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Mostly because I don’t really want to be reminded of Red Day. If, by chance, I should happen to receive anything for it, I will be appreciative, but since I haven’t really made much for overtures toward anyone, I don’t expect to receive anything. Which may make for hilarity if I should happen to receive lots. But, anyway, I’m keeping my head down, for the most part, going to class and lab, doing my work, and then refereeing tomorrow night. I will likely escape unscathed, although that’s a rather pessimistic way of looking at it. Might be good, though, for the the anti-V-Day crowd, which businesses are trying to tap into so they can get both the fuzzies and the furies. There’s also another Rails assignment coming down the pipe - now that I can make one model dance, I have to make many models dance and know the relationships between them all, so they all dance together! Ha-ha-ha-ha. It’s probably more like those seating chart puzzles.
The Velvet Revolution has a strong anti-war position. And some people with art and layout talent. Check out the material they've produced as ad campaigns. Have you seen any of these kinds of posters around you?
In matters of Iraq and Iran, first, here's the 16-page briefing that occurred yesterday, purporting to link Iran's government with supplying high-power explosive material to Iraqi insurgents. Today, though, the chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff did not endorse the supposition that Iran's government is supplying Iraq with high-power explosives. Which certainly makes the skeptic feel like they’re in a good position. An opinion in The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, says that Iran wants to drive the U.S. out so that it can take control of the region and institute a Shi'ite government. In response to that kind of thought, Sunni Arab states are ramping up their defense spending and buying lots of military objects. Possibly fueling this fear is a report to the EU that says Iran will have nuclear weapons, despite current sanctions and actions. Additionally, Iraq plans on closing its borders with Syria and Iran. For all the bluster, posturing, and speculation going on, the Weekly Standard reports that Iran's still not afraid of a U.S. attack.
In domestic politics, the Black Agenda Report opines that Senator Obama is a chameleon that presents to the American populace what they want to see, even if the people looking at him don’t see eye to eye with each other. Obama also recently came under fire from the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, who said if Obama and the Democrats win in 2008, it'll be the best gift al-Qaeda in Iraq ever got. This is what happens when you declare early - you get looked at by flatterers and people who think you’re the worst thing the country needs. We can expect more mudslinging as time goes on.
On the Republican end, Mitt Romney declared his intention to be president of the United States. So did Rudy Guliani. The primaries this time around could end up being very interesting, tough, competitive battles. We’ll see whether the candidates elected will carry the excitement over into the big campaign.
In the latest in I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s trial, several journalists suggested that the Bush Administration was more than willing to leak Plame's name, as Libby insisted that he was not responsible for the leak.
With continual pressure from media interests and others cracking down on file sharing, some users are turning to private, encrypted, peer-to-peer sharing. Looks more like a VPN is being set up with that software, and everyone on the network can browse what’s set to be shared. IF the networks are flexible, the content amounts are good, and it really is untraceable, then connecting into small networks may be the way of the future. I just have to say that it sounds an awful lot like the idea, if not the protocols, behind IRC file sharing.
We worry with birds about H5N1 avian flu. Well, beekeepers may have found something similar. A mystery ailment is killing entire hives of honeybees. Even stranger is that other bees, pests, or predators appear not to be in a hurry to take over or wreck the hives - which suggests that even the predators know something screwy’s going on. That’s not a good sign.
For human health, though, some advice coming our of Harvard’s School of Public Health - go take an afternoon nap. It reduces your heart disease risk, apparently. Although, if you fire ze missiles soon after, then any stress-busting benefits may be nixed. Insecure relationships may put strain on the immune system, just like other stresses. This particular insecurity is not causally related to weakened immune systems, but it’s in line with the research that says stress kills.
Taking a page straight out of Red Alert 2 (although the Russians have not developed the mind-controlled giant octopuses, as far as I know), the U.S. Navy is looking to train dolphins and sea lions for base defense. The mammals would be employed as spotters and trained to drop a beacon near the person they spotted.
In the same sort of idea, with gaming things being used for real-world purposes, we have an example of the Wiimote’s Bluetooth ability, along with its motion-sensing ability, being used to drive a USB-capable vibrating device. (Probably considered not safe for work, even though there are no demonstrations of the capability of the device, only links to the Python program to run it with.) It apparently requires a bit of a kernel patch for those running Linux.
A warm story of love, probably hand-selected because of the mushy day tomorrow, tells of a man who had total amnesia, but came back and fell in love with the person he loved before. They’re now married, even as he tries to remember who he was. On something more anti-V-Day, a woman in England is claiming she developed an asbestos-related cancer because her father worked with asbestos, and she liked to give him hugs. Her father died from an asbestos-related cancer as well.
