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Early to rise... - 04 October 2007
Oct. 4th, 2007 11:48 pmEarly to rise, early to get out of work. Did some presentation stuff to middle school troops about the library’s homework help service, then dropped off some bookmarks elsewhere, and then went to “my” branch (being the one that I am the sole Youth Services Librarian for) and weeded the hell out of the teen collection - come Sunday, I’ll make final decisions about whether or not to flag them as possibly needing replacement, or just to have them withdrawn from the collection. Made some shelf space, which is what we need badly. Next time going back will be with reinforcements, and I’ll tackle the E and J collections, to see if I can’t free up more shelf space to prevent “overflow”.
Tonight’s leading line is something that fellow librarians will nod, smile, and cheer at - a metaquote about how difficult it is to put a librarian off their stride. One asterisked f-bomb, but also a very accurate summary of the library profession when it comes to what the job throws at you daily.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite into space. And, apparently, the tenth anniversary of the launch of Slashdot, responsible for more temporary closures due to interest than any other site on the web.
According to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jarandhel in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dark_christian, today also marks Focus on the Family firing the first salvo in yet another nonexistent "War on Christmas". Having broken hearts in this manner, we can expect several pundits, like Bill’O, to weigh in on the issue in support of continuing the charade. Even better, the release uses the nonexistent war to peddle knicknacks to the crowd - buttons and magnets. Oh, and the Muslim they say got complained about Christmans and got it banned? Just wanted the school to observe Ramadan. No real want to get rid of All Hallows Eve or Sol Invinctus, just to have one of the important months of the Muslim calendar be accommodated for. I don’t think that would put too much undue hardship on the school, now would it?
Alabama couple celebrates an 80th wedding anniversary. Married at 17 and 14, respectively, and still together. D’awww.
Significantly less warm and fuzzy is a suggestion by Americans United for Separation of Church and State that several prominent evangelical leaders are laying groundwork so they can express support of a religious third-party candidate, in case the Republicans nominate someone who fails their ideological tests. Americans United believes that plenty of those organizations are already engaged in unlawful candidate endorsement (tax-exempted religious organizations cannot expressly endorse candidates, contribute to their coffers, or publish ‘voter guides’ that basically endorse one over another). I wonder how much the heat will increase as the general election arrives.
And then, of course, there’s the inter-religious wars going on. Off a post on Jihad Watch correctly noting how Osama bin Laden is corrupting Islam to suit his own purposes (in much the same way that Fred Phelps warps Christianity), the comments go in the opposite direction, condemning Islam in general as a warlike religion based on obedience and fear that people like bin Laden can just use without needing to corrupt. Sounds like “Brother, there’s a speck in your eye” to me. If you really need an example of this, not in comments, look at Hot Air's, well, hot air, about how a proposed Islamic History month would turn out - all positive, no negative. Because apparently there’s no way you can expect history teachers to look at religious conquests and not provide a balanced view of the good things and the bad things done in the name of a religion. If that’s not the case, will you stop bitching about how much there never is anything good about Christianity in public education? And if it is the case, turn your attention to the certifying bodies for those teachers and campaign for them to make teachers who actually can do their jobs of instructing and leading children. Unless somewhere along that way, you think that you’ll be able to subvert those weak-minded teachers and make them follow your philosophy of life. If that’s so, good luck on that, and don’t mind the angry mob that will spike you on their pitchforks.
Regarding the United States’ military presence in Iraq, the focus is shifting away. Mr. Bush says he'll negotiate if Iran will give up nuclear power, and then says that U.S. presence in Iraq is necessary to push Iran to the negotating table. I can see the q slowly being erased and an n being painted in. Soon, we’ll have to go to war with Iran because they refused to listen to their betters and insist on continuing to develop nuclear capabilities. Plus, Mr. Bush now has command of a missile defence system that will supposedly stop attacks from Asia. Some expansion on that and they might feel they can intercept from the Middle East, too. Domestically, it has been revealed that the Gonzalez Justice Department issued an opinion approving harsh and painful physical and psychological tactics to interrogate terror suspects with. And that Central Intelligence Agency methods did not violate Congress’s outlawing of “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” treatment. More authorization for torture methods to be used. What sort of skeletons are going to be unearthed when we finally get to find out what was really going on in this administration?
