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And another - 4 Feb 2009
Feb. 5th, 2009 12:42 amHi, hi. Still sicky, but almost better. I think we're going to need a bigger teaboat, honestly.
Before the news, this commercial message, placed because someone on the friends-list could use a few extra bucks sent her way to make some of the ends meet, and has a product, called a HUG, that might make for a nice gift for the people you want to hug.
And now, your news, with no further commercial messages.
Of interest to our Unabashed Feminism Department and others, an article on Alternet about how Christian ideas about male headship and wifely submission have led to what can be bowlderized as "Christian domestic discipline", or an epidemic of Christian men beating their wives and the wives being told that divorce or separation is not an option. There is hope, though - those who survive the abuse and get away are working to try and find ways that fit within the evangelical worldview that will give battered women a way out.
Also of interest, perhaps in a happier way, a testosterone-based birth control drug for men is entering a second stage of clinical trials. If it works out, that is awesome, and we hope that it meets with swift approval here in America. After all, then both men and women can share in the responsibilities of birth control even more so than usual - and couples that don’t like barrier methods and aren’t at risk for STDs can still improve their probabilities.
And, because I can’t really put it anywhere else... why would someone use a batleth to rob a store with?
International desk starts with something that’s been making the rounds in lots of places - the pigeon smuggler, who put the birds in his pants. A further question, though, is why one would want to smuggle pigeons.
More worrying to many, Iran claims to have launched a domestically constructed satellite. If that’s true, then their effective missile range just got a whole lot bigger. Which will make a lot of people that much more itchy on their trigger fingers. The United States warned North Korea that missile testing on their part would be seen as a provacative gesture. Is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moving the clock closer to the midnight hour again?
Pakistan continues to bid as a good place for focusing anti-terror efforts, as militants kidnapped 29 police and soldiers.
On the domestic side, rescue efforts in the eastern ice storm continue, with some being saved by National Guard members after their food deliveries were interrupted, and others being discovered to have perished due to cold or carbon monoxide poisoning through improper ventilation. On a different matter, the Slacktivist reminds us that there are a lot of people who have it in for mobile home parks, and those who live there. Raising rents on the land under the house, complaining about “property values” if one should want to go in next to them, and the perception that those who live in them are “trailer trash” and uncomfortable reminders that poor or otherwise, they’re with us always. And a bailout booth probably isn't enough to help them.
President Obama admits to mistakes in judgment concerning his cabinet appointments, after Mr. Daschle and Ms. Killefer both resign their appointments over tax issues. This looks like a walk-the-talk moment for the President, and we can only hope that capable replacements are found for both offices. The WSJ believes that there are lessons to be learned here, namely about the revolving door that is government service to private service, and how putting people who were lobbyists in charge of the industries they were lobbying for could make for some interesting policy.
The First Lady looks to be no slouch on matters of her own expertise, assembling teams to assist her in crafting policy suggestions for the President and Congress for family and education matters, although she’s quick to describe herself as a listener, and not as attempting to have her own center of political power.
Last, and getting into the opinions with a perfect segue, despite pleas to come together, conservatives and liberals continue ideological war. Because its what many of them get paid to do, and for others, because it’s what they truly believe and their voice has a place at the table. It may be a vanishingly small place, based on what their voice says, but a place nonetheless.
In opinionesque realms, The General is quite concerned at all these hetero-superior philosophers being caught doing very homosexual things, insisting that all they need is good PR about how hetero those acts really are.
Stephen King pans Stephanie Meyer, while concisely explaining her popularity with Twilight as a safe way of dealing with sexual feelings...because there’s just about no sex in any of those books, but coded shorthand of feelings and touching where there would normally be sex.
