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An' One - 27 December 2007
Dec. 28th, 2007 12:01 amToday felt a little like being the trained entertainer slash child keeper, but that should hopefully not be much of an issue. It’s still the problem of one hour of time being not enough for someone and there being no viable options for teenagers to go and do neat stuff after school. Anyway, onward.
The big revelation in news today was with me when I got up. The leader of a Pakistan opposition party, Benazir Bhutto, was killed by an assassin, who then set off explosives on himself after shooting Bhutto. The news of her death sparked a very angry response from the Pakistani crowd, including pockets of riots. No group has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the killing, but the current president, Pavez Musharraf, is suspected by some segments of the populace for being complicit, if not ordering and executing the killing themselves. The assassination comes right before general elections in Pakistan, and opinions are split as to whether they should continue as planned or be suspended. A crisis, well-timed and easily able to cause destabilization. Pakistan is not going to be a nice place to be for anyone for a while.
Having been removed from a major offensive for sufficiently long to begin rebuilding, Iraq is doing just that. Right Wing News believes this progress is obvious enough to be undeniable, with the implied assumption that the United States can take some amount of credit for how things have gone. It’s first steps, and a significant amount of this progress, from the looks of things, seems to have been Iraqis talking and working with Iraqis. The real test is what happens when the United States takes the supports away and sees if the structure that Iraq has built stands, leans, or falls over. In the final reckoning, though, I’d be more willing to give the Iraqis full credit for building something that works than the United States credit for doing anything other than sticking around to help rebuild the blocks they kicked over.
In India, workers are finding that call center life is just as hazardous to their health as it is to ours. Pay’s good, sure, but the hours and the customers are often hell. Not to mention the problems of potentially heavily accented English on both ends of the call.
Russia wants to put up a space base, from which they will launch manned and unmanned Moon and Mars missions, after 2020. Progress in exploration is a good thing. Admittedly, we still haven’t developed an FTL drive yet, which means we’ll be toddling around Sol for a while yet. Once we do pick up on FTL, though, I doubt Earth will have to worry about overcrowding for a good long while. Staying in technology for a bit, Technoccult says that while cyberpunk and transhumanism are still a ways off, there have been some real products that have come of it. Including drugs that supposedly help you build brainpower and substances that will help stop you from losing what brains you have.
The Navy's Judge Advocate General has resigned because his superiors do not admit to waterboarding being torture, despite several things, including the Geneva Conventions, I recall correctly, that forbid it. But “enemy combatants” are outside the law and the conventions, despite that designation being needed to detain them within the law and conventions. At least, I think that’s true. Still, kudos to the JAG who followed his conscience.
The FBI is expanding the fingerprint database to include biometric information now. Digital face images and other data, in your FBI file. In some places of the world, a traffic violation will now get you fingerprinted, which could easily mean that data is fed into the federal system, too. After all, why make the agents do more work, right?
Omnibus spending bill signed, Bush complains too much in earmarks and not enough for war. Wait, $10 billion in earmarks is too much, but Mr. Bush has been asking for at least five times that much to spend on his war. Who’s being fiscally irresponsible here? Admittedly, though, some money might be useful to repair the F-15s that have been grounded because of safety issues.
For 2007, the state of Texas had 60% of the executions done in the United States. Being a state that doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere toward the banning of the death penalty or letting it die a graceful death, Texas may soon be one of the only states in the union where people are executed regularly. And may still be providing “pro-life” presidential candidates.
Your daily dirt on Mike Huckabee: He hangs out and speaks with some pretty nutty pastors. Against Mitt Romney, another anti-endorsement. In Kansas, Kris Kobach is bragging to the GOP that he's been wildly successful at "caging". Caging involves sending a registered mail letter to a person, and then if/when the mail comes back because there’s nobody to sign for it, the voter won’t sign for it, or there’s nowhere to deliver to, the returned letter is used as a challenge that the voter is actually a registered resident. Caging also might be used as a way of making sure that all of one’s own party residents are registered and have proof. The practice appears to be an effective one for taking persons thought to traditionally vote Democratic off of registered voter rolls. Rounding out all the dirt and nasty stuff on politicians, Judicial Watch has a list of ten "Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2007. Senator Clinton, Senator Craig, and Senator Obama all make the list, as does Mayor 9/11 and Mr. Huckabee. In fact, only one of then ten isn’t a Senator, Representative, or Governor. And that’s the pardoned I. Lewis Libby.
WorldNetDaily is probably only carrying this because it happened on Christmas, but responding to an anonymous call about a man with a gun, police used stun guns on a man and his wife when the police tried to subdue them. The man had no weapon, but apparently did match the suspect description, and according to the accounts, physically resisted the officers’ attempts. I can see where the line of thinking leads to the stun guns, and I can see the line of thinking that leads to needing no stun guns. Small consolation, I’m sure, but at least no real guns were fired.
