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Back to work. - 26 December 2007
Dec. 27th, 2007 12:49 amHoliday finished, went back to work. Steady stream of users, got some professional reading done. All told, not too shabby. More work tomorrow.
Public Service Announcement from a librarian. Pay your fines, lest we send you off to collection agencies. Now, admittedly, you’ll have to accumulate a significant amount of fines first, or a lost item or two, but if you pay quickly and keep your balance down, the spectre of collections will not get anywhere near you. Additionally, for any proclamations that you may need in your life, the Bureau of Communication has sufficient forms and official notices for several suitable occasions.
I claim victoly on a previous wager, where I said that Will Smith’s comment about how Adolf Hitler perceived the work of the Nazis as good would provoke a media storm because some people can’t parse a sentence correctly. Will Smith has spoken again about how he did not believe Hitler was good, but that Hitler believed Hitler was good. All those betting in the affirmative can collect from their nearest zealot.
In other news that’s just weird, Egypt is considering placing "pharaonic monuments" under copyright and forbidding their exact replication worldwide without royalty fees. This not only covers pyramids, but sphinxes as well. Can they actually do that? They might have a better case with sphinx than with Khufu. Not that many people will pay attention, anyway. David Pogue tried to get the young generation to admit that copying stuff was wrong, and they stonewalled him. He’s kind of worried about that. Things are probably not going to get better as the movie industry finds that storing digital data for future generations costs a freaking lot more money than negatives, tapes, and scripts.
Internationally, Leon Aron thinks Russia's current hostility toward the U.S. is from a desire to be the old Soviet Union Russia, and that such a direction is stepping way backwards. Even more so, there’s not a whole lot that the U.S. can do about reversing this trend, unless they can get another leader they can work with, someone that Putin probably is not.
Domestically, some fallout from the material yesterday about Ron Paul’s supposed ties to white supremacist groups - the Inner Frenchman posts an e-mail forwarded onto him taht accuses a "Jewish Cabal" of attempting to discredit Mr. Paul based entirely on the presence of an icon in screenshots taken and posted. In this reasoning, somehow, the white supremacist in question is really a propagandist for Israel, and for some reason, Israel hates Ron Paul and is trying to discredit him. On David Duke’s website, John Young and Frank Roman rush to Mr. Paul's defense, accusing the Anti-Defamation League of trying to paint Mr. Paul and persons like themselves as "White Supremacists", gunning for the knee-jerk “ick” reaction such a label produces. Young and Roman pile on the ADL and the government all the ills that have come about and proclaims that their organization and Mr. Paul would have nothing to do with any of it. Please excuse any naturally-occurring skepticism that I may have of the sources of each of these explanations and their arguments.
With primaries arriving in the next week, Klintron offers some parting shots for all those in the races. Republicans are scary people who want to destroy the world, and Democrats have some really scary people of their own, although some that might actually be electable and decent.
There’s no present under the tree for several children who were hoping for some insurance at the beginning of this year. While the current SCHIP keeps those in the program already, new applicants are not likely to get in. The meanie in the White House says no, while asking that and more to play in the sandbox. Thanks to that and the growing power of immigrants, foreign countries like China and India, and the possibility of an economic downturn, the Washington Times wonders where the right-of-center coalition will be at in five years, and if they’ll still be able to be seen as an electable coalition. The newest members of Congress, apparently not as willing to stick to their ideological guns, have begun voting against the majority on meaningless procedural matters, just so that they can have some “nays” on their record. With as unable as the current Democrats are to get something through and over Mr. Bush’s head, I suspect those Democrats will find their own on the chopping block when an angry liberal base takes their ball and goes home.
Speaking of the lost, all those with GPS systems and other ways of finding themselves on maps, that can have other maps layered and detailed on top of them can thank Roger Tomlinson, the person responsible for the first Geographic Information Systems.
Robert Novak wants us to know that even members of the GOP are incensed that the CIA destroyed tapes of its torture against the recommendations of Congress. And then goes on to say that the CIA has defied the Bush Administration as well with the latest NIE and withholding other pieces of information from those who should be making the decisions about them.
In other segments, Beliefnet is on watch, to see what the new owner, Fox Entertainment Group, will be doing with it. We’ll see if it suddenly takes a seriously conservative and Christian bent or not.
Winning tonight’s Glass Ceiling Tile, to be ceremoniously placed on the offender’s head, after having it properly prepared with a quiche bath, is Ron Blachut, the writer of a letter to the editor of the New York Post Star suggesting that a pregnant Congresswoman reimburse the Treasury for every day that she is not at work because of her child. That’s right, every woman should have to choose between her child(ren) and her career. So no children and career, such that it is, or children and no career. There are no alternatives. Scouring pads or shoulder pads. And women should be punished for trying to provide for their children and raise them at the same time! I hope the letter writer encounters several successful women working with children, just so that the universe gets the chance to stick her tongue out at him.
Last, but certainly not least, sound advice from Carrie Schwab Pomerantz on choosing how to give money and/or time to nonprofits and charitable groups. By giving to organizations whose missions you support, the good feelings are much easier to come by.