Lee Ellis says that Mexico will soon become a gigantic threat to the United States, based on the idea that The Mexican Drug Cartel(TM) has taken over the country and will soon be collapsing it so that Communists can take over, while ever-increasing numbers of Americans become addicted to Mexican drugs and continue the Cartel’s rule through their purchases. Almost sounds like the right thing to do is legalize the drugs, but that wouldn’t go over well in a Family Security Matters column. We could even take the Michael Phelps drug case as a good reason why legalization is worth it, because drug charges turn out to be less about the effect of the drugs than what the government will do to you if they catch you with the drugs. No, instead, we have to be vigilant, build up border security, and (bizzarely) keep Guantanamo open so that the prisoners don’t recruit new terrorists from our prisons.
Mr. Farah is a little less far-fetched in saying that there's no way we can make inroads with Iran or the Taliban by talking, because they don't want to talk, and we don’t want to give them what they want.
The WSJ scratches their heads at Judd Gregg's acceptance of Secretary of Commerce, thinking he could do more damage, errr, influence from the Senate than from the Cabinet.
Mr. Armey insists that John Maynard Keynes is not correct for our time, was not correct for his, and complains that nobody seems to care. Obviously, to him, the private market and letting prices do their thing is the best thing to do to get the economy going again. I’m still missing the point where someone said that they were following Keynes - everyone just seems to have arrived at that conclusion. Mr. Jenkins, Jr. suggests that time is also the correct solution to working off toxic bank assets, instead of bailing them out, albeit this working-off has regulators breathing down their necks to make sure they don’t gamble themselves into bigger holes.
Michael Annissimov on the benefits of everyone uploading their brains to computers, including massive economic benefits, environmental corrections, and, yes, that practical immortality thing.
Which leads into scitech, where we discover insulin protects against Alzheimer's, which means that Alzheimer’s might be a form of diabetes? Wow. That’s weird. Beyond that, there are quantum dots, exerting ever finer-grained control over electronics, investigating why some peopel don't get cancer, more on teleporting ions across relatively long distances (for them), technology that offers to complete your sentences for you, and building automation controls that use swarm logic rather than top-down control, so they all stay under certain power consumption levels while still accomplishing their each individual tasks.
Last for tonight, Cornify! Because the world needs more sparkly unicorns. If that’s not your thing, try another retro-future book for boys, and then feast your eyes on robots and ray guns built from found or scrapped objects.
Before the news, this commercial message, placed because someone on the friends-list could use a few extra bucks sent her way to make some of the ends meet, and has a product, called a HUG, that might make for a nice gift for the people you want to hug.
And now, your news, with no further commercial messages.
Of interest to our Unabashed Feminism Department and others, an article on Alternet about how Christian ideas about male headship and wifely submission have led to what can be bowlderized as "Christian domestic discipline", or an epidemic of Christian men beating their wives and the wives being told that divorce or separation is not an option. There is hope, though - those who survive the abuse and get away are working to try and find ways that fit within the evangelical worldview that will give battered women a way out.
Also of interest, perhaps in a happier way, a testosterone-based birth control drug for men is entering a second stage of clinical trials. If it works out, that is awesome, and we hope that it meets with swift approval here in America. After all, then both men and women can share in the responsibilities of birth control even more so than usual - and couples that don’t like barrier methods and aren’t at risk for STDs can still improve their probabilities.
And, because I can’t really put it anywhere else... why would someone use a batleth to rob a store with?
International desk starts with something that’s been making the rounds in lots of places - the pigeon smuggler, who put the birds in his pants. A further question, though, is why one would want to smuggle pigeons.
More worrying to many, Iran claims to have launched a domestically constructed satellite. If that’s true, then their effective missile range just got a whole lot bigger. Which will make a lot of people that much more itchy on their trigger fingers. The United States warned North Korea that missile testing on their part would be seen as a provacative gesture. Is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moving the clock closer to the midnight hour again?
Pakistan continues to bid as a good place for focusing anti-terror efforts, as militants kidnapped 29 police and soldiers.
On the domestic side, rescue efforts in the eastern ice storm continue, with some being saved by National Guard members after their food deliveries were interrupted, and others being discovered to have perished due to cold or carbon monoxide poisoning through improper ventilation. On a different matter, the Slacktivist reminds us that there are a lot of people who have it in for mobile home parks, and those who live there. Raising rents on the land under the house, complaining about “property values” if one should want to go in next to them, and the perception that those who live in them are “trailer trash” and uncomfortable reminders that poor or otherwise, they’re with us always. And a bailout booth probably isn't enough to help them.
