Days off, days on. - 15 December 2007

Working Saturday is a full day. Had lots of fun at it, with a program, but I need to remember on Monday to input the numbers for the program into our calendar. Quite the interesting time. Disrupts my sense of the weekend, though. But I should be okay now. In addition to the regular absentminded, I find that I suddenly start getting more absentminded when I’m anticipating or feeling rushed from something. I guess I just have to always be able to take things slowly.

Onward to news.

Alcohol was involved. Someone had a kitchen knife. And an argument that had already risen to the level of a shouting match broke out again. This time, though, the creationist stabbed the biochemist, killing him. Probably because of the alcohol, the judge gave a light sentence to the stabber. I have no idea what the sentence will be for the people who cut off a holy man's right leg after he claimed it could heal diseases and grant wishes. Should have also said that it only works attached to the holy man.

Either it’s good news that there’s enough of them to pass the bill, or it’s horrible news that so many people don’t get it, but a bill officially banning waterboarding and "harsh interrogation techniques" has passed the United States House of Representatives. Except that waterboarding was always illegal, because it was torture. We’d established that part, right? That said, I’d rather it were codified rather than left for further abuse. Speaking of torture and waterboarding, the Justice Department isn't giving over any information about the destroyed CIA tapes. Well, what do we expect? We couldn’t get a definite declaration out of him about the torture issue, so it would make sense that anything related to a torture issue would take a lot to get worked out.

As a reminder against blanket statements and assuming that all your opponents are wrong always, Michelle Malkin spotlights a story about a young Korean girl adopted by a Dutch consular, but then returned to adoption after supposedly not "fitting in" with her new family. As mentioned, “A child is not a returnable product.” (Which might be why Ma n’ Pa always said we were blue light specials - no returns, exchanges, or refunds.) If you adopt a child, you commit to raising that child as your own, for better, worse, or whether they “Fit in” or not. One cannot adopt children to fashionably cart around in a little purse.

Trusting WingNutDaily to report on all things involving abortion, but in this case, it's the Democratic attorney general resigning over a scandal, apparently with the AG asking for some inside information about a case developing against a Planned Parenthood in the area. It’s a mess. And it might be opposite day - Malkin and WND made sense there in both their articles. What gives?

Perhaps they realize they have to make sense for the American populace to get their message. The American Bar Association’s attempt at getting people to think of awards in a new light has failed miserably, and now Mr. Gonzales is merely the top "Newsmaker of the year" for 2007.

Or maybe there was subtle manipulation of the ionosphere, causing a broadcast scrambling, and that when I go back and see those things again, they’ll be the usual material. Who knows what the government is doing, funding research that will screw around with the part of the planet’s envelope that is really needed to do communication.

Cussing out your toilet for misbehaving is protected speech, according to a Pennsylvania judge. That someone was peeved enough over colorful language to call the police is enough of an oddity for me. If I read this article correctly, right about now, I’m thankful we don’t have ASBOs. And that anything that might cause for a re-up in membership for the Society for Librarians* who say “Motherf**ker” is protected. It still might get me fired, were I to utter such things within hearing of just about anyone.

The New York Times has a segment on the ease with which children and adults can insult, flame, name-call, and otherwise pick on each other, inside the classroom and outside it. While physical bullying still requires proximity, cyber-bullying can relentlessly follow someone around, regardless of whether they’re at home or at school. While it also has the benefit of leaving a record behind to be followed, it also reaches a potentially larger amount of people much faster - passing a link to a comment or something that they want to make fun of, an then the pile-on can commence. School really does sound more and more like a prison where the guards and warden don’t really care what happens.

Almost winning the quiche derby tonight is the state of Texas, which implemented a requirement that those seeking to flee emergencies using state transportation must first go through background checks. Ostensibly, to prevent molesters and rapists with outstanding warrants from getting on buses with potential victims. I’d like to say that if you’re scared to the point of having no piss with which to wet your pants, the idea of committing a crime like that or even an advance is probably not anywhere near the execution phase. The collected will not be left behind, but they will be evacuated separately from everyone else. Now, whether they can actually pull it off with a hurricane bearing down on them, that we’ll have to see.

The quiche-victors tonight are the Iraqi government, who ordered all of the women on their police force to turn in their firearms on penalty of having their pay withheld. This is the part of the “surge” that isn’t working, and is the part of the surge that has to work, lest the house of cards collapse in on itself, with or without the guy at the bottom trying to hold it all up. Having a sexist police force isn’t going to help distribute that weight.

