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Caucus night. - 03 January 2008
Jan. 3rd, 2008 11:46 pmBefore I begin, I have a public service announcement. We implore you, at any point when you decide to have alcohol, leave the keys where you are. Be sure that you’re sober. Have a designated driver. Make certain, before you consume, that you will not move unless someone sober is driving. Because we don’t want a mother and her four children dying because you were too stupid to realize that you couldn’t drive safely! Please, take appropriate precautions when it comes to imbibing.
The Iowa people have spoken, and according to the results, Barack Obama is the winner of the Democratic caucus, and Mike Huckabee is the winner of the Republican caucus. An interesting start to the proceedings of the general election this year. Nothing is finalized, of course, until the conventions meet and the candidates are declared. There will be plenty of speculation, though.
Something that may have far more long-reaching implications is Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center's State of Privacy Map - the UK and US score the lowest grade, along with China and Russia. Canada and much of Europe fare much better. There doesn't seem to be much for stopping the trend toward constant surveillance, though, with lots of technology being developed for the purpose. Including attempts to establish a working pre-crime division by feeding in data and then monitoring or arresting those who fit the profile of likely to commit a terrorist act or crime.
In some segments of Iraq, where security seems stable, the Untied States military is getting the Iraqi populace involved in service jobs, such as sanitation or construction. That’s a smart military move. Once it’s in the process of rebuilding, especially if it’s something vital, the people of the town are going to be more likely to defend it. Reconstruction is a very good way of getting the locals to take on the burden of their own security. If this is the trend that gets encouraged, and Iraq is able to stand up again and keep things going without degeneration, then the hawks will claim success. Which they can, assuming they understand that in no way will they ever be able to claim that they had the moral high ground in starting the fight, so their reconstructive efforts are at best attempting to put things back the way they were, just without Saddam. Depending on the success of special teams being constructed to get detainees to embrace a pro-U.S. viewpoint, Iraq might be persuaded to believe that the U.S. invasion was a morally good idea.
Have to say, the following item caught me by surprise - the United States Justice Department is opening an investigation into the destroyed CIA torture tapes. They even went as far as to call the destruction of the tapes “obstruction”. Admittedly, the evidence is destroyed, so all the CIA really can do is suffer whatever punishment is meted out to it, but it’s very nice to see principles reappearing in the government here and there.
Khomeni urges election candidates to campaign without negativity. So attacks on candidates are bad, but promoting one’s virtues are good. I wonder if we could make something like that stick here. And what the campaign would look like if we did. And if we’d get any useful information out of it, too. Still, would be interesting to watch. That said, we don’t require tests of ideological purity before we let candidates run. If we did, we’d probably not have too many of our current crop.
The American populace is able to say one thing, do another, and give apparently contradictory polling results. Daniel Henninger attempts to explain how 70% of the populace can believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, while 84% of the populace considers themselves happy. What I believe Mr. Henninger fails to take into account is the ability of humanity to be happy, even in the face of problems or to be happy now, but worried about the future. Things may be good now, but if it looks like they’re going to get bad, then you can get both of those numbers. Mr. Henninger attributes the duality to people complaining about the corners of the society while being immensely satisfied with the core. Which is true - we’re not dealing with civil war or other disrupting influences. That doesn’t stop people from wanting to make the country better. If we’re not gunning for the abolition of the death penalty, we're trying to make it a bit more humane.
Donald Lambro is crowing at Mr. Bush's successes of this year, and the solidarity the Republican party showed in blocking the Democrats’ efforts to do just about anything meaningful this year. The Republicans have believed and behaved as though they were the ones in power, and the Democrats have been unwilling to risk political heat to stick to their guns, so it was a Republican year this year. And probably will be next year as well, unless the Democrats decide they’ve had enough and keep pushing things until the President signs it or enough Republicans sign on to override. The latest potential front is in Medicaid, where the Bush Administration is trying to restrict the amount of people enrolled in the program, by indirectly interfering with the ability of the states to set their own criteria for qualification. We find it appropriate, if reprehensible, that Mr. Bush continues to try and curtail spending on life and medicine while increasing spending on death and war.
