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Today, 3/14/09, is the second mathematically interesting day in the month, the other being 3/3/09. On that note, all hail our mathematically accurate overlords, including those that navigate the jungle with their geometric powers, turn their precise geniuses to the life of crime and steal diamonds from supposedly unbreakable vaults, and those who can steal your keystrokes and passwords out of the air or through the electrical grid, and as Mr. Olbermann would say, let's play Oddball. (You, on the cell phone while you drive? Put it down.)
A judge has ordered, as part of divorce proceedings between the parents, that the children be placed in public school instead of continuing with their homeschool education. The judge cited concerns about the religious base for the homeschooling with regard to science education, The children themselves test approximately two grade levels above their current public school grade, which says that the thing itself is clearly not falling down. The law requires all children in the state to go to school, which is where some of the judge's basis may be coming from. The opposition to the move believes that the judge is not doing his job properly, alleging the judge lets an adultering husband stay in the house instead of kicking him out, insists on equal settlements and her dependence on him, orders her to mentally evaluated on mere allegations, disparages her religious beliefs, and other things, claiming it's a case against religious homeschooling run by a judge who hates Christians desiguised as a divorce proceeding.
Taking as high-and-mighty approach as they can to the matter, someone urges other LDS not to watch Big Love, the television program about the nominally LDS plygamist, but the language is in "not dignifying it with a response, and nobody watch this trash either". Both on that, and apparently on the continuing anti Prop-8 protests going on around the LDS temples in the area. High horses tend to meet axemen, Or satirists, like the General. I'm just saying.
A Salon feature on someone who was in the Quiverfull movement and then walked away from it, The cycle of pregnancy, childbrith, and child care was draining her, he rchildren were unhappy, and when she tried to turn within the system, it told her to suck it up and obey instead of fixing the problem.
A conference between UFO-ites and Christians, who each believe that the visitors might have been fallen angels.
In actual news, China is getting a bit worried about United States debt and spending, which is important, because much of the stimulus and debt spending relies on China and other creditors to continue purchasing our bonds.
Madagascar mutineers have moved tanks and troops into the capital as the government and its opposition struggle, Russian bombers may be finding safe spots in Venezuela or Cuba, a conversation with Leabanon's Ayatollah, which reveals some additional nuances to the "hate America" rhetoric that the Glass Middle East party would have you believe, and Iraq says that it will not become a terrorist haven once United States troops leave the country.
On the doemstic front, we may have our very first official flip-flop, and it's not the Democrat who cracked first. RNC chariman Michael Steele caught hell from his still-functioning base over a GQ interview where he said that he was not the doctrainaire Republican they elected him to be, and has now repudiated his own words, trying to spin them so that they fall back within Republican orthodoxy, including the requirement that all Republicans be staunchly against abotion, so that the revolt in progress against him doesn't get any worse and actually elect Rush Limbaugh as the next RNC chair. The General wonders what other mistakes may have been made.
the President may have missteped himself, signing the appropriations act which contains a dirty trick of language claiming that no money in that act can be used to fund embryonic stem cell research, as an amendment buried in it. Or, perhaps new appropriations will appear that do not contain such language. Still, this is the difficulty of large omnibus bills. All sorts of people can stick in things they shouldn't be. Perhaps we ned to institute rules requiring that each lesiglative object contain only one subject or category of programs/laws, etc. More laws passed, sure, but they'd be easier to read, repeal, and work with.
Out with the term "enemy combatant" for the War on a Concept. This doesn't mean that the authority to hold someone without trial at an offshore facility is being abandoned, just that the term is going out. And it's not like security has improved all that much in the last few years, despite all the security theater.
The President may have to confront an equality for homosexuals issue sooner than anticipated - California rules that domestic partners are entitled to benefits in federal jobs, the government says it won't do that based on the 1996 DOMA. Official policy is currently that the administration opposes providing marriage for homosexuals but supports repealing the DOMA. Leaving it to the states, his agencies, and the courts after a DOMA repeal might be a good way of buying time for Mr. Obama to clear off some of the other important issues, but it will come back around to him soon enough.
