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My professional self had one of those weird things happen today - in the middle of a reference book on the Presidents, a patron and I found the back cover to a paperback copy of the Yoga Sutra, with tape on it to flatten it against the page it was stuck to. Luckily, the tape hadn’t adhered all that well, and I managed to extract the cover with a minimum of text loss. Upon analysis of the page it was stuck to, I couldn’t find anything offensive about it. I checked our catalog, fully expecting to see the status be “missing” or “lost”, but instead, it was “Storage” - the status we used for books that shouldn’t be circulating, because they aren’t on the shelves. Curious, then, how this cover managed to get separated from the book and taped into another book. I wonder what happened - maybe some conscientious censor saw “Yoga Sutra” and assumed that it was like Kama Sutra, except this was a book of positions for the extremely flexible. That might explain the back of the book cover being missing. The tape doesn’t seem to make sense, unless it was someone trying to mask what they had done. No, it was clear tape, sorry. This is a library mystery that has no end. Don’t know when someone removed the cover, nor who might have done it, as the book wasn’t checked out. I wonder if the rest of the book is in a similar condition, or whether it was just the barcode that was struck. It could also be that this was a withdrawn book, and some joker decided to tape the cover somewhere random. Just another day at the library, really.
First up tonight is a statue that bears further examination and thought - Lenin, Mickey, and Jesus. Which attests to a truth of some sort - regardless of communist or fundie Christian leanings, Walt Disney’s mouse has appeal to both.
Following on from yesterday’s news, the complete text of Dennis Kucinich's thirty-five articles of impeachment against George W. Bush.
A Manitoba prvince woman is trying to get her kids back after her daughter went to school sporting a swastika. It appears that a deal is being worked out to return the children. The mother’s apparent claim of being a “white nationalist”, although “not a neo-Nazi skinhead” or white supremacist, nor the markings on the child, is not sufficient to invoke protective services. Truancy induced by the mom not wanting to get up in the morning and possible drug and alcohol concerns might. It looks, though, as though the primary concern was the political beliefs of the parents, and so the government is making the correct legal decision to return the children, even if it sparks moral outrage. Lots of people should be upset that an old symbol continues to be shackled with a particular meaning recently applied. If the children are raised with white supremacy beliefs, that’s a tragedy, but there is nothing in the law that stops anyone from believing what they want to. There’s lots that stops acting on those beliefs.
Speaking of matters of belief, April DeConick finds the Catholic doctrine of preventing women as priests ridiculous, and the justifications for keeping them that way unfounded. It does seem rather odd that even in today’s more progressive society, the idea that women cannot be Catholic priests is still part of doctrine. I’m not saying this in a “everyone else seems to eb doing it, why not you?” sort of way, but that cutting out a significant part of the congregation from joining the priesthood does not seem to be a way of retaining and obtaining more people.
Leading the gloom and doom section, According to a RAND Corproation study, members of Pakistan's intelligence and paramilitary services are aiding the Taliban in Adghanistan and providing bases for them in Pakistan territory. Perhaps because of that, or because of continued violence in the region in question, Pakistan is scrapping a peace deal made with the Taliban. (Honestly, I’m never sure how far to trust CNS. Sometimes they seem like someone has a grasp on things, other times, they’re off the deep end - see later in the post for the deep end problems).
Reports in say that the New Labour government since Tony Blair has gone in the wrong direction in trying to fight poverty and income inequality. The gaps are up, and there are more poor and more debtors. I wonder when we changed from “Money makes the world go ‘round“ to ”Credit makes the world go ’round”.
Jurors in New South Wales were reprimanded for playing Sudoku in the jury box rather than paying attention to the trial. Something about this makes me wonder what the trial was like, though. Whatever the proceedings were, or their presentation, it was not interesting enough, or there was so much of it that the jury tuned out. There amy need to be some looking into how the trial was being run so that the jurors don’t suffer boredom. At least the jurors can take noted, rather than having to remember it all without aids.
