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Helloooo, people! The Dead Pool got someone today - Ricardo Montalban, perhaps best known for being Mr. Roarke in the original Fantasy Island. He was also Khan (KAAAAAAAAHNNNNNNNN!) in Star Trek II as well as the villain in the first Naked Gun movie. Additionally, Number Six has escaped. Patrick McGoohan dies at 80.
For those interested in leaving commentary to the President-elect on the best course for the country on your pet issue, change.gov now has the Citizen's Briefing Book. Registration is required to leave commentary or to vote to affect the popularity of other items. There’s a lot there, so you may want to go searching for some keywords before leaving your own comment, just to see if you can piggyback on someone else’s already well-articulated thought.
Internationally, the Czech Republic gets punked - they thought they were comissioning art from 27 different European artists. What they got were two Czech pranksters, and an art installation that does its very best to poke fun at Europe... possibly even being mildly offensive.
Much more seriously, the Gaza war threatens to open up another front, as Israel fired shells into Lebanon after a rocket attack from there. Additionally, Ethopian soldiers leave Somalia, prompting worry that the counry will collapse into an ugly civil war. There’s also the piracy problem to deal with.
Iraq continues to be an interesting blend of positive and negative-looking stuff. An Iraqi-controlled terror-fighting force takes to the streets, like its predecessor, the Sons of Iraq. Good. Possible problems with the election system with ballots scheduled to start at the end of the month. Bad.
Best of the bunch, however, are the girls in Afghanistan that continue coming to school, even after they were attacked with acid on the way there.
In domestic news, parkour pushes more and more into the mainstream limelight, soon enough, we’ll probably have legions of people trying to find their fastest ways up and down, possibly with some interesting tricks along the way. And the likely inevitable commercialization of it and its related discipline, freerunning.
No charges were brought against a police officer who shoved the 71 year-old Wal-Mart greeter to the ground when he asked to see the man's receipt and later put a person trying to help the greeter through a glass door. The judge did his very best to avoid charging the officer, when there are probably half a dozen charges that could be easily brought, even if they would later be thrown out, producing the apparently foregone conclusion. But at least we would feel better about it, knowing that charges would be brought. The General thinks this would be the perfect pilot for a new reality video series called "Greeter Beaters", in the vein of such classics as Bum Fights.
I freely admit that I have thought the anti-vaccination thing to be something quaint that a few people engage in, to their own detriment (and posibly those around them, if they think similarly), bassed on unsound matters regarding mercury and autism, but reading that someone can't do a book tour for a work refuting the antivaccination crowd because of the demonstraters, assassination attempts, and placards declaring him a terrorist makes me wonder just how big this idea has become.
Trying to scare you and the incoming President into contnuing the practice of holding people without charge at the Guantanamo Bay facility, the Pentagon released a report saying that 61 inmates of the facility have returned to terrorism acts after their release, which actually breaks down to 18 “confirmed” recidivists and 43 “suspected” ones. A criticism of the report is that it lacks sufficient detail as to what these terror acts are. Considering the government has profiled pacifists as terrorists, I think that skepticism is warranted and healthy. Details, please.
Further attempts to scare you, this time about the religion of Islam, is the chief cleric of Saudi Arabia blessing the idea of marrying ten year-old girls. Saudi Arabia. Which means that we’re talking Wahabism and somewhere that routinely goes for as much shock as possible, it seems.
How’s this for pretty stupid? A posting claims that Rolex watches helped cure Owen Wilson of his suicidal depression. The place where it was posted issued an addendum saying Uh, that's your opinion, not ours, and says, “Guys, don’t do this kind of this. It makes us look really bad.” I find it interesting that someone was really willing to pin the recovery of someone from a dark place on a trinket.
Different potential stupidity is the couple charged with theft after they spent a bank error in their favor. Apparently, not calling the bank and saying it was an error means charges of theft if they correct it and then demand their money back. This seems counterintuitive, and thus I must ask what the law is on the matter when the bank makes errors in your favor.
A snappy treatment of stupidity is the Skeptoid's review of The Secret and answering questions about the Mozart effect, popular treatment of quantum theory, and AIDS weirdness.
Following up on a previous story, Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell have all been taken into child-protective custody by the state of New Jersey, according to the chief of police for that township. The Youth and Family Services decision has no comment about it.
The outgoing administrator held his last Cabinet meeting, and continued to tout his strengths and try to convince the populace that he was an excellent administrator. He also awarded some medals to foreign dignitaries that helped him through his administration and will probably appreciate Mickey Rourke's defense of him, claiming that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got dumped on by the populace.
