Oooog. I hate working Saturdays. - 17 November 2007

They disrupt my sense of weekend, to start with - they also prevent me from watching padded rugby games, but from what I’ve been told, today’s incarnation was not worth seeing, anyway. See previous post for the results of that item. Spent half the day being the monitor of sorts for programming - mostly involved sitting and listening to the program, and not much more.

Russia will be leaving a 1990 treaty regarding troop deployments in Europe, because they feel the treaty isn’t working, and nobody wants to sign on to the 1999 version that Russia likes. Is it me, or does the media narrative continue to make Russia out to be somewhat like an old man who was good in his prime, has since faded, but insists that he’s still relevant and demands that everyone see him as he was those years ago?

Mr. Gore, as a Nobel Prize Winner, has a dinner date at the White House. As the comments show, the jokes, snipes, infighting, and continued attacks mean that the Gore-supporting country still hasn’t forgiven anyone for what happened in 2000. I expect much material to be found and commented on in this visit. In more general terms, the American public thinks mroe favorably of Democrats than Republicans. The gap is closing, and by the time election times roll about, there will probably not be as much of a difference in opinions.

The People's Republic of China has reminded its fire-fighting corps that bribes and sexual favors are not to be accepted for their services. Apparently, there’s a lot of that going around. Obviously, we have underestimated the value of firefighting ability and equipment.

Regarding Iraq, Tom Philpott interviews selected new recruits on why they joined up, even with opinion against the Iraq war. I do note that while he wanted to interview recruits at random, he instead gets recruits selected for their articulate demeanor to speak with him. Call it cynical, but they were probably also selected for their ability and willingness to espouse certain philosophies. I’m sure they believe it, so it’s not forcing them to say something they don’t want to.

A better idea for the world would be to take Peggy Noonan's advice on how to be a beacon of liberty, excluding the part where she implies that conservatives have been worrying about the important parts of this issue for quite a while now. Still, a relatively solid piece for everyone to start working toward - the real good, where the virtue is apparent by itself, rather than needing strident denouncements of vice. To provide an excellent example of why Noonan’s view is superior, why it’s none other than Bill’O! How convenient that he should loudly denounce a movie based on true events of American soldiers (although as Olbermann noted, not without having a commercial for said movie in the middle of his show. Bit of a gaffe there, Faux.) because it happens to show them in a less-than-favorable light. Wouldn’t it be better for such a movie to be a fiction because the real military never did such things? We support the troops, Bill - perhaps not in the yellow-ribbon empty-phrase way you do, but be assured that what we do, we do with what we believe are the best interests of the troops.

Thomas Friedman lays out how a gasoline tax of about $1 a gallon in 2001 could have changed the way the country works, increasing pressure to decrease dependence on foreign oil, develop new and more fuel-efficient vehicles and ideas, and to starve out ideologies that were being funded by oil dollars from America. Supposedly, Detroit would have had to adapt or die (there’s a strong possibility it would have been die). The market solution that was instead taken has seen oil prices go way up - although I think the United States’ actions in the Middle East has certainly strongly contributed to this. Perhaps after being slapped with a gas tax, the country would be less willing to go invade, or we might now be complaining about $4+ gas prices, no further along to innovation, and still in the Iraq situation as deep as we are now. Either way, Friedman says that most people should support a gas tax increase, regardless of what we think ideologically.

As perhaps an alternative to paying more for products and continuing to do business as usual, Frito-Lay, with the blessing of parent company PepsiCo, is retooling their factories to try and get them as far off the grid as they can be.

Mona Charen doesn't think Ron Paul is "Hope for America" - she looks into his past, his policy, and his associations, and finds a fringe, history-unaware candidate being supported by an awful lot of rabid zealots rather than someone who could actually win a presidential office and run the country. When Ron Paul supporters are raided for the production of illegal currency, claiming their money can restore the markets by being based on a non-fluctuating currency. Isn’t that impossible? In any case, Mr. Paul, if these are your supporters, I think the snowball has a better chance than you do.

