Dentists and the rest - 15 October 2007

So, I went to see the dentist today, and it turns out that while I have excellent tooth health, there’s some need for some fillings on some of my teeth. It’s not big scary cavities, but they are there, and my gums need to be whipped back into shape or they’ll go not only soft but diseased... despite having excellent tooth health, apparently, I feel like it was a litany of faults - small ones, I guess, but still there. Thank goodness for insurance, I guess. And I’ll be getting my money’s worth. Plus, now I’m supposed to be doing what I should have been doing even more now - twice-a-day brush, add floss, plus some flouridated mouthwash so that things that look like they might be turning into those cavities get beaten back before they do. I don’t know. Feels kind of like I messed up somewhere, even though I was doing at least one shot of brushing daily. I think I’m more... blargh about having to spend money on something that was likely preventable, had I actually gone and done it. Too late for that now, I suppose, but it’s still yet another expense eating up my finances. I hate having to spend money like this, when it surely seems like a result of my own stupidity. I probably shouldn’t be holding on to this negative mindset, but I’m not sure if there’s a spin, or at least a rationalization, that I could put on it so that it doesn’t seem quite so bad. The rest of my day was uneventful, actually, so this is sort of the one event that makes it all.

Moving past my own problems, Tonight’s lesson in History That Doesn’t Suck is that rice can be used as a cement. And now you know.

One way of getting more thrill into less space is to build a free-fall ride right into the side of your entertainment building.

And one more good reason why any sort of nondiscrimination amendment based on sexuality or gender should include trans people - because they're people, too, and everyone deserves that kind of protection. Better to have the extent of one’s opponents’ ability be something like trying to smear the 1964 Peace Prize winner in 1965 (for all the good it did them), rather than being able to be violent and discriminatory without any fear of consequence or revolt. Although occasionally people do just riot when stuff like that happens...

Austin Hill, in Townhall, agrees with the Czech President in questioning whether Mr. Gore has actually done anything to merit the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded, not seeing or believing that anthropogenic climate change is happening, nor seeing how someone trying to raise awareness of it has somehow contributed more to world peace. Perhaps indirectly, it can be reasoned that he is trying to bring about world peace by trying to reduce dependence and demand for petroleum products, such that when futures in crude oil have reached $86 per barrel, as they have, they can instead lessen demand, and likely, price and not contribute toward a premature petroleum shock. Some tips for the plebes to follow on reducing one’s polluting effect are available at the Happiness Project. Hrm. I suppose that counts as a paragraph about the environment for something like Blog Action Day, which was today. Or something.

Akbar Atri in OpinionJournal says despite what the Iranian government and the United Nations say, democracy advocates in Iran appreciate foreign assistance, even if it’s just operating a radio broadcast that has different perspectives that official government policy.

Domestically, potentially as a way of circumventing the process of Senate review, Mr. Bush's administration is chock-full of "acting" and interim directors and officials. Yet another feather in the Chimp’s cap for finding ways around the regulations, while a candidate who had a tagline saying "If you like oral sex, vote for me" stands by his words. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Bush-bash without someone making comparisons between now and the lead-up to the second world war. Thus, likely invoking some Internet law on the whole thing, Alternet posts a story on how much Americans now have become like the "Good Germans" of the past.

Perhaps balancing, or more probably strongly reacting to the current political climate, Ron Paul supporters continue to make media and voters say "WTF, mate?" at his continued visibility. They’re spreading information about a candidate they think can manage to sneak away with a nomination. For more insidiously, e-mail rumores are circulating that Senator Obama is a Muslim, with all the bashing, mudslinging, and Christo-superiority that goes with it. The Senator is not a Muslim, but a Christian. Regardless of the result, New Orleans would like to host a presidential debate in 2008. Might be a good way of keeping them in the public eye and reminding us that there’s still work to be done rebuilding, as well as letting them ask the candidates what they plan on doing to help reconstruct.

The last laugh may be on all of us, though as states pass differing kinds of legislation and regulation regarding illegal immigration in lieu of a federal directive. Some are inviting, others are forbidding, denying, and deporting.

As a warm up for tonight’s Quiche ceremony, observe the maxim “Opinions are comparable to rectal openings. All Humes have one.” Then, see some choice opinions expressed in support of Mr. Thompson, including someone unsure as whether sacrificing an hour of drinking time is worth being “protected” from potential terrorists. I wonder if they also consider an appropriate maths teaching technique to be flipping over a graph and tracing it, rather than teaching the transformation multiplications that produce mirror images and then graphing those. These people may very well qualify for stupid, stupid rat creature status, but the candidates for the quiche tonight are far, far better at it.

