Humboldt Park Ride

Yesterday, I rode down through Logan Square, past Palmer Square and south to Humboldt Park. I mapped my route in a custom Google Map. I saw quite a few public murals which I plan to document in a return trip this afternoon.

This trip took me through the following community areas:
West Ridge (2) - The North Shore Channel Path is in West Ridge from Hood to Bryn Mawr.
Lincoln Square (4) - The North Shore Channel Path is in Lincoln Square from Bryn Mawr to Lawrence.
Albany Park (14)
Irving Park (16)
Avondale (21) - I got confused where Kedzie meets the Kennedy and went west by mistake.
Logan Square (22) - I stopped a woman on the street at Wrightwood and asked her for directions. Luckily, I wasn't too far off and I just went back east on Wrightwood for a couple blocks and ended up right at the Logan Square pillar.
Humboldt Park (23) - I'm including the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the list because I rode through Humboldt Park (the park itself). However, it appears that Humboldt Park isn't officially in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. It's in West Town. Technically, I only rode along the eastern border of the neighborhood. I'll have to come back and revisit Humbolt Park proper.
West Town (24), including Paseo Boricua, a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood
North Center (5)

Andreis Scheinkman has used Google Maps to reproduce the entire Chicago Bike Map. It loads somewhat slowly on my computer, but if you're patient, it's a great resource.

Trees

On a recent bike excursion, I found a little triangle of a park in Rogers Park dedicated to Joyce Kilmer, author of the poem "Trees". Here is the text of this beautiful poem, according to Wikipedia:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

I hope to create a blog post on that entire excursion through Rogers Park soon.

Other recent excursions include:

A trip straight down Clarendon/Halsted from Lawrence (4800 N) to Armitage (2000 N)

A trip straight down Ashland from Lawrence (4800 N) to I-55 (3100 S)

A trip along the Lakefront path from Argyle down to Grant Park, then to Ping Tom Park, then along Archer through Bridgeport to Halsted, south on Halsted to the Union Stockyards (4100 S), a quick stop at the Canaryville Branch of the Chicago Public Library, south on Wallace/Union to 51st St., east on 51st to Princeton, then a ride back north on Princeton through gang-invested Fuller Park and Armour Square (such a sad situation there), through the safety of IIT to 31st St and east on 31st back to the lakefront path and from there back north.

On Torture

It worked. So says intelligence director Dennis Blair, according to a NY Times article. Yeah? So what? A lot of things work. If you want to get rid of someone, murder works. If you need money, robbery works. If you need information, torture works. Sometimes. It's still illegal and immoral.

Read Dr. Phillip Butler's opinion at Military.com. Dr. Butler is a combat veteran who spent 8 years as a POW in Vietnam. He writes:

Resorting to torture or stressful coercion of prisoners only makes us out to be the biggest liars in history. We profess to be the most democratic and humane country in the world. But this current national "debate" and our recently exposed actions in Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries where we have resorted to illegal rendition of prisoners only tells the world that we are deceitful, dishonest, inhumane and immoral.

How is it possible that Ari Fleischer, Michael Mukasey and Joe Liberman aren't vehemently opposed to torture techniques such as waterboarding and sleep deprevation? There's only one thing to say:

Here's a synopsis of what I've gathered from media sources so far:

1. In the years following the Sept 11 attacks, the US military engaged in waterboarding and other tactics which are generally considered torture.
2. It was initially believed that these were unauthorized, rogue actions and not sanctioned by the Bush administration.
3. Memos were recently declassified that clearly show that the Bush administration approved of the torture activities. The memos were authored by John Yoo and David Addington and submitted by the OLC Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee.

The question now is how to handle those who were involved. There are two, possibly three, categories into which these people fall:

1. The military personnel who directly carried out the torture
2. The lawyers in the Office of Legal Council (Bybee, Yoo, Addington, possibly others) who gave advice to the US Attorney General which indicated that the torture activities were legal.

The third category about which I'm not hearing much is the group of leaders who read the legal advice and gave the orders to go forward with the torture based on the advice.

In any case, I think the lawyers certainly need to be held responsible for the bad advice that they gave. That's what these lawyers are paid for - to give counsel on what is legal and what isn't. When they make a blatant mistake on a critical issue such as torture, they need to be held accountable for that error. When the advice concerns such an important issue, the counselors need to be especially diligent and prudent in their understanding of the issue and in their legal research. When they failed at that, they were negligent. The only question is the extent of their liability. I'm not a lawyer myself, so I don't know if there was any criminal action on their part, or whether it was a breach of professional conduct. In either case they should also be held accountable and liable for their actions and advice.

As for the military personnel who carried out the torturous activities, I don't see why they also shouldn't be held responsible for their actions to some extent. Although they themselves may not have had the legal knowledge to know whether the torture was permissable, "I was only following orders" is never ever a defense to a war crime. These soldiers should have realized that what they were doing was questionable and questioned it. If we find that they did question it and that they faced punishment unless they carried out the orders, I would be lenient. But if they just mindlessly went forward with sleep deprivation and waterboarding of the suspected terrorists, that's a different story. They should be prosecuted like other war criminals based on their actions and the situation. Rep. Jan Schakowsky spoke out about this as well.

Read this Newsweek article from back in 2004 in which memos are revealed that indicate that the Bush administration was more interested in saving their own skin than whether the treatment of the prisoners was humane and moral. Reading that article made me sick.

Free Software Development Tools - Adobe, Microsoft, Java

Adobe
Adobe is providing two of its RIA (rich internet application) development tools, Flex and ColdFusion, free to students, teachers and unemployed people. You can request the free software at: https://freeriatools.adobe.com/. Students and teachers must provide a scanned copy of their student or faculty ID.

Microsoft
Also, Microsoft provides "express" editions of its software and database development tools, Visual Studio and SQL Server, free to anyone at: http://www.microsoft.com/Express/

Igor Stavnitser tells me that students can also get complete versions of
- Visual Studio Pro 05 and 08
- SQL Server 2008
- Windows Server 2008
for free @ https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

Tip of the hat to Steve Cohn for the link to the Technet evaluation center at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/default.aspx

Java
There are many free Java development tools. My group's tool of choice is Eclipse, which can be downloaded from: http://www.eclipse.%20org/downloads/

All of these programming languages/environments are in relatively high demand - emphasis on "relatively".

Not being able to afford expensive software development tools is no longer a reason for not upgrading or modernizing one's programming skills.

Project Management
For a review of some free project management tools, see the review at 3point7designs.com.

Chicago Community Areas

Now that the weather is turning nicer, I have a few Chicago travel goals that I would like to achieve this year:

1. Visit each of the 77 Chicago community areas (officially-defined neighborhoods) via bicycle, preferrably in no more than 4 trips. I would like to document my trips with at least one photo from each community area.
2. Visit each branch of the Chicago Public Library, perhaps in conjunction with #1 above.
3. Cross each bridge over the Chicago River - north, south and main branches - either by foot or on bike.