President Obama admits to mistakes in judgment concerning his cabinet appointments, after Mr. Daschle and Ms. Killefer both resign their appointments over tax issues. This looks like a walk-the-talk moment for the President, and we can only hope that capable replacements are found for both offices. The WSJ believes that there are lessons to be learned here, namely about the revolving door that is government service to private service, and how putting people who were lobbyists in charge of the industries they were lobbying for could make for some interesting policy.
The First Lady looks to be no slouch on matters of her own expertise, assembling teams to assist her in crafting policy suggestions for the President and Congress for family and education matters, although she’s quick to describe herself as a listener, and not as attempting to have her own center of political power.
Last, and getting into the opinions with a perfect segue, despite pleas to come together, conservatives and liberals continue ideological war. Because its what many of them get paid to do, and for others, because it’s what they truly believe and their voice has a place at the table. It may be a vanishingly small place, based on what their voice says, but a place nonetheless.
In opinionesque realms, The General is quite concerned at all these hetero-superior philosophers being caught doing very homosexual things, insisting that all they need is good PR about how hetero those acts really are.
Stephen King pans Stephanie Meyer, while concisely explaining her popularity with Twilight as a safe way of dealing with sexual feelings...because there’s just about no sex in any of those books, but coded shorthand of feelings and touching where there would normally be sex.
Lee Ellis says that Mexico will soon become a gigantic threat to the United States, based on the idea that The Mexican Drug Cartel(TM) has taken over the country and will soon be collapsing it so that Communists can take over, while ever-increasing numbers of Americans become addicted to Mexican drugs and continue the Cartel’s rule through their purchases. Almost sounds like the right thing to do is legalize the drugs, but that wouldn’t go over well in a Family Security Matters column. We could even take the Michael Phelps drug case as a good reason why legalization is worth it, because drug charges turn out to be less about the effect of the drugs than what the government will do to you if they catch you with the drugs. No, instead, we have to be vigilant, build up border security, and (bizzarely) keep Guantanamo open so that the prisoners don’t recruit new terrorists from our prisons.
Mr. Farah is a little less far-fetched in saying that there's no way we can make inroads with Iran or the Taliban by talking, because they don't want to talk, and we don’t want to give them what they want.
The WSJ scratches their heads at Judd Gregg's acceptance of Secretary of Commerce, thinking he could do more damage, errr, influence from the Senate than from the Cabinet.
Mr. Armey insists that John Maynard Keynes is not correct for our time, was not correct for his, and complains that nobody seems to care. Obviously, to him, the private market and letting prices do their thing is the best thing to do to get the economy going again. I’m still missing the point where someone said that they were following Keynes - everyone just seems to have arrived at that conclusion. Mr. Jenkins, Jr. suggests that time is also the correct solution to working off toxic bank assets, instead of bailing them out, albeit this working-off has regulators breathing down their necks to make sure they don’t gamble themselves into bigger holes.
Michael Annissimov on the benefits of everyone uploading their brains to computers, including massive economic benefits, environmental corrections, and, yes, that practical immortality thing.
Which leads into scitech, where we discover insulin protects against Alzheimer's, which means that Alzheimer’s might be a form of diabetes? Wow. That’s weird. Beyond that, there are quantum dots, exerting ever finer-grained control over electronics, investigating why some peopel don't get cancer, more on teleporting ions across relatively long distances (for them), technology that offers to complete your sentences for you, and building automation controls that use swarm logic rather than top-down control, so they all stay under certain power consumption levels while still accomplishing their each individual tasks.
Last for tonight, Cornify! Because the world needs more sparkly unicorns. If that’s not your thing, try another retro-future book for boys, and then feast your eyes on robots and ray guns built from found or scrapped objects.