Congresscritter Paul wants an audit done of the Federal Reserve. The reasoning, as provided by the Campaign for Liberty and others, is that the Fed is a closed-books operation that dictates when and how it will be transparent to the populus in how it creates and determines monetary policy and extends credit, and how it spends money allocated to it through stimulus and other government spending. The system has apparently devalued the dollar by more than 95% (of what original?) and is also responsible for trillions in debt and loans and credit crisis as well. Sounds like someone is really saying "We should go back to pegging our currency to a commodity, like gold or silver, and use Real Money instead of worthless electronic bits and paper." But they can't convince us of that, so they want to say "See how this corrupt institution has devalued your money and saddled you with debt." Excepting that it's not really the institution that's done this, but the reserve system that requires banks to keep only a portion of its assets available instead of the entire balance. If that's what people are supposed to be clamoring for, then an audit of the Fed isn't the action they should want, it should be a change in regulations and law so that banks have to have all their assets on hand. So I guess I'm just confused. What's the reasoning behind this audit? If it's trying to expose all the debt, well, you might want to talk to the government about that. Or the banks that are borrowing. Or the reserve system. The institution itself? Meh.
Talking economics, The popular things in a recession are cookable food, and condoms. Because people go out less, which means they have more time at home to enjoy each other. And, for as much as children are supposed to be a gift, they're expensive. The President says that he feels our pain, but that he's building a long-term solution to the problem, so if we happen not to see our recovery immediately, not to worry - it's coming. Not that anyone will have the patience to see it through, with a corresponding drop in approval and support to accompany it. (Although, for others, the approval drop is normal for a president of Obama's policies, and will continue to slide as more people disapprove of them.)
Why does it take Jon Stewart to get people to pay attention to overly bullish predictions made before the markets collapsed? I see why people watch the Daily Show as their source of actual news - Stewart gives them what they want and makes it funny. When things calm down again, he'll go back to being a satirist, but for now, the actual news is all the material he needs.
Doing their best to undermine confidence or build a new narrative, CNN reports the Obama team is considering a possible plan where veterans may need private insurance to pay for care, a plan that would be nixed if it ever got to Congress, and one that the administration officially has no comment on. Am I seeing a "Barack Obama hates the military" thing starting here? Especially if someone wanted to try and pair it with money from congressional appropriations going to facilities that Kennedys are involved with, or the implication that the President is courting the upper crust while claiming to be a champion of the populous.
Oy. Another White Hosue official on leave pending charges in a corruption case. The pickings have been bad this time around. Is it just that we have bad choices, or is it people deciding they're going to go after them now where they wouldn't before?
In the opinions, David Frum speaks on why conservatives should see Boss Limbaugh's anointment as a really bad thing, because it pits the moderate-looking Obama against the in-your-face Limbaugh, driving more people to support the Democrat instead of the blowhard. That the GOP hasn't been offering alternatives to the President's plans is hurting them lots, too.
Mr. Goldberg says that all the talk of economic woe to sell stimulus and liberalism is immoral and an exploitation of the people, making the President a jerk and undemocratic. Mr. Powell believes the tax policies on capital gains will suck Silicon Valley dry, a point Mr. Will takes and makes a generality, deciding the President is still improvising without an actual plan. (As an aside, Ms. Strassel notes how people scolding the Republican's defecits are praising the Democrat's, a fair point to be making. People will have to explain themselves as to why they changed positions.) Mr. North considers him and his team cowards for not taking strong hardline stances toward Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Russia, and China when they did things that would upset U.S. strategic interests, with Mr. Goldberg returning and making the five who signed their praise of 9/11 more into Jokers than clowns, and Obama the fool for not taking their ideology seriously. Mr. Thomas considers him a inveterate baby-killer with no respect for Christianity's proscriptions on ending human life, because of his executive order on embryonic stem cells, and another step to a lawless, immoral, self-destroying country. All this, culminating in comedian David Limbaugh commenting that the President has declared war on the American Dream with his soak-the-rich, green, and charitable giving policies, because he's a Marxist. A Marxist who contradicts himself and waves away serious moral questions by presenting them as false choices. So, out of all of this, there seem to be two responses. Mr. Tyrrel wishes to have Bill Clinton back in office, so that he has a President that he can work with and that sort of espouses his values, and Mr. Mackenzie is needling liberals, trying to get them to think about all of this as if it were the vile and hated G.W. Bush doing it, with the implication that if they don't like it if the Republican was doing it, they shouldn't like it because it's a Democrat doing so (a fair point, to be sure, but presented in likely the worst way to actually get it across). Although one would wonder what other sorts of hell would be raised by the Republicans if said President had gone through on things - if they were complaining about abandoning principles then, it would be an avalanche now. We still probably would have elected the Democrat, but possibly on a different platform.
Actually making some sense, on the other hand, is Mr. Kennedy, who notes that trying to socially engineer through the tax code invokes, almost by default, the Law of Unintended Consequences, many of which might go against building a solid and stable society, or which end up taking back the revenue lost by certain tax breaks. (He suggests that if one is totally against the tax increases, stop buying things and hold on to the money for four years or more.)
