Late day, early night - 26 November 2007

You’ll excuse me if I’m a little tired tonight. I don’t have too much time to be witty and interesting, so you may have to do a little more joke-making yourself.

Of course, there’s always the steampunk MP3 player mod to distract you from what might be a lackluster entry. Or throw out a story about how even Santa's elves don't get job security. Or perhaps trying to wow you with the past's visions of the future. Not that I’d stoop so low as to just throw out random links with no context in an attempt to distract you. With tabbed-browsing technology, of course, you can get after all of those and keep reading on.

Facing severely decreased donations, Republicans are trying to convince independently wealthy people to run under their party ticket. “Sure, finance your own campaign, we’ll endorse you, and then you can have a Congressional seat!” This does run across both major political parties, but the Republicans seem to really be seeking those who are willing to stake their personal fortunes on political office.

Rain has arrived in Georgia. Whether any sort of institutional prayer uttered on the seat of government had any efficacy at all has the Slacktivist commenting that perhaps it would have been better for those prayers to have been undertaken in secret, rather than in public. Although other prayers have probably been answered, as Trent Lott will be stepping down from his post.

How many brain injuries? The Pentagon’s official reports through the end of September are about one-seventh of the brain trauma cases that appear when compiling data from the Army, Navy, and the VA. I wonder what the criteria are that have produced such wildly divergent numbers.

When Yahoo! set up shop in China, the Chinese government requested and received personal data on journalists that were critical of the regime. With the two men in prison, Human Rights USA sued and had a settlement made against Yahoo, Inc, claiming that the company violated United States human rights laws in complying with the Chinese government request. Doug Wilson calls this a victory for freedom, but the two journalists are still in prison. Perhaps there will be some pressure to release, but the difficulties of being a multinational, especially an Internet portal, are starting to develop.

Is Israel planning on cutting electricity to Gaza? All of this because Hamas took power in the area in elections? What kind of grudge are we nursing here?

The Slacktivist is genuinely confused by the conservative noise machine, because they can say with a straight face that Nancy Pelosi talking to Syria is Bad, but George Bush talking to Syria is Good. Most of the comment squad retorted with the first immediate thought - “Two-legs bad, four-legs good.” Anything Nancy Pelosi or a Democrat does is Bad, by definition, anything Bush or a Republican does is Good. I wonder if that mentality extends to the Department of Homeland Security's want to train firefighters to spy on the people whose fires they're putting out, or people they’re rescuing, since they don’t have to have warrants to enter buildings. Spy on your neighbor, citizen, and report their subversive behavior, like entering the public library and checking out books.

Much more dangerous than the noise machine is that almost 40 percent of people in a nine-country survey believe AIDS is nonfatal. Despite all the treatments and possibilities that extend life and stave off the worst effects, it’s still lethal. And the other news from that survey isn’t too encouraging, thinking more people are getting treatment and that people are still uncomfortable about HIV/AIDS. Which makes the Reuters article about older white women heading to Kenya to pick up younger men slightly scary, considering that there’s a relatively high HIV infection rate in Kenya.

If the particulars are accurate on the following account, however, we have a winner in a baby quiche competition, or a perfect example of how much kids really do look to their parents for modeling behavior and learning opinions. As the story is told, a single peace shirt that became many peace shirts provoked an angry response from other students, including the misusage of swastikas, further damaging that symbol, and “Support the Troops” responses (although possibly one self-mocking response in “I Love America, Because America Loves War”). The administration is treating the group as if they were an unauthorized club, without a faculty sponsor, rather than a group of friends all saying the same thing. If you stick out in school, there will be plenty of people who want to hammer you down and try to keep you in line. This situation is a reasonable microcosm of the world outside - group wishes to express a peace message, plenty of shouting and angry response, those in power seem more interested in finding some way of shutting down the peace group rather than their attackers. Peace is not a political message - it only seems that way to those who think their pet cause is being talked about. We wonder whether these differences of opinion will be allowed to continue, in such a way that both sides will have to come to the agreement that they disagree, and only incidents where there is violence or a credible threat thereof getting administration intervention. It’s a marvelous teaching moment, assuming everyone’s willing to participate in the lesson. And who knows? It might sneak outside the school and be a teaching lesson for the community, too.

Ooh, look, an ending distraction! The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, another fine organization, open to members of all gender identities, from the same people who brought you the Ig Nobel Prize for research that makes people laugh, and then think, Improbable Research. They’re probably at least partially responsible for the following poster about why curiosity often results in mindscarring. But I don’t think they have anything to do with the underwear tug-of-war kit available in Japan, nor the SKORPIONS shifting garments.

My professional self found more books to read, too - was scoping out some of the newest paperbacks, and there’s another Darwin Awards book on the way, in addition to a Ken Jennings book that will probably get checked out, and I ordered up a book I heard on NPR - and should probably go snag a different book, assuming it’s still there tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll ever not have books to read, it’ll just be a matter of how far behind I am when I run out of time to read. G’night, everybody.

VEWPRF Correspondence Post - leave an address, get an envelope.

Comments on this are screened out, but you’re welcome to use whatever method is most familiar to you.

If you would like VEWPRF correspondence from me, I will endeavour to send something your way. I cannot guarantee it will arrive in time for Buddha Day, but I will try. What I need from those of you who wish to receive correspondence, however, is a name, address and post code that I can send correspondence to that you will receive it at. Submissions received by some arbitrary date will go out in a batch, and then the rest will probably follow sometime after.

If there is anything more you would like with your correspondence than a card with a VEWPRF-appropriate platitude, please say so and I will attempt to fulfill this request. It may, however, delay your receipt of said correspondence.

