![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So, that part where I thought my sources were going to return with a vengeance? Yeah, it happened today. In addition to the high traffic that I got today (everyone’s posting stuff!) means, the sifters are on and working full-tilt. So we’ll try hard to make it all relevant. And most of it, hopefully, funny or serious, as the mood dictates.
Putting this forward as a possible explanation for why “pink pistols” was the phrase of choice in the O’Reilly accounts mentioned yesterday, the Pink Pistols - an organization that promotes gun ownership and familiarity among homosexuals, for use in personal defense.
Lady Bird Johnson, wife to President Lyndon Johnson, has passed away at 94 years. She outlived her husband for thirty-four years. But most of us are surprised that she died now, considering that she fell out of the spotlight when her husband died, most likely.
All things come around, eventually. Megatokyo, a comic inspired by manga and Japan, is getting the first volume, possibly more, published in Japan by Kodansha. What goes around, comes around, sort of?
I have to say one very important thing about the following article - Laaaaaaaaaate. Al-Qaeda has threatened the United Kingdom because of their knighting of Salman Rushdie, but it’s been a few weeks since the knighting. Someone’s dropped the ball over at al-Qaeda. Yet this doesn’t stop the United States government from claiming there's an al-Qaeda cell in the United States. And it’s probably some justification for the mining of personal data collected on Americans by the government. Data that may not be correct and may or may not be used in trying to calculate whether or not you are a terrorist. (Hint: You are. It just hasn’t been decreed that whatever thing that you do is a terrorist act.)
One still is glad that our own country does not yet have the people in power who would stone a man to death for adultery, as Iran just confirms it has. Or a country that executes the food and drug administrator of the country after he took bribes and let untested medicines through. (Arrest, fine, imprison, even, sure. Kill? Overboard. Even though there were fatalities because of his looking the other way.) Regarding our own Middle Eastern excursions, OpinionJournal offers a much more nuanced and reasoned explanation of why the "surge" is working, one that looks and sounds better than the usual material . Rich Low considers that people in Iraq are expressing support for America to be a sign that the surge is working, and takes the Republican Senators that favor leaving to task. Perhaps he considers the Democrats to be a lost cause already. Or, like David Lindbergh, he thinks that liberals are rooting against the sacred mission in Iraq, doing all they can to undermine the cause of justice, and that the corruption has spread to the Republicans as well.
All of this material is echoing the same thing from the White House - give the surge more time to see how well its working. The more time they get, the more Americans, Iraqis, and others are killed or wounded. The benefits mentioned so far are fairly nebulous. Even if the amount of violence has gone down in one or two places, that’s a far cry from the security the troop surge is supposed to be providing.
Adding his name and office to the growing legion of those claiming they’ve been interfered with by this government, the previous surgeon general, Richard H. Carmona claimed that the Bush Administration muzzled him on several sensitive issues, requiring him not to speak, deleting his information, or otherwise interfering with anything that didn’t follow the administration line, even when it was scientifically incorrect. I wouldn’t be surprised, with the way that the administration has been funding abstinence-only and cutting out programs that promote safe sex.
More mud is slung around, more good names sullied, more links drawn where they may or may not exist, and the presidential candidates receive new abuses at the hands of the world. Douglas MacKinnon would like to know why Rudy Guliani was a named partner in a firm that ran ads for Citgo, the United States arm of the Venezuelan national oil company. MacKinnon considers Mr. Chavez to be the biggest threat in this hemisphere to the United States, painting a picture of a mad dictator who wants arms and nukes and is willing to work with anyone to get them.
The alternative campaigns are heating up - even this early in the stage, it appears Lisa Simpson has declared for the presidency, in addition to Theodric, a 70th level Tauren warrior.