Moving from something that can be plausibly denied as not religious-based to things that hold their core in religious beliefs, an ex-ex-gay minister interviews with the Southern Poverty Law Center. He talks about what the groups looked like at the beginning, the “exorcism” of his demons of homosexuality, and how dangerous it is for ex-gay ministries to be advertising to teens, considering their failure rate. Charged religious rhetoric, and then “recidivism” back to one’s natural inclinations can be bad juju for a teenage psyche.

Digby’s Blog puts out an interesting proposition - after having read Davidson Loehr's "The Fundamentalist Agenda", describing scary similarities between scientists presenting researched reports on fundamentalist groups worldwide, and enumerating the characteristics of fundamentalists (Men are Always in Charge, The Rules Apply to Everyone, The Children Must Learn These Rules Exactly, History is interpreted idiosyncratically, and the End Goal is a mythic Golden Era to return to), he suggests that there might be a two-birds solution to fixing fundamentalism abroad and here at home, even though the religions are different. Decrying Islam’s fundamentalists in such a way that several will be able to make the connection to how much the Christian fundamentalists at home are unAmerican might make for an effective hydra-headed attack against both groups. If liberals and progressives can also tap into conservative language and mindsets and use the key phrases correctly to get churches behind a progressive agenda, then maybe the fundamentalist strains will be forced to retreat back to the shadows.

The Germans, hwoever, are made of much actual win, making a bid to ban Scientology from the country. The Scientologists cry that they have the right to practice their religion, the German government sees them as an organization that incompatible with the German constitution. We’ll see whether or not Scientologists can convince the judiciaries that they are a religion and not a con game.

Our Cool Stuff for tonight, is pictures of some of LucasFilm's holiday cards from the past 30 years. Pop-up stormtroopers and Yoda’s philosophies to Chewie and the children. Really neat stuff.

But the last bit for tonight is Calico, the cat cafe, where visitors can play with the house felines. Which is really cool - the cats have finally found a way to start their plan to make enough money to actually take over, rather than just pulling the strings. Oh, and the part where a purring cat is one of the best psychological stress reducers there is, in my opinion. Even Sakaki might be able to pet the cats in Calico. Thus, with thoughts of kitties, it’s time for bed.

A day well spent - 16 December 2007

Well, I decided I was going to go watch the Fremont Philharmonic put on a show today, managing to fulfill a promise I made to myself some months ago when I visited western Washington. As things are, I thoroughly enjoyed the Puss in Boots show that the Fremont Players and the Philharmonic put on, and so if they can get me an instrument, I’m going to play trombone for the Fremont Phil. This makes my already limited social life time even more so, I suspect, and it does mean doing some driving, but I’ll share some gas costs and car space with przxqgl, so hopefully it won’t drain finances that much more than usual. Why I agreed to do something like this, that’s so very far out of my way, well, it’s a playing gig, and hearing the music they put on, well, it’s excellent music as it is, and then beyond that, I heard how much they could use a trombone player to make their sound even better. Rehearsals won’t start until after the new year, and I’m probably going to have to shuffle around my cooking ideas so that I bring along some extra food to work that I can scarf before heading out to the rehearsal/performance sites. Ah, well. New job, new location, new life. I don’t really regret it, even though I’m sure it seems insane to do.

What’s worrying me more is making sure that I adhere to my budget, as I don’t have much for wiggle room outside of it. I kind of hate how my brain translates “budget responsibly” into “if you spend anything outside of absolute necessities and bills, you’ll fall apart and become financially destitute”. I know it’s not true, but it’s a problem nonetheless. I’m not sure completely how much all of my monthly loan payments will be, and I’ve already got some things planned for vacation time and such, and so I know that I can’t be carefree about money. I need to relax and tell the bean counter that the occasional item is not going to break the budget, because the budget is built to have some wiggle in it. I just wish that my books would reflect that.

Anyway, enough of my personal frets and worries. If all I’m worried about is money, I can manage that. I can. Really.

Doctor Football wins again, keeping his march alive, and besting one of the two armies of New York. Two more victories and he’ll have opened the way into immortality. Remarkably, the nadir of futility that they face next, the aquatic Dolphins of Miami, broke their own streak and were able to turn back Baltimore’s offensive and claim a victory for themselves. Perhaps with this energy, they’ll be able to halt Doctor Football. It’s not likely, though. If Doctor Football gets by Miami, he’ll have only one troop in New York, and he’ll have to climb on the shoulders of the Giants to achieve his goal. Will the Michigan Man falter or stumble, or will all in Doctor Football’s path be defeated? Well, we’ll see.

