And we'll rummage and find... - 6 February 2009

...wedding sparklers. That’s right, wedding sparklers. We have some strange people in this world. The Boy from Michigan also has to have his point, laugh, at 10 ways to deal with snow from the BBC, mostly because, well, snow is a Michigan thing. We deal. And I’m still glad a bought these boots the first year I moved, because that way I’m not stuck when there’s totally unexpected snowfall in the Seattle area. Should have bought the tire chains then, though.

And as if by design, more revelations about the drugs, homosexual sex, and bedroom proclivities of Ted Haggard appear. Including, apparently, that his wife knew about most of it. Which means that the General takes to the blog waves defending the practice of righteous rogering, and nervously contemplating whether Ted really had The Gay.

However, not even Ted Haggard’s drug-fueled orgies can top (no pun intended) this example of Great Weirdness - the "EX-masturbator" shirt, focal point of the EX- campaign. The situation here calls for an ellipsis. Who would wear such a thing proudly? Anyone betting there will be an “ex-gay” version, if there isn’t one already? Plus, as the General alludes to, why buy it if you might have to take it off every few days?

Yeah. It’s today’s news, coming right up, after this commercial where we throw miniature pies at insects.

Mr. Gates has moved from software bugs to organic ones, releasing mosquitoes on attendees at his TED talk. As someone who grew up with the damn things, that’s not really kosher, sir.

A look into a part of going blind where people start seeing things, because the brain craves processing information, so much so that it makes stuff up if the feed isn’t there, and the brain is expecting it to be. In a sense, the brain is addicted and has to have enough time to readjust to the new environment. If Bruce Alexander's theory that addiction is based on psychological and environmental problems instead of exposure to an addicting agent, then this brain thing makes sense... and we need to retool our addiction thearpy procedures so that we can get someone away from teh stressors that trigger the addictive response - might even mean that with proper help and retraining, people who are addicted to alcohol or other relatively safe things might even be able to enjoy them again without triggering the addiction. I’d give it higher success chances than having to go through a 12-step that makes you get religion and totally avoid the thing, no matter what situation its in. (The article also mentions that in our highly individualistic society, where people don’t peek out and make social bonds and webs and interact, we tend to be addicted to things more. So if we had good neighborhoods, maybe we could tone some of that down, too?)

At the international desk, Krygyzstan has said the United States is no longer welcome at their air bases, which may affect the campaign in Afghanistan. Naturally, the architect of the surge and counterinsurgency in Iraq is expected to work his mojo again in a totally different circumstance, with many hopes pinned on his continued success.

Keeping on the pressure and fear, a top general in Iraq still claims that Iran has ben funding and aiding the insurgency, claims Iran denies. This plays nicely into Richard Cheney's unrelenting fear campaign, this time with "terrorists will get us if President Obama closes down Guantanamo" message, even though he’s been out of the White House for two whole weeks now, and he’s not contributing anything that other conservative opinions haven’t already covered, and he’s still defending the policies that he helped to write and implement as if he were still Vice President. Which leaves me to wonder - if he gets subpoenaed, will he also claim “executive privilege”?

It’s apparently a slow news day, as there’s a pretty obvious item coming up, although it’s supposed to be shocking, I guess - the level of civility in political discourse has not improved any since the new administration took office, with about even amounts saying things have gotten worse and better, according to the poll. Until we stop paying people to be divisive, partisan, and obstructionist, or we manage to shift things so that both sides of the spectrum stop seeing their political beliefs with the same doctrinaire “I‘m right and you aren’t“ mindset as a lot of monotheists (and others) see their religious beliefs (those could use some loosening, too), I think we’re mired in uncivil discourse. If you're talking approval ratings, however, those seem to be on the rise.

The First Lady is taking on more of a political role faster than most commentators expected, according to Politico. They also seem to be amazed by the grace of her multi-tasking abilities, and wonder what sort of power she will be bringing to bear for the President. Might also really draw in the calls that the ”First Lady“ deserves a stipend for her political work. Not in this economy, though.

