![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wireless Wizard and Other Thoughts
Aug. 30th, 2008 02:29 pmI'm downstate at the parent's house. Dad and I went skeet shooting this morning. We broke them all (when they hit the ground). Mom bought a laptop for traveling, and she wanted me to set it up for wireless. So, they now have a (secure) wireless router. Actually, so do I - for the work laptop.
In other news, we watched the movie Charlie Wilson's War last night. It was very entertaining and I recommend it highly. Tom Hanks, who produced it, was clearly having fun The opening scene with him in a hot tub with three naked blondes must have been tough work (not)!
But Charlie Wilson's War is not just yucks. The movie details our intervention in Afghanistan to get the Russians out, then our abandonment of Afghanistan as soon as the Russians were gone. This of course came back to bite us in the ass come 9/11/01. The CIA character played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman had a great little story at the end. It went like this.
A 14-year-old boy in a village was given a horse. All the villagers said that was a good thing, except the Zen Master who said, "we'll see." Two years later, the boy fell off the horse and broke his leg. The villagers said that this was a bad thing, except for the Zen Master who said, "we'll see." A few weeks later, war broke out, and all the men and to go with the army, except the boy, since his leg was still in a cast. The villagers said that this was a good thing.
The Zen Master said, "we'll see."
The moral of course is that it's hard to evaluate whether your actions are good or bad until well after they happen. This is not to say we should do nothing - doing nothing is a decision to let the status quo continue - but a reminder that situations are frequently not as simple as they seem.
In other news, we watched the movie Charlie Wilson's War last night. It was very entertaining and I recommend it highly. Tom Hanks, who produced it, was clearly having fun The opening scene with him in a hot tub with three naked blondes must have been tough work (not)!
But Charlie Wilson's War is not just yucks. The movie details our intervention in Afghanistan to get the Russians out, then our abandonment of Afghanistan as soon as the Russians were gone. This of course came back to bite us in the ass come 9/11/01. The CIA character played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman had a great little story at the end. It went like this.
A 14-year-old boy in a village was given a horse. All the villagers said that was a good thing, except the Zen Master who said, "we'll see." Two years later, the boy fell off the horse and broke his leg. The villagers said that this was a bad thing, except for the Zen Master who said, "we'll see." A few weeks later, war broke out, and all the men and to go with the army, except the boy, since his leg was still in a cast. The villagers said that this was a good thing.
The Zen Master said, "we'll see."
The moral of course is that it's hard to evaluate whether your actions are good or bad until well after they happen. This is not to say we should do nothing - doing nothing is a decision to let the status quo continue - but a reminder that situations are frequently not as simple as they seem.
