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Quickly, and gone! - 17 January 2009
Jan. 17th, 2009 05:03 pmHello, everybody. (Hi, Doctor Nick!) And it's time for selected news and insanities over the last couple days. Genuine material, of course, without imitation or obvious inspired-by elements. Well, at least as much as I can.
Random stuff: There's another Principia Discordia in softcover available, a font resembling the one used in the Planet of the Apes movies, and a brand of maternity-style nursing covers called Hooter Hiders. On a website called "Bebe Au Lait".
Oh, and the possibility that the universe is nothing but a giant hologram.
Internationally, I think a few people are glad to see the American administration change over.
In the domestic sphere, a jet airline crash-landed into the Hudson River soon after takeoff from LaGuardia airport in New York. Everybody lived, and there were no serious injuries, it appears. Rather than calling it "miraculous", we do as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks does and say "Great job, everyone. Helluva job", because here is where it applies. Luck, sure, but there was so much skill deployed that there was only a little luck needed. Some days, everybody lives.
Even in dead economic times, teenagers are geting plastic surgery because they feel they're not pretty enough, which to me indicates the sign of a national disease in the under-eighteen population, fed by image-manipulated fashion pictures, the demands for the models of that fashion or acting profession, before the image manip takes over, and the insistence that a rail-stright woman with no hips or breasts is the correct ideal... y'know, the most masculine female you could get away with is right. Excepting when playing a motherly role, and then you need all those hips and breasts, or in an adult entertainment profession, where things get inflated past their normal or natural sizes. The Unabashed Feminism Department has lots of good comments on the matter, including the knowledge that teenagers are petty and cruel, leading to their finding whatever they can use to make fun of you, be it looks or otherwise. Not that I'm excusing it. But high school has the unique problem where the brain development of its residents is highly peer-focused, so all it takes, really, is one group to put pressure on its own to conform before others start being affected by that view of the world, often negatively, and they then go seek a peer group to conform to and to draw battle lines with. After then, when dumped rather unceremoniously into reality or the university experience, which not only operates on different rules, actually provides sufficient space for someone to grow into their own identity, even if they are still somewhat peer-focused, they learn what those of us who have been through the process already know, but have not found the magic way to articulate. Still, correction and alteration on a still-developing body, people. They could just grow out of it. And once we mature up some, we find out that while the whole body thing never goes away (I know several people much older than me that suffer from it), there's that whole personality and mind thing that starts to factor into our decisions as to whether we actually like someone.
Pastor Warren likes his comparisons - to the Hitler Youth, to the Bolsheviks, to the Cultural Revolution..., which would make most people who think him a patiotic young man building an army of God pause, right? I mean, if there's some direct comparisons, it's not like you can say that it's an insinuation or liberals projecting, right?
Of course, it's not just Pastor Warren that's engaging in some nuttery - according to the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition, the presence of the gay bishop and several other obviously homosexual groups at the inaguration ceremony means that good Christian men and women can't watch it without compromising their principles, because their presence is celebrating the deviant lifestyle and tinges his patriotic inauguration with sexual sins and sinners. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."
This is still nothing compared to the account of someone who spent a lot of time in a gulag that used the Book of Mormon as its Christian veneer. Much like other places where children are kidnapped and then tortured, so as to "strighten them out" from being normal teenagers into mindless zombies, because their parents believe that they are somehow being unacceptably rebellious.
However, in perhaps what is one of the best or scariest applications of public records and technology, observe The Eight Map, which pinpoints on a Google Map where a donator to the Yes on Eight campaign lives or does business, their profession, what company they work for, and how much they donated and when.
Getting into the government, who still claims that the country does not torture detainees, despite the ruling of a federal judge to the contrary, a federal appeals court has rules that telecoms do have to cooperate with warrantless wiretapping, as it is legal to spy, even on Americans, that are believed to be agents of a foreign power without obtaining a warrant. So not only do we torture, we spy on our own citizens without needing justification if we think they're terrorists and can wave the figment of national security at the situation.
The SCOTUS doesn't help that much, ruling that evidence obtained as a result of police mistakes, such as not updating a computer when a warrant expires, is still admissible in court. Thus, the gent who had contraband in his pockets when he was stopped for an old, expired warrant that had not been updated in a neighboring county's computer system is still convicted of the crimes from that contraband. So the Fourth Amendment just got a little narrower.