David Sanders reflects on how the Gospel of Republicanism tainted his Christian views, but that he eventually let go of the Republican version and had a look for himself. One of his interesting arguments is that if one were to apply the idea of WWJD to all issues, it would be expensive and not necessarily fiscally conservative, based on “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.”
Our Odd Stuff department has chickens. Even more, it has men beating chickens. With a hammer. While naked. This is one of the rituals meant to help men find their appropriate gender balances between masculinity and femininity at The ManKind Project. Several others involve nudity, and at least one of the other ones, according to accounts, involves reaching over and touching another man’s genitalia. While it’s not claiming to be any sort of “ex-gay” program, it’s not necessarily my first choice for where to go to find balance.
Further along in oddities, a crematorium in Colorado has been asked to install a mercury filter or remove the teeth of the dead before cremation. Mercury? Well, apparently amalgam fillings for cavities have mercury in them. And when cremated, that mercury apparently goes into the atmosphere and then becomes mercury rain, which is dangerous. The state is studying whether or not cremation produces enough mercury to actually pose a threat to anyone now, and whether as the popularity of cremation increases the mercury will begin to pose problems.
Last in odd stuff, a student made his First Amendment presentation by speaking ill of the Bible and then tearing pages out of it. While an effective presentation, the members of the school the student attends felt threatened by his posture and actions. Fair enough - one would hope we’d have the same reaction to someone who tears up the Constitution and calls it a “goddamn piece of paper”. While the school is not saying anything about the specifics of the discipline meted out, the incident is enough for some parents to be pulling their children out of the public school system. Rhetorically, I have probably done the equivalent of this incident here and there, and for that, I’m sorry. I hope that any shredding of holy writ that I do is done with a justifiable purpose in mind, rather than just as something to do. I still haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to off the Buddha, should I meet him.
List time! Technology review has two - the year in Energy, with cheaper solar, more efficient vehicles, and possible alternative energy sources, and the year in Hardware, with iPhone/iTouch’s touch screens that are cool, but lack a tactile feedback for button-pushing, context-aware stuff, robot cars, and multicore computing. Wired goes organic with the top 10 New Organisms of 2007, from glow-in-ultraviolet cats to vaccine-producing mushrooms and insulin-producing lettuce.
And last for tonight, The Weirdo gives us a different take on how to get equality, balance, and good harmony between the sexes. To wit, get male sexuality to be accepted with the same vigour and encouragement that female sexuality is, and furthermore, make it okay for men to be humans. Take away the assumption that opportunities for men and women is a zero-sum game. So long as you do so in a safe, sane, and consensual manner, it’s okay to be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, even asexual. It’s okay to be a bottom, to top, to think whips are neat, to think whips are something to stay well away from, to experiment, to ask people who know about sex and sexuality, to not have mind-blowing sex all the time, but to try for it anyway, to learn your partner(s), to have multiple partners, to hold your partners as equals rather than prizes, to be sensitive, to have feelings, to voice those feelings, and to ask your partner to do the same. It’s okay to say a safe word if you’re not comfortable or if you need things to stop. It’s okay to give the green light for more when your partner’s doing something you really like. It’s okay to have sex, seriously. It’s not something that needs to be shut away and not talked about. It’s okay to believe that sex should wait until marriage, and it’s okay to believe that marriage shouldn’t happen unless people are sexually compatible as well as emotionally compatible. It’s okay to be yourself in your identity. What’s not okay is the use of sexuality as a put-down or something that somehow makes a man or woman something nondesirable. What’s not okay is the social order that insists the most successful men are the ones that are pure macho, and that manliness is measured in conquests rather than experiences. It’s not okay when society punishes those who deviate from the narrow “acceptable men” paths openly and drives others to express themselves underground and in fear of discovery. It would be nice if we could get away from “battle of the sexes” mentalities.
What we need is the ability to not only say no to the images presented to us about what men “should be”, but also to go and find our own identity, without fear of the law (unless we violate the SSC rules), without fear of social ostracism for being a “deviant” or a “pervert”, without fear that if someone from the church down the street sees you marching in a pride parade, they’re going to grab megaphones and shout insults and degrading statements at you while you’re in your house and out on the town, spread rumors about you and try to call the law down on you for anything they can or to get you fired, without fear that your employer will suddenly deem you dangerous or undesirable and find some way of firing you because your identity is different. We need to go from “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to “Don’t care, except if it violates the rule of law and/or the guidelines of safety, sanity, and consensuality” (Yeah, it’s longer, but that can be shortened to “Don’t care” for most uses.)
