Which of these things might you be talking about? - 28 July 2008

Ah, refreshed and ready and working yet again. Last week, a seminal hacker movie celebrated 25 years of "Would you like to play a game?"

In other nations, a terrorist strike kills 45 in India through simultaneous detonations. Iran has more than 6,000 centrifuges. The United States has probably been trying to censor without censoring the images that come out of Iraq, so as not to tell or show the populace what war really looks like or permit photographers anywhere near the front lines to take candid shots. Hell, if someone can't take a picture of an empty kids' pool for fear of pedophilia, it’s not that far of a stretch to assume or guess that other, more unsuitable for the masses images would be encouraged not to be taken or to appear.

Going from serious to silly, a complaint has been filed that the police did not respond appropriately to... a statue that depicts Jesus with an erect and visible penis. For which the General weighs in about the need to support the idea of Jesus' membership.

Domestically, a gunman shot members of a Tennessee Universalist Unitarian church, killing two and wounding others. The motive of the shooter appears to have been hatred of the liberal movement and homosexuals. The church apparently had a sign out front that advertised their tolerant and welcoming position toward homosexuals in their church. This wingnut decided to go a-shooting. How many others are trying to change the laws so that homosexuals may as well be illegal? An account of someone at the shooting, who calls the shooter what he is - a terrorist. For deeper analysis and looking at it from a perspective beyond one nut with a shotgun, Orcinus discuses the role and philosophy of UUs and their likelihood to be in the firing line if fundamentalists decide to put on the Armor of God and go slaughter who they consider to be apostates.

Speaking of problems with conflicting spiritualities, our Human Rights department sends forward a school policy that is preventing a young Native American from attending kindergarten, because of the length of his hair. Apparently, the rules require that boys keep short-cut hair. The family that wants to send their kid to the school believes in the sacredness of long hair, and of cutting only at important events. Feministing's comment squad thinks the school board and the super don't want to recognize any culture or religion different from their own, looking through other elements of the dress code to find other similarly discriminatory rules in place for what boys and girls can and can’t wear or do to their hair.

The cash quotes from the superintendent - “A school district is a reflection of the community. We’ve consistently been very conservatively dressed, very conservatively disciplined. It’s no secret what our policy is: You’ll cut your hair to the right point. You’ll tuck in your shirt. You’ll have a belt.”

He continues, “How can it be outdated? How many doctors, professionals, lawyers, look at your military branches, look at bankers, how many of them have long hair? How many have beards? How many have body piercings all over their face?”...“I’ve never had a hair past my ears,” Rhodes says. “I’m pretty much a rule follower. I’m not out to, just because there’s a rule I got to try to break it. I wasn’t raised that way, I wasn’t genetically put together that way. If they say do this, I’m going to do it.”

No individuality, nowhere, not permitted, not on my time or my school. Everyone here conforms - you will, too.

Even after appeal, the school board decided that their policies would not change, and the child cannot come to kindergarten. If you want to give the Needville school District a piece of your mind, politely, contact information is for you.

Convicted "Spam King" escapes from jail, kills wife and daughter, then himself. No motive in the article, so it is officially unknown. Whatever it was, it was apparently enough to take others with him.

Bikers jam roadways, wanting more people to bike, driver runs over bikers in aggravation at being late for appointment because of bikers. About as productive, on both ends, as a man shooting his lawnmower because it wouldn't start.

It’s from Infowars, so it could be nothing more than a rumor and little less than a smear, but supposedly, Mr. Bush likes hanging out with a lot of other men at a camp for the powerful, which may or may not include mock rituals and other things. Considering what Mr. Bush is like off-camera, this would not be surprising, if it could be substantiated.

