![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Feb. 17th, 2009
The Twitter Filter, assuming everything is situated correctly, should be up and running. You will now no longer see Twitter updates, unless you wish to be part of the group that receives them. Let me know if you want in on the filter. It will do well otherwise as an archive assistant so as to keep things together.
Up top, librarianship in schools has become ever more important about teaching navigation of the digital realms, even as school boards continue to not recognize this by scheduling other things in the librarian’s instruction time or laying off their school media specialist.
In the international waters, a French and British submarine collided at low speeds while both were on routine exercises. No leaking, no damage, just embarrassment on both sides.
The Untied States is shifting some troops from Okinawa to Guam. Other United States troops arriving in Afghanistan are already thrown into combat operations, as Pakistan tries to pacify some of its millitants and cooperation-building starts in fits, European dignitaries are visiting Iraq, with the latest visitor the German foreign minister, North Korea asserts their sovereign right to test space-capable rockets as the United States asks them to honor their commitments on nuclear weapons, and Hugo Chavez gets term limits repealed in Venezuela,
A genocide trial got underway in Cambodia, putting on trial members of the Khmer Rouge regime. This could go on for a while.
The continuing unemployment situation is taking its toll on security and stability worldwide. A bigger-than-terrorism problem, in fact. (Well, not everyone agrees with that assessment. Some even go to say that British terrorists are the people we have to worry about.) You suddenly have a lot more idle hands who feel unhappy at that status, and what do you expect? People to just sit depressed? Nah. They’ll go try to get new jobs and will protest the circumstances that got them into that situation, whether at the company or at the politicians. Or, if you believe the Jerusalem Post, they'll blame the Jews.
Thirteen and a father. With a mother at 15. And clearly clueless on how the whole situation works, excepting in perhaps the most abstract of ways. There’s a rough ride ahead for him. (From the Sun, for which I’m not sure credibility can be applied.)
A renter of kilts is requesting that those who rent wear undergarments underneath, because some of the people returning them do so in unhygenic conditions. Oy. Take care of yer kilts.
A couple of jokers perpetrated a prank on a person, where he drove 400 miles to hopefully meet a date, only to find out there was nobody there on the other end and he’d been set up by fans of a rival football club. Sounds like someone doing it for the lulz.
Out on the Internet, Facebook changed their TOS, supposedly so that they can CYA, but a side effect brings them more in line with other services, where you publishing gives them rights to potentially reuse your content everywhere and elsewhere, subject to your privacy settings.
A group in NZ wants you to protest the laws there that force an ISP to shut off your Internet access, without trial or evidence, if a content cabal thinks you’ve been violating copyright, kind of like what the content cabals are trying to do here, although without the backing of the law.
Domestically, regardless of whether the dog was attacking or barking, the deputy shot him in the owner's home. Thing is, there’s a witness that says the dog was just barking. The deputy thought the dog was going to bite him, so he shto the dog. Either way, there’s a pet owner that no longer has a dog, and doesn’t necessarily have recourse. All of this over the deputy not being able to find the right house to investigate a burglary.
The President may need to stomp on his Justice Department to bring them more in line with his idea of openness of government, depending on how much he wants to go along with or reverse his predecessor’s stance on secrecy. elsewhere, expect the nepotism accusations to fly on the chief of staff's brother, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, advising the White house on health care,
Something good out of this, though, is that military service, for a select group of servicepeople, will become a path to citizenship in the United States. I’d say that should be extended to most people willing to sign themselves up into the line of fire, as a way of helping to repay them for their service.
Pension benefit guarantee corporation looks at bad economy, swallows hard, fearing that they’re going to have to pay out lots and possibly need bailouts, as the companies they’re guaranteeing either fold or find they don’t have enough cash to make it work.
In the opinions, Messrs. Robinson and Roubini say that the correct solution to our financial crisis at this point is to nationalize the banks. Figure out who’s insolvent, bankrupt them and sell them off, and then take on the solvent institutions, separate out their assets, revalue, and work from there.
Some people are happy with the way things have turned out so far. Green spending and things like infrastructure and S-CHIP are good things. Even with some last-minute additions and changes, things seemed well enough for the President to sign the bill.
Others are not - Mr. Epstein laments the death of promises, change, and bipartisanship, all on a couple appointments and a stimulus bill, apparently intended but failing to show that the new President was a strong hand at the wheel. Mr. Steyn feels that those appointments and stimulus bill have made Mr. Obama a failure, and that's without any unplanned events happening. Mr. McGurn declares it a failure of bipartisanship, one that cold have easily been a success had he catered to Republicans more, instead of apparently letting the non-compromisers write the bill and thus doom any chance of bipartisan agreement. Ms. Crouse accuses Mr. Obama of being a "snake-oil salesman" whose polished rhetoric wins over the weak-minded, who then gets favorable media press to disseminate his message after he’s managed to get the fools to agree with him, and then smiles and look bipartisan while hammering home his partisan-ness.
