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Did a whole lot of nothing today. Reading tomorrow, possibly a little bit more of nothing - I’ll probably look over my material for Tuesday/Wednesday, too, just to make sure it all works. And then we’ll be continuing to crush puny things with the might of the Overlord.
Anyway, bring forth the links. I start with a reminder that what you see is what I’m presenting to you. Those of you brave enough to challenge the front will find treasures in your own views and in making the picture three-dimensional. Thus, looking at a picture from another angle can be quite revealing.
Some interesting data for people wondering whether, when, and how the government may be monitoring their networks. Cryptome purports to have obtained a list of IP addresses routinely used by the United States government to monitor networks. This is under the auspices of Terrorist Surveillance, according to the article, and that many people who have registered those blocks are unaware that they’re being used for this purpose. I can’t really decode how they would go about doing that kind of thing. IP-address spoofing, maybe?
The new guy in charge of American forces in Iraq says we've got to work together if we want to do anything good. Novel thought, that - working together, rather than maintaining the image that America can do anything it wants to, whenever it wants to, with no need for help.
Domestically, of course, ears are being tuned to the political airwaves, several months out from actual elections, and so we learn that Hilary said that she would have voted against trrops, had she known what was going to happen. Hindsight is 20/20. I don’t know how much could have been predicted in advance, but this comes off to many as a measure of Cover-your-arse as a presidential candidate. The Guardian, on the other hand, attempts to analyze why Barack Obama is gathering the kind of support he is. The conclusion they reach, from what I gather, is that Obama is popular because he’s a black candidate that is not a black candidate. There’s no obvious connections to the struggles of the 1960s and earlier, but he’s got connections to multicultural experiences. I think the Guardian may be hitting the nail on the head when they say that Obama is a candidate that whites can be okay with their whiteness around. Whether this means he’s actually going to be elected remains to be seen - experience tells me that voters can appear to be supporting (or opposing) one thing and then have a reversal in the ballot box. Most of this is speculation, anyway. Those that are registered for their primaries, of course, may want to to take notice of the slate of candidates, and go select the one that is best for the country. (Not, not, not the one that is most likely to win.)
In a town in Shanxi province, and this is considered extreme even by the official censor’s standards, clandestine Internet cafes exist, unable to operate openly because of an official ban on them for being a bad influence on minors. Worried about pr0n, dissident voices, many hours spent on WoW, and the sanitary conditions, all considered detrimental to minors, the cafes were banned. And like most things, when banned, they sprung up again, just in a way designed not to attract the attention of the authorities.
Hmm... this is an interesting, interesting thought, and suggests even more that Second Life will be defined by what we make of it, rather than any set plan - a strong agoraphobic is using Second Life and a true-to-life avatar to help get over his fear. It’s mediated through the computer, but it’s him, and other real people, and the interactions they have are real as well. This looks like it could be a very interesting way of getting agoraphobics able to get out, or at least interact with other people. With the way the Linden dollar is set up, too, someone with mad Second Life skillz could potentially make a living and get over their fears. Working in the same sort of department, although for different reasons and disorders, Virtual reality Iraq may soon be used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers returning from combat. From safe environments to those that strongly resemble what actually goes on over there, the virtual world is supposed to help the real-world problems come out, get discussed, and get therapy.
In Canada, an organization of exotic dancers are raising thousands of dollars to help breast cancer. However, because of where it’s coming from, the Breast Cancer Society of Canada has refused to take their donation. Not to be deterred, the dancers are looking for another organization to take their money, but I don’t think that the Cancer Society made the right decision on this one. Legitimately-obtained money donated should probably be welcomed with open arms, regardless of source. If the KKK wants to fund cancer research, people may ask about their motivations, but so long as there aren’t conditions, then the results could be spread to anybody, and everybody would benefit. (Or am I oversimplifying here? Is there some subtlety I’m not getting?)
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab is closing. For 28 years, they’ve been studying things like ESP, telekinetics, and other sixth-sense materials. With dwindling funding and aging equipment, those in the lab decided to call it a career. I’m not sure whether it’s a matter of a lab trying to really test these things and having their results and procedures basically ignored, or a rogue lab that was subsisting on private donations to do quackery. As the matter is, the materials and equipment will be going into storage, perhaps to come out again when there’s funding.
