Blargh - 24 July 2008

More duct tapes tuff today, and we had quite a few people at the small branch try their hands. This may have to become a regular thing.

Starting internationally, as always, copyright infringement disguised as cultural heritage. Yeah, I doubt that would fly here, because it’s just too close to the original.

Significantly weirder than that, apparently, hailstones came back through the toilet system in Austria after they clogged drains from a freak storm. Supposedly, a person who was on the can when the backup happened is asking for damages because of the backup and avalanche of hail balls.

Stranger still, however, and true, is the chimpanzee that stole a zoo worker's tranquilizer gun from him before the gun could be used.

Back in the realm of familiarity, there's unreported heroism going on in Iraq. This is apparently both the Western media’s fault, for not reporting on all the big heroes there are, and the Army Public Relations office’s fault for not flooding the Western media with stories of heroism day after day after day, and countering the insurgency’s superpowers and ability to get media play for everything they did, wrote, or videotaped. Of course, if the reports are true and Iraq's al-Qaeda are headed back to Afghanistan, then there will be less heroism to report on from Iraq. CNS has an answer for this, too - as the surge worked, the embedded reporters went away, obviously because success in Iraq contradicts the agreed-upon media narrative that Iraq is a failure. Although, the Wall Street Journal thinks that more than just additional troops will be needed to carry the day in Afghanistan.

Domestically, distance-learning students may be required to let an exam proctor watch them over websam, supposedly to cut down on exam cheating, and with the camera bought at the student’s expense. Oh, and some of the systems only work with IE and Windows. Sorry, Mac people.

Of more interest, a Venn Diagram from hell - detailing several running scandals of the current administration, and the people involved in them. Just in case you wanted to know who’s at the heart of everything, and who has crossover appeal from scandal to scandal.

And out into the cold opinion columns, where Collin Levy says Democrats are scrambling to find a way of getting energy costs down and being able to keep the environmental camp on their side. It doesn’t, apparently, involve renewables until much later down the road, but for now, a little more drilling and some nuclear plants (with great potential to really pollute the planet... which might be why Mr. Gore opposes them) to get energy costs down. Apparently, this is a terrorizing prospect for the Democrats. And measures like re-instituting a national 55mph speed limit are useless, according to Stephen Moore.

Drilling down a bit, there is apparently a constiutuinal amendment plot underway to change the rules so that the Democrats can retain control, even when they lose the governor's office and the legislature, as an attempt not to return toward fairness, but to do the dirty deeds the Republicans did back to them and see how they like it. Anyone back home that can confirm/deny/provide more information?

Walter E. Williams goes for a loop on logic, concluding that the welfare state is somehow responsible for the degraded black schools in the country, based entirely on the idea that children of earlier eras could and did succeed, in tougher conditions like Jim Crow laws, and in greater poverty than there is now, so the welfare state, which breaks apart black families and doesn’t reward hard work and moral standards (?), has obviously been the cause of the decline of the school. All this, in the last paragraph, after describing the horrible situation at a school that is clearly underfunded and unable to motivate the students. I wonder what the property values are around that school now, and how many of those families have to have the parents working all the time just to be able to make the rent, and what the neighborhood is like around those schools. Tell me how the “welfare state” managed to produce this kind of problem, can account for the current demographics and property values, and still manage to interfere somehow and break apart families.

OpinionJournal hates bailouts, especially taxpayer-guaranteed ones, continuing to hiss about government saving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from their own portfolios. Terrence Jeffrey takes it one step further, decrying the size of the Federal government in general and proclaiming it has grown too large. And Pat Toomey says that the voters want politicians who will spend less on pork, whether the pork benefits them or not. In a downturning economy, suddenly people are more interested in how their tax dollars are spent. Funny, that.

In candidate opinions, someone has concluded that an electronic copy of Senator Obama's birth certificate, provided as an attempt to get people to shut up about his "secret Muslim/Arabic origins" is a forgery, meaning the Senator is really...Amish? (Thanks, General, for providing the tail end of that sentence.) Well, according to those who believe that his birth certificate fo Hawai’i is forged, this means that Senator Obama is somehow a foreign national, and thus ineligible for the candidacy, and must be some sort of Manchurian-type candidate to lead us all into perdition. Wait, what? Let me do some research... a different analysis, including the testimony of someone in Hawai'is vital records office, debunking the forgery claims. I feel that something like this derives from people still wanting to believe that Senator Obama is a Muslim or terrorist or anti-American candidate, and are grasping at whatever straws they can to try and discredit him. In filing for the Presidency, the Senator had to provide appropriate documentation that he fit the criteria of the office - and I doubt that the government officials responsible for such a thing would let something that had forgery suspicions through without further investigation. (And before that, the Democratic party probably did some looking, too.) Of course, this doesn’t stop the clamor for the Obama campaign to produce a certified paper copy of his documentation. Actually, there is a sane voice in the cacophony of comments on the Atlas Shrugs bit - one person says that nobody’s analysis is authentic if they didn’t study the original document, and are basing all their claims on digital copies of original documents. Which makes the whole thing a non-issue, and thus, one’s inner Nelson can come out and say “Haw-haw!”, on that. Also, potentially according to Title 8, 1401, section d of the United States Code, so long as his father was a national of the United States, even if he wasn’t actually a citizen (would a student visa do - or being married to a citizen, as he was for a couple months before the Senator’s birth), then the point is moot and the Senator is a natural-born citizen.

