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Wild weekend ride - 16 August 2008
Aug. 16th, 2008 05:00 pmA quick shot of material for the weekend. The summer reading program officially ends today, so I've managed to survive that wild ride.
My professional self wants to know the rationale behind a truly WTF decision - a knitting group is being excluded from a library for not being "literary" enough, while the library promotes other non-literary activities such as video gaming. There's room for both at the library, and both should be encouraged as ways to get people to the library. Thus, it's weird that "crafts"-type group meetings are being told to go elsewhere.
My professional self also has a chuckle at a comic where the agent has to go undercover as a "sexy librarian", where the definition is apparently more like a pr0n-star in the library (and lampshaded as such by the agent that has to put the outfit on) rather than a librarian that exudes sexiness. Well, the profession does desperately need a hit or five of sexy, but I don't think that's the way we're going to go about it.
Internationally, the blood pressure keeps going up - Poland will be hosting missile defense outposts that the United States has wanted in Eastern Europe for a while now. While supposedly there to counter threats from a potentially-nuclear Iran, one can only guess hwo much this will make Mr. Putin's tensions rise.
In Iraq, The AP believes there are hit squads training in Iran, to be deployed at just the right time to kill targeted American and Iraqi officials and re-de-stabilize the country. So, look for the next few months to see if the victory goes sour again.
Our domestic news section has quite the round-up of interesting things said by candidates or about them - the juxtaposition of a rich lobbyist talking about Senator Obama's celebrity status, and then showing off the celebrity-like extravagance of his own house, the Republican candidate putting his foot in his mouth twice, once for stating "In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations", and again withcalling the Russia-Georgia conflict "the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War"... apparently, the Senator is getting senile. He's forgotten the United States-Iraq conflict twice now in his sound bites. Even further, Jackson Browne, a singer/songwriter, is suing the Ohio Republican Party and John McCain for using his song "Running on Empty" in a political advertisement for the candidate without his permission or license, not only committing copyright infringement, but also creating the impression of a false endorsement. I wonder whether there will be a hurried change in the laws of the DMCA if this goes through and the campaign gets smacked with damages for infringement. It's just the right case for them to generate loopholes with.
Speaking of candidates, the Democratic National Committee appears to be taking the same attitude toward protesters the Republicans have been for years, complete with chain-link fence, barbed wire, and stun guns. The city was going to tell people about it, of course, but those reporters showed up unannounced and started filming while the door was open.
Desperately un-funny comedian Rush Limbaugh denigrates Elizabeth Edwards, saying on-air that the reason John Edwards had an affair was because she was smarter than him and he was looking for a woman "that did something more with her mouth than just talk", trying to make him into a henpecked, undersexed, cowering man with a domineering wife. I'm waiting for the slander suit to be filed. Also, I wonder if Mr. Edwards would resent the implication that he would cheat on his wife because another woman had a variety of oral talents.
In addition, in the care of INS officials on an overstayed visa, a man developed pains and died wihtout receiving treatment. The post-mortem diagnosis was cancer that spread as the government accused the detainee, Mr. Ng, of faking his illness.
Furthermore, a federal judge upheld the University of California's refusal to accept Biblical-based denial-of-evolution courses as acceptable science credit for admission to the UC. They will also probably deny anyone who seriously posits that the Earth is flat.
A Texas school district, citing the need to protect students and deter potential shooters from coming to school and opening fire, is permitting teachers to carry firearms. Which could be a deterrent effect. Or which could be the new method by which the shooter operates - figure out which teachers carry, and where they have the guns, and then use their weapons to attack. The only possible "good" thing about this is that the teachers can theoretically then shoot the rampaging student sooner, assuming that the student doesn't decide to shoot every teacher he comes across because they might be armed, and then take the weapons of those that are. How rare are school shootings, again? Do we need to have all of these measures in place, or are we over-reacting again to a statistical anomaly, and should be putting our attention in places so as to remove the causes and reasons why students shoot classmates and teachers?
Despite all of this, The General posts a poem about how people can still get past all the regulation and fear in the airport to bond as a community. While at times it feels like getting back to normal is like trying to find the yeti, perhaps in a less toxic environment, we could do just that.
Staying with the strange theme for a bit, A gent pays half of his new truck purchase with coins, because of a distrust of paper money. The other half came by check. There's also the provenance to an otherwise unremarkable picture, involving the perception that someone does not have permission to take a picture of a building from a public street, the ensuing conversation, and an apoplexy by the guard attempting to tell someone they couldn't exercise a public right in a public place because it was taking a picture of a private building.
And then there's the allegation that the father of the mayor of Detroit was involved in some schemes to steer city contracts to certain companies. Man, Detroit, could you not implode so quickly? The rest of the country is still a little jittery about being forced into what was real for you a decade or two ago. After all, when Donald Trump buys Ed McMahon's house to stop it from being foreclosed, you know the economy's doing some really strange things.
