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All sorts of stuff happening while I’m away. It’s hard to keep up with the flow at times. At the same point, there’s a potentially bigger audience every day, as more and more Americans turn to the World Wide Web for their news content. Doesn’t mean I get any better, just that I have more potential people, right? Of course, that would mean I would have to be good at this, which doesn’t always seem to be the case. It may not matter all that much, though, if those growing up to the Web can’t read. President Bush apparently plans to eliminate an inexpensive book distribution program, which probably means that a lot of children won’t have books in their home that they actually own and can read at any time they want to.
Going international to start, Tensions continue to mount in South America as accusations start flying from Colombia, Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor wins the Russian presidency, picking Putin to be his Prime Minister and likely ensuring that Russia will continue on its present course.
The United States ambassador to the United Nations urges Iran to meet the UN's demands for stopping enrichment and other weapon-possible capacities, and dangles the promise of being able to run an effective civilian energy program in return. I don’t think Iran will take us up on the offer - self-sufficiency is a good thing to have if you consider a lot of the world your enemy.
Cranking Widgets offers something that I can agree with, being only recently hired myself - how to not screw up your new job. May we never merit such dishonor.
With regard to the general election, Senator McCain continues to win, cementing his nomination, and Senators Clinton and Obama continue to split their delegates.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks is very much a fan of the manner that Texas allocates its Democratic delegates, because they measure all his power categories. Additionally, and perhaps amusingly, the politics of names and race extend to other countries' thinking, as well, with several people in the Middle East favoring Senator Obama because of his upbringing and because he is a man of color. On policy, things may not be so rosy - apparently, even Senators Clinton and Obama hedge on the matter of mercury in vaccines. It feels like the post is missing context, so hopefully there’s something about how they want potentially toxic metals out, but only if they can be replaced with something that works just as well.
In other domestic news, the founder of The Weather Channel has lashed out against his creation, because of the way it apparently is telling people what to think about anthropocentric climate change. He would no doubt be bolstered by Bill Steigerwald's mentioning of research that concludes only that all is not known about the phenomenon, while gloating about the chilling out of certain areas in the Arctic.
An apparent act of eco-terrorism burnt several luxury homes in Woodinville, Washington, doing $7 million of damage. The act may have been spurred by signs claiming the mansions were eco-friendly.
Spanking children apparently leads to risky and deviant sexual behavior, among other possible deviant behaviors. Hrm. Sounds like the phrase, “well, I was spanked, and I turned out okay” doesn’t actually hold true.
Media Matters does a fact check on something spoken by Pat Buchanan - “offended” by the suggestion that the Republican Party look and sound like 50-150 years in the past, he extolled the virtues of white men, including the false claim that they were the only casualties at Gettysburg or Normandy. Nice try, Pat.
Heaping shame upon themselves, The General talks about the ways in which the FBI manufacture "terrorists" to convict. Deserving of significant shame and attention are the legislators of Virginia, who intend to outlaw abortion or miscarriage, excepting in the course of taking a normal contraceptive.
Deserving of cheers is the Virginia Supreme Court, which upheld the nation's first felony conviction for spamming. Further in the cheers section, Rebel Yell gives some jeers to those who think that fat people want unsolicited advice, and cheers for a really well-placed zing in response. For a similar retort against people who think that poor people are lazy, John Scalzi rips apart the idea taht shame is an effective motivator for poor children, based on the point that most poor children have zero control over their own economic circumstances. Unless, of course, Americans would like to see eight and ten year old children working eighteen hour days in the weaving factories.
And last out of this section (and the Two Minutes Hate), John Hawkins praises the virtues of the American Angry White Man, errr, conservative. He does his ideology no favors in the way he represents liberalism or conservatism.
In the opinion columns, Austin Cline thinks ethanol development is taking needed food resources away from poor and starving countries. Feeding the hungry, then developing fuels with the excesses sounds like good policy, even if there are worries about running out of crude or gas prices getting too high. Nansen Salieri says that peak oil is still a ways off, and is confident that a good alternative will appear and be transitioned to before the fossil fuels run out. I hope he’s right, but I’d rather see it sooner than later.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is squicked by the idea that health care coverage should be complete, simultaneously denigrating the DSM as a useful diagnostic tool while also trying to deny that gender identity disorder or pedophilia are actually mental disorders. Apparently, as the Slacktivist muses, there are no mental disorders, only sin, to Perkins. Which is a really bad position to take in relation to some of the disorders on his list, or on the list of the top ten strange phenomenon of the mind.
