![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Better Late than Never - 9 January 2008
Jan. 10th, 2009 06:17 pmGreetings, all. Did you know that we live in a world where an old video game such as Darkstalkers still can generate an art contest to produce a fan art book? Which is interesting. We also have the Internet, home to a website where a man offers free oral sex to women in his geographical area... with a design out of the 1996 version of the web. Mm. The Internet also has places where devices intended to cure [whatever the male version of female hysteria is] are marketed. If that's all too weird for you, have some book recommendations.
And comic books where radioactive heroes keep presidents from being killed at their inauguration. I'll be waiting for that one to come across my desk in our regular comic raid.
The international stage always has actors. And always has cameras and audiences. The UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for cease-fire in Gaza. Remains to be seen how fast that will happen. While Iran's overt ban on people going into Gaza and helping Hamas by becoming explosives, they did say they would help in other manners.
In the other locus of attention, General Petraeus suggests that Afhganistan and Pakistan have to be solved together, because of the nature of the relationship between the two countries. Although, supposedly, an airstrike in Pakistan killed some top al-Qaeda people, so that should help, and we've got a few translators making their living in Afghanistan, so that might help with a more comprehensive strategy.
Not that Iraq isn't trying to make sure some attention rightly stays on it. And there are ships being dispatched to deal with pirates around Somalia.
And there will be at least some crowing about a deicision by a major oil company in India to stop seling gasoline to Iran.
...but did we really have to report on the exception that lets troops in Iraq drink beer while watching the Super Bowl?
Domestically, the Faithful Word Baptist Church stays on the General's radar for the third straight day, this time focusing on the pastor's wife and her great pride when her two sons, not even six, say they hate Barack Obama even more than faggots in the middle of a story about how much she hates homosexuals and thinks that the public schooling system is completely pro-homosexual at that age, as is the public library. Yes, there are comments to the post praising her for being who she is and agreeing with her.
Finding a job is really freaking hard, because the economy sucks nuts and most firms are shedding people rather than taking them on. It's probably going to only get worse in this year, too.
And down into the opinions we go. Cal Thomas continues with campaign to make the outgoing administrator more human and worthy of sympathy, even if we never will agree with his presidency. However, Ross Mackenzie isn't shy about declaring the outgoing Presidet to be the most consequential in a "bestest EVAR!" sort of way, despite his disclaimer to the matter, because he persevered and did the right thing, like taking credit for no further terror attacks, and pre-emptively invading countries. Even with all the evul libruls trying to foil his benevolence at every turn, he persevered... because we didn't like how he won the White House in 2000 and just weren't going to work with him from there, no matter how wrong we are about everything.
John Fund is not fond of the new House rules, decrying the repeal of term limits for committee chairs, the destruction of the "pay-go" system, and limiting the motion to recommit a bill to a committee. The people most hurt, apparently, are those "pro-life, gun-owning Democrats" who are stuck without a chance of getting into power. The ones who really aren't all that liberal in the liberal party. Mr. Fund also thinks Senator Feinstein will also be a thorn in the Democratic side in the upcoming session, because she's unafraid of speaking her mind. That's possibly true, but if it is, then I start thinking in terms of whips, backbenchers, and free votes rather than the supposed system we have where people should be voicving their opinions instead of talking points.
Thomas Sowell recommends a book claiming to expose all the myths we have about single-payer "universal" health care. Y'know, that Americans don't wait as long, have better treatments, that more people die in those kinds of countries while politicians twitter their thumbs or refuse to pay for the lifesaving treatment, that most uninsured people have above-average incomes (but are stuck with policies that have had added things put onto them by politicians that make them unaffordable), that kind of stuff. And, of course, because Medicaid is a wreck, this just shows that government is incapable of effective health care and should just stay out of it.
Ms. Coulter, fresh from being stung by NBC, an organization that she apparently desperately wants to have her, despite the fact that it also emplys, say, Mr. Olbermann, lashes out by...giving us an except from her new book about how much the media fawned over Barack Obama. So, the same media that you thrash because it's so rabidly partisan against you and tells you to get lost... is the media you're trying to court and possibly sell books on? Can you hear the dissonance there, Ms. Coulter?
And now, I'm sensing a theme. Rebecca Hagelin gushes about Michael Medved's new book, complimenting his memory and speaking style as well as his writings, in a general point of saying "Government bad. Unregulated, unrestrained capitalism good! Attempts to regulate or protect workers from being squeezed out in the profit pursuit is socialism. Socialism bad."