And, just for that extra knife-twist to people everywhere, the outgoing administrator declared the 18th of January "Sanctity of Life Day". Much like Dave Barry, I am not making this up. Nor can I claim that The American Life League's demonization of the Krispy Kreme Free Doughnut Day on the 20th as a pro-abortion endorsement because of the word "choice" in the Krispy Kreme press release is a fabrication.
On a more state-level, Mr. Robert Ford, state Senator from South Carolina, has introduced a bill that would make it a maximum five thousand dollar fine/five year prison sentence to "wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature" in "a public forum or place of public accommodation". "No, we can't say fuck, no we can't say fuck, no we can't say fuck, fuck no!" Or, alternately, "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.", if you don't want to be profane about it.
The President-elect, however, has an anti-torture person as his Attorney General, so that nonsense will hopefully be proprerly resolved, even if no prosecutions appear of those who did engage in torture.
Nationalization of the American banking system is pretty likely, thanks to capital infusions of verious financial institutions, according to the IHT...except really, they're talking about all the gymnastics going on so that the Treasury and the government don't actually end up owning the banks. Argh for headline-story disparity.
In the opinions, ddjango lays out the far lef's case against Barack Obama, as a snake oil salesman committed to ensuring the status quo, rather than doing anything to produce real change that would move the country in a truly leftward direction, away from the terror and theft that sustains the country, and all the bureaucracy and greed that keeps us the peons. Peter Wehner and Paul Ryan say that a national health care plan is the tipping point where America stops being free-market and starts being socialist, with detrimental effects to health care companies and consumers as bean counters stifle innovation and private industry dies through not being paid enough by the government to operate. Instead, of course, we should be making it so that everyone can afford a private insurance plan and let them choose what kind of coverage they want for what they can afford. Mark Levey says the proper economic stimulus is to eliminate taxes on corporations, so they can employ more peons and drive the industry, and cut capital gains taxes, so that we can spend more of our own money when those dividends come through. Ross MacKenzie is all well and good about change, but feels the Obama change will be to something evil (and socialist!), once we find out, of course, what Barack Obama's plans really are. Gary Aldrich compares the country to someone in an obsessive and unhealthy relationship, so much so that he had to cancel his Washington Post subscription, because it's clear to him that the newspapers are not about reporting the truth and are instead bastions of Obama-worship, anti-capitalist, anti-religious, anti-military thought and deed.
However, if we follow Stephen Hill's excellent suggestion on investing more in workplace infrastructure through guaranteed sick and vacation days, maternity and paternity leave, retirement systems, affordable university, and medical care with our stimulus spending, perhaps even driven by a modest amount of taxation on people and corporations, then perhaps the incoming President-elect will be able to drive the economy forward, by making it so people can be healthy and productive almost all the time, instead of being run ragged and then having to miss work for big conditions (unpaid) and possibly taking out more of the workforce because they came in with something infectious.
Peggy Noonan suggests that the best way to enjoy the inauguration is to suspend disbelief, put aside the snark and the skepticism... for a little while, to enjoy the pageant, then the let reality reintrude later. Turd Blossom assures us it will.
Someone's being a smartass about university courses that are supposed wastes of time, despite most of them probably being of interest to a university-goer, and despite the snark about much of their inapplicability, there's probably more than a few useful things in each of those courses.
Despite giving a perfunctory nod to the "correlation is not causation" camp, Chuck Colson claims that television advertising is effective on teenagers and this leads them into sex and pregancies. Because ads change attitudes, and teens then act on those attitudes. If that were the case, one would think the parental attitudes that sexuality is a closeted thing only to be talked about in whispered tones, with little to no information and lots of exhortations not to do anything with it would have changed by now. George Will complains that people are trying to reverse Proposition 8 through the courts, because the constitutional referendum, while unwise, is the people's way of imposing their will, and to have a judge declare the people can't amend the Constitution would make judges untouchable. Nevermind that someone's asking the court to help resolve the fact that the Constitution, as it stands, is now in conflict with itself.
Melanie Kirkpatrick hopes the incoming Secretary of State takes a much harder line with North Korea, based on how they didn't do what they said they would to get themselves off the state-sponsored terror list, and their continued reluctance to release Japanese citizens kidnapped decades ago.
The WSJ points to Sri Lanka's conflict with the Tamil Tigers as proof that military solutions to terrorism are possible, and suggests that both Israel and Mr. Obama take note of this so as to end their own conflicts with terror effectively. Austin Bay talks about the use of human shields and their relative ineffectiveness for Hamas based on Israel's superior intel and firing accuracy, as Ruth R. Wisse says that Yassir Arafat, whom Clinton got to sign peace accords, is a terrorist with a proto-state now, rather than the outgoign administrator's knockdown of Saddam.
