Nov. 22nd, 2007

silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
Today was a successful day - the weed was very effective (and the shelves look a lot nicer now), and I managed to put my futon together by myself. The key to this operation was that I have high enough ceilings. Really. That futon is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. But it’ll make an excellent guest bed and couch, so I’m happy. So it’s been a successful day today.

Free book, writ in 2000, revised in 2001, about video game aesthetics. If you’re curious, give it a read, but remember it’s potentially dated.

Science says that looking the other way is a necessary social skill. Being in denial is sometimes the right thing to do, so that you don’t snap, or that you don’t really get stung by betrayals. In other words, being a pillar of society might very well mean letting all those harmless things go.

Iraqi violence is down because Iraqis are tired of violence, according to an Army general. So, not the surge, not the increased troops, not the great strategic management, but the domestic security forces asserting themselves and the people getting really fucking sick of things blowing up around them all the time. Are you sure that’s the message you wanted to send? It might even say that Representative Murtha is right, and I doubt your political superiors would want that.

In Pakistan, more than three thousand opposition supporters have been released, in a continuing attempt to reduce the tensions in the country. That emergency might actually stand down for once.

There’s a glut of articles about stem cells again. Probably has something to do with the announcement that skin cells may be programmable to behave like embryonic stem cells. Of course, there's still a lot of hurdles to jump over before we get to the human treatments phase, having to go through the Mouse Party phase, first. Then there’s also the debate about whether "playing God" in such a manner should be permitted at all. Really, though, when it comes to these kinds of things, you can't defeat the Weirdo.

The Republican candidates want to give people more incentives to get health insurance, so they do the Republican thing - offer tax breaks that probably won't help people with pre-existing conditions actually get insured. Because what insurance company wants to take on someone unprofitable? Although Senator McCain supposedly says he'll never use signing statements if he's elected, going back to the powers spelled out in the Constitution, to veto or to sign. Well and good, sir, but what method do you have in reserve for ensuring that your interpretation wins out? Will you be a hands-on head of the executive? I don’t believe for a moment that you’re not going to sit by and let Congressional interpretations of law stand.

Turning on the oven to set one’s quiche inside, Walter E. Williams finds little to celebrate in the present generation, preferring to continue to perpetuate the myth that the great generations stopped one before the baby boomers and have gone down since then.

For those of you who are writers, schoolpeople, or anyone who has to generate a report or written work as part of their profession or education, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, proofread your work! Providing yet another example why, the entirety of the United States' reading scores on an examination were invalidated because of a difference in pagination. Wrong numbers meant directions for “opposite page” should have been “previous page”, and the students were more confused than Florida voters trying to use a butterfly ballot. The kicker? “A good copy editor would have caught this in ten seconds”, according to the person interviewed by the Times. Once again, have an editor proofread your work. Please.

Going from one bad situation to the next, what if Microsoft had designed GMail? Imagine all the stuff that would be th... or you could just log into Windows Live Mail and see for yourself (“What did you do to my Hotmail, you bastards?”).

Pushing into nightmare territory, data containing personal details of every family in the United Kingdom with a child under 16 have gone missing. The official line is that they haven’t gone to criminal elements, but there’s a possibility for a really large amount of fraud, if that information does escape to criminal elements.

Going from scary to cool, though, NASA's Glenn Marc Mills has a nice list of observations on the challenges and progress toward FTL travel. That there’s even anybody at NASA seriosuly considering such means we might not have to lose all hope that they’ve limited themselves to the solar system.

And then there’s the art-using-old-stuff department, offering humanoid sculptures made from typewriter parts. Repurposing things for art. That’s one way of ensuring that people remember Remington’s typewriters in addition to their firearms. (Like the people who have Nintendo hanafuda cards.)

Countering the old stuff, we have some pretty new visitors to Gaia doing some creative thinking. Meet the laptop club, where very young children draw out their ideas for the ideal laptop. As a creative project that involves children, what you learn from letting them run free is always interesting. And with a keyboard like Optimus Maximus, they might be able to make those drawings real.

And then in a strange mix of old meets new, Peter Davison's Children In Need Special autographed Celery Stick fetched 5500 quid at auction. I’m guessing the proceeds go to charity, but I’m not entirely sure.

