The View From the Outback

• Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling Fan
• Close All Law Schools for Ten Years
• Abu Zubaydah - "If You Believe That, I Have a Bridge I Want to Sell You"
• Some Further Thoughts About Labeling People
• Late Night Shows Start to Dump on Bush Again
• You Can Never Be Too Rich or Have Too Many Backup Files
• Those Devishly-Long Filenames for Downloaded Web Pages and Favorites
• Suggested Reading From Past Columns

It is disheartening that so many politicians and media types are trying to blame President Bush for our failure to know in advance about the Sept. 11 attacks. Our intelligence agencies, INS, federal law enforcement, and local law enforcement all failed to connect whatever dots were available. This failure was rooted in decades of ignoring the terrorist threat. Those who are using the accumulated weaknesses in tracking terrorism for political purposes are shameless. I watched FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, who had been on the job one week when Sept. 11 took place, grilled mercilessly in front of a Congressional panel about the Phoenix memo (about foreign student pilots). The man was not even in the FBI at the time of the memo. Mr. Mueller was attacked on several fronts about FBI failures that had their roots 20 years previous. Mr. Mueller is in the process of revamping the FBI in ways that should have been done many years ago. To blame him for past failures is reprehensible. Reprehensible is a good word to describe the partisan politics that is playing out over 9-11.

There have been some arrests of people in Nigeria who have been scamming people with e-mails that tell the convoluted story about how you can make big money by helping to get some money out of Nigeria. But first you have to send money to cover banking fees and administrative costs. I have gotten at least 30 of those messages. Each time, I forward them to my ISP's SPAM mailbox and delete the message. It is very hard to feel sorry for people who become victims of this type of scam. The victims are the same people who listen patiently to telemarketers who tell them about a new stock that will jump 1000% in value in one month. Once again, you can never get swindled if you hang up immediately on all telemarketers and delete all e-mail that is from a stranger and tells you how you can make some "easy" money. It ain't going to happen.

In many school systems, children are no longer allowed to point their fingers like guns. Where will this end? I remember Ross Perot's line during his one campaign: "When I grew up in Texarkana, we all had guns. But we did not shoot each other." When I grew up in St. Paul, we all had cap guns and BB guns. But we did not grow up to be killers. The zero tolerance policy in schools about bringing anything to school that could remotely be used as a weapon, or not being allowed to point your finger like a gun is frustrating for kids. That cumulative frustration may foster the very thing it seeks to prevent - a violent outburst.

The NBA is going to switch from basketballs made from leather to synthetic ones. Please tell me that they are not bowing to pressure from PETA. If a cow is slaughtered for meat, which also enrages PETA, then why should the hide not be used to make various balls for sports? What will be next, plastic baseballs? Charles Barkley, former NBA great, is quoted as saying, "I hope those people are outside by my car .... I will run them over like dogs." Sir Charles, it is not nice to run over dogs. They are man's best friend. But, you have my blessing to run over any PETA members who get in your way. I won't belabor recent news that PETA contributed to some domestic terrorist funds, and that PETA themselves often engage in terroristic acts. Another example of a good idea (concern for animal welfare) gone bonkers.

Amazon.com never fails to amaze me. A while back, I ordered some CDs by Diana Krall and Jane Monheit. David Letterman held up a new CD by Terence Blanchard, which features cuts by Krall, Monheit and others. I went to Amazon to check it out. And there was a recommendation waiting for me - that I might be interested in "Let's Get Lost," by Terence Blanchard! Took the words right out of my mouth. Of course, I ordered the CD. One minute later, I had my e-mail confirmation.

In the Outback for March 30, 2002, I ran a long piece about the battle over CD and DVD copy protection. One music CD that got a lot of attention was a Sony CD by Celine Dion which has copy protection. I was delighted to read that the copy protection had been broken! Did it take $10,000 of hardware and software? No. Somebody figured out that the copy-protection data was in the outer track of the CD. They covered the track with ink from a felt-tipped pen and the CD played normally in a computer, and could be copied for the Walkman, etc., like any other CD. Can you believe it? A felt-tipped pen. How cool is that? Make music CDs more affordable. Prosecute those who copy music CDs or movies to peer-to-peer Internet sites. Shut down the peer-to-peer site. But, forget this copy-protection idea. All such schemes will be defeated.