Michael Paulsen declares that the Mineesota recount has been unconstitutional and embarassing, and then it should all be doen over in a manner consistent with both the high law and the ranking case, namely Bush v. Gore of 2000.
And, of course, the commentaries on the legacy of the outgoing administrator. Mr. Sowell stands on his judgment that the outgoing administrator was fundamentally good, protected us from harm, but made a few mistakes, like everyone does, and that we'll all be grateful to him when terror attacks happen in the new administration. Larry Elder focuses on the "no attacks" and thinks historians would be crucifying the outgoing administraot if he hadn't attacked Iraq, because we would have suffered another terror strike. The WSJ exonerates him of some of the blame for the economic woes of today, thinking he did all right on taxes but not so great on spending. Walter E. Williams blames Congress and past presidents. Matt Towery blames the outgoing administrator's subordinates for failing him. Brent Bozell declares the media has been hostile to the outgoing administrator since a month after September 11, and before as well, because nobody wanted him there (despite his victory in Bush v. Gore). He also notes that it's a little late to be trying to defend yourself in the media. Michael Medved will blame the media for shifting the goalposts every time so that the outgoing administrator stays reviled, first from preventing attacks to establishing a stable Iraq and hen finally to the economic crisis that killed his approval. History, says he, will approve because the outgoign administrator made good on his pomises. Assuming he pardons Scooter Libby.
Last for the opinions tonight, though, Gen. Colin Powell calls the country to service in the new Presidential era, asking if the country can spare an hour of volunteer work or something else to help their fellow.
In technology, The Cadillace WTF concept, a car that would theoretically last for one hundred years, pictures of the frogfish, checking a methane vent on Mars for signs of life on the next mission, more progress toward creating true optic camoflauge, Circuit City is closing up shop, which means deep discounts for their inventory while the stores all close, and five likely spots for ET life to appear in our solar system.
Last for tonight, and deserving of a special hell, Frank Turek thinks that science has proven Genesis, and that because scientists refuse to say anything definite about the origins of the universe, they're just stubbornly denying that God did it. Which leads, actually, into an example of unfortunate juxtaposition.
Night, everybody.
Random stuff: There's another Principia Discordia in softcover available, a font resembling the one used in the Planet of the Apes movies, and a brand of maternity-style nursing covers called Hooter Hiders. On a website called "Bebe Au Lait".
Oh, and the possibility that the universe is nothing but a giant hologram.
Internationally, I think a few people are glad to see the American administration change over.
In the domestic sphere, a jet airline crash-landed into the Hudson River soon after takeoff from LaGuardia airport in New York. Everybody lived, and there were no serious injuries, it appears. Rather than calling it "miraculous", we do as
bradhicks does and say "Great job, everyone. Helluva job", because here is where it applies. Luck, sure, but there was so much skill deployed that there was only a little luck needed. Some days, everybody lives.Even in dead economic times, teenagers are geting plastic surgery because they feel they're not pretty enough, which to me indicates the sign of a national disease in the under-eighteen population, fed by image-manipulated fashion pictures, the demands for the models of that fashion or acting profession, before the image manip takes over, and the insistence that a rail-stright woman with no hips or breasts is the correct ideal... y'know, the most masculine female you could get away with is right. Excepting when playing a motherly role, and then you need all those hips and breasts, or in an adult entertainment profession, where things get inflated past their normal or natural sizes. The Unabashed Feminism Department has lots of good comments on the matter, including the knowledge that teenagers are petty and cruel, leading to their finding whatever they can use to make fun of you, be it looks or otherwise. Not that I'm excusing it. But high school has the unique problem where the brain development of its residents is highly peer-focused, so all it takes, really, is one group to put pressure on its own to conform before others start being affected by that view of the world, often negatively, and they then go seek a peer group to conform to and to draw battle lines with. After then, when dumped rather unceremoniously into reality or the university experience, which not only operates on different rules, actually provides sufficient space for someone to grow into their own identity, even if they are still somewhat peer-focused, they learn what those of us who have been through the process already know, but have not found the magic way to articulate. Still, correction and alteration on a still-developing body, people. They could just grow out of it. And once we mature up some, we find out that while the whole body thing never goes away (I know several people much older than me that suffer from it), there's that whole personality and mind thing that starts to factor into our decisions as to whether we actually like someone.