The age of the Internet makes it easy for a mistake to show up and be nitpicked to death. That said, mistaking Iraq as being part of Africa is a pretty big mistake. Uploading pornographic pictures to your private site, while sitting on an obscenity case, and then neglecting to set a password is a pretty big mistake.
Mortgage lenders are finding the dying housing market a problem for them - people are ditching their high-cost mortgages and buying cheaper houses, now that the market has dropped. Lower payments, same type of house, almost actually affordable. Gives the lenders nightmares.
A tornado went through an Iowa Boy Scout Camp, killing four and injuring forty more. While this is no laughing matter, the first thing that came to mind for me was “Is this a divine punishment for the BSA’s refusal to admit atheists and homosexuals?” - using the crux of other disaster arguments against them. I don’t like that idea, though, because it has all the flimsy parts that the original “disaster was God’s wrath” ideas do. Even though one is supposed to “Be prepared” as a Scout, there are some things that will get you, even despite careful planning.
Getting into opinion columns, Alan Caruab praises the Electoral College system, claiming that it works as intended, and that Barack Obama’s nomination as the Democratic Party candidate is a result of a similar system, where the popular vote doesn’t really matter, except as a method of choosing electors/delegates, who then choose with their votes. Theoretically, of course, the electors can defect from their choices, as a preventative measure against a highly popular dictator with ruinous plans for the country.
It sounds like the following CNS “correspondent” is trying to hid their personal disgust and offense under statistics and an attempt at a neutral point of view. I can’t really understand why anyone would make an article out of the fact that a college receiving arts and sciences grants puts on a student art exhibition where some of the works are offensive to Christians unless they thought that the government should revoke the grant because of the artwork. Nowhere is this actually said in the article, although the description of the offending pieces of art (Crucifix and/or rosary in someone’s rectum, rosaries decorated with penises, that sort of thing) appears at least twice.
Aaron Hanscom wants Spain to take the messages about "reconquering al-Anadlus" more seriously, believing that it will become a focus point for extremists who want the old boundaries of the countries of Islam back. With as much as we hear about attempts at terror, or messages of terror, or worries about terror, just how successful is a terrorist attack outside of zones where the concentration of potential suicide bombers is high? And actually, how successful is it inside those areas? For as much a “progress” is being touted in places like Iraq, where one would expect a higher potential incident count, there’s a whole lot of worry about Europe (and to a lesser degree, America) being overrun and bought up by extremist interests, who then work their way into government and take it over. How little faith someone has in the country, then, and the methods by which it operates. If something like that were to happen, I don’t think that the residents would take the matter lying down. Nor would I expect anyone with a hint of radicalism to succeed in the halls of power - we do well enough shunting away legitimate third party voices, it would take a conquest to install an extremist in power. And popular uprisings are very unpoopular to a government with a monopoly on force.
Continuing on in the opinion columns, in matters of the candidates, Lawrence Kudlow wants the candidates to listen to the cries of the people for more oil, and start supporting domestic drilling. So that people can get a quick fix of cheap oil now and put off the problem for a little while longer, rather than using this as an opportunity to think strategically about the future and set in motion plans to deal with the reality that oil is not going to be a permanent resource. With that plan in place, perhaps some amount of cheap energy will be needed to effect the transitions and the changes, but I think it’s a sign of wisdom that the candidates are not immediately capitulating to the idea of domestic drilling.
In technology, NASA is finally sending a probe into Sol's outer spheres to sample the conditions firsthand, requiring serious heat shielding and equipment that can stand up to the conditions. If it succeeds, though, we’ll know a lot more about Sol than we do right now.
Apple computer is focusing on effectively using many-cored processors to boost their computing power, starting with Apple OSX 10.6, Snow Leopard. If they can do it, and have effective parallel processing, then the method will hopefully escape into the wild, where it can be implemented in other operating systems.