Finally hitting our opinionated stride, Paul Craig Roberts wants President Bush to shut up, to stop trying to ring Russia with U.S.-friendly states using NATO and other organizations, and to stop trying to put on the facade that the U.S. has any credibility at all about invasions and conflicts being bad, with our own invasion still there for all to see. Francis Fukuyama illustrates this, noting that while there has been progress, the reason for invading Iraq was still wrong. Which won't stop Melik Kaylan from saying the U.S> needs to gobble up all the post-Soviet nations, rather than let Russia rebuild.
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bradhicks is absolutely furious that the United States is basically letting the first debate of the presidential season be conducted by an evangelist about how Christian the candidates for office are, despite the "no religious tests" part of the Constitution, and the fact that the fundamentalists are such a small segment of the voting populace that they shouldn't get pandered to in such a big way.
The WSJ thinks lower corporate taxes is a great way or not only getting corporations to pay taxes, but to give greater revenues to the government because companies aren't trying to exploit all the loopholes to avoid paying the current tax rate. I think there will always be corporations looking to exploit the tax rate and pay nothing - I also am unsure that the tax rate is the sole reason, that America is "uncompetitive" and that we're shedding jobs to other nations. After all, if rule changes can permit companies to hire foreign workers to work for much less than prevailing wage, assuming it's in the right industry, then it would make more sense for those companies to skip the rule changes and set up shop completely in the countries where the labor force is cheapest.
Last out of this sequence, Philip K. Howard believes that with our insistence on safety in childrens' play, we're generating more obese children, because risk (and learning to manage it) is one of the things that attracts the interest of kids. Being able to go fast means possibly falling down, and the like, including some safety features backfiring a bit, like the soft rubbery blacktop becoming hot enough to hurt young feet and teaching the value of wearing shoes. If the country became a little less safety-and-lawsuit obsessed, the benefits would be an active and healthier populace.
In science and technology, political problems in Russia could ground the U.S. from launching material and people up to the Space Station. Beyond that, fighting spam and contributing to the digitization of older texts, through the use of CAPTCHAs, a breakthrough in creating and modeling virtual hair, posible solar cells without the use of fossil fuel, swallowable medical robots, and new ways to dope for extra athletic power.
Artistic but morbid are pictures of ash containers that have begun to corrode. Much mroe artistic is the world's smallest solar vehicle, a design for a really portable laptop, some vintage postcards, some of which really should have gotten a second look before publication, and LEGO recreations of famous photographs.
Last for today, though, lightning in very slow motion, and for penguin-lovers everywhere, the knighting of a Norwegian Colonel-in-Chief, the only penguin to hold the rank so far, no doubt.
My professional self wants to know the rationale behind a truly WTF decision - a knitting group is being excluded from a library for not being "literary" enough, while the library promotes other non-literary activities such as video gaming. There's room for both at the library, and both should be encouraged as ways to get people to the library. Thus, it's weird that "crafts"-type group meetings are being told to go elsewhere.
My professional self also has a chuckle at a comic where the agent has to go undercover as a "sexy librarian", where the definition is apparently more like a pr0n-star in the library (and lampshaded as such by the agent that has to put the outfit on) rather than a librarian that exudes sexiness. Well, the profession does desperately need a hit or five of sexy, but I don't think that's the way we're going to go about it.
Internationally, the blood pressure keeps going up - Poland will be hosting missile defense outposts that the United States has wanted in Eastern Europe for a while now. While supposedly there to counter threats from a potentially-nuclear Iran, one can only guess hwo much this will make Mr. Putin's tensions rise.
In Iraq, The AP believes there are hit squads training in Iran, to be deployed at just the right time to kill targeted American and Iraqi officials and re-de-stabilize the country. So, look for the next few months to see if the victory goes sour again.
Our domestic news section has quite the round-up of interesting things said by candidates or about them - the juxtaposition of a rich lobbyist talking about Senator Obama's celebrity status, and then showing off the celebrity-like extravagance of his own house, the Republican candidate putting his foot in his mouth twice, once for stating "In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations", and again withcalling the Russia-Georgia conflict "the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War"... apparently, the Senator is getting senile. He's forgotten the United States-Iraq conflict twice now in his sound bites. Even further, Jackson Browne, a singer/songwriter, is suing the Ohio Republican Party and John McCain for using his song "Running on Empty" in a political advertisement for the candidate without his permission or license, not only committing copyright infringement, but also creating the impression of a false endorsement. I wonder whether there will be a hurried change in the laws of the DMCA if this goes through and the campaign gets smacked with damages for infringement. It's just the right case for them to generate loopholes with.
Speaking of candidates, the Democratic National Committee appears to be taking the same attitude toward protesters the Republicans have been for years, complete with chain-link fence, barbed wire, and stun guns. The city was going to tell people about it, of course, but those reporters showed up unannounced and started filming while the door was open.