My name is Silver Adept, and I approve this message.
The big revelation in news today was with me when I got up. The leader of a Pakistan opposition party, Benazir Bhutto, was killed by an assassin, who then set off explosives on himself after shooting Bhutto. The news of her death sparked a very angry response from the Pakistani crowd, including pockets of riots. No group has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the killing, but the current president, Pavez Musharraf, is suspected by some segments of the populace for being complicit, if not ordering and executing the killing themselves. The assassination comes right before general elections in Pakistan, and opinions are split as to whether they should continue as planned or be suspended. A crisis, well-timed and easily able to cause destabilization. Pakistan is not going to be a nice place to be for anyone for a while.
Having been removed from a major offensive for sufficiently long to begin rebuilding, Iraq is doing just that. Right Wing News believes this progress is obvious enough to be undeniable, with the implied assumption that the United States can take some amount of credit for how things have gone. It’s first steps, and a significant amount of this progress, from the looks of things, seems to have been Iraqis talking and working with Iraqis. The real test is what happens when the United States takes the supports away and sees if the structure that Iraq has built stands, leans, or falls over. In the final reckoning, though, I’d be more willing to give the Iraqis full credit for building something that works than the United States credit for doing anything other than sticking around to help rebuild the blocks they kicked over.
In India, workers are finding that call center life is just as hazardous to their health as it is to ours. Pay’s good, sure, but the hours and the customers are often hell. Not to mention the problems of potentially heavily accented English on both ends of the call.
Russia wants to put up a space base, from which they will launch manned and unmanned Moon and Mars missions, after 2020. Progress in exploration is a good thing. Admittedly, we still haven’t developed an FTL drive yet, which means we’ll be toddling around Sol for a while yet. Once we do pick up on FTL, though, I doubt Earth will have to worry about overcrowding for a good long while. Staying in technology for a bit, Technoccult says that while cyberpunk and transhumanism are still a ways off, there have been some real products that have come of it. Including drugs that supposedly help you build brainpower and substances that will help stop you from losing what brains you have.
The Navy's Judge Advocate General has resigned because his superiors do not admit to waterboarding being torture, despite several things, including the Geneva Conventions, I recall correctly, that forbid it. But “enemy combatants” are outside the law and the conventions, despite that designation being needed to detain them within the law and conventions. At least, I think that’s true. Still, kudos to the JAG who followed his conscience.
The FBI is expanding the fingerprint database to include biometric information now. Digital face images and other data, in your FBI file. In some places of the world, a traffic violation will now get you fingerprinted, which could easily mean that data is fed into the federal system, too. After all, why make the agents do more work, right?
Omnibus spending bill signed, Bush complains too much in earmarks and not enough for war. Wait, $10 billion in earmarks is too much, but Mr. Bush has been asking for at least five times that much to spend on his war. Who’s being fiscally irresponsible here? Admittedly, though, some money might be useful to repair the F-15s that have been grounded because of safety issues.
For 2007, the state of Texas had 60% of the executions done in the United States. Being a state that doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere toward the banning of the death penalty or letting it die a graceful death, Texas may soon be one of the only states in the union where people are executed regularly. And may still be providing “pro-life” presidential candidates.
Your daily dirt on Mike Huckabee: He hangs out and speaks with some pretty nutty pastors. Against Mitt Romney, another anti-endorsement. In Kansas, Kris Kobach is bragging to the GOP that he's been wildly successful at "caging". Caging involves sending a registered mail letter to a person, and then if/when the mail comes back because there’s nobody to sign for it, the voter won’t sign for it, or there’s nowhere to deliver to, the returned letter is used as a challenge that the voter is actually a registered resident. Caging also might be used as a way of making sure that all of one’s own party residents are registered and have proof. The practice appears to be an effective one for taking persons thought to traditionally vote Democratic off of registered voter rolls. Rounding out all the dirt and nasty stuff on politicians, Judicial Watch has a list of ten "Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2007. Senator Clinton, Senator Craig, and Senator Obama all make the list, as does Mayor 9/11 and Mr. Huckabee. In fact, only one of then ten isn’t a Senator, Representative, or Governor. And that’s the pardoned I. Lewis Libby.
WorldNetDaily is probably only carrying this because it happened on Christmas, but responding to an anonymous call about a man with a gun, police used stun guns on a man and his wife when the police tried to subdue them. The man had no weapon, but apparently did match the suspect description, and according to the accounts, physically resisted the officers’ attempts. I can see where the line of thinking leads to the stun guns, and I can see the line of thinking that leads to needing no stun guns. Small consolation, I’m sure, but at least no real guns were fired.
