Greetz - 07 January 2008

Welcome, one and all, to the show that hopefully doesn’t end for many years to come. I seem to have picked up another reader, so would sisterblonde introduce herself and explain why you decided to friend this journal? I’m curious as to the hows and whys that people find this corner of the Internet. No need for great amounts of specificity, of course. Spent today helping a friend clean house and yard and a lot of those odd tasks. I didn’t have anything else to do, so it was good, got me out into the yard and reacquainted with tools like push brooms and rakes.

Not too soon before her assassination, PARADE magazine interviewed Benazir Bhutto and asked her about her desire and drive to lead Pakistan toward modernity.

Tomorrow, the first United States Presidential Election Primary occurs in the state of New Hampshire - Cogitamus has the Republican lineup, with their appropriate Buffyverse villain beside them. Those are the candidates. George McGovern says we should still impeach members of the current administration, for all the harm they’ve done to the Constitution, to American honor, and to the rule of law. I’d be behind that. Impeach the current lot, elect a new set. To be “fair and balanced”, I’m also including Right Wing News's 20 most annoying liberals in the U.S. for 2007.

John Whitehead, a founder of what has become the religious right, says the current leaders don't have the brains to rule. Which means Mike Huckabee is definitely out, as he was stumping for people to join God's Army.

Sadly, No! points out how horrible democratic socialism is, in that all those Americans can't get up to the standard of living of their UK counterparts. So awful, those poor English, with their higher standard of living, socialized medicine, and other benefits.

Mexican boy adheres himself to his bed to avoid school. It worked, for a couple hours, and then the paramedics were finally able to dissolve the adhesive. No word as to whether the child gets a sanity break from school.

IO9 fires up the TARDIS and takes us back to a 1992 where women rule the world and have outlawed male-female sexual intercourse. Even the consensual stuff.

Just a little while after purchasing it, a couple found a note in a hidden room in their new house detailing the presence of a lot of mold. They hired someone to check it out, and as it turns out, the house had the molds, and lots of them. So the new homeowners sued Fannie Mae, because they didn’t tell them about the mold room. Fannie Mae has agreed to refund their purchase price of the home. So things end well in this case.

In technology, GM thinks it will be unveiling self-driving cars in ten years. The fruits of the Pentagon’s driverless car races, but it would have to be able to navigate inner-city traffic and those nuts on the highways that do 100. From large to small, inhibiting a particular hormone may assist in defeating diabetes and obesity. Said inhibition supposedly changes the manner or the amount of fat metabolized in the body.

Collaborative computing might have a new method - Napkin PC, where a square of flexible e-paper and specific pens can be used in the same way that doodling on a napkin would be. When the collaboration is done, zip it off to the pocket printer. Sounds like a good idea. Going from handhelds to laptops, Intel and One Laptop Per Child have called it quits, after an Intel salesperson tried to convince the Peruvian government to buy Intel, not OLPC. Much more positively, a 12 year old boy's nonprofit organization teaches computer skills to homeless students. That’s the right kind of spirit.

The Happiness Project tackles this issue of whether money can buy happiness. The answer is yes, but only when spent in the correct sort of ways.

Last for tonight is gorgeous wildlife photography. Site requires Flash, though. I really don’t like it when it’s a Flash-only site. The pictures are great, though. And now, bed. Work in the morning and all that.

Once more into the world? - 08 January 2008

Had an orange when I got home from work today. Om nom nom. $.29-plus-tax well-spent. Work itself was also productive - got to bang out some ideas with regard to the burgeoning gaming programs we’re going for, with exciting new possibilities. Tomorrow should hopefully be equally productive, although without the need for meetings. Although, weather-wise, the skies were pretty grey today. There was snow on the ground when I got up this morning, though.

A presidential primary in New Hampshire happened today, and according to the punditry, the projected winners of the primaries are Senator Clinton for the Democrats, and Senator McCain for the Republicans. Hrm. This means the Republicans may not have a front-runner, or even a pairing to fight it out, and the Democrats look to be shaping into a pair-race between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, with Senator Edwards making it interesting by picking up enough good finishes to possibly be a threat to either of the two front-runners.

In Iraq, an Iraqi soldier who killed two United States soldiers to protect a pregnant woman is a national hero. At least, in the Iraqi press. The official line from the U.S. is that the soldier in question had links to insurgents and was spying for them. If soldiers were shaking down women and threatening them, they should have expected negative consequences. In this country, roughing up women often gets you into trouble. In Iraq, where customs are a bit more conservative, negative consequences should have been expected. It’s not necessarily excusing the behavior of the Iraqi soldier, but it is telling about how much real progress is being made. If the Iraqi accounts are true in all their particulars, then stupid, stupid American soldiers.

