Dec. 19th, 2008

silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
Warning, warning - If you have/run IE, you are vulnerable to this particular exploit.. That means you, too, Royal Navy (Okay, it's the Register. I always get the feeling they're the Sun of the tech world. I don't know if that's true or not.)

Up top, lest you think that the United States military devotes their time entirely to secular purposes, several missionaries were embedded in combat troop deployments, so as to witness to the native Afghans. We know this because it was filmed and then distributed by the organization that embedded the journalists. Lawsuits ahoy.

It is near the end of the year, which means, it's time for pictures of the news, as published by Reuters, and also a set as published by the Boston Globe, part one of three.

Internationally, a plane that should not have been in the air at all has disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle, the government in Iraq has arrested several security ministers on the suspicion that they were attempting to revive Saddam Hussein's political party, (latest nation to indicate they will be removing troops from Iraq: Albania, with the possibility of Blackwater joining the list), the U.N. convicted a colonel for his part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and sentenced him to life imprisonment, and plans ordered for the closure of Guantanamo. Might be a couple years before it all gets done completely.

In the domestic sphere, a judge ordered a new trial for a defendant after determining that he did not receive a fair trial through the incompetence of his lawyer.

Mr. Drew Peterson is engaged to be married again. This despite, as [livejournal.com profile] theweaselking notes, it following the pattern of his last three wives, all who disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

The Treasury department has designated a New York firm a front for an Iranian bank and seeks seizure of their assets, officials believe that Russia will prod at the President-elect on arms issues, and Socks, the cat of President Bill Clinton, is fighting off cancer.


The transition piece between news and opinion is cause for serious flames - Rick Warren, of Saddleback church fame, has been selected to give the invocation at his inauguration. The pastor is fairly well-known for his hostility to the LGBT crowd, equating homosexual marriage with incest, his anti-choice stances, and a belief that the social part of the gospel was Marxism. Laboring under the belief that the President-elect selected the pastor, instead of a committee, the President-elect may have lost a significant part of his base. I wonder whether the selection committee decided they wanted to undercut the President-elect in such a manner.

Yet more dispatches from the VEWPRF fronts, Chuck Norris is unafraid to cast his lot against atheism, calling them fools, ignorant, liars, and potentially idolaters, because of the sign in the Washington Legislature Building and his own beliefs about those who don't believe. After such a bold statement, The General suggests Chuck sign himself up to be one of the embedded missionaries mentioned above.

The Chicks on Anime take a look into pornography and how some women view it, or like it, or have quite the market for it.

William Greider thinks he's got a solution to how Republicans can use the filibuster threat to get what they want from the Democrats - amend the rules to take that power away from them, such that the ending-filibuster vote only takes 55 or 51 votes. Elsewhere, Turd Blossom continues to declare how much the Obama cabinet stinks and that the President-elect will have to wrangle them if he wants a prayer of success, as Bruce Bialosky tries to turn Al Gore into an Evil Mastermind, suggesting that his statements of "no credible opposition" to anthropogenic climate change are now being used by the Obama cabinet to push consumer bailouts, government-run health care, and other bogeymen. W. Thomas Smith, Jr. tells President Carter to stop meddling in the Middle East and taking terrorists like Hezbollah seriously, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann believe that the incoming administrations of Israel and the United States will run at cross purposes, with out diplomacy-loving president set against the military-solution prime minister. Assuming that's how the elections in Israel turn out, that is. Larry Elder gives a backhanded compliment by comparing the show-throwing incident now, where the journalist is imprisoned, to if it had happened during Saddam's reign, where he would surely be dead, with the subtle hint "See? Our invasion means that this man's life is okay, rather than dead." Excepting then, he probably wouldn't have thrown the shoe, knowing he would die for it, and perhaps not having a reason to do so, as opposed to his frustrations with the person that invaded the country and then took six years to stand it back up after toppling it. Kathleen Parker talks about dynastic rule in America and that the way Caroline Kennedy gets Hillary Clinton's seat is similar to how Blagojevich was willing to sell Obama's, just not nearly so blatant about it, and John Stossel makes a subtle push for libertarianism through the purse strings, noting that governments get to tax, the rest of us have to bargain, and thus, those best at being bad will become the best at being politicians. And that's without the WSJ grousing at the Fed over proposed rules to limit how credit card institutions handle interest rates and complaining about the request of universities for some federal funds for projects that can't be used by state legislators as justification for trimming budget dollars.