For years I used PowerDesk 4.0 from Ontrack as my file manager - instead of Windows Explorer. When I built my XP machine, I had some problems with PowerDesk, so I downloaded a trial version of FileQuest XP Gold. It is a very facile program, but confusing to me. I was just about to go online and pay the rather high fee to register the program. Then, Ontrack released PowerDesk 5.0, with support for Windows XP. I am happily using my old favorite and have deleted FileQuest XP Gold from my disk. Check out: www.ontrack.com for PowerDesk 5.0 and www.piquest.com for FileQuest XP Gold. (Since I originally posted this, I have discovered some bugs in PowerDesk 5.0, but I am sure they will be corrected shortly.)

Close All Law Schools for Ten Years

We have an enormous surplus of lawyers. People are suing for the slightest of causes. Doctors are going out of business or moving to other states because of the astronomical cost of malpractice insurance. Lawyers end up paralyzing commerce by their warnings and threats. And the legal clutter in our lives is enormous. Do we really need a warning not to use the hair dryer in the bathtub? Before lawyers warned us about every conceivable danger, stupid behavior was a way to weed out the unfit among us. It is called "natural selection" in nature. If we closed all law schools for at least ten years, we would be doing a great service to the country.

The last two straws came this week. I was watching Marion Nestle on TV, a professor of nutrition at New York University, talk about her new book "Food Politics." Among other things, she rightly points out that we eat too much sugar, especially our kids. She read parts of a letter from a law firm in Washington, D.C. which represents The Sugar Association, Inc.

Part of one sentence reads ".... you have made numerous false, misleading, disparaging, and defamatory statements about sugar." Defamatory remarks about sugar! How the hell do you defame sugar? Defaming refers in the law to attacking someone's good name, reputation, or character. Now sacks of sugar are people. Terrific legal concept, Jeff.

The letter runs onto a third page, and they conclude by threatening this nice lady by telling her to cease making misleading or false statements regarding sugar or the sugar industry. If not, they say, "the only recourse available to us will be to legally defend our industry...." Maybe they could send a guy from the Mob around to break her kneecaps. It would be quicker than a protracted legal battle over "defaming sugar."

Of course, I am writing the author of that asinine letter, Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum, in which I intend to defame his intelligence and suggest that he get a real job. One sentence will read "It is people like you who make me ashamed that I attended law school."

For loads of fun, read the letter at:

www.foodpolitics.com

Then, you can drop the genius lawyer, Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum a note at:

jstenenbaum@venable.com

The second event was quite a shock. I snapped some photos of paintings I own - using my 35mm camera instead of my digital camera, because I wanted the sharpest images I could get. I made a 90-mile round trip to buy new batteries for the camera and fresh film. The photos were to send to my insurance agent and to be used to contact various art dealers about selling two of the paintings. The paintings were propped at an angle against an outside wall of my house. You can see the bricks of the wall in the pictures. In one, I think you can see my shadow. In another, you can see the reflection of a branch of a tree or a power line. A day later, I left the film at Wal*Mart to be processed and get one print of each. Two days later, when I arrived at Wal*Mart to claim my prints, I was told that they would not print the photos because the negatives contained works of art. I must have a written release from the artist, they said. He is probably dead, but that is beside the point.

Damn lawyers! What chance is there that photos of paintings leaning up against the wall of a brick home can be used for sale or profit? None! So, I will take the shots again, using my digital camera and print them myself. And as soon as I can afford it, I will buy one of the high-end mega-pixel digital cameras. I will take a picture of my posterior, send a print to the lawyers at Wal*Mart and say "kiss this." Damn lawyers!

Update: 5-30-02 I was able to scan the color negatives I got from Wal*Mart (the ones they refused to print) into my computer. Using software, I swung the images around vertically and made up lovely composite sheets for my two paintings I want to sell. On each sheet, there is a pretty decent photo of the painting, with a little shadow of my arm and some light clouds, and a blowup of the artist's signature, and a text box telling the history of the painting(s). They are printed on glossy HP photo paper on one of the better HP inkjets. Finally, I used most of my computer junk for a single project. Now, it is off to make the rounds of the art dealers with my promo kit. No thanks to the lawyers at Wal*Mart. Well, in fairness, also no thanks to the 9,000 lawyers who are suing Wal*Mart for all manner of nonsense. Here's one for you. Do people who make photo copies of great works of art for pirated resale of prints take the film to Wal*Mart to get it developed? You gotta be kidding. Just for fun, I am going to shop my negatives around Dallas to see how many outlets will make prints of them, even after I tell them Wal*Mart refused. Piece of cake. I have an honest face, even though I was a CIA agent.

Abu Zubaydah - "If You Believe That, I Have a Bridge I Want to Sell You."