Inspector Lohmann trips my deja vu filter with the differing accounts of a Haitian immigrant's death at the hands of police - on one hand, the policeman “had to fire” when the young man scuffled with him. On the other side, the young man may have been tired of being frisked for no reason, and asked the officer why, provoking a violent response for daring to question the authority of the officer. The truth is probably somewhere in between - perhaps the question was aggressive, the response was belligerent, and the two fought until the teen was killed. Lohmann takes this as a broader indication of the state of America - where we’re all Free enough to stand by and cede control to authority, which then turns around and abuses us with it and destroys anyone who objects to the ceding or the abuse.

A Colorado ballot initiative is considering defining a fertilized egg as a person, and being entitled to all the rights delivered to people. The proponents of the initiative are calling it what it really is, an attempt at banning abortion, and the challenges to the initiative say that it’s a ban on abortion, but there’s no language in the proposal that mentions such, and so it’s misleading. Either way, Colorado may not be a good state to be in, if you’re female.

Of course, we can’t let political figures be the only people who feed at the quiche trough. There’s plenty for all. Yes, you, Hyde Park Baptist Church, based in Austin, Texas, because you canceled an interfaith meeting on your property after learning that there would be Muslims there and hosting the event. Luckily for the interfaith meeting, the largest synagogue in the area offered to let them use their facilities.

And then there’s the cute account of the minister and the Klansman allying themselves to attack Microsoft's policies that are tolerant toward gays. For an example of how I think religion should be behaving, Desmond Tutu's chiding of the Anglican church is a good place to start.

After all that cheery talk, a biologist saying we should be expecting a new epidemic sometime soon is probably not the thing to reverse our mood.

A Family Guy joke might, however. Just remember, kids, say no to toad.

Going more toward cultural matters, are whites wearing dreadlocks just stealing black culture, or is there another reason behind it? If hairstyle isn’t your thing, then perhaps a tour of some of the odder uses of wiki software? Is it bad that I know and have visited most of them?

Something much weirder than the previous is the person who may have dumped ashes in the Pirates of the Carribean Disney ride. It’s claimed to be baby powder, but apparently, sprinkling ashes on Disney rides is popular. Having been to both Disney places, my question is... why?

With services offering to test out genetic predispositions, what will people do with that knowledge? Again, it’s a possibility that genes and genetic testing could spark new waves of bad behavior, or parents reading their child’s genome prints may try to steer them in ways that their genes seem to like, possibly closing off avenues of good development, even if they would require a little more work. And there’s still the spectre of defining one’s child to some degree of order in their genes. All sorts of possibilities with this data, even if all the warnings are thrown up and things are explained in exquisite detail how much or little the gene map actually means.

Next to the last point for tonight, we get a reveiw of "Gonzo", a biography of one Hunter S. Thompson, probable inspiration of many characters, whether closer or farther away from the reality of the man himself.

Last for tonight, however, is a review of the biography of Eiji Tsuburaya. Why do we care about this name? One word: Godzilla. He’s the guy who pioneered the rubber-suit monster stomping on miniatures special effect, and may the person we have to thank for all the tokusatsu that has followed, including the Super Sentai series, the Masked Riders, and all those other great-fun with giant monsters shows and movies we all enjoy.

Right. Bed. Soon, I would think.

Back to work tomorrow - 18 November 2007

Admittedly, it’ll be a short work week, because there’s a federal holiday this week. But before it, I scheduled in to have a thorough scrubbing and cleaning of one of the collections, so we’ll have earned it by the time we get to that point.

Everybody say hi to dualistic, who recently took the plunge and decided I was worth friending. Stand up, introduce yourself, and tell me how you arrived here, please? We’re always curious to what sort of marketing techniques managed to draw you in.

According to one of our agents stationed around the Northeast, Doctor Football’s team continues their dominant march over the professional landscape, with The Michigan Man at the helm, throwing five scores in a sequence where the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo scored on their first seven attempts.

Back in collegiate turf, there’s a lot of articles showing up about the alma mater. First, Lloyd Carr is retiring after the bowl game. Much speculation already happening this season, now there will be even more. The legacy likely to be left behind by Carr is going to be good, both on the field and off, even if some of us might wish that his career had ended better.

And how does a graduate student who’s spent twelve years on an M.B.A. make the New York Times? By being the Michigan Marching Band's pep-talk specialist.

