Broadband

There are airplanes falling out of the sky in Miami and a patent has been denied in Canada for the gene system of an engineered species of mouse. The Israelis are acting on the West Bank, intervening in one of the camps, it is an Islamic Ali Abu Aloof is quoted as saying the people in the camp are boiling mad. The Israelis say they are justified and had destroyed the home of a known terrorist, though he wasn’t present at the time. Aiman Shazneer was the target, a Palestinian who was responsible for the destruction of an IDF tank earlier this year. In a separate report, Ethiopia is said to be lurching toward another crisis, in which the world must intervene. With the exception of the airplane crash near the Federal Reserve and the Headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command, and the mouse, of course, it is the same news I could have written on any day this year. They say humans have a lot in common with the engineered mice, and the rest of the morning’s news seemed to bear that! out.

The news lurched back to this continent. Roone Arledge, the architect of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” died at 71. Monday Night Football is still the longest-running prime time show. Along with auto stylist Harley Earl, Arledge could be said to be one of those guys who changed fundamentally the way the rest of us perceive the world.

Then we lurched overseas again. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleisher says they have solid evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, even if the weapons inspectors can find none. That is a no-brainer, since they gassed the Kurds years ago, but it sounds a little defensive. Meanwhile, over to the east in India, controversy is flaring over the forced conversion of low-caste Hindus- Dalats, or the former Untouchables- to Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. The story comes from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where there is a new law against the practise. Sounds bad on the face of it, vaguely colonial, since Mahatma Ghandi decreed the end of the caste system. In practical terms, however, it is still there and conversion provides a convenient means for the untouchables to opt out of a social system which keeps a foot on the necks of the lower orders. So there is an incentive for the missionaries to gain converts and an incentive for the Dalats and a constant source of o! utrage for those of higher caste who view the act as a crime against the very essence of Hindu society. Ten organizers were arrested for defying the news law. So the commentary is that once more India is on the brink of losing their secular society. That is an annual event, and I put no particular credence in it.

There are more developments there that connect the People of the Book, the three major faiths that share the lineage of Abraham, squabbling relatives.

It is also the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the Iodia Mosque by Hindu militants. Ten years ago the Muslims retaliating with a bomb in Bombay, or Mumbai, they are calling it now. Although Iodia is reported quiet, there is the usual nattering about  It is the festival of Ead al Fitr for Islam, the end of Ramadan, when everyone buys new clothes to celebrate the end of the holy month. It celebrates self-determination, and understand injustice, and for the faithful to feel the pain of others. They try to begin Ead fresh and new, and make a donation to the less fortunate after the rigors of the fasting. The poor and needy are made to feel part of the community. All are brought together. This sense of community is the great strength of the Faith. Ashmal Nashgur, a spokesman for the Islamic Alliance of Britain, links the various offenses against the greater Muslim community on the radio. He connected the bombing in Afghanistan, the actions of the Israelis, the whole ! war on terror, the inspections and embargo against Iraq as part of a single campaign. Nashgur was well spoken, his tone sounded moderate, and his words sounded like a simple declaration of faith. He says he is going to have a somber Ead this year. I ended the piece agreeing with him, though perhaps not in the way he intended. Listening to his words, I became convinced that despite the pious pronouncements of the Administration, this is indeed a collision of cultures, East against West.

It has been an interesting week. I was a prisoner in the building yesterday. The warm moist breeze from the Gulf swept north and collided with dense cold Canadian air to the west and blanketed the southeast with ice and six inches of snow. This is no big deal to jurisdictions which are prepared for winter, but this is not one of them. I stood on the balcony and watched the intrepid motorists plowing their way down Route 50, checked the web site of the Office of Personnel Management, and discovered that the decision had been made at 0449 to allow “unscheduled leave” and that only “emergency employees” had to arrive on time at the Federal Government. I am no fool and have commuted for a long time in this town. If Uncle Sugar gives you a break from driving on ice with the Virginians, you take it in a New York second. The schools were closed everywhere except the District, and I had a suspicion that they would close as soon as a grown-up took a look out the window. They are alwa! ys a little slow on the uptake in the District.

I drank coffee and watched the creeping traffic down on the major artery. I had things to do, gifts to wrap and boxes to organize, laundry to do. I did none of it, of course. Instead I played with my new high-speed cable modem, surfing like lightning across the World Wide Web. I am delivered once more to the miracle of Broadband communications. I lost my high-speed Digital Switching Link (DSL) link when I changed apartments seven weeks ago. The nice people at Verizon permitted me to keep the same phone number, a convenient dispensation for one of the dozens of little details involved in moving. But the DSL component which rides on the phone line (and allows you to talk on the phone while you are on-line) stayed hard-wired to the old Apartment. My service provider was Earthlink. I have been battling with them in a telephonic reenactment of the old Cheech and Chong sketch:

“It’s Dave, let me in. I got the stuff.” Stoned pause.

“Dave’s not here.”

“No, I’m Dave” Pause.

“Dave’s not here.”

The essence of the problem was that they couldn’t perform a change of service because the system told them that the service was good on my phone number. It just wasn’t in the right place. I called them five times, each time being assured that the problem was fixed, it would just be another 48 hours. This went on for five weeks, and finally the problem got out of Earthlink and over to Verizon. Where the phone company said the institutional equivalent of “Dave’s not here.” Same deal. Order rejected. The service is already on.

I was in agony, struggling with a clunky dial-up connection, able to access the ‘net at only 28.8 bits-per-second, web pages loading so slowly that I could go and pour a cup of coffee in time to come back and find that the system had crashed and I had to log-on all over again. I lost pages of deathless prose to the monster of dial-up and missed dozens of telemarketing calls. I was near the end of my rope. The cable company called one evening just after “an unexpected network error has occurred” flashed across my screen, followed shortly thereafter by the Blue Screen of Death.

I asked them if they could install a cable modem connected to my television and they said they could, and have it running the next day, before the snow came. I jumped on the opportunity like a big dog and a nice young man from Brazil stopped by the next day at the appointed hour and hooked me up. At near T-1 speed. My little box was cooking, and I happily took three calls from credit card companies while I checked my e-mail.

I had attended a Holiday party on Wednesday night. It was a Navy party, held in honor of an old friend who is President of the Navy League of Cannes, France. Avery has been the stalwart supporter of the Fleet for all the years she has practiced law in France. She is sweet and caring and knows everyone who has come and gone with the aircraft carrier groups. The host of the party is a military aide at the White House and the party had that sort of energy to it. Young people, talented and good looking. Excellent food and wine. Everyone was looking up at the sky to see when the snow was going to start coming down and Virginia was going to go into the Ice Age. It was a marvelous time. One of the last people I talked to was an Air Force pilot whose parents had emigrated from Tamil Nadu. It is a small and connected world these days, much smaller since I got my broadband access back.

According to the attorneys for the genetic manufacturing company up in Canada, the new and smaller family includes the mice. I checked the OPM home page this morning at lightning speed. It claims the Federal Government is open this morning. I think I have to go to work.

Copyright 2002 Vic Socotra