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Here’s a copyright puzzle to twist your brain before giving you the news. It’s from the UK, so everything that I know of regarding fair use and distribution went flying out the window. A broadcast corporation has threatened legal action against a blogger who posted a 44-minute chunk of a 3 hour show to demonstrate his point about how the media gives voice and authenticity to vaccination deniers. The show itself is available, if you want to pay 4 pounds, from the corporation itself. On the other side, of course, we have the Legions of The Internet, who will find a way at some point, anyway. But, it’s a question of whether the appropriate fair use and copying doctrines apply to this person making a point by illustrating it with examples from teh source material.
Internationally, Joints Chiefs Chief says no more than 30,000 troops to Afghanistan from the United States. Well, we’ll see. The French President visited Iraq, paving the way for good relations to be restored between the two countries. Hooray. Russia sees no hurry to return overtures attempting to improve relations between them and the United States.
In domestic and publishing news - HarperCollins shutters the Collins division, lays off employees. Further pessimism appears in an AP "fact checking" of the President's stimulus rhetoric yesterday, focusing on how the President said nothing false, but didn’t say much that was demonstrably true, either, by their standards.
Speaking of the President, a Senator talked to PResident Obama today about investigations of the previous administration's actions, thinking that a “truth and reconciliation” commission is the right way to go.
A confirmed case of Marburg fever in Colorado, contracted from traveling in Uganda. This is, luckily, a rare virus and not a common one that could cause damage if, say, people were lacking vaccinations from it. In oher health bits, Maryland is considering warnings and possible pans for common food additives believed to be linked to ADHD. Hrm... that would be interesting.
Newspapers attempt to look grassroots as they try to convince the populace that they're necessary and useful, instead of dying a slow and agonizing death from having missed out on a lot of opportunities and being squeezed by their shareholders to be super-profit companies.
The continuing saga of Ted Haggard adds on another interesting twist - while hopped up on a dangerous mix of drugs, Ted apparently liked to enjoy homosexual pornography. Which, considering all the rest, I suppose, isn’t all that odd, but it certainly continues to tell the story of someone without an effective coping mechanism for his sexual orientation. Significantly more positively, Utah's governor backs the idea of civil unions. Which will hopefully soften the hostility felt at the state and the LDS church headquartered there after the Proposition Eight revelations.
Guess what, all the women on my f-list, and the Unabashed Feminism Department, too? You're supposed to be protected by your parents in a good loving, Christian home, help around the house, not go to university, and then willingly give yourself over into blissful marriage. Because if you go to university, you become vulnerable to the hook-up culture, and there’s like, sex there, and sin, and you might stop wearing dresses and skirts for, horrors, pants. Much better to stay at home until some Christian gentleman pays the bride-price, err, meets with your parents’ approval, and then spend the rest of your life in matrimony, totally dependent on your husband to make income as you patiently be a housewife and mother. The General and his comment squad point out just how much the potential of these darling daughters is being wasted.
Furhtermore, if you’re a member of the AKC, PETA believes it justified to dress up as members of the KKK to protest your convention. If, say, PETA were to actually live and work with the Klan, they might learn that being insane does not help your credibility... or they might learn that PETA and the KKK have a scary amount in common and should join forces.
And, perhaps most pessimistically, the military is still hitting recruiting goals, and picking up more recruits, as the job market disappears. Can’t remember who said it or where, but I recall someone making mention of the military as a way of getting minority children to die by being the last resort in a horrible economic situation. Have no idea about the mixed-ness of the recruits now - could be an “any port in a storm” problem.
In the opinions, Judith Warner talks about how much the First Couple seem like average people, and the dreams, nightmares, and fantasies that people have involving them. If those dreams become ashes or the nightmares come true, there could be a lot of latent fury, she says.
Mr. McGurn reveals the true target of his stimulus "pork" attacks - Nancy Pelosi, acknowledging that attacking Barack Obama would be suicidal at best, due to his popularity, but trying to find the appropriate person to pin the perceived excess on. He points at Ms. Pelosi’s record at accomplishing tasks with a hostile President as proof of her lack of leadership and of ability, and painting her as a liability to the Obama administration, because she’ll have similar failures (even with a majority) dealing with Republicans in the House and Senate. Contrast with Mr. Becker and Mr. Murphy, both of whom say to expect less benefit from stimulus than the numbers currently in vogue - no mention of any particular person here, although, again, if you believe Republican numbers, stimulus benefit will be zero, so they are confidently expecting negatives now. More generally, Ms. Parker continues to cry against the perceived socialism of the Obama administration, this time using the metaphor of slaves on the plantation as the equivalent of poor people on government assistance programs, with the country moving in the direction of putting more slaves on the plantation, who change their thinking to how they can stay on the dole instead of how to get off it and be free. Mr. Sasse and Mr. Weems don't use such metaphorical language, but do decry the bill ending what they see as an excellent welfare reform during Mr. Clinton's presidency, and it being done in a sneaky manner. And the WSJ wants to know where the promised end to capital-gains taxes for small businesses is.
