And we are go for the break! - 22 February 2007

So at 7pm (slightly before, actually), my Spring Break began. Officially, it’s not until Saturday, of course, but I’ve now got more than a week of time to finish up what outstanding assignments I have, and then to do some relaxation. Possibly also some job-searching. In any case, for a little bit, and while the snow is melting, it’s not really spring yet, I’m off the hook for a bit. I picked up Bone from where I had left off over the summer, and then finished it out (Yay for one-volume omnibuses. Although I wonder just how long the binding on that will actually hold). Good story, that. It seems to follow a pattern, though - the first few chapters of the book are comedic and involve mishaps. Then, the tone steadily darkens, and at about midway, there’s a nosedive into the serious part, and that’s ridden out all the way to the end. An anime like Trigun does the same thing. I wonder why this happens - obviously, the serious is going to happen, but why the lightness beforehand? Is it to get us acquainted with the characters and their motivations before the disaster/war/whatever drops on them? Or is there some other reason for it? Anyway, now that I have finished it and V for Vendetta, I’ve only got two books left from my buying spree. It’s R.O.D., though, so it’ll be good reading.

Anyway, I’ve jabbered enough - onward with the links.

greyweirdo got passed a link purporting to be a list of what scares men enough that they won't talk about it. There’s some standard “Not Manly Enough!” fare on there, like baldness, not being attractive, not being perfect for the kids, not having dad around anymore, and the like. There’s also very silly stuff, like Tofurkey. greyweirdo took the list items to task, pointing out the silliness and stupidity of some, and dismissing the others as things that will have to be dealt with. Are you a Bad Enough d00d to be secure in your manhood? (And no, we’re not just talking about the scrotum here.)

Japan's trying to make their SDF cute? Well, the logos and images put abroad of the SDF are going chibi-style in an attempt to get people to think of the SDF as cute and harmless, two things that a military unit, even as a defence force, are anything but. That said, the cute seems to be working some. Maybe the U.S. needs to enlist some of these artists to help with their own image problem.

Weirdness in the domestic educational system - standardized test scores are not improving, but students are posting higher GPAs and taking higher-level courses. There’s a lot of possibilities there, which include grade inflation, metrics that aren’t relevant, or the curriculum being taught is at sub-basic levels for students. Could be something else, too. Anyone with relevant experience want to hazard an opinion? (Or anyone else, I suppose.)

Do Libras Live Longer? Welll, that depends on the data you’re looking at, and what kind of pattern you’re trying to extract out of it. With the right material and models, anything can be proven right. At least, that was the aim of this particular study, not to find out any meaningful correlation between astrological sign and longevity (or anything else).

Domestic politics have begun spinning the wheels of war. Dick Cheney blasted the Democratic opposition to war funding, calling it "validating the al-Qaida strategy". The Vice President seems to have a bit of a fascination in trying to equate anyone who disagrees with him as a terrorist or as supporting terror. Thing is, the statistics on terrorism arrests did not fare well after an audit, with only two of twenty-six sets containing accurate data. The auditor said this was an incompetence rather than malice case, so hopefully there will be correct numbers from here on out. And those numbers are probably lower than most people think.

The President’s budget is soon to be coming down the pipe, and while there’s a big ruckus about funding for military personnel, there are some other things in there that would make eyeballs pop, like repealing estate taxes as well as cutting out programs designed to help the poor, elderly, and struggling pay for heating oil and groceries. According to the article writer, though, we’re too bust obsessing over Spears’s shorn sheep look than on the raising of spending while cutting out helpful programs that the budget does. Shows where our priorities are, I guess.

On the other side of the divide, Senator Obama was asked to denounce comments made by the founder of Dreamworks about Senator Clinton. Senator Obama wondered why he was being asked to apologize for someone else’s remarks. I don’t think we’re going to see another frenzy over this like there was over the Edwards bloggers, though, since it’s inter-sect fighting, rather than launching outward. In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi analyzes Obama's chameleon-like abilities and talent for hitting the middle of everything, and pegs Obama as the perfect mirror for the society that could elect him. There’s a lot of ink and bits describing the Senator in this sort of manner, as somehow being able to blend in with whatever background he’s put up against. I’m not totally sure this is a positive or negative thing, myself. Those more versed in politics, perhaps you can help shed light on why this designation is sticking and what it could mean for the Senator’s campaign.

Not that it’s particularly hard to do, and he’s a fairly deserving target, but Light and Life linked to an about.com page that makes fun of Pat Robertson’s statements. And thus, The ten most stupid things Pat Robertson ever said, with a few bonus quotes thrown in for good measure. Going from religion to politics in making fun of people, Jay Dyckman pokes fun at all the questions surrounding a Democratic candidates ethnic purity by asking Is Chris Dodd White Enough?

There was a giant flap at the university when either the College Republicans or the Young Americans for freedom held a “catch the illegal immigrant” contest on the campus, where finding the hiding immigrant netted you a prize. One would have hoped that it spread out just a tad to other places, but, NYU's College Republicans are giving this type of event a go themselves. At least one poster to the Facebook page where the event was publicized, justified the political incorrectness of the event and thanked the people who took offense for creating attention and controversy for them. This same poster accused those who took offense as attempting to stifle an idea they fear, and mentioned that the College Republicans involved really didn’t care what other people’s opinions were about the matter. I suspect that they’re right in some senses - they can be politically incorrect, and they don’t have to care about anyone’s opinions but their own. I don’t think that a stunt such as that will be particularly effective in doing anything other than making noise and drawing disgust and scorn, but hey, that’s their right.