We are in the process of a monumental overhaul of our intelligence gathering agencies, border control, and so on. But, if we still have people around like those who release information to the public about "potential terrorist threats" which they got from Abu Zubaydah, we are in trouble.

Abu Zubaydah is a high ranking Al Qaeda member. He was captured and has been interrogated for some time now. Several "warnings" have been issued based upon the information supplied by this man. What is wrong with the people who are releasing this information? Why would Zubaydah tell us anything that is true, other than there are general plots against the United States? He has no reason to be truthful. He is jerking our chain.

Recently, I got one good clue that Zubaydah is making up stories just to confuse and disrupt the government and upset the American people. One of his gems was that the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania (Flight 93) was headed for the White House. If I recall the chronology correctly, another hijacked plane was heading for the White House and got within about three miles when it turned and flew to the Pentagon. An air-traffic-controller said that they were tracking the plane as it headed on a course for the White House, but it suddenly turned and in short order flew into the Pentagon. There was speculation that the morning sun, combined with the small profile the White House presents among taller buildings, caused the hijackers to abort the WH run and turn toward the Pentagon - which anybody could find.

There is no question in my mind that the plane that flew into the Pentagon did so as an afterthought, not part of the schedule. That plane slammed into the only part of the Pentagon that had recently been refurbished with steel "crash beams," shatter-resistant windows, and Kevlar wall inserts to impede flying shrapnel from an explosion. This was nowhere near the offices of the Joint Chiefs or other top brass at the Pentagon - which would have been the target of a "planned" assault.

As I indicated earlier in the Outback, it is much easier to find and hit the Capitol than the White House. My guess is that the plane that went down in Pennsylvania was either targeted at the CIA HQ or the Capitol. There may have been one or two more planned hijackings that did not come off. So, the total targeting quite possibly was the Twin Towers in NYC, the White House, the Capitol, CIA HQ in Langley, and the Pentagon. The "second choice" of the Pentagon by the plane that diverted from the White House run, lends credence to the fact that there may have been another aircraft originally scheduled for the Pentagon, but its hijacking never took place. There is a good chance that Zacarias Moussaoui was part of a hijack team that failed to carry out their mission. And who else is out there with 9-11 plans still in their pockets?

Years ago, we had the famous one-eyed drifter in Texas, Henry Lee Lucas, who claimed to have killed about 30 people. He would be flown to the general scene of a murder and he would confess. I was president of the book publisher which had a contract with a well-known author to write the "blockbuster" book about all of Henry Lee's murders. But, our man soon discovered that Henry Lee was jerking the chain of law enforcement. He finally told our man that he was being flown all over, fed steaks and booze and was having a great time confessing to all the murders. It was a scam to travel and eat and drink well!

So, my guess is that Abu Zubaydah is a modern day Henry Lee Lucas. He is probably been fed very well, and given other unknown perks (and maybe money for his family, who knows?). In between burps, he is feeding the intelligence community all this non-specific garbage about terrorists plots. Shame on those who are relaying that information to the media.

Some Further Thoughts About Labeling People

When you decide that you want to buy a Honda Accord, for weeks every car you see on the road is a Honda Accord. You have sensitized yourself. Well, my article about Halle Berry being labeled as black, even though her mother is white, has sensitized me. I am looking even closer at some of the labels and stereotypes.

The "Cosby Show Reunion" was great for those of us who never missed an episode. More than once, one of the actors mentioned how the show had helped change attitudes about "black families." I began to look closely at the cast members. They ranged from black, to partly-black, to barely-black, to hardly black at all. A couple of the girls would be hard pressed to sincerely call themselves black - outside the confines of the "Cosby Show." My point again is that no matter how little black blood you have, you are labeled black. Something is wrong when a girl who could possibly pass for white in many settings talks about being black. We need to get beyond that.

The term Mexican-American seems to have fallen into disfavor. Hispanic or Latino is used more often. And those terms cover a wider range of people. A Latino is one from Latin America, which is the entire western hemisphere south of the United States. Hispanic technically refers to people of Spanish descent - and in popular modern usage as people from Latin America. For what it is worth, I love the Hispanic culture. When I lived in San Antonio, I used to attend many Hispanic art and community functions - in hopes of meeting a dark-eyed Hispanic beauty. Nice try, anyway.