The “Pot, Meet Kettle” department serves up some choice segments for you tonight. First up is Michelle Malkin, who rails against a loack of media coverage when a clearly insane man shot a soldier, and then himself, on 4 July. A single man, mentally ill, shot another man, a soldier, attempting to “make a statement” on a holiday, and then shot and killed himself. A tragedy, to be sure, but Ms. Malkin believes that the media would swarm all over the story, were it to be reversed, and a mentally-ill soldier were to shoot a peace activist. Perhaps so, but I suspect that would be because of a higher probability of more fatalities when the soldier went berserk. And it might depend on whether the soldier’s condition could be traced to something like the combat situation in Iraq. Because the probability of a returning soldier doing something like this and succeeding, on this or on a grander scale, would be higher than the probability of J. Random Mentally-Ill American deciding to do/repeat this tragedy. The media is more likely to report on a plane crashing into a house, killing five than a single person wounding another, “statement” or no. I suspect that all Ms. Malkin gets out of it, though, is, “See! Liberal bias! SEE! It’s right there!”
Enough of that, and onward to our second entry - Ratzinger claims that those who don't recognize his primacy aren't Real Christians. Which probably undoes a significant amount of the work his predecessor did in trying to bring Christian faiths closer together and to talk with each other without calling each other names and/or throwing things at each other. (To be fair, Wojtyla made a similar statement in 2000.) This is, I suppose, a move in character with the cardinal who was in charge of the Inquisition before being promoted to the papacy. One wonders whether Ratzinger will also reinstitute the Latin mass and require the priest to face away from his congregants as well.
Regarding religious matters, a valiant effort, but there’s not enough data attached to this pretty graphic purporting to show how densely religious the United States is, by county. I’m sure that if we looked up the study data that was used to construct this, we’d find holes, errors, and omissions enough to whack this things out of kilter. And no, I don’t expect the whole map to be solid red, despite how it may appear to many.
Bizarro world has firmly entrenched itself in the following case of a lawmaker accused of domestic abuse. His defense intends to establish that he was the victim of emotional abuse from his wife, in addition to her disrespect for his religious beliefs and philosophy of household. From the sounds of things, the marriage and relationship itself is dysfunctional on both sides of the coin. The heads or tails of it coin is still laying firmly on its side.
Sprint has apparently had enough with 1,200 of its celular clients, cutting them loose after they called customer service with too many complaints. Rather than take the complaints, Sprint has decided to turn them loose. I wonder what they were calling about, and whether it was something that actually got fixed by Sprint. It sounds like it was a dedicated complaint of some sort.
An even bigger Bizarro, though, involves a Telemundo host being fired for comparing a trout to a grouper - except that the particular word for grouper can apparently also be used to denigrate a gay man in Cuban Spanish. Which would be about the equivalent of a citizen of England saying they went outdoors to purchase a carton of faggots (cigarettes) and the BBC firing them because of American slang that has faggot mean a gay man. The local gay and lesbian groups applaud the stance on not tolerating homophobic language, but note that she wasn’t exactly using the term in a homophobic manner. Must be careful what we say these days, I guess. The man who tried to get out of jury duty by claiming he was a racist and a homophobe has probably learned that lesson as well. Additionally, the NAACP held a ceremony in Detroit to bury the word "nigger" and all the associations that go with it, so there’s a lot of language-related material here.
The birthplace of communism has been converted to luxury apartments. The march of progress moves ever onward, or something. The hotel/pub that was the meeting site for the Communist convention that tasked Marx with making a final, printed copy of that-which-would-be the Communist Manifesto was boarded up in 2006, and has now been bought and is going to be converted into luxury apartments. The dynamo hooked up to Marx’s grave would probably generate more than a few megawatts of power off of this one. In other bizzare money matters, more than 4 million yen have been found, in 10,000 yen denominations, in mens’ bathrooms. The money is in an envelope, accompanied with a note, but beyond that, little is actually known about who and why this is happening. This is in comparison to someone deciding to play with the 411 scammer by writing back in the same English style as the mail was sent. Which, will likely result in no money changing hands at all, but good laughs to be had.
The Big Bizarro for tonight, however, might be the adult film actress who may have taken her friend's middle and last names as her screen name. The matter was discovered, naturally, when people started calling the person who originally had the names and asking about her adult film career.
