what about me?

Or both?

[T]he single biggest predictor of likely aptitude for programming is a deep comfort with meaninglessness.

A new chapter in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has been posted at History is a Weapon. It’s about The 2000 Election and the “War on Terrorism”. You should read it.

Zinn excerpts Robert Bowman, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew combat missions in Viet Nam, suggesting a novel foreign policy: “[W]e should do good instead of evil.” I suppose King George II would respond, “But that’s what we are doing, that’s what I’ve been saying all along, we’re the good guys here.” Bowman, though, is a Catholic bishop, so the good/evil split he emphasizes is the classical, simple dictionary definition; good is good, and evil is bad — not the what’s-good-for-General-Motors-is-good and what’s-bad-for-United-Fruit-is-evil crap that KGII means.

Here are a few nice bits from Bowman’s piece:

• Why do they hate us?
  

  We are not hated because we practice democracy, freedom and human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations.

• What does “do good instead of evil” mean?
  

  Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water and feed starving children . . . Instead of training terrorists and death squads, we should close the School of the Americas. Instead of supporting insurrection, destabilization, assassination and terror around the world, we should abolish the CIA and give the money to relief agencies.

Crazy nut. Read Truth is, we’re terrorized because we’re hated — it’s short.