Now we have all the labels straight. Almost. I see Jake on "Becker" on CBS. Alex Desert brilliantly plays a blind - and black - newsstand operator. My guess is that he is called an African-American or a black by most who write or speak of him. Actually, his parents are from Haiti. The CIA fact book says that Haiti is 95% black and 5% mulatto and white - a population that is a fusion of African, French, and West Indian elements. This gets confusing, doesn't it? In Haiti, it is common to refer to "mulattos" - that is, a person with both black and Caucasian ancestors. Yet another label for our "label catalog." Although socially acceptable in the Caribbean, mulatto is not used much in the U.S., except perhaps pejoratively.

So, keep your eyes open. Look for people being labeled and for stereotypes. It is an interesting exercise. Better than Where's Waldo? Maybe, like me, you will conclude that labels are counterproductive and irrelevant.

Late Night Shows Start to Dump on Bush Again

During the last presidential campaign, I quit watching all late night comedy shows because of their tasteless barbs about Gov. George Bush. After the election, it was even worse, as I sampled the shows. After Sept. 11, 2001, I sampled the shows again. Most seemed to consider "Bush is a moron" jokes to be off-limits, given the fact that we were in a war against terrorism and needed to present a united front.

Recently, the Bush bashing has started again. Bush is dumb, Bush is a puppet of Cheney, Bush should have been able to "connect the dots" leading up to 9-11, and so on. I will never watch Craig Killborn again, especially after he ran the "Sniper Wanted" overlay during a mock news story about Bush during the campaign. Now, MadTv, Leno, and Saturday Night Live are reverting to the old form. Letterman has been more circumspect, but he gets his digs in now and then. You could not pay me to watch Jon Stuart on "The Daily Show," or "Dennis Miller Live" or "Politically Incorrect." There is no balance in these shows. They are all one huge, shrieking, collective, liberal billboard.

It is said that perhaps 75% of the American public gets much of their political news from watching late-night comedy. This alone is tragic. But, when I look at a guy like Jay Leno, I wonder where he thinks he got the charter to be a political commentator - and often way off base. As I recall his resume, he was a car detailer, a standup comic, and now does a comedy monologue of jokes written mostly by other people. He also interviews a motley group of airheads from the entertainment industry. Where in there is any claim to fame as a political commentator? He has becoming increasingly arrogant, since he has now passed the 10-year milestone as host of the Tonight Show. Mavis needs to have a chat with him. "Jay, your head is getting too big for your motorcycle helmet. Chill out."

So, once again I must take my leave of the late-night shows, as I become incensed at the tasteless jokes about Bush and Cheney - and others. I may tape Letterman and start the recording after five minutes into the show, since his monologue is so short. I have never met a man or woman with a degree from Yale and an M.B.A. from Harvard who is stupid, regardless of grade average. And there is nothing funny about a heart attack. But people laugh. I give up.

We are still in a fight for survival against the terrorists. What kind of a message does it send to friend and foe alike overseas when every night the President and Vice President are depicted as bumbling fools?

You Can Never be Too Rich or Have Too Many Backup Files

Most people do not back up their files often enough. I have a 250MB Zip drive for daily backups, and I back up to CD-R at least once a month. Some people keep a CD-RW disk in the drive all day for quick backups of data files. I have never found this to work conveniently for me. On the machine that I use for e-mail, I back the entire Mailbox files up to a 64MB USB Drive (a solid state device you just plug into a USB port) - and later to a CD-R. Now, there is a trend among power users to use a second hard drive to back up files. You can buy some very speedy USB 2.0 external hard drives, for example.

I now use a second 40 GB hard drive ($90), set as a Slave on IDE Channel 1, to do additional backups. You can use one of several programs to back up your entire hard drive or simply use a batch file with Xcopy commands to back up selected data to the second hard drive. The chance of two hard drives failing simultaneously is pretty remote. But a backup to CD-R now and then is still a good idea.

The Master hard drive is partitioned C: (8GB) for Windows XP and misc operating files, D: is 32GB for programs and data. The Slave drive is partitioned E: (8MB) to duplicate the XP and other operating files, F: (27MB for a mirror of programs and data), and G: is 5GB - for the Windows Swap File (Virtual Memory), the Temp files, and the Temporary Internet files. Some people use one partition solely for data. I have found this too unwieldy, as some programs will not let you move your data files to a place of your choice. Since I do not normally download music, and never download movie files, I do not need 160GB hard drives.

In theory, if you put your operating system on a fairly small partition (C: drive) and your programs and data on another partition, if your operating system crashes, you can format only the C: drive (partition) and reinstall the operating system. In theory. But, you accumulate a lot of common and shared files on the C: drive. And there are some programs that refuse to install on any drive but C:, which is being very narrow minded. That is why a mirror image of the C: drive is handy, either on another hard drive or on a CD-R.

