The nice stuff of life - September 22, 2008

Putting The Weirdo up front today, because, well, he doesn’t fit anywhere else, a question of language - is the "privelege" white folk are supposed to enjoy really special positive treatment, or is it really that most of those people are trying to treat everyone else in a special negative way, seeing the white person as a normal interaction rather than a special one?

So, the old ballparks will go away. Eventually. Yankee Stadium will close after 85 years of service, as a new Yankee Stadium opens up down the street.

And one other odd things that doesn’t categorize - L.M. Montgomery was depressed through much of her life, and ended up killing herself. New information just released from the descendants. Successful writers committing suicide? That puts L.M. Montgomery in good company, I guess.

And now, the stuff that can be categorized or snarked.

The head of food safety in China has resigned his post, after the scandal of baby milk tainted with melamine, affecting close to 53,000 Chinese so far.

Confirming they were serious about it, Pakistani troops fired on United States helicopters that passed into their airspace. Boy, it’s quite the hot seat in Pakistan these days, innit?

The rest of the world is pretty hot, too, as more suspicions on nuclear weapons come through on Iran, with the assumption that Tehran is being unthruthful, Thabo Mbeki resigns as South African president, anti-globalists protest in Sweeden, and relations with Russia continued to spiral downward.

Domestically, if it wasn’t the economy before, it is now - 700 billion bucks available to buy bad debts with, from Treasury, with love. Plus, now all the investment banks can create regular deposit banks, and are thus And nothing in the plan right now that says anything about what the government expects in return. It doesn't ask who really has the authority to do something like this, nor is it asking the taxpayers whether they want to go through with it. Nor does it offer any actual relief for homeowners stuck in the debt trap, meaning that even while nobody has a clue about the important questions of this proposal, the people themselves are going to get stuck with the results. And none of the actual benefits, if some should actually appear. For some, this is the result of some fundamental problems and imbalances with our economy, and for others, perfect instances of how much the Republicans have always been about enriching the already rich at the expense of the lower classes. All in all, though, the consensus in the liberal world is No Deal, at least not as stands. Scarecrow at firedoglake has an excellent checklist for what any bailout plan should inclued, with one fo the non-negotiable points being extra taxes on those who need and benefit from the bailout, the wealthiest, up to the point where the bailout loans have been repaid, along with their associated costs and interest. It would certainly motivate accountability and quick repayment if the companies became profitable again, and those people who ran the companies would have incentive to pay things back so they don’t have their incomes taxed heavily to pay things back. Senator Bernie Sanders agrees with the surtax idea.

Larisa Alexandrovna, at HuffPo, sees this crisis bailout as the final step in removing democracy and substituting an oligarchy of businessmen as the government fo the United States, considering the bill gives Trasury wide-ranging powers and removes judicial oversight from any of the decisions Treasury makes on the matter. Do you trust someone from Wall Street to handle a Wall Street bailout? Or are we supposed to learn some new skills for the coming days?

Of course, The WSJ has plenty of blame to spread around on how we got into the situation, whether from loose rules for balance sheets or bad government rules and regs. Jeremy Siegel takes it one step further in calling for all bank deposits to be guaranteed, so as to prevent a 1930s-style run.



No, no, no, no, no, no, no! (Mamma Mia...) Brunswick, North Carolina, you don't teach creationism in science classes because it isn't science!, not because it’s somehow teaching an atheist agenda without a religious one. *sigh*. Could we move on from something like this, please? Or at least, if insisting on creationism being taught, do so in the right context, of a comparative religious education course? Yes, with the potential climate of a vice-presidential candidate that would cheerily rule with her religion, from a position of ignorance, rather than law and the position of knowledge, it does look like a good time to try the gambit again. But it doesn’t last, and that’s before courts get involved.

All in all, it sounds like America is a nation of masochists, with the way we seem to enjoy getting hurt, hit, pained, and smacked around by the Republicans of the last eight years. And it’s not like certain evangelical segments of the populace have been clamoring for the government to stop the torture and abuse, especially when it’s physical harm done to people of another ethnicity (and still half say it’s justified even when reminded that as one gives, one tends to get). Homosexuals certainly don't escape the notice of the torturers, either, although at that point, they try to call it therapy.

