august 21, 2003 - 06:12 - all the stars in nyc
deemed worthy as a cover story to this week's time magazine, clearly,
the big event last week was the cascading power outtage
that managed to down several major metropoli in canada and the north-eastern
united states, and perhaps most iconically, new york city.
i wasn't there to experience it myself, but have spent a considerable
amount of time reading about the logistics of the event with the detached
curiosity of someone who's simply interested in the dynamic and
instantaneous physics of 'energy delivery.'
through all the volumes of text i have now perused, a 'witness' comment
in a well written editorial stands out above them all.
unfortunately, i don't have the exact source, but concede the semantics
far outweigh the syntax:
'it was the first time in 40 years that i've seen
stars over new york city'
at first, i innocently considered this comment a rather comedic anecdote.
admittedly simple minded, this first impression eventually melted
into awe: surely, a feat such as this must be a testiment to man's
igenuity; his ability to push back against the oppressive blackness
of night?
in turn, this new postulate held fast until i found my mind swimming
within the soothing indifference proffered by the darkness of last night.
it was then, laying in bed under an open window, that i couldn't help
but wonder if the above observation was just a literal manifestation of
everything that is wrong with society. to put it
bluntly, how can people dream if they can't see the stars?
it's far from my station to wax philosophical on such a global scale,
(i'm admittedly far too selfish for such practice), but it sure seems to
me that the bigger story here is definitively outside the politics of
regulation vs. deregulation, and wholly independent of all the finger
pointing and blame games. instead, i can't help but to wonder:
for all our bright lights, can we really see better in the dark?
one thing is certain: measures to prevent reccurance of this event
are already being implemented, and experience suggests that the probabilty
of a repeat will continuously decrease, asymptotically bounded to zero.
(perhaps thankfully, never reaching).
of those that were in NYC on that magic night, the subset of people
that spilled into the streets and found occasion to stare awe-struck
at a decades-repressed sky exploding above them, witnessed a moment so
singularily noteworthy that it might stand out in human history as an
event more important than any scandal, or war, or disaster in recent memory.
then again, maybe it was just another wacky night out in the big apple.
august 1, 2003 - 18:27 - the elusive geek-high
every once in a while, jack configures something that
makes him feel like a proper geek again.
a little wireless connectivity, a little port of the rendezvous protocol,
a couple little hacks, and a big dual channel RAID published from
a linux file server: we don't do this because it's necessary, we do it
because it's cool.
august 1, 2003 - 07:25 - cat /dev/null/ >> brain
somtimes, it's like the whole wold is working against you.
[root@foo bin]# ./unzip
bash: ./unzip: No such file or directory
[root@foo bin]# ls -al ./unzip
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 85288 Aug 1 14:56 ./unzip
( more )
| 