Landing in opinions and having a look around, Valtin points out that most rendition is extraordinary and outside the rule of law, the Army Field Manual has its own ghosts to exorcise, and that just because the new President said something, doesn't mean he'll actually do it the way we think he will. If we really wanted to be in compliance with the law, we wouldn’t do rendition at all, in addition to excising parts of the Army Field Manual that are definitely torture. A reminder that while moving away from the brazen flaunting of the law is an improvement, it would not do to simply let such things sink beneath the waves without real action.

On slightly less expansive matters, Mr. Williams continues to paint Social Security as a national Ponzi scheem destined for collapses or tax hikes, because the boom will be retiring and there aren’t enough people paying taxes in to cover the matter, not to mention all the raids on the Social Security trust by Congress. And, since nobody really has a right to the Social Security payments, if it declares itself insovlent and/or starts over again, tough noogies. I would hope, though, that nobody really expects to rely completely on Social Security for their retirement.

Mr. Stossel continues the economic opinions, claiming that there's no amount of spending that can get us out of the recession, because, of course, government spending takes away from private investment, the inherently superior option, and tax cuts, the other inherently superior option, because they both let the mob decide where to spend their money. (Spend? Heh. Not in this economy...), a sentiment that Mr. Turd Blossom agrees with, caling it a gambit that the populace accepts centralized, top-down government. Mr. Henninger thinks that spending on renovation and construction of new buildings for federal entities is autoeroticism, as Mr. Malkiel is alarmed by the large amount of protectionist sentiment in the stimulus bill. Mr. Gleaser is not fond of a Republican alternative that provides fixed-interest mortgages to the credit-worthy, also chanting the refrain of tax cuts.

The WSJ expresses confusion at the naming of the United States ambassador to Iraq, considering the new ambassador to be unqualified and of the wrong mindset for the job, as Mr. and Ms. Kagan marvel at the smoothness and results of the Iraq election. Mr. Weinthal suggests that Europe, and especially Germany, ditch oil and gas partnerships with Iran, to stop feeding their economy and giving them cash to develop nuclear weapons. Which does raise the question about where they will fill the void left by stopping contracts with Iran. Gazprom certainly is not the place to look, considering it and Ukraine are likely to have yearly fights and turnoffs.

Best opinion for the day, however, goes to Cliff Mason, who tells us just what the score is on class war - the proles are getting spanked, like always. Executive compensation limited to 500K? Symbolic slash. The real deal is that we can pass $700 billion for banks without blinking, even when the legislative and executive are at cross parties, but now that we have a unified set, we are having a tooth-and-nail fight over passing $800+ billion to help out the average person. Bail out the rich? No problem! Give needed and overdue improvements to the lives of the regular citizen? Socialism! Waste! Excess! Tax cuts are superior! (Unless, y’know, you want people to do more than recapitalize the banks by saving all that money that’s been tax-cut to them.)

In technology and science, have a look at the bones on this giant snake, knowledge that the a human cell contains a strong electric field internally, if one is buying, what material is most environmentally healthy, robots with neural networks that can evolve new methods of using appendages optimally when new appendages are added, Intel looking into System on a Chip designs, looking at brain wiring that gets us to work well with herd mentality, with the knowledge that being able to control people in groups can be used for good or bad. Additionally, more justification for "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" based on brain chemistry and evolutionary successful means, like being able to imagine, our need for cause and effect, and other such components.

Finally, the supposed $10 laptop turns out to be more hype than product. Soemthing is coming out, but it’s not a $10 laptop.

Last for tonight, The Visual Telling of Stories, where there are all sorts of images around, to see how the picture is worth one thousand words, compared with Mirroshards, which does short stories and flitterfics, all showing how few words it takes to create a lovely picture.

All this and then the weekend - 6 February 2009

Professional self gets an opening lead line, namely - more people are using libraries because the economy sucks. Truism, we know, and of course, the worser part of it is because we get more use, we could use more funds, but in bad economic times, nobody likes taxes or tax increases.

Oh, and I’ve become a Twitterhead. Follow Silver_Adept at your own peril, and/or decloak yourself and reveal your name so that I may join in. I’ve already started following many of you that broadcast yourselves, and 2dlife, d’you think it would be feasible/possible to think about borrowing/using your script for my own Twitterverse stuff?

