Running on high octane something - 20 February 2008

Which means, as usual, it’s time for another rapid-fire round of randomness that we cleverly disguise as a newsfeed of sorts. There was a total lunar eclipse tonight, and also the United States launched a missile from a naval carrier into the defunct spy satellite.

Mr. Bush's approval rating has struck a new all-time low - nineteen percent, according to the American Research Group. Perhaps being seven years late on improving Amtrak security has some (very) small part to do with it. There’s also the Supreme Court's refusal to hear a case about warrantless wiretapping done by the government. Finally, despite their continual insistence that torture is both legal and effective, torture is a clumsy method of intelligence-gathering, and its results are often tinged with falsehoods.

Internationally, a cease-fire negotiated with Muqtada al-Sadr may expire Saturday, which could easily undo any sort of progress the Bush administration can claim.

The United Kingdom’s Boy Scout organizations are taking flak for the oath that requires Boy Scouts to do "their duty to God and to the Queen", much like the American Oath is “duty to God and to country”. Good to see the organization across the pond catching up with its counterpart here in the States. Or perhaps this is just one instance where it’s made it up above the newsline. Regarding a different religious belief in the United Kingdom, courts that deal in Islamic law are popular, even with their nonbinding status in the United Kingdom. Noting the comments, of course, there’s still a continued Islam hysteria - are people really that convinced that Muslims will be elected to positions, and then restructure the country in such a way as to follow Sharia? In constitutional democracies, and with all this paranoia, some people are still convinced that the world is just waiting before the rise of a One Muslim World government? Apparently, the answer to that is yes, in all sorts of ways, including the fear that Muslims are "out-breeding" Christians so that they can take over through being the majority of the population in the world. Latin Christendom and the Caliphate are as close as anyone got to making the world one particular religion, and we’ve seen how those turned out. Besides, if anyone was going to have leveraged the world into a galvanized religious government force, it would be the Christians, not the Muslims.

Domestic politics is going to get uglier than usual. With Senator Obama continuing to capture state after state, it may seem that the Clinton rules being used on Hillary now to squelch her Democratic nomination bid will be turned on Obama if he gets the nomination. Some part of this already exists, like Freedom's Enemies' timeline of Barack Obama, using quotes and narrative to paint Obama as a Muslim-in-hiding, an angry black man out to get white folk wherever he can, a Marxist, on board with the “homoseuxal agenda” (of which I am still missing my proof copy so that I can put it out on library shelves for the unsuspecting), a hypocrite and liar, and all sorts of other nasty things, like someone who wants to help illegal immigrants, the poor, and to utilize the United Nations. And no doubt would enjoy a meaningless poll such as this as something like “statistical backup” of those claims.

Keep an eye out on Bill’O. From the looks of things, he might have just wanted to independently investigate whether Michelle Obama is a "millitant woman" as one of his callers claimed. Is this Bill’O having respect for the journalistic progress and wanting to see his sources through? Or is this the prelude to O’Really coming back in a couple days claiming to have found all the evidence and corroborated everything? Well, if Malkin's example is to be followed, it’ll be a vicious set of smears that comes back from Bill’O.

I think it intriguing that Sara Robinson has been looking not only at the idea of change as in “hey, we might elect someone we haven’t elected before”, but thinking the Republican mismanagement of the last few decades might have put enough spit and fire into the populace to start an actual revolution.

Our Science department has something to offer on masters of camouflage that can adapt to just about any ugly-colored environment. Which is pretty interesting to watch. There’s also sticky tape that can heal surgical incisions or deliver drugs long-term.

The Education desk has a few interesting items for our perusal - President Nicolas Sarkozy wants schoolchildren to study the child victims of the Holocaust. This potentially worried those who believe that studying victims near their own age could traumatize the children. He also referenced the event using language that described it as an “absence of God”, which angered secularists, I think it would make history a little more real, and perhaps imprint upon the children the idea that something like the Shoah is not something to be considered or repeated. Back stateside, Florida adopts new standards to teach evolution - but phrases it in the "only a theory" manner.