Of course, if you believe Douglas MacKinnon, this is just another example of the MSM's obsession with declaring Iraq a failure, rather than doing actual journalism and reporting on all the good things happening in Iraq. And if Howard Kurtz’s view of how even conservative media members are going to bat for Obama is on target, I’m sure MacKinnon would point to it as further evidence of the media’s leftward slant.

There was almost an international incident between the United States and Iran today, but right before the U.S. warships were going to fire on Iranian speedboats, the Iranians blinked and went away. Playing chicken with a high-strung gun nut is not a good idea at all.

Adding to the chaos, Pakistan is angrily denying that there are plans for covert United States operations to be launched into Pakistan to assist with fighting the war in Afghanistan. It’s hell in a handbasket, it appears, and it’s spreading to a lot of other places. A UK bishop has claimed that Islamic extremists have created a "no-go" area in the United Kingdom where it is dangerous for non-Muslims to enter. The Government is not buying it, but they are looking into how well or poorly peoples of different faiths are integrating into UK society.

Domestically, even Mr. Bush must admit that the economy is not going as swimmingly as before. He stops short of the word “recession”, but there are a lot of people thinking it in the country, excepting for those for whom the hammer has already fallen. They’re saying it openly. To counter the sort of populist mentality that would have the government assist in getting the economy going again, the United States Chamber of Commerce plans on running advertisements against candidates deemed "anti-business". The choice quote here: “It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits -- and who it is that eats them.” That sounds remarkably like a threat to me.

Because of the ongoing Writer's Guild strike and solidarity from the actors, the Golden Globes award show will be a press conference rather than a red-carpet affair. There is a distinct possibility that should the strike continue, the Academy Awards may suffer a similar fate.

Conservative pastor wants fellows to buy Microsoft stock and donate some to a church, so that the stockholders and the church can exert pressure on Microsoft's pro-equality political stance. It would take a lot of stock, first, and second, watch the pitch from our friend the pastor. He plays the race card as a reason why he shouldn’t be crossed, and tries to tell Microsoft not to “influence public policy”, while telling people to influence Microsoft’s policy. If it were a matter of believing corporations in general should not be influencing public policy, this might make sense, but no, it’s anti-homosexual rhetoric with a little dash of a racism threat. And apparently, as a pastor, he can and should be influencing public policy. I think the First Amendment has some restrictions on just how much pastors can influence public policy.

Electing a creationist president would doom the United States, according to a University of Michigan professor. Well, with as well as we’ve done with Mr. Bush, who wants to “teach the controversy”, I can see where doom would be the forecast if a hardcore evolution-doubter were elected to the Presidency. On the other side of the spectrum, I’m sure some people are worried that their child is becoming An Atheist, Damned to Hell.

The SCOTUS declined to hear the appeal of Jerry Fitch, a businessman ordered to pay $750,000 USD to the man that he cuckolded. Fitch was fined under Mississippi laws that permit the man cheated on to seek restitution for “loss of society, companionship, love and affection,” as well as “the loss of sexual relations.” I thought we were done with bride prices, myself, but it appears that in some pockets of the country, you can put a price on love.

IKEA does everything, including putting up a comedian for a week while his apartment is being fumigated. There’s the obligatory camera crew documenting things, of course, so there’s probably going to be quite a bit of material for the comedian when it’s all done.

Cranking Widgets offers up something to know before utilizing the services of a cashier's check - make sure you can replace the money if it gets lost, as it can take 90 days to put the funds back.

In technological news, Adobe has been spying on their users, using something that looks like a 192.168.* IP address, but is actually a server owned by Omniture. When you hide like that, people think you’re up to something. And they’re not happy about it. If you’re going to collect data, best to simply say so and be done with it.

Doing their part to help with creation of virtual-world objects, Stanford University programmers have created software that allows users to design and create three-dimensional trees, based on mathematics and the wealth of data that botanists have collected on real trees. By navigating among various elements, the program allows users to choose trees and nudges them toward more popular choices, which theoretically are the more real-looking ones. Yay for trees. Can we get some other things to create this easily?

Finally, TiVo will be able to do World Wide Web streams. Meaning that new YouTube video could come through right on the TiVo. Assuming that the recording was done off a PC with the right software, or the video stream is from select sources that can be recorded through the TV set.

The 10 worst foods of 2007, health-wise. How many have you had?

Bust of Lenin found in Anarctica, with the cabin and Soviet base underneath having been buried in snow. It’s made out of plastic, surprisingly, and the elements have not destroyed it. It’s also visible from several kilometers away, apparently. Nice going, comrade.

Tonight’s ending material is a list - the top 25 science fiction movies of the past 25 years, according to Entertainment Weekly. Starts with V. Ends... well, you’ll have to find that out yourself.