Ms. Rickard takes a closer look at a study claiming that arbitration is actually better for the consumer than going throuh the courts, as a refutation to a law that would nullify the arbitration clauses in consumer contracts and prohibit companies from forcing their customers to agree to arbitration of disputes up front. Arbitration may work (and it may also discourage people from taking claims, especially if they had to, say, travel cross-country to do it), but forcing your customers to give up some of their legal rights to use your product or service is still playing relatively underhandedly.
Winning a covereted quiche-to-the-face and a declaration of FAIL, Dan Gainor says "Ha! Foolish global-warming advocates! It's been record amounts of COLD across the country! Guess that menas all your fancy science is wrong!" And now the people will see the naked control-our-lives agenda for what it really is! Curses! ...except for that part where the effects of climate change work on long-term bases, and are often cited not just as warming, but as things that then change the weather patterns. So, like, unnatural amounts and repetitions of snowfall in Seattle might be just as attributable to global warming as the brush fires across Australia. Oh, yeah, they're in the middle of summer now, aren't they? Maybe the warming is affecting them, too? And the ice melt? Is that, too?
Technology generates a scientist asking people to use aborted foetal organs as transplants for those who need them, as a way of helping to stop the shortage. Pro-life storm is on the way, as well as ethical questions about whether or not to wait for a certain point to terminate a pregnancy to harvest those organs.
Additionally, a suit where an iPod touch apparently generated fire that melted a kid's underwear, PETA folks unveiling a tofu that apparently tastes like George Clooney, using tissue samples of him to grow the stuff, (It's people! It's people!), Shizzow, a service that marries Twitter-like brevity with geotagging, so that someone can see where you are and what you're doing at any given moment, five years as the window for the genesis of life from chemicals, paint that could heal its own scratches, cheap, not-so-powerful computers used as game-playing machines to teach kids computer literacy, worries about the world water supply as bad-case climate scenarios are alrady coming to pass, more mind-reading, this time to determine where you've been, and apparently, a spider bite may have assisted in a paraplegic regaining motor function to his legs. Which kind of sounds like how 23andMe wants to collect spit of Parkinson's patients to identify common genes and the Department of Homeland Security trying to use body odor as a reliable lie detector.
Last for today, The Internet Meme Database. Know Your Memes. I wonder if the next one will come from the idea that a solar flare could cause your toilet to stop working. What this all actually leads to, though, is that if you know your memes, you might be able to not be one of the fifty reasons nobody wants to publish your first book.
And taking advantage of the ACRL conference to pimp out the idea that Seattle will be filled with sexy librarians, just on the end.
A judge has ordered, as part of divorce proceedings between the parents, that the children be placed in public school instead of continuing with their homeschool education. The judge cited concerns about the religious base for the homeschooling with regard to science education, The children themselves test approximately two grade levels above their current public school grade, which says that the thing itself is clearly not falling down. The law requires all children in the state to go to school, which is where some of the judge's basis may be coming from. The opposition to the move believes that the judge is not doing his job properly, alleging the judge lets an adultering husband stay in the house instead of kicking him out, insists on equal settlements and her dependence on him, orders her to mentally evaluated on mere allegations, disparages her religious beliefs, and other things, claiming it's a case against religious homeschooling run by a judge who hates Christians desiguised as a divorce proceeding.
Taking as high-and-mighty approach as they can to the matter, someone urges other LDS not to watch Big Love, the television program about the nominally LDS plygamist, but the language is in "not dignifying it with a response, and nobody watch this trash either". Both on that, and apparently on the continuing anti Prop-8 protests going on around the LDS temples in the area. High horses tend to meet axemen, Or satirists, like the General. I'm just saying.
A Salon feature on someone who was in the Quiverfull movement and then walked away from it, The cycle of pregnancy, childbrith, and child care was draining her, he rchildren were unhappy, and when she tried to turn within the system, it told her to suck it up and obey instead of fixing the problem.
A conference between UFO-ites and Christians, who each believe that the visitors might have been fallen angels.
In actual news, China is getting a bit worried about United States debt and spending, which is important, because much of the stimulus and debt spending relies on China and other creditors to continue purchasing our bonds.
Madagascar mutineers have moved tanks and troops into the capital as the government and its opposition struggle, Russian bombers may be finding safe spots in Venezuela or Cuba, a conversation with Leabanon's Ayatollah, which reveals some additional nuances to the "hate America" rhetoric that the Glass Middle East party would have you believe, and Iraq says that it will not become a terrorist haven once United States troops leave the country.