The Atari corporation may be fading away from the video game consciousness, if revenues don’t improve for them. Of course, the products produced by Atari haven’t exactly been the ones people are talking about in the modern era. For classic gamers, Atari is still gold. To see the pioneer go is definitely a sign that the times have changed.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a much stronger warning about the dangers of continued carbon dioxide production, forecasting a large amount of big, damaging changes that will result from a lack of action, as well as proposing alternatives that are supposed to be cheap in global economy terms. Moving down to the corporate level, making sure that electronics corporations aren't endangering others when they "recycle" old electronics is a good way of helping things out. On the much more local level, perhaps using nine ways to use one less plastic bag will also help with the environmental problem.

After British troops left the Basra area, violence is about a tenth of what it was when they were there. Apparently, if you remove an invading force and the daily reminder that there’s an invading force there, violence against the invading force goes away. Weird how that works, isn’t it? Additionally, West Point cadets got a speech that told them to keep their heads on why terrorism seems to work - and to provide appropriate response, without over-reaction, without playing into their hands, and without making the terrorists out to be anything bigger than they are. Military people are getting this talk. Political candidates should be getting it, too.

Oh, and if you wanted to know just how things are run at Guantanamo Bay, a procedure manual has been linked to the web, so now analysis can begin on that facet of things. Still doesn’t necessarily close down the prison there, but it might speed the process significantly, and get more people to strongly demand that their country be the beacon of morality and the rule of law that it claims to be.

Internet phenomenon, meet political candidate. Not sure whether to laugh, cry, or say “Old Meme!” at Mike Huckabee's "Chuck Norris Approved" campaign advertisement. Then again, it's really kind of difficult to read political campaign logos, too, so maybe it’s a mixing in the message somewhere?

Dangerous precedents - a power permitting the United Kingdom government to demand persons under suspicion provide their decryption keys or plaintext of encrypted files has been invoked, seven years after the original law was passed. The recipient claims that she doesn't use encryption, despite some encrypted files supposedly being found on her computer.

In New Orleans, it is news to someone that the city council is composed mostly of white people now. Probably only there because of the heightened racial tensions and perceptions in the city when the hurricane ripped through. Of more importance is the Supreme Court agreeing to review Tom Delay's 2003 Texas redistricting that added five Republican seats to the state's delegation. Of course, there’s plenty of political stuff going on whenever districts are being redrawn, but Delay did his about seven years before the law normally redraws districts, with helpful results to his party.

Taking the previous Fox Attacks Decency and going One! Step! Further! produces Fox News Porn, the new service that many of us already have on our cable foxes. Watching the right shows at the right time will give more than enough blurry softcore for anybody’s teenage male audience. Oh, yeah, did we mention that almost all of the stuff on Fox is women in those kinds of situations? If you’d like a bit more stark example of the attitudes here, try the following on for size. A lawyer defending a man on a rape charge said the sex could have been consensual because the woman has a history of sleepwalking. Wait, what? Consent, despite being unconscious? I don’t think that flies anywhere.

Gene Simmons thinks that piracy is killing the music industry, apparently causing the lost of anywhere from 100,000 to 1,000,000 jobs and that the recording industry has no idea how to make money. Well, half credit, as the second part is right. But Gene’s probably got more than enough money as it is, and the whole interview there sounds like someone who’s hoarding what he’s got and wants to squeeze as much as he can out of what time he has left.

Although it probably violates someone’s copyright somewhere, a pictorial tour of the Creation museum. That should be about as much as we see of that place for a while now, right? We’ve had a review, a picture tour, about the only thing we’d do is see it ourselves, as a curiosity, and frankly, I’m not spending the money, no matter what it costs.

Next-to-last for tonight is the Korean camp to help people beat an addiction to the Internet. As someone who’s turned in the occasional marathon session here and there, I can understand the addiction part. Of course, I also have other things interfering with my ability to be online for large amounts of time, like work. And I like to get out of the apartment on occasion and see people. Still, I wonder how bad things really are when camps like these appear.

Last for tonight, play around with the Ridiculous Futuristic Cereal Name Generator! (echoes and all) And when you’re done with those silly things, have a look at Bent Objects, creating art out of all sorts of everyday things, and Really Bent, it’s slightly older, slightly more mature cousin.

Bedtime, now. Maybe when I get my furniture, I’ll start putting things up on the walls.