EDITOR
Josh Funk
OPINION
EDITOR
Mark Baldridge
EDITORIAL
BOARD
Lindsay Young
Jessica Fargen
Samuel McKewon
Cliff Hicks
Kimberly Sweet
Our
VIEW
Computer
illiterate
Suspicious minds
breed foolish thoughts
“They’ve got to be kidding us, right?”
the younger senator asked the older senator.
The two sat in a smokers’ lounge, talking
about one of the latest memos.
“No, son, it’s quite a serious matter,” the
older senator replied as he puffed on his
cigar. “These are matters of national securi
ty, you know. We can’t have the commies
using our own technologies against us. We
have these laws for a reason.”
“Look, Apple’s making home comput
ers, not some sort of superpowered code
cracking machine!” the younger senator
fumed. The proposal, in his mind, was a
simple one.
Apple is requesting a change in the laws
that govern the export of “supercomput
u
‘It plays
frickin ’
videogames’
the younger
man shouted,
‘not break
into the
Pentagon! ’
ers. The definition
of that word, Apple
argues, hasn’t kept
up with the tech
nology itself..
“See, hat’s
how it might
appear td laymen
like you and me,
but the boys who
handle national
security, they think
about these kinds
of things all the
time.”
The younger
senator looked at
me memo, aumo
struck. “It says here that they are still cur
rently debating over whether or not the new
PlayStation will be considered a supercom
puter or not.”
“And?” the older senator asked.
“It plays frickin’ videogames,” the
younger man shouted. “It doesn’t break
into the Pentagon!”
“Ah, but it’s fast, and speed’s all one
needs anymore. These hackers, they can
redirect technology and corrupt it for their
■ own uses.”
“Tell me again why we’re supposed to
take this argument as valid?”
The older senator nodded. “It’s a matter
of national security, son. If the boys over at
the National Security Agency say some
thing might be dangerous, then we need to
keep our eyes on it.”
“Letting Apple sell its G4 personal
computers to foreign countries is going to
cause a breach of national security?”
“Ah ah ah. Supercomputers.”
“Right. How?”
“Well... well, I don’t know exactly, but
just the possibility is enough for me.”
“Right, and I wondered why people
think Congress is full of dimwits,” the
younger man said as he ground his cigarette
butt into the ashtray. “Now I know.”
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VIEW
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DN
LETTERS
Let’s Do Lunch
I enjoyed Josh Moenning’s col
umn “Third Party Predicament” (DN,
Sept. 14).
I think you’re right on the money
that if Buchanan joins the Reform
Party it would hurt Bush’s chances at
getting elected. As a liberal, I’ve long
been hoping that either Buchanan or
(Gary) Bauer would join a third party
and leach votes away from the
Republican candidate.
The most important outcome of
the presidential election is that three
Supreme Court justices are expected
to retire by 2005. The winner of the
election will have a chance to shift the
balance of power on the court.
I found your use of the term “mil
itant and maniacal gay rights
activists” interesting. A common tac
tic of a group is to brand its oppo
nents as insane, perverted or evil. As
a member of the ACLU, I support
equal rights for gays and lesbians
(rights such as employment, housing,
marriage and adoption). I often want
to stereotype all Christian conserva
tives but then I remember that I have
friends and family members who are
Christian, and they’re not all bad peo
ple.
If you’re interested, I’ll buy you
lunch some Saturday, and you can see
what a gay rights activist is really
like.
Jeremy Patrick
Lincoln
Forced Choices
I would like to enthusiastically
thank Jessica Flanagain for speaking
out against this murder that society
calls “partial-birth abortion.”
The name itself, “partial-birth,”
even suggests life, yet some ignorant
people blindly refuse to see this par
allel. The fact that the former sur
geon general, many physicians, med
ical experts and even some abortion
ists acknowledge that this “proce
dure” is never necessary should be
enough for legislators and the
American public to see the wrong in
this act.
To address Mr. Baldridge’s side:
Isn’t the inalienable right to life of
the child greater than the woman’s
right to choose?
Especially because thousands of
women are forced into abortion by
men who refuse to accept responsi
bility for their offspring.
Rachel U. Ronning
sophomore
undeclared
Freshman Refresher
Amanda Lighter could use a
refresher course in freshman English
composition. Her letter to the editor
(DN, Tuesday) was, for a senior, poor
in logic and worse in English, one of
her listed majors.
Regardless of your stand on
Jessica Flanagain’s comments about
the women’s studies program, when
you use poor logic and horrible
English to attack someone, you only
display your ignorance and destroy
your argument.
Karl Baumgarten
technician
geosciences
Boat Rocking Artists
The recent uproar in New York
regarding an art exhibit represents a
common problem with our society’s
“support” of the arts and of its per
ceptions of free speech rights.
Conservatives and liberals are
both bashing this publicly funded
Brooklyn Museum exhibit, which
supposedly portrays the Virgin Mary
with cutouts of pornographic maga
zines and elephant “dung.”
The Catholic Church’s position
seems to be an outcry of the violation
of church and state. (Which I find
amusing coming from an institution
seemingly bent on a theocratically
ruled nation.) I doubt, however, that
there would be anyone staging this as
an important issue if the artist had
painted a Christian religious icon in a
positive light.
The issue everyone is trying to
mask as a church and state violation
is really a matter of free speech. Call
a spade a spade - this is a clear exam
ple of censorship.
It’s ludicrous for a nation to say, in
effect, we support the arts but only to
the extent that an artist does not mean
or imply anything with which we may
disagree.
If we want to live in a country civ
ilized enough to recognize the impor
tance of artistic expression, then we
must be strong willed enough to real
ize that we are a nation of highly
divergent opinions to which we must
be tolerant.
Nolan Gaskill
senior
music education
I PS. Write Hack
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