Pastor Warren likes his comparisons - to the Hitler Youth, to the Bolsheviks, to the Cultural Revolution..., which would make most people who think him a patiotic young man building an army of God pause, right? I mean, if there's some direct comparisons, it's not like you can say that it's an insinuation or liberals projecting, right?
Of course, it's not just Pastor Warren that's engaging in some nuttery - according to the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition, the presence of the gay bishop and several other obviously homosexual groups at the inaguration ceremony means that good Christian men and women can't watch it without compromising their principles, because their presence is celebrating the deviant lifestyle and tinges his patriotic inauguration with sexual sins and sinners. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."
This is still nothing compared to the account of someone who spent a lot of time in a gulag that used the Book of Mormon as its Christian veneer. Much like other places where children are kidnapped and then tortured, so as to "strighten them out" from being normal teenagers into mindless zombies, because their parents believe that they are somehow being unacceptably rebellious.
However, in perhaps what is one of the best or scariest applications of public records and technology, observe The Eight Map, which pinpoints on a Google Map where a donator to the Yes on Eight campaign lives or does business, their profession, what company they work for, and how much they donated and when.
Getting into the government, who still claims that the country does not torture detainees, despite the ruling of a federal judge to the contrary, a federal appeals court has rules that telecoms do have to cooperate with warrantless wiretapping, as it is legal to spy, even on Americans, that are believed to be agents of a foreign power without obtaining a warrant. So not only do we torture, we spy on our own citizens without needing justification if we think they're terrorists and can wave the figment of national security at the situation.
The SCOTUS doesn't help that much, ruling that evidence obtained as a result of police mistakes, such as not updating a computer when a warrant expires, is still admissible in court. Thus, the gent who had contraband in his pockets when he was stopped for an old, expired warrant that had not been updated in a neighboring county's computer system is still convicted of the crimes from that contraband. So the Fourth Amendment just got a little narrower.
And, just for that extra knife-twist to people everywhere, the outgoing administrator declared the 18th of January "Sanctity of Life Day". Much like Dave Barry, I am not making this up. Nor can I claim that The American Life League's demonization of the Krispy Kreme Free Doughnut Day on the 20th as a pro-abortion endorsement because of the word "choice" in the Krispy Kreme press release is a fabrication.
On a more state-level, Mr. Robert Ford, state Senator from South Carolina, has introduced a bill that would make it a maximum five thousand dollar fine/five year prison sentence to "wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature" in "a public forum or place of public accommodation". "No, we can't say fuck, no we can't say fuck, no we can't say fuck, fuck no!" Or, alternately, "You have been fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.", if you don't want to be profane about it.
The President-elect, however, has an anti-torture person as his Attorney General, so that nonsense will hopefully be proprerly resolved, even if no prosecutions appear of those who did engage in torture.
Nationalization of the American banking system is pretty likely, thanks to capital infusions of verious financial institutions, according to the IHT...except really, they're talking about all the gymnastics going on so that the Treasury and the government don't actually end up owning the banks. Argh for headline-story disparity.
In the opinions, ddjango lays out the far lef's case against Barack Obama, as a snake oil salesman committed to ensuring the status quo, rather than doing anything to produce real change that would move the country in a truly leftward direction, away from the terror and theft that sustains the country, and all the bureaucracy and greed that keeps us the peons. Peter Wehner and Paul Ryan say that a national health care plan is the tipping point where America stops being free-market and starts being socialist, with detrimental effects to health care companies and consumers as bean counters stifle innovation and private industry dies through not being paid enough by the government to operate. Instead, of course, we should be making it so that everyone can afford a private insurance plan and let them choose what kind of coverage they want for what they can afford. Mark Levey says the proper economic stimulus is to eliminate taxes on corporations, so they can employ more peons and drive the industry, and cut capital gains taxes, so that we can spend more of our own money when those dividends come through. Ross MacKenzie is all well and good about change, but feels the Obama change will be to something evil (and socialist!), once we find out, of course, what Barack Obama's plans really are. Gary Aldrich compares the country to someone in an obsessive and unhealthy relationship, so much so that he had to cancel his Washington Post subscription, because it's clear to him that the newspapers are not about reporting the truth and are instead bastions of Obama-worship, anti-capitalist, anti-religious, anti-military thought and deed.