Ready, go.

More work? Right-o - 27 November 2007

Work was accomplished today (no different than any other day, of course), and now visions are clearer, purchases have been made for other programs, and I had a really good look at the storytelling collection today, so hopefully I can pick up the stories that I want for the next reading sequence. Tomorrow, I’ll go back after some of the objects in the realia collections and see what I want. After the training, of course.

My professional self leads with Eyewitness to History, offering accounts of historical events from the perspective of those who were there. May come in handy for someone’s report and they need a primary source.

Despite cautious optimism from the United States and elsewhere about the leaders of Israel and the PLO agreeing to start talks and possibly develop a solution by the end of 2008, in Bethlehem, things are definitely not like the story of the manger. Long-standing grudges and wars make for a walled society where three religions all agree something sacred happened, but almost none of those groups want to get along with each other.

After all the stuff about how much Iraq is improving and that people might get their hopes up that troops would be on their way home, then comes the other shoe. Iraq might be offering the United States a deal to stay longer and help the domestic security forces on a long-term basis. Just when you thought things might actually improve and people would be coming home. Psych.

Nice to know that pets are eligible for joining a group life insurance plan at a community college, but domestic partners can't. Yep, the dogs get better treatment than the people. Even though it wouldn’t have cost extra to cover the partners, because they would be paying their own premiums. Hopefully, a light will turn on, and the community college trustees will fix the problem.

Big Head DC speculates that Trent Lott has also been meeting with gay escorts, but the escort has declined to comment about any relationship that he may have had with Mr. Lott, citing that it would be against his professional ethics to reveal anything. So, sorry, speculation is all you’ll get. With the trend of Republicans that shout loud against homosexual relations being somewhat closeted themselves, it’s always possible that Lott was hiring and not just meeting.

OpinionJournal manages to endorse an idea without endorsing a person by saying that Barack Obama has a good idea in visiting Tehran, but for the way that it can be used to swing the world’s opinion of the United States to backing us if we should go to war with Iran. If we look like we’re trying all the diplomacy that we can, and then, reluctantly but decisively, we go to war, that looks better. We get the high ground and moral authority and people don’t talk about a war of aggression. So the whole peace thing is out, but the manipulation of people’s viewpoints is definitely in. And the focus on Iran is detrimental to our interests, according to David Remnick, who says that we ignore Russia in the current world at our own peril. In more general terms, Liberal Seagull offers perspective and a suggestion to Americans on how patriotism should be viewed - not as “my country, right or wrong, and we’ll beat you up if you say otherwise”, but more of a “For as much as I love this country, it does some really embarrassing things at times. We’re trying to fix those so they don’t happen again.”

Wouldn’t be a government database without error. In the case of the Social Security Administration, however, errors are critically bad. Four percent of the SSA database having errors is unacceptably high. Especially if you plan on requiring Social Security information to be verified before employment is possible.

You may not want to be eating when viewing the following link. It’s not gross in the sense of blood and gore, but seeing animals preserved in formalin might be a little unsettling, just with how things look. Much more entertaining is the holiday album, "A Very Scary Solstice",, from the same demented folks that brought you A Shoggoth on the Roof.

Stranger than this, however, is that some computers start playing random classical music as their way of signaling that things have gone outside tolerances.

For as much as Guitar Hero and Rock Band let you rock out, Peter Hartlaub says that learning to play the real thing is probably going to make you happier. Thsoe who want to learn the real thing, will, I suspect, with our without the video games to rock out with. After all, we know that playing a four-arrow rhythm game does not make one a breakdancer. Or a waltzer. Or anything else. But the games are still fun anyway. For the person who wants to take things One! Step! Further!, however, Wikihow produces How to make your Christmas Lights Flash to Music.

This can’t be the first time it’s been discussed, but for those who wonder whether medicine really is taking a look at technology, there's a new paper published about the potential dangers of RFID chips for medical uses. All I get are the excerpts, though, so I have no idea if the data locked therein is also useful, or would require some translation and decryption to be intelligible.

Tonight’s Big Losers, who may not even enjoy the honor of being smacked in the face with pastry, may be doing their jobs perfectly correctly and according to the letter of the law. That still means, though, that the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously passed the language of a proposed constitutional amendment that would define life at fertilization. The arguments for the measure sound remarkably like the same ones that were used to deny civil unions and the possibility of marriage between homosexuals. “We’re defining something. That it also happens to have consequence X is noted, and if this passes, we’ll take full advantage of it, but we’re not deceiving anyone with our langauge.” Right. So marriage was “defined”, and then there was that action about “preferential treatment” that had consequences, and in this case, now it’s that they’re defining when life begins. The courts may be doing their jobs, ruling correctly. But then that places the issue in the hands of people who may not have any idea what sort of planned secondary effects will happen if they pass such an initiative. Or they do know and actually want that sort of thing to happen. Even with the respect that would be granted for correctly doing the job assigned to them, the Colorado Supreme Court loses big time.

Following up on that with something positive appearing in a very negative situation, Indian women in Banda have taken on pink saris and formed a gang intending to help women in the area. They refuse cooperation with government and NGOs because they want to continue doing things, and in their doings, they’ve uncovered corruption in officials and given thrashings to men who abandon or beat their wives.

The Big Winners for tonight are the crew of French restoration artists that built a studio and repaired an antique clock to working status inside one of Paris's monuments, all without being detected. Of course, when they revealed the depths of their plan, the first reaction was prosecution. They have, happily, been cleared of charges.

Our parting shot, however, is the fifty greatest fictional weapons of all time, according to Wizard magazine.

And so, bed time.