From thence to Insanity! - 4 September 2008

My professional self greatly appreciates the Jezebel props to the librarians who successfully fought the government's order to give up patron records, even though the award that resulted from it has passed, and the gag order that accompanied the NSL lifted so that we know who’s got a gigantic set of [appropriate non-objectifying gender-empowering genitalia] in that area. Ah, did we mention that Banned Books Week is this month? There’s quite a few good titles on the most challenged list, including cute penguin tales, several books you may or may not have had to read in your high school or university lit courses, and the like. Check out the banned books, yo.

Hopping up top because it needs to be said up top - Comcast High-Speed Internet will have a 250GB/month cap on it starting in October. I’m sure they’re looking at stats that say Internet traffic is growing by leaps and bounds, and rather than take the smart idea and lay down more bandwidth and researching optimizing bandwidth usage, they decide to just cap everyone and assume that takes care of the problem. If you exceed your bandwidth, you could get one warning from Comcast, and then be banned from their service for a year, after which you will be encouraged to resubscribe under a more expensive service plan to accommodate your bandwidth-hunger. So, goodbye it seems, to the era of being able to utilize technologies like P2P and BitTorrent as freely as desired. And, no doubt, there will be no monitor object you can get from them if you want to skirt the cap as close as you can get. Plus, there’s all that IM spam and stuff like that which will contribute to your bandwidth totals. So I’m in the market for a program available for my Debian-derived distribution, Ubuntu, that will let me monitor my own cumulative bandwidth usage, so I can tell if and when I need to slack off on any given month. Any ideas?

In the international sphere, peace overtures from Syria to Israel, dependent in some ways on who is Israel's next prime minister. even as Israel builds in hospital capacity for use in times of war, and allegations from South Korea that North Korea is rebuilding nuclear capacity.

Two teenagers were sentenced to community service and were banned from owning pets or playing violent video games, had a curfew set and have to see a therapist after they microwaved a cat to death. The article doesn’t say whether this was bored kids doing something stupid or the beginning pattern of cruelty and crime, although the two convicted are alleged to be involved in a criminal investigation where teenagers broke into a house and smashed things, so I’m guessing the implication is cruelty and crime. Which is why Laverne said all the important things about not microwaving one’s pets in reality during Day of the Tentacle.

Domestic news abounds: Pandora, the music service that attempts to match users with new artists they would like based on their previous votes of liking or not liking tracks they hear, is likely going under, crushed by the weight of royalty and performance fees the RIAA is demanding of them for having the audacity to actually play tracks to decide whether users will like them or not. Levi Weaver is one eloquent voice among many who decries the destruction of one of the best music marketing tools in existence.

Musings & Migraines reports on the sorry state of the "rebuilt" New Orleans levees and how well they performed when another storm came their way, as well as some advice to get on the case of the Democratic nominee to solidly commit to rebuilding the city properly.

The wringer continues on Governor Palin. Despite claims, Sarah Palin never had authority to issue an order to the Alaskan National Guard, so her Commander-in-Chief experience kind of isn’t, for her reformer image, she liked earmarks when she could get them (as everyone does), and some stretching and exaggeration going on at the RNC, including a stock-video soldier funeral used as a video backdrop, instead of either the real thing... or showing a little tact. someone in Australia taking the National Enquirer seriously (although something tickles the back of my head that they were actually right about something once in this current administration), and she believes that the Iraq war is a "task from God". The story of her apparent waiting nearly 12 hours from water breaking to actually having a child prompts a letter from Lynn Paltrow, the Executive Director for National Advocates for Pregnant Women, on how the governor has already exercised her rights to choose how she gives birth, and so she should extend that same right to other women, so they can choose the time and manner of their birth, or whether they want to give birth at all. Because putting the rights of the unborn high above the rights and choices of the mother makes for some very bad situations when it comes to birth, being able to stay working, or whether or not a woman can be forced to do things because she is pregnant (or even “prepregnant”).

