McVeigh
While Timothy McVeigh was waiting to die, I was reading "So, Say Goodnight to Joshua: Homeland Defense and the Prosecution of Jim Bell" by Deborah Natsios. Here Natsios shows off her knowledge of cartography, geography, and history by connecting the history of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (where I still want to visit, much as my plans to do so have repeatedly failed) with the recent trial of Jim Bell, much watched by Cypherpunks and people who are curious about Cypherpunks. The writing style is interesting and thought-provoking; I can't say that I read the piece objectively, since I'm already familiar with several of the sources cited and have already formed some of my own opinions about them.
Natsios mentioned McVeigh and contrasted McVeigh with Bell. A major difference: Bell has never killed anybody. Instead, says the government, he placed people "in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury".
I have to admit that, when I first saw the link to "So, Say Goodnight to Joshua" on Cryptome, I thought "Why the hell would somebody write an academic paper about Jim Bell's trial? What's the interest?". But it made good reading. I hope to meet John Young and Deborah Natsios eventually.
One of the media articles about McVeigh led me to a site where Federal death row inmates have their own web diaries. One thing I learned there was that there is a Federal death row inmate younger than myself -- a very strange thought indeed. (There is a quotation from Tom Lehrer which is given in many different forms, all of which are along the lines of "It is a sobering thought that, when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for three years". I don't know the original source or the exact text. But it is a sobering thought that, when Christopher Vialva is my age, he will have been under a death sentence for three years.)
