Another day in the books - 12 July 2007

Today was spent making progress. The problem is, I make about so much progress, and then I have to stop for a bit so that my characters can amass sufficient amounts of money and skill to actually take advantage of the things that are now being offered them. One step forward, a couple hours running around killing things, and then forward again. At least I found the artefact that doubles all the skills accumulation. Oh, and I applied for another job today, too. At some point, I’ll be doing my share to lose more leisure hours to work. And watched baseball. The game itself was definitely an interesting game, and will probably be useful fodder for umpire training in the future. See? Boring life. Wonder whether I should leave early tomorrow to pick up my shoes from greyweirdo before I pick up a friend from Metro airport in Detroit tomorrow. It would probably make my interview on Monday easier. So long as greyweirdo doesn’t mind me dropping by.

Timing is a bastard child sometimes. Because of the way I approach my sources, querying them but once a day, sometimes the things I say will be coming have already happened by the time I get to them. Such is the case with the following.

The set-up is the American Family Association raising a large stink about the Senate inviting a Hindu cleric to give the opening invocation to the 12 July senate session, including, as noted in dark_christian, an "action alert" rife with incorrect facts and F.U.D. sent out to all, urging people to write their Congresscritters and complain. So, here I was, getting ready to virtually breathe fire...

...and then, after this little announcement went out, then some idiots decided they were going to disrupt the invocation, getting themselves arrested and removed from the Senate viewing chambers, thus turning thought into action.

At least these people were being honest in showing off their prejudices like that - New South Wales MPs have been under siege from letters, at least some originating from a Scientology ministry, asking them not to make psychiatric drugs more available. None of the letters disclose their affiliations. Perhaps because they would not be taken credibly were they to be forthright and say they were Scientologists. At least they weren't using prestidigitation and passing them off as miracles.

Back in the United States, several Christian denominations have already expressed their feelings on the first review of the American Psychological Association's current policy on counseling homosexuals, fearing that the APA won’t accommodate views that condemn homosexuality. A choice quote mentioned from a representative of Focus on the Family, “We’re concerned...The APA does not have a good track record of listening to other views.” One would think, with the weight of scientific studies backing their recommendations and policy decisions, they don’t have to listen to other views. that don’t have equally scientific backing to them. We probably won’t know what the report hold until December, when a draft may be submitted, and the final probably won’t arrive until next March.

Two hundred explosive belts were seized attempting to enter Iraq from Syria, prompting the United States to continue pressuring Syria to do more to contribute to Iraqi stability. Additionally, the United States claims that Al-Qaeda has rebuilt itself along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Adding to the culture of fear, the Washington Post reports that GAO investigators were able to obtain a license and sufficient material to build a "dirty" nuclear bomb from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Unto which much castigation is likely to follow, because the NRC isn’t thinking in post-11 September terms. To their defense, the NRC says that the devices ordered would take some work to be fashioned into something explosive. At least they aren’t posting "sensitive" military documents on file-servers that can be accessed from the Internet. You know, stuff that if you asked for it, you couldn’t get it, available on-line if you know where to look. Not in plain sight, but apparently not too well-hidden. At the same time, many still claim that progress is being made in Iraq, and that we should wait for the General to give his assessment. All of this stuff apparently freaked out the director of the Department of Homeland Security enough to raise the terror level.

At the same time, an amendment that would require returning U.S. military personnel to receive as much rest as they had active service was filibustered in the Senate. In light of what the troops themselves are saying about the Iraqi tour, giving them short rest and continuing to keep them there for long periods of times may be a recipe for disaster in keeping order in the ranks and in accomplishing anything at all.

Daniel Henninger grasps a fundamental difficulty with the world - things that can be used for great good, like the Internet and the World Wide Web, can also be used for evil. The whole “great power, great responsibility” thing that Uncle Ben was so fond of.

Earlier, we made mention that the Justice Department knew of violations regarding National Security Letters and records requested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Today, Wired says a criminal investigation has been launched to see if the Patriot Act was misused by FBI agents, including saying that NSLs would be filed while not actually doing so. A rare show of accountability, or a bone being thrown to the dogs to get them off the scent of other violations and crimes?

There are source materials after the commentary, that will probably require Bugmenot, but there’s a couple things to be extracted from In Support the Lesbian Seven. The first, is the account of the incident itself. The defendants claimed that one of their number was harassed by a man sufficiently that an altercation occurred. During the altercation, the man was stabbed, although footage taken of it appears to show that men who joined the fray later were responsible for the datbbing. Of the seven, three pled guilty to an attempted assault and served six months’ time in jail. The other four went to trial, were convicted (if the account in I Support is accurate, without much for evidence-gathering or professionalism among the prosecution, judge, and jury), and received sentences from 3.5 to 11 years in prison. The other part taken out of this is that both sides (the writer and the quotes provided from the man, post-incident) argue for their side of accounts as victims of bias - either by portraying the group as “man-haters” or by invoking a similar account that ended in tragedy for the lesbian harrassed, pointing out the irregularities of procedure and rather harsh penalties assessed to those who chose to take their case to trial. Six months for a plead compared to 11 years for maintaining one’s innocence is a rather large variance, for what has been characterized by the commenters and the defendants as an incident of self-defense from unwanted aggression. The whole thing doesn’t make sense, from beginning to end. I wonder what the video shows, and how much decorum was observed in the courtroom before sentencing.