In candidate matters, beer as a campaign issue? Although it doesn’t happen under the direct auspices of either candidate, someone thinks an anti-McCain 527 could make a mint talking about how much money Cindy McCain stands to make from the purchase of Anheuser-Busch by inBev. Personally, I think they could do much better showing off how the "prosperity gospel" idea is funneling all sorts of cash into already-rich church coffers, making their pastors richer and potentially politically powerful, instead of doing work promoting the religion, promoting social justice, or helping those that need it. Further matters of the Republican presumptive nominee include a recommendation that the VA get out of the business of routine care for soldiers and stick strictly to combat injuries, proposing that th VA give a card to each vet that they can then take to a civilian doctor for free regular health care. In other words, the government will pay for it, but the civilians will take care of the routine issues. Isn’t the point of the VA hospitals and doctors supposed to be so that the government has experts who are familiar with soldiers and their potential problems on hand, even if just for routine care?

Perhaps it is his fame, or perhaps for some other reason, but a prayer attributed to Senator Obama left at the Western Wall in Israel was printed by an Israeli newspaper, which immediately drew outrage from others in the country, feeling that a prayer such as that was a communication between a man and his God, and thus sacred. I agree - there should be no real interest in the note left by the Senator at the wall, whether it was the Serenity prayer or “Hail Satan”. Ostensibly, the Senator’s personal religious beliefs only come into play when he starts proposing or making policy based on them.

The opinion columns love us, they really do. We're all a bunch of moral relativists, which is destroying our country. Faith in the Abrahamic God makes us the power that we are, . Someone claiming there is a government cover-up about aliens is actually under the influence of malign demons. There are precious few staunch defenders of traditional morality in the face of openly pro-homosexual people who want homosexuals in the military, arguing that there will be disastrous effects on morale and an increased amount of sexual harrassment and assault. (Because men in the military are afraid of homosexuals and would pulp anyone they suspected to be one?) If we believe Phil Harris, we're trading one doomsday for another if we engage alternative technologies, because we’re always actively working toward Entropy. So why try to put off the inevitable? Instead, we’ll just kill ourselves in a different way. Of course, we all just need to admit that men are better at football and firing weapons, and cherish and value all the values of manliness, because it’s objectively true - someone in a book said so. If we elect a Democrat, everyone will pay higher taxes and the poor will be even better off lazing about, being parasitic off the hard work of others.

Burt Prelutsky thinks Israel needs to toughen up their anti-terror stance, including stopping tradied corpses for prisoners, instituting a death penalty for those declared terrorists, and sending corpses back to predominantly Muslim countries and areas wrapped in pigskin. Mary Katherine Ham sees America becoming more and more like Israel as time goes on, trying to balance security with freedom in the face of a neverending terror swarm.

Much more calmly, John Bridgeland thinks we need to fund and provide more opportunities for people to do public service, John Fund has no love for BAMN, the organization chiefly opposing Ward Connerly's drive to remove any sotr of "racial preferences" from government hiring, university admissions, etc. Yeah, we can see why, having seen some of BAMN at work (and the free rag that calls itself the Daily’s satirization and outrage at the same). That’s not to say we agree with Mr. Connerly, just that BAMN’s tactics leave much to be desired.

With regard to candidates, Steve champan thinks the current journalism gush on Senator Obama will fade, much the same way it did with Senator McCain earlier on in the decade. Of course, Senator McCain might have a little trouble getting back into the spotlight. It won’t matter, thuogh, because nobody will be fooled by Barack Obama by November, according to douglas MacKinnon, even with his media empire trying to get him elected. For Selena Zito, Pennsylvania is a must-win for Obama. Austin Hill thinks Senator Obama is deluding himself when the Senator speaks of "the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope", because they don’t have a movement for us to graft on to, but instead, we’d have to push them and get their movement going. Floyd and Mary Beth Brown think bloggers and the netroots are Senator Obama's shock troops, with Daily Kos at the forefront.

John Hawkins thinks he's clever and does a lot of quoting what the Democrats thought the surge would do. Ha, ha, they’re so obviously wrong now, aren’t they? Iraq is a stable place and ready for us to withdraw and let them stand on their own. Right? And with that in mind, we should elect a candidate that thinks those troops should stay there, against the wishes of the populace, like Senator McCain. Because he was right about the surge working, he’ll be right there, too.