Mr. Rayn actually talks about the bill itself, declaring a return to stagflation because of it and offering his alternatives, including dealing with entitlements. Mr. Bialosky complains that none of the tax cuts and credits will actually help people, nor will they be immediately effective. Huh. I thought tax cuts were supposed to be always instantly effective and good for all. You’re telling me someone actually has to think about what kind of tax cuts to give?
The WSJ thinks that the Left will soon be betraying their President and urging him to get out of Afghanistan as the conflict drags on and claims more blood and treasure. They might. They might not. At least with Afghanistan, there’s a solid belief that something should be/have been done there in retaliation for attacks.
And for the Loyal Opposition? Jason Linkins says that the strategy of trying to derail a stimulus package based on a salt mouse just shows how rudder- and leader-less the GOP is, having given up effective objections for silly things that other conservatives are saying are silly things. Thus, More calls for Mr. Obama and the Democrats to consign them to the rubbish bin instead of courting them, and force them to use their filibuster technique, rather than just buckling under at the threat, as well as doing some actual guiding and work to get the President’s agenda reflected in Congress. Mr. Ightman says that "No" is all the Republicans can say to Obama, despite it being a high-risk maneuver.
Additionally, the maddening difficulty for conservatives of Americans supposedly believing on one side of the spectrum and electing a President that goes against all of those beliefs. Well, if the position you compare is extreme (9 percent believe abortions for all for any reason, but how many more are partially on board with abortion, huh?), and you only talk about people’s beliefs as to whether they are conservative and liberal and what President should be the role model for Mr. Obama - it being Reagan, they could be saying that they need him to be slick and not scandal-bogged, not that they want Reaganomics.
The Slacktivist lets off some steam about how supposedly sixty percent of Americans don't believe in scientific fact or the biblical account of Genesis, by not believing in evolution.
Mr. Stephens is aggravated at a country that would defend The Satanic Verses but will leave open the creator of Fitna for hate speech prosecutions and ban him from traveling. He has a point - the thing to be quelled is the violent part of violent opposition, not the person creating the thing that causes it (subject to some interpretation - clearly inciting to riot should be quashed, etc.).
Mr. Will smugly believes that environmental concerns will fade out, because they are replaced by the concerns of the economy, where “real calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones”. Not only that, but I saw a “We should drill for more oil and gas domestically” commercial today mentioning that doing so would create jobs. And if there are still articles about people declaring yes or no on global warming, I don’t think it’s going to fade-out too quickly.
Getting to our end point, Floyd and Mary Beth Brown predict the doom and death of MSNBC now that their favorite target is out of the Presidential Office, praising Fox as a more balanced and fair news source, calling MSNBC a propaganda arm of the new administration, and demanding that MSNBC do what they consider to be actual criticism or investigation of the Obama administration before they will consider them anything other than a propaganda arm, including getting conservatives on the program. I’m sure they’d love to have conservatives on, but I believe Ms. Maddow when she says that despite their best efforts, there don’t seem to be too many takers on MSNBC programs.
At the very end, Ms. Parker believes that if we just told young black women there was another way other than abortion, and that there were such things as absolute rights and wrongs, black America would improve rapidly, while relaying a story about a minister charged and convicted of violating an ordinance of coming within eight feet of a reproductive heath facility client for “counseling, harassing, or interfering” with them - by holding a sign that says “Jesus Loves You & Your Baby. Let Us Help You.” and offering pro-life literature. She thinks it’s a violation of his right to protest. She may be right. I think the conviction is right, too. Even if the law itself is wrong.
Over here in technology, the possibility of wood-derived product replacing plastics in those applications where wood could do the replacing without difficulty, the possibility of billions of Terra-like planets in our galaxy alone, designing vertical farms for when the sprawl goes up instead of out, peering at what cosmologists believe is the beginning bits of the universe, thinking about scrapping the Internet-as-we-know-it and starting over because the security concerns are getting to be too great (Pluto’s Kiss and ALTIMIT, here we come), using artificial muscles to bring back facial control to those suffering paralysis, new methods for manufacturing nano-scale stuff, and designing a brick that could respond as different devices depending on the way the user grips it. Oh, and did we mention the bit where a compound derived from sponges might neutralize the antibiotic resistance of disease.
Last for tonight, photographs of the damage that we do with our explosives.