With snow and wind blasting the north of the country in a very, very, frigid way, dumping snow and other assorted precipitaions on us all, two teenagers decided it would be nice to have a day off from school and changed the school's webpage to say so. The matter was found out when the principal went to post a delay. The two teens were caught because the identifications they had used to access the website were tied to them. Got to hand it to the students for using what was at hand. Hopefully, the school will now realize that it probably shouldn’t be letting everyone have root or root-like access to things like the webpage. The students have been charged with criminal offenses, and will probably be convicted of them.
All told, that’s a relatively minor thing. A bigger snafu is the Justice Department's Inspector General taking the FBI to task over having more than 300 laptops lost or stolen, some with sensitive or classified data, as well as more than 350 weapons lost or stolen. That’s a big problem.
Whew. That’s a lot of material. You look like you could use a drink. How about some tap water? Five United Kingdom advertising agencies give their tips on how they'd market the water from the faucet over the bottled variety. There. Refreshed? Good. It’s time to bring it on toward the end for tonight.
And coasting gently... okay, dropping like a sixteen-ton weight, to the end, we get more stories from the places where religion and politics mix, sometimes violently. Kansas is taking up the issue of evolution and creationism in science standards. We can hope that science prevails in some sort of permanent matter this time. It’s really silly to have this happening time in and time out. Not to mention that students in Kansas are probably getting stiffed of a good science education, when one time around, they get evolution, the other, evolution and ID. In Tennessee, one of the state lawmakers wants to require aborted babies be issued a death certificate. Even though they haven’t gotten to the point where they would be issued a birth certificate. That would have to confuse a lot of people in the office of vital records - all these deaths with no births attached. Of course, a simple solution would be to say that life (and thus, the “birth” certificate) began at conception, which is probably what the state senator is shooting for in the first place. Oh, yes, and in some states, those who vehemently fight against abortions are receiving public funds to do so. Mind you, this is in theory going to counseling and services to women, but the track record for accuracy of information isn’t always good from those opposing abortion, according to the article, and some of those groups simply don’t refer women who come to them to any clinic that performs an abortion. There’s an argument to be said that state monies funding abortions is not necessarily the way to go, either, but the article says that Planned Parenthood doesn’t use tax money on abortions, but on services to women like examinations and cancer screenings, and making contraception available at low or no cost. In both cases, opponents accuse the other side of pushing toward one way or another. Of course, if birth control were universally available at low cost, and there was an effective nationwide sex education program that taught protection, rather than “NO SEX! SEX BAD!”, and may have a slight afterthought of “well, if you’re going to do it, here’s a couple tips on what to use.”, we’d probably have a lower abortion rate. At least, that’s my guess. Why not try it and see?
And, having just been assaulted with a pink-hearts banner from LiveJournal, I’m going to bed. Mostly to see if I can cleanse it out of my mind. With fire. And possibly explosions.
The Velvet Revolution has a strong anti-war position. And some people with art and layout talent. Check out the material they've produced as ad campaigns. Have you seen any of these kinds of posters around you?
In matters of Iraq and Iran, first, here's the 16-page briefing that occurred yesterday, purporting to link Iran's government with supplying high-power explosive material to Iraqi insurgents. Today, though, the chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff did not endorse the supposition that Iran's government is supplying Iraq with high-power explosives. Which certainly makes the skeptic feel like they’re in a good position. An opinion in The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, says that Iran wants to drive the U.S. out so that it can take control of the region and institute a Shi'ite government. In response to that kind of thought, Sunni Arab states are ramping up their defense spending and buying lots of military objects. Possibly fueling this fear is a report to the EU that says Iran will have nuclear weapons, despite current sanctions and actions. Additionally, Iraq plans on closing its borders with Syria and Iran. For all the bluster, posturing, and speculation going on, the Weekly Standard reports that Iran's still not afraid of a U.S. attack.
In domestic politics, the Black Agenda Report opines that Senator Obama is a chameleon that presents to the American populace what they want to see, even if the people looking at him don’t see eye to eye with each other. Obama also recently came under fire from the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, who said if Obama and the Democrats win in 2008, it'll be the best gift al-Qaeda in Iraq ever got. This is what happens when you declare early - you get looked at by flatterers and people who think you’re the worst thing the country needs. We can expect more mudslinging as time goes on.
On the Republican end, Mitt Romney declared his intention to be president of the United States. So did Rudy Guliani. The primaries this time around could end up being very interesting, tough, competitive battles. We’ll see whether the candidates elected will carry the excitement over into the big campaign.
In the latest in I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s trial, several journalists suggested that the Bush Administration was more than willing to leak Plame's name, as Libby insisted that he was not responsible for the leak.