Adam Freeman, in the New York Times Opinion column for today, demonstrates just how much meaning a comma can have, especially when applied in odd clauses and cases like the Second Amendment. The placement of punctuation really does matter. in other matters of law where hairs may be razorbladed, a federal judge in Vermont has ruled that a person charged of a crime is not legally required to surrender encryption passphrases. The person in question was arrested when officials noticed child pornography on his computer. However, when it came time to try him for the matter, the drive on which the materials potentially rested had re-encrypted itself. The evidence unpresented itself.

In worldwide news, there’s a pretty graphic going around that maps the world by oil reserves. Which is cute, but doesn’t really mean anything, unless some sort of interpretation id applied to it. The most common one seems to be that this map determines how the United States applies foreign policy with regard to the Middle East - not doing much to piss off those who supply well, unless we have a reason to invade and knock them over. Contrasting this idea with the material set out in Addicted To War, though, some balance would have to be struck between ensuring appropriate supplies of things and in pumping up the military to levels beyond what anyone else does (and still forcing schools to have bake sales to pay for necessary supplies).

Austin Cline, one of The General’s trusted subordinates, notes that if we generate a place where laws do not have meaning, we should expect people to behave lawlessly. The case of rape in the Green Zone is one that we’ve seen. So is Blackwater. What other ones have we not seen?

It has to take some nuts to do it (and apparently, everybody down at the South Pole has a big set of them, to go from the 200 degree sauna out naked into the -100 degree Antarctic cold), but the guys and girls in Antarctica need Internet connectivity. Meet the IT manager at the South Pole.

Back on North America, Dive Into Mark has a rather pessimistic progression that it calls The Future of Reading, a “play” in six acts, all composed of a statement from a fictional story and a statement regarding the way Amazon’s Kindle and/or electronic books have been. Each of the “acts” describes a way that some item fundamental to the spread of books and reading evaporates because of the material described, including, apparently, Newspeak-like rewriting of the past and the introduction of thoughtcrime, both through Kindle’s ability to update and to remember/send what a person does with their Kindle.

And onward into the news of the weird. Advice for gentlemen - know what's on the other side of the fence if you decide to piss through it, lest the dog have a nip at your penis. Additional advice - don't go burglarizing houses, as you might end up naked and in the same danger as the urinating gentleman above.

Science gives us a winning idea that may drop people off the organ transplant waiting list, if successful and wide-ranging in application - a weakened heart was repaired using tissue sheets grown from thigh cells. It also gives us the possibility where robots are able to feel something akin to pain and react to it. While the voice needs some work, the technology of sensing and reacting to pain or pressure could be a very interesting development for prosthetics. Or for A.I.

Other scientists are predicting people will leave real life for virtual life in great numbers, and that everyone will have some form of a virtual life within ten years. Between escaping reality and taking refuge from the slings and arrows of it, a large number of people are going to go into the virtual world and enjoy themselves there. I still don’t really feel I can afford the access fees for any of them, so I’m just sitting outside, still wondering quite what the appeal is.

We knew there had to be at least one morbid listing from 2007 - AOL has pictures of forty-seven famous people who dies this year. I’m getting older - I knew a lot of those names.

Through ldragoon, I was linked into a digital copy of Vitamin, a manga drawn about a young girl whose school experience becomes bullying hell. I’m wondering how much of that story is exaggeration, though. After the first few incidents, then the real damage is in the psyche of the person being bullied - it doesn’t help that each time she has a chance to bounce back, she gets cruelly smacked back down again. If nothing else, it pretty realistically shows how the world collapses around someone when the negativity doesn’t let up and the person being bullied doesn’t find or have the superhuman will/strength to bring about the end of the bullying.

If you can get past the awful web design and absolutely mismatched colors, the idea of Learning to Love You More has possibilities. The assignments are pretty random, then the people get a directive on how to prove they achieved the assignment’s goals, and then people participating post pictures or text of the completed objects. The assignments could lead to some very interesting opportunities or ways of injecting some weird into other people’s lives.

But as not to end on a down note, Happy Cephalopodmas! Enjoy the kitsch. Even if you can’t afford any of it.