Getting into the actual competition, the forces of science (SCIENCE!), if you wish to characterize them as such, have already fired volleys today on a variety of subjects. Their lead shots come from four places where remarks critical of homeopaths, trolls, molotov cocktails, and false copyright claims all end up with the effect of having someone stop blogging or posting YouTube videos. Yet, it’s the science-types who are bullying others and silencing debates that need to be had, right? The atheists and skeptics are all forcing godless things down our throats and kicking us in the nuts when we protest?

The broadside volley comes form jokermage himself, with pictoral reminders of why you want children to get the standard suite of vaccinations. The consequences can be severe, even deadly, if those diseases aren’t fought off, and the vaccination method is a good way of doing that.

The tail strike, and tonight’s winner, is an op-ed that says that by removing religion and making all atheist is to remove the capacity for imagination and several other qualities of the good. This sounds like a more classical argument here, or maybe I’ve just heard it before. Either way, Ezra Klein notes that imagination and belief are two very separate things, so imagining something is still possible without believing it, and the Liberal Eagle concurs, as an artist and as someone who doen't believe in god.

Going out into Cool Things - take a tour of the garden that models the galaxy. Hope you’re not allergic to the space pollen. There’s also new ways of making light-bending metamaterials. So there might be some things disappearing soon. Or, perhaps, electromagnetic wormholes being opened, based on the same technology.

Last for tonight is Tim Wu in Slate, who shows just how much laws can be on the books and ignored, either through not making it look like something that should be illegal, even thought it technically is (prescription substances), or by indifference and focusing on other things (how most adult porn survives, even though there might be merit for an obscenity case).

And that’s the wrap for tonight. Now, to go brush my teeth (again) and get used to the taste of mouthwash, too. Oy. I’m probably going to have to build some extra time into a routine somewhere so that I can take care of my teeth like I’m supposed to now. I’m still not sure whether to say “Well, we caught it early, so that’s good” or to say “If I had taken better care of my teeth, dummy, this wouldn’t be happening.”

Okay, all that's straightened out - 16 OCtober 2007

Got the bit with the credit union straightened out - after realizing it would be Monday before any direct deposit stuff appeared, I thought it would be good to let them know that so that they don’t change my account over. Tomorrow, most likely, there will be mailing of things, and hopefully, there will be some rebates arriving. At least, that’s the idea. And cooking meats in the broiler seems to be eluding me pretty well. I’ll just have to give it a little more before I start using it or consuming it, since I left this one a little too close to raw and bleeding for health and comfort. Argh.

Moving onward to things in the pursuit of Nollij, Tara Lohan at AlterNet is worried that the big crisis isn't going to be an oil shock, but a water shock, thanks to privatization of water services, the still-faddish bottled-water routine, and management and manufacturing processes that draw out more water than can be replenished. Wouldn’t that be a scary triple-punch - seas rising, drinkable water shrinking and oil reserves running out?

The RIAA might not be able to collect on insane awards, if a constitutional challenge to the penalties goes through. Working on the grounds that paying $222,000 for 24 tracks is a cruel and unusual punishment, being well over a 9-to-1 ratio set by the Supreme Court, if the cost of the track is iTunes $.99. While I still think that the jury should not have convicted, it would be good to see this objection taken to heart by the court and have the award reduced to something that can actually be paid by someone, rather than something that will bankrupt them.

The Slacktivist starts a series that promises to be interesting - he’s taking a look at the possible reasons why most people think of gay-bashing as the first thing in their minds regarding American Christianity. Potential reason number one is that they're "safe" to rail against without being subjected to the speck-plank problem. Which, depending on how much buggery’s been going on between ministers and their charges, probably falls down pretty hard. There aren’t sins in others that anyone points out that don’t possibly apply to the person pointing, and perhaps in larger degrees. We condemn what we’re familiar with ourselves, after all.

If you thought outlawing abortion would decrease its prevalence, you’d be wrong. Abortions are just as common in places where it's illegal as places where it's legal. Now, which set has ones where the women survive more often? Here’s a hint. It ain't where they're banned.

Technoccult puts up a two-part series about how the United States has transformed into a police state through the War on (Some) Drugs. (Part Two available at this link). As such, there’s no need to declare any sort of formal martial law, as it’s already here. And in fact, declaring it might end up causing the revolt or the courts to really have a look at things and declare the whole thing to be insane. Not that it would necessarily have effect, but it would probably touch off some very violent happenings.

I think the New York Times is having fun at Mr. Bush’s expense in covering his increasing reluctance to see crowds other than sycophants. The choice of cover images there can’t be accidental.

Even Mitt Romney must court the evangelical vote, appearing as a fellow Christian, just of a different stripe. Those who he’s courting, however, seem to find him as alien as the members of the opposition party. Considering that many of the people that Mr. Romney is going to try and get on his side are specialists in driving wedges between denominations, this may be quite the uphill slog. But Mr. Romney does have the dean of Bob Jones University on his side, so maybe it’ll be easier.