Moving totally differently,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks is more than a little perturbed taht the current Treasury plan to fix the banking crisis will not do anything of the sort.
The WSJ feels the confirmations for sub-Cabinet level members of Justice is moving too fast, with the real purpose of confirmation hearings to be to inform he public about the people who will be ruling. Mr. Fund hears redistricting and gerrymandering when confronted with the idea of the Census reporting directly to the White House, instead of letting the statisticians do their thing. There were apparently concerns that the Secretary of Commerce, who normally is the person in charge for the Census, would not conduct an accurate counting.
Mr. Chapman suggests that when we do Afghanistan, we do it right by smashing its capability to house terrorists, and leaving the nation-building exercises as the after-war thing. And at the very end of our opinions, Mr. Stephens wants to know where all the vaunted Obama good will is, the stuff that was supposed to appear with the election of a new guy and the dismissal of George Bush.
Welcome to technology, where even old ideas still get some play, although not in the form they were envisioned in. Also, pictorials of giant mechanical spiders in Liverpool, which makes me think of someone science fiction plot somewhere, cities arranged like giant mushrooms, which is something that also could be SF, customized miniature robot versions of yourself, also very SF, Google delving into developing items that will regulate power demand from the grid, so as to minimze cost and maximize efficiency, possibly in tandem with technology developed from semantic web applications working on the power grid to make it efficient, as others look into using solar power to trim coal plant carbon footprints, higher-clockspeed RAM from Toshiba, using lasers to push cells for "lab-on-a-chip" types of work, a new brain-detection interface that could spot strokes-in-progress faster, reviews of Kindle 2, and people pictorially speculate on the future of mankind, in a dystopian sort of way, perhaps caused by the asteroid with a 1 in 1400 chance of striking Terra in 160 years.
Oh, and a drug tested apparently blocked HIV infection in monkeys, which could mean good news for Humes if it works there, which would allow for stopping the spread of the disease even in societies where women can’t insist on safe sex practices because they haven’t been raised to the level of equals.
That’s the n00s.
Internationally, Joints Chiefs Chief says no more than 30,000 troops to Afghanistan from the United States. Well, we’ll see. The French President visited Iraq, paving the way for good relations to be restored between the two countries. Hooray. Russia sees no hurry to return overtures attempting to improve relations between them and the United States.
In domestic and publishing news - HarperCollins shutters the Collins division, lays off employees. Further pessimism appears in an AP "fact checking" of the President's stimulus rhetoric yesterday, focusing on how the President said nothing false, but didn’t say much that was demonstrably true, either, by their standards.
Speaking of the President, a Senator talked to PResident Obama today about investigations of the previous administration's actions, thinking that a “truth and reconciliation” commission is the right way to go.
A confirmed case of Marburg fever in Colorado, contracted from traveling in Uganda. This is, luckily, a rare virus and not a common one that could cause damage if, say, people were lacking vaccinations from it. In oher health bits, Maryland is considering warnings and possible pans for common food additives believed to be linked to ADHD. Hrm... that would be interesting.
Newspapers attempt to look grassroots as they try to convince the populace that they're necessary and useful, instead of dying a slow and agonizing death from having missed out on a lot of opportunities and being squeezed by their shareholders to be super-profit companies.
The continuing saga of Ted Haggard adds on another interesting twist - while hopped up on a dangerous mix of drugs, Ted apparently liked to enjoy homosexual pornography. Which, considering all the rest, I suppose, isn’t all that odd, but it certainly continues to tell the story of someone without an effective coping mechanism for his sexual orientation. Significantly more positively, Utah's governor backs the idea of civil unions. Which will hopefully soften the hostility felt at the state and the LDS church headquartered there after the Proposition Eight revelations.
