Making it all work - 29 November 2007

Waaaaaaark. It was a productive meeting, most certainly, but my head is spinning a bit more than usual, trying to get all the planning in order. I think I’m going to need to see a calendar before any of this stuff actually makes sense enough that I can do my appropriate planning. That may be tomorrow that I start hammering things out. In addition to other work. (There’s always other work.)

Livejournal rolled out another feature today, and obliquely referenced it in a news post, instead giving the details in lj_biz. It's now possible to mark your own communities and journals for "adult concepts" and "Explicit Adult Content", in addition to also being able to flag someone else’s journal for “Explicit Adult Content”, “Offensive Content”, “Illegal Activitiy”, “Hate Speech”, or “Nude Images of Minors”. One flagging is enough for a “moderation queue”, and multiple flaggings get Abuse on the case, unless it’s for illegal stuff, hate speech, or kiddie porn, which goes straight to abuse.

Leading off tonight’s non-LJ news are the world's Ten Most Famous Uncracked Codes, which will give decrypters plenty to work on throughout the generations. Following that might be an equally interesting code to crack, as MIT is offering a Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize, as an incentive for businesses to get green.

The idea of Magick TV, which apparently looks to broadcast (using YouTube) programming related to Wicca and Pagan subjects, is intriguing, but there’s something about it that rings weird to me. Although, some other part of me says “Well, they’re getting it out on a broadcast medium. Shouldn’t you be pleased that alternative spirituality is now Web 2.0?” I guess I’m not sure what to think about the idea. Certainly a creative use of the web, but perhaps my ingrained prejudice towards printed media and network television has me suspicious. I defer to the wisdom of my reading populace in this case, if you care to investigate and report back.

Tonight’s lead entry internationally is that Saudi Arabia arrested 208 on terrorism suspicion, after releasing 1500 members of al-Qaeda yesterday. Um, that’s very interesting. Although, I suppose it’s no more different than how justice works here in America. Taking a quick trip back into the past, nukes in the Middle East concerned even Richard Nixon - regarding Israel, not the neighbors.

Domestically, Mayor 9/11 continues to have problematic ties - this time, his company has ties to Qatar, who have been accused of shielding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the 1990s. The longer this campaign goes on, the more disreputable people Mayor 9/11 seems to be hanging around. Would it take having gotten a blowjob in office before people decide against him? Of course, if all the debates are like the CNN/Youtube debate, where CNN selects the questions because they don't think the public would vote for appropriately serious questions, despite asking some very unserious questions themselves, then we may never learn anything about any of the candidates through their debates.

Yet another Bush adviser jumps ship. This one is an economic adviser, Alan Hubbard. Perhaps he leapt out because the Bush Executive Order regarding seizure of assets related to terrorism is a potentially infinite GOTO loop, and he didn’t want to have to deal with the fallout from that.

It's a bad life if your name is Rodney King. the same man who was beaten by the LAPD in 1991 received some light wounds in a shooting incident.

Glenn Greenwald has been sticking it to Joe Klein over the last two weeks. First, Glenn took on Joe for lying about what a Democratic FISA amendment would do and saying the Democrats have to behave like the Republicans if they want to survive on issues like national security. Klein didn’t do a whole lot of strong retraction, and so Greenwald thwacked him again about not actually reading the material he was commenting on. Not to mention that through his non-retraction and insistence that he’s right, he’s misled Time’s readers into believing that the FISA bill does the opposite of what it does. Who gave him that info? The Republicans, of course. Then, Klein manufactured a "controversy" by simply parroting what both sides said, and denied that he even had the skills to tell fact from fiction, despite the truth being in the bill itself. Greenwald esclated the complaint to the editors at Time. What he got in response was the Editors noting that Democrats and Republicans disagree on the interpretation of the bill, which, Greenwald says, is all we can expect from Time and a large part of the journalism industry. Forget determining what’s true and what’s not, even if it’s a simple task like reading the bill. All Time does is report “The Republicans said this, the Democrats said this”, and then publishes it. Liberal Eagle has a big problem with this kind of "journalism".

Warming up the oven for our daily dishing of quiche, I-35 is apparently either a corridor for the eventual takeover of the North American Union, the conspiracy behind the idea of the “amero” that will take over North America, or it is a corridor for pornography and other ungodly businesses that requires cleansing. In either case, The General praises those doing YHWH's work on I-35.

In the hunt for the quiche award tonight, a judge sentenced the entire set of defendants to jail after a cell phone went off in the courtroom during proceedings. They were released when the judge regained his head, and the judge is now on administrative leave.

Even though he’s said it many times over by now, people still continue to circulate false rumors that Barack Obama's exposure to Islam somehow makes him a threat, or that he will somehow dismantle the United States and turn it into a Sharia world, or just leave it open to attack by radicals. But that’s the things with rumors like those - they persist, despite being debunked multiple times. Kind of like how computer viruses still infect people’s computers, despite obviously being virus payloads, because some people don’t know how to spot them.

Quiche winners tonight are the people who forced the Texas science curriculum director's resignation on accusation of "creating the appearance of bias against intelligent design" . Once again, class, repeat after me: Religion does not belong in the science classroom. Science does not and cannot prove the existence of the Intelligent Designer because the Designer is not a testable hypothesis. The Science Curriculum Director does not have to be “neutral” about something that is not, has not been, nor ever will be a scientific hypothesis.

The Big Winners tonight have much to do with religion, as well. Minneapolis Christian churches are refusing to sign the legal marriage documents, still performing ceremonies and blessings to both heterosexual and homosexual couples, but requiring them to seek a judge/justice of the peace to go through the legal requirements. Considering in many places, the homosexuals still can’t actually get the legal paperwork, forcing the heterosexuals to inconvenience themselves may not be the most effective protest, but it might, even for a moment, make them think.

The last mark for tonight is some speculation about what the writers of Genesis meant when they talked about Adam’s rib being removed. Since men and women have the same number of bones that we refer to as ribs, it’s possible that some other bone may have been removed. And since there’s a lot to do with reproduction in that section, it’s possible the bone removed was a Baculum.

And yes, we’re going to combine that with the nine most bad-ass bible verses, of which at least one also has to do with the things men keep in their pants.

G’night, everybody.