Because I can’t resist, and because I think it’s actually a healthy sign that the President is not a Ned Fladers clone, the raw fodder for many a remix and/or soundboard to come - clips of Barack Obama reading his own book, cuss words and all, because a faithful reading means all the words, not just the ones you like. And since it’s audiobook and not broadcast, there’s no reason to censor them, either. Besides, we know what censorship is and does. I wonder whether this isn’t a follow-on of some sort from the Christian Bale outburst.

If books is what you want, though, Google and Amazon are putting a lot of them in a mobile phone readable format. Be careful, though - a pocket-sized translation of the Qu'ran in Afghanistan that lacked the Arabic originals has two men facing the death penalty for modifying the book, trying to set themselves up as prophets, and possibly warping the Word of God itself. We don’t have nuts like that in our country, do we?

Internationally, reversing a trend of his predecessor, President Obama intends to embark on serious diplomatic negotations and treaties to further reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons in the possession of the United States and Russia. Good start. Let’s see if the number reductions still let us destroy our world many times over or not.

Hamas walked away from negotiations for long-term ceasefires in Egypt, leaving them and Israel without a plan to move forward, but with talks resuming at a later date. This is mixed in with a story about suitcases of cash that were stopped by Egyptian authorities from entering Gaza. Elsewhere, Israel's ambassador in Sweden took a shoe to the leg. It’s like hitting Bill Gates with a cream pie, I suspect - once seen, it plants an idea for others to try it, too.

On the domestic desk, the source of a sweet, maple syrup type of smell wafting through New York City is in, unsurprisingly to those who like to make jokes about such, New Jersey.

More seriously, charges were dropped against an accused participant in the USS Cole bombing, bringing the military tribunal system into line with the President's order to freeze trials regarding Guantanamo Bay residents. Those charges can be re-brought after the review period the Obama administration wants. Furthermore, the new CIA director insists that there will be no "extraordinary rendition", unlike the previous administration, continuing to cement the possibility that the President will succeed in his planned policy rollbacks. Rendition for prosecution is still on the table, and it looks like only those who were doing things they knew were illegal at the time will be prosecuted - the Nuremberg defense might work here.

The President re-mandated an office of faith-based initiatives, spreading it out to all sorts of assistance organizations, regardless of faith, (and even whether they have any) or politics. I think what he wanted to call it was the office of Communnity Organizers and Helpers, really. There’s still possible problems with religious hiring qualifications on orgs that receive federal funsd, and to what purpose that money can be put to. So, uh, is it just somethign to try and get the churches on board? Seriously, this could all be done secularly, without nearly as much fuss or muss.

The Interior Secretary suspended the sale of federal land parcels in Utah pending review, checking to see whether parcels are too close to parks or monuments to have been sold as well as dealing with lawsuits from environmental groups about the land itself. The government could use some funding here, though, as the last administration gave too much TARP money to corporations, acording to the latest study.

The articles here are a bit on the sketchy as in incomplete data side, so we’ll start with the local news item. A teacher in Texas has apparently resigned his position after being placed on indefinite administrative leave after a parent complained that he let inappropriate conversations happen in his classroom. The parent also apparently accused Mr. Mullens of being an atheist, and or supporting President Obama in a highly conservative neighborhood, and made threats against Mr. Mullens Mr. Mullens relates to us the accounts of actions in his own words, with some details redacted by Democracy For America, which indicates school board pressure, the principal talking to the local church minister, a list of people apparently to be blacklisted, several people commenting about his religious beliefs (“but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”, recall.), and his suspension changing from “teaching atheism and being too liberal” to “inappropriate contact with students and comments”, and then rumors planted to make it sound like he was letting students smoke marijuana in his class, all pressure from the baptist church of the minister talked to. More details as everything unfolds and the media get involved. If all accounts turn out to be true in all their particulars, then Mr. Mullens should have probably made the school district fire him so that he could retaliate for a wrongful termination, considering the large amount of taint the whole affair already has.

Tennessee youth used evangelism as their cover for casing, and then robbing, homes. Gives a whole new meaning to “blessed are the poor”, I guess.

In the matters where opinion sometimes means more than fact, The General has an inspiring series of posters for the Republican Party, all about their favorite subject - tax cuts, whether for the wealthy or otherwise.