Guess what, all the women on my f-list, and the Unabashed Feminism Department, too? You're supposed to be protected by your parents in a good loving, Christian home, help around the house, not go to university, and then willingly give yourself over into blissful marriage. Because if you go to university, you become vulnerable to the hook-up culture, and there’s like, sex there, and sin, and you might stop wearing dresses and skirts for, horrors, pants. Much better to stay at home until some Christian gentleman pays the bride-price, err, meets with your parents’ approval, and then spend the rest of your life in matrimony, totally dependent on your husband to make income as you patiently be a housewife and mother. The General and his comment squad point out just how much the potential of these darling daughters is being wasted.
Furhtermore, if you’re a member of the AKC, PETA believes it justified to dress up as members of the KKK to protest your convention. If, say, PETA were to actually live and work with the Klan, they might learn that being insane does not help your credibility... or they might learn that PETA and the KKK have a scary amount in common and should join forces.
And, perhaps most pessimistically, the military is still hitting recruiting goals, and picking up more recruits, as the job market disappears. Can’t remember who said it or where, but I recall someone making mention of the military as a way of getting minority children to die by being the last resort in a horrible economic situation. Have no idea about the mixed-ness of the recruits now - could be an “any port in a storm” problem.
In the opinions, Judith Warner talks about how much the First Couple seem like average people, and the dreams, nightmares, and fantasies that people have involving them. If those dreams become ashes or the nightmares come true, there could be a lot of latent fury, she says.
Mr. McGurn reveals the true target of his stimulus "pork" attacks - Nancy Pelosi, acknowledging that attacking Barack Obama would be suicidal at best, due to his popularity, but trying to find the appropriate person to pin the perceived excess on. He points at Ms. Pelosi’s record at accomplishing tasks with a hostile President as proof of her lack of leadership and of ability, and painting her as a liability to the Obama administration, because she’ll have similar failures (even with a majority) dealing with Republicans in the House and Senate. Contrast with Mr. Becker and Mr. Murphy, both of whom say to expect less benefit from stimulus than the numbers currently in vogue - no mention of any particular person here, although, again, if you believe Republican numbers, stimulus benefit will be zero, so they are confidently expecting negatives now. More generally, Ms. Parker continues to cry against the perceived socialism of the Obama administration, this time using the metaphor of slaves on the plantation as the equivalent of poor people on government assistance programs, with the country moving in the direction of putting more slaves on the plantation, who change their thinking to how they can stay on the dole instead of how to get off it and be free. Mr. Sasse and Mr. Weems don't use such metaphorical language, but do decry the bill ending what they see as an excellent welfare reform during Mr. Clinton's presidency, and it being done in a sneaky manner. And the WSJ wants to know where the promised end to capital-gains taxes for small businesses is.
Moving totally differently,
bradhicks is more than a little perturbed taht the current Treasury plan to fix the banking crisis will not do anything of the sort.The WSJ feels the confirmations for sub-Cabinet level members of Justice is moving too fast, with the real purpose of confirmation hearings to be to inform he public about the people who will be ruling. Mr. Fund hears redistricting and gerrymandering when confronted with the idea of the Census reporting directly to the White House, instead of letting the statisticians do their thing. There were apparently concerns that the Secretary of Commerce, who normally is the person in charge for the Census, would not conduct an accurate counting.
Mr. Chapman suggests that when we do Afghanistan, we do it right by smashing its capability to house terrorists, and leaving the nation-building exercises as the after-war thing. And at the very end of our opinions, Mr. Stephens wants to know where all the vaunted Obama good will is, the stuff that was supposed to appear with the election of a new guy and the dismissal of George Bush.
Welcome to technology, where even old ideas still get some play, although not in the form they were envisioned in. Also, pictorials of giant mechanical spiders in Liverpool, which makes me think of someone science fiction plot somewhere, cities arranged like giant mushrooms, which is something that also could be SF, customized miniature robot versions of yourself, also very SF, Google delving into developing items that will regulate power demand from the grid, so as to minimze cost and maximize efficiency, possibly in tandem with technology developed from semantic web applications working on the power grid to make it efficient, as others look into using solar power to trim coal plant carbon footprints, higher-clockspeed RAM from Toshiba, using lasers to push cells for "lab-on-a-chip" types of work, a new brain-detection interface that could spot strokes-in-progress faster, reviews of Kindle 2, and people pictorially speculate on the future of mankind, in a dystopian sort of way, perhaps caused by the asteroid with a 1 in 1400 chance of striking Terra in 160 years.
Oh, and a drug tested apparently blocked HIV infection in monkeys, which could mean good news for Humes if it works there, which would allow for stopping the spread of the disease even in societies where women can’t insist on safe sex practices because they haven’t been raised to the level of equals.
That’s the n00s.