Public Service Announcement from a librarian. Pay your fines, lest we send you off to collection agencies. Now, admittedly, you’ll have to accumulate a significant amount of fines first, or a lost item or two, but if you pay quickly and keep your balance down, the spectre of collections will not get anywhere near you. Additionally, for any proclamations that you may need in your life, the Bureau of Communication has sufficient forms and official notices for several suitable occasions.
I claim victoly on a previous wager, where I said that Will Smith’s comment about how Adolf Hitler perceived the work of the Nazis as good would provoke a media storm because some people can’t parse a sentence correctly. Will Smith has spoken again about how he did not believe Hitler was good, but that Hitler believed Hitler was good. All those betting in the affirmative can collect from their nearest zealot.
In other news that’s just weird, Egypt is considering placing "pharaonic monuments" under copyright and forbidding their exact replication worldwide without royalty fees. This not only covers pyramids, but sphinxes as well. Can they actually do that? They might have a better case with sphinx than with Khufu. Not that many people will pay attention, anyway. David Pogue tried to get the young generation to admit that copying stuff was wrong, and they stonewalled him. He’s kind of worried about that. Things are probably not going to get better as the movie industry finds that storing digital data for future generations costs a freaking lot more money than negatives, tapes, and scripts.
Internationally, Leon Aron thinks Russia's current hostility toward the U.S. is from a desire to be the old Soviet Union Russia, and that such a direction is stepping way backwards. Even more so, there’s not a whole lot that the U.S. can do about reversing this trend, unless they can get another leader they can work with, someone that Putin probably is not.
Domestically, some fallout from the material yesterday about Ron Paul’s supposed ties to white supremacist groups - the Inner Frenchman posts an e-mail forwarded onto him taht accuses a "Jewish Cabal" of attempting to discredit Mr. Paul based entirely on the presence of an icon in screenshots taken and posted. In this reasoning, somehow, the white supremacist in question is really a propagandist for Israel, and for some reason, Israel hates Ron Paul and is trying to discredit him. On David Duke’s website, John Young and Frank Roman rush to Mr. Paul's defense, accusing the Anti-Defamation League of trying to paint Mr. Paul and persons like themselves as "White Supremacists", gunning for the knee-jerk “ick” reaction such a label produces. Young and Roman pile on the ADL and the government all the ills that have come about and proclaims that their organization and Mr. Paul would have nothing to do with any of it. Please excuse any naturally-occurring skepticism that I may have of the sources of each of these explanations and their arguments.
With primaries arriving in the next week, Klintron offers some parting shots for all those in the races. Republicans are scary people who want to destroy the world, and Democrats have some really scary people of their own, although some that might actually be electable and decent.
There’s no present under the tree for several children who were hoping for some insurance at the beginning of this year. While the current SCHIP keeps those in the program already, new applicants are not likely to get in. The meanie in the White House says no, while asking that and more to play in the sandbox. Thanks to that and the growing power of immigrants, foreign countries like China and India, and the possibility of an economic downturn, the Washington Times wonders where the right-of-center coalition will be at in five years, and if they’ll still be able to be seen as an electable coalition. The newest members of Congress, apparently not as willing to stick to their ideological guns, have begun voting against the majority on meaningless procedural matters, just so that they can have some “nays” on their record. With as unable as the current Democrats are to get something through and over Mr. Bush’s head, I suspect those Democrats will find their own on the chopping block when an angry liberal base takes their ball and goes home.
Speaking of the lost, all those with GPS systems and other ways of finding themselves on maps, that can have other maps layered and detailed on top of them can thank Roger Tomlinson, the person responsible for the first Geographic Information Systems.
Robert Novak wants us to know that even members of the GOP are incensed that the CIA destroyed tapes of its torture against the recommendations of Congress. And then goes on to say that the CIA has defied the Bush Administration as well with the latest NIE and withholding other pieces of information from those who should be making the decisions about them.
In other segments, Beliefnet is on watch, to see what the new owner, Fox Entertainment Group, will be doing with it. We’ll see if it suddenly takes a seriously conservative and Christian bent or not.
Winning tonight’s Glass Ceiling Tile, to be ceremoniously placed on the offender’s head, after having it properly prepared with a quiche bath, is Ron Blachut, the writer of a letter to the editor of the New York Post Star suggesting that a pregnant Congresswoman reimburse the Treasury for every day that she is not at work because of her child. That’s right, every woman should have to choose between her child(ren) and her career. So no children and career, such that it is, or children and no career. There are no alternatives. Scouring pads or shoulder pads. And women should be punished for trying to provide for their children and raise them at the same time! I hope the letter writer encounters several successful women working with children, just so that the universe gets the chance to stick her tongue out at him.
Last, but certainly not least, sound advice from Carrie Schwab Pomerantz on choosing how to give money and/or time to nonprofits and charitable groups. By giving to organizations whose missions you support, the good feelings are much easier to come by.