Wingnut says terrorist should rot in prison forever for bomb plot in 1973, instead of release and rendition to Iraq after good behavior and 15 years. Not only that, the wingnut uses it as a roundabout justification for the Iraq war, claiming that they started it with this act in 1973. Other wingnut says we should be paying attention to Iran's satellite launch, because the inevitable multi-stage ballistic missiles will follow, raining doom on Israel and pulling the United States even deeper into the Middle East. Unless we build good missile defense shields and/or cripple/destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

Mr. Lieberman is optimistic about Afghanistan, though, thinking it will be a good place to sink al-Qaeda, instead of having it sink another empire.

After The President penned an op-ed in the Washington Post abotu the needs to get the stimulus bill through the legislature without delay and then went on camera talking about much of the same, Mr. Krauthammer pans President Obama's taking to the airwaves to talk up the stimulus bill and the bill itself, of course, with the standard arguments about how it’s wasteful spending, pork and influence-peddling, and that the American people have awakened from their fantasy-world and now see the President as a person to oppose. Curiously enough, he also pans the usage of words designed to inspire fear (or, more properly, evoke the fear that a lot of Americans have about things going south, and quickly) because the candidate was all about hope and change, as if reinforcing that the Barack-magic has worn off on the populace. Except that the President doesn’t need the populace to pass the bill. He needs the legislative houses to do it, and if the opposition party is digging in their heels, then talking about the consequences of resistance for resistance’s sake seems pretty logical to me. Making a more substantive argument, Mr. Melloan is certain stimulus spending will make for inflation, as there is simply not enough credit to go around to finance the (bloated, pork-filled) stimulus bill. Mr. Johnson is none too pleased with globalization as it is, considering that the tighter the links are between economies, the easier it is for one economy going out of whack to bring everyone else down with them. While disguised as “more globalization won’t solve this”, he also gets his knock in at the stimulus plan, too.

Ms. Noonan sees the growing debate over the stimulus bill as a failure of Barack Obama to be a man of change, because he let a standard Democratic bill appear which galvanized the standard Republican opposition and left the country feeling like nobody’s in charge or knows anything about new ways of getting things done. Instead, the President should have hammered out a bill that would have had good support from both sides and then presented that. Taht bill may have been totally neutered for effectiveness, however, depending on how much the opposition stomped its foot and demanded concessions. Kind of like what they’re doing now, although it’s supposed to be a much more dignified foot-stomping. Which kind of leads into Ms. Strassel's remarks that the populace and Washington has become focused, perhaps myopic, on the hows of things getting done that they're losing the whats, because they believe the candidate was all about hows and not whats, as well. All those “Who is Barack Obama?” and “empty suit” types of attacks took better hold than previously thought. For all the talk of being a “prgamatist”, committed to doing what works, these first few weeks have been really focused on the methods, perhaps to the exclusion of the ends (unless its convenient, like Guantanamo, where the opposition can safely snipe both means and ends). Might be a public flip-flop from the last administration, where lots of people were scared about getting things done, no matter what the methods are.

In tech and science, putting up guesses, based on models, as to how many other intelligent civilizations there are in the galaxy. Doesn’t necessarily help us find them or make contact, but it does suggest that it’s probable that we’re not alone in the universe. Additionally, testing on a prototype artifical liver, a butterfly that can mimc ant sounds so the workers treat it as a queen, robots that climb and that can forage for additional energy supplies, carbon nanotubes (the phlebotinum of our times) as possibly making fuel cells affordable, making genome sequencing really cheap through the use of server farms tuned for computing horsepower, and finding genetic markers that control synaesthesia, which could mean therapy for those that don’t want it, or a new form of trippy drug for those that do (didn’t LSD supposedly have that effect?). For those of us that aren’t synasthetes, though, color still apparently affects our strengths at certain tasks - red makes recall and detail tasks better, blue makes creativity tasks better.

Last out, IBM planning computers that attempt to mimic the way natural brain circuitry works, which sent up more than a few Singularity flags should they succeed.

At the very end, Heavy Metal Laundry Tips, or, how to make sure that your dark shirts professing your allegiances to various bands stay dark with their logos intact. Speaking of logos, DesktopGaming has some nice, big, cool retro gaming backgrounds.