All that and the bag of chips. - 05 February 2008

Did something relatively productive today - hung most of my posters on the walls today, so the place looks a bit more lived-in - took out some trash, some recyclable stuff, some cardboard. Much better now.

So, there was a flurry of caucuses and primaries to pledge delegates for the party conventions - according to the punditry, Senators Clinton and Obama captured various states and delegates somewhat evenly, from what I could gather. Roland S. Martin says we should forget the idea of the Clinton-Obama/Obama-Clinton ticket, so if one wins, the other will fade. With the results and James Kirchick's suggestion that Obama's popularity is based mostly on image and not substance, and it might end up being Obama who misses the nomination by a hair. On the other side, Senator McCain continued to stay a front-running candidate, while Mr. Huckabee took a surprising number of states in the Bible Belt to put him in a potentially stronger position than Mr. Romney. Now, the real politicking begins, as the strong try to convince the weak to drop out, the weak try to court those yet unpledged, or to try and exchange their pledged delegates for assurances of other sorts, until at the conventions, someone emerges as the party candidate. One hopes that this means after a bit, the political ads will die down until the candidates are selected.

Before we start with actual news, although the names have been changed, no doubt to protect against certain lawsuit possibilities, Aso Brain Games appears to have Java-enabled versions of various popular boardgames.

I’ve never seen the signature title associated with him, but Barry Morse, who apparently played a detective in "The Fugitive", died at 89 years of age yesterday. Versatility seems to have been his great strength in his career.

Onward to actual news (although we’re still keeping a hairy eyeball on Mr. Huckabee because of his successes). Today was Carnivale, or Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday, whichever you like to call it - a day of feasting before the forty-day fast required of Catholics in preparation for the arrest, execution, and reported sighting post-mortem of Jesus of Nazareth. For those getting ready for a burst of witnessing to the masses on the occasion of such a sighting, keep some tips in mind when confronting the unbelieving, and you’ll do fine. Do not follow the example of Dallen Johnson, who threatened to boycott a gym because it was showing PG-13 and R-rated movies and permitted the aerobics room to be viewed while the inhabitants were dancing. Protect us all from ourselves and our impulses, yeah, that’s the ticket.

United States troops in Iraq accidentally killed 9 civilians. Accidental deaths are a real problem in a war zone - the more people you kill, the less likely the people are to support you. Luckily, it looks like Vermont is attempting to assert the authority to recall its National Guard, claiming the mission that the Guard was sent over to Iraq on has been completed. An excellent power play, and one that I hope can be emulated successfully by others.

A significant portion of the intelligence used in the 9/11 Commission report was apparently extracted using "enhanced interrogation techniques". The Commission apparently ordered a second round of interrogation for confirming what they heard, and expressed some doubts about the veracity of their sources because they suspected torture was involved, but nothing concrete, of course. And now the conclusions drawn are drawn on much shakier ground than if intelligence had been gathered without the need to resort to torture.

Mr. Bush's budget proposals are cutting out a significant part of Medicare and Medicaid, under the justification that rising costs will continue to eat the budget until they are untenable. Well, there are some proponents of a universal care plan that could theoretically help keep the costs down - or at least justify raising revenues sufficiently to cover those costs.

Elsewhere in the world, those convicted of supporting failed suicide bombers in the UK have received up to 17 years in prison for their assistance. Wow. The accomplice penalties have gone way up - and now, you don’t even really have to do all that much to actually assist in a terrorism case.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says that solving the global climate change difficulties may require $15 to $20 trillion USD. Expensive, and only getting more so. The question is, who’s going to pony up that kind of money to try and steer us on another track? Unless, of course, they think they can make that money back with some profit left over.

A California bill working its way through the assembly would require philanthropic foundations with assets of more than $250 million to disclose the race, gender, and sexual orientation of their trustees, staff, and possibly grant recipients, according to a Wall street Journal op-ed. This is a bad idea. A very bad idea. Do we really want nonprofit workers being outed? Or giving hate groups a list of relatively high-profile people to target? This item doesn’t look to have been thought through all that well.

TBogg takes aim at the idea that “poor people are fat, so there’s no need to increase any sort of food stamp assistance because poor people buy stuff that makes them fat, and fat people need to lose weight, so they should eat less and buy better food.” in Soylent Green is Poor People. The paradox of ages is that unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food, thanks to subsidies that go into producing things like high fructose corn syrup, a common ingredient in unhealthy foods.