The Daily Mail has quite an appropriate picture of the current Catholic Pontiff to accompany its article on the apparent focus of said pontiff on training, fielding, and using exorcism squadrons. It is the Mail... but it is this particular pope... keep an eye out for God Squads near you, okay? While you’re at that, though, give a kiss to your beloved to thumb your nose at South Africa's law preventing under-16 youth from kissing, touching, or rubbing up against each other. If you’re feeling particularly naughty, maybe nibble your beloved’s neck to bite your thumb at the law. (Okay, puns stop now. We promise.)
With regard to good people doing ill, S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher peg ideological identification as the key, rather than people simply submitting to authority. Looking at the classic experiments of the shocked learner and the prison experiment, the writers note that there was not a uniform obedience to the authority, nor were the participants not showing signs of making difficult moral decisions. Not all of the guards were monsters. Additionally, the writers contend that most acts of cruelty in these situations are not blind obedience, which tends to be stupid, but creative expressions and interpretations, which implies solidarity. So while it may still be true that evil can flourish when good men do nothing, it could also be true that the truly evil have paid the admission to their brotherhood.
Tonight’s guest star, however, and quiche dunce-hat wearer is none other than Pat Robertson. With Falwell’s death, perhaps he feels he needs to pick up some slack. We have Pat’s predictions for the new year. No word, of course, on whether he properly consulted the Umim and Thurim for these. Pat says China will become a Christian nation this year. The United States will not do so well, as Pat predicts violence, chaos, recession, and high oil prices in the upcoming year, as well. Considering he was pretty off-target with regard to, well, most of his predictions, I think it would be safer to consider Robertson just another huckster. If you really wanted to be nasty, though, you could apply the punishments for forbidden divination and claim that Robertson wasn’t talking to the true God, but Satan masquerading as such. So, if a pitchfork-and-torches mob wants to grab some of the pontiff’s new exorcism squad and go stage an intervention with Pat, I think it would be a swell time.
In honor of the passing of Netscape,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
torgo_x installed and attempted to surf the Web with Netscape 0.9b. While local files seemed to render reasonably well, the World Wide Web as currently accessible did not. We’ve come a long way since then. The use of Flash-only websites isn’t as nice, though. Going into movieland, IO9 makes a speed comparison between various cars in science fiction programmes. Obviously, there are plenty of other cars that could make the grade, and probably better than the ones described here. Going from big to small, however, and back into the real world, meet the world's smallest projector - a prototype at the moment, but one that looks to be carryable in a pocket, and good enough to project from a laptop onto just about any surface. It’s laser-tech and rechargeable, and looks like it might be about $200-$300, making it a really affordable way of putting some video-out on your laptops. Getting even smaller, researchers are attempting to mimic the propulsion methods of sperm as a viable method of delivering and utilizing nanomachines.
Staying in medicine for a bit, on the heels of the potential sleep-defeating chemical, a possible reason why dreams are necessary components of sleep - they permit rehearsal of situations and discovery of solutions. So the brain practices all those million-to-one odds situations, and does things that might work without really caring whether they’re improbable or not. Sometimes, that makes for some interesting solutions. Now, if we could only remember how those solutions worked out.
For those who have made resolutions for this year, The Happiness Project offers some tips on how to make them stick.
It’s time for some art. First, recruitment posters for the Empire, as imagined by someone who thinks in proportions of stereotypical science hero/superhero comics, and then the winners of the Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest, which are simply beautiful.
My professional self cheers as Jon Scieszka is named the United States' national ambassador for young people's literature. The writer of “The true story of the 3 Little Pigs” and “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales”, as well as the head of the Guys Read! project is a worthy choice for promoting reading of books to everyone. Plus, thanks to the focus we’ve been putting on them, young people are using the library more, and for more than just the free Internet access. But a new potential problem demographic has appeared! The 30something crowd appears to be not utilizing our services that much. Perhaps that will become the new focus area. Not to dissuade or take anything away from the teenage and college age crowd, of course.
Next to last tonight is a critique of the "Privilege" list that I marked yesterday, raising several good counterexamples of how the items on the list have very little to do with accurately determining whether a person really has a privileged upbringing. It says what I was poorly grasping at yesterday quite well.
