Another week over - 09 May 2008

Week’s end. Always seems like there’s more stuff on Friday than any other day. Working tomorrow, too, so that I can do the ACen thing. But let’s get to the news.

The United Nations has suspended relief operations in Burma/Myyanmar, pending getting necessary permissions to get aid workers inside the country so they can distribute their material. The government of the country is letting people die while aid waits outside, because the U.N. insists that it actually get to where it is supposed to go, rather than leaving it there for the government to confiscate for their own purposes.

In matters of Iraq, Iraqi government sez, "We got one!". U.S. government sez, Ah, nope. Similar name, different person.

Five years later, an interview with Hans Blix, the chief of the United Nations weapons inspection program that found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, taking out a significant justification for the upcoming war. I’m sure the government is thrilled to find out that a released Gitmo inhabitant performed a carbomb suicide in Iraq, so that they can justify keeping the people right there and “interrogating” them even more. And they’re grateful that the Iraqi industry minister says that rapid troop removal would be destabilizing. The justification, though, is one that might work - the current Iraqi national police force and army is insufficient to keep peace.

Last out of Iraq, Ross MacKenzie says the U.S. should be in Iraq for the long haul, after taking time out to chide Democrats for wanting to keep a Wildlife refuge a refuge, blocking unsympathetic judges from appointments, and trying to raise sufficient revenue to cover the debts that the current administration has run up. Quoting Senator Obama from September of last year, slyly inserting Pastor Wright where there’s no need to do so, Ross lays out the “success” of the surge (which is still conditional on keeping troop levels up), accuses Speaker Pelosi of loading a war spending bill with pork for “whacko” domestic affairs, as well as “cheapen[ing] the deaths of 4,000 American troops (islamofascism, they say, poses a threat vastly less than Nazism or Communism did) and implicitly declare that the long war on global terror pales in importance against, for instance, the war on global warming”, and declares anyone who is still against continuing to fight in Iraq as defeatists, with the collapse of Iraq and subsequent invasion by Iran as foregone conclusions should the United States leave. I find it interesting that the rhetoric involved here is one of “defeat” and “surrender” now, with “victory” being the goal, despite “Mission Accomplished” having been declared more than five years ago. It’s as if the war supporters forgot that detail, despite Mr. Olbermann’s reminder of it every night at the end of his broadcast.

With other international matters, The United States and Russia have traded diplomatic expulsions. The U.S. is downplaying the significance of the dismissals, considering it an event that happens from time to time, and not an indication of a greater rift in relations between the two countries. Whatever the case may be, when people are sent home, there’s usually a reason for it. The story didn’t give the reason, as best I saw.

Domestic matters begin - Glenn Greenwald lays out, in no uncertain terms, the Pentagon's deliberate propaganda attempt using "military analysts" that were expected to toe the party line. They supposedly became experts on Guantanamo Bay, despite having spent less than three hours in the facility, and none of it actually in the presence of any of the detainees. From there, CNN helped the Pentagon try to discredit the Anmesty International report of widespread abuse in Gitmo. The collusion and lack of truth in the “reporting” on Gitmo is sickening, and those who criticized the Pentagon found themselves without any access at all to the Pentagon or Rumsfeld. This is a documented case of the press cooperating with the Pentagon’s message. (Liberal bias, my tailscales) I wonder how many more undocumented collusions happened, and how many happened in the run-up to the Iraq war. And what’s worse, despite documented evidence that these things happened, the majority of media outlets still refuse to report on it and admit their role in being propaganda engines. Is that because of a continuing relationship, as the Voice?

A significant amount of candidate-related material has appeared. The campaigns have gone on long enough that the creativity is really starting to appear. Thus, Hillary is 404, providing semi-unsubtle commentary about the state of Senator Clinton’s campaign, while Robert Novak goes after Senator Obama, rehashing that Ayers connection and dismissing Senator Obama’s success as a matter of demographics rather than skill. I don’t see it as a convincing argument, much like how Senator Obama's campaign manager responded to accusations that Obama was being ageist and hypocritical, when the Senator was talking about Senator McCain’s directionlessness.