On the doemstic front, we may have our very first official flip-flop, and it's not the Democrat who cracked first. RNC chariman Michael Steele caught hell from his still-functioning base over a GQ interview where he said that he was not the doctrainaire Republican they elected him to be, and has now repudiated his own words, trying to spin them so that they fall back within Republican orthodoxy, including the requirement that all Republicans be staunchly against abotion, so that the revolt in progress against him doesn't get any worse and actually elect Rush Limbaugh as the next RNC chair. The General wonders what other mistakes may have been made.
the President may have missteped himself, signing the appropriations act which contains a dirty trick of language claiming that no money in that act can be used to fund embryonic stem cell research, as an amendment buried in it. Or, perhaps new appropriations will appear that do not contain such language. Still, this is the difficulty of large omnibus bills. All sorts of people can stick in things they shouldn't be. Perhaps we ned to institute rules requiring that each lesiglative object contain only one subject or category of programs/laws, etc. More laws passed, sure, but they'd be easier to read, repeal, and work with.
Out with the term "enemy combatant" for the War on a Concept. This doesn't mean that the authority to hold someone without trial at an offshore facility is being abandoned, just that the term is going out. And it's not like security has improved all that much in the last few years, despite all the security theater.
The President may have to confront an equality for homosexuals issue sooner than anticipated - California rules that domestic partners are entitled to benefits in federal jobs, the government says it won't do that based on the 1996 DOMA. Official policy is currently that the administration opposes providing marriage for homosexuals but supports repealing the DOMA. Leaving it to the states, his agencies, and the courts after a DOMA repeal might be a good way of buying time for Mr. Obama to clear off some of the other important issues, but it will come back around to him soon enough.
Congresscritter Paul wants an audit done of the Federal Reserve. The reasoning, as provided by the Campaign for Liberty and others, is that the Fed is a closed-books operation that dictates when and how it will be transparent to the populus in how it creates and determines monetary policy and extends credit, and how it spends money allocated to it through stimulus and other government spending. The system has apparently devalued the dollar by more than 95% (of what original?) and is also responsible for trillions in debt and loans and credit crisis as well. Sounds like someone is really saying "We should go back to pegging our currency to a commodity, like gold or silver, and use Real Money instead of worthless electronic bits and paper." But they can't convince us of that, so they want to say "See how this corrupt institution has devalued your money and saddled you with debt." Excepting that it's not really the institution that's done this, but the reserve system that requires banks to keep only a portion of its assets available instead of the entire balance. If that's what people are supposed to be clamoring for, then an audit of the Fed isn't the action they should want, it should be a change in regulations and law so that banks have to have all their assets on hand. So I guess I'm just confused. What's the reasoning behind this audit? If it's trying to expose all the debt, well, you might want to talk to the government about that. Or the banks that are borrowing. Or the reserve system. The institution itself? Meh.
Talking economics, The popular things in a recession are cookable food, and condoms. Because people go out less, which means they have more time at home to enjoy each other. And, for as much as children are supposed to be a gift, they're expensive. The President says that he feels our pain, but that he's building a long-term solution to the problem, so if we happen not to see our recovery immediately, not to worry - it's coming. Not that anyone will have the patience to see it through, with a corresponding drop in approval and support to accompany it. (Although, for others, the approval drop is normal for a president of Obama's policies, and will continue to slide as more people disapprove of them.)
Why does it take Jon Stewart to get people to pay attention to overly bullish predictions made before the markets collapsed? I see why people watch the Daily Show as their source of actual news - Stewart gives them what they want and makes it funny. When things calm down again, he'll go back to being a satirist, but for now, the actual news is all the material he needs.
Doing their best to undermine confidence or build a new narrative, CNN reports the Obama team is considering a possible plan where veterans may need private insurance to pay for care, a plan that would be nixed if it ever got to Congress, and one that the administration officially has no comment on. Am I seeing a "Barack Obama hates the military" thing starting here? Especially if someone wanted to try and pair it with money from congressional appropriations going to facilities that Kennedys are involved with, or the implication that the President is courting the upper crust while claiming to be a champion of the populous.
Oy. Another White Hosue official on leave pending charges in a corruption case. The pickings have been bad this time around. Is it just that we have bad choices, or is it people deciding they're going to go after them now where they wouldn't before?
In the opinions, David Frum speaks on why conservatives should see Boss Limbaugh's anointment as a really bad thing, because it pits the moderate-looking Obama against the in-your-face Limbaugh, driving more people to support the Democrat instead of the blowhard. That the GOP hasn't been offering alternatives to the President's plans is hurting them lots, too.
