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Winding downward - 18 January 2007
Jan. 19th, 2007 02:35 amWrangled CSS today - I think it’s about as close I can get to the real thing without actually having the images and the source templates in front of me. Of course, this means I may have done more than I was supposed to do, but the assignment said to make it look as close to the real thing as possible, and so that’s what I did.
I’ll spend some part of tomorrow doing the work I was assigned today. I spent the rest of the period after class letting off steam. Got aggravated by something silly in class today. Being brushed off by the teacher contributed significantly to it, and so now that I’m away from it, and have taken much of that aggravation and channeled it into making monsters (and Defenders of Earth) pay for crossing a young Overlord. And now, I drown you in links, one of which may be interesting and relevant to you at any given time.
A hurricane swept through Germany today. If it hasn’t already, it’ll arrive in the nearby countries soon. I didn’t think the north Atlantic did hurricane-force winds. Maybe this warming thing does have something to do with it. Unless there’s a good scientifically sound explanation other than that (evil geniuses testing doomsday weather devices is also an acceptable answer, so long as you state your demands clearly and ask your ransom in even amounts of millions or billions.
In Iraq-related news, this sequence of three gives a pretty good idea of what’s coming down the pipe: 400 fighters with alleged ties to al-Sadr were detained by the Iraqi security forces , which in turn produces al-Sadr's Mahdi Army lowering their profile significantly in anticipation of a big crackdown, from which, when paired with other data, draws out a correct conclusion: trying to take down the Mahdi Army by knocking over the front gate is risky. So there will be other plans put in place to see whether or not al-Sadr can have all his appendages picked off, and then with no help, he could be taken down/out/captured. It sounds like the field commanders have their heads on straight, even if the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t seem to grasp things.
The ease at which I can make three Iraq articles but only one of many other types is apparently because Iraq was covered in one out of every three news stories last week. That’s print news, television news, on-line news, and cable news. Almost everything else competed to try and find the number two spot. Definitely a single mentality in the news populace. I wonder if they count talking heads like Rush, Bill, John Stewart, and the like as news persons, too.
Domestically, a town in Maine has banned smoking while driving if there are children present in the vehicle. Which makes a certain amount of sense - developing bodies should not be needlessly exposed to things that are proven to adversely affect their health. While it may feel like the town is doing more of substance than the Congress, especially when reading about a nonbinding resolution introduced for Senators to express disapproval of the troop surge, but that’s not entirely true. I keep hearing that loan rates will be cut in half, and more money restored for loans. Which is nice, but more grant money would be better for most of us who are on loans. P! suggests, however, that as a country, we should stop thinking we're "great" and start working on making it to "good". I noticed a lot more this year than others how many people were playing up Dr. King’s Vietnam speech rather than the more traditional “I Have A Dream”. Obviously, with the conflict around, I can point to that. I have no frame of reference for previous years. For those in the know and that have paid attention to this, has King-as-war-protester been much more popular over the last ten years or so? (I’d say five, but that still keeps us in the post-September 11 era, which would skew results.)
From Flickr, I got linked to a very colorful picture of the Tokyo nightscape. At first glance, it looks like someone was having a lot of fun in Photoshop, changing the hues and the colors... and then I remember that it’s Tokyo, and so there’s no need to doctor the photo at all.
In another way that we’re resembling the Japanese, land line telephone usage is dropping in favor of cell phones. Apparently, this could skew survey results, as they tend to call people with landlines rather than cell phones. Well, considering the populace is, on average, aging, there’s a possibility of skew there, too, but with the widespread adoption of cellular phones by young (and older, too), that could really mess with your Gallup results.
The RIAA has taken their black-and-white interpretation of the world to another segment of the music population - mixtape creators, the predecessors to (and possibly still the biggest creators of) mashup makers. DJ Drama, who has created mixtapes for prominent hip-hop artists, was arrested and charged with racketeering and music piracy. His equipment and tapes were seized. This is after some of his creations have had endorsements from the artists mixed as track one.
Working my way through a ten-part series on the eliminationalist bent in the American people, or why so many people would enthusiastically applaud requiring Muslims to carry special identifiers, in a manner reminiscent of Europe for several hundred years, most notably Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s very interesting reading, and gives a good perspective on just how deep the “Us versus Them” mentality runs in our country, and even in the people who immigrated to this country.
Possibly tangentially related to the previous paragraph, I’m getting a bit more of a sense as to why things like anti-“preference” legislation pass as easily as they have - a Virginia state senator offended some by saying that African-Americans "should get over" slavery, as well as inquiring whether Jews should apologize for the slaying of Jesus. It, plus a lot of the letters to the editor that I’ve been seeing about the implementation of our own newly-minted constitutional amendment, tells me that there are a lot more people who see very little merit in affirmative action or other programs designed to try and provide as level a playing field as possible. Personally, I’m not confident that we’re ready to step into the preference-free age, but direct democracy has spoken. Now it’s up to the courts to sort out what it actually means.
My last piece is a puzzle for you, friendslist - this is the "simple" definition of Intelligent Design given by Phillip Johnson. For a simple definition, it seems like there’s some extraneous material there. So why not take your best swing at tightening up the definition and making it clearer? (The conclusion gotten by the blogger, compresses well into something like “ID != Evolution”. If you can do better, or smaller, go for it!)