Now that our computers are almost always on, and doing a lot of tasks that would otherwise be taken up by date books or other reminder units, an upcoming generation of organizers and to-do lists use text boxes and natural langauge processing to try and translate human instructions into data and a schedule, sending reminders at the appropriate time to help our fading memory. For someone who already uses his computer as a message station, programs like these are probably going to be pretty handy. If such technology could be implemented in a persocom, and technology that lets robots pick out voices in a crowd improves, we all might have our own little Sumomos. Assuming that they were fairly lightweight. The PDAs we have now will do the job nicely, of course, but for the cool factor, having a robot sitting on your shoulder is pretty good.
The creator of some of the fastest F1 cars in the world has said that cars need to get lighter - less weight will make for less CO2 emissions and better fuel mileage. BMW designed a concept car that would probably fit, although there are zero plans to put it into production - a modular car with a fabric skin. Which is actually pretty cool - you can make whatever kind of car you want, be it to look like a sporty racer or a more sedate muscle car, or possibly even like a regular convertible coupe.
Proving that “sex sells” yet again, seeing a scantily-clad woman triggers men to become more impulsive and less future-oriented, but only if they feel they'sre not doing better off than their peers. So all those bikini women and lingerie ads and the like, selling products that have nothing to do with attractive women? Yeah, they’re screwing with your brain. Proving that it still works, players of the game Age of Conan copmlained that the breasts of the female characters had been reduced. The game developers said, in response “Sorry. Unintended change. We’ll get the breasts back to normal soon.”
Because they think it will help stem the flow of kiddie porn, Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint Cable will stop offering access to Usenet or blocking certain newsgroups. Which doesn’t actually stop people from accessing Usenet, just makes them go a different way to get there.
Listmania for tonight - Fourteen tips to avoid nagging, only some of which might actually work as intended. All told, though, they’re likely to get it to a point where boundaries and roles are defined, and assuming that both partners can leave the stuff they’re not doing to their partner, then there won’t be too much for nagging. They just will have to come to an agreement about what constitutes an acceptable level of messiness.
Singled out for further inspection, and perhaps a small modicum of heat, is the continued insistence that Senator Barack Obama has some sort of nefarious agenda for the United States. Whereas criticism and investigation into the dealings and illegalities of those whom the Senator has put into important positions seems much more justifiable, despite the allegations having to do with nothing that would really impact the recommendations or gathering of VP candidates, (update - from Olbermann, apparently, this person has since been removed from the Obama VP selection committee) to continually try to make a big deal out of whom the Senator studied with and made friends with during his collegiate years is really stretching to try and find somewhere to dig dirt on. So the Senator hung out with socialists, attended socialst conferences, and has friends who were and are socialists. To then make implications (although the interviewed person evades the question on whether they’re implying this, to avoid actually lying in print) that the Senator is somehow really a communist in disguise is just this side of being slanderous (or libelous, as the matter may be). It looks like the Senator is going to have to fight off allegations of this sort through the entire general election. No, Senator Obama is not a stealth Muslim. No, he’s not a stealth Communist. He hung out with them in college many years ago. Check his policy statements to see whether he’s still a communist or not. No, he’s not in league with terrorists that want to destroy America. Yes, he’s patriotic, but he doesn’t pray in the streets with his flag pin and yellow magnet ribbon like you do. Why yes, he’s of African descent. No, that doesn’t matter. The mere fact that the Senator has the backing of the Democratic Party indicates to me that they’ve already tossed him through the fires of whether or not he holds positions that are electable and doable, and he fought a vicious primary with another candidate who used these kinds of tactics against him. She lost. If this is the tone the general election takes, then the Republican will also lose.
This advice does not seem to have sunk in, as the comedians at Fox Noise have managed to imply that Senator Obama's wife is not actually married to him, calling her “Obama’s baby mama”, no doubt for the alliterative effect.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greyweirdo wondered if the people doing these things actually knew what they were doing. I think they do, and they’re lookign for something to stick, whether it’s true or not.
