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Up top - A letter to Bella, informing her of what she should already know - she's a high-ranking Mary Sue.
Attempting to put pressure on Hamas, Israel has been preventing bank notes from entering the Gaza strip. Naturally, the people have been putting a run on the banks, trying to get what notes they can. And, although the squeeze has been on since October, it’s probably not hurting the people it’s intended to.
The rush is on in Iraq to bring charges against many of the detainees, before the new status of forces agreement takes place and the United States loses the ability to hold them indefinitely. So, how many “enemy combatants” have we been holding without charge or intent to charge?
Did we mention the slow news continues? So much so that we're reduced to reading about what the President-elect had for lunch? Yeah. I think there’s some impatience about the inauguration day. A mysterious piano in the woods is more interesting than this. Although, speaking of lunch, you may want to check out Edible, assuming you’re not grossed out by all the possible things, like insects, that are edible.
Even as the house collapses down around them, the 10 worst corproations of the year are doing their best to rearrange the chairs, mismanage money, try to buy their way out of wrongdoing, and screw everyone but their executives over. Did we mention Citigroup's getting some cash in the bailout? Who knows? Perhaps we’ll be selling some part of the banks to Libya in exchange for investment cash. Of course, if we try to bail out everyone, or even just those that Treasury considers important, we're in for a world of hurt. Hell, Even Bill'O says we should let some companies die.
The President-elect may have selected a potential Treasury secretary, though. It’s all speculation at this point, though. Doesn't stop commentary on it, but it is just speculation.
Ah, here's something more interesting: no, wait, more domestic spying, lawbreaking, and consolidating unknowable power into the hands of the executive. Nevermind. Hrm. And apparently both campaigns were sharing lists of good people for the incoming administration before it was determined who would lead them, which could have been a helpful gesture, aimed at trying to get some of your own people into the other administration, so as not to be totally shut out.
Gent attemtps to save pets from his burning house, ends up arrested and with the pets dead. Guess the state.
Down here in the state that I now call home, the General has a nice profile of one of our state representatives - she’s all the things the Republican Party wants - God Warrior, fiscally irresponsible, and is married to someone convicted of embezzling funds. Further along that line, Austin Cline feels that Mike Huckabee will be the face of the Republican Party soon, and that progressives should start compiling all the reasons why he's not electable now, rather than wait for him to be part of a campaign again. And, perhaps riffing things out far enough to hit an edge, one of Scientology's most popular marketers talks about his time in the church.
At the opinions, a new case for Star Wars missile defense, against EMP strikes as much as actual explosions, praise that the current administration has learned that the International Criminal Court isn't a bad thing, and that the U.S. will veto any attemtps to stop the prosecution of the Sudanese president for crimes related to Darfur, as well as Salena Zito's retrospective on the current administration, characterizing it as good bits often following bad, concluding that the current administrator really was out of his comfort zone in D.C., as well as some characteristic flaws that makes for the negative opinion we have of him today.
On the President-elect’s side, Terry Moe on why the Democrats have to divorce themselves from teacher's unions to achieve any real education change, because unions deathly oppose anything that looks like real accountability because it might threaten jobs, have no fondness for school choice, and love making it as difficult as possible to fire anyone for any reason. The WSJ can't resist taking a swipe at th President-elect's choice of schooling for his daughters, because they chose not to go to a public institution, but a private one, and can afford to do so, unlike most everyone else who wants good education but can’t afford it and won’t be able to get vouchers, either. The WSJ on a Louisiana proposal to invest medicare money in buying insurance plans, thus saving over the current setup,
In technology, anyone with smug Mac superiority, kiss it goodbye - Apple caved and has added copy protection to its content so that if you're not on authorized HDCP-compliant hardware, your content doesn't play. Enterprising hacks that will work around this difficulty should be appearing for all computers if not by the end of this year, by the end of next year, unless Apple’s loyal base abandons iTunes entirely. Still, this was not announced, nor is it any smarter than it was in the first place.