That said, Daddy Dialectic finds that even if her policies leave much to be desired, the nomination of Palin, with her nontraditional, non-nuclear family, indicates that even the arch-conservatives are slowly giving ground on what "family values" means, and will likely have to shift some of their ideology around to accomodate Palin as a choice. I think, anyway.
Terrence P. Jeffery believes liberals are trying to fool the voters into thinking of the Democrats as the traditional family values party, apparently based on the media wondering if Sarah Palin can be supermom in a vice-presidential role. Which is a rather silly thing to be wondering, anyway. No party should want to be the party tarnished with the “get back in the kitchen” mentality. Right now, though, if you listen to the WSJ and others, the mainstream media has decided to make Palin into an unqualified lightweight because she looks like she’ll buck the Beltway, and so the media decided to focus on her daughter, because they can’t produce credible arguments against the mother, engaging in hypocrisy, sexism, and hate-filled attacks that no doubt make the liberal candidate squirm, because he knows that those kinds of hits will only hurt him, even if he didn't order them. (That said, some voters were just underwhelmed by Governor Palin.) Obama already has experience with how one rumor that’s untrue can damage him. He probably doesn’t want a second like “Obama told the media to attack the daughter.” even though he came out publicly and said “Hands off the family people.” - a point that Musings & Migraines notes apparently only applies to those who are not poor and black.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing out of this entire sequence is some Dominionists are praying that McCain gets elected, takes the oath of office, and then dies so that Palin can become President, and the glory years they’ve enjoyed under the current administrator will continue on unabated, and perhaps even made worse. Which, in some ways, could mean that both Presidential candidates will have worries that someone on the lunatic right will try to assassinate them.

Paired with this concise summary of the whole Palin thing, I think those two are good for getting all the high-level stuff done, if wading through articles upon articles and commentaries isn’t your thing.
Al hubbard and Norm Neusner think the poll closeness is because the American populace is smart and sees that Senator Obama's plans don't work, bolstered by Keith Marsden's statistics that the current administration has done good for the economy, and Victor Davis Hanson's belief that real change comes from not nominating lawyers, because lawyers don’t have experience in running countries and boardrooms.

Nick Sprayregen is fighting what he sees as an unconstitutional use of eminent domain, trying to make him sell or move so that Columbia University can build a new campus in his neighborhood.

The Junk Science department gets a doozie - comparing men to voles, researchers think they've foudn a gene that predisposes men toward cheating or not.

In better science, research on manipulating genes to turn on and off the fat storage parts of our bodies, converting a school bus into a mobile home, the birth of a new meme in Japan, some necessary adjustments to the EULA when it comes to Google Chrome, because people were a mite miffed about the possibility that Google could store very sensitive data. As it is, they’re going to store some percentage of the stuff that gets typed into the search and address box in Chrome.

Additionally, ice sheets breaking off in Canada, which makes some people worried, climate caps of Kyoto-strength or better trying to go through state legislatures, which makes doubters of manmade global warming just as unhappy, microbes to generate small amounts of off-grid electricity, perfect for places where the power is unreliable or nonexistent, Zen training helps to refocus after distractions (well, duh.), and a greenlight to a petascale supercomputer. More and more power for calculations. Hopefully, this means that we’ll be able to see even more patterns that only machines with gigantic amounts of processing, memory, and storage can deduce.

Last for tonight, the terrifying future of advertising. To get that awful taste out of your mouth, some of the world's strangest fences.

Oh, we're sorry, the insanity hasn't happened yet - 5 September 2008

Short week, taxing week, it’s over, at least for a little bit, and then there’s working on the weekend. So let’s dive right in. Although, we may need to make a quick trip to the bathroom for some toilet entertainment, like the Pee Goal, bringing interactivity to urination. If that wasn’t quite your thing, maybe the dinosaur made of balloons will work?

My professional self is flaming mad at the original decision, since overturned on appeal, to deny an asylum-seeker entry to the United States based upon what a Wikipedia article said about the document she was presenting. This goes back to basic biblio instruction, one of those Things You Should Have Learned In School, Even If You Weren’t Paying Attention. Always vet your source and check their credibility. Wikipedia is great for start points and jumpings-off, but it is not and never really will be an authoritative source because of its “everyone-can-edit” nature. considering the addition or deletion of a letter or two can change a statement from true to false, there’s always a high possibility that the material in Wikipedia is not 100% accurate. To then base a decision for asylum mostly on that is enough that I don’t merely point and say “Stu-pid”, I make sure the anvils hit their targets. Stupid, stupid government creature.

And then, well, there’s what very well may have been the single most tasteless thing done to date in a Presidential campaign this year. First, The Boston Globe, in text, about the video materials to come, for which the question "Did they just cross a line?" is answered with a resounding Yes. As it turns out, the partisan campaign video endorsing McCain at the RNC shamelessly replays the video of the 11 September tragedy for political purposes. The current administrator was certainly not above doing this in the aftermath of the event, and it appears the party is still more than willing to try and use it for their own purposes. And that’s without the bit at the beginning linking the Iranian revolution that deposed the shah and Osama bin Laden to the footage that follows, probably as an attempt to make us think that Iran was really behind 9/11, so we’ll go invade them next.

