Oh, yay, another day - 05 December 2007

I’m usually good through my day, it’s when I get home that my energy level crashes and I don’t feel like doing much for a while. Today, there was much great discussion about the new branch being built, including some space changes that would have to get themselves approved by our collection services people, to make sure that there’s enough room for everything plus planned expansions and the like. If it goes through, though, the new dimensions will rock hardcore, and hopefully be enough that they can last for about ten years, when we’ll pick up some new space (and I’ll be all of a year or two out of being done with my loans, according to the standard repayment plans. I’m hoping to get done with that part a little bit faster.)

Luckily, I was not part of the flooding that washed over I-5 and several large swaths of the South Sound, being northward of that incident. I thought I was getting away from the floodplains. As it turns out, I may have been walking right into them. Ooog.

So, here we go again, once more into the sequence of giant links. Let’s start with a lightbulb shattering, just so that you know the content within is either so powerful that it overloads and explodes the lightbulb, rather than just turning it on, or that the material here is so stupid that the lightbulb shatters rather than turns on, and all the magic smoke gets out. Your choice.

insomnia, who has been with Livejournal for some time, including doing a lot of work on the marketing and staff part, expresses distate for the most recent selling to SUP. Even the bones thrown to the plebes do not appear to have the appropriate effect, with as many ways as they could be abused or rendered impotent. Trust, but verfiy, and do not engage in the Cult of Brad is the message. Well, we’re waiting, cautiously, to see what happens. There’s always the chance, however small it appears to be, that the new owners will do everything right.

The moving picture cabal takes down its toolkit after being informed of GPL violations. This does not permanently stop them from offering their material, but it does require them to come into compliance with the GPL, meaning source will be available for those who wish it. Those who want the source can thus scrutinize to see how well or poorly the toolkit is built, and even if it is necessary at all. And all of this without even having to threaten to sue them for copyright violation. It’s a good model for interactions between the MPAA and the supposed legion of pirates sharing movies.

Al-Qaeda is apparently focusing more on Afghanistan... except that there hasn’t been any evidence of it except for an uptick in violence in the area. Must everything be somehow tied to al-Qaeda? Especially those things that don’t have corroboration that al-Qaeda is even involved?

In Iraq, the rules have been tightened on Blackwater. This does not, however, lay out any framework for the prosecution of private security firms that break the laws. It just says that they have to coordinate more with the military when doing their protection functions. *finger-spin* Fantastic.

Israel doesn't believe Iran stopped nuclear weapons-building in 2003, claiming they have better intelligence than the United States NIE. So if there was a stop in 2003, things have since renewed and are moving apace, according to the in-house intelligence. Israel isn’t the only skeptic, though. George W. Bush isn’t convinced, and Norman Podhoretz and other conservatives think the intelligence community is deliberately trying to make Mr. Bush look bad. Because the intelligence community wants to do lots of things, from influencing the upcoming national elections, to heading off airstrikes against Iran. Y’know, not escalating a situation where there isn’t cause to do so, kind of like how we attacked Iraq without much for provocation or pre-invasion justification?

In domestic matters, Daniel G. Amen says that we should have our leaders and leader-candidates undergo a brain scan - any abnormalities that appear can then be used to infer what kind of leader they would be, and whether they might even be fit to be a good president.

Massachusetts is requiring lots of highway overpass tributes be taken down, citing safety reasons. On the chance that things might break or otherwise pose a hazard to drivers and those going underneath them, especially after repeated amounts of bad weather. It’s a sane idea, but it’s probably going to be sold as “Massachusetts hates the troops and are terrorists!” to those that will object.

More learning from reviews, this time about a rape that occurred at an MGM studio party in 1927, where the women called in were supposed to basically get themselves too drunk to care and have sex with the studio people there. One refused to be intoxicated and was raped in the back seat of a car. She pressed charges. Her lawyer didn’t show, the studio did its best to cover it all up, and an argument in the court trial was about how ugly the girl was. In so much time, so little has changed, it would seem. At least, in those media stories that actually do see the light.

Working on this same idea, but aiming much higher and describing a significantly larger conspiracy, Art of Mental Warfare publishes "Confessions of a Covert Agent", supposedly from someone who has seen the insides of the intelligence community, and the gigantic amount of psychological warfare that happens over the minds of Americans and has been for years. And then there’s all the stuff about interference in other countries. Admittedly, some of the advice offered at the end would be helpful in determining just how far the supposed conspiracy goes, as well as being things that would definitely assist the country in returning to some where around what the ideal of the country is. When this PsyOps confession gets paired with a Wikileaks page about academic research being funded covertly or overtly by the National Security Agency, for the apparent purpose of capturing, translating, transcribing, and then making searchable the telecommunications of anything that passes through United States networks (which does not require a court order, according to current law), the conclusion might be drawn that Big Brother is indeed watching and recording everything. The Students for an Orwellian Society’s Minitrue branch must be ecstatic.

