Yeah, I'm tired - 04 August 2007

Got up, helped droewyn celebrate level 30, came back, hung out with friends, scheduled my ride to Metro on Monday, need to stabstab the people who I’m supposed to be interviewing with for not telling me anything so far about what’s going on and/or to make up their minds about when they want to interview me. Hopefully, there’s a whole lot more communication going on soon, or I’m really going to be aggravated.

Anyway, onward to another more rapid-fire edition of things, considering it’s early in the morning and I want to go to sleep. So, first, semi-good news out of the Minnesota bridge collapse - the death count could end up being very low because traffic was stopped and the river was running slower than usual, among other things, like people moving quickly to assist others.

Drug spammer gets thirty years for running illegal pharmacy, even in the face of judicial orders telling him to stop selling prescription drugs. So that’s what spamming and then selling the drugs will get you - prison. Not that it’s likely to make a dent in the amount of spam we get daily.

Rich Tucker says something that is chilling, Orwellian, and likely true for the next generation if not further along - war is an inevitable thing. He uses it in the context of justifying letting the matter of Iraq play out, so that we learn what works and what doesn’t for the next inevitable conflict. I think that’s one of the parts people miss out of 1984 when they focus on the Newspeak - there’s also a segment in there about how any surpluses are shunted out to the places of continual war, so that there’s a state of almost-poverty everywhere. And then, United States Defense secretary Robert Gates says that he's disappointed by the lack of political progress in Iraq. So while the troops may be holding and making some progress, the politicians seem to be learning the ways of the United States government a little too well.

Outsourcing has been outsourced. Or something like that. Specifically, a call center for an Indian company opening a U.S. branch is in... Ohio. Perhaps it’s become true that lower wages don’t compensate for the ability of a native American to connect with other Americans when calling in for support. As such, they might be able to explain why the Washington Post is congratulating itself on supposedly exposing a position change regarding Chelsea's schooling that, well, doesn't exist.

Rapid-fire out of the news of the strange - dog shoots man, non-fatally, after knocking a loaded gun off the table. Bad man, for leaving a loaded gun where someone can get to it and in a state that permits the discharge of a bullet. Victor Willis, the "cop" from the musical group Village People says that their songs were not about homosexual activities. The United States has a new Poet Laureate, Mr. Charles Simic, an immigrant. Perhaps he could make some appropriate lyrics for the songs that reinforce the non-homosexual content.

Arkansas couple welcomes 17th child into the family, and not only that, all of the kids names begin with J. The mother has been pregnant for a little over a quarter of her life. Our advice to her is that perhaps she should become an abstinence trainer just so that the idea of having seventeen children seems a bit odd to her. Of course, she might be predisposed to tell all of her children to be abstinent. Seventeen children, yeesh. How anyone could make that work is beyond me.

The “Why? Why?!” department mutely pointed us to Scrollovers, a JavaScript that changes the color of the link when mouseover’d, but all then scrolls that new color into place. Pretty much a visual thing, with little for purpose, unless there’s something that would require or be aided by such a maneuver. I can’t think of anything immediately.

Of course, that could be because it’s late and I’m tired. Either way, bed.

And another journey begins - 05 August 2007

So I get to get up tomorrow morning and board a plane and fly for a little bit, and spend a week wrangling with others about possibly employing me. There should be good Internet access there, so hopefully things will continue in a relatively regular manner.

Anyway, onward to link-like stuff.

A gentleman who was once previously arrested for attempting to create a nuclear reaction from small amounts of radioactive material has been arrested for stealing smoke detectors - the items could be dismantled and then have their radioactive contents harvested for whatever purpose he had in mind for them. Doubtful, though, that any sort of meaningful explosive would be created from them - would be easier to get a permit and then buy the radioactive material from a science supply store or something.

An American soldier convicted of the rape of a 14 year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her and her family has received 110 years in prison. Other soldiers convicted have received sentences from five to 100 years in prison.

Regarding the entire country, the countries surrounding Iraq are worried about chaos in Iraq, yet seem reluctant to give support to the current government. If something stable were to appear, they might be more supportive, or they might get angry and evil. I don’t know. Of course, Iraq’s not doing much to help its cause, if the following account of an old law banning oil workers' unions in Iraq is to be believed.

Next door, in Iran, several young people were arrested at an underground rock concert, deemed "satanic" by the government, where there was alcohol, CDs, and other materials there. Sounds more like a rave than a rock concert to me, but in either case, the reigning law says “Ah, no. That’s forbidden.” Because power chords are Satanic. We went through this before, didn’t we? And we’re... actually, that example probably doesn’t work for Iran. Our own country may still be having a little bit of trouble with race relations, especially when they relate to immigration laws, according to Austin Cline. And we do have difficulties with the whole religious-secular divide, as officers who appeared in their military dress for a evangelical Christian video were cited for breaching ethics. Free expression is good, and each person is entitled to it. When acting as the representative of something else, or in particular offices, speaking officially, however, that’s not the case.

In the United States, Harvey Wasserman lays out the rationale behind a likely GOP attempt to steal the 2008 election, with possible vote-machine tampering, disenfranchisement, and other dirty tricks, up to and potentially including the cancellation of an election. I think this sort of worry is the same kind that might have happened when Washington left office. He could have gone for a dictator-for-life sort of position, but willingly stepped down. This time around, we wonder whether some other occupant won’t leave.

I’m hoping that wherever I get employed is sufficiently dense and has good public transit systems, so that I can forego having a vehicle while I’m there, and be able to get to and from work and the other stuff. Plus, it really is possible in some places to give up your car and still do just fine. In other places, like super-spread-out suburbs, it’s not so easy, unfortunately.

The National Geographic News says Humes and Neanderthals may have been able to breed together. There’s nothing completely biologically incompatible between the two, right? But it may or may not actually be a sign of interbreeding. More to be seen.

Winding down, then, the Guardian’s Observer publishes a piece about whether Jack Kerouac's On the Road had survived time, and whether or not it would still resonate today as it did when it was written. The society has certainly changed sufficiently that Kerouac’s writing may or may not work. Why are they talking about it? Well, it is going to be fifty years published this year. Might be the right time for a revitalization, or it might just pass on again.

Last for tonight is Similar Diversity - a visual representation of various names in major religious holy books, but it treats “God”, and “Lord” as different entities, since in the various books, they refer to different people. Several representations of various parts of the books present a visually engaging representation of the textual analyses being done. Very neat.

The Sunday entries tend to be a bit smaller, I note, than all the others. Maybe it’s just that people aren’t reporting on things. In any case, I’m finished with my materials, so you can all go to bed, like I should probably already be. In any case, if you’re in or around the area I’m headed to, drop me e-mail and we’ll see if we can’t work out some sort of meet-up or something like it.