I think our Unabashed Feminism department has a new chew toy to work with, as the Wall Street Journal ridicules two acts of Congress that would put no statute of limitations on wage discrimination claims and establish guidelines for equality of pay between the sexes, based on the wges of their professions. It's not an "equal pay for equal work", but trying to address "the average woman worker makes 78 cents USD per 100 cents USD a man makes" (at least, I think that's the latest figure). The WSJ dismisses both acts as Democrats throwing chum to trial lawyers, who will greedily go looking for intentional or unintentional pay disparities and then litigate them, and says that it's not a secret penis-cabal that keeps women down, but just that women tend to get into positions that have lower salary, like teaching, where experience, education, and such just naturally lead to less pay. And jobs like teaching are government jobs, so if you want to accuse anyone of discrimination, he says subtly, go after the government.
Right before the end, our newly minted (although unknown about their seating) Senators show up - Kimberley Strassel compares Burris, who was legal in every way but despised and rejected, although eventually will likely be seated, and Al Franken, loved and admired, but who is manipulating an election until it benefits him, despite the thrashing it does to the law and the illegitimacy it confers on Mr. Franken. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann consider the recount stealing an election, with fraud and deception and counting votes that weren't and duplicates until Mr. Franken won... and a small smug aside about the seating of Mr. Burris, with a bit about whethe or not we'll ever know if he was corrupted or paid the Illinois governor' price. Stanley Fish notes that the virtue of the person appointing shouldn't matter, unless there was an actual act of vice than can be prosecuted, because once validity depends on the virtue of the people appointing, instead of principles and procedures established by law, then it quickly slides down a steep and slippery slope to find one virtuous man from whom all authoirty could flow. "The (perhaps paradoxical) truth is that while governing has or should have a moral purpose — to safeguard and advance the health and prosperity of the polity — it is not a moral practice." I mean, Abraaham bargained the being represented by the Tetragrammaton down to five virtuous men in the city, from what looked to be a pretty low standard of fifty. I think it says something about what Abraham knew or suspected about his fellows.
Last out of the opinions, Gerald Warner confidently declares that global warming was nothing more than a way to make money, because ice is up, temperatures are down, and the promised heat waves never happened, so we must be in a coling period and there's no need to do things that will reduce environmental pollution.
Technology rules! We've got carbon nanotubes as the next superbattery, when they're not being super everything else, the big push for three dimensional broadcast programming, highlights from the Consumer Electronics Show, including Intel's answer to the OLPC XO, a self-replicating molecule, analyzing cosmological radio static, and a baby born that tested negative as an embryo to see whether she is a likely carrier for cancers, which doesn't necessarily mean that she won't have any in her life, because the genetic sequences tested for don't definitively say cancer yes/no. The ethics questions are being asked at least, even if I don't see any answers coming soon. Oh, and a medicine-resistant strain of flu has become popular.
In scitech opinions, Simon Baron-Cohen cautions that choosing to eliminate something like autism might end up eliminating mathematical savants and retard progress, as an example where decisions have to be made about which is more important - social fitting in or intellectal ability.
Klintron has a host of stuff, including praise for Twitchboard, a service that parses Tweets and then sends on messages to other services. Right now, they have it set up so that all URLs in a Tweet are captured and sent to your del.icio.us account. Klintron sees this as the beginning of how to develop customized user agents that will handle connections and our online social lives. You could, say, Tweet where you are, and it would change your Facebook locale and possibly send IMs to friends you have on various services that your geographical location and theirs are proximal ("Hey! I'm in your neighborhood! We should hang out!"), et cetera. Or, perhaps a blog post about the awesome time you had would change your moods and send thank-yous to those contacts you have that were involved. If we mixed this in with things like geotagged to-do lists, that's a lot of data that could be slung around automatically, so that when I came home, it alerted JAMS I was there, added "JAMS Meeting" to my calendar, and then told, say, The Weirdo that I was around and would love to hang out. Klintron also sees applications for business intelligence, probably leading to the ubiquitous computing world.
He also touches on how tightly coupled Adobe and Cisco are going to be in the video revolution.
The best piece, though, is his thoughts on generating viewports into online worlds, so that people can watch what's going on elsewhere in virtual existence, by say, seeing a deathmatch through the eyes spectator cameras scattered about that the user can choose, or tapping into a feed of CCTVs of the Grand Theft Auto world, being able to view what kind of mayhem others are up to, or just watching WoW as one might a reality television show. Without needing the scripting or the machinima tools, drama could play itself out in front of an audience who will watch. (And advertisers who will hope to make money off it.)
Last out, using the retiring space shuttles and some propulsion to get to Mars on the cheap. The landing would be a little rough, so not all the details are worked out, but someone's thinking of ideas, which is an important part to gettign the ball rolling. The thought paper is available for perusal.