Twelve former Untied States Army captains say that after five years, Iraq is still a nightmare and that it is time to either institute a draft or leave. The draft is political suicide and will probably have many of the same problems as the last draft. Which would leave the option of leaving Iraq and letting it collapse.

The states are preparing to cut the S-CHIP rolls in case their funding should go into limbo. So if this showdown continues, there’s a chance that the ends that the Republicans are aiming for will be achieved through attrition, while wrangling goes on.

In an attempt to get them to return home, FEMA is offering a whopping... $4,000 incentive to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Weak carrot. But there’s also a stick, where rental aid starts getting reduced as an incentive to get people to move away, until it all goes away.

As our lead-in to our Quiche segments, rewards are available for low-income and poorer students across the country who do well on their AP tests. Dollars to build advanced test scores. Question is, can those schools actually manage to get and hold an AP program, or will it be out of the question because the funding is too tight? Beyond that, the Bush Administration has said that it isn't participating in international maths and science tests, because it can't find the $5-$10 million USD needed for it. That’s right - can spend billions per day fighting expensive wars. Can’t find a small amount to test the nation’s children against others. Probably because he knows what the results are likely to be - last, dead last, and close to last, and it would just be bad press and another way for people to declare him and his No Child Learns Bupkiss policies to be miserable failures. The childrens is not learning, not while you stiff them money they need and then tell them it’s their own fault for failing.

Even so, after you leave the realms of maths and sciences into equally useful liberal arts, the climate on university campuses is less "debate" and more "shut up", which is a profoundly disturbing sort of idea, because university is supposed to be the last bastion to hear alternate perspectives to the conformity mush thrown at you in public schooling. If public schooling teaches you how to get a job and be a cog, university is supposed to teach you how to think for yourself.

Getting progressively more stupid, there was a physical altercation between employees of rival soda companies. That’s right, a brawl over shelf space. That’s just fantastic. Stupid, but not dastardly, as far as I know.

We can (and do) get worse than this, and in here we find our winner - Verizon confirms that it handed over telephone records or IP addresses in at least 720 cases since 2005, all without the required court orders. Their justification is that actually figuring out whether it’s a legal request would slow down efforts to save lives in investigations. Not only did the feds want all the people their target had called, but also all the people that those contacts had called. Oh, and additionally, there were 94,000 requests accompanied by a court order. That’s a lot of crime going on. That any part of it happened without the requisite court order should carry stiff fines for privacy violations. How many of us have now just been put on watch and listen lists, because we’re part of someone’s call record? For giving up and continuing to give up records without insisting on the rule of law, you truly are stupid, stupid rat creatures.

After that kind of stuff from the dredges, Our Cool Things Department follows a man trying to break the Cannonball Run speed record, outfitted with as much information and technology as possible to avoid and not be detected by police officers, so as to achieve maximal speed and speeding. Known for some other outlaw driving events, the run finally works for him... and they beat a previous record by at least an hour with some serious outlaw driving. After all that speed, the department then notes that a car-crushing, fire-breathing robot is for sale, just in case you wanted your own for an appropriate post-apocalyptic movie. OR as something to do with your demolition derby. After the car work, the department then turns to just how much lighting affects a photograph. And finally, we have to give Richard Branson some credit for trying to zip all the way down the face of a hotel in promotion of his airline. That all he lost were a few bits of his trousers means that this is probably a successful venture for him.

las found something in her brain - a way of living on the career of writing short fiction. The conclusion is that you have to live like a college student and a starved artist, and even then, you’re still probably going to have to write a novel or two before you can even think about upgrading off the 10 cent ramen for every day of the week.

For tonight’s last things, some money matters. The question of what financial security entails is a difficult one to answer, but Get Rich Slowly offers their take on what financial security is - no debts, good savings, control of your expenses, and working a job you love, not one that pays the bills. All things that are very good ideas. And as someone just out of university, at his first job, and staring loans in the face, I’m freaking terrified that I’m one misstep away from ruin. And that’s before any decisions like marriages or mortgages or vehicles. Even though I have a support network, I don’t want to have to rely on it regularly, because that means things are going pear-shaped. I think it’s just that more people have confidence in me than I have confidence in myself. I don’t like being in this position, and would rather get out of it sooner than later, if that’s at all possible. It may not be. Perhaps financial security is the ability to buy oneself brothel tokens (credit even in those days), of various imprints and denominations without having to worry that the fling will break the bank.

Anyway, I’m tired, and I’m going to go to bed. Getting up in the morning to tell stories is a great thing. Having to pay all sorts of bills isn’t so great, but it’s part of life.