Hissatsu! Part Two - 14 March 2008

Ran around, did stuff, got stuff, got rained on, and got to see a really pretty rainbow today. Big spectrum against the darker clouds and all that. I loved it. And I got tasks done today, which is always a good thing. Next oil change is going to be expensive, though, if I go with all the recommended things. Want my car to live quite a while, though, so I probably will think about it.

Onward to stuff that is or passes for news. The tiny island republic of Nauru is running out of money, after Australia will shut down a center for asylum seekers. Iran held elections, where conservatives were expected to win handily, considering most reform candidates had been excluded from running by the clerical authorities.

The ACLU notes that the terrorist watch list will be over one million names in July, and that more than 20,000 names are being added to the name each month. So it’s going to be true soon that both you and I are terrorists. Me for saying stuff against Fearless Leader and you for reading it.

The House of Representatives shows some spine by passing another FISA bill that does not include any telecommunications company immunity. The expectation is that it will fail, whether in the Senate or by veto, but the House is at least showing a little bit of teeth now on an issue. Which makes Cliff May complain that the threats of radicals are still strong and need to be dealt with. He also complains that Democrats insisting that banning interrogation methods is hindering the ability of the intelligence community to do its job. Well, we could start with not violating international treaties and conventions.

David Strom thinks the government should get out of monkeying with personal choices, putting up the idea that the unhealthy are actually cheaper in the long run to care for, because they die, and thus stop sucking up health care dollars, as an example as to why trusting a “nanny state” and social engineering is not what the populace wants. I think the column he has is a case where the things he says may be true, but I don’t necessarily believe that he’s right, or that the argument he’s putting up is relevant to the point he wants to make.

A major fund-raising arm for the Republican Party found out that the treasurer stole nearly three quarters of a million dollars from them and faked audit sheets to cover it up. The treasurer was authorized to make money transfers all on his own. And then, using outside committees, he siphoned money to his own accounts. Those siphonings were noticed and investigated.

Rebecca Hagelin wants more military spending so as to modernize the troops and recruit more of them. Using the likely-misleading “we only spend 4 percent of GDP on the military, unlike the past” and trying to deflect attention to entitlement programs as something that needs fixing, it’s supposed to make people want to spend more money and lives in a war on a concept, fighting in a battleground that’s increasingly unpopular and still may not be able to stand on its own two feet.

With regard to the candidates in the general election, Charles Krauthammer characterizes the Democratic primary as identity politics at its finest, because the two Senators are ideologically similar to each other. While they share similarities, I don’t think that one can characterize the two as similar enough to say that identity is the only distinguishing factor. Senator Clinton has shown that she can just as easily become a conservative if it looks like it will help her.

Comedian-in-training David Limbaugh is convinced that Barack Obama is a liberal and will advance liberal causes, rather than make nice with Republicans. If he does that, he’ll get cheers from the actual liberal base of the Democratic party. Of course, the comedian-in-training can’t resist getting in as many liberal stereotypes as he can, running from universities to the mainstream media and listing off as many liberal positions that he finds abhorrent in the process.

Something that will no doubt be thrown at Senator Obama in the time to come are inflammatory remarks made by the minister of the church Senator Obama is a part of. In response to those, the Senator dismissed the minister from his campaign, although he mentioned on Mr. Olbermann’s show tonight that he was condemning the remarks, not the person, and that those comments were not usually what the minister talked about from the pulpit. He also mentioned that he was expecting those remarks to be used by his political opponents. Ronald Kessler is already on the offensive, claiming that the Senator has to agree with some of those remarks because of his continued attendance at church. From the stuff that is quoted in Kessler’s opinion piece, I’d say the minister understands that there’s still a lot of progress to be made in making the United States a place that he can unreservedly be proud of, and that our history does not speak well of us to the world. All of this will no doubt be used as a way of questioning whether Senator Obama has sufficient belief in the infallibility of his country to be elected to the Presidency.