Plus, buying experiences makes us happier than buying things, because of all that social interaction and good memory-making stuff. (That, and things tend to be limited in their usefulness). To close it out, Cracked shows us five things we think will make us happy, but tend not to.
Up top, librarianship in schools has become ever more important about teaching navigation of the digital realms, even as school boards continue to not recognize this by scheduling other things in the librarian’s instruction time or laying off their school media specialist.
In the international waters, a French and British submarine collided at low speeds while both were on routine exercises. No leaking, no damage, just embarrassment on both sides.
The Untied States is shifting some troops from Okinawa to Guam. Other United States troops arriving in Afghanistan are already thrown into combat operations, as Pakistan tries to pacify some of its millitants and cooperation-building starts in fits, European dignitaries are visiting Iraq, with the latest visitor the German foreign minister, North Korea asserts their sovereign right to test space-capable rockets as the United States asks them to honor their commitments on nuclear weapons, and Hugo Chavez gets term limits repealed in Venezuela,
A genocide trial got underway in Cambodia, putting on trial members of the Khmer Rouge regime. This could go on for a while.
The continuing unemployment situation is taking its toll on security and stability worldwide. A bigger-than-terrorism problem, in fact. (Well, not everyone agrees with that assessment. Some even go to say that British terrorists are the people we have to worry about.) You suddenly have a lot more idle hands who feel unhappy at that status, and what do you expect? People to just sit depressed? Nah. They’ll go try to get new jobs and will protest the circumstances that got them into that situation, whether at the company or at the politicians. Or, if you believe the Jerusalem Post, they'll blame the Jews.
Thirteen and a father. With a mother at 15. And clearly clueless on how the whole situation works, excepting in perhaps the most abstract of ways. There’s a rough ride ahead for him. (From the Sun, for which I’m not sure credibility can be applied.)
A renter of kilts is requesting that those who rent wear undergarments underneath, because some of the people returning them do so in unhygenic conditions. Oy. Take care of yer kilts.
A couple of jokers perpetrated a prank on a person, where he drove 400 miles to hopefully meet a date, only to find out there was nobody there on the other end and he’d been set up by fans of a rival football club. Sounds like someone doing it for the lulz.
Out on the Internet, Facebook changed their TOS, supposedly so that they can CYA, but a side effect brings them more in line with other services, where you publishing gives them rights to potentially reuse your content everywhere and elsewhere, subject to your privacy settings.
A group in NZ wants you to protest the laws there that force an ISP to shut off your Internet access, without trial or evidence, if a content cabal thinks you’ve been violating copyright, kind of like what the content cabals are trying to do here, although without the backing of the law.
Domestically, regardless of whether the dog was attacking or barking, the deputy shot him in the owner's home. Thing is, there’s a witness that says the dog was just barking. The deputy thought the dog was going to bite him, so he shto the dog. Either way, there’s a pet owner that no longer has a dog, and doesn’t necessarily have recourse. All of this over the deputy not being able to find the right house to investigate a burglary.
The President may need to stomp on his Justice Department to bring them more in line with his idea of openness of government, depending on how much he wants to go along with or reverse his predecessor’s stance on secrecy. elsewhere, expect the nepotism accusations to fly on the chief of staff's brother, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, advising the White house on health care,
Something good out of this, though, is that military service, for a select group of servicepeople, will become a path to citizenship in the United States. I’d say that should be extended to most people willing to sign themselves up into the line of fire, as a way of helping to repay them for their service.
Pension benefit guarantee corporation looks at bad economy, swallows hard, fearing that they’re going to have to pay out lots and possibly need bailouts, as the companies they’re guaranteeing either fold or find they don’t have enough cash to make it work.
In the opinions, Messrs. Robinson and Roubini say that the correct solution to our financial crisis at this point is to nationalize the banks. Figure out who’s insolvent, bankrupt them and sell them off, and then take on the solvent institutions, separate out their assets, revalue, and work from there.
Some people are happy with the way things have turned out so far. Green spending and things like infrastructure and S-CHIP are good things. Even with some last-minute additions and changes, things seemed well enough for the President to sign the bill.
Others are not - Mr. Epstein laments the death of promises, change, and bipartisanship, all on a couple appointments and a stimulus bill, apparently intended but failing to show that the new President was a strong hand at the wheel. Mr. Steyn feels that those appointments and stimulus bill have made Mr. Obama a failure, and that's without any unplanned events happening. Mr. McGurn declares it a failure of bipartisanship, one that cold have easily been a success had he catered to Republicans more, instead of apparently letting the non-compromisers write the bill and thus doom any chance of bipartisan agreement. Ms. Crouse accuses Mr. Obama of being a "snake-oil salesman" whose polished rhetoric wins over the weak-minded, who then gets favorable media press to disseminate his message after he’s managed to get the fools to agree with him, and then smiles and look bipartisan while hammering home his partisan-ness.