For those in the clientele that think the constraints of their bodies and of “natural” living ,even though our lives are already highly assisted by technology, Accelerating Future gives (another?) top ten list of transhumanist technologies, from cryonics to an artificial general intelligence. One that will probably not make their list is the Avatar Machine, a rig that allows a person to view themselves in the third person, as if they were an avatar in a game. S’a little awkward, and someone would have to be very aware of the requirements of the camera behind them. Still, it proves that the temptation to make life into a game is strong.

Those scientists staring at the stars have found a hot gas planet that has definite evidence of water vapor. It’s another exoplanet, so it’s unlikely we’ll get to study it up close and personal unless we start managing to develop c-fractional or FTL travel drives. Something a bit more practical for those of us on earth is a project being undertaken by Gristmill to document and provide responses to persons skeptical of anthropogenic climate change. Most likely, there will be more added as more is provided, but for those people who want to brush up their materials or want to see what’s already been tried, there’s a place to go.

The classiscal music critic for the San Diego Union Tribune asks Americans to show a little restraint at concerts and to save the standing ovation for when it is deserved. The symphony and singers have put on a good show every time I’ve gone, and they’ve prolonged the matter with one encore, sometimes two, which is nice of them to do. Although I wonder if some of those orchestra members are getting a little sick of One-Winged Angel...

Our human interest department, often trying its hardest to find something of, well, interest, pleaded with us to post about the wedding of a 2.36 meters-tall man. (That’s 7’9“ or so, currently the world’s tallest man by 2mm) We relented.

Luckily, our humor department comes through in the pinch with suggestions on more Hasbro property movies, now that Transformers has seen the big screen in the more modern style. Have a good laugh. Considering that Etch-a-Sketch is now forty-seven years old, maybe there’s some cross-licensing possibilities here.

The last for tonight is also something designed to make you feel good after all the stuff that I put up that’s supposed to provoke other emotions - a small checklist of things that you can do to get into the happy part of life. I might add one onto the end of that - give someone a compliment. We’re compliment starved, seriously. Some of us, myself included, have such great complexes that we’re never sure whether we’re actually doing right in the world, being good people, and that our friends really do like us. Some of us have it with more frequency than others, I will note. This combines with a general perception that when things are going well, even when they’re going spectacularly, they’re not noticed, but one slip or poor showing is magnified into a much bigger problem than it is. Remind someone who needs it that they’re good people. Make them really believe it.

This one arrives early - 13 July 2007

Going away for the weekend, so everybody gets an early update from the network. Take a quick entry about perceived versus real responsibilities from The Bellman as your starting point, and please hold on tightly throughout the ride. Beware of allegations of a North Carolina state legislature exposing himself to a staff member and chasing her about the room asking for oral sex and other hazards.

The Department of Rich and Poor reminds us all that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is hitting record highs, even as we complain about the prices of goods being exorbitant. I’d say the two are related in some way, wouldn’t you?

Speaking of prices going haywire, come Monday, many Internet radio stations will be shut down or required to pay many thousands of dollars in retroactive royalties. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did not stay a decision urged by the recording industry to strongly increase royalty fees and to assess them retroactively to 2006. For many sites that operate with no profit at all, or even necessarily any revenue stream, finding money to pay royalties is not possible, and so they will shut down. Once again, the recording industry, the people that want you to only be able to play music that you have purchased on their terms, pushed through a royalty increase that punishes Internet radio stations. I guess we’ll have to wait for brave judges or legislators smack them around a bit before they’ll actually do anything that benefits the music customers. Our corporate department also provides a handy business-buzzword-compliant translation device for you so that you can sift through what is being said. Economist’s view has already tested it on a graph in the Wall Street Journal purporting that less taxes makes for more revenue, and you can see the results for yourself.

Diana West, in Townhall, says that the United States should be looking at Iran if it wants to stop global terror, not Iraq, in such that even if Iraq succeeds according to spec, that doesn’t gain the United States anything in terms of ground against terror. So she says to snuff out the terrorists in Iraq, sure, but then to smash Iran as the real enemy. That’s been a little silent for a while, admittedly. Perhaps because there’s been an attempt to shore up the situation in Iraq, with plenty of opinion columnssuggesting different categories of metrics to evaluate whether or not the troop surge is working.