In domestic matters, regarding the general election upcoming, a contributor to The Politico says Democrats must court white men afraid of liberal values to win. Or at the very least, white working class men or white men close to the poverty line. Which, for a party that claims to be the liberal party, well, that’s got to be tough to be ideologically sound and win. Luckily, the Democratic party hasn’t been a liberal party for a long time, at least, not from the showing that they’ve given so far. Money was appropriated for border security, and yet another attempt to actually not spend too much money on Iraq failed.
And through all of this, Mr. Bush still considers himself "The Decider", despite how well his decisions have gone over. Supposedly Mr. Bush has smart people around him, but then he makes the final decision. Which could very well invalidate all the hard work those smart people did.
Down in the place where everyone is supposed to feel secure and safe, DHS forgot a crucial rule of e-mail lists - never let anyone reply to all. And thus, the e-mail addresses of some security personnel were exposed. Even worse, Unisys was contracted to do security on DHS computers, and botched it badly enough that they were unaware of DHS computers being hacked for three months. And even worse, Unisys covered things up and tried to bury them. That’s the people who are supposedly protecting us from the terrists. In some ways, this isn’t surprising. It is enough to raise your blood pressure, though. For occasions where the police are taking advantage of someone else’s stupidity, Milwaukee police have begun monitoring social-networking sites, where people supposedly confess to having broken the law. Remember - anything we say here can and probably will be used against us in a court of law, or the court of public opinion. If you want to stay clean, stay away form any sort of traceable communication. Security experts are also worried about "Storm" a combination worm, bot, and mutating device. It doesn’t attack in an always-on manner, it uses p2p for C+C, and only has some computers infecting others. If/when it gets to an appropriate infestation level, lots of fun possibilities could happen. Maybe zombies, maybe DDoS, or maybe it gets leased to the RIAA so that they can spy on everyone’s computers for what they believe are illegal or unlicensed copies of files. Like ripped CDs. Oh, and also something of interest - despite an excellent defence, a jury found Jammie Thomas guilty of copyright infringement through file-sharing networks, and awarded the cabal $222,000 USD in damages . The strength of screenshots about the user “terrastar”, along with showing a similar username registered by Jammie and supposedly similar musical taste between Jammie and “Terrastar” was enough to convince the jury to convict and to award damages. Let the campaign of fear and intimidation continue. The sharks will be out in the water, now that blood has been tasted.
Oooh, pretty. Food carvings. Significantly more ugly, but with points for ingenuity, some cocaine runners attempted to hide their product in dead bugs. Potentially ugly and making false statements, the test of the Father of All Bombs claimed by Russia may not have actually been completely accurate. There may have been a misdirection about what kind of plane could carry the weapon, and the actual effectiveness of the bomb itself. So one actual bit there, fifty years ago, as the satellite was launched, and now one potential fib about something much more dangerous.
Scientists complain mightily after Dutch censors remove references to evolution, speciation, and the timeline that takes from BBC documentaries. The edits are apparently less than five minutes on the hour, so the BBC did not immediately get involved in the matter. Watching as creationists edit the documentaries and then broadcast them as if they were unedited BBC material is not something the BBC should be allowing, contend the scientists. Perhaps there will be more, especially if the BBC feels the need to ensure that the substance of their materials is not radically altered and then presented as genuine. We’ll have to see.
Think Progress would like to see both sides of an issue reach the radio airwaves. Radio listeners in Rush Limbaugh's hometown are not hearing an advertisement created by VoteVets as a response to Rush's "phony soliders" comment. The reasoning, from ClearChannel, is that running the ad in the zone where people listen to Rush would only create conflict. I’m pretty sure it’s legal for ClearChannel to choose to not run the ad, but it certainly doesn’t encourage the idea that people will be given airtime to respond to a perceived slander. More instances of how much the free and independent media is neither when it decides not to be.
On the downswing for tonight is Lifenaut.com, offering seven gigabytes of file storage to create a mind profile, for potential downloading later into a reconstructed body or computer, after one’s cellular death. The information you put on is publicly available, so one should choose caution in what is added to a mind profile. This assumes, of course, that one can fit all the essential characteristics of oneself in seven gigabytes. Considering music collections are above and beyond that, I think we’ll need more if we want a true digital reproduction of ourselves.