Also, Liberal Eagle's opinion on why Libertarianism doesn't work out in the end, and Austin Cline's anger that the government is planting moles and using surveillance on peaceful organizations.

In science and technology, say hello to the New York Times' and National Public Radio's APIs, ready for enterprising people to remix and slice the content, their way, fish as the inspiration for new armor, Wikifying medical knowledge and information, newer, better, fuel cell technology, and the U.S. playing catch-up with Japan in putting newspapers on someone's cell phone.

Oh, and Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter believe that nobody should be able to share anything, ever by letting the government file civil suits against copyright infringers and creating a copyright czar in the federal government whose sole purpose it is to protect the interests of the MPAA, RIAA, and other large content middlemen. I’m betting that even if the populace complains about the bill and seeks its burial, it will pass handily, and we can all look forward to government lawsuits. Well, that, or having our ISPs tell us just how much they're monitoring our communications. Or not telling us. Whichever.

Last for tonight, watches that require more than just a passing numeric knowledge to tell time with, which goes handily with the promise of revealing OSS and CIA gadgetry from the past. Also, abstinence thongs. Just because it’s funny.

And another day finishes - 29 July 2008

My professional self realizes that this is something that bears repeating, even if it seems obvious, but if you give teenagers a space of their own, they'll own the space, hang out, and repsect the place. It’s a pretty simple concept for libraries, and so now we’ve got to work hard to undo the damage done when teenagers were considered pests in a library, rather than important people.

Internationally, still cleaning up Iraq, although this is supposedly the last real challenge province, which renews the crowing that the United States has won the combat operations phase, despite the military personnel being cautious about declaring victory and worrying that the people sought after will pack up and move over to Afghanistan, where NATO troops are apparently falling down on the job. Or Beijing, for the Olympics, if CNS is to be trusted further than they can be thrown. Anyway, because the pilgrimages are returning, things are apparently doing well enough for a little strutting around. Just don’t try to suggest additional NATO commitments in Afghanistan could result in tax breaks for families in the U.S..

Palestinian jails regularly torture their prisoners, according to human rights watchdogs. If people want incentives for the Untied States to not torture their opponents, the lists of places that do torture regularly should be an incentive to those who pride themselves on not being like “the enemy”. For those willing to work with some other, more ethical and moral concepts, we’ve got plenty there, too.

Domestically, some Q & A about who qualifies to rework their loan into something less lethal, with a caveat - the bank has to approve it. So good luck if you’re actually going to try and refinance yourself into something better.

At least a couple Republicans are steamed about the method of Unanimous Consent to pass bills, accusing the Democrats of subverting and preventing the normal course of debate and amendment to create legislation, forcing filibusters and objections. I think I need a refresher on how the Congress works - I think the committees are supposed to be made up of members of each party that reflect the distribution in the larger chamber, so in committee, there should be a way of objecting and amending. After that, if the Democrats really are trying to cheat the larger house of its opportunity to comment, then it’s dirty pool. If the Republicans are going to object and delay just because they want to obstruct Democratic bills, that’s also dirty pool.

CNS thinks the House Majority Leader is artfully dodging having a position on offshore drilling, when it looks to me like the Leader is repeating the official Democratic position, which is “Explore the stuff you have before asking for more”. If that land is nonproductive, and the companies can prove that, then let the lease go for being nonproductive and look elsewhere. If it’s all nonproductive and provably so, then perhaps the Democrats will consider opening up new zones to drill in. Not that drilling will make an immediate impact on pricing or supply, unless the capacity to process and refine it is built first. It also wont't stop opinion columnists trying to paint Democrats as devils standing in the way of lower gas prices.

Let the voter fraud investigations commence. The GOP wants Virginia to expand the scope of its investigation into a documented voter registration fraud case, in a battleground state. Funny how the states that get those investigations, regardless of the party that instigates them, are always toss-ups in the upcoming election year.

A fact about an opinion writer. Robert Novak has a brain tumor.