So, moving onward, it is apparently impossible to support clean coal and be against the removal of mountaintops to find coal veins, according to this posting on the Daily Green. Is that a contradiction?

One item on the Republican candidate - more concern that Senator McCain may not end up living out a first term in office - concern magnified by his unwillingness to release medical records.

Pam Meister accuses Senator Obama of breaking the law by negotiating with the Iraqi government on behalf of the United States without authorization because the Senator asked why the Iraqi government wasn’t willing to delay the “Strategic Framework Agreement” until there was a new admnistration. Sounds more like the Senator was interested in why the current administration was trying to rush the thing through before the leader left office, not making any diplomatic demands or requirements. Also sounds remarkably like the Iraqi legislator accused of embarassing the nation because he traveled to Israel and said that Iraq was ready to make peace with them, breaking a 1950s-era law about travel to Israel. Althoguh, in the second case, there’s been a lot of retaliation and prosecution, much of it likely unwarranted in more civilized times.

The WSJ points its finger at Joe Biden and says, "Shame on you for saying that God is on your side.", because Senator Biden believes that God wants us to help each other out. The WSJ scoffs at the tax plans, putting up numbers over twenty years that may not have been adjusted to the relative sizes of the economies, claiming that low tax rates make for less poverty, and then calling out Senator Biden’s lack of charitable giving over the last ten years. Dinesh D'Souza lays down his hand on the George Obama matter in triumph, feeling he’s embarassed the Senator enough about not taking care of his half brother, and using it to take a nice swipe at atheists, off-handedly noting that none of them contributed to the fund, only self-proclaimed Christians (who also happen to like right-wing media). Kevin McCullough piles on, believing Senator Obama's plans will rob the rich and create more government dependency, as well as mentioning the Senator's vote on the born alive infant act as Austin Hill beleives the Senator's plans will simply take from those who have earned it through merit and give to those who haven't earned anything.

Armstrong Williams finds that Senator Obama needs Senator Clinton to help him beat Governor Palin, by using them to get Governor Palin to define herself and the McCain campaign and then skewering her. Pizza Diavola thinks that making a strong stand against the new HHS rule changes would be an easy way for Senator Obama to pick up needed voters and to reassure women that he’s serious about protecting their rights. CNS goes after the Obama campaign for paying female staffers at supposedly 78 percent of what the male staffers are paid, and noting Senator McCain's campaign pays the women slightly more on average than the men. Those statistics are tricky things, aren’t they? If all you look at are the salaries, then it really doesn’t say a whole lot. Even the bit about how many women are in the top staffing jobs doesn’t really say anything about the matter. You’d really have to look at the org chart and who’s in it - if I employ more women in the lower positions, then on average, their salary is lower than the men. Does that necessarily make me sexist, like CNS implies? Not at all. I might be quite progressive, because I have a high number of women on the campaign. Statistics are nice, but they lack context, especially when reported on.

Henry Payne says Michigan will be a battleground state, which makes me wonder where he’s been the last few elections. Michigan hinges on whether the liberal pockets can overcome the rest of the state or not, and it’s usually a pretty close affair.

Finally, Liberal Eagle wonders why this race is so damn close, considering that on the issues, it should be easy to choose whom to vote for. The guess is that people vote from the gut, not the brain, and thus the candidate that appears least offensive or is least smeared wins. Well, either that or we've already made up our minds, and hearing misinformation that confirms our biases only makes them stronger, even if those misinformations are debunked.

In science and technology, the iPhone takes screen captures of what you do, which could then be exploited by crackers or law enforcement personnel to reconstruct your actions. Hooray for privacy-killing security flaws. Hooray also for systems that can't handle long names with non-English characters in them, forcing a traveler to be turned away, spend an extra night, and then still have her boarding pass print out invalid. Furthermore, enjoy the way statistics supposedly say Downs Syndrome tests are risky and increase miscarriage rates, because of provider error, possible error from the test, and the false positive rate meaning more mothers take the tests than need to.