Starting the opinion department off right, a Global Guerrila suggests some needed improvements to the education system, such as elimination of lectures and a shift in education toward on-line collaboration and simulation, so as to provide the best people talking and virtual environments to do hands-on scenario work and learn the concepts practically as well as theoretically. With all the on-line stuff, too, the cost of education supposedly drops through the floor even as more people get more education. There is still the messy matter of accreditation to worry about, but if “prestigious” universities take the lead and still offer accreditation for their work, then the rest will soon follow, he says. Personally, I still think that most of the money spent at university is not for the education, but for that accreditation, and democratization of the knowledge probably won’t drop the cost of university until it becomes prohibitive for anyone but the most elite to afford it. At which point either the universities get stomped on to bring prices down, or the K-12 education system gets a serious overhaul so that people don’t have to go to university to do most professional work.
ddjango speaks of war, violence, and the insanity of humanity, whether religious and ignoring the unequivocal command that says, “Thou shalt not kill” or nonreligious but militant against the religious. It only ends when someone gets smart enough to realize war is not a profitable action in the important ways. In some ways, Thomas Sowell agrees, by declaring that Israel needs to smash Gaza, occupy it, drive out all the terrorists, and then talk about whether or not Palestinians want peace and/or their own land. Dennis Prager gives them the moral justification for it, because Hamas's stated purpose is to destroy Israel, and while Israel weeps for dead Palestiniants, Hamas would never weep for dead Israelis, giving Israel the moral high ground, and Dore Gold says not to forget crushing and caving in tunnels underneath the land, so as to stop smuggling of weapons into Gaza.
More domestically, Mona Charen rolls her eyes at all the Obama products on the market before declaring that the only way for Obama to win and get out of the recession is to do the conservative thing, slash “entitlements”, raise the ages for retirement benefits, no new stimulus spending, cut corporate taxes, and balance the budget, or else we’ll just spend our way further into the hole. Philip Levy agrees there, believing the budget defecit is already bad enough that no more spending is necessary, no matter what we say about “stimulus”. Taking care of the debt is important, and adding new debt is not a great thing - of course, we could have done that with the budget surpluses we had when the last Democratic president was in office. Still, I don’t know how much of “Social Security and Medicare will kill us!” is Chicken Little and how much is “No, this one’s going to hurt.” If we really wanted to, I’m pretty sure we could impose fiscal discipline on the government. Might take someone calling in our loans to be paid before it happens, though. Paul Kennedy agrees, noting the market for American debt in this bad economy is slim and none, so finding someone to finance the stimulus, as well as the possibility of rushing money out the door without adequate oversight (here’s hoping the Obama team has learned their lesson from TARP and the way the outgoing administration handled it), means American power is definitely on the way down.
the outoing Secretary of Labor makes a statement that Labor's done well over the last few years, updating and modernizing, and that employers and workers alike should oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, because the private, secret ballot is essential, and not having card check prevents workers from being intimidated by union representatives into signing on their card. Isn’t intimidation of that sort a violation of labor laws? I mean, if it’s illegal for employers to intimidate against unions, I would think it is also illegal for union reps to intimidate employees. Then again, I expect the law to make sense whenever I encounter it, and it doesn’t seem to do that all that much.
The Slacktivist has some rumination on the last election, on how Palin appealed to fear and Obama to seeking, and how that can translate into trying to convince people that they’re not the bottom of the food chain, but people who can band together to do great things. It also apparently applies to why atheist evangelists are having a really hard time convincing anyone other than the already convinced - they start with the idea that religion is based on fear, not on seeking, and they work from there. Which doesn’t really work.
Last out, the WSJ considers the new product safety law to be an overreaction to scares about lead in toys, which, if it’s as bad as everyone seems to be playing up, it is, and it will probably kill off a lot of things taht would be perfectly safe and doing fine under the old rules.
In our technology department, nanotubes used to get cells to differentiate into neurons, meaning that such things could help fight neurodegenerative diseases. Sir Terry is testing a light-burst helmet that's supposed to slow his Alzheimer's down.
Stanford raised $100 million to develop and build an energy research institute. So maybe they’ll find a way of clearing up the air so the tree can return to a healthy look?
Removing a part of the ecosystem has effects on other parts of the ecosystem, an Australian island finds out. Um, whoops. Guess getting rid of the cats to save the birds wasn't such a good idea - the rabbits outbred everything.
Scientists team up to point radio telescopes worldwide at a passing quasar, basically turning all the disparate scopes into one earth-size observation unit.
A quick humorous matter on how science is slowly unlocking the mechanisms by which we fall in love...and all the possible pitfalls of having love potions or love vaccines at hand.
Oooh, giant spinning discs of ice!