Last for tonight, however, is a DIY wooden keyboard kit, for those who want to assemble their own USB keyboard. As times change, all sorts of things happen, even to things that you thought were unchanging. Take, for example, Flight of the Bumblebee. And while we ponder the nature of change, I will shift from one cycle to another, and go to sleep.
Tonight’s leading line is something that fellow librarians will nod, smile, and cheer at - a metaquote about how difficult it is to put a librarian off their stride. One asterisked f-bomb, but also a very accurate summary of the library profession when it comes to what the job throws at you daily.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite into space. And, apparently, the tenth anniversary of the launch of Slashdot, responsible for more temporary closures due to interest than any other site on the web.
According to
jarandhel in dark_christian, today also marks Focus on the Family firing the first salvo in yet another nonexistent "War on Christmas". Having broken hearts in this manner, we can expect several pundits, like Bill’O, to weigh in on the issue in support of continuing the charade. Even better, the release uses the nonexistent war to peddle knicknacks to the crowd - buttons and magnets. Oh, and the Muslim they say got complained about Christmans and got it banned? Just wanted the school to observe Ramadan. No real want to get rid of All Hallows Eve or Sol Invinctus, just to have one of the important months of the Muslim calendar be accommodated for. I don’t think that would put too much undue hardship on the school, now would it?Alabama couple celebrates an 80th wedding anniversary. Married at 17 and 14, respectively, and still together. D’awww.
Significantly less warm and fuzzy is a suggestion by Americans United for Separation of Church and State that several prominent evangelical leaders are laying groundwork so they can express support of a religious third-party candidate, in case the Republicans nominate someone who fails their ideological tests. Americans United believes that plenty of those organizations are already engaged in unlawful candidate endorsement (tax-exempted religious organizations cannot expressly endorse candidates, contribute to their coffers, or publish ‘voter guides’ that basically endorse one over another). I wonder how much the heat will increase as the general election arrives.
And then, of course, there’s the inter-religious wars going on. Off a post on Jihad Watch correctly noting how Osama bin Laden is corrupting Islam to suit his own purposes (in much the same way that Fred Phelps warps Christianity), the comments go in the opposite direction, condemning Islam in general as a warlike religion based on obedience and fear that people like bin Laden can just use without needing to corrupt. Sounds like “Brother, there’s a speck in your eye” to me. If you really need an example of this, not in comments, look at Hot Air's, well, hot air, about how a proposed Islamic History month would turn out - all positive, no negative. Because apparently there’s no way you can expect history teachers to look at religious conquests and not provide a balanced view of the good things and the bad things done in the name of a religion. If that’s not the case, will you stop bitching about how much there never is anything good about Christianity in public education? And if it is the case, turn your attention to the certifying bodies for those teachers and campaign for them to make teachers who actually can do their jobs of instructing and leading children. Unless somewhere along that way, you think that you’ll be able to subvert those weak-minded teachers and make them follow your philosophy of life. If that’s so, good luck on that, and don’t mind the angry mob that will spike you on their pitchforks.
Regarding the United States’ military presence in Iraq, the focus is shifting away. Mr. Bush says he'll negotiate if Iran will give up nuclear power, and then says that U.S. presence in Iraq is necessary to push Iran to the negotating table. I can see the q slowly being erased and an n being painted in. Soon, we’ll have to go to war with Iran because they refused to listen to their betters and insist on continuing to develop nuclear capabilities. Plus, Mr. Bush now has command of a missile defence system that will supposedly stop attacks from Asia. Some expansion on that and they might feel they can intercept from the Middle East, too. Domestically, it has been revealed that the Gonzalez Justice Department issued an opinion approving harsh and painful physical and psychological tactics to interrogate terror suspects with. And that Central Intelligence Agency methods did not violate Congress’s outlawing of “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” treatment. More authorization for torture methods to be used. What sort of skeletons are going to be unearthed when we finally get to find out what was really going on in this administration?
In domestic matters, regarding the general election upcoming, a contributor to The Politico says Democrats must court white men afraid of liberal values to win. Or at the very least, white working class men or white men close to the poverty line. Which, for a party that claims to be the liberal party, well, that’s got to be tough to be ideologically sound and win. Luckily, the Democratic party hasn’t been a liberal party for a long time, at least, not from the showing that they’ve given so far. Money was appropriated for border security, and yet another attempt to actually not spend too much money on Iraq failed.