Elsewehre in science, growing one's own treehouse, 10 beautiful underground lakes and rivers,

Ah - a picture of the new time-eater clock, Chronophage. And an on-line dating simulation for women that encourages collaboration among the players to win the hearts of the boys in the sim - common goal, and possibly bonds formed over trying to get to the boy. As opposed, to say, Gospelr, a Twitter-like service for the conspicuously Christian tweeter.

Last out of science, though, Damon Darlin says technology doesn't make us stupid - it unlocks our minds. Even if we make sure we have an equal amount of time-wasting things on our time-saving devices. And can use that knowledge to generate things like vending machiens that deliver freshly cooked pizza in 90 seconds.

The winning item for tonight, however, is most definitely the Pastafarian counter-protest to the Phelps clan that sent the WBC packing. ARRRRR! With that, Covering the Mouse, a blog about finding covers of Disney songs, whether good... or horrible.

The big losers for tonight, however, is the government of Uganda, seeking a ban on the wearing of miniskirts in the country, based on the supposition that they are "indecent" and the men will be distracted from important tasks, like driving, because they will see a ":naked" miniskirt wearer.

From here to the realms of the strange... and beyond - 23 September 2008

Up top tonight, Cracked (of all places) presents six brainwashing techniques They use on you to make you stop thinking, all in good effect now. Such things as chanting slogans, making you believe the “other side”‘s news organizations are all a bunch of partisan hacks, making you believe there’s only black and white choices and a limited time to decide... and the whole dividing you up into an Us versus Them, where Them is not They, but other fellow Us. By putting everyone in tribes, They can then put the tribes against each other. Scary how it works, innit?

So, for a dose of this, and possibly to check off the list against, Michael Moore is giving away Slacker Uprising, his latest movie, for free in the United States and Canada... but i doubt somehow that it’s going to stay there for long. Ah, and also, The Internationale, anthem of the USSR from 1917-1943, in several languages, so that we can study multiple examples in the same session.

International news of the Weird begins with an account of a dead horse on the 12th flor of an apartment block, noticed mostly because the decomposing body stunk pretty bad, and the remains were apparently in a ventilation shaft. How weird.

More seriously, The United Nations doesn't know if Iran has a military nuke program, because they can't seem to get access to anything that would confirm or deny, vehicular attack in Israel, more problems with cartoons in Iraq, even as Iraq and Shell sign a natural gas deal

Domestically, gas shortages mean temporary closures for stations, based on the refineries around them closing. Another unintended consequence of our economy dying, or just that we’ve got so much demand and never built refinery capacity to match?

Calls from representatives to begin building weapons in space, not to fend off what might be an ET threat, but to turn back on other people living on Terra, because they assume that the other people are building weapons to be deployed in sapce to shoot them with, and they want to be first. You know, for as much as I hope for something like the Star Trek future, I keep wondering whether we’re going to end up with the B5 or the Firefly future. To furher the depressing mood, expect weapons that use lasers to temporarily blind people to appear at your next antiwar rally... well, maybe the one afterwards, after things filter down from the military to riot control. Unless the military is going to be used as riot control. And then, you might see them coordinating and firing in a totally silent manner, as they communicate with each other through brainwave-enabled helmets, using very high frequency communications to download and upload lots of data to each other.

And the TSA will now attempt to read you mind for malintent, using a system called MALINTENT, and see if you're planning a terror attack. It can supposedly distinguish between ordinary artificially-induced anxieties as to whether one will be capriciously and Unaccountably Randomly Searched and those with deliberate design or intent to cause grevious bodily harm. Good luck, then, with the irate businessman who just found out his stock options aren’t worth as much anymore, or the guy who found out on his vacation that he’s been fired and intends on making sure there’s a face-to-face afterward.

Search warrant served against a college student in connection with the Palin e-mail hack, because the anonymizer service he used cooperated with the government and gathered up what clues were left behind. I guess there realy is no such thing (yet) as truly anonymous browsing. Of course, the person who cracked the e-mail account should be prosecuted, but there should also be eyebrows raised about the Governor doing state business off her official e-mail account.

Dealing with opinions, Quite a fuss being made over the 2007 decision to retire Colonel Reb, a mascot of the University of Mississippi, of which The General has an idea or two on how to return Colonel Reb to prominence, perhaps by turning him into “Blind Jim”, a different part of the school’s history.