Finally, almost. Scientists say they've generated something that resembles how life might have come about here on Terra.
And at the very last, Rejection, Disney 1938-style. And the sound of jelly wobbling.
For those interested in leaving commentary to the President-elect on the best course for the country on your pet issue, change.gov now has the Citizen's Briefing Book. Registration is required to leave commentary or to vote to affect the popularity of other items. There’s a lot there, so you may want to go searching for some keywords before leaving your own comment, just to see if you can piggyback on someone else’s already well-articulated thought.
Internationally, the Czech Republic gets punked - they thought they were comissioning art from 27 different European artists. What they got were two Czech pranksters, and an art installation that does its very best to poke fun at Europe... possibly even being mildly offensive.
Much more seriously, the Gaza war threatens to open up another front, as Israel fired shells into Lebanon after a rocket attack from there. Additionally, Ethopian soldiers leave Somalia, prompting worry that the counry will collapse into an ugly civil war. There’s also the piracy problem to deal with.
Iraq continues to be an interesting blend of positive and negative-looking stuff. An Iraqi-controlled terror-fighting force takes to the streets, like its predecessor, the Sons of Iraq. Good. Possible problems with the election system with ballots scheduled to start at the end of the month. Bad.
Best of the bunch, however, are the girls in Afghanistan that continue coming to school, even after they were attacked with acid on the way there.
In domestic news, parkour pushes more and more into the mainstream limelight, soon enough, we’ll probably have legions of people trying to find their fastest ways up and down, possibly with some interesting tricks along the way. And the likely inevitable commercialization of it and its related discipline, freerunning.
No charges were brought against a police officer who shoved the 71 year-old Wal-Mart greeter to the ground when he asked to see the man's receipt and later put a person trying to help the greeter through a glass door. The judge did his very best to avoid charging the officer, when there are probably half a dozen charges that could be easily brought, even if they would later be thrown out, producing the apparently foregone conclusion. But at least we would feel better about it, knowing that charges would be brought. The General thinks this would be the perfect pilot for a new reality video series called "Greeter Beaters", in the vein of such classics as Bum Fights.
I freely admit that I have thought the anti-vaccination thing to be something quaint that a few people engage in, to their own detriment (and posibly those around them, if they think similarly), bassed on unsound matters regarding mercury and autism, but reading that someone can't do a book tour for a work refuting the antivaccination crowd because of the demonstraters, assassination attempts, and placards declaring him a terrorist makes me wonder just how big this idea has become.
Trying to scare you and the incoming President into contnuing the practice of holding people without charge at the Guantanamo Bay facility, the Pentagon released a report saying that 61 inmates of the facility have returned to terrorism acts after their release, which actually breaks down to 18 “confirmed” recidivists and 43 “suspected” ones. A criticism of the report is that it lacks sufficient detail as to what these terror acts are. Considering the government has profiled pacifists as terrorists, I think that skepticism is warranted and healthy. Details, please.
Further attempts to scare you, this time about the religion of Islam, is the chief cleric of Saudi Arabia blessing the idea of marrying ten year-old girls. Saudi Arabia. Which means that we’re talking Wahabism and somewhere that routinely goes for as much shock as possible, it seems.
How’s this for pretty stupid? A posting claims that Rolex watches helped cure Owen Wilson of his suicidal depression. The place where it was posted issued an addendum saying Uh, that's your opinion, not ours, and says, “Guys, don’t do this kind of this. It makes us look really bad.” I find it interesting that someone was really willing to pin the recovery of someone from a dark place on a trinket.
Different potential stupidity is the couple charged with theft after they spent a bank error in their favor. Apparently, not calling the bank and saying it was an error means charges of theft if they correct it and then demand their money back. This seems counterintuitive, and thus I must ask what the law is on the matter when the bank makes errors in your favor.
A snappy treatment of stupidity is the Skeptoid's review of The Secret and answering questions about the Mozart effect, popular treatment of quantum theory, and AIDS weirdness.
Following up on a previous story, Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell have all been taken into child-protective custody by the state of New Jersey, according to the chief of police for that township. The Youth and Family Services decision has no comment about it.
The outgoing administrator held his last Cabinet meeting, and continued to tout his strengths and try to convince the populace that he was an excellent administrator. He also awarded some medals to foreign dignitaries that helped him through his administration and will probably appreciate Mickey Rourke's defense of him, claiming that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got dumped on by the populace.