And through all of this, Mr. Bush still considers himself "The Decider", despite how well his decisions have gone over. Supposedly Mr. Bush has smart people around him, but then he makes the final decision. Which could very well invalidate all the hard work those smart people did.
Down in the place where everyone is supposed to feel secure and safe, DHS forgot a crucial rule of e-mail lists - never let anyone reply to all. And thus, the e-mail addresses of some security personnel were exposed. Even worse, Unisys was contracted to do security on DHS computers, and botched it badly enough that they were unaware of DHS computers being hacked for three months. And even worse, Unisys covered things up and tried to bury them. That’s the people who are supposedly protecting us from the terrists. In some ways, this isn’t surprising. It is enough to raise your blood pressure, though. For occasions where the police are taking advantage of someone else’s stupidity, Milwaukee police have begun monitoring social-networking sites, where people supposedly confess to having broken the law. Remember - anything we say here can and probably will be used against us in a court of law, or the court of public opinion. If you want to stay clean, stay away form any sort of traceable communication. Security experts are also worried about "Storm" a combination worm, bot, and mutating device. It doesn’t attack in an always-on manner, it uses p2p for C+C, and only has some computers infecting others. If/when it gets to an appropriate infestation level, lots of fun possibilities could happen. Maybe zombies, maybe DDoS, or maybe it gets leased to the RIAA so that they can spy on everyone’s computers for what they believe are illegal or unlicensed copies of files. Like ripped CDs. Oh, and also something of interest - despite an excellent defence, a jury found Jammie Thomas guilty of copyright infringement through file-sharing networks, and awarded the cabal $222,000 USD in damages . The strength of screenshots about the user “terrastar”, along with showing a similar username registered by Jammie and supposedly similar musical taste between Jammie and “Terrastar” was enough to convince the jury to convict and to award damages. Let the campaign of fear and intimidation continue. The sharks will be out in the water, now that blood has been tasted.
Oooh, pretty. Food carvings. Significantly more ugly, but with points for ingenuity, some cocaine runners attempted to hide their product in dead bugs. Potentially ugly and making false statements, the test of the Father of All Bombs claimed by Russia may not have actually been completely accurate. There may have been a misdirection about what kind of plane could carry the weapon, and the actual effectiveness of the bomb itself. So one actual bit there, fifty years ago, as the satellite was launched, and now one potential fib about something much more dangerous.
Scientists complain mightily after Dutch censors remove references to evolution, speciation, and the timeline that takes from BBC documentaries. The edits are apparently less than five minutes on the hour, so the BBC did not immediately get involved in the matter. Watching as creationists edit the documentaries and then broadcast them as if they were unedited BBC material is not something the BBC should be allowing, contend the scientists. Perhaps there will be more, especially if the BBC feels the need to ensure that the substance of their materials is not radically altered and then presented as genuine. We’ll have to see.
Think Progress would like to see both sides of an issue reach the radio airwaves. Radio listeners in Rush Limbaugh's hometown are not hearing an advertisement created by VoteVets as a response to Rush's "phony soliders" comment. The reasoning, from ClearChannel, is that running the ad in the zone where people listen to Rush would only create conflict. I’m pretty sure it’s legal for ClearChannel to choose to not run the ad, but it certainly doesn’t encourage the idea that people will be given airtime to respond to a perceived slander. More instances of how much the free and independent media is neither when it decides not to be.
On the downswing for tonight is Lifenaut.com, offering seven gigabytes of file storage to create a mind profile, for potential downloading later into a reconstructed body or computer, after one’s cellular death. The information you put on is publicly available, so one should choose caution in what is added to a mind profile. This assumes, of course, that one can fit all the essential characteristics of oneself in seven gigabytes. Considering music collections are above and beyond that, I think we’ll need more if we want a true digital reproduction of ourselves.
Last for tonight, however, is a DIY wooden keyboard kit, for those who want to assemble their own USB keyboard. As times change, all sorts of things happen, even to things that you thought were unchanging. Take, for example, Flight of the Bumblebee. And while we ponder the nature of change, I will shift from one cycle to another, and go to sleep.