Last for tonight, taking an XKCD suggestion to heart and building a basement ball pit. I think it was a great idea to construct, and I’ll bet the people who built it are the envy of all their friends. Rather than sleeping in a fun ball pit, I’m going to lay down on my mattress.
The Iowa people have spoken, and according to the results, Barack Obama is the winner of the Democratic caucus, and Mike Huckabee is the winner of the Republican caucus. An interesting start to the proceedings of the general election this year. Nothing is finalized, of course, until the conventions meet and the candidates are declared. There will be plenty of speculation, though.
Something that may have far more long-reaching implications is Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center's State of Privacy Map - the UK and US score the lowest grade, along with China and Russia. Canada and much of Europe fare much better. There doesn't seem to be much for stopping the trend toward constant surveillance, though, with lots of technology being developed for the purpose. Including attempts to establish a working pre-crime division by feeding in data and then monitoring or arresting those who fit the profile of likely to commit a terrorist act or crime.
In some segments of Iraq, where security seems stable, the Untied States military is getting the Iraqi populace involved in service jobs, such as sanitation or construction. That’s a smart military move. Once it’s in the process of rebuilding, especially if it’s something vital, the people of the town are going to be more likely to defend it. Reconstruction is a very good way of getting the locals to take on the burden of their own security. If this is the trend that gets encouraged, and Iraq is able to stand up again and keep things going without degeneration, then the hawks will claim success. Which they can, assuming they understand that in no way will they ever be able to claim that they had the moral high ground in starting the fight, so their reconstructive efforts are at best attempting to put things back the way they were, just without Saddam. Depending on the success of special teams being constructed to get detainees to embrace a pro-U.S. viewpoint, Iraq might be persuaded to believe that the U.S. invasion was a morally good idea.
Have to say, the following item caught me by surprise - the United States Justice Department is opening an investigation into the destroyed CIA torture tapes. They even went as far as to call the destruction of the tapes “obstruction”. Admittedly, the evidence is destroyed, so all the CIA really can do is suffer whatever punishment is meted out to it, but it’s very nice to see principles reappearing in the government here and there.
Khomeni urges election candidates to campaign without negativity. So attacks on candidates are bad, but promoting one’s virtues are good. I wonder if we could make something like that stick here. And what the campaign would look like if we did. And if we’d get any useful information out of it, too. Still, would be interesting to watch. That said, we don’t require tests of ideological purity before we let candidates run. If we did, we’d probably not have too many of our current crop.
The American populace is able to say one thing, do another, and give apparently contradictory polling results. Daniel Henninger attempts to explain how 70% of the populace can believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, while 84% of the populace considers themselves happy. What I believe Mr. Henninger fails to take into account is the ability of humanity to be happy, even in the face of problems or to be happy now, but worried about the future. Things may be good now, but if it looks like they’re going to get bad, then you can get both of those numbers. Mr. Henninger attributes the duality to people complaining about the corners of the society while being immensely satisfied with the core. Which is true - we’re not dealing with civil war or other disrupting influences. That doesn’t stop people from wanting to make the country better. If we’re not gunning for the abolition of the death penalty, we're trying to make it a bit more humane.
Donald Lambro is crowing at Mr. Bush's successes of this year, and the solidarity the Republican party showed in blocking the Democrats’ efforts to do just about anything meaningful this year. The Republicans have believed and behaved as though they were the ones in power, and the Democrats have been unwilling to risk political heat to stick to their guns, so it was a Republican year this year. And probably will be next year as well, unless the Democrats decide they’ve had enough and keep pushing things until the President signs it or enough Republicans sign on to override. The latest potential front is in Medicaid, where the Bush Administration is trying to restrict the amount of people enrolled in the program, by indirectly interfering with the ability of the states to set their own criteria for qualification. We find it appropriate, if reprehensible, that Mr. Bush continues to try and curtail spending on life and medicine while increasing spending on death and war.
The Daily Mail has quite an appropriate picture of the current Catholic Pontiff to accompany its article on the apparent focus of said pontiff on training, fielding, and using exorcism squadrons. It is the Mail... but it is this particular pope... keep an eye out for God Squads near you, okay? While you’re at that, though, give a kiss to your beloved to thumb your nose at South Africa's law preventing under-16 youth from kissing, touching, or rubbing up against each other. If you’re feeling particularly naughty, maybe nibble your beloved’s neck to bite your thumb at the law. (Okay, puns stop now. We promise.)