David Sanders reflects on how the Gospel of Republicanism tainted his Christian views, but that he eventually let go of the Republican version and had a look for himself. One of his interesting arguments is that if one were to apply the idea of WWJD to all issues, it would be expensive and not necessarily fiscally conservative, based on “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.”
Our Odd Stuff department has chickens. Even more, it has men beating chickens. With a hammer. While naked. This is one of the rituals meant to help men find their appropriate gender balances between masculinity and femininity at The ManKind Project. Several others involve nudity, and at least one of the other ones, according to accounts, involves reaching over and touching another man’s genitalia. While it’s not claiming to be any sort of “ex-gay” program, it’s not necessarily my first choice for where to go to find balance.
Further along in oddities, a crematorium in Colorado has been asked to install a mercury filter or remove the teeth of the dead before cremation. Mercury? Well, apparently amalgam fillings for cavities have mercury in them. And when cremated, that mercury apparently goes into the atmosphere and then becomes mercury rain, which is dangerous. The state is studying whether or not cremation produces enough mercury to actually pose a threat to anyone now, and whether as the popularity of cremation increases the mercury will begin to pose problems.
Last in odd stuff, a student made his First Amendment presentation by speaking ill of the Bible and then tearing pages out of it. While an effective presentation, the members of the school the student attends felt threatened by his posture and actions. Fair enough - one would hope we’d have the same reaction to someone who tears up the Constitution and calls it a “goddamn piece of paper”. While the school is not saying anything about the specifics of the discipline meted out, the incident is enough for some parents to be pulling their children out of the public school system. Rhetorically, I have probably done the equivalent of this incident here and there, and for that, I’m sorry. I hope that any shredding of holy writ that I do is done with a justifiable purpose in mind, rather than just as something to do. I still haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to off the Buddha, should I meet him.
List time! Technology review has two - the year in Energy, with cheaper solar, more efficient vehicles, and possible alternative energy sources, and the year in Hardware, with iPhone/iTouch’s touch screens that are cool, but lack a tactile feedback for button-pushing, context-aware stuff, robot cars, and multicore computing. Wired goes organic with the top 10 New Organisms of 2007, from glow-in-ultraviolet cats to vaccine-producing mushrooms and insulin-producing lettuce.
And last for tonight, The Weirdo gives us a different take on how to get equality, balance, and good harmony between the sexes. To wit, get male sexuality to be accepted with the same vigour and encouragement that female sexuality is, and furthermore, make it okay for men to be humans. Take away the assumption that opportunities for men and women is a zero-sum game. So long as you do so in a safe, sane, and consensual manner, it’s okay to be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, even asexual. It’s okay to be a bottom, to top, to think whips are neat, to think whips are something to stay well away from, to experiment, to ask people who know about sex and sexuality, to not have mind-blowing sex all the time, but to try for it anyway, to learn your partner(s), to have multiple partners, to hold your partners as equals rather than prizes, to be sensitive, to have feelings, to voice those feelings, and to ask your partner to do the same. It’s okay to say a safe word if you’re not comfortable or if you need things to stop. It’s okay to give the green light for more when your partner’s doing something you really like. It’s okay to have sex, seriously. It’s not something that needs to be shut away and not talked about. It’s okay to believe that sex should wait until marriage, and it’s okay to believe that marriage shouldn’t happen unless people are sexually compatible as well as emotionally compatible. It’s okay to be yourself in your identity. What’s not okay is the use of sexuality as a put-down or something that somehow makes a man or woman something nondesirable. What’s not okay is the social order that insists the most successful men are the ones that are pure macho, and that manliness is measured in conquests rather than experiences. It’s not okay when society punishes those who deviate from the narrow “acceptable men” paths openly and drives others to express themselves underground and in fear of discovery. It would be nice if we could get away from “battle of the sexes” mentalities.
What we need is the ability to not only say no to the images presented to us about what men “should be”, but also to go and find our own identity, without fear of the law (unless we violate the SSC rules), without fear of social ostracism for being a “deviant” or a “pervert”, without fear that if someone from the church down the street sees you marching in a pride parade, they’re going to grab megaphones and shout insults and degrading statements at you while you’re in your house and out on the town, spread rumors about you and try to call the law down on you for anything they can or to get you fired, without fear that your employer will suddenly deem you dangerous or undesirable and find some way of firing you because your identity is different. We need to go from “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to “Don’t care, except if it violates the rule of law and/or the guidelines of safety, sanity, and consensuality” (Yeah, it’s longer, but that can be shortened to “Don’t care” for most uses.)
My name is Silver Adept, and I approve this message.