In our news of the weird, a Macedonian court convicted a bear of stealing and damaging honey and beehives. The bear was fought off with Serbian “techno-folk” music, according to the accounts. Further weirdness is the apparent fact that a factory known for making steel swords apparently is the only place in Japan to get steel barriers that can withstand hard rads. Which could cool off nuclear expansion until other plants can replicate the feat.

Two sisters attempted to hide an inheritance from taxation by storing the cash in cardboard boxes. Take a lesson from Al Capone, ladies - you can murder, kill, loot, and be an organized crime boss, but tax evasion will get you every time.

A city in Arizona thinks that they can revive a fragile environment and keep illegal immigrants out by building a moat on the border between their city and Mexico. Well, the engineers will enjoy the task, I’m sure. Unless the moat gets populated with some creatures, though, I don’t think it’s going to be that effective of a deterrent.

Technology news says high-definition pictures of the moon are really cool, and that the Japanese definitely had a good idea with sending a probe with an HD camera. Google is getting into seeing the sky, too, launching Google Sky for those who are stuck in cloudy or light-polluted areas and can’t see the stars. In other tech news, the United States held the largest-ever simulated cyber-attack exercise, working on many aspects of cyberwarfare and detecting problems before they become big problems.

The art department has a few interesting things to look at, courtesy of theweaselking. First, A common, tame, house dragon. Second, going with the theme before of good moon pictures, a moonset over the water.

Next to last for us, the debt collection industry is booming, even if every other industry is suffering from the current economic slowdown, and people who thought they would have the money to pay their debts found themselves out of a job, not getting their raise, or having prices for good jump way high on them. But the debt collectors are doing brisk business.

Last for tonight, exploring the Tomb of Horrors with archaeologists. The experience and account sounds a lot like what it would be like to try and explore the place properly. And there would be lots of death involved, I bet.

So I think I’ll just choose sleep. Or cake. But certainly not “or death.”

And then one more - 15 March 2008

Working Saturdays are a disruption to anyone's schedule. In public service jobs like mine, though, they're necessary. And they don't happen all that often, so I'm not completely out of sorts, anyway. And the news happens regardless of what day it is. So, let's go for it.

On the radio today and yesterday were protests in Tibet that turned violent with a Chiense government crackdown, resulting in damage, police control, and accusations from the Chinese government that followers of the Dalai Lama organized the entire affair. At least 100 are dead from the violence, and that number is likely only to grow as the Chinese government attempts to stomp out the protests.

Domestically, tornadoes and severe weather struck at the downtown Atlanta area, with some fatalities and a lot of damage. I hope that everyone in the path of those storms is safe and that not too much damage happened.

AmericaBlog is incensed that there's no outcry for the "free market" to do its work in the housing crisis. Which is true - if people really were interested in letting the free market take its course, the economy would probably free-fall for a while, crash violently and then start building itself again. Lots of disruption to people lives and livelihoods. Of course, the government insists that things aren't really that bad - while the Federal Reserve bank bails out investment institutions left and right.

The FBI attempted to justify and cover it's abuses of warrantless wiretapping with blanket subpoenas a year after the event happened. Because giving the government new powers and a go-ahead to use them first and think about them later never resulted in abuses in the past.

For Ashley Dupre, a little scandal translates into a lot of money. On-line, at Amie Street, the escort's music has suddenly become rather popular. Not everyone gets to have their name slung about the presses this easily. I wonder if she could turn this escort business into a successful musical career. She's obviously already comfortable with schmoozing with rich and powerful people. She might manage a recording contract and national tour, for all we know.

As for Governor Spitzer, Greg Palast says there needs to be law reform in the United States because a man who exercised his vices is getting a baleful media eye while a man who is responsible for the deaths of many thousands smirks and sings songs of his accomplishment while the press laughs.