A shirt listing the names of dead soldiers from the Iraq conflict underneath a message "Bush lied, they died" has been banned from a third state. Arizona joins Oklahoma and Louisiana in prohibiting the sale of the shirt, calling it “commercial speech” that can be subjected to regulation, as opposed to a protected political statement. This does not make people happy. With similar subjects, just juggled into new relationships, Reason Magazine takes a look at Burning Man's decision to include corporations demonstrating environmentally-friendly objects at the gathering this year. As with many things, the corporate that Burning Man tries to escape sneaks back in, sure, but this is a time where they’re letting it in the front gates, I suspect, and that makes people who really want as pure a TAZ as they can get unhappy.

The new surgeon general nominee says that he's committed to science over politics. Much of the concern has been over a 1991 paper he wrote (wow, we dig up old stuff) claiming that sex between men was unnatural and associated with diseases. His more recent material is better, including supporting an increase on tobacco taxation and supporting the use of condoms as a pregnancy preventer as well as a disease stopper. Sixteen years does give someone time to rethink their positions. But there will likely be some close watching just to make sure that there isn’t any backsliding away from sound science.

In an attempt to cut down on the number of selective abortions in India, the government of Inida ha smandated that all pregnancies be registered with the government. While the idea is noble, in trying to keep alive female foetuses and newborns, the precedent set may be more disturbing. And it may not end up being effective if there aren’t more places where women can have a hospital delivery, rather than a pregnancy where almost half never see a doctor. On our own shores, the teen birth rate has dropped to record lows, while condom usage is increasing (and, according to the figures quotes, less teenagers are having sex). They’re also more likely to be completing high school. Regarding the lower birth rate, the availability of Plan B as a nonprescription emergency contraceptive may have something to do with it as well, despite the increased howling of winds that say such availability promotes promiscuity or is immoral. (Be careful about the statistics quoted - some people might be cherry-picking their numbers)

Something that could be interesting to a significant number of people wondering where (U.S.) Democratic candidates stand on LGBT issues - a debate dedicated solely to those issues will occur on August 9. An interesting resource to tap for those voting in the primaries.

The following is not funny. It is cruel, and an indication of just how far things have gone. A mother claims that she and her baby were forced off a plane because her baby uttered the phrase "Bye-by, plane" many times. You can never be too careful in this day and age. Those 19 month-old children are really harboring plots to blow up commercial airliners.

This incident, however, is funny. Advice to aspiring h4xx0rs who want to goof around in class - make sure that you understand the setup that your instructor has. Otherwise, the instructor may decide to get a humorous revenge by flexing their own knowledge about the system you’re trying to compromise.

I believe this is a new wrinkle in the Anti-Potter crusade. Considering the source, it’s probably just that I haven’t seen it before. The argument itself sounds like something that you could cut-and-paste a number of things into without changing the substance of it. Hat tip to amenquohi for stomaching this enough to link to it. Anyway, this gist of this particular WND column is that Harry Potter teaches kids to be rebellious to their parents, and engages in and advocates moral relativism and narcissism. Because Mr. Potter is responsible for all these things, and that’s without the extra “rebellion against God” that he advocates by being a practicing wizard. I may have to take up flamespitting as a past-time, just for that extra emphasis when something annoys me that much.

Kudos to the Palm Beach County school board's rejection of a mother's request to pull books referencing homosexuality, atheism, and abortions off high school library shelves. The mother did not precisely make herself a credible and sane source, decrying the school’s insistence on teach the Big Bang, rather than creationism, in addition to her request to remove the books from shelves. The board member quoted indicates a very good position - the board and the school support all their students, regardless of orientation, or pregnancy, or religious beliefs. Would that more organizations took this stance. Besides, examples of microevolution keep popping up, like the blue moon butterfly successfully evolving a gene that suppresses a parasite within 10 generations - about a year, human time. Stands to reason that the bigger evolution patterns are likely to hold true, too.

The Bizarro World news desk gave us a nice story about elephants meandering in the suburbs (one of these days, we’re going to see a successor to Joshua Norton riding a war-elephant, I’m sure), which passed without major incident, and an incident that led to the military of the United Kingdom expressly saying they didn't release man-eating badgers into a populated area. At least it wasn’t procupines. Porcupines have the ability to get past security at nuclear research facilities. And then the guy who robbed a bank using foliage to try and disguise himself.

Our Cool things department once again reaches into the bag of masterful food art and produces an 8-bit Mario square-cupcake cake. It’s a lot easier to see than to describe, I assure you. If things in motion is more your thing, then the story of Tzuki might be a better set for you - be warned, though, there’s a lot of animated material here, so it’ll probably run slowly.

After all that material, I’m going back to the other house. The one that might be my residence if September arrives and no jobs have been found for me. Suffice it to say, I really hope that doesn’t happen.