Most succinctly put so far, in metaquotes, is the wish for the upscoming President to be as elite and intelligent as possible, so as to run the country effectively and well. If most people wouldn’t trust their neighbor to be the President, why do we expect the President to be like our neighbor?

And involving the Republican candidate as well, Bill Press tells a tale of two candidates and two pastors. Both pastors have said some inflammatory things, and both have endorsed a candidate. Yet one pastor has received significant media scrutiny for his remarks, forcing the candidate to distance himself from the pastor, and the other pastor was sought after for his endorsement. The candidate there continues to champion the pastor’s endorsement as a good thing. Why the disparity? I don’t know, but anyone who thinks “liberal bias” is in the media can’t point to this incident.

In other opinions, Diana West feels the power of language, and thinks that the U.S. should still call terror and extremism by the name Islam. The new government decisions on language are supposed to be avoiding inflaming the rest of the religion and sticking strictly to the extremists, but Diana believes firmly that every Muslim is at war with the West and won’t rest until the West is subjugated to Islamic law. No doubt she thinks of Islamic law as the Wahabist strain or the Iranian strain where women are property at best and all freedoms are squashed. By that logic, I would be more worried about the Christians waging war on America, because they’re actually in the country, have successfully managed to garner influence in our political decisions, and are trying to provoke us all into wars with the other major religious and philosophical groups.

Cal Thomas thinks that Time's list of influential people misses out on the really influential people, like the couple that works things out, the honest politicians, and the businesspeople who put people before profit. And Jesus. Cal and I may actually agree that the list should probably be changed to be more worldwide in nature and to think of persons both living and dead whose effects are still felt and influential today. He and I might disagree about what to put in the Jesus entry, though.

And look, a segue! A council of evangelicals have urged their preachers and leaders to pull back from politics, so as not to be exploited as "useful idiots" by partisan politics. Excellent idea! Not only staying strictly on this side of the law about endorsing particular candidates, but going back to those places where churches traditionally have some authority, like the things they consider moral issues. There, we can disagree lots, but we’ll at least admit that the church should be talking about those kinds of things.

Obsidian Wings holds up Representative Vito Fossela as a shining example of what the defending marriage movement is all about - drunkenness and an affair that has a three year-old child, while voting for all the marriage amendments and laws that keep teh gays from adopting or marrying. I’m sure that there are plenty of homosexual couples who would be able to achieve a better marriage than this, so really, what’s the argument again?

But managing something resembling a laugh before moving on, Dana Milbank recounts the Republican woes, including a decision of being against motherhood after being for it, all part of various problems and stalling techniques on display in the governmental halls this week.

In a highly improbable event, our science column leads with the data on a hard drive that was on the Space Shuttle Columbia when it fragmented has been recovered and used to publish an experiment. Wow. Even after re-entry, 90% of the data was recovered.

Protein-folding algorithms may be getting some human direction, thanks to a game in development called FoldIt. It takes the protein folding model to find good candidates for disease prevention and/or cure many of us are familiar with, using BOINC or Rosetta@home or United Devices, and then solicits user input on how to improve the design of good-looking candidate proteins. After a tutorial on how to recognize and build good proteins, the players are pitted into a competitive mode to design and build the best proteins to fight diseases with. The game obviously has no end in sight, and the researchers are hoping to tap into the power of the people and some savants to basically sift a long list of potential candidates into a much shorter list of good candidates. If interested in the game and participating, FoldIt can be downloaded from the main site. Speaking of harnessing great computing power, NASA aims to have a supercomputer that can process 10 PFLOPS (petaflops, or a quadrillion floating-point operations per second) by 2012. Some serious number-crunching going on for the manned asteroid mission and the Return to Luna.

Last out of science, see approved images of the Soviet future, mostly in black and white, but not that different than our own images of a rocketships future. Along with the Solar System Visualizer, many more dreams of The Future might be born.

Taking a less than orthodox interpretation of the Last Supper, a piece depicting the Last Supper of Jesus as a homosexual orgy has drawn criticism from the local Catholic bishop. The piece itself is part of an exhibit celebrating the works of a particular Vienna-based artist.

