even religious faith and our core values were brought into a harsh and horrendous light in a single afternoon of terror and death in Colorado.
    Now, nine months later, the debates and arguments still rage across the country, but no real consensus has been, or probably ever will be, reached.  Spending $3.5 million in private funds to build a memorial atrium and raze the library where 10 students of a total 15 victims lost their lives is fast becoming an issue of its own, and that is sad.  When second and third tier agendas overshadow the initial and overriding questions, we lose much more that we gain by this shedding of collateral blood and tears.
    We can only wish that the next headlines we read, see, or hear will be truly positive in nature.

Back to the Index

by Haskell 
January 26, 2000

    This week, four separate and seemingly unrelated minor news items from around the world managed to capture in whole, or in part, the attention of parents, educators, and hopefully ordained religious and self-appointed social guardians everywhere.
    Singularly, each has nothing to do with another, but together they might as well be a quatrain of social commentary.  Each story in it's own right, or taken as one, invite comment, question, complaint and even a nod of encouragement, but sadly, as 1-2-3-or-4, they answer nothing— neither solve anything nor heal anyone. Perhaps that little bit of encouragement is enough on which to cling in today's uncertain and irresolute atmosphere.
    First the frightening: "Rural Teens' Drug Use Grows," this according the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University who released their findings on Wednesday, as reported by the Associated Press (AP).
    "Eighth graders in rural America are 104 percent likelier than those in urban centers to use amphetamines…50 percent likelier to use cocaine….(and) 83 percent likelier to use crack cocaine…" the story read in part.  All of the numbers were alarming and prompted the research group's president, Joseph A. Califano Jr., to urge President Clinton and Congress to appropriate $1.6 billion in "emergency aid" to combat the problem at home.  One day before, Tuesday, the president proposed the same amount of money in aid to Columbia to assist with the drug problem there.
    Story number two: In Britain, youngsters in that nation may soon, by law, be exempt from most forms of corporal punishment and discipline. A 1998 case heard by the European Court of Human Rights, has given the English Parliament cause to unveil proposals to curb parental spanking "with anything but their hands or (from) smacking a child's head, eyes or ears," the article stated. British law outlawed corporal punishment in public schools in 1986, and according to the article it was not until two years ago that the practice was halted in the private school sector.
While the new proposal is intended to strike down the Victorian-era notion of "reasonable chastisement," deplored by the court, many in that country do not feel that the parliament is going far enough to curb such methods of discipline.
    Health Minister, John Hulton, only noted that "Good parenting is vital, but it can be a demanding job."
    From Miami, Florida, came the story of a mother arrested for contributing to the delinquency of her children and refusing to comply with compulsory school attendance.  Miami is just one jurisdiction in many across the nation who are threatening parents with jail time in order to get their children to attend classes.
    Finally, in Japan, the story was a bit different.  The Japan Teachers' Union "adopted an appeal" calling for educators to become more interactive by "fully heeding the views of students," stated another AP story.
    Citing "bullying, students' refusal to attend school, and so-called 'collapsed classes' as challenges to be tackled by teachers," the union said that the members should "carefully listen to what children think, and feel that they have won students' approval, instead of deploring that children have changed."
     The outcome, results and impact of these stories will not be known for years to come, and probably argued and debated to death even before any real good or harm can actually be done. Corporal punishment, listening to our kids, legal threats against parents, and the sad reality of increasing rural drug use among our teens all made headlines this week.
     What finally happens with any or all of this is largely dependent on our individual internal and public reaction.  But one thing that we've learned as parents and educators is that no response and no reaction has a far greater potential for catastrophe.
     Oh, yes, one more story made the headlines this past week.
In April of last year the clouded issues of violence in the schools, discipline, education, even religious faith and our core values were brought into a harsh and horrendous light in a single afternoon of terror and death in Colorado.
    Now, nine months later, the debates and arguments still rage across the country, but no real consensus has been, or probably ever will be, reached.  Spending $3.5 million in private funds to build a memorial atrium and raze the library where 10 students of a total 15 victims lost their lives is fast becoming an issue of its own, and that is sad.  When second and third tier agendas overshadow the initial and overriding questions, we lose much more that we gain by this shedding of collateral blood and tears.
    We can only wish that the next headlines we read, see, or hear will be truly positive in nature.

Back to the Index

The Y2K-Bug has arrived!

January 1, 2000 came and went and the predictions of Armageddon, financial catastrophe and total mayhem created by a mere faulty computer chip were never realized. Serious, and needed, questions and issues now remain for industry and government leaders to wade through as they assess costs estimated in the billions of dollars to Americans.

    Maybe, just maybe, we weren't listening carefully. When the prophets first cried out in the wilderness did we hear the voice come down from the mountaintop, or did we just imagine it arising from Silicone Valley and echoing through the concrete jungle of Wall Street?

    If you haven't been looking closely, or have been too sick to get up and check, the millennium bug has struck! Since New Year's Eve, hospitals across the nation have been bulging with millions of patients, including their own stricken staff. This condition, bordering on epidemic, has forced many health care providers to stop, curtail, or dramatically alter their usual mode of operation.

    The US continental span and scope of this year's outbreak is still being tallied, but press wire reports have chronicled effects that include gurneys parked in hospital hallways in Texas, the necessity of using refrigerated lorries as temporary morgues in the U.K., postponement of continuing millennium events in Scotland, and the prediction of as many as 20 percent of the population of the Netherlands being eventually downed by the flu.

