Free Matthew Corwin

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Wrongfully accused, wrongfully imprisoned, and held for days without even being charged, Matthew Corwin is now a sad testimony to a climate of fear.

In this post-9/11 era, and especially after the recent tragedies at Virginia Tech, it is perhaps natural for people to be afraid. Fear can be a good thing. It keeps us alive and unhurt, prompting us to use another ATM machine, for example, when a group of thugs hangs around your first choice after dark, casting furtive glances at you as you walk by. But fear can consume you, too, and it can grow into a monster. If you were frightened by a young black man in baggy pants outside your ATM machine, would it be right for you to attack – or arrest – a black student on his way to class in the middle of the day? What if he were wearing baggy pants? Can you justify doing that to someone, just because you were frightened by the way they looked? What if this young man, who turns out to be the class president and had committed no crime, were arrested by the police? Would you be angry? Would you feel a sense of injustice? If you wouldn’t, you need to have a long talk with yourself.

Yet this is exactly what was done to Matthew Corwin. President of the Associated Student Body at East L. A. College, military veteran, and part-time MP in the US Army Reserve, Matthew was arrested last week on suspicion of having illegal weapons. You see, in addition to his other interests, Matthew is also a gun-rights advocate. That’s right, he has guns. He likes guns. He has lots of friends who like guns, and they go target shooting together on weekends. He is no brooding loner or psychopath. He is just different enough to get noticed. And get noticed he did, when he posted pictures of himself and his friends holding their guns on myspace.

Liking guns is not a crime. Having guns is not a crime. Wearing baggy pants is not a crime. It’s true, there are some guns that we, as ordinary citizens, are not allowed to have. But Matthew knows these laws. He knows what is and is not legal, and he and his friends work hard to stay within the law. What they do not do is hide. They are not “in the closet” about their hobby. With them, what you see is what you get.

Last Thursday night, Matthew paid for that honesty, that openness, with his freedom. He didn’t hurt anybody. He didn’t threaten anybody. He just frightened somebody by being himself.

And now he is in jail. His bond is set at $365,000, so he will not be leaving any time soon. Adding insult to injury, he is prohibited from going within 100 yards of his school’s campus, if he manages to get out of jail, or from contacting anyone there. How will he pass his classes and finish the term? Who will do his duties as student body president? Was he a threat to anyone, the next Virginia Tech shooter? Of course not. Ask any of his numerous friends, and they will tell you he was not.

Don’t let this fear grow into a monster. Free Matthew Corwin.

Video from FOX 11
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I also love how they show the pictures of him in uniform with an M-16 as if that is bad or something. What’s with that?

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Spiderman 3

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How do you juggle this many characters and keep the story coherent must have been the chief concern for this movie. I found that they had a difficult a strained job doing so but I enjoyed the complexity immensely.

Spiderman is one of my favorite superheroes due to his character development. In the third installment of Spiderman Tobey Maguire doesn’t let you down with showing you different sides of our hero. While I found the transition to Emo hair for dark Spiderman funny … the rest of Maguires performance was great.

In addition while others have difficulty with the complexity of villains, I found it refreshing. Having characters that do bad things for good reasons is always a great twist on villains.

I also found the constant theme of forgiveness to be a great way to show depth of character among hero and villain. The ability to forgive is one of the characteristics that often separate the hero from the anti-hero. It helped to further define Spiderman as a true hero.

Spiderman 3 was well worth the price of watching it in the theaters.

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Packets

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“Through wind, rain, sleet or snow,” is the mail person’s mantra. That image has always brought to my mind a mail person trudging through the snow to deliver the daily mail. During the time that I lived in Colorado, I had the chance to see mail people actually reenact that scene from my mind for me. I still fondly remember the Christmas Eve that I saw the mail carriers delivering packages in the snow to ensure people received their Christmas gifts.

Every day people send and receive information; letters and packages by traditional methods and over the Internet. Not all people are familiar with the basic concept how this is done over the Internet. The traditional method is a common occurrence that most people are familiar with. It begins when someone puts together a letter or package. After putting the package together, a person puts sending and receiving addresses on it. The package is then dropped into a mail receptacle or post office and the package begins its journey to the receiver. In the mail system the package is routed through different levels of mail offices and finally goes to a local mail carrier. That local mail carrier then takes the package to the person on the address.