Other education of note for the populace is Respectful Insolence on when journalism is supposed to abandon the "report both sides" idea (when one side is clearly bullsh*t, note it as such), American Samidzat's take on the effectiveness of Anonymous. and whether or not Stuff White People Like is a serious endeavour or a satire.

And a couple of free books, too. The Future of Reputation, and Steal This Wiki, the extension of Steal This Book... with a link to the original, of course.

The Unabashed Feminism department’s awesome bureau chief ldragoon pointed us in the direction of a Jezebel article that notes in the latest Gossip Girl book, there's an average of nearly 2 products named by brand per page. Thus inspired, the bureau decided that we’d go check out the first book of the series and give it a read, to see whether this name-dropping happens all the time, and to analyze the plot and characters to see if there’s really anything good to be taking out of these books for use in the real world.

Our game-players pointed us toward the Traveler IQ challenge - the World one gets pretty tough in the later rounds. I made it all the way to stage 10 before failing out. Tiny map, so it’s hard to hit with pinpoint accuracy. While in between rounds of that, try catching some clips of Sailor Moon: The Abridged Series. If that’s not enough, you can always try to get into the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.

Last for tonight, the City of Sound describes the data-rich street of the future. All stuff that doesn’t get seen by the CCTV cameras, but could be used with them to indicate any one of myriad things. It’s stuff like this, and the associated philosophy and ethics that drives the Treasure House of Pearls to remind us of what the definition and process of "the occult" really is, as things that are hidden or that need to be discovered. By looking for the hidden, there’s a lot that can be found. Like brain modifications resulting from whether or not one thinks monks enjoy roller coasters.

So, bed. All those who are sick should sleep. All those with staff meetings in teh morning, like me, should have been asleep a long time ago.

Long day, rhythm disrupted - 21 Feb 2008

Just by starting my day an hour earlier, my entire routine sort of went out of whack, and I felt a bit more tired after today than usual. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t have a bumper crop of interesting material for you.

From the top, then, here we go. Jon Taplin leads with deductions that as early as 1998, and even without the events of 11 September, there was no doubt that the United States was going to topple Saddam Hussein and sell Iraq's oil fields to Dick Cheney's friends. The proof lies classified at the moment, as part of the discussions of a 2001 Energy Task force convened by Dick, according to Jon.

A remarkably sane and non-overreaching conclusion is made by Amir Taheri in Islam At the Ballot Box, where he compares election figures from around the Middle East, notes the low popularity of hard-line Muslim candidates and parties, and concludes that supporting free and fair democratic elections in Muslim countries is an effective deterrent to terror. I’d say so, if nothing else because it gives the people an incentive to try their democratically elected government as a method of addressing grievances. When it works, there’s even more incentive to keep things going. If it didn’t, though, I don’t think you’d see that much of a terror drop.

It appears that Israel has some of its own fundies that like to blame natural disasters on the government's tolerance for homosexuals. Now that I think about it, I wonder whether the Jews might actually have a case for blaming their ills on homosexuals, since they don’t have a Christ-figure to break the old covenant. What do the mitzvot and the rabbis say on that particular matter?

Not that we’re finished with accounts of The Gay Agenda. Did I mention that my Librarian’s Annotated Copy was re-routed through the Westboro Baptist Church? It’s the only way I can explain the condition that it arrived in - it was a pile of ash. Anyway, in customers_suck, two stories where a pair of tuxedo-clad strawberries were misinterpreted to be "recruitment" for homosexuality. Not once, but twice. I can’t say much more than “Wow.” to that.

Getting out of religion with just one more thing, Rebel Yell has a brush with a Real True Christian. Not one of the nice forgiving ones, but the judgmental, my-way-or-hell ones.

In the matter of the general election to arrive in November, extending the point made that Barack Obama will have to deal with piles of steaming crap if he should get the nomination, The Invisible Library calls Racist Bingo based on what’s been said about Barack so far. The conservatives appear to be pouncing on Michelle Obama’s statement about pride in her country, with Rich Galen demanding Mrs. Obama apologize to America for the statement. Completely ignoring the possibility that being “[really] proud for the first time” might mean the degree of pride, not the presence or absence of it. Even worse, it made that awful song play in my head while I was reading the article. A zero score on that opinion for Mr. Galen.