Tobacco appears to have a protective effect against Parkinson's disease. Scientists aren’t sompletely sure why yet, but it seems that smoking, and possibly chewing, reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease, and such a risk lowering persists in those who gave up cigarettes some time ago. If they can figure out how its done, they’ll probably concoct a synthetic of sorts and, depending on how safe it is for regular use, might make it part of the pill parade for older Humes. In another health issue that tends to strike at older Humes, a genetically altered herpes simplex virus appears to be an effective colorectal cancer fighter. That’s herpes simplex, the kind that causes cold sores, not the other herpes, the one that’s an STD and to be avoided. Genetic manipulation of viruses seems to be a burgeoning frontier in possible treatments, especially those that require targeted payload delivery.
Global warming is apparently not being caused by solar energy variations, which should have produced a cooling period, rather than the warming currently underway. Even if the root cause does turn out to be natural, why not seize the opportunity to reduce one’s footprint on the world, anyway? And for those places that don’t necessarily have the money to improve their infrastructure to greener ability, provide a nice grant, in the name of future generations, and get it that way, hey? And while we’re at making the world better, Southern Studies claims that for a little bit more in tax for everyone, we could all have single-payer or universal health care. A little less take-home pay, a bit more paid in Value-Added Taxes, and suddenly everyone’s insured. No more worrying about whether or not you’re covered, or whether a particular doctor is “in-network”, or whether your insurance will cover that.
Ursula K. LeGuin was not happy about Slate magazine saying that another author was spending great time and effort to drag genre fiction out of the grave that “writers of serious literature” had dug for it. So she wrote a long drabble about the matter, transforming the statement into a miniature story of its own and demonstrating to her fans why they’re her fans.
For those that have stuck through to the end, congratulations. Ready for something that might set your blood on fire (if it hasn’t already)? Psychology Today offers 10 politically incorrect truths about Hume nature, from the natural tendency to be polygamous, the drive in men to want blonde bombshells, and so forth. All referencing various scientific studies, sometimes directly, often obliquely.
Those that are here for the links may stop now and move on. The rest will be subjected to something silly.
( A Harry Potter House-Sorting Checklist )
Anyway, bedtime, as I’ve probably spent far too long crafting this.
Putting this forward as a possible explanation for why “pink pistols” was the phrase of choice in the O’Reilly accounts mentioned yesterday, the Pink Pistols - an organization that promotes gun ownership and familiarity among homosexuals, for use in personal defense.
Lady Bird Johnson, wife to President Lyndon Johnson, has passed away at 94 years. She outlived her husband for thirty-four years. But most of us are surprised that she died now, considering that she fell out of the spotlight when her husband died, most likely.
All things come around, eventually. Megatokyo, a comic inspired by manga and Japan, is getting the first volume, possibly more, published in Japan by Kodansha. What goes around, comes around, sort of?
I have to say one very important thing about the following article - Laaaaaaaaaate. Al-Qaeda has threatened the United Kingdom because of their knighting of Salman Rushdie, but it’s been a few weeks since the knighting. Someone’s dropped the ball over at al-Qaeda. Yet this doesn’t stop the United States government from claiming there's an al-Qaeda cell in the United States. And it’s probably some justification for the mining of personal data collected on Americans by the government. Data that may not be correct and may or may not be used in trying to calculate whether or not you are a terrorist. (Hint: You are. It just hasn’t been decreed that whatever thing that you do is a terrorist act.)
One still is glad that our own country does not yet have the people in power who would stone a man to death for adultery, as Iran just confirms it has. Or a country that executes the food and drug administrator of the country after he took bribes and let untested medicines through. (Arrest, fine, imprison, even, sure. Kill? Overboard. Even though there were fatalities because of his looking the other way.) Regarding our own Middle Eastern excursions, OpinionJournal offers a much more nuanced and reasoned explanation of why the "surge" is working, one that looks and sounds better than the usual material . Rich Low considers that people in Iraq are expressing support for America to be a sign that the surge is working, and takes the Republican Senators that favor leaving to task. Perhaps he considers the Democrats to be a lost cause already. Or, like David Lindbergh, he thinks that liberals are rooting against the sacred mission in Iraq, doing all they can to undermine the cause of justice, and that the corruption has spread to the Republicans as well.