Mr. Rayn actually talks about the bill itself, declaring a return to stagflation because of it and offering his alternatives, including dealing with entitlements. Mr. Bialosky complains that none of the tax cuts and credits will actually help people, nor will they be immediately effective. Huh. I thought tax cuts were supposed to be always instantly effective and good for all. You’re telling me someone actually has to think about what kind of tax cuts to give?
The WSJ thinks that the Left will soon be betraying their President and urging him to get out of Afghanistan as the conflict drags on and claims more blood and treasure. They might. They might not. At least with Afghanistan, there’s a solid belief that something should be/have been done there in retaliation for attacks.
And for the Loyal Opposition? Jason Linkins says that the strategy of trying to derail a stimulus package based on a salt mouse just shows how rudder- and leader-less the GOP is, having given up effective objections for silly things that other conservatives are saying are silly things. Thus, More calls for Mr. Obama and the Democrats to consign them to the rubbish bin instead of courting them, and force them to use their filibuster technique, rather than just buckling under at the threat, as well as doing some actual guiding and work to get the President’s agenda reflected in Congress. Mr. Ightman says that "No" is all the Republicans can say to Obama, despite it being a high-risk maneuver.
Additionally, the maddening difficulty for conservatives of Americans supposedly believing on one side of the spectrum and electing a President that goes against all of those beliefs. Well, if the position you compare is extreme (9 percent believe abortions for all for any reason, but how many more are partially on board with abortion, huh?), and you only talk about people’s beliefs as to whether they are conservative and liberal and what President should be the role model for Mr. Obama - it being Reagan, they could be saying that they need him to be slick and not scandal-bogged, not that they want Reaganomics.
The Slacktivist lets off some steam about how supposedly sixty percent of Americans don't believe in scientific fact or the biblical account of Genesis, by not believing in evolution.
Mr. Stephens is aggravated at a country that would defend The Satanic Verses but will leave open the creator of Fitna for hate speech prosecutions and ban him from traveling. He has a point - the thing to be quelled is the violent part of violent opposition, not the person creating the thing that causes it (subject to some interpretation - clearly inciting to riot should be quashed, etc.).
Mr. Will smugly believes that environmental concerns will fade out, because they are replaced by the concerns of the economy, where “real calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones”. Not only that, but I saw a “We should drill for more oil and gas domestically” commercial today mentioning that doing so would create jobs. And if there are still articles about people declaring yes or no on global warming, I don’t think it’s going to fade-out too quickly.
Getting to our end point, Floyd and Mary Beth Brown predict the doom and death of MSNBC now that their favorite target is out of the Presidential Office, praising Fox as a more balanced and fair news source, calling MSNBC a propaganda arm of the new administration, and demanding that MSNBC do what they consider to be actual criticism or investigation of the Obama administration before they will consider them anything other than a propaganda arm, including getting conservatives on the program. I’m sure they’d love to have conservatives on, but I believe Ms. Maddow when she says that despite their best efforts, there don’t seem to be too many takers on MSNBC programs.
At the very end, Ms. Parker believes that if we just told young black women there was another way other than abortion, and that there were such things as absolute rights and wrongs, black America would improve rapidly, while relaying a story about a minister charged and convicted of violating an ordinance of coming within eight feet of a reproductive heath facility client for “counseling, harassing, or interfering” with them - by holding a sign that says “Jesus Loves You & Your Baby. Let Us Help You.” and offering pro-life literature. She thinks it’s a violation of his right to protest. She may be right. I think the conviction is right, too. Even if the law itself is wrong.
Over here in technology, the possibility of wood-derived product replacing plastics in those applications where wood could do the replacing without difficulty, the possibility of billions of Terra-like planets in our galaxy alone, designing vertical farms for when the sprawl goes up instead of out, peering at what cosmologists believe is the beginning bits of the universe, thinking about scrapping the Internet-as-we-know-it and starting over because the security concerns are getting to be too great (Pluto’s Kiss and ALTIMIT, here we come), using artificial muscles to bring back facial control to those suffering paralysis, new methods for manufacturing nano-scale stuff, and designing a brick that could respond as different devices depending on the way the user grips it. Oh, and did we mention the bit where a compound derived from sponges might neutralize the antibiotic resistance of disease.
Last for tonight, photographs of the damage that we do with our explosives.
Plus, buying experiences makes us happier than buying things, because of all that social interaction and good memory-making stuff. (That, and things tend to be limited in their usefulness). To close it out, Cracked shows us five things we think will make us happy, but tend not to.