However, if we follow Stephen Hill's excellent suggestion on investing more in workplace infrastructure through guaranteed sick and vacation days, maternity and paternity leave, retirement systems, affordable university, and medical care with our stimulus spending, perhaps even driven by a modest amount of taxation on people and corporations, then perhaps the incoming President-elect will be able to drive the economy forward, by making it so people can be healthy and productive almost all the time, instead of being run ragged and then having to miss work for big conditions (unpaid) and possibly taking out more of the workforce because they came in with something infectious.
Peggy Noonan suggests that the best way to enjoy the inauguration is to suspend disbelief, put aside the snark and the skepticism... for a little while, to enjoy the pageant, then the let reality reintrude later. Turd Blossom assures us it will.
Someone's being a smartass about university courses that are supposed wastes of time, despite most of them probably being of interest to a university-goer, and despite the snark about much of their inapplicability, there's probably more than a few useful things in each of those courses.
Despite giving a perfunctory nod to the "correlation is not causation" camp, Chuck Colson claims that television advertising is effective on teenagers and this leads them into sex and pregancies. Because ads change attitudes, and teens then act on those attitudes. If that were the case, one would think the parental attitudes that sexuality is a closeted thing only to be talked about in whispered tones, with little to no information and lots of exhortations not to do anything with it would have changed by now. George Will complains that people are trying to reverse Proposition 8 through the courts, because the constitutional referendum, while unwise, is the people's way of imposing their will, and to have a judge declare the people can't amend the Constitution would make judges untouchable. Nevermind that someone's asking the court to help resolve the fact that the Constitution, as it stands, is now in conflict with itself.
Melanie Kirkpatrick hopes the incoming Secretary of State takes a much harder line with North Korea, based on how they didn't do what they said they would to get themselves off the state-sponsored terror list, and their continued reluctance to release Japanese citizens kidnapped decades ago.
The WSJ points to Sri Lanka's conflict with the Tamil Tigers as proof that military solutions to terrorism are possible, and suggests that both Israel and Mr. Obama take note of this so as to end their own conflicts with terror effectively. Austin Bay talks about the use of human shields and their relative ineffectiveness for Hamas based on Israel's superior intel and firing accuracy, as Ruth R. Wisse says that Yassir Arafat, whom Clinton got to sign peace accords, is a terrorist with a proto-state now, rather than the outgoign administrator's knockdown of Saddam.
Michael Paulsen declares that the Mineesota recount has been unconstitutional and embarassing, and then it should all be doen over in a manner consistent with both the high law and the ranking case, namely Bush v. Gore of 2000.
And, of course, the commentaries on the legacy of the outgoing administrator. Mr. Sowell stands on his judgment that the outgoing administrator was fundamentally good, protected us from harm, but made a few mistakes, like everyone does, and that we'll all be grateful to him when terror attacks happen in the new administration. Larry Elder focuses on the "no attacks" and thinks historians would be crucifying the outgoing administraot if he hadn't attacked Iraq, because we would have suffered another terror strike. The WSJ exonerates him of some of the blame for the economic woes of today, thinking he did all right on taxes but not so great on spending. Walter E. Williams blames Congress and past presidents. Matt Towery blames the outgoing administrator's subordinates for failing him. Brent Bozell declares the media has been hostile to the outgoing administrator since a month after September 11, and before as well, because nobody wanted him there (despite his victory in Bush v. Gore). He also notes that it's a little late to be trying to defend yourself in the media. Michael Medved will blame the media for shifting the goalposts every time so that the outgoing administrator stays reviled, first from preventing attacks to establishing a stable Iraq and hen finally to the economic crisis that killed his approval. History, says he, will approve because the outgoign administrator made good on his pomises. Assuming he pardons Scooter Libby.
Last for the opinions tonight, though, Gen. Colin Powell calls the country to service in the new Presidential era, asking if the country can spare an hour of volunteer work or something else to help their fellow.
In technology, The Cadillace WTF concept, a car that would theoretically last for one hundred years, pictures of the frogfish, checking a methane vent on Mars for signs of life on the next mission, more progress toward creating true optic camoflauge, Circuit City is closing up shop, which means deep discounts for their inventory while the stores all close, and five likely spots for ET life to appear in our solar system.
Last for tonight, and deserving of a special hell, Frank Turek thinks that science has proven Genesis, and that because scientists refuse to say anything definite about the origins of the universe, they're just stubbornly denying that God did it. Which leads, actually, into an example of unfortunate juxtaposition.
Night, everybody.