If you understand how the mail system works, then you are not far off from understanding the basic concept of how the Internet works. Even some of the terminology is very similar. Much like packages travel through the mail system, packets of information travel through the Internet. In addition, an individual’s Internet address is called an Internet Protocol Address, oftentimes shortened to IP. The Microsoft Tech Net site further defines IP as it tells us:

IP is a connectionless, unreliable datagram protocol primarily responsible for addressing and routing packets between hosts … Unreliable means that delivery is not guaranteed. IP always makes a “best effort” attempt to deliver a packet. (Microsoft Tech Net)

As we can see, IP makes a best effort for delivery, much like the mail person does as they leave a note saying you were not home for delivery. The similarities do not stop with this example. As packets of information leave a computer, they are marked with that computers IP and the destination’s IP. The packet then travels to an Internet service provider and then routes the packet to your destinations computer through a series of networks. The receiving system is identified by its IP. This is very similar to how a packet is sent through a series of offices to arrive at its destination.

An IP is the address system of the Internet but people don’t type in an IP when the are looking for a site. People type in a name like www.google.com for reaching a site. On the Internet, many IP addresses are bound to a name for ease of use. This is done through a process called Domain Name Service, or DNS. DNS allows a person to type in the name as opposed to having to remember an IP like 216.239.39.99 for Google. I often think of this process as having a telephone speed dial for phone numbers. On my phone all my friends have speed dial numbers assigned to them. So instead of remembering a ten digit number, I just remember the speed dial. DNS is just the speed dial that the Internet uses for everyone.

No matter if you are sending mail or e-mail, information has to travel. It is only logical that in the building of the Internet, the same basic concepts that have been used for years were borrowed from the mail and telephone system. While people may claim they know nothing of how the Internet works, deep down they really do.

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Fences

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I remember when I was I kid in foster care. The memories seem gray and brown to me now. I lived in some pretty rough places, with some pretty rough people. Life was tough, fast and hard. In the places I lived, a person had to grow up quick. They had to learn many important lessons young and quickly.

Whenever I went somewhere with my foster brothers, trouble followed. I remember many times getting chased, just coming back from the movies with them. We’d be walking along and some guys from one of my foster brothers rival crews would come after us or something. If there weren’t too many of them, we would stand and fight. In a fight, I could handle a little more than my own. More often that not, there were too many and we would run.

Every kid knows how to run. Every kid on the street learns how to run a different way. It’s a way a person runs when they know that if they get caught, there may be no tomorrow. When you run like that, one of the best ways to get away is by jumping fences. A normal person jumping a fence is slow and clumsy. When a person knows how to jump a fence it becomes smooth and graceful. Like a rabbit gliding away from it’s pursuer over and under the obstacles in the way.

I was twenty-two and newly married. My church asked me to be the scoutmaster of their small troop on my first Sunday there. I guess they heard that I wanted to make other kids lives better than my own. I just hadn’t known it would be so hard. I’m not saying that I expected it to be easy. I wasn’t expecting a bunch of teenage boys to be angels. I just expected a connection for a way to help to teach them the lessons I had to learn the hard way.

I don’t know what they thought of me. I wasn’t old enough to respect and fear like their fathers. I wasn’t young enough to be a friend. I was Brother Darr, the new scoutmaster. The guy who was a young adult, yet already feeling slower. I didn’t know how I related to them, so how would they know how to relate to me? My first evening as Scoutmaster I had to give two boys a ride home.

They had to crowd in my Ford Escort that I had named, “Fred”. Fred was a plain car I had got for one hundred dollars. It was dented and held together in some spots with duct tape. The back seat was tight for Tyler and Paul, but they squeezed in. On my way to their homes I passed by a train track that had chain link fences on either side and homes one hundred feet beyond the tracks.

Crack! A rock slammed into the side of my car. I looked over and saw half a dozen boys standing near the farthest fence bordering the homes. I don’t remember thinking, I just started acting. My foot went to the break and slammed down hard. My hand instinctively grabbed the e-break handle and pulled. Fred came to a squealing stop amid a flood of smoke from burnt rubber. I jumped out leaving the door open and the car sitting in the street. I was wearing boots and a scout uniform but I ran with a speed that I hadn’t needed to use in a long while. With a few steps and a jump I flew over the first fence in my way.

I bellowed out with rage, “I’m going to kill you kids!”

This all happened in mere moments, the boys hadn’t even had a chance to react. As I looked at them I saw a deer in the headlight look of abject fear. They turned and ran for their lives. I heard several land flat on their backs, as they jumped the fence of the house behind them. The boys fled with the fear and awkwardness of tamed animals, loose and running from a predator for the first time. I let the prey go.

I glided back over the fence and began to return to my car. Tyler and Paul looked at me with a look in their eyes I hadn’t seen before. It was a look of wonder and respect. In the crazy act they had seen something in me they didn’t know before. I was no longer Brother Darr. I was The Brother Darr. They had seen a fierceness and knowledge in me borne of one who has had to grow up hard. They knew they could trust and learn from me. I had found my place. This story was told repeatedly to the other boys of the Scout troop and became a turning point in my relationship with them.

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