And last for tonight, D20 flails. Because there should always be a random joke inserted somewhere into anything that tries to take itself seriously. Taking oneself positively, however, is a necessary thing.
And comic books where radioactive heroes keep presidents from being killed at their inauguration. I'll be waiting for that one to come across my desk in our regular comic raid.
The international stage always has actors. And always has cameras and audiences. The UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for cease-fire in Gaza. Remains to be seen how fast that will happen. While Iran's overt ban on people going into Gaza and helping Hamas by becoming explosives, they did say they would help in other manners.
In the other locus of attention, General Petraeus suggests that Afhganistan and Pakistan have to be solved together, because of the nature of the relationship between the two countries. Although, supposedly, an airstrike in Pakistan killed some top al-Qaeda people, so that should help, and we've got a few translators making their living in Afghanistan, so that might help with a more comprehensive strategy.
Not that Iraq isn't trying to make sure some attention rightly stays on it. And there are ships being dispatched to deal with pirates around Somalia.
And there will be at least some crowing about a deicision by a major oil company in India to stop seling gasoline to Iran.
...but did we really have to report on the exception that lets troops in Iraq drink beer while watching the Super Bowl?
Domestically, the Faithful Word Baptist Church stays on the General's radar for the third straight day, this time focusing on the pastor's wife and her great pride when her two sons, not even six, say they hate Barack Obama even more than faggots in the middle of a story about how much she hates homosexuals and thinks that the public schooling system is completely pro-homosexual at that age, as is the public library. Yes, there are comments to the post praising her for being who she is and agreeing with her.
Finding a job is really freaking hard, because the economy sucks nuts and most firms are shedding people rather than taking them on. It's probably going to only get worse in this year, too.
And down into the opinions we go. Cal Thomas continues with campaign to make the outgoing administrator more human and worthy of sympathy, even if we never will agree with his presidency. However, Ross Mackenzie isn't shy about declaring the outgoing Presidet to be the most consequential in a "bestest EVAR!" sort of way, despite his disclaimer to the matter, because he persevered and did the right thing, like taking credit for no further terror attacks, and pre-emptively invading countries. Even with all the evul libruls trying to foil his benevolence at every turn, he persevered... because we didn't like how he won the White House in 2000 and just weren't going to work with him from there, no matter how wrong we are about everything.
John Fund is not fond of the new House rules, decrying the repeal of term limits for committee chairs, the destruction of the "pay-go" system, and limiting the motion to recommit a bill to a committee. The people most hurt, apparently, are those "pro-life, gun-owning Democrats" who are stuck without a chance of getting into power. The ones who really aren't all that liberal in the liberal party. Mr. Fund also thinks Senator Feinstein will also be a thorn in the Democratic side in the upcoming session, because she's unafraid of speaking her mind. That's possibly true, but if it is, then I start thinking in terms of whips, backbenchers, and free votes rather than the supposed system we have where people should be voicving their opinions instead of talking points.
Thomas Sowell recommends a book claiming to expose all the myths we have about single-payer "universal" health care. Y'know, that Americans don't wait as long, have better treatments, that more people die in those kinds of countries while politicians twitter their thumbs or refuse to pay for the lifesaving treatment, that most uninsured people have above-average incomes (but are stuck with policies that have had added things put onto them by politicians that make them unaffordable), that kind of stuff. And, of course, because Medicaid is a wreck, this just shows that government is incapable of effective health care and should just stay out of it.
Ms. Coulter, fresh from being stung by NBC, an organization that she apparently desperately wants to have her, despite the fact that it also emplys, say, Mr. Olbermann, lashes out by...giving us an except from her new book about how much the media fawned over Barack Obama. So, the same media that you thrash because it's so rabidly partisan against you and tells you to get lost... is the media you're trying to court and possibly sell books on? Can you hear the dissonance there, Ms. Coulter?
And now, I'm sensing a theme. Rebecca Hagelin gushes about Michael Medved's new book, complimenting his memory and speaking style as well as his writings, in a general point of saying "Government bad. Unregulated, unrestrained capitalism good! Attempts to regulate or protect workers from being squeezed out in the profit pursuit is socialism. Socialism bad."