Mr. Goldberg says that all the talk of economic woe to sell stimulus and liberalism is immoral and an exploitation of the people, making the President a jerk and undemocratic. Mr. Powell believes the tax policies on capital gains will suck Silicon Valley dry, a point Mr. Will takes and makes a generality, deciding the President is still improvising without an actual plan. (As an aside, Ms. Strassel notes how people scolding the Republican's defecits are praising the Democrat's, a fair point to be making. People will have to explain themselves as to why they changed positions.) Mr. North considers him and his team cowards for not taking strong hardline stances toward Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Russia, and China when they did things that would upset U.S. strategic interests, with Mr. Goldberg returning and making the five who signed their praise of 9/11 more into Jokers than clowns, and Obama the fool for not taking their ideology seriously. Mr. Thomas considers him a inveterate baby-killer with no respect for Christianity's proscriptions on ending human life, because of his executive order on embryonic stem cells, and another step to a lawless, immoral, self-destroying country. All this, culminating in comedian David Limbaugh commenting that the President has declared war on the American Dream with his soak-the-rich, green, and charitable giving policies, because he's a Marxist. A Marxist who contradicts himself and waves away serious moral questions by presenting them as false choices. So, out of all of this, there seem to be two responses. Mr. Tyrrel wishes to have Bill Clinton back in office, so that he has a President that he can work with and that sort of espouses his values, and Mr. Mackenzie is needling liberals, trying to get them to think about all of this as if it were the vile and hated G.W. Bush doing it, with the implication that if they don't like it if the Republican was doing it, they shouldn't like it because it's a Democrat doing so (a fair point, to be sure, but presented in likely the worst way to actually get it across). Although one would wonder what other sorts of hell would be raised by the Republicans if said President had gone through on things - if they were complaining about abandoning principles then, it would be an avalanche now. We still probably would have elected the Democrat, but possibly on a different platform.
Actually making some sense, on the other hand, is Mr. Kennedy, who notes that trying to socially engineer through the tax code invokes, almost by default, the Law of Unintended Consequences, many of which might go against building a solid and stable society, or which end up taking back the revenue lost by certain tax breaks. (He suggests that if one is totally against the tax increases, stop buying things and hold on to the money for four years or more.)
Ms. Rickard takes a closer look at a study claiming that arbitration is actually better for the consumer than going throuh the courts, as a refutation to a law that would nullify the arbitration clauses in consumer contracts and prohibit companies from forcing their customers to agree to arbitration of disputes up front. Arbitration may work (and it may also discourage people from taking claims, especially if they had to, say, travel cross-country to do it), but forcing your customers to give up some of their legal rights to use your product or service is still playing relatively underhandedly.
Winning a covereted quiche-to-the-face and a declaration of FAIL, Dan Gainor says "Ha! Foolish global-warming advocates! It's been record amounts of COLD across the country! Guess that menas all your fancy science is wrong!" And now the people will see the naked control-our-lives agenda for what it really is! Curses! ...except for that part where the effects of climate change work on long-term bases, and are often cited not just as warming, but as things that then change the weather patterns. So, like, unnatural amounts and repetitions of snowfall in Seattle might be just as attributable to global warming as the brush fires across Australia. Oh, yeah, they're in the middle of summer now, aren't they? Maybe the warming is affecting them, too? And the ice melt? Is that, too?
Technology generates a scientist asking people to use aborted foetal organs as transplants for those who need them, as a way of helping to stop the shortage. Pro-life storm is on the way, as well as ethical questions about whether or not to wait for a certain point to terminate a pregnancy to harvest those organs.
Additionally, a suit where an iPod touch apparently generated fire that melted a kid's underwear, PETA folks unveiling a tofu that apparently tastes like George Clooney, using tissue samples of him to grow the stuff, (It's people! It's people!), Shizzow, a service that marries Twitter-like brevity with geotagging, so that someone can see where you are and what you're doing at any given moment, five years as the window for the genesis of life from chemicals, paint that could heal its own scratches, cheap, not-so-powerful computers used as game-playing machines to teach kids computer literacy, worries about the world water supply as bad-case climate scenarios are alrady coming to pass, more mind-reading, this time to determine where you've been, and apparently, a spider bite may have assisted in a paraplegic regaining motor function to his legs. Which kind of sounds like how 23andMe wants to collect spit of Parkinson's patients to identify common genes and the Department of Homeland Security trying to use body odor as a reliable lie detector.
Last for today, The Internet Meme Database. Know Your Memes. I wonder if the next one will come from the idea that a solar flare could cause your toilet to stop working. What this all actually leads to, though, is that if you know your memes, you might be able to not be one of the fifty reasons nobody wants to publish your first book.
And taking advantage of the ACRL conference to pimp out the idea that Seattle will be filled with sexy librarians, just on the end.