More finger-pointing in the matter of the financial crisis, including David Limbaugh's blaming the government for getting us into the mess, and the liberals for suggesting that more government is the solution to the mess, doing his level best to tiptoe gently around the knowledge that only eight of the last twenty-eight years of executive branch government have been under the supposedly fiscally conservative party, and both sides have been quite happy to raid Social Security and other accounts when they felt like it. Rich Lowry provides an apologetic for Phil Gramm, saying that what he did didn’t precipitate the crisis and his deregulation didn’t contribute to the problems we have now. Out of all of this, Paul Weyrich salutes the poor sucker who gets to inherit the worst of this financial storm.

Using the bailout vote as an easy way to reinvent the fiscally conservative maverick, should Senator McCain and the Republicans choose to, however, looks like at least some members of Congress (if this anonymous e-mail really is from one) are not feeling optimism about actual reforms, and if the negotiations on what's supposedly been agreed to are accurate, then they’ve already gone to the deck chairs phase and aren’t really sggesting much for real oversight or reform. Glenn Greenwald provides hope in that Republicans are suddenly rediscovering their small-government principles, although potentially in a cynical and manipulative manner, when faced with the potential prospect of a President that isn’t of their party, because over the last eight years, tehy certainly haven't been opposing the unchecked expansion of executive power and the idea that such expanded powers are unanswerable to either Congress or the courts.

It is still true, however, that the only proper response to someone asking for kingly powers and money to do things without oversight or accountabilty is "No.". Possibly even “No fucking way.” if one feels profane about it.

Brett Joshpe condemns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an evil man and dismisses any attempt to meet with him and do diplomacy as pointless and fruitless, as Frank J. Gafney, Jr. declares Senator Obama to be working against America's interests, with people dedicated to the destruction of America, according to his past associations and current willingness to sit down with Ahmadinejad.

In candidates, Salena Zito thinks the union vote won't be a lock for Senator Obama, but blames it on his supposed inability to relate to working-class members, something that Senator McCain is apparently able to do. On the other side, Zito quotes several people saying that the problem some union members have with Obama is his race. I can safely say that neither candidate probably has a copmlete idea of what living in, say, Detroit on the UAW salary is. I’m not so sure that the race allegation is right, but I’m pretty sure that Senator McCain is not a person that favors unions, whether in their current form or conceptually. What this whole opinion really says is that people are unique and vote for the candidate that they want to, rather than in some sort of brainwashed lockstep based on what the union boss (or the church pastor) says.

What, precisely, is the McCain campaign up to by having two noted antigay people as the Pres and VP, but a chief of campaign that, while not out completey, shows many of the signs (with some support) that is gay? Are they stringing along the far right social conservatives? Does Pailn truly believe and not know yet? Has the chief of staff sold out? Or is he trying to sneak himself into such an administration to subvert any McCain-Palin attempts to force homosexuals to stay hidden or be arrested/beaten/killed? What’s going on here, anyway?

Plus, The 15 people the next President should listen to if he (or she, depending) wants to have a good presidency, including looking at water supplies now, keeping anthropologists in with the military units, making Washington more like the Web, and be ready for the new extremes in weather and climate.

In science and technology, doing research on why stories captivate us the way they do, and noting that those who like and enjoy stories often do better relating to other people, The Agnostic&Apos;s Prayer, a delightfully nondenominational wishing of benefits in whatever after-death experience one may have, a one-atom thick balloon, made of grapheme, interesting designs and claims in a new bed, a reconstruction of the face of the Neanderthal named Wilma, continuing to improve on solar cell design, common birds on the decline, due to habitat loss, the possibility of a more efficient oil shale extraction method, and Japan's bid to build a space elevator.

Last for tonight, the beauty of things that are designed to kill, or a picture of a bullet just exiting the last of four pieces of chalk in a row, and the killing of things that were designed to be beautiful (well, maybe), through Project Censored's Top 25 Censored stories of 2009, aiming to highlight the things that you haven’t heard on the news, from me, or anyone else, for that matter.