Rather than one tragic death, Attytood and others have decided that the real young woman to be covering in the news is Jennifer Parcell, the 3,115th person to die in the still-undeclared Iraq war. different forms of tragic death, but the famous one is more important to the mainstream media than the soldier, or so we’re supposed to believe. One death is a tragedy. 3,115 and counting? A statistic, nothing more.
Vanity Fair suggests that we may have found something as close to the Illuminati as we can get: a corporation called SAIC, which provides manpower for a significant part of government operations that require bright and skilled people. It’s a revolving-door sort of place that aggressively hunts for contracts from the government, is responsible for things like programs to feed disinformation or broadcast American propaganda to Iraq, and has a lot of influence, no-bid contracts, and knows its way around billing higher amounts than needed.
Going from the dark bowels of governmental work to policemen now in other professions, a former law-enforcement official is hawking a DVD that claims to teach people how to not get busted for marijuana. Some of those suggestions may be useful for running other drugs, of course, but that’s not what the former cop is about - he wants the police not to buy into the War on Some Drugs, and for people to talk about what is and isn’t working regarding weed. Those on the side of legalization, though, think he’s more about a fast buck than anything. But they’re not going to be silly - if he’s got good things for them to learn, they’ll learn them, and then go back to trying to get the laws changed, and declaring the War on Some Drugs to have been lost for a very long time now, so Congress should pull its head out of the sand.
Weird stuff in Los Angeles - hospital vans possibly leaving patients out in the street on Skid Row and then driving away? Details are sketchy from the article, but the gist of it seems to be that homeless patients from a particular hospital are being dumped out on the street and left to fend for themselves. The article mentions that there are some treatment facilities on Skid Row, but the allegations involved here appear to be abandonment more than transfer. Anyone have more details on what’s going on down there? I’m definitely confused.
Barbara Ehrenreich takes aim at material awaiting us in the self-help aisles. Banding together to have us not really care or get too annoyed at our workplace, Fake Your Way To the Top kind of books tell us to think positively. All the time, even when we’re not positive. Be cheery and sunny and always happy and you’ll be just fine, citizen. (“Oh, yes, Great Computer, we are quite happy!”) Ehrenreich will have none of it, comparing that attitude to the one instilled into the slaves, with the constant smiles, and the meetings where no negative comments are allowed, as a required sign of submission, rather than an indicator of mood or one’s actual thoughts. The alternative? Seek ye out the complainers and figure out what their beef is. If you can keep the people happy by actually addressing their complaints and figuring out why they’re complaining, rather than enforcing artificial happiness codes, you’ll probably achieve real results in workplace morale, rather than good reviews because of a sword of Damocles.
If you’ve gotten this far, you deserve a cute break. The Buenos Aires zoo had triplet white tiger cubs out today, with their parents. They’re adorable, and seeing three of them born hopefully means that conservation efforts for the species are working.
If you want to end on a cute and fuzzy note, you’re free to go. What we hold in reserve for the lauded or loathed last spot tonight is a couple of opinions about sex and its consequences. An editorial published in Central Connecticut State University’s paper, The Recorder, about the joys an benefits of rape (image from elsewhere, extracted, as source material is not likely to be found anywhere on the Recorder’s site, for obvious reasons once you read it.) raised a bit more than eyebrows. From what is claimed and may be visible in the reading, is a satirical, silly attitude toward sex and sexuality that happened to choose a bad topic to lampoon. It may just be me, but for the most part, I don’t think people are going to consider forced sex to be a subject they can joke about, not without other people reaching for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Okay, could be a poor choice of subject. But then, you read some of the other opinions published - like a lament about how fathers are given no choice on whether the woman carrying their baby decides to abort, and his call for a requirement that both parents consent to the procedure, or a doctor signs off that it is medically necessary, because “A woman’s claim that ”it’s her body“ ends when another’s grows within it.”, and you wonder just how much this particular guy is playing in the rape article and how much of it could be serious. I’m not sure myself, and I wonder what decision-making models he used to come up with the conclusion that this was an acceptable thing to joke about.