With regard to the statements made by Pastor Jeremiah Wright, bradhicks remarks that what Wright says is all true, is part of the history of the country, but is Forbidden Lore because of that, and the natural reaction of the populace is to assume it to be crazy talk. In comments, the readers point out that Senator Obama's repudiation of the remarks is not necessarily saying anything against their truth value, but that the Senator's campaign is based on a delivery style that is antithetical to the pastor's. It's still all true, it's just not delivered properly. Having a convenient example at hand, an African-American reporter was attacked physically and verbally while doing a report from the streets. In South Carolina. The attack was filmed by another camera crew, who were not attacked. The reporter was doing a piece on the arrest of one of the relatives of the attacking family. It's not known, of course, whether or not the family would have had the same reaction if it was the crew that filmed the attack doing the reporting, but Pam's House Blend thinks the attack was racially-motivated.

A citizen in Virginia is facing murder charges after he shot a police officer while they raided his house. The raid began in the night while the citizen was asleep, and apparently the informant who sparked the raid had broken into the citizen's house a few days before. All of this, by the way, was over the information that the citizen was growing marijuana plants, none of which were found. Even more so, there was no indication at any point that the citizen was violent or inclined to violence. The raid provoked the citizen shooting the police officer in self-defense, believing that his house might under invasion by violent criminals. Sounds like everything went wrong that could have, but that the prosecutors and judges aren't listening, believing that a citizen should be able to determine, upon waking from a sound sleep, whether or not it is the police that are invading his home or criminals, and thus be able to determine whether or not to fire on the invaders.

Something really scary, although obviously Minitrue-approved - A device that purports to track the emotional states of those who wear them. "Quality assurance", indeed, by making sure that the drones in the call centers or the peons at their desks don't experience forbidden emotions. Or they'll get really good at not letting it show when they're looking at unapproved content from work. I can only see bad results from trying to put this in a workplace environment. As such, I expect Wal-Mart to be the first to adopt them.

Other technology includes floating ideas and working on a backup of human civilization, to be stored on Luna in case of disaster. Placing it there, of course, requires that there be some method of retrieval developed eventually, but if there happens to be a situation where there are people on Luna that can then return to Terra and rebuild, then we might manage to survive our own stupidity.

Linden Labs creator Philip Linden is stepping down as CEO of Second Life, transitioning to become the chairman of the executive board and trying to find a different CEO.

GoDaddy unceremoniously shut down a site called RateMyCop that was dedicated to letting citizens provide ratings of their interactions with uniformed police officers. Apparently, the police were worried that their names and identification numbers were publicly available. RateMyCop tried to get back on-line with a different host, only to have them nix the deal. GoDaddy's official line was that the site became too popular for its payment plan. Radley Balko notes that all the information there is public, and that having open citizen and police comment on their interactions is beneficial to everyone. Best to know when you're dealing with a power-tripper from the beginning, rather than finding it out after a gun gets pulled on you and your arms broken because you didn't obey fast enough.

Weird news includes a person who can cook fish with his hands, to the point of blackening the outsides, sculptures and masks created with hair and Nike Air Jordans, which is pretty expensive art, I would guess. More of Brian Jugen's works available at Catriona Jeffries.

Making sure there are lists in every entry, ReadWriteWeb discusses applications for iPhone that will integrate the physical and digital worlds more closely.

Last for tonight is something really, really, cute, although you do have to be a fan of the BBC Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood to fully get it. Torchwood Babies scales the series down to the diapers-and-playhouses crowd, and stays adorably cute while doing so.

The postscript (because both this and Torchwood Babies deserve to be at the end for the skimmers) involves turning debates with opposing viewpoints into games for charity, with wagers being applied so that both sides have an interested stake in the matter. In Part II, the rules for the deabtes are outlined, with scoring done based on the severity of offense against the ethics of debate, and Part III has some additional ideas that explain why these debates are needed and what beenfits they could have. Even if they don't end up convincing anyone to change sides, through ethical and respectful debate, maybe both sides can agree to disagree.

And thus, we're gone and away from here. Have fun, people!