With continual pressure from media interests and others cracking down on file sharing, some users are turning to private, encrypted, peer-to-peer sharing. Looks more like a VPN is being set up with that software, and everyone on the network can browse what’s set to be shared. IF the networks are flexible, the content amounts are good, and it really is untraceable, then connecting into small networks may be the way of the future. I just have to say that it sounds an awful lot like the idea, if not the protocols, behind IRC file sharing.
We worry with birds about H5N1 avian flu. Well, beekeepers may have found something similar. A mystery ailment is killing entire hives of honeybees. Even stranger is that other bees, pests, or predators appear not to be in a hurry to take over or wreck the hives - which suggests that even the predators know something screwy’s going on. That’s not a good sign.
For human health, though, some advice coming our of Harvard’s School of Public Health - go take an afternoon nap. It reduces your heart disease risk, apparently. Although, if you fire ze missiles soon after, then any stress-busting benefits may be nixed. Insecure relationships may put strain on the immune system, just like other stresses. This particular insecurity is not causally related to weakened immune systems, but it’s in line with the research that says stress kills.
Taking a page straight out of Red Alert 2 (although the Russians have not developed the mind-controlled giant octopuses, as far as I know), the U.S. Navy is looking to train dolphins and sea lions for base defense. The mammals would be employed as spotters and trained to drop a beacon near the person they spotted.
In the same sort of idea, with gaming things being used for real-world purposes, we have an example of the Wiimote’s Bluetooth ability, along with its motion-sensing ability, being used to drive a USB-capable vibrating device. (Probably considered not safe for work, even though there are no demonstrations of the capability of the device, only links to the Python program to run it with.) It apparently requires a bit of a kernel patch for those running Linux.
A warm story of love, probably hand-selected because of the mushy day tomorrow, tells of a man who had total amnesia, but came back and fell in love with the person he loved before. They’re now married, even as he tries to remember who he was. On something more anti-V-Day, a woman in England is claiming she developed an asbestos-related cancer because her father worked with asbestos, and she liked to give him hugs. Her father died from an asbestos-related cancer as well.
With snow and wind blasting the north of the country in a very, very, frigid way, dumping snow and other assorted precipitaions on us all, two teenagers decided it would be nice to have a day off from school and changed the school's webpage to say so. The matter was found out when the principal went to post a delay. The two teens were caught because the identifications they had used to access the website were tied to them. Got to hand it to the students for using what was at hand. Hopefully, the school will now realize that it probably shouldn’t be letting everyone have root or root-like access to things like the webpage. The students have been charged with criminal offenses, and will probably be convicted of them.
All told, that’s a relatively minor thing. A bigger snafu is the Justice Department's Inspector General taking the FBI to task over having more than 300 laptops lost or stolen, some with sensitive or classified data, as well as more than 350 weapons lost or stolen. That’s a big problem.
Whew. That’s a lot of material. You look like you could use a drink. How about some tap water? Five United Kingdom advertising agencies give their tips on how they'd market the water from the faucet over the bottled variety. There. Refreshed? Good. It’s time to bring it on toward the end for tonight.
And coasting gently... okay, dropping like a sixteen-ton weight, to the end, we get more stories from the places where religion and politics mix, sometimes violently. Kansas is taking up the issue of evolution and creationism in science standards. We can hope that science prevails in some sort of permanent matter this time. It’s really silly to have this happening time in and time out. Not to mention that students in Kansas are probably getting stiffed of a good science education, when one time around, they get evolution, the other, evolution and ID. In Tennessee, one of the state lawmakers wants to require aborted babies be issued a death certificate. Even though they haven’t gotten to the point where they would be issued a birth certificate. That would have to confuse a lot of people in the office of vital records - all these deaths with no births attached. Of course, a simple solution would be to say that life (and thus, the “birth” certificate) began at conception, which is probably what the state senator is shooting for in the first place. Oh, yes, and in some states, those who vehemently fight against abortions are receiving public funds to do so. Mind you, this is in theory going to counseling and services to women, but the track record for accuracy of information isn’t always good from those opposing abortion, according to the article, and some of those groups simply don’t refer women who come to them to any clinic that performs an abortion. There’s an argument to be said that state monies funding abortions is not necessarily the way to go, either, but the article says that Planned Parenthood doesn’t use tax money on abortions, but on services to women like examinations and cancer screenings, and making contraception available at low or no cost. In both cases, opponents accuse the other side of pushing toward one way or another. Of course, if birth control were universally available at low cost, and there was an effective nationwide sex education program that taught protection, rather than “NO SEX! SEX BAD!”, and may have a slight afterthought of “well, if you’re going to do it, here’s a couple tips on what to use.”, we’d probably have a lower abortion rate. At least, that’s my guess. Why not try it and see?
And, having just been assaulted with a pink-hearts banner from LiveJournal, I’m going to bed. Mostly to see if I can cleanse it out of my mind. With fire. And possibly explosions.