Dennis Prager has a checklist of questions for parents to ask about their child's college choice, most of which revolve around the idea that college and university is really a place where teh evul libruls create armies of mindless automatons, brainwashed with their philosophy, and lacking anything resembling an actual education. I think that most of the questions he asks about knowledge, though, could have been adequately covered in a properly-funded and instructed high school. That it seems to be taking university just to get a remedial education is an indictment of how the public school systems are not currently working. To Prager, that’s probably also the fault of the libruls. He probably sees all children as potential taggers, like the graphic does in the article.
Dallas Weaver suggests that copyrights behave more like patents - exclusive rights for a small amount of time, a fee to register them, and then swift movement toward the public domain. It’s always a balancing act to figure out how long a work should stay in copyright. Although the idea of paying a fee to get oneself copyrighted would likely squeeze out most of the people who create stuff. We’ll have to see how things turn out. Althoughglvalentine would probably not be sad to see “The Other Boelyn Girl” pass into the public domain and be forgotten, with the remarkable lack of costuming accuracy in the film.
In technology news, more attempts to replicate Spider Jerusalem's glasses - this time, touted as a memory aid for the forgetful. We’ll get those things soon enough. Other matters of science (SCIENCE!) include the top fifteen misconceptions about the theory of evolution, a gene that may be a contributor to living for a long time, and the world's smallest crime laboratory.
Our celebrity department has three pieces of note - first, wear a sweater on March 20 in honor of what would have been Fred Rogers' 80th birthday. It’s kind of like Towel Day, I think. Second, Brett Favre has indicated that he will retire from professional football, and last, Gary Gygax, a co-creator of the wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons series of games, has died at 69 years. In honor of his passing,theferrett is compiling a list of the various epitaphs espoused in honor of Gygax's passing. Although he wasn’t necessarily responsible for Nethack, I’d say that Gygax has ascended.
Next to last for tonight, in the favored “lots of stuff about this today” segment, I think it was thatldragoon, our Unabashed Feminism Department bureau chief, posted about the California Supreme Court reviewing the ban against homosexual marriage in that state, but from there, I’ve seen a lot about the topic of homosexual marriage in general today. Kevin McCullough accuses Barack Obama of being in league with homosexual "activists", Janice Shaw Crouse waxes about the necessity of fathers (and thus, heterosexual marriage) in their childrens' lives, and Cal Thomas highlights a parental movement in California toward private schools after the public schools included sexual orientation as something not to be discriminated against. At the end of it all, though, kadymae wins big with the application of logic on why same sex marriage will not lead to bestiality. Even if someone in the world thinks the hexapus is a cutie.
At the very end of tonight’s entry, laugh it up, fuzzball - it's good for you. In that vein, the set of a play that has been mistaken as a "redneck mansion". And with that, bed.
Going international to start, Tensions continue to mount in South America as accusations start flying from Colombia, Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor wins the Russian presidency, picking Putin to be his Prime Minister and likely ensuring that Russia will continue on its present course.
The United States ambassador to the United Nations urges Iran to meet the UN's demands for stopping enrichment and other weapon-possible capacities, and dangles the promise of being able to run an effective civilian energy program in return. I don’t think Iran will take us up on the offer - self-sufficiency is a good thing to have if you consider a lot of the world your enemy.
Cranking Widgets offers something that I can agree with, being only recently hired myself - how to not screw up your new job. May we never merit such dishonor.
With regard to the general election, Senator McCain continues to win, cementing his nomination, and Senators Clinton and Obama continue to split their delegates.
bradhicks is very much a fan of the manner that Texas allocates its Democratic delegates, because they measure all his power categories. Additionally, and perhaps amusingly, the politics of names and race extend to other countries' thinking, as well, with several people in the Middle East favoring Senator Obama because of his upbringing and because he is a man of color. On policy, things may not be so rosy - apparently, even Senators Clinton and Obama hedge on the matter of mercury in vaccines. It feels like the post is missing context, so hopefully there’s something about how they want potentially toxic metals out, but only if they can be replaced with something that works just as well.In other domestic news, the founder of The Weather Channel has lashed out against his creation, because of the way it apparently is telling people what to think about anthropocentric climate change. He would no doubt be bolstered by Bill Steigerwald's mentioning of research that concludes only that all is not known about the phenomenon, while gloating about the chilling out of certain areas in the Arctic.
An apparent act of eco-terrorism burnt several luxury homes in Woodinville, Washington, doing $7 million of damage. The act may have been spurred by signs claiming the mansions were eco-friendly.
Spanking children apparently leads to risky and deviant sexual behavior, among other possible deviant behaviors. Hrm. Sounds like the phrase, “well, I was spanked, and I turned out okay” doesn’t actually hold true.