Of course, I could be wrong. I was very wrong when lots of states followed the same lead as the federal government and wrote discrimination into their constitutions. I was almost certain that the nation wouldn’t willingly elect the current administration back for a second term. I’m guessing that the country is going to get fired up in this election, and that there will be a lot of voter turnout. I’m hoping that there are no dirty tricks, or the ones that are attemtped are all caught, and that the candidate that the populace truly wants to have as their president is elected, whether from the major parties or the minor ones. I could be wrong. But from the way things are going so far, there’s a good chance that this time, I won’t be. At least, so I hope. Impassioned statements from someone who is not a trained political analyst probably don’t do much outside my monkeysphere. Still, I think this will be a good election. Regardless of who wins, I can see a lot of issues that need discussion finally getting some.
And last for tonight, The Directory of Open Access Journals, for those times when you have scholarly needs and no library database access - or that your library doesn’t have anything on the subject you’re interested in.
First up tonight is a statue that bears further examination and thought - Lenin, Mickey, and Jesus. Which attests to a truth of some sort - regardless of communist or fundie Christian leanings, Walt Disney’s mouse has appeal to both.
Following on from yesterday’s news, the complete text of Dennis Kucinich's thirty-five articles of impeachment against George W. Bush.
A Manitoba prvince woman is trying to get her kids back after her daughter went to school sporting a swastika. It appears that a deal is being worked out to return the children. The mother’s apparent claim of being a “white nationalist”, although “not a neo-Nazi skinhead” or white supremacist, nor the markings on the child, is not sufficient to invoke protective services. Truancy induced by the mom not wanting to get up in the morning and possible drug and alcohol concerns might. It looks, though, as though the primary concern was the political beliefs of the parents, and so the government is making the correct legal decision to return the children, even if it sparks moral outrage. Lots of people should be upset that an old symbol continues to be shackled with a particular meaning recently applied. If the children are raised with white supremacy beliefs, that’s a tragedy, but there is nothing in the law that stops anyone from believing what they want to. There’s lots that stops acting on those beliefs.
Speaking of matters of belief, April DeConick finds the Catholic doctrine of preventing women as priests ridiculous, and the justifications for keeping them that way unfounded. It does seem rather odd that even in today’s more progressive society, the idea that women cannot be Catholic priests is still part of doctrine. I’m not saying this in a “everyone else seems to eb doing it, why not you?” sort of way, but that cutting out a significant part of the congregation from joining the priesthood does not seem to be a way of retaining and obtaining more people.
Leading the gloom and doom section, According to a RAND Corproation study, members of Pakistan's intelligence and paramilitary services are aiding the Taliban in Adghanistan and providing bases for them in Pakistan territory. Perhaps because of that, or because of continued violence in the region in question, Pakistan is scrapping a peace deal made with the Taliban. (Honestly, I’m never sure how far to trust CNS. Sometimes they seem like someone has a grasp on things, other times, they’re off the deep end - see later in the post for the deep end problems).
Reports in say that the New Labour government since Tony Blair has gone in the wrong direction in trying to fight poverty and income inequality. The gaps are up, and there are more poor and more debtors. I wonder when we changed from “Money makes the world go ‘round“ to ”Credit makes the world go ’round”.
Jurors in New South Wales were reprimanded for playing Sudoku in the jury box rather than paying attention to the trial. Something about this makes me wonder what the trial was like, though. Whatever the proceedings were, or their presentation, it was not interesting enough, or there was so much of it that the jury tuned out. There amy need to be some looking into how the trial was being run so that the jurors don’t suffer boredom. At least the jurors can take noted, rather than having to remember it all without aids.
The age of the Internet makes it easy for a mistake to show up and be nitpicked to death. That said, mistaking Iraq as being part of Africa is a pretty big mistake. Uploading pornographic pictures to your private site, while sitting on an obscenity case, and then neglecting to set a password is a pretty big mistake.
Mortgage lenders are finding the dying housing market a problem for them - people are ditching their high-cost mortgages and buying cheaper houses, now that the market has dropped. Lower payments, same type of house, almost actually affordable. Gives the lenders nightmares.