So on that disturbing sort of note, the material has passed by again, and we are going to our beds.
Anyway, bring forth the links. I start with a reminder that what you see is what I’m presenting to you. Those of you brave enough to challenge the front will find treasures in your own views and in making the picture three-dimensional. Thus, looking at a picture from another angle can be quite revealing.
Some interesting data for people wondering whether, when, and how the government may be monitoring their networks. Cryptome purports to have obtained a list of IP addresses routinely used by the United States government to monitor networks. This is under the auspices of Terrorist Surveillance, according to the article, and that many people who have registered those blocks are unaware that they’re being used for this purpose. I can’t really decode how they would go about doing that kind of thing. IP-address spoofing, maybe?
The new guy in charge of American forces in Iraq says we've got to work together if we want to do anything good. Novel thought, that - working together, rather than maintaining the image that America can do anything it wants to, whenever it wants to, with no need for help.
Domestically, of course, ears are being tuned to the political airwaves, several months out from actual elections, and so we learn that Hilary said that she would have voted against trrops, had she known what was going to happen. Hindsight is 20/20. I don’t know how much could have been predicted in advance, but this comes off to many as a measure of Cover-your-arse as a presidential candidate. The Guardian, on the other hand, attempts to analyze why Barack Obama is gathering the kind of support he is. The conclusion they reach, from what I gather, is that Obama is popular because he’s a black candidate that is not a black candidate. There’s no obvious connections to the struggles of the 1960s and earlier, but he’s got connections to multicultural experiences. I think the Guardian may be hitting the nail on the head when they say that Obama is a candidate that whites can be okay with their whiteness around. Whether this means he’s actually going to be elected remains to be seen - experience tells me that voters can appear to be supporting (or opposing) one thing and then have a reversal in the ballot box. Most of this is speculation, anyway. Those that are registered for their primaries, of course, may want to to take notice of the slate of candidates, and go select the one that is best for the country. (Not, not, not the one that is most likely to win.)
In a town in Shanxi province, and this is considered extreme even by the official censor’s standards, clandestine Internet cafes exist, unable to operate openly because of an official ban on them for being a bad influence on minors. Worried about pr0n, dissident voices, many hours spent on WoW, and the sanitary conditions, all considered detrimental to minors, the cafes were banned. And like most things, when banned, they sprung up again, just in a way designed not to attract the attention of the authorities.
Hmm... this is an interesting, interesting thought, and suggests even more that Second Life will be defined by what we make of it, rather than any set plan - a strong agoraphobic is using Second Life and a true-to-life avatar to help get over his fear. It’s mediated through the computer, but it’s him, and other real people, and the interactions they have are real as well. This looks like it could be a very interesting way of getting agoraphobics able to get out, or at least interact with other people. With the way the Linden dollar is set up, too, someone with mad Second Life skillz could potentially make a living and get over their fears. Working in the same sort of department, although for different reasons and disorders, Virtual reality Iraq may soon be used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers returning from combat. From safe environments to those that strongly resemble what actually goes on over there, the virtual world is supposed to help the real-world problems come out, get discussed, and get therapy.
In Canada, an organization of exotic dancers are raising thousands of dollars to help breast cancer. However, because of where it’s coming from, the Breast Cancer Society of Canada has refused to take their donation. Not to be deterred, the dancers are looking for another organization to take their money, but I don’t think that the Cancer Society made the right decision on this one. Legitimately-obtained money donated should probably be welcomed with open arms, regardless of source. If the KKK wants to fund cancer research, people may ask about their motivations, but so long as there aren’t conditions, then the results could be spread to anybody, and everybody would benefit. (Or am I oversimplifying here? Is there some subtlety I’m not getting?)
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab is closing. For 28 years, they’ve been studying things like ESP, telekinetics, and other sixth-sense materials. With dwindling funding and aging equipment, those in the lab decided to call it a career. I’m not sure whether it’s a matter of a lab trying to really test these things and having their results and procedures basically ignored, or a rogue lab that was subsisting on private donations to do quackery. As the matter is, the materials and equipment will be going into storage, perhaps to come out again when there’s funding.