Stuff not having to deal with forgeries includes Richard Allen saying that a week-long visit to Iraq and Afghanistan does not a solid foreign policy grounding make, compared to the experience previous Presidents and current Republican candidates have under their belts, Michael Gerson suggseting that Cindy McCain's humanitarian work should be looked at as a potential reason to elect her husband, and last for the opinion columns, Karl Rove details the turns of opinions if the candidates, on both sides. So if one wanted to despise both sides as flip-floppers, well, here’s Turd Blossom to the rescue.

Scitech introduces Knol, Google's foray into knowledge creation and presentation, with articles penned by individuals, who then can choose to accept comment, but ultimately still retain control over what goes in and out. “Wikipedia, with moderation”, according to some. Might be great, might suffer the same lack of users as Conservapedia... or Citizendium. Beyond that, there’s the first renderings of a joint Russian-European space capsule, and the insidious plot of reeling people in with "free-to-play" grinders where equipment wears out faster than can be obtained, thus prompting people to shell out real cash just to keep up.

And last for tonight, Design Observer hates on steampunk, but uses a functional steam bike as an example of just putting weird and antiquarian veneers on otherwise modern stuff. Whoops. Wrong example. Might have a better shot with renderings of what's actually inside the toaster.

The Home Stretch - 25 July 2008

We’ve made it to the weekend yet again. On some weeks, this feels like a grand accomplishment all by itself. I think it was because I had programs every day this week that I’m feeling a little overrun. At the same time, it's not really a job to me - it's still fun.

As anticipated, having given his last lecture some time ago, Randy Pausch died of cancer July 25 at 47 years of age.

The International Bureau is noticing the shift in coverage locales with interest. Apparently this time, Iraq really has been sealed up as a done deal, so now it’s time to get Pakistan to help out with Afghanistan by not being so lax with their borders. Although it’s not completely wine and roses - Iraq will not participate in the Olympic Games this summer unless some compromises can be reached, considering the government dissolved the National Olympic committee in the country, provoking the IOC’s decision.

Iran wants to help the IAEA and cooperate more - if the IAEA isn't going to go in as a watchdog looking for secret nuclear weapons. Which seems kind of counterproductive - part of ensuring atomic safety, no doubt, would be to find out whether there are weaponization processes going on... an accident there could end up making swaths of land uninhabitable.

Domestic news: fuel from waste is picking up steam as a viable alternative, mostly because gas prices have gotten to the point where alternative methods of production, even in their crude form, are price-competitive. If gas prices stay high, then refinement and innovation might drive their prices down to the point where it’s cheaper to get garbage gas instead of new petroleum from the ground. It would be great if we could use all the landfill garbage to make motor fuel with - reduce two environmental problems at once. Why not?

In candidate matters, Senator Obama decides not to visit wounded troops on a campaign visit, thinking it would be seen as trying to score cheap political points, for which the McCain campaign jumps on him because “it’s never inappropriate to visit the military” - well, considering that people are swinging around Senator McCain’s military experience to score political points, this is not an out-of-character statement for him. Odds are good, though, that if he had visited, he would have been accused of trying to score cheap political points and a photo-op, because “everyone knows” he’s a elitist pie-in-the-sky surrender monkey who hates the troops and is secretly a Muslim working with the terrorists. Of course, none of this gets coverage, they proclaim, not because, say, it isn’t fucking true, but because the media loves Senator Obama and would never do anything to hurt him, based on the amounts of money given to Democratic campaigns as opposed to Republican ones by those who work in journalism and newsrooms. Well, of those who can contribute and aren’t forbidden by employer policy from making indvidual contributions to political campaigns. Or based on the NYT's rejection of Senator McCain's response op-ed, and all the time that the media is devoting to Obama. Well, both of these campaigns are historic, in the ages and races of the people running - their politics may or may not be anything new, but th people certainly are. As Liberal Eagle notes, it's only bias when the liberl is getting good press. If it were a scandal-laden conservative, like it has been for the last eight years, then it’s just good news reporting to downplay the scandals, demand no accountability, and present them as the guardians of order and morality against the degenerate liberals (Thanks, Andrew Klavan, for this song of W praise, equating Mr. Bush to the Batman).