The Pentagon has temporarily suspended the use of external flash drives, citing a virus threat. The defense/military organization is permiting people to bring in outside data and take it out. Viruses are frigging inevitable, which means there should be good A/V on the computers, right? So, rather than fix the problem, Pentagon appears to be more interested in shooting the messenger. No wonder everyone's worried about China launching cyberwarfare - it doesn’t sound like we can even fight off the most basic intrusions and viruses.
Elsewhere, the spiders on the ISS? They’ve apparently figured out the microgravity thing, the rats carrying a different form of plague, which may be countered by the unintelligent slave bacteria, trying to generate a map of one's personal information, a device to draw drinkable water from the ambient moisture in the air - a potential solution to plastic bottles of drinking water, the inventors say, generating inmprovisational riffs in real-time, using input from the composition being played and outputing more variations on the theme, and using lasers to generate gigabits of truly random numbers.
Last call for tonight - first, the Withering Sarcasm Warning - facts* about women that everyone knows and abides by.
And finally, a theory of existence that suggests if the human species loses the ability to adapt at high speed, trying new cultural variations and picking good adaptations for when the old ways (inevitably) fail, and doesn't stop using The Other as a goad to fight, or seeing the existence of The Other as a weapon being used against them, then we're going the same way the Neandertals did - to extinction. For an example of this hatred of the Other in action, Doug Giles is happy to oblige us, with a rant about "Stealth Jihad", or “How the Muslims are turning the United States and its schools into terrorist Muslims while the sheep look on.” Be afraid of the Other, with its different ways, and be sure to magnify anything they might do in one place as something they’re doing worldwide, with an agressive and conquering mindest backing it, because They obviously want to turn Us into Them. Or... we could be sane about the matter, recognize there’s a place for everyone, that extremism (that’s not Us being Extreme), while making great headlines and spook pieces, doesn’t actually get a huge amount of traction among the masses, and realize that on par, there is enough diversity in this country to negate just about any group taking over and doing something radical. With a couple exceptions, but we’re working on them, too.
Attempting to put pressure on Hamas, Israel has been preventing bank notes from entering the Gaza strip. Naturally, the people have been putting a run on the banks, trying to get what notes they can. And, although the squeeze has been on since October, it’s probably not hurting the people it’s intended to.
The rush is on in Iraq to bring charges against many of the detainees, before the new status of forces agreement takes place and the United States loses the ability to hold them indefinitely. So, how many “enemy combatants” have we been holding without charge or intent to charge?
Did we mention the slow news continues? So much so that we're reduced to reading about what the President-elect had for lunch? Yeah. I think there’s some impatience about the inauguration day. A mysterious piano in the woods is more interesting than this. Although, speaking of lunch, you may want to check out Edible, assuming you’re not grossed out by all the possible things, like insects, that are edible.
Even as the house collapses down around them, the 10 worst corproations of the year are doing their best to rearrange the chairs, mismanage money, try to buy their way out of wrongdoing, and screw everyone but their executives over. Did we mention Citigroup's getting some cash in the bailout? Who knows? Perhaps we’ll be selling some part of the banks to Libya in exchange for investment cash. Of course, if we try to bail out everyone, or even just those that Treasury considers important, we're in for a world of hurt. Hell, Even Bill'O says we should let some companies die.
The President-elect may have selected a potential Treasury secretary, though. It’s all speculation at this point, though. Doesn't stop commentary on it, but it is just speculation.
Ah, here's something more interesting: no, wait, more domestic spying, lawbreaking, and consolidating unknowable power into the hands of the executive. Nevermind. Hrm. And apparently both campaigns were sharing lists of good people for the incoming administration before it was determined who would lead them, which could have been a helpful gesture, aimed at trying to get some of your own people into the other administration, so as not to be totally shut out.
Gent attemtps to save pets from his burning house, ends up arrested and with the pets dead. Guess the state.