Next to last for tonight, lest anyone wonder whether children are learning things in their schooling, the breakup of fast-food and fizzy drinks smuggling rings in United Kingdom schools tells me that there are several students who grasp the power of entrepreneurship. They’re missing the part about healthy eating, but I have to applaud their ability to create a supply and distribution chain and make profits off it. Even more so, it was a multilayered organization. As I know from my own work, just because they haven’t reached legal majority doesn’t mean they’re stupid. When they put their minds to it, especially when it comes to rulebreaking, children and teenagers are smart. They’ll swipe Dad's credit card and try to buy escorts with it if they can and feel they can get away with it.

Last for tonight, the instant rimshot. For those occasions where the joke needs it. Or if the six-headed guitar player is busy..

And another in the books - 10 May 2008

So it's a work Saturday, traded in so that I can so off to Chicago next week and enjoy myself greatly there. Life is doing pretty good. Work was also rather interesting yesterday, in that I got to have my professional qualifications and fitness to be a librarian called into question, heard a recommendation for my dismissal, and was told what the library is supposed to be, but also that I was able to sufficiently leverage a good relationship to resolve the conflict without problems. I could feel myself getting all flushed as I was getting verbally abused, which isn't the right response, but I chalk it up to inexperience. Well, either it was embarrassment, or aggravation. Might have transitioned from one to the other. Either way, situation resolved. Perhaps rantiness on it later, if I really think it's warranted. Probably isn't.

It's Mother's Day on Sunday, so hooray for motherhood, without which none of us would be here. amenquohi has a column from Anna Quindlen about motherhood, where all the expert knowledge gives way to the knowledge that children are always a specific case unto themselves.

Proving that social networking tools are great for both good and ill, a garden in the United Kingdom was wrecked as three hundred people showed up for a water fight organized on Facebook. So, able to protest Scientology or create chaos. Improv street performance or giant soaking. Never underestimate the mob. The comments are "make them clean it up!/pay for the damage!/arrest them!/" in the majority, with additional "How sad that our youth do these things! I never would have been in a mob like this!" and "Bet they're all on public assistance, the yobs." sprinkled in. It was probably a bunch of fun, and it may have only been afterward that anyone found out there was a lot of damage, or someone damaged something accidentally and either left it or thought it didn't look that bad. It's kind of like the end-of-school water balloon fight. (Of which, as I recall, carrying a camera in plain sight meant general immunity from the balloon strikes.)

Zimbabwe's opposition leader has said he would stand for a runoff election after the official results said that while he had garnered the most votes, he did not gain a majority of votes, necessitating the runoff. The opposition leader has been concerned that violence in the country is making it impossible for a free and fair election to take place. To that end, the opposition leader has asked for several conditions to be met before the runoff takes place.

An interesting piece - several years after arrest, and apparently a few mistrials, the government is once again trying to prosecute the detainees in Guantanamo Bay - the defendant in this case, Mr. Hamdan, however, wants to know what law he's being tried on, and doubts the fairness of his trial. We'd like to know at some point, too. The defense is trying not only to prove Mr. Hamdan's innocence, but that the process by which he is being tried and the military commissions have been tainted by political meddling. More as this develops.

I'm getting some lessons in perspective here - CNS News, who I think is a little shaky on the news bit, characterizes the recent unrest in Lebanon as a hostile takeover by pro-Iran Hezbollah. The New York Times, in reporting that there will be a cease-fire and Hezbollah will stand down, characterizes Hezbollah's actions as a reaction to government forces attacking people in the country. The facts of the events are still the same. It's all dependent on interpretation.

The world's oldest gorilla turned 55 today. Thanks to good captive care and protection from predators, Jenny has outlasted her compatriots by about 20 years so far.

All it took was two lines, written with what was at hand, and Canada's last World War I survivor is a Canadian citizen again. Having given it up to become a U.S. citizen in 1946 because there was no dual citizenship allowed at the time, things have been returned to the way they were before.

Getting into candidate affairs, CNS News attempts to re-stir the hornets involved with the Jeremiah Wright scrutiny by making mention of other pieces written in the church bulletin that could also be viewed as inflammatory. It's beginning more and more to sound like the pastors and people in the church are concerned with more than just spiritual matters, sure, but what counts are the Senator's beliefs. Until the Senator's behavior starts to indicate that he believes the same as some of the more extreme churchmembers, then it's just smoke. Unlike, say, John McCain, who gladly sought John Hagee's endorsement and has done nothing to distance himself from it.