Rumors about Republicans - Larry Craig may have also frequented the same men that Ted Haggard did. But that’s just rumors, even if it does seem to fit the profile of the toe-tapper himself.

A vandal put a graffiti quote on the side of a library. What does the media report on? The quote may be misattributed, depending on whether you feel citing the character is acceptable or not. Actual reporting about the fact that someone put graffiti on the library? Zero. What the staff reaction to it was? A couple lines. I do have to admit, if I had the tag “For freedom, enter here” sprayed somewhere relatively innocuous, like the sidewalk in front of the library, I’d probably look the other way on it. The person who tagged the library at least had the good sense to try something literary, rather than just a symbol or a string of profane language. Maybe it could start a trend, where we could have quotes and messages displayed here and there as way of trying to say something more profound than “Kilroy was here”. It would probably make the graffiti a little less of an eyesore to people.

In candidate news, The polls say all sorts of things about Senator Obama's lead - so far, they all agree he's leading, even with the opinion that the media is helping Obama (everyone sees bias when it’s THEM getting the good press coverage) and wants to see him elected. Actually, I heard Rachel Maddow say on Countdown last night that the media is giving Senator McCain a free pass by just airing his material without a cursory fact-check or attempt to correct or report on his or his campaign’s gaffes, missteps, and falsehoods. Some part of me wonders if it’s not the media giving McCain a free pass, but the media sensing from the populace that John McCain is not a hot ticket or fairly electable outside the Fox demographic, and is duly reporting that he did or said or released something, but feeling that the audience really doesn’t care past that point. Perhaps with the tightening of the polls, the people will decide they want to hear more about what McCain has in store for them, and accordingly, the media will scrutinize him more.

In God We Trust, an ":inter-faith organization" has complained to the Obama campaign about the Freedom From Religion Foundation's "Imagine No Religion' billboard in Denver, claiming that the FFRF is trying to spread their message using Senator Obama's success and the Democratic convention. The organization calls on the Obama campaign to condemn the billboard, because if he doesn’t, he’s apparently endorsing the billboard and its “hate-filled message”, damaging his reputation with the 91 percent majority of people who believe in God and showing that “attacks on their beliefs will go unchallenged in an Obama administration”.

Wait, WHAT? If 91 percent of Americans believe in God, then goddammit, you do NOT get to act like an oppressed minority. Furthermore, you’re going to have to try very hard to convince me that in a country where all beliefs about religion are protected (at least to the point that they don’t violate other laws, of which “I am the entity represented by the Tetragrammaton, you will have no other gods before me” does not appear), a message that asks people to engage in a mental exercise about religion, with no impetus to act or to change their beliefs stemming from it, is somehow a “hate-filled message”. I expect, that if Senator Obama makes any statement at all about this asshaberdasheric crackpottery, it is to say “All views on religion are welcome in America. Our Constitution provides explicit protection for all people to believe what they want about the existence or nonexistence, number, gender, and preferences of godly beings. Our government will not censor alternative messages to the majority, and only when it is clear that the laws of the Untied States are, or will soon be, violated as a result of actions from those beliefs, will the government arrest anyone promoting a particular message.” We’ve gone from Obama as the Secret Muslim to the Secret Atheist, who magically endorses things by not saying anything about them when they exist in proximity to something he will be doing in the future, at a time when the billboard itself will not actually be up. Or maybe he’s still the Secret Muslim, and his non-condemnation of this non-issue will only confirm to the organization that he can’t be a Christian, because every Real True Christian would be totally offended and condemning of a message that asks the world to go beyond dogmas and viewing others as inferior, cursed, or damned.