I think our Unabashed Feminism department has a new chew toy to work with, as the Wall Street Journal ridicules two acts of Congress that would put no statute of limitations on wage discrimination claims and establish guidelines for equality of pay between the sexes, based on the wges of their professions. It's not an "equal pay for equal work", but trying to address "the average woman worker makes 78 cents USD per 100 cents USD a man makes" (at least, I think that's the latest figure). The WSJ dismisses both acts as Democrats throwing chum to trial lawyers, who will greedily go looking for intentional or unintentional pay disparities and then litigate them, and says that it's not a secret penis-cabal that keeps women down, but just that women tend to get into positions that have lower salary, like teaching, where experience, education, and such just naturally lead to less pay. And jobs like teaching are government jobs, so if you want to accuse anyone of discrimination, he says subtly, go after the government.
Right before the end, our newly minted (although unknown about their seating) Senators show up - Kimberley Strassel compares Burris, who was legal in every way but despised and rejected, although eventually will likely be seated, and Al Franken, loved and admired, but who is manipulating an election until it benefits him, despite the thrashing it does to the law and the illegitimacy it confers on Mr. Franken. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann consider the recount stealing an election, with fraud and deception and counting votes that weren't and duplicates until Mr. Franken won... and a small smug aside about the seating of Mr. Burris, with a bit about whethe or not we'll ever know if he was corrupted or paid the Illinois governor' price. Stanley Fish notes that the virtue of the person appointing shouldn't matter, unless there was an actual act of vice than can be prosecuted, because once validity depends on the virtue of the people appointing, instead of principles and procedures established by law, then it quickly slides down a steep and slippery slope to find one virtuous man from whom all authoirty could flow. "The (perhaps paradoxical) truth is that while governing has or should have a moral purpose — to safeguard and advance the health and prosperity of the polity — it is not a moral practice." I mean, Abraaham bargained the being represented by the Tetragrammaton down to five virtuous men in the city, from what looked to be a pretty low standard of fifty. I think it says something about what Abraham knew or suspected about his fellows.
Last out of the opinions, Gerald Warner confidently declares that global warming was nothing more than a way to make money, because ice is up, temperatures are down, and the promised heat waves never happened, so we must be in a coling period and there's no need to do things that will reduce environmental pollution.
Technology rules! We've got carbon nanotubes as the next superbattery, when they're not being super everything else, the big push for three dimensional broadcast programming, highlights from the Consumer Electronics Show, including Intel's answer to the OLPC XO, a self-replicating molecule, analyzing cosmological radio static, and a baby born that tested negative as an embryo to see whether she is a likely carrier for cancers, which doesn't necessarily mean that she won't have any in her life, because the genetic sequences tested for don't definitively say cancer yes/no. The ethics questions are being asked at least, even if I don't see any answers coming soon. Oh, and a medicine-resistant strain of flu has become popular.
In scitech opinions, Simon Baron-Cohen cautions that choosing to eliminate something like autism might end up eliminating mathematical savants and retard progress, as an example where decisions have to be made about which is more important - social fitting in or intellectal ability.
Klintron has a host of stuff, including praise for Twitchboard, a service that parses Tweets and then sends on messages to other services. Right now, they have it set up so that all URLs in a Tweet are captured and sent to your del.icio.us account. Klintron sees this as the beginning of how to develop customized user agents that will handle connections and our online social lives. You could, say, Tweet where you are, and it would change your Facebook locale and possibly send IMs to friends you have on various services that your geographical location and theirs are proximal ("Hey! I'm in your neighborhood! We should hang out!"), et cetera. Or, perhaps a blog post about the awesome time you had would change your moods and send thank-yous to those contacts you have that were involved. If we mixed this in with things like geotagged to-do lists, that's a lot of data that could be slung around automatically, so that when I came home, it alerted JAMS I was there, added "JAMS Meeting" to my calendar, and then told, say, The Weirdo that I was around and would love to hang out. Klintron also sees applications for business intelligence, probably leading to the ubiquitous computing world.
He also touches on how tightly coupled Adobe and Cisco are going to be in the video revolution.
The best piece, though, is his thoughts on generating viewports into online worlds, so that people can watch what's going on elsewhere in virtual existence, by say, seeing a deathmatch through the eyes spectator cameras scattered about that the user can choose, or tapping into a feed of CCTVs of the Grand Theft Auto world, being able to view what kind of mayhem others are up to, or just watching WoW as one might a reality television show. Without needing the scripting or the machinima tools, drama could play itself out in front of an audience who will watch. (And advertisers who will hope to make money off it.)
Last out, using the retiring space shuttles and some propulsion to get to Mars on the cheap. The landing would be a little rough, so not all the details are worked out, but someone's thinking of ideas, which is an important part to gettign the ball rolling. The thought paper is available for perusal.
And last for tonight, D20 flails. Because there should always be a random joke inserted somewhere into anything that tries to take itself seriously. Taking oneself positively, however, is a necessary thing.
