Paul's Down-Home Page

Attention, Kate, KC, and Dori. Google is sponsoring a panel on non-traditional ways for women to enter the computer science field:

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and Google are pleased to co-sponsor an all-star female panel on education options for entering and re-entering Computer Science and IT on Wednesday, June 2 at 6:00pm at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Attendance is free but space is limited and you must pre-register. One of the many myths about the computer industry is that you must be young to enter the field. To the contrary, many highly successful women and men study Computer Science when well past traditional college age. Several innovative programs exist in the Bay Area for older students, with or without a diploma, who wish to study Computer Science.

This year’s Hugo Award nominees have been announced. This page lists them, with links to full-text versions of most of the novellas, novelettes, and short stories. As a bonus, there are several links to lists of other recommended reading.
Update: Fixed a bad link to the story page. Thanks, Phil.

Special Forces master sergeant. Doctor and combat medic. Linguist. And, of course… Georgia Tech graduate. Meet Captain Dan Godbee, USA.

Dennis posted a link to an AP story in which some random yahoo claims that the soldiers accused in the Abu Ghraib torture cases reflect “a broad lack of moral values in the culture at large”. Leaving aside the issue of relativism, what he should be saying is simple: “Our soldiers knew that what they were doing was wrong, but they chose to do it anyway.”
You’d have to be retarded (and I mean that literally) not to pick up on the Geneva Convention instruction given in Army and Marine Corps boot camp. I don’t know about the USAF and Navy, but I assume there’s similar instruction there. Back in ’86, those of us in the tender care of the 1st Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island got a thorough drilling in the Law of Land Warfare, which covers what is and isn’t permissible in actual combat. Guess what? Torture isn’t on the “OK” list. The soldiers implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture cases may not have been schooled in the fine points of Geneva Convention requirements for the care of military prisoners, which are more detailed and quite different than the Law of Land Warfare.
I’m prepared to concede that they weren’t; that they should have been, and that the fact that they were not is an indictment of those given the responsibility of supervising and training the troops who run the prison. However, I’m with Stryker on this one:

Let me say it clearly for anyone who may be morally befuddled by such things as “right” and “wrong”: You don’t follow illegal orders. In fact, you have a moral and professional obligation to refuse an illegal order. That’s what these Nevada soldiers did:
“There was one incident when we were asked to keep detainees awake, to wake them up with metal drums. We said, `Absolutely not.’ I stopped them from doing it,” said Armstrong, a 37-year-old child protective services worker from Las Vegas.
She said no. Read the rest of that article to see how real soldiers conduct themselves.

There is no excuse or justification for what these troops did, and they are a stain on the military. Once the investigation concludes, I expect that those found guilty will be punished. One related question: why are the enlisted troops already being court-martialed, while the officers seem to be skating? They’re not skating, as this post explains clearly. This one also points out that there are several investigations underway, including one to identify how the Taguba report got loose before the senior DoD structure obtained it.