You can usually spot a novice computer user. They have all their Icons lined up on the left, since they never learned how to uncheck that function. Even though they don't use AOL or MSN, the icons are still on the Desktop, etc. And they may have an 80GB hard drive labeled C:, with no extended partitions to break up the drive into functions. Nothing wrong with that, but there are more efficient ways to do things. I love to see the president of some big company on TV posing at his desk with his computer - with 30 icons all lined up on the left. With 25 icons he may never have clicked on to see what they do. But, I digress into computer snobbery.

The idea of putting the Swap File, TEMP, and Internet Explorer Temp files on a small separate partition is that they are constantly being accessed and contribute to a rapid defragmentation of a C: drive, for example. And when given their own small playroom, they access more quickly and can be defragged in a minute or two. You can divert all three files to G: or E; or whatever small partition you have set - by options in the menus.

In IE 6.0 under Tools, Internet Options, Temporary Internet Files, Settings, Move Folder.

The Swap File (Virtual Memory) is under Control Panel, System, Advanced, Performance, Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory (Change) (in XP). Most geeks say to set the Virtual Memory to about 2 1/2 times your amount of RAM, and set both Initial and Max to the same amount. Windows normally expands and contracts the Swap File on the fly, which contributes to fragmentation. If you have a lot of RAM (512 or more) you need less Swap File (Virtual Memory). My machine have 512MB of RAM and my Virtual Memory is set a 766-766.

The TEMP files are normally at C:\Windows\TEMP, or may be under C:\Documenmts and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temp in XP. You can change this by going to Control Panel, System, Advanced, Environmental Variables (in XP).

Those Devlishly-Long Filenames for Downloaded Web Pages and Favorites

Do you download Web pages to read or print later? Have you noticed that you end up with some very long file names? Then, if you try to back up those files to a CD-R, you may get a message about the file name being too long. I think the maximum allowed is 64 characters. If you downloaded a complete Web page and right click on the .html file and rename it to a shorter name, you loose the connection to the associated Folder that contains the graphics from the Web page.

Here is the correct renaming procedure: In a file viewer , such as Windows Explorer or Power Desk Pro, double click on the .html file to open it in Internet Explorer (or your browser). Under File, click on Save As, and give the file a shorter name. A copy of the Folder (with the graphics) will be associated with the new, shorter, file name. Now, you will have the original file with the long name and the new one with the shorter name. Delete the old .html file with the longer name.

If you want to archive the file to another folder (e.g., C:\Archive\Webpages), highlight the .html file and drag and drop it to the destination folder. The Folder of graphics associated with that file will copy at the same time. It's computer magic.

I have about 15 Sub-Folders for archiving Web pages, with names ranging from D:\Archive\Environment to D:\Archive\Terrorism. If all your downloaded Web pages are nested in Folders under C:\Archive (or D:\Archive), it is easy to back them all up by dragging the main Archive Folder to the CD-R icon. I also have a Folder D:\Archive\OldWPDoc which contains every document file I have written since about 1990. When all of this gets too much for one 700MB CD-R, I open D:\Archive2 and so on. And drag and drop some files until I have less than 650MB in any one Archive folder.

You may also notice that if you try to back up your Favorites to a CD-R that you run into the "filename is too long" thing. You can edit them in the Favorites Menu under Organize Favorites. Right click on a Favorite and you Cut, Copy, Delete, and RENAME. Or, you can rename and edit them in a file manager, since they are simply text files.

The best place to stop all this nonsense is when you save a New Favorite. Before you click the OK button, edit the name of the Favorite down to a manageable length. Press End to go to end, and then backspace to get rid of excess. Or, press Home to go to the start and Delete characters. Or, use the Arrow keys with Delete and Backspace to clean up a long or complex Favorite. And get rid of all the stupid "Welcome to" intros, as they will of course all sort under "Welcome." You can also Move a Favorite from one Favorites folder to another, although I find it easier to do this sort of thing in a file manager - such as Power Desk Pro 5.0 (now compatible with XP). For one thing, in a file manager, you can select a block of entries and move them at one time.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Richard C. Rhodes

You are welcome to quote sections from this page - or the whole page, as long as the source URL is included. Of course, I would be flattered if anyone linked to this page. It is very hard to be the writer, editor, fact checker, copy editor, and publisher of anything. So, I welcome corrections of fact, notes of misspelled words, and so on.

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