Rather than one tragic death, Attytood and others have decided that the real young woman to be covering in the news is Jennifer Parcell, the 3,115th person to die in the still-undeclared Iraq war. different forms of tragic death, but the famous one is more important to the mainstream media than the soldier, or so we’re supposed to believe. One death is a tragedy. 3,115 and counting? A statistic, nothing more.
Vanity Fair suggests that we may have found something as close to the Illuminati as we can get: a corporation called SAIC, which provides manpower for a significant part of government operations that require bright and skilled people. It’s a revolving-door sort of place that aggressively hunts for contracts from the government, is responsible for things like programs to feed disinformation or broadcast American propaganda to Iraq, and has a lot of influence, no-bid contracts, and knows its way around billing higher amounts than needed.
Going from the dark bowels of governmental work to policemen now in other professions, a former law-enforcement official is hawking a DVD that claims to teach people how to not get busted for marijuana. Some of those suggestions may be useful for running other drugs, of course, but that’s not what the former cop is about - he wants the police not to buy into the War on Some Drugs, and for people to talk about what is and isn’t working regarding weed. Those on the side of legalization, though, think he’s more about a fast buck than anything. But they’re not going to be silly - if he’s got good things for them to learn, they’ll learn them, and then go back to trying to get the laws changed, and declaring the War on Some Drugs to have been lost for a very long time now, so Congress should pull its head out of the sand.
Weird stuff in Los Angeles - hospital vans possibly leaving patients out in the street on Skid Row and then driving away? Details are sketchy from the article, but the gist of it seems to be that homeless patients from a particular hospital are being dumped out on the street and left to fend for themselves. The article mentions that there are some treatment facilities on Skid Row, but the allegations involved here appear to be abandonment more than transfer. Anyone have more details on what’s going on down there? I’m definitely confused.
Barbara Ehrenreich takes aim at material awaiting us in the self-help aisles. Banding together to have us not really care or get too annoyed at our workplace, Fake Your Way To the Top kind of books tell us to think positively. All the time, even when we’re not positive. Be cheery and sunny and always happy and you’ll be just fine, citizen. (“Oh, yes, Great Computer, we are quite happy!”) Ehrenreich will have none of it, comparing that attitude to the one instilled into the slaves, with the constant smiles, and the meetings where no negative comments are allowed, as a required sign of submission, rather than an indicator of mood or one’s actual thoughts. The alternative? Seek ye out the complainers and figure out what their beef is. If you can keep the people happy by actually addressing their complaints and figuring out why they’re complaining, rather than enforcing artificial happiness codes, you’ll probably achieve real results in workplace morale, rather than good reviews because of a sword of Damocles.
If you’ve gotten this far, you deserve a cute break. The Buenos Aires zoo had triplet white tiger cubs out today, with their parents. They’re adorable, and seeing three of them born hopefully means that conservation efforts for the species are working.
If you want to end on a cute and fuzzy note, you’re free to go. What we hold in reserve for the lauded or loathed last spot tonight is a couple of opinions about sex and its consequences. An editorial published in Central Connecticut State University’s paper, The Recorder, about the joys an benefits of rape (image from elsewhere, extracted, as source material is not likely to be found anywhere on the Recorder’s site, for obvious reasons once you read it.) raised a bit more than eyebrows. From what is claimed and may be visible in the reading, is a satirical, silly attitude toward sex and sexuality that happened to choose a bad topic to lampoon. It may just be me, but for the most part, I don’t think people are going to consider forced sex to be a subject they can joke about, not without other people reaching for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Okay, could be a poor choice of subject. But then, you read some of the other opinions published - like a lament about how fathers are given no choice on whether the woman carrying their baby decides to abort, and his call for a requirement that both parents consent to the procedure, or a doctor signs off that it is medically necessary, because “A woman’s claim that ”it’s her body“ ends when another’s grows within it.”, and you wonder just how much this particular guy is playing in the rape article and how much of it could be serious. I’m not sure myself, and I wonder what decision-making models he used to come up with the conclusion that this was an acceptable thing to joke about.
So on that disturbing sort of note, the material has passed by again, and we are going to our beds.