Moving on into our opinion segments (after, admittedly, having given one of my own), a quick post from the Orcinus blog about the choices of reading (and probably viweing) material that the Knoxville UU vhurch shooter favored, which bradhicks sees as a great example of how right-wing "jokes" about killing liberals and others, combined with an economic situation that left a lot of men out of work, and sprinkled just so with the adoption of no-fault divorce created a person who feels like they have little enough to live for that they'll take a shotgun and try to shoot as many of their "enemies" until killed by police. Excepting that in this situation, the congregation managed to subdue the shooter with nonlethal force, and did not then use lethal force in revenge. bradhicks‘s point, though, is that even when pundits say things that no sane person would consider to be serious, there are enough insane people who will, and having the requisite insanity in this case, they may also have the requisite insanity to then go out and try. This condition should make people of all political stripes tell the clowns who “jokingly” call for the elimination of all viewpoints not their own to shut the f**k up, at least while they’re on the air and broadcasting to millions.

The Wall Street Journal considers the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout to be government rewarding a corporation with money so that the corporation can give the money to the government’s political causes, creating a cycle of corruption and political donations.

William McGurn thinks the idae of using Blackwater personnel as advisors and logistical support for the UN troops that would do the actual fighting is an excellent, cost-effective way of solving the problem of the Janjaweed. And then there would be the matter of the sustaining part of the action, to make sure there isn’t a resurgence of Janjaweed militia, to actually serve and execute the warrant on the Sudanese president, and to hold the country together after that to build something stable. Which may or may not potentially make the Blackwater solution as expensive, if not more so, than the homegrown and trained solution.

Michael Soussan feels the IOC's decision to ban Iraq from Beijing is hypocrisy, citing the IOC’s own scandals of late as proof that they can’t really take the high ground in forbidding Iraqis to compete based on the national Olympic committee’s politically-motivated changes. Soussan admits the decision was a bad one for Iraq, but not a bannable one, unless the IOC wants to do some more banning based on unnamed violations and countries that are implied to be far worse.

In candidate opinions, starting with something not on the major track, a plan for how to make third-party campaigns effective by getting enough seats to be a spoiler or filibuster squad against the opposition.

Michael Boskin believes Senator Obama's plans for taxation and trade will be ruinous to the American economy, giving the very rich less incentive to work or to enjoy capital gains on their investments. Apparently, the spending on health insurance will be gigantic, and the poor will be harmed by his energy taxes. Such a no-win situation. Guess we should vote for the person that believes in cutting taxes and continuing rampant deficit spending... Robert Novak sees the polling numbers as evidence that Obama hasn't closed the deal on the American public, a testament to the effectiveness of both political parties to convince the populace and the media that their candidate is the superior one. Garry Kasparov thinks that Obama doesn't yet have the stones to stand up to Russia and China, like he should. For the crowning stroke of today’s candidate opinions, an anonymous political contributor says Senator Obama is the perfect candidate for a politics that has and wants no real power, a product marketed and sold, and will inevitably and completely betray the demographics that elected him, creating four more years of the same elite rule rather than any actual change. Wow. Pessimism in politics is a staple, but I thought we had managed to already deal with Obama as the Antichrist.

Our science and technology department has found someone talking about warp engines, although the energy generation requirements are a little bit more than humans can muster at this point, tidal power hooked up to the grid in Northern Ireland, cheaper lithium-ion battery manufacture, really tiny-size optical microscopes, perfect for use in the developing world, where some doctors make the rounds by going to the villages where the patients are.

We’re intrigued by Richard Brason's unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo, a vehicle designed to carry SpaceShipTwo, the craft designed for commercial suborbital spaceflight. (Wired has pictures, d00ds.)

Technology is also put to much more whimsical things, like circuit-bending toy Pikachus to create a Pinhead Pikachu sympohony.

Last for tonight, Roger Ebert posts a whimsical letter about M&M dueling, a letter that I’ve seen before elsewhere, I’m sure, right down to how the whole matter ends. Whether Ebert knew what was going on and published it anyway or not, it proves that even professional movie ctiyics aren’t trying to be serious all of the time. Two thumbs up.

Okay. One postscript. the colorful language of program comments. I think I’ve done this one before, but it’s still worth seeing again. If for nothing else, the absolute creativity with which programmers can use the f-bomb and still get their point across in the comments.