Perhaps as evidence of the grand conspiracy, or just as a timeline showing how bad things have gotten, QuestionAuthority on Mondoblogo presents a Bill of Rights timeline under Mr. George W. Bush's presidency. Because, since we’ve been in the nightmare for six years now, it’s hard to conceive of a time when we were outside of it. Which is probably a failing on our parts. But every now and then, reminders come through. Like picket signs protesting the Ferndale, Michigan police decision to ban people honking when they see political signs, citing safety concerns, or a doctor arrested for trying to ensure an arrested protester didn't asphyxiate while he was being “subdued” by University of Michigan campus police, in addition to having ammonia capsules broken under his nose after passing out from the campus cop’s rough handling. According to the account, the doctor identified herself as a doctor and instructed the police and medics to the proper care and handling of their charge, much of which was ignored, and her attempts to oversee what happened to the man and monitor his condition were rebuffed. After all was said and done, she was arrested and then released when there was no grounds for keeping her. After filing a complaint, seven weeks later, she was arrested for attempted interference with police business. The jury said "You're f---king kidding, right?" and acquitted her of charges, although not without the prosecution attempting to make the jury convict her based on her political leanings. The story told there sounds far too fantastic to be true. And since I’m not exactly in the locale where it happened anymore, I can’t do any verification beyond asking my sources in that area to help me out.

Getting away from conspiracies, in America Ate My Brain, Part Two, the comic book series “Marvel Zombies”, where the superheroes are turned into super-zombies and wipe out the population they would normally save, is interpreted as a satire on the comic publishing industry and the United States Army. Your heroes are undead, feasting on you, America, and the country is feasting on the world in a similar manner.

Something that all of us should learn, and not just storytellers, teachers, and librarians, is how to talk to toddlers - namely, keep it simple, don’t worry about the babble, and let them steer the conversation. If you’re me, however, there’s not much you can do about the part where they run away when I get close.

If you’d like a lesson on why teasing someone can be a dangerous thing, read about a man who passed gas ,got teased, went out to his vehicle, got a semi-automatic rifle, and shot at his teasers. These days, saying anything at all, joking or not, could mean that shots are fired. Just ask Robert Hawkins of Nebraska, who shot many, including himself, in an Omaha mall. Apparently not wanting to be a burden, and knowing that the media would descend, he decided to go rampage. Perhaps it’s me, but ever since the media flocked to Colorado for the school shooting there, it seems that there’s been an uptick in these kinds of incidents. Not that they aren’t newsworthy, but how much attention do they rightly deserve?

The New York Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church has tried to come up with a new way of telling children not to get chatted up by pedophiles, including the ones in the robes. How? A comic book, one that can probably be colored in by the young children. Points for ingenuity, and for something that might help parents have to talk about those kinds of things. I wonder what else is in that comic, though. Anything that might make Jack T. Chick proud, perhaps? And, we wonder, how effective will it be?

Staying in religion, April D. Deconick says that the much-touted Gospel of Judas says that Judas was Ialdabaoth, not Jesus's most favored disciple. This based on errors she believes happened in the Coptic translation that National Geographic did. So now, Judas isn’t just reviled, he was a demon, enlightened to his purpose, and then sent to do his task, knowing full well what would elude him for sacrificing Jesus to the demons. Huh. Guess everybody wants you to know that YHWH is a dick.

The Slacktivist takes on another of those “What Would Jesus...” questions with regard to all the things that will befall us after we are dead or the apocalypse happens. Everything concealed is disclosed, which sucks nuts for all the bad stuff we did when we thought nobody was looking. And probably sucks just as bad for people who end up misusing that which has been entrusted to their care, be it a planet, or resources, or children. That’s not even the focus of the post, though. It answers the question “What would Jesus say about estate taxes?” with “Don’t leave one. Sell all you have and donate it to causes that help the poor.” If one has wife and children being left behind, I suspect as part of the responsible stewardship, he would want to make sure the family was well-cared for, but that excesses of that should be sold off and donated. But, not being Jeezis, I can’t say that with too much certainty.

Our winner tonight in quiche competition, not through being the only candidate, but because it’s really tough to top this particular incident, displays a remarkable lack of historical knowledge. And no, it’s not Bill’O and his “5000 years ago, Jeezis was here” comment, it’s Sherri Shepherd, fresh off a remark that she wasn’t sure whether the planet was round or flat, claiming that Jeezis predates the Romans and the Greeks. While we appreciate your willingness to understand the BCE/CE designation, umm, considering that most people still use that whole BC thing, and it means “Before Christ”, I think we can safely say that a lot of things preceded that particular individual’s presence on Gaia.

Okay, enough of that. Science! (Science!) And possibly Spark-like genius, here, too. Meet bionic cat, who now has metal implants in all of her limbs. Topping that act, though, is the system that uses human hair mats to soak up oil spills, grow mushrooms in the mats to draw out the oil, which creates a compostable mat. It’s a neat ecologoically sound way of cleaning up oil spills. Of course, it needs a lot of hair to pull it off.

At Alterati, the webmaster of Technoccult looks at alternative culture substance, rather than the style we’re used to. And notes that for 9/11 Truthers and those who swear by the pedals at their feet, if they should happen to worm their way into adoption by mainstream media or shopping habits, then they win and get the heavy lifting done by outlets designed specifically for the purpose of disseminating mass culture.

Technological news has I Am Seb documenting that the BBC has developed Perl on Rails, and why this development shows the BBC is made of fail. The story told appears to be one where crushing management and corporate procedure prevents quick movement, code that has had functionality removed from the language, and other tortoise problems in the environment of the Web’s hare-speed.

At the very end, though, if any of this has disturbed you, or you’re worried about possible threats from foreign countries, just remember - Duck and Cover and all will be fine. OR amuse yourself with comparisons between The Golden Compass and the Big Lebowski, thanks to sharing an actor with a similar sort of character in both sequences.

Anyway, time for bed. Have much to do tomorrow, like rearrange bookshelves and weed out older biographies. And get interviewed by sixth graders. That should be a hoot.