With regard to good people doing ill, S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher peg ideological identification as the key, rather than people simply submitting to authority. Looking at the classic experiments of the shocked learner and the prison experiment, the writers note that there was not a uniform obedience to the authority, nor were the participants not showing signs of making difficult moral decisions. Not all of the guards were monsters. Additionally, the writers contend that most acts of cruelty in these situations are not blind obedience, which tends to be stupid, but creative expressions and interpretations, which implies solidarity. So while it may still be true that evil can flourish when good men do nothing, it could also be true that the truly evil have paid the admission to their brotherhood.
Tonight’s guest star, however, and quiche dunce-hat wearer is none other than Pat Robertson. With Falwell’s death, perhaps he feels he needs to pick up some slack. We have Pat’s predictions for the new year. No word, of course, on whether he properly consulted the Umim and Thurim for these. Pat says China will become a Christian nation this year. The United States will not do so well, as Pat predicts violence, chaos, recession, and high oil prices in the upcoming year, as well. Considering he was pretty off-target with regard to, well, most of his predictions, I think it would be safer to consider Robertson just another huckster. If you really wanted to be nasty, though, you could apply the punishments for forbidden divination and claim that Robertson wasn’t talking to the true God, but Satan masquerading as such. So, if a pitchfork-and-torches mob wants to grab some of the pontiff’s new exorcism squad and go stage an intervention with Pat, I think it would be a swell time.
In honor of the passing of Netscape,
torgo_x installed and attempted to surf the Web with Netscape 0.9b. While local files seemed to render reasonably well, the World Wide Web as currently accessible did not. We’ve come a long way since then. The use of Flash-only websites isn’t as nice, though. Going into movieland, IO9 makes a speed comparison between various cars in science fiction programmes. Obviously, there are plenty of other cars that could make the grade, and probably better than the ones described here. Going from big to small, however, and back into the real world, meet the world's smallest projector - a prototype at the moment, but one that looks to be carryable in a pocket, and good enough to project from a laptop onto just about any surface. It’s laser-tech and rechargeable, and looks like it might be about $200-$300, making it a really affordable way of putting some video-out on your laptops. Getting even smaller, researchers are attempting to mimic the propulsion methods of sperm as a viable method of delivering and utilizing nanomachines.Staying in medicine for a bit, on the heels of the potential sleep-defeating chemical, a possible reason why dreams are necessary components of sleep - they permit rehearsal of situations and discovery of solutions. So the brain practices all those million-to-one odds situations, and does things that might work without really caring whether they’re improbable or not. Sometimes, that makes for some interesting solutions. Now, if we could only remember how those solutions worked out.
For those who have made resolutions for this year, The Happiness Project offers some tips on how to make them stick.
It’s time for some art. First, recruitment posters for the Empire, as imagined by someone who thinks in proportions of stereotypical science hero/superhero comics, and then the winners of the Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest, which are simply beautiful.
My professional self cheers as Jon Scieszka is named the United States' national ambassador for young people's literature. The writer of “The true story of the 3 Little Pigs” and “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales”, as well as the head of the Guys Read! project is a worthy choice for promoting reading of books to everyone. Plus, thanks to the focus we’ve been putting on them, young people are using the library more, and for more than just the free Internet access. But a new potential problem demographic has appeared! The 30something crowd appears to be not utilizing our services that much. Perhaps that will become the new focus area. Not to dissuade or take anything away from the teenage and college age crowd, of course.
Next to last tonight is a critique of the "Privilege" list that I marked yesterday, raising several good counterexamples of how the items on the list have very little to do with accurately determining whether a person really has a privileged upbringing. It says what I was poorly grasping at yesterday quite well.
Last for tonight, taking an XKCD suggestion to heart and building a basement ball pit. I think it was a great idea to construct, and I’ll bet the people who built it are the envy of all their friends. Rather than sleeping in a fun ball pit, I’m going to lay down on my mattress.