Media Matters does a fact check on something spoken by Pat Buchanan - “offended” by the suggestion that the Republican Party look and sound like 50-150 years in the past, he extolled the virtues of white men, including the false claim that they were the only casualties at Gettysburg or Normandy. Nice try, Pat.
Heaping shame upon themselves, The General talks about the ways in which the FBI manufacture "terrorists" to convict. Deserving of significant shame and attention are the legislators of Virginia, who intend to outlaw abortion or miscarriage, excepting in the course of taking a normal contraceptive.
Deserving of cheers is the Virginia Supreme Court, which upheld the nation's first felony conviction for spamming. Further in the cheers section, Rebel Yell gives some jeers to those who think that fat people want unsolicited advice, and cheers for a really well-placed zing in response. For a similar retort against people who think that poor people are lazy, John Scalzi rips apart the idea taht shame is an effective motivator for poor children, based on the point that most poor children have zero control over their own economic circumstances. Unless, of course, Americans would like to see eight and ten year old children working eighteen hour days in the weaving factories.
And last out of this section (and the Two Minutes Hate), John Hawkins praises the virtues of the American Angry White Man, errr, conservative. He does his ideology no favors in the way he represents liberalism or conservatism.
In the opinion columns, Austin Cline thinks ethanol development is taking needed food resources away from poor and starving countries. Feeding the hungry, then developing fuels with the excesses sounds like good policy, even if there are worries about running out of crude or gas prices getting too high. Nansen Salieri says that peak oil is still a ways off, and is confident that a good alternative will appear and be transitioned to before the fossil fuels run out. I hope he’s right, but I’d rather see it sooner than later.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is squicked by the idea that health care coverage should be complete, simultaneously denigrating the DSM as a useful diagnostic tool while also trying to deny that gender identity disorder or pedophilia are actually mental disorders. Apparently, as the Slacktivist muses, there are no mental disorders, only sin, to Perkins. Which is a really bad position to take in relation to some of the disorders on his list, or on the list of the top ten strange phenomenon of the mind.
Dennis Prager has a checklist of questions for parents to ask about their child's college choice, most of which revolve around the idea that college and university is really a place where teh evul libruls create armies of mindless automatons, brainwashed with their philosophy, and lacking anything resembling an actual education. I think that most of the questions he asks about knowledge, though, could have been adequately covered in a properly-funded and instructed high school. That it seems to be taking university just to get a remedial education is an indictment of how the public school systems are not currently working. To Prager, that’s probably also the fault of the libruls. He probably sees all children as potential taggers, like the graphic does in the article.
Dallas Weaver suggests that copyrights behave more like patents - exclusive rights for a small amount of time, a fee to register them, and then swift movement toward the public domain. It’s always a balancing act to figure out how long a work should stay in copyright. Although the idea of paying a fee to get oneself copyrighted would likely squeeze out most of the people who create stuff. We’ll have to see how things turn out. Although
glvalentine would probably not be sad to see “The Other Boelyn Girl” pass into the public domain and be forgotten, with the remarkable lack of costuming accuracy in the film. In technology news, more attempts to replicate Spider Jerusalem's glasses - this time, touted as a memory aid for the forgetful. We’ll get those things soon enough. Other matters of science (SCIENCE!) include the top fifteen misconceptions about the theory of evolution, a gene that may be a contributor to living for a long time, and the world's smallest crime laboratory.
Our celebrity department has three pieces of note - first, wear a sweater on March 20 in honor of what would have been Fred Rogers' 80th birthday. It’s kind of like Towel Day, I think. Second, Brett Favre has indicated that he will retire from professional football, and last, Gary Gygax, a co-creator of the wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons series of games, has died at 69 years. In honor of his passing,
theferrett is compiling a list of the various epitaphs espoused in honor of Gygax's passing. Although he wasn’t necessarily responsible for Nethack, I’d say that Gygax has ascended.Next to last for tonight, in the favored “lots of stuff about this today” segment, I think it was that
ldragoon, our Unabashed Feminism Department bureau chief, posted about the California Supreme Court reviewing the ban against homosexual marriage in that state, but from there, I’ve seen a lot about the topic of homosexual marriage in general today. Kevin McCullough accuses Barack Obama of being in league with homosexual "activists", Janice Shaw Crouse waxes about the necessity of fathers (and thus, heterosexual marriage) in their childrens' lives, and Cal Thomas highlights a parental movement in California toward private schools after the public schools included sexual orientation as something not to be discriminated against. At the end of it all, though, kadymae wins big with the application of logic on why same sex marriage will not lead to bestiality. Even if someone in the world thinks the hexapus is a cutie.At the very end of tonight’s entry, laugh it up, fuzzball - it's good for you. In that vein, the set of a play that has been mistaken as a "redneck mansion". And with that, bed.
