WontonBlog

Burning Chrome and Scything Commentary

Ok, so I was a bit harsh on Burning Chrome to begin with. It gets better. I always feel very drawn to the dystopian settings William Gibson creates, and his short stories always leave me wanting more. He paints such vivid pictures, settings, and situations, then, as has become a staple of the cyber-punk genre, he stops halfway through and leaves you with no denouement. And yet it still works.

I ran across an interesting sight today that really made me think. The site has a counter showing the cost of the war in Iraq thus far. It also lets you break it down by state or city, to see how much your area owes. Most shocking to me, however, was its comparison to how else the money could have been spent. As of the time I’m writing this, the investment in the war on Iraq could have been used to give every child in the world basic immunizations for 39 years, or fully fund global anti-hunger efforts for 4 years. It kind of makes me wonder about the compassion that our president claims to have. Can anyone imagine Bush proposing a plan to immunize children, or feed the starving? I can’t. Instead he spends a ludacris amount of money furthering his own interests in Iraq, an effor that does not save lives, but ends them. Also from the site is a very nice quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” I couldn’t have put it better myself Ike.