Intenrational affairs begin with a confirmed raid by NATO forces in Pakistan, marking the first time the border has been officially crossed by NATO troops. ‘S not the full-scale invasion thing... yet? Plus, recommendations to keep more troops in Iraq than projected (shock), even as some conservatives call for troops to be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan, and Condoleezza Rice visits Libya.

Remembering that life is different elsewhere, we have such tidbits as a question in Saudi Arabia on whether it is permissibile to celebrate a birthday with a party, and continued religious violence in a province of India.

Domestically, the economy is doing just fine, thank you, because we haven't actually had negative growth yet, or so we’re told. Although, I doubt the fine citizens of Detroit believe that. Considering the mayor has been dismissed after pleading guilty to felony counts, I think they have good reason to not believe all is well.

In candidate matters, Swiftboating 2.0: Media Matters Action Network lays out the map of exaggerated, misleading, and downright false, but highly popular and resilient, attacks used against Senator Obama. After the overview, there’s the Venn Diagram of things, accompanied by the explanations of the attacks, and the actual truth, in the fact sheet.

We hope the McCain family feels good about the current administration's tax breaks, as they pretty well paid for one outfit worn by Cindy McCain at the convention. So who’s trying to fool who about looking out for the working and middle classes again? Positioning yourself as a moderate or postpartisan after your VP selection won't work, either, Senator McCain. And would the candidates stop using music that they didn't get permission for, seriously?

In some ways, the pick of Palin might work to McCain’s advantage, because right now, tehre’s a storm of stuff both positive and negative going around about her. dogemperor is, well, dogged in his pursuit of proving that Palni will do anything in her power to bring about the Dominionist vision, based on past actions as a Mayor and Governor.

The Rebel Yell finds Palin's speechmaking less than informative and very unexciting, and flutterbychild reminds us that community organizers can be quite the experienced hands, even as John Fund believes it was energizing to the conservative base, and well done enough that liberals couldn't attack it, while Daniel Henninger thinks that Palin will be attacked because she doesn't fit the liberal mold of "successful women", with her conservative views and the methods of her rise to power, because she is everything modern feminism says she shouldn't be, because she’s pretty, supermom, doesn’t hold feminist views, and has been nominated to potentially be the vice president, while Hillary’s run for President stalled out. Well, if the Jezebel crew is on target, it’s because Palin represents everything that's wrong with high school politics, writ large, by being the pretty girl who’s a snot in personality that nonetheless ends up winning all the popularity contests and succeeds despite all the things in her personality and stated positions that work against her. Many are screaming, “It’s a mask! Tear it off and see what’s underneath” while they worry that others will be entranced by it and never look deeper. To that end, Gloria Steinam dismisses Governor Palin as the wrong woman with the wrong message to appeal to women voters looking for a good women’s issues candidate. Maybe Palin’s success and media scorn is because she's the next Ronald Reagan, apparently, and can put the smack down on the "elites" as Reagan did, sounds just like the average American mother while demolishing the parts of the GOP that have grown soft, complacent, and dependent on earmarks.

In other opinions, The WSJ praises Joe Lieberman for sticking to his principles, including his support of the Iraq invasion, Andrew Wilson compares Senator Obama unfavorably to former Prime Minster Thatcher, Jeffrey Imm plays up Terror under the guise of Islam and predicts grave consequences for the UK if they ignore it, because apparently, the United Kingdom erfuses to acknowledge the threat they face and won’t call it what it is. Is that before or after the expansion of surveillance and police powers, sir?

Out in the places where science and technology rule, the possibility that 68 molecules generate all the important components of cells, more proof that decentralized resources work effectively, whether for good or for evil, and designing robots to fit the expectations of the people that encounter them.

Significant discovery of the brain is that remembering is like reliving, with refiring of some of the neurons involved in the original incident, and, even more, we tend to replay our emotional highs and hurts much moer than our physical ones. So it’s really pretty easy to drive yourself into the ground and feel worthless, because one social mess-up recalls others, and then you’re stuck reliving all of them, with just as much hurt as when they were fresh.

Also significant, although rather obvious, is that musical tastes reflect personality, which means that those who enjoy music constructed from mathematical patterns and randomness... well, I don’t know what it says about them.

Last for tonight, the mindset of the incoming college students. All sorts of changes, yet many things still stay the same. And a highly unfortunate coincidence of positions.