Anyway, I’m going to sleep. I shouldn’t be staying up this late - it does bad things to my patterns, I’m sure.
I’ll spend some part of tomorrow doing the work I was assigned today. I spent the rest of the period after class letting off steam. Got aggravated by something silly in class today. Being brushed off by the teacher contributed significantly to it, and so now that I’m away from it, and have taken much of that aggravation and channeled it into making monsters (and Defenders of Earth) pay for crossing a young Overlord. And now, I drown you in links, one of which may be interesting and relevant to you at any given time.
A hurricane swept through Germany today. If it hasn’t already, it’ll arrive in the nearby countries soon. I didn’t think the north Atlantic did hurricane-force winds. Maybe this warming thing does have something to do with it. Unless there’s a good scientifically sound explanation other than that (evil geniuses testing doomsday weather devices is also an acceptable answer, so long as you state your demands clearly and ask your ransom in even amounts of millions or billions.
In Iraq-related news, this sequence of three gives a pretty good idea of what’s coming down the pipe: 400 fighters with alleged ties to al-Sadr were detained by the Iraqi security forces , which in turn produces al-Sadr's Mahdi Army lowering their profile significantly in anticipation of a big crackdown, from which, when paired with other data, draws out a correct conclusion: trying to take down the Mahdi Army by knocking over the front gate is risky. So there will be other plans put in place to see whether or not al-Sadr can have all his appendages picked off, and then with no help, he could be taken down/out/captured. It sounds like the field commanders have their heads on straight, even if the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t seem to grasp things.
The ease at which I can make three Iraq articles but only one of many other types is apparently because Iraq was covered in one out of every three news stories last week. That’s print news, television news, on-line news, and cable news. Almost everything else competed to try and find the number two spot. Definitely a single mentality in the news populace. I wonder if they count talking heads like Rush, Bill, John Stewart, and the like as news persons, too.
Domestically, a town in Maine has banned smoking while driving if there are children present in the vehicle. Which makes a certain amount of sense - developing bodies should not be needlessly exposed to things that are proven to adversely affect their health. While it may feel like the town is doing more of substance than the Congress, especially when reading about a nonbinding resolution introduced for Senators to express disapproval of the troop surge, but that’s not entirely true. I keep hearing that loan rates will be cut in half, and more money restored for loans. Which is nice, but more grant money would be better for most of us who are on loans. P! suggests, however, that as a country, we should stop thinking we're "great" and start working on making it to "good". I noticed a lot more this year than others how many people were playing up Dr. King’s Vietnam speech rather than the more traditional “I Have A Dream”. Obviously, with the conflict around, I can point to that. I have no frame of reference for previous years. For those in the know and that have paid attention to this, has King-as-war-protester been much more popular over the last ten years or so? (I’d say five, but that still keeps us in the post-September 11 era, which would skew results.)
From Flickr, I got linked to a very colorful picture of the Tokyo nightscape. At first glance, it looks like someone was having a lot of fun in Photoshop, changing the hues and the colors... and then I remember that it’s Tokyo, and so there’s no need to doctor the photo at all.
In another way that we’re resembling the Japanese, land line telephone usage is dropping in favor of cell phones. Apparently, this could skew survey results, as they tend to call people with landlines rather than cell phones. Well, considering the populace is, on average, aging, there’s a possibility of skew there, too, but with the widespread adoption of cellular phones by young (and older, too), that could really mess with your Gallup results.
The RIAA has taken their black-and-white interpretation of the world to another segment of the music population - mixtape creators, the predecessors to (and possibly still the biggest creators of) mashup makers. DJ Drama, who has created mixtapes for prominent hip-hop artists, was arrested and charged with racketeering and music piracy. His equipment and tapes were seized. This is after some of his creations have had endorsements from the artists mixed as track one.
Working my way through a ten-part series on the eliminationalist bent in the American people, or why so many people would enthusiastically applaud requiring Muslims to carry special identifiers, in a manner reminiscent of Europe for several hundred years, most notably Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s very interesting reading, and gives a good perspective on just how deep the “Us versus Them” mentality runs in our country, and even in the people who immigrated to this country.
Possibly tangentially related to the previous paragraph, I’m getting a bit more of a sense as to why things like anti-“preference” legislation pass as easily as they have - a Virginia state senator offended some by saying that African-Americans "should get over" slavery, as well as inquiring whether Jews should apologize for the slaying of Jesus. It, plus a lot of the letters to the editor that I’ve been seeing about the implementation of our own newly-minted constitutional amendment, tells me that there are a lot more people who see very little merit in affirmative action or other programs designed to try and provide as level a playing field as possible. Personally, I’m not confident that we’re ready to step into the preference-free age, but direct democracy has spoken. Now it’s up to the courts to sort out what it actually means.
My last piece is a puzzle for you, friendslist - this is the "simple" definition of Intelligent Design given by Phillip Johnson. For a simple definition, it seems like there’s some extraneous material there. So why not take your best swing at tightening up the definition and making it clearer? (The conclusion gotten by the blogger, compresses well into something like “ID != Evolution”. If you can do better, or smaller, go for it!)
Anyway, I’m going to sleep. I shouldn’t be staying up this late - it does bad things to my patterns, I’m sure.