All of this material is echoing the same thing from the White House - give the surge more time to see how well its working. The more time they get, the more Americans, Iraqis, and others are killed or wounded. The benefits mentioned so far are fairly nebulous. Even if the amount of violence has gone down in one or two places, that’s a far cry from the security the troop surge is supposed to be providing.
Adding his name and office to the growing legion of those claiming they’ve been interfered with by this government, the previous surgeon general, Richard H. Carmona claimed that the Bush Administration muzzled him on several sensitive issues, requiring him not to speak, deleting his information, or otherwise interfering with anything that didn’t follow the administration line, even when it was scientifically incorrect. I wouldn’t be surprised, with the way that the administration has been funding abstinence-only and cutting out programs that promote safe sex.
More mud is slung around, more good names sullied, more links drawn where they may or may not exist, and the presidential candidates receive new abuses at the hands of the world. Douglas MacKinnon would like to know why Rudy Guliani was a named partner in a firm that ran ads for Citgo, the United States arm of the Venezuelan national oil company. MacKinnon considers Mr. Chavez to be the biggest threat in this hemisphere to the United States, painting a picture of a mad dictator who wants arms and nukes and is willing to work with anyone to get them.
The alternative campaigns are heating up - even this early in the stage, it appears Lisa Simpson has declared for the presidency, in addition to Theodric, a 70th level Tauren warrior.
The “Pot, Meet Kettle” department serves up some choice segments for you tonight. First up is Michelle Malkin, who rails against a loack of media coverage when a clearly insane man shot a soldier, and then himself, on 4 July. A single man, mentally ill, shot another man, a soldier, attempting to “make a statement” on a holiday, and then shot and killed himself. A tragedy, to be sure, but Ms. Malkin believes that the media would swarm all over the story, were it to be reversed, and a mentally-ill soldier were to shoot a peace activist. Perhaps so, but I suspect that would be because of a higher probability of more fatalities when the soldier went berserk. And it might depend on whether the soldier’s condition could be traced to something like the combat situation in Iraq. Because the probability of a returning soldier doing something like this and succeeding, on this or on a grander scale, would be higher than the probability of J. Random Mentally-Ill American deciding to do/repeat this tragedy. The media is more likely to report on a plane crashing into a house, killing five than a single person wounding another, “statement” or no. I suspect that all Ms. Malkin gets out of it, though, is, “See! Liberal bias! SEE! It’s right there!”
Enough of that, and onward to our second entry - Ratzinger claims that those who don't recognize his primacy aren't Real Christians. Which probably undoes a significant amount of the work his predecessor did in trying to bring Christian faiths closer together and to talk with each other without calling each other names and/or throwing things at each other. (To be fair, Wojtyla made a similar statement in 2000.) This is, I suppose, a move in character with the cardinal who was in charge of the Inquisition before being promoted to the papacy. One wonders whether Ratzinger will also reinstitute the Latin mass and require the priest to face away from his congregants as well.
Regarding religious matters, a valiant effort, but there’s not enough data attached to this pretty graphic purporting to show how densely religious the United States is, by county. I’m sure that if we looked up the study data that was used to construct this, we’d find holes, errors, and omissions enough to whack this things out of kilter. And no, I don’t expect the whole map to be solid red, despite how it may appear to many.
Bizarro world has firmly entrenched itself in the following case of a lawmaker accused of domestic abuse. His defense intends to establish that he was the victim of emotional abuse from his wife, in addition to her disrespect for his religious beliefs and philosophy of household. From the sounds of things, the marriage and relationship itself is dysfunctional on both sides of the coin. The heads or tails of it coin is still laying firmly on its side.
Sprint has apparently had enough with 1,200 of its celular clients, cutting them loose after they called customer service with too many complaints. Rather than take the complaints, Sprint has decided to turn them loose. I wonder what they were calling about, and whether it was something that actually got fixed by Sprint. It sounds like it was a dedicated complaint of some sort.