Starting the opinion department off right, a Global Guerrila suggests some needed improvements to the education system, such as elimination of lectures and a shift in education toward on-line collaboration and simulation, so as to provide the best people talking and virtual environments to do hands-on scenario work and learn the concepts practically as well as theoretically. With all the on-line stuff, too, the cost of education supposedly drops through the floor even as more people get more education. There is still the messy matter of accreditation to worry about, but if “prestigious” universities take the lead and still offer accreditation for their work, then the rest will soon follow, he says. Personally, I still think that most of the money spent at university is not for the education, but for that accreditation, and democratization of the knowledge probably won’t drop the cost of university until it becomes prohibitive for anyone but the most elite to afford it. At which point either the universities get stomped on to bring prices down, or the K-12 education system gets a serious overhaul so that people don’t have to go to university to do most professional work.
ddjango speaks of war, violence, and the insanity of humanity, whether religious and ignoring the unequivocal command that says, “Thou shalt not kill” or nonreligious but militant against the religious. It only ends when someone gets smart enough to realize war is not a profitable action in the important ways. In some ways, Thomas Sowell agrees, by declaring that Israel needs to smash Gaza, occupy it, drive out all the terrorists, and then talk about whether or not Palestinians want peace and/or their own land. Dennis Prager gives them the moral justification for it, because Hamas's stated purpose is to destroy Israel, and while Israel weeps for dead Palestiniants, Hamas would never weep for dead Israelis, giving Israel the moral high ground, and Dore Gold says not to forget crushing and caving in tunnels underneath the land, so as to stop smuggling of weapons into Gaza.
More domestically, Mona Charen rolls her eyes at all the Obama products on the market before declaring that the only way for Obama to win and get out of the recession is to do the conservative thing, slash “entitlements”, raise the ages for retirement benefits, no new stimulus spending, cut corporate taxes, and balance the budget, or else we’ll just spend our way further into the hole. Philip Levy agrees there, believing the budget defecit is already bad enough that no more spending is necessary, no matter what we say about “stimulus”. Taking care of the debt is important, and adding new debt is not a great thing - of course, we could have done that with the budget surpluses we had when the last Democratic president was in office. Still, I don’t know how much of “Social Security and Medicare will kill us!” is Chicken Little and how much is “No, this one’s going to hurt.” If we really wanted to, I’m pretty sure we could impose fiscal discipline on the government. Might take someone calling in our loans to be paid before it happens, though. Paul Kennedy agrees, noting the market for American debt in this bad economy is slim and none, so finding someone to finance the stimulus, as well as the possibility of rushing money out the door without adequate oversight (here’s hoping the Obama team has learned their lesson from TARP and the way the outgoing administration handled it), means American power is definitely on the way down.
the outoing Secretary of Labor makes a statement that Labor's done well over the last few years, updating and modernizing, and that employers and workers alike should oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, because the private, secret ballot is essential, and not having card check prevents workers from being intimidated by union representatives into signing on their card. Isn’t intimidation of that sort a violation of labor laws? I mean, if it’s illegal for employers to intimidate against unions, I would think it is also illegal for union reps to intimidate employees. Then again, I expect the law to make sense whenever I encounter it, and it doesn’t seem to do that all that much.
The Slacktivist has some rumination on the last election, on how Palin appealed to fear and Obama to seeking, and how that can translate into trying to convince people that they’re not the bottom of the food chain, but people who can band together to do great things. It also apparently applies to why atheist evangelists are having a really hard time convincing anyone other than the already convinced - they start with the idea that religion is based on fear, not on seeking, and they work from there. Which doesn’t really work.
Last out, the WSJ considers the new product safety law to be an overreaction to scares about lead in toys, which, if it’s as bad as everyone seems to be playing up, it is, and it will probably kill off a lot of things taht would be perfectly safe and doing fine under the old rules.
In our technology department, nanotubes used to get cells to differentiate into neurons, meaning that such things could help fight neurodegenerative diseases. Sir Terry is testing a light-burst helmet that's supposed to slow his Alzheimer's down.
Stanford raised $100 million to develop and build an energy research institute. So maybe they’ll find a way of clearing up the air so the tree can return to a healthy look?
Removing a part of the ecosystem has effects on other parts of the ecosystem, an Australian island finds out. Um, whoops. Guess getting rid of the cats to save the birds wasn't such a good idea - the rabbits outbred everything.
Scientists team up to point radio telescopes worldwide at a passing quasar, basically turning all the disparate scopes into one earth-size observation unit.
A quick humorous matter on how science is slowly unlocking the mechanisms by which we fall in love...and all the possible pitfalls of having love potions or love vaccines at hand.
Oooh, giant spinning discs of ice!
Finally, almost. Scientists say they've generated something that resembles how life might have come about here on Terra.
And at the very last, Rejection, Disney 1938-style. And the sound of jelly wobbling.