In technology, The Weasel King ignites flint and tinder with a suggestion on how to avoid getting hit by the latest Windows/IE-based exploit, and it involves browsers and add-ons that are not Internet Explorer.
I'm waiting for our work machines to get smacked by it because they only use IE.
Also, one step closer to a spaceport in New Mexico, the need to reignite interest in the space program through definite planning and beginning of a manned mission to Mars, where they could study interesting things like rock varnish to see if there is life on board, a robot teddy bear that can be controlled remotely, with video feeds and actions and possible speech synthesis. Perfect for long-distance hugs. Additionally, trying to develop computers that learn, building supercomputers from PS3s, an anti-theft sandwich bag, beef-scented body spray, and increased hybrids and no increases in oil usage projected for 2030.

Last for tonight, Federation starships must find a new computer voice. And Deanna Troi loses her mother. Majel Barrett Roddenberry died today. Hopefully they send her up to be with her husband.
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (VEWPRF Kodoma)
I am going to be sending out correspondence for the VEWPRF - they may not arrive in time for any holiday in December, but I'm compiling an address file so that I should hopefully only need updates from last year.

So, comments are screened - leave an address, or send it through e-mail or an instant message contact, whatever makes you feel the most secure.
silveradept: The emblem of Organization XIII from the Kingdom Hearts series of video games. (Organization XIII)
Remember, I'm collecting addresses for VEWPRF correspondence, even if it doesn't get there in time for the new year. Check the post previous.

Up top, the repilcation of a famous experiment has the same result, unfortunately - Milgrim's experiment redone, people still willing to administer electric shocks marked lethal if an authority figure tells them.

Welcome to another news day - Blackwater produces evidence suggesting that guards accused of shooting civilians unprovoked in 2007 came under fire first, South Korea denies that it had anything to do with the assassination plot North Korea alleges happened, where the leader's latest absence is explained by the fact that he was fighting off poisoning.

In much the same vein as "Sorry, World", we now have "Thank You For Throwing Your Shoe", where people post pictures of themselves and their shoes in support of the person they felt was sufficiently brave to express his opinion of the outgoing administrator. According to a source that has reason to be biased, students in Fallujah protested by their own show-throwing, only to be fired upon by troops.

Domestically, following, perhaps, a bit of a trend of the last eight years, the naval carrier to be named after the outgoing administrator's father will be commissioned before undergoing sea trials.

Detroit gets the bailout it wanted, cheers, everyone else gets to bitch and moan about how this was a bad decision and to complain that the necessary reforms will not occur.

The mother of Levi Johnston, the man who will be marrying the pregant Bristol Palin, was arrested on drug charges. Certainly makes the family values tactic look more suspect.

New allegations appear that indicate Governor Blagojevich was running gambling rings in previous decades, making the corruption run deeper than initially thought. And the world lost someone who exposed deep corruption, Mark Felt, also known as "Deep Throat".

The best of the lot? a suit against Galveston police officers alleges that they arrested a 12 year-old girl, believing her to be a prostitute, and then beat her as she screamed for her father. The neat thing? The place the police officers were being called to was several blocks away. And now, the police department are claiming they're totally justified in arresting the girl and imprisoning her for resisting her false arrest and assaulting a peace officer.

In the opinions, Peggy Noonan says the country should catch a reality check, and that we should become optimistic again about the future by talking the long-term view, being totally confident that the current economic crisis will be short-term, and to seek the return of the people who will take responsibility and lead the country into those optimistic times.

Kimberley Strassel understands how the Democrats will now be the focus of every scandal in the media, now that they're the elected party. The WSJ complains that any forthcoming prosecutions of high officials in the outgoing administration about torture are politically motivated sham trials, where officials were just following the law, there was no actual torture sanctioned by the higher-ups, and those officials were just protecting the country from terrorist attacks.

Philip Howard believes that the government in Washington should restructure itself in the same way that it demands Detroit do so, eliminating useless laws, outdated subsidies, and trimming the levels of management in the government so as to become much leaner. That would we way nice to happen. It would also be pretty cool if the law could be rewritten in such a way that the layperson understands it all, but we'd take a pruning.

Last out - because it's VWEPRF season, Armstrong Williams feels confident in telling us all that because of the economic downturn, everyone will get back to celebrating Christmas and acknowledging Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

In technology, trying to link sneezing to thinking about sex, the robots of the year in Japan, using E. Coli to generate the building blocks of biofuels, proteins that suppress the growth of new neurons discovered, which means if those proteins get suppressed, they think the brain could rejeuvenate, new ways of spotting cancer through protein analysis, and a happy birthday to Beethoven who may have been a catalyst for determining the effective length of the compact disc.

Last for tonight, Ice: A Victorian Romance, chronicling stories and narratives of visits to the frozen north. Also, some of the first art of the Americas. If that's too highbrow for your taste, perhaps some severely ugly VEWPRF-themed sweaters will suffice.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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