A tornado went through an Iowa Boy Scout Camp, killing four and injuring forty more. While this is no laughing matter, the first thing that came to mind for me was “Is this a divine punishment for the BSA’s refusal to admit atheists and homosexuals?” - using the crux of other disaster arguments against them. I don’t like that idea, though, because it has all the flimsy parts that the original “disaster was God’s wrath” ideas do. Even though one is supposed to “Be prepared” as a Scout, there are some things that will get you, even despite careful planning.
Getting into opinion columns, Alan Caruab praises the Electoral College system, claiming that it works as intended, and that Barack Obama’s nomination as the Democratic Party candidate is a result of a similar system, where the popular vote doesn’t really matter, except as a method of choosing electors/delegates, who then choose with their votes. Theoretically, of course, the electors can defect from their choices, as a preventative measure against a highly popular dictator with ruinous plans for the country.
It sounds like the following CNS “correspondent” is trying to hid their personal disgust and offense under statistics and an attempt at a neutral point of view. I can’t really understand why anyone would make an article out of the fact that a college receiving arts and sciences grants puts on a student art exhibition where some of the works are offensive to Christians unless they thought that the government should revoke the grant because of the artwork. Nowhere is this actually said in the article, although the description of the offending pieces of art (Crucifix and/or rosary in someone’s rectum, rosaries decorated with penises, that sort of thing) appears at least twice.
Aaron Hanscom wants Spain to take the messages about "reconquering al-Anadlus" more seriously, believing that it will become a focus point for extremists who want the old boundaries of the countries of Islam back. With as much as we hear about attempts at terror, or messages of terror, or worries about terror, just how successful is a terrorist attack outside of zones where the concentration of potential suicide bombers is high? And actually, how successful is it inside those areas? For as much a “progress” is being touted in places like Iraq, where one would expect a higher potential incident count, there’s a whole lot of worry about Europe (and to a lesser degree, America) being overrun and bought up by extremist interests, who then work their way into government and take it over. How little faith someone has in the country, then, and the methods by which it operates. If something like that were to happen, I don’t think that the residents would take the matter lying down. Nor would I expect anyone with a hint of radicalism to succeed in the halls of power - we do well enough shunting away legitimate third party voices, it would take a conquest to install an extremist in power. And popular uprisings are very unpoopular to a government with a monopoly on force.
Continuing on in the opinion columns, in matters of the candidates, Lawrence Kudlow wants the candidates to listen to the cries of the people for more oil, and start supporting domestic drilling. So that people can get a quick fix of cheap oil now and put off the problem for a little while longer, rather than using this as an opportunity to think strategically about the future and set in motion plans to deal with the reality that oil is not going to be a permanent resource. With that plan in place, perhaps some amount of cheap energy will be needed to effect the transitions and the changes, but I think it’s a sign of wisdom that the candidates are not immediately capitulating to the idea of domestic drilling.
In technology, NASA is finally sending a probe into Sol's outer spheres to sample the conditions firsthand, requiring serious heat shielding and equipment that can stand up to the conditions. If it succeeds, though, we’ll know a lot more about Sol than we do right now.
Apple computer is focusing on effectively using many-cored processors to boost their computing power, starting with Apple OSX 10.6, Snow Leopard. If they can do it, and have effective parallel processing, then the method will hopefully escape into the wild, where it can be implemented in other operating systems.
Now that our computers are almost always on, and doing a lot of tasks that would otherwise be taken up by date books or other reminder units, an upcoming generation of organizers and to-do lists use text boxes and natural langauge processing to try and translate human instructions into data and a schedule, sending reminders at the appropriate time to help our fading memory. For someone who already uses his computer as a message station, programs like these are probably going to be pretty handy. If such technology could be implemented in a persocom, and technology that lets robots pick out voices in a crowd improves, we all might have our own little Sumomos. Assuming that they were fairly lightweight. The PDAs we have now will do the job nicely, of course, but for the cool factor, having a robot sitting on your shoulder is pretty good.
The creator of some of the fastest F1 cars in the world has said that cars need to get lighter - less weight will make for less CO2 emissions and better fuel mileage. BMW designed a concept car that would probably fit, although there are zero plans to put it into production - a modular car with a fabric skin. Which is actually pretty cool - you can make whatever kind of car you want, be it to look like a sporty racer or a more sedate muscle car, or possibly even like a regular convertible coupe.