In the opinion columns, it’s beginning to become a bit clearer why energy independence has become a hot topic (well, past the point of really expensive gas prices, anyway) - it's a perfect opportunity to accuse the Democratic leadership of not taking on important matters and try to paint them as the party that’s stopping people from magically fixing the gas problem, or the party still stuck in the 60s, shouting loudly about what needs to be done while doing none of it.

Speaking of doing nothing, David Ranson suggests that nothing is exactly what we should do with the economy problems, because we’re exaggerating the impact of the collapses, and things will right themselves, assuming we don’t make stupid political decisions, like bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to Dick Armey.

Taking care of some of the odd statements people make: John S. Wilkins on why monkeys are still here, even if other things evovled from them, with a quick digression into how the idea that “humans evolved from monkeys” really works, assuming you get your terms and definitions right to say “humans and monkeys evolved from a shared ancestor, who is aprt of a group that we would commonly call monkeys in this era, even thgouh they may not be part of what we scientifically call monkeys now”. As with a lot of things, the mixture of common definitions and scientific ones creates confusion and discord.

Much more easily filed is Bill Donahue equating the "desecration" of the Catholic wafer with the burning of crosses and the display of swastikas...excepting the last two actually were done by groups with the intention of intimidating, whereas the first is, well, kind of laughable, because the people reputed to have done it never did, according to theweaselking.

And we get into the candidate opinion section with a real whammy. Ben Stein says that using an open-air stadium to accept a nomination in front of 75,000 screaming fans is something Hitler would have done, as opposed to what? The convention center and a dignified speech in front of 75,000 cheering fans and a few spectators applauding politely? Or that the prpemise of compaigning in this country is based precisely on appeals to those 75,000 screaming fans to go out and vote for the shiny candidate? If Stein wants a more dignified atmosphere, then he’s going to have to change the way we do politics in the country. He might fidn help in the WSJ's portrayal of Barack Obama as someone who lacks statesmanship, because he refuses to accept that he was and still is wrong about being a surrender-advocating cheesemonkey in Iraq and still insists that we move ahead with troop withdrawals, endangering the chances we have to “win” in Iraq. Cal Thomas agrees that the Seantor's position is just so wrong that it makes him unelectable. Janice Shaw Crouse gives the 60s another run, painting the later half of the decade as the point when it all started unraveling, with the riots and the Roe decisions and how we can’t vote for the Democrat who wants to take us further down the road of the 60s, rather than voting for the person who was a POW during the 60s and understands the need to resist and stay a stringently family-values guy. Larry Elder believes he has great questions for media people to ask Senator Obama, the last one being, of course, “Is it possible that all these spending just might have prevented another terrorist attack?”

And then there’s the peach of the whole thing, where Ken Blackwell says that schools can't instill the things children need to succeed, only married two-parent families who regularly go to church with their children can. The basis of his point? Research by the Family Research Council, who have a significantly vested interest in promoting both the heteronuclear married family and making one’s faith the single most important thing in one’s life, sufficient that children who don’t adopt or conform will be shunned. While I agree that schools often reflect the community around them, because the tax bases fund the schools, and certain demographic groups tend to get shunted into certain property-value areas, schools should be able to help overcome family deficiencies. Churches assisting in this totally depends on your faith and whether your government firmly believes that churches are the key to getting social assistance in the right places (and can be trusted not to push their faith as a prerequisite of getting social aid), but schools really should be able to provide high-quality education and teachers, even if the state and federal government need to chip in high amounts of that cost because the property values in the area aren’t able to do that support themselves until the neighborhood gets renewed.

Science moves on apace, and creates robot fish that look and swim a lot like the real thing, and thus could get up close and personal when it came to studying stuff. Just so long as they weren’t predators of that particular type of fish. In addition to that, other signs we’re living in “The Fuuuuuuturrrrrre” is androids starring in sunscreen commercials, more efficient and faster-timed LCD monitors, figuring out why the phrase "licking your wounds" isn't just "Whistlin' Dixie", learning some of the for the aurorae in the night sky, old horse viruses back for another round, with worries we may have a human-infectable strain, along with the resurgence of an old ebola-type virus. (Why old diseases back again? Well, viruses mutate and evolve, and one of those things of the future is that the bugs get better... technologically or biologically)

Of course, we’re still stuck in some proprietary hells here and there. Take, for example, an accusation that a motherboard manufacturer is deliberately pointing its BIOS to places that will make Linux-based OS choke, while giving Windows Vista and others a free pass and the correct tables. While the conspiracy theory doesn’t really interest most of the comment crew on Slashdot, they are very interested in the manufacturer's claim to be compliant with a standard, even though they are faced with a counterexample, and the attitude of the support personnel amounting to “use Vista, which is what we’re certified for”, rather than “Thanks, we’ll pass that information along and try to roll out a truly standards-compliant version in a later release.”

Last for tonight, Oh, the irony. Thank heaven for things that will get you there faster, indeed.