Desperately un-funny comedian Rush Limbaugh denigrates Elizabeth Edwards, saying on-air that the reason John Edwards had an affair was because she was smarter than him and he was looking for a woman "that did something more with her mouth than just talk", trying to make him into a henpecked, undersexed, cowering man with a domineering wife. I'm waiting for the slander suit to be filed. Also, I wonder if Mr. Edwards would resent the implication that he would cheat on his wife because another woman had a variety of oral talents.
In addition, in the care of INS officials on an overstayed visa, a man developed pains and died wihtout receiving treatment. The post-mortem diagnosis was cancer that spread as the government accused the detainee, Mr. Ng, of faking his illness.
Furthermore, a federal judge upheld the University of California's refusal to accept Biblical-based denial-of-evolution courses as acceptable science credit for admission to the UC. They will also probably deny anyone who seriously posits that the Earth is flat.
A Texas school district, citing the need to protect students and deter potential shooters from coming to school and opening fire, is permitting teachers to carry firearms. Which could be a deterrent effect. Or which could be the new method by which the shooter operates - figure out which teachers carry, and where they have the guns, and then use their weapons to attack. The only possible "good" thing about this is that the teachers can theoretically then shoot the rampaging student sooner, assuming that the student doesn't decide to shoot every teacher he comes across because they might be armed, and then take the weapons of those that are. How rare are school shootings, again? Do we need to have all of these measures in place, or are we over-reacting again to a statistical anomaly, and should be putting our attention in places so as to remove the causes and reasons why students shoot classmates and teachers?
Despite all of this, The General posts a poem about how people can still get past all the regulation and fear in the airport to bond as a community. While at times it feels like getting back to normal is like trying to find the yeti, perhaps in a less toxic environment, we could do just that.
Staying with the strange theme for a bit, A gent pays half of his new truck purchase with coins, because of a distrust of paper money. The other half came by check. There's also the provenance to an otherwise unremarkable picture, involving the perception that someone does not have permission to take a picture of a building from a public street, the ensuing conversation, and an apoplexy by the guard attempting to tell someone they couldn't exercise a public right in a public place because it was taking a picture of a private building.
And then there's the allegation that the father of the mayor of Detroit was involved in some schemes to steer city contracts to certain companies. Man, Detroit, could you not implode so quickly? The rest of the country is still a little jittery about being forced into what was real for you a decade or two ago. After all, when Donald Trump buys Ed McMahon's house to stop it from being foreclosed, you know the economy's doing some really strange things.
Finally hitting our opinionated stride, Paul Craig Roberts wants President Bush to shut up, to stop trying to ring Russia with U.S.-friendly states using NATO and other organizations, and to stop trying to put on the facade that the U.S. has any credibility at all about invasions and conflicts being bad, with our own invasion still there for all to see. Francis Fukuyama illustrates this, noting that while there has been progress, the reason for invading Iraq was still wrong. Which won't stop Melik Kaylan from saying the U.S> needs to gobble up all the post-Soviet nations, rather than let Russia rebuild.
bradhicks is absolutely furious that the United States is basically letting the first debate of the presidential season be conducted by an evangelist about how Christian the candidates for office are, despite the "no religious tests" part of the Constitution, and the fact that the fundamentalists are such a small segment of the voting populace that they shouldn't get pandered to in such a big way.The WSJ thinks lower corporate taxes is a great way or not only getting corporations to pay taxes, but to give greater revenues to the government because companies aren't trying to exploit all the loopholes to avoid paying the current tax rate. I think there will always be corporations looking to exploit the tax rate and pay nothing - I also am unsure that the tax rate is the sole reason, that America is "uncompetitive" and that we're shedding jobs to other nations. After all, if rule changes can permit companies to hire foreign workers to work for much less than prevailing wage, assuming it's in the right industry, then it would make more sense for those companies to skip the rule changes and set up shop completely in the countries where the labor force is cheapest.
Last out of this sequence, Philip K. Howard believes that with our insistence on safety in childrens' play, we're generating more obese children, because risk (and learning to manage it) is one of the things that attracts the interest of kids. Being able to go fast means possibly falling down, and the like, including some safety features backfiring a bit, like the soft rubbery blacktop becoming hot enough to hurt young feet and teaching the value of wearing shoes. If the country became a little less safety-and-lawsuit obsessed, the benefits would be an active and healthier populace.
In science and technology, political problems in Russia could ground the U.S. from launching material and people up to the Space Station. Beyond that, fighting spam and contributing to the digitization of older texts, through the use of CAPTCHAs, a breakthrough in creating and modeling virtual hair, posible solar cells without the use of fossil fuel, swallowable medical robots, and new ways to dope for extra athletic power.
Artistic but morbid are pictures of ash containers that have begun to corrode. Much mroe artistic is the world's smallest solar vehicle, a design for a really portable laptop, some vintage postcards, some of which really should have gotten a second look before publication, and LEGO recreations of famous photographs.
Last for today, though, lightning in very slow motion, and for penguin-lovers everywhere, the knighting of a Norwegian Colonel-in-Chief, the only penguin to hold the rank so far, no doubt.