Just remember, everyone, neuter your pets, and your weird friends, and relatives. A kind message from the people who say they're not at all fixated on homosexuality. Why can’t they just admit they envy the man whose license plate reads "POOFTER".

And because there’s some sort of holiday tomorrow, here's a few things you probably won't be hearing at the dinner table. Of course, we do live in a slightly stranger age than usual. Still, gobble gobble. Have fun tomorrow, everyone.
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
At least, for those of us in the United States of America, where we have the second harvest festival in as many months, this one sanctioned by the Christian establishment. The pumpkins were still in force, as were the second-place candidate for national bird, other great foods, some of which are eaten only really once a year (which is a shame), and much more for conversation and laughs. And creme puffs. Especially the creme puffs. Yummy, yummy creme puffs. And much excellent food elsewhere. Hooray for harvest festivals.

Hopefully everyone got through their family gatherings today without resorting to blows. Jezebel offered some suggestions for conversations if you and your family diverge on political beliefs, but for some, that won’t do, as they insist there's a war on Thanksgiving, just like the war on Christmas. Or they make the claim that prayer to YHWH was the reason the Pilgrim settlers' crops improved in their insistence on how much the country is Christian and that Thanksgiving is a holiday where one can only give thanks to YHWH. Anything could have set them off. You can have your revenge on them, though, if you feel as [livejournal.com profile] pope_gulty feels about a supposedly culturally, politically, ethnically, and religiously correct cartoon. Or you can just use Elastic Waist's comebacks for well-meaning but obnoxious relatives.

The news doesn’t stop too much for the holiday, and there will probably be a few accounts of violence done tomorrow by those seeking special discounts on items available for a limited time. Others will participate in Buy Nothing Day, which attempts to avoid such seeking and try to make a statement through a single day’s nonconsumption. Perhaps they will then go out and hack a feed, and display a pop culture icon spouting gibberish.

NASCAR nation is apparently a hot topic for the Republican candidates, with Mayor 9/11 being sighted at a recent race, and then Fred Thompson comparing the Democratic candidates to NASCAR drivers - Mayor 9/11 courting the racing crowd, Thompson probably angering them but also trying to court them himself. I also like it how the Republicans think the Democratic party is the leftmost party, and that all the candidates there are the leftest of the left. One socialist candidate would put them all to shame.

Of course, with inspid, unbalanced, and otherwise bad debate formats from CNN and others, we may never have a chance of knowing whether there is something like that socialist candidate at all. If you live in New Hampshire or Michigan, time’s running out - the New Hampshire primary is Jan 8, after Michigan was permitted to move its up to Jan 15.

The stupid doesn’t stop either, unfortunately - police in Accokeek, Maryland went to the wrong address with their warrant and ended up holding them hostage and killing their dog. Perhaps if the family had kept a pet gigantic sea scorpion as well there would have been more accountability and the police would have been more polite. Supposedly, the deputies realized what was wrong immediately, and are not acknowledging that the dog was shot.

Just when I keep thinking that our schools have de-stressed enough to not be hair-trigger paranoid about everything, I get something reminding me that they’re still as high-strung as ever. A student who scribbled a "death note" with classmates names, in the same vein as the manga with the same name has been suspended. Everything must be taken seriously, of course. Here’s the question - what are they going to find wrong about the student that justifies their actions, and how much of the student’s situation, social circle, and place in the school social order are they going to ignore in looking for their justification?

A different police decision-making process produced a gentleman in a diabetic coma being tasered twice for fear that he was a suicide bomber. Since he couldn’t respond to the policepeople, and apparently looks Middle Eastern, he got plenty of voltage, and then a “sorry” when the truth won out. Here. Have some quiche in return.

For those counting the days until our robot overlords take over, there’s a ladybug-type robot that cleans restrooms, and a work assistant robot.

Despite their spraying techniques being flimsy and their evidence generally falling down in the face of some actual research, the RIAA appears to have enough clout with the courts that the Free Software Foundation is creating a fund to get expert witnesses in technical matters to testify in defense of those who are served with the cabal's suits. Not to say we don’t approve of the existence of the fund, or the help that the experts will provide, but I think this shows just how much the average person in the jury of their peers needs translators to filter out the BS and attempts to confuse them.

Wired closes out the posts tonight, first with 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets, of which nine everyone can agree on, but on the tenth, the dowsing rods, there is discussion as to whether they actually do work according to their stated goals.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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