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Sick time fedayeen!
Regarding the flames I've received concerning Mac writer Henry Norr's suspension by the San Francisco Chronicle, allegedly meted out for taking sick leave to cover a day in jail after he was arrested for protesting the war, I'd like to say that I've never heard so much drivel in my life. I'd like to say that, but it probably isn't true, given the length of time I've been drawing breath and all that I have seen.

But really, folks: the hypocrisy over this is astounding, simply astounding. Show me the place of employment where sick leave is never used to excuse an absence of one kind or another that has nothing to do with the state of one's health and I'll show you, uh, what? I don't know what I'll show you, because it's hard to imagine such an institution. (Yeah, I know. Now everyone will email and swear that such things never happen where they work. HAH!) I'll bet you a million freaking dollars it goes on every day at the Chronicle, and in any case, what difference does it make if you take sick leave, personal leave, or a vacation day?! Are the people who emailed me so unspeakably virtuous that they can cast the first stone?

Norr thought everything was hunky-dory with his office and would have taken other leave time if he had known this would happen. The loss of half a month's salary is a substantial hit, under the circumstances. The man was punished because he was arrested in an anti-war demonstration and you know it. How many of you really believe he would have been treated the same for using a sick day to deliver a speech in favor of the war? Gimme a break!

12-inch hot box?
Speaking of flames (oh, I kill me), I sure caught hell earlier this month when I reported people complaining about how hot their new aluminum PowerBooks felt. The Little Al, that is. And yet, I can't say I've read a single review of the little guy that fails to mention this in one way or another. Sometimes the reader comments appended to these articles are even more harsh. There's one over at O'Reilly's that claims you can cook an egg on the bottom of the 12-inch PowerBook and that only Mac users would be so loyal as to overlook what the writer obviously considers a design flaw. The reviewer himself suggests that the manufacturer intended the human body to function as a heat sink in this case, and if I recall correctly, also warns against laying the machine against bare skin.

Since the Little Al came on the scene, I've read explanations including overworked hard drives, battery charging problems, funky DC-in circuit boards, and the G4 processor itself. I've also read that the fan is either noisy as hell or unbelievably quiet. Some say it runs all the time and some say almost never. Some people swear their 12-inchers won't melt butter in the sun on a hot day, and others tell tales of dealers replacing overheated machines. I think everyone is insane or suffers from various neurological issues from watching too much CNN. Since I refuse to watch even a snippet of televsion news, I'm fortunately immune to this condition and hereby volunteer to settle the argument once and for all. Accordingly, I urge everyone harboring the slightest doubt about his or her new 12-inch PowerBook to SEND IT TO ME IMMEDIATELY. That's all you have to do, no waiting, no insurance, no fees. Just gimme the damn things and I'll sort 'em out.

I hope that clears everything up, once and for all. Personally, I'm almost at the point of selling blood to buy one. I'd really like the 17-inch Big Al, but as a desktop replacement. And for that one, blood won't be enough: I'd have to sell your sister, but that's out because I'd have to take a day of sick leave to hit the white slaver markets. There are no sick days on the Internet, of course, so it looks like the iBook and I will be together for a very long time. At least it's cool, in both senses of the word.

Liberate me baby
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I ran across an article in the New York Times that hit me really hard. It's about a guy named Yasser Abdel-Hassan who lives in a slum in Baghdad and opens like this:

"In Baghdad's largest slum, Yasser Abdel-Hassan broods over the life that he wants, then faces the life that he has.

His dream, an obsessive and almost blinding desire, is to become an engineer, like his father. But already 18, he has yet to master a computer. He studies until 11 p.m., but his school in Saddam City promises only dead ends, with broken windows, battered desks, 500 students and 10 computers, still in boxes. His father earns $35 a month, barely enough for food and clothing.

That was before the war."

The old man used to earn over $1,800 a month working in a chemical plant. That's excellent middle-class income for Iraqis, only the slow death of economic sanctions killed the engineer job years ago. And needless to say, Abdel-Hassan doesn't have a school to go to any more.

"Abdel-Hassan said he rarely listens to the news. Instead, he dreams of escape. He longs for a computer, lamenting that Chinese-made desktops that recently arrived at his school were not unpacked before the war began. With unbridled curiosity, he peppers a visitor with questions about mobile phones, DVDs and the Internet, symbols of an elusive modernity in a country that, in many ways, remains trapped in the 1970s.

'We look at computers and don't know how to use them. I'm in my last year of high school and I don't know how to use one. I'd just like to see a computer, just see it,' he said."

It seems to me that no matter what you think about the war, this has to hurt. It sure puts my STUPID WHINY-WEASEL WIMPDIP BOOSHWAH SNIVELING about not being able to afford a new PowerBook in perspective, doesn't it? [I was going to edit that middle section out, but when I saw the Times article I realized I needed to leave it in to make this point!] But it gets worse: Abdel could be a bitter, uneducated twenty-something before he can even make a phone call, assuming he survives, much less get his hands on a computer and learn to be an engineer.

We just destroyed the main telecommunications network in Baghdad, you see, blew it all to hell. Yes, yes, I understand: we want to cut the government's ability to send and receive messages and hasten the breakdown of authority, shorten the war and all. This still seems to me to be an awfully short-sighted move, though, as it surely makes it harder for ordinary citizens to find out what's going on. Maybe it would have been a good thing for anti-Saddam people to be able use the phones or go online, for example. The Iraqi blogger I was reading has been off the air since last Monday, too. No phones, no Internet. (We blew this sucker up in the last war, too. It took the Iraqis hundreds of millions of dollars and years of work to get the phones working again.)

I'm just sitting here trying to understand how these people are going to feel about us when this is all over, and "grateful" is not the first word that comes to mind.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr invites your comments.

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