Senator McCain is not immune to a scrutinizing eye. The New York Times ran a piece on how much Senator McCain is sure that he is being ethical, and how that can easily become hubris and stop him from seeing any ethical lapses he might commit. Senator McCain’s campaign was not happy, and said they would 'go to war' with the Times because of that story. The campaign accuses the NYT of running a hit and run smear on the Senator. We’ll see how this plays out.

There will be an Akira live-action movie, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. I don’t think this bodes particularly well for anime fans. Maybe all these movies are here because our licenses over here in the States are worried that the market’s going to drop out.

In technology, A man who wanted his busty girl tattoo to have three dimensions had one of the implants break and leak its material inside his body. Well, not every transhuman experiment is for the greater good, nor does it go flawlessly. Something that works a mite better is an infra-red headband designed to prevent IR-capable CCTV from recording one's face. It does so by providing extra energy in the band just underneath red that causes all of the receptors for various colors to fire in the pixels that would represent one’s face. It’s crude, and there are probably plenty of flaws in it, but perhaps one day, we’ll all go around looking like Laughing Men to the cameras.

Technology being used in a manner that may create more problems than solutions is Bad Screen Names, a service that purports to post reviews of screen names for the purpose of identifying paedophiles and masqueraders. It’s a nice “protect the childrens!” idea, but it relies on the premise that screen names are unique identifiers across the whole of the Internet. I suspect a large file will be compiled about Anonymous.

Speaking of the wastes of technology, there's a whole lot of nuclear waste costing a lot of money that isn't getting buried/stored and on its way to become nonradioactive.

And to end our technology matters for tonight, a retrospective on Wired magazine's first issue, fifteen years ago.

Our Unabashed Feminism department’s bureau chief ldragoon wants to call attention to the business of Suicide Girls, who claim to be alt-porn that women can like. With walkouts of the models and a lot of information coming to light about business practices and contracts, the image of being female-friendly or women-empowering isn’t going to stay around. Although, I have to admit, Suicide Girls made a blip on my radar several years ago and then promptly disappeared. I wonder how much that’s true for others, though.

The following piece, also from the UNF department, demonstrates two very important axioms: the necessity of a free press, and that opinions often resemble anuses. So, Dick Marple believes that a woman cannot legally be elected president. (Yes, make that Dick joke now. We’ll wait.) According to him, the 19th Amendment only gave women the right to vote, not the right to participate in any governmental office. On the opposite side of his opinion, we quote, as an example, from the Constitution, Article II, section I: “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.” Those are the qualifications of the office of the President - natural-born citizen, 35 years of age, lived in the United States 14 years. That’s it. All the unofficial bits, like having a personal fortune to draw upon, are helpful in this day and age, but not necessary.

With regard to other matters, the following may seem obvious to those already in a good stable relationship, be it mono- or polyamorous, but for those looking to get into either of those types of relationships, The Infamous Brad has some advice - keep someone around who you trust and that can provide you with an external reality check. We’ll follow up that sound piece of advice with ten things to be prepared for when negotiating polyamory, but again, those bits of advice can apply to those who only have one partner as well.

Doing a hit and run on a philosophical idea, whenThe New York Times cites a study that says people who don't believe in free will are more inclined to cheat, Hit and Run says well, the cheaters were basically convinced that nobody would know they were cheating. So it may be more accurate to say that believing nobody will catch you will make you more inclined to cheat. After all, there are rewards at stake, and there’s probably a good bet that our evolutionary ancestors learned that sometimes it’s beneficial to be a cheater.

Last for tonight, because it tickled my musical and technological fancies, two iPhones and a Nintendo DS make some pretty good music. The iBand has not yet posted a standalone mp3 of its work, and would like to have some other material and software to work with. Maybe a group of iPhone enthusiasts can travel as a portable band.