To really set your blood boiling, though, a rapid-fire sequence form our Unabashed Feminism department, courtesy of Bureau chief ldragoon and her cohort of feminists. Starting with why 10 years of age is far too young to be having a Brazillian waxing. Um, prepubescence, for one, and two, are girls at 10 really concerned about catching a boy to go mating with? On top of that, a very good reason why we need feminism to stick around. Reading that letter and knowing it’s from a 13 year-old, I shudder, but I hope that she’ll grow out of it before she gets put into a situation where it’s really hard to break out of a pattern that puts women’s necks under the heels of men. Climbing the ladder all the way up to infuriating, two sisters convicted of adultery in Iran have been sentenced to be stoned to death. Rounding out the section, as something meant to cheer for, rather than jeer for, Family Planning is Family Values. Because those who plan their marriages for love and their families for the ability and want to support children are happier and turn out better than those who have marriage and parenthood thrust upon them when they aren’t ready and aren’t able. The sexual liberation has been good for both sexes.

Intel announces a chip with two billion transistors. Chip density can’t get that much more packed unless we find out new nanoscale manufacturing processes. I think we’re getting close to the asymptote of silicon.

Out in space, rocky Terra-like worlds may be fairly common around Sol-size stars. If that’s true, then the chances of similarly intelligent and understandable life in the universe go up. Back here on Terra, though, Detroit and Flint are the first and third most miserable cities in the United States. Which means they’ll probably be the ones most likely to go out and see if those planets can develop life or to start new colonies on them.

The Art Department returns some pretty sci-fi images with Robots in Arts, which are really cool, and renditions of art where grey oval-eyed aliens are in the place of humans in various classical art pieces.

The Silly Criminals File produces a grandmother who allegedly hid crack and powdered cocaine in her brassiere during a raid. Sliding over a little into the Stories of Retail department, Rebel Yell shows off a Tale from working at a Half-Price Books. The rest of the blog is similarly excellent and worth reading, although it is not solely focused on Consumer Hell.

Next to last for tonight - a plethora of strange canned foods, some of which might be appetizing. Others will just be weird. Further potentially useless knowledge involves learning the most expensive variety of X for several given X, at the Most Expensive Journal.

The very last, though, is a study on studies and how much studies are not studying anything at all. Perhaps as a good example, a study by an Italian urologist suggests that wearing high heels might improve a woman's sex life, by exercising pelvic muscles. And speaking of selectively looking at facts, Wynton Hall in Townhall polishes the Republican reputation by painting it as the party for civil rights, which, at the times mentioned, it was. Since then, it has not been such a party, and right now, especially with immigration debates going on, the Republican Party does not appear to be the party of civil rights any longer.

Okay, time for bed. Got work in the morning and all that.

Mid-week crazies - 06 February 2008

Stuff done. More stuff to do. Got to play around a little bit here and there, of course, but not a whole lot. And there’s always more work when we get finished with what we have now. Likely through Professor tscheese or Bureau Chief ldragoon, we picked up another reader. Hello to vornandmoggy, and we hope you enjoy the place. Feel free to dive in and comment.

Yesterday, while the voting was fast and furious, tornadoes were tearing through the southern United States, leaving wreckage and devastation in their path. The weather was mentioned on the shows looking after the political races, and from the sounds of things, it was a totally unexpected thing for the majority of the residents there. That said, it also sounds like the residents were calm and did not suffer many casualties or fatalities.

Mr. Bush is threatening to veto any bill that would deny retroactive immunity to telecoms. So a bill that’s probably being touted as essential to continued national security will be squashed because Mr. Bush is going to throw a tantrum that he doesn’t get it exactly his way? This sounds remarkably familiar to me. So Will Congress Vote "Yes" to more Bush Spying? Given their track record on standing up to him for anything else, my guess is that they will. And with the Wall Street Journal's editorial board trying to convince the populace that torture is necessary for good intelligence and the safety of the American populace and insisting that the intelligence community return to the shadows from which it operates, lest they produce another NIE that is damaging and political for all the world to see, there are at least some media outlets fully on board with continued violations of the law for the feeling that people are more secure now. At least now we know that some prisoners of the United States have been waterboarded. Officially, only three. Still too many.

Out in Iraq, when coalition troops leave, al-Qaeda moves in. Which says the local troops are unable or unwilling to maintain security. The surge may have been working, but it won’t last forever. If those supposed to fill the gaps can’t, well, then the surge didn’t work at all.

bradhicks does some analysis on the political elections that happened last night and determines that even in primaries and caucuses, even if you get yourself and three friends to vote for a candidate, your'e helping to shape an election. Three people or so in each district of the close states ended up swinging the primaries in one direction or another.

Speaking of the candidates, although we probably have a good idea about the policies that would result by now, First Freedom First has ten questions to ask each of the political candidates regarding whether they use science, law, and the Constitution or religion that the Constitution and science should come into line with as their guiding principle for government.

And then, some various bits of dirt-tossing, now that the race is truly on in earnest. Senator Obama says that the GOP will be able to sling endless mud if Senator Clinton is nominated. Meanwhile, Both campaigns are trying to paint themselves as the hip underdogs, and the Washington Post says Democrats are divided on their candidate according to racial lines.