Down here in the state that I now call home, the General has a nice profile of one of our state representatives - she’s all the things the Republican Party wants - God Warrior, fiscally irresponsible, and is married to someone convicted of embezzling funds. Further along that line, Austin Cline feels that Mike Huckabee will be the face of the Republican Party soon, and that progressives should start compiling all the reasons why he's not electable now, rather than wait for him to be part of a campaign again. And, perhaps riffing things out far enough to hit an edge, one of Scientology's most popular marketers talks about his time in the church.
At the opinions, a new case for Star Wars missile defense, against EMP strikes as much as actual explosions, praise that the current administration has learned that the International Criminal Court isn't a bad thing, and that the U.S. will veto any attemtps to stop the prosecution of the Sudanese president for crimes related to Darfur, as well as Salena Zito's retrospective on the current administration, characterizing it as good bits often following bad, concluding that the current administrator really was out of his comfort zone in D.C., as well as some characteristic flaws that makes for the negative opinion we have of him today.
On the President-elect’s side, Terry Moe on why the Democrats have to divorce themselves from teacher's unions to achieve any real education change, because unions deathly oppose anything that looks like real accountability because it might threaten jobs, have no fondness for school choice, and love making it as difficult as possible to fire anyone for any reason. The WSJ can't resist taking a swipe at th President-elect's choice of schooling for his daughters, because they chose not to go to a public institution, but a private one, and can afford to do so, unlike most everyone else who wants good education but can’t afford it and won’t be able to get vouchers, either. The WSJ on a Louisiana proposal to invest medicare money in buying insurance plans, thus saving over the current setup,
In technology, anyone with smug Mac superiority, kiss it goodbye - Apple caved and has added copy protection to its content so that if you're not on authorized HDCP-compliant hardware, your content doesn't play. Enterprising hacks that will work around this difficulty should be appearing for all computers if not by the end of this year, by the end of next year, unless Apple’s loyal base abandons iTunes entirely. Still, this was not announced, nor is it any smarter than it was in the first place.
The Pentagon has temporarily suspended the use of external flash drives, citing a virus threat. The defense/military organization is permiting people to bring in outside data and take it out. Viruses are frigging inevitable, which means there should be good A/V on the computers, right? So, rather than fix the problem, Pentagon appears to be more interested in shooting the messenger. No wonder everyone's worried about China launching cyberwarfare - it doesn’t sound like we can even fight off the most basic intrusions and viruses.
Elsewhere, the spiders on the ISS? They’ve apparently figured out the microgravity thing, the rats carrying a different form of plague, which may be countered by the unintelligent slave bacteria, trying to generate a map of one's personal information, a device to draw drinkable water from the ambient moisture in the air - a potential solution to plastic bottles of drinking water, the inventors say, generating inmprovisational riffs in real-time, using input from the composition being played and outputing more variations on the theme, and using lasers to generate gigabits of truly random numbers.
Last call for tonight - first, the Withering Sarcasm Warning - facts* about women that everyone knows and abides by.
And finally, a theory of existence that suggests if the human species loses the ability to adapt at high speed, trying new cultural variations and picking good adaptations for when the old ways (inevitably) fail, and doesn't stop using The Other as a goad to fight, or seeing the existence of The Other as a weapon being used against them, then we're going the same way the Neandertals did - to extinction. For an example of this hatred of the Other in action, Doug Giles is happy to oblige us, with a rant about "Stealth Jihad", or “How the Muslims are turning the United States and its schools into terrorist Muslims while the sheep look on.” Be afraid of the Other, with its different ways, and be sure to magnify anything they might do in one place as something they’re doing worldwide, with an agressive and conquering mindest backing it, because They obviously want to turn Us into Them. Or... we could be sane about the matter, recognize there’s a place for everyone, that extremism (that’s not Us being Extreme), while making great headlines and spook pieces, doesn’t actually get a huge amount of traction among the masses, and realize that on par, there is enough diversity in this country to negate just about any group taking over and doing something radical. With a couple exceptions, but we’re working on them, too.