    In the end, this Y2K-bug will have more far-reaching personal, economic and social effects than the highly touted computer glitch ever approached.

    Still, modern man has a way to make lemonade out of lemons. It has become a rule of modern supply-side economics: wherever there is woe, there is a way to make money. Someone is always getting rich off someone else's illness, calamity, fear, or necessity. Perhaps not as brazen as the profit takers of the great millennial hoax, but probably more aggravating in many ways, stories are being published on pharmaceutical companies soaring stocks, and the positive impact on many medical related businesses.

    One segment that is not going to be able to profit from this real bug is the church. Less attendance due to illness means less cash in the offering plate. Maybe church members can donate bottled water, batteries, and freeze-dried food. Somehow, it seems only fair.

    To be honest, however, I was not listening too closely, either. I thought they said "Y2K-Hug" and in the spirit of the season went around passing on influenza germs to everyone within reach.

© January, 2000 by Haskell

Back to the Index

Oops…OSHA in my bathroom?

by Haskell
January 14, 2000

    News from the Labor Department that Occupational Safety and Health Act regulations may adversely affect America's growing numbers of telecommuters is not only sad, but also frightening.

    The idea now is that employers can be held responsible for the safety of a worker's environment even while he or she is operating from home. This is good up to a point and probably necessary when it comes to things like paper cuts, eye strain and the dreaded carpal-tunnel syndrome, but Big Brother needs to back off from there.

    If we are to have a life away from the downtown connector and wasted time and energy searching for those elusive parking spaces, many of us enjoy (even demand) the option of working from home.

    This not only cuts down on traffic, smog, accidents, insurance costs and resulting road rage, court fights, and fistfights, but telecommuting actually has the potential of increasing employee productivity, improving mental health and building stronger marriages and more stable families.

    To create a situation through government meddling where employers are no longer willing or able to offer the option of seeing my smiling E-mail face by 9:00 a.m., the personal, financial and technological strides of the past 20 years will be sorely negated.

    One other thing to consider: how will this regulation be enforced? Will my bosses drop in to see if my ergonomics are in order? Will government inspectors show up at my door at 4:30 p.m. and look over this mess I call wiring that grows under my desk? The possibilities are horrific!

    One writer/editor I know works the same odd hours I do and we agree - if we had to work out of a single newspaper or magazine office downtown we would not be able to earn as much or enjoy the lives we have based on our flexible work arrangements.

    She does, however, do one thing quite unique: she writes while soaking in a large indoor Jacuzzi (she says it helps her think). I've been to her "home-office," and must admit it's quite an arrangement. Besides the board mounted on the side of the tub for her laptop computer, there is also a television for her soaps and a radio for early morning local news. That many appliances plugged up that close to standing water is not recommended by any of the owner's manuals, but it works (so far) for her.

    I would really like to be there when a contract employer and an OSHA representative come by demanding to inspect her working conditions. The only real unsafe situation will be the one in which the intruders find themselves!

    And to think, I'm worried about the telephone I had installed in my bathroom.

© January, 2000 by Haskell

Back to the Index

Cloning Redundancies Again

by Haskell
January 16, 2000

    A recent Associated Press story, dateline - Albany (GA), appeared in one paper under the headline, "Ga. Could become world leader in cattle cloning."

    It seems that the University of Georgia and the Georgia Research Alliance have received a $1.5 million research endowment to clone cattle and improve on Mother Nature. And this, at least according to the AP, "could someday produce human medicines or better meat and milk." Most of us, however, remember the lesson learned from our childhood television education - "it's not nice to fool (with) Mother Nature."

    The cloning project head, Steve Stice, denying they were 'playing God,' was quoted as saying, "I try to explain that we're really just trying to do what Mother Nature is allowing us to do." Perhaps the jury is still out on that one.

    Ever since Dolly, the clone-in-law of an identical ovine, appeared in Scotland in 1996, scientists have been lurking in stables the world over, most often in secret, working on various cloning projects and to date, besides sheep, they have managed to genetically replicate about 100 cattle.

    Where does it all stop? According to the director of Georgia Research Alliance, Bill Todd, the cloning project also will be looking into the poultry industry, which will cause us to wonder, which came first - the chicken or the cow? Even if it means the world will finally have a nutritious fifty- cent cloned-chicken-salad sandwich, most of us just aren't quite ready to cross that road.

    The real news coming out of Georgia, however, was that Stice eventually hopes to be the first to clone a pig. Pigs, it would seem, are more sensitive creatures, at least where their sperm cells, eggs, and embryos are concerned, but said Stice, "Since pigs and humans are biologically similar, scientists may someday be able to clone pigs that have organs which could be transplanted into humans."

    Though the possibilities are endless, we must acknowledge that perhaps before violating the poor, sensitive pig, scientists should start with its less irascible and discriminating porcine cousin - the politician. It would at least be a gain for scientific research while protecting the sanctity of nature. The end result of building a politician's politician would have no other socially redeeming value or quality, but animal rights activist would have no reason to protest.

    It's quite possible that God likes His cows, sheep, goats, and horses just the way they are. But the politician can only be improved by genetic tinkering. If extinction of the subspecies Politicus-enigmus were not in Nature's plan, then maybe man would have a beneficial role to play.