In Chicago, a rather impressive, apparently accidental, disenfranchisement happened when voters were told that their pens contained "invisible ink", when in reality, the pens contained no ink at all, and the ballot-counting machines didn't count their vote.

In something that’s actually useful and relevant to the issues, Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part I - clearing up misconceptions about levels of service, how much things cost, and whether or not Canadians have better insurance than Americans. (They do.)

Heath Ledger's death has been ruled an accidental overdose. It’s still sad that someone’s life is so stressful and driven to the point where they can overdose from interactions of a lot of drugs that they take just to function.

The Department of Strange reminds us of something we’ve linked to before - a brassiere that doubles as an alcohol storage unit. First, the girl wearing it has a bigger chest when you’re sober, and after drinking ensues, the chest size may get smaller, but it will probably be perceived as about the same in terms of attractiveness. Could be a really useful tool for sneaking drinks in, but you have to find the right woman to wear it.

Further strange is a posting on the TSA's blog apologizing for local offices setting up new draconian gadget measures. This was apparently independent actions. That said, the government apologizing? The TSA apologizing? I don’t know - this almost smells like someone hacked the TSA, rather than an actual apology. Something absolutely true, however, is the fallout over a sign that read "Gun Permits/Sex Offender Registration". While both things had to be done with the same government official, the sheriff, the possibility of being rumored to be a sex offender when simply registering one’s weapon were a bit too much for most of the residents.

Strangest, yet most awesome, pictures of an abandoned Soviet underground submarine base. Okay, it’s really the wormhole in Hollywood, but we had you for a minute there, right?

Check your comics pages around to see a comic protest about the lack of racial minorities as principal characters in comic strips. The comics page could be a great seller of newspapers if it were permitted to expand into a serious thing, rather than “the funnies” tucked away in the back with the crossword and the classifieds. And thus, editors could choose many good comics to run, and things might improve for them. If nothing else, having lots of good funnies might draw younger readers to the newspapers again.

Brett Stephens, in the Wall Street Journal, says, What, me, worry? with regard to the perception that American influence and economic strength is waning compared to other regions of the world. If the next President does some pretty good work in improving relations and in bringing the country back underneath the budget and running surpluses, then there may not be much reason to worry. Otherwise, I’d still wonder about whether America’s going to take a back seat to another power like China or the EU for a while.

Our bureau chief for Unabashed Feminism, ldragoon, and her cohort provide us with great material for thought and speech. First, it looks like the South Dakota legislature is not as unilaterally against birth control as first presented - the bill that would shield pharmacists from dispensing still goes to the full Senate, but on a very hotly contested 4-3 vote.

After that, another in the chronicles of the Nice Guy(TM). Someone smite me if I ever behave in the manner to which this Nice Guy does.

Here’s a neat sequence of logic - banning birth control and promoting abstinence-only means a baby boom. So more babies. However, banning abortion leads to more deaths of women and babies. And furthermore, banning birth control also harms women, babies, families, and doctors. There’s the examples of what life is like without the ability to choose to plan a family and the ability to end a pregnancy.

As a response to yesterday’s 13 year-old girl who thinks women shouldn’t be able to rule or can’t rule, methodicmadness produces Current and previous female world leaders. It can be done. Women can rule, and rule well.

Our temperature-raising segment, cr0wgrrl was exposed to the same sort of attitude behind the Missouri bill that would prohibit overweight people from dining in restaurant. Only this time, a person on the street, not knowing her from Eve, told her squarely to go on a diet. Ladies and gentlemen, even though it may look to the judgmental eye that every obese person is that way because of a lack of will, of overconsumption of unhealthy, fattening food, and a lack of exercise, this is not the case. Genetic factors apply. Psychological factors apply. To judge that someone simply needs to “go on a diet” and that all their weight problems will be solved is gross oversimplification. We’re not telling all the naturally thin people that they need to bulk up - they’re being put on magazine covers and used as examples for girls who think starving themselves is the only way to be pretty. I agree with cr0wgrrl - if anyone should say such an insensitive thing, they shouldn’t be surprised if they get clocked or followed into a dark alley and beaten soundly.

Last for tonight, lest one think that the Nintendo Wii’s components are there merely for enjoyment, a couple projects using a Bluetooth-connected Wiimote to track fingers or create interactive whiteboards. Neat to see technology being repurposed. And yes, as I recall, you can play Half-Life 2 with a Wiimote. Oh, and because Easter will be arriving in 40 days or so, here's what happens when heat sources get to make contact with cute chocolate rabbits.

So, I’m going to bed, and hoping that I get the effects of a caffeine blitz to clear my passages without actually ingesting any caffeine.