An even bigger Bizarro, though, involves a Telemundo host being fired for comparing a trout to a grouper - except that the particular word for grouper can apparently also be used to denigrate a gay man in Cuban Spanish. Which would be about the equivalent of a citizen of England saying they went outdoors to purchase a carton of faggots (cigarettes) and the BBC firing them because of American slang that has faggot mean a gay man. The local gay and lesbian groups applaud the stance on not tolerating homophobic language, but note that she wasn’t exactly using the term in a homophobic manner. Must be careful what we say these days, I guess. The man who tried to get out of jury duty by claiming he was a racist and a homophobe has probably learned that lesson as well. Additionally, the NAACP held a ceremony in Detroit to bury the word "nigger" and all the associations that go with it, so there’s a lot of language-related material here.
The birthplace of communism has been converted to luxury apartments. The march of progress moves ever onward, or something. The hotel/pub that was the meeting site for the Communist convention that tasked Marx with making a final, printed copy of that-which-would-be the Communist Manifesto was boarded up in 2006, and has now been bought and is going to be converted into luxury apartments. The dynamo hooked up to Marx’s grave would probably generate more than a few megawatts of power off of this one. In other bizzare money matters, more than 4 million yen have been found, in 10,000 yen denominations, in mens’ bathrooms. The money is in an envelope, accompanied with a note, but beyond that, little is actually known about who and why this is happening. This is in comparison to someone deciding to play with the 411 scammer by writing back in the same English style as the mail was sent. Which, will likely result in no money changing hands at all, but good laughs to be had.
The Big Bizarro for tonight, however, might be the adult film actress who may have taken her friend's middle and last names as her screen name. The matter was discovered, naturally, when people started calling the person who originally had the names and asking about her adult film career.
Tobacco appears to have a protective effect against Parkinson's disease. Scientists aren’t sompletely sure why yet, but it seems that smoking, and possibly chewing, reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease, and such a risk lowering persists in those who gave up cigarettes some time ago. If they can figure out how its done, they’ll probably concoct a synthetic of sorts and, depending on how safe it is for regular use, might make it part of the pill parade for older Humes. In another health issue that tends to strike at older Humes, a genetically altered herpes simplex virus appears to be an effective colorectal cancer fighter. That’s herpes simplex, the kind that causes cold sores, not the other herpes, the one that’s an STD and to be avoided. Genetic manipulation of viruses seems to be a burgeoning frontier in possible treatments, especially those that require targeted payload delivery.
Global warming is apparently not being caused by solar energy variations, which should have produced a cooling period, rather than the warming currently underway. Even if the root cause does turn out to be natural, why not seize the opportunity to reduce one’s footprint on the world, anyway? And for those places that don’t necessarily have the money to improve their infrastructure to greener ability, provide a nice grant, in the name of future generations, and get it that way, hey? And while we’re at making the world better, Southern Studies claims that for a little bit more in tax for everyone, we could all have single-payer or universal health care. A little less take-home pay, a bit more paid in Value-Added Taxes, and suddenly everyone’s insured. No more worrying about whether or not you’re covered, or whether a particular doctor is “in-network”, or whether your insurance will cover that.
Ursula K. LeGuin was not happy about Slate magazine saying that another author was spending great time and effort to drag genre fiction out of the grave that “writers of serious literature” had dug for it. So she wrote a long drabble about the matter, transforming the statement into a miniature story of its own and demonstrating to her fans why they’re her fans.
For those that have stuck through to the end, congratulations. Ready for something that might set your blood on fire (if it hasn’t already)? Psychology Today offers 10 politically incorrect truths about Hume nature, from the natural tendency to be polygamous, the drive in men to want blonde bombshells, and so forth. All referencing various scientific studies, sometimes directly, often obliquely.
Those that are here for the links may stop now and move on. The rest will be subjected to something silly.
( A Harry Potter House-Sorting Checklist )
Anyway, bedtime, as I’ve probably spent far too long crafting this.