Remarkably (and I'm not sure how this happened, or whether we slipped into Bizzaro World for a bit), Bill O'Reilly has an accurate summary of the issues Senator Obama will have to overcome if he wants to win the general election. No spite, no vitriol, just good reasoning. Had to check the name on it to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. Could you be more like that in general, Bill? For all our sakes?

Further into the opinion columns, Michael Barone thinks the populace was sold a bad narrative on the Iraq War - that the lack of the WMD meant the war was unjustified. Apparently, the threat of WMD and some ties to terror organizations is still sufficient to invade a country. We're getting the same rhetoric with regard to Iran now, although this time Iran is openly admitting that they are doing processes that could lead to weapon construction. Afterward, when the weapons weren't found, the spin changed immediately to what Barone is saying now - Saddam was a Bad Man, we had to get rid of him, he still had the capacity to make the weapons, even if we never found any, and he still was working with terrorists. "Guns don't kill people, you silly liberals, people kill people, so getting rid of the person was a good thing." Despite being a fairly secular regime and having fought wars against Iran in the past. Saddam was a bad man - the evidence is indisputable on that point. If we were going for regime change based on moral outrage, though, there are better targets in the Middle East.

American Samidzat has a laugh in linking to Pharyngula's noting that Yoko Ono was suing the makers of "Expelled". Namely that, the makers of "Expelled" enforced a copyright claim when someone attempted to link to the offending piece that contained Yoko Ono's "Imagine". So, the people being sued for violating someone else's copyright had no qualms on enforcing their own. Thus, the laugh.

If one ever wanted to know what all the dirty words were in Straight Outta Compton, well, the reverse edit should be perfect to satisfy that curiosity. Hooray for technology! Okay, silliness aside, there are patents in the works to use plasma to life objects, admittedly only 15cm, at the moment, but it could be the future at hand! Or, it could be another patent to be put into an Inventors game, like the Horse Waster-Wing Jacket or the Automatic Hat Tipper.

Another unmanned probe will try to penetrate the mystery of Martian ice after the last one ceased to function just before touching down on the South Pole. Mars still looks like a good candidate for terraforming, or at least having a colony established upon it - I wonder whether Mars will be the new Australia. With the warranty being voided on Terra, finding a new planet may be in our best interests. (Th' article's a joke. Terra was clearly marked as-is.)

A PR nightmare was narrowly averted when EA dropped a planned requirement for PC versions of Spore and Mass Effect to phone home every ten days to check and see if the CD key involved was still valid and hadn't been pirated. What were they thinking? Not everyone has a connection, for one, and two, gamers are usually pretty up-to-snuff on their game news. Why piss off an entire user base like that? As things are, reauthentication will still be needed to get new game content, but I wonder how their sales will be hurt as more people find out about the planned protection scheme.

Last for tonight, deserving of a very Special Hell Flaming Quiche, either for being serious about this, or for being a satire that isn't discernible as such, is Take the Action, a program that intends to curb the craving for masturbation. Because apparently, media viewing leads to wanking, wanking is addictive and takes over lives, destroying partnerships and sex lives, and wasting time, dreams, and potentially money (because every masturbator is a porn addict, too). While I'm sure that it would please a significant number of the abstinence movement to find such a product, and to potentially encourage its use, I think $47 is going to be a bit steep of a price to pay.

The last thing this country needs is more sexual repression. For as much as the media sells sex and sexuality, the society it's trying to sell it to has precious little openness of attitude about partnerships, aids, and autoeroticism. Despite saying that products will help you get all the chicks/bring all the boys to the yard, the prevailing attitude is still "Marriage. Then sex. And only for children. If you can't or don't want to marry, tough. No sex for you." *sigh* Society is such a tease.

Also, isn't it sexually healthy to orgasm, whether by one's own implements or another's?

That's all for tonight. I hope that everyone here has a way of being happy with themselves, whether through positive thinking, battery-operated implements, or other methods.