Proving that “sex sells” yet again, seeing a scantily-clad woman triggers men to become more impulsive and less future-oriented, but only if they feel they'sre not doing better off than their peers. So all those bikini women and lingerie ads and the like, selling products that have nothing to do with attractive women? Yeah, they’re screwing with your brain. Proving that it still works, players of the game Age of Conan copmlained that the breasts of the female characters had been reduced. The game developers said, in response “Sorry. Unintended change. We’ll get the breasts back to normal soon.”
Because they think it will help stem the flow of kiddie porn, Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint Cable will stop offering access to Usenet or blocking certain newsgroups. Which doesn’t actually stop people from accessing Usenet, just makes them go a different way to get there.
Listmania for tonight - Fourteen tips to avoid nagging, only some of which might actually work as intended. All told, though, they’re likely to get it to a point where boundaries and roles are defined, and assuming that both partners can leave the stuff they’re not doing to their partner, then there won’t be too much for nagging. They just will have to come to an agreement about what constitutes an acceptable level of messiness.
Singled out for further inspection, and perhaps a small modicum of heat, is the continued insistence that Senator Barack Obama has some sort of nefarious agenda for the United States. Whereas criticism and investigation into the dealings and illegalities of those whom the Senator has put into important positions seems much more justifiable, despite the allegations having to do with nothing that would really impact the recommendations or gathering of VP candidates, (update - from Olbermann, apparently, this person has since been removed from the Obama VP selection committee) to continually try to make a big deal out of whom the Senator studied with and made friends with during his collegiate years is really stretching to try and find somewhere to dig dirt on. So the Senator hung out with socialists, attended socialst conferences, and has friends who were and are socialists. To then make implications (although the interviewed person evades the question on whether they’re implying this, to avoid actually lying in print) that the Senator is somehow really a communist in disguise is just this side of being slanderous (or libelous, as the matter may be). It looks like the Senator is going to have to fight off allegations of this sort through the entire general election. No, Senator Obama is not a stealth Muslim. No, he’s not a stealth Communist. He hung out with them in college many years ago. Check his policy statements to see whether he’s still a communist or not. No, he’s not in league with terrorists that want to destroy America. Yes, he’s patriotic, but he doesn’t pray in the streets with his flag pin and yellow magnet ribbon like you do. Why yes, he’s of African descent. No, that doesn’t matter. The mere fact that the Senator has the backing of the Democratic Party indicates to me that they’ve already tossed him through the fires of whether or not he holds positions that are electable and doable, and he fought a vicious primary with another candidate who used these kinds of tactics against him. She lost. If this is the tone the general election takes, then the Republican will also lose.
This advice does not seem to have sunk in, as the comedians at Fox Noise have managed to imply that Senator Obama's wife is not actually married to him, calling her “Obama’s baby mama”, no doubt for the alliterative effect.
greyweirdo wondered if the people doing these things actually knew what they were doing. I think they do, and they’re lookign for something to stick, whether it’s true or not.Of course, I could be wrong. I was very wrong when lots of states followed the same lead as the federal government and wrote discrimination into their constitutions. I was almost certain that the nation wouldn’t willingly elect the current administration back for a second term. I’m guessing that the country is going to get fired up in this election, and that there will be a lot of voter turnout. I’m hoping that there are no dirty tricks, or the ones that are attemtped are all caught, and that the candidate that the populace truly wants to have as their president is elected, whether from the major parties or the minor ones. I could be wrong. But from the way things are going so far, there’s a good chance that this time, I won’t be. At least, so I hope. Impassioned statements from someone who is not a trained political analyst probably don’t do much outside my monkeysphere. Still, I think this will be a good election. Regardless of who wins, I can see a lot of issues that need discussion finally getting some.
And last for tonight, The Directory of Open Access Journals, for those times when you have scholarly needs and no library database access - or that your library doesn’t have anything on the subject you’re interested in.