Estonia will be holding the first parliamentary national election where citizens vote over the Internet. There are security protocols in place, like the need to physically swipe an ID card and enter a pair of passwords, but the results from those stations will be transmitted over the Internet. Rather interesting. Hopefully they get a paper trail, in case the counts should be garbled, lost, or corrupted.

Big, possibly world record-breaking squid caught. We’re starting to see a lot of really big things coming up long enough to get caught. Have we managed to locate R’yleh or Atlantis somehow, and are now pulling up some of the residents?

Several members of Blackwater, a mercenary force or private security company, depending on how you look at them, have formed a private intelligence-gathering company. Having an intelligence company working for Blackwater could turn into a mechanism that instigates conflicts through the intelligence it provides, then offers security contracts to the affected parties for its own profit. It remains to be seen whether the intelligence gathered by the new corporation will have effects on public policy or decisions. They could just be doing it to get a better eye on the people that Blackwater or other private militaries are being hired to fight.

Cornet Harry of the royal family will be deployed to Iraq, where he will serve in front-line duty. He’ll get firsthand experience what war is like. This reminds me of some other campgains, like those to get the children of warhawks into the military, or to sign up those same hawks for service themselves. Nothing like seeing it happen to help shape your opinion of whether war should be waged, and how it should be done.

Wading into murky territory, namely anything involving reproduction, reproductive rights and opinions, and stuff that some parents don’t want kids knowing about, researchers in Europe report that a fertility-checking measure, the symptothermal method, can be used as a contraceptive method if performed properly. I’m not entirely sure what this entails, and the article is vague, only mentioning measuring temperature and secretions. Is there more to it than this? If it really can be used as a contraceptive technique, then I highly expect the pro-life community to start promoting the hell out of it as an alternative to things they disapprove of. That probably won’t happen, but it would solve the complaints some pro-lifers have about contraceptives when they classify them as aboritfacents. And it might assuage some of the heat they’ll feel finding out that the proposed abortion ban in South Dakota was quashed 8-1 in committee. But even with good practice of the technique, sometimes things don’t go well. This may have been linked elsewhere in time, or it may be different than the one previously linked, but the story of an Ohio woman and her boyfriend who, after their condom failed, were refused Plan B (a post-intercourse contraceptive) at their local Wal-Mart because of the beliefs of the pharmacist and a law that permits that pharmacist to refuse to fill that kind of order, would still happen. That story has been picked up as the poster child for a campaign of e-letter writing to H. Lee Scott, Jr., the president and CEO of Wal-Mart, requesting that all Wal-Mart stores have the capacity to dispense Plan B as a matter of corporate policy. If this is a campaign you, dear readers, would like to join in on, Pro Choice Action has a web form that you can customize your e-letter with.

Staying in murky places, the RIAA released a list of the 25 universities that received the most warnings from administrators to students about music piracy. On this list as well, my undergraduate alma mater and current school are. I think it’s still going in the wrong direction, but that’s just me. Plus, the universities are probably only able to warn those people on their own networks, so there may be a lot more going on for those students not on the university’s bandwidth.

Michael Medved responds to Tim Hardaway’s comments in his own way, claiming that while the comments were wrong, where Tim Hardaway was right is just as interesting - there is apparently a widespread discomfort with athletes, soliders, or others having to share intimate quarters with those who are known homosexuals. Medved equates this discomfort with the same kind of discomfort that men would have with having to share locker rooms or showers with ugly women, or the discomfort that women have sharing locker rooms with men, because in each of these situations, there’s the possibility that someone might be checking you out while you’re in a semi-nude or totally nude state, someone whom you wouldn’t have a reciprocal attraction to. That possible erotic context is apparently so strongly distracting that it shouldn’t appear at all in any of the “team”-type environments, lest it distract from the required teamwork. What I’d like to know is what kind of teamwork bonds are being forged if the possibility that one of the other team members might be homosexual is that disruptive of an influence.

What we leave with, however, shows that with everything going on, politicians do occasionally take time out to make sure they hear their constituencies and give them good responses. The evidence here is a petition reply from 10 Downing Street asking the Government to recognize Jedi as a religion. The Government, quite wisely, replied that they had no role in regulation or recognition of religions or beliefs, and that there was no impediment to practicing those beliefs so long as they were within the law. It concludes, “May the Force be with you.” This is a properly-thought out response to the question, treating it with appropriate seriousness and invoking the generally-accepted Western idea that religion and government should be separated. I’d love to see a memo like that come out of Congress or the President’s office. Instead, we have far too many people clamoring that we should adopt Christianity as our sole and official religion and begin enforcing that morality on the people. These same people tend to then accuse Islamic states of repressing their people with hateful religious beliefs, and that they should separate their religion and their government. The speck-plank problem arises anew. Anyway, kudos to the official that responded to this request. Ya got it just right.

Anyway, bed now. Work tomorrow - if I’m lucky, I might be able to knock out all of my assignments due when I get back from the break, and thus be able to relax.