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For the Whedon fans, one of the principal castmembers of Angel, Andy Hallett, died of heart failure yesterday.
Ugh. So we're almost all settled in, but now there are those tiny bits here and there that make it all that much more... wonderful. Including having to deal with the OS lock-in that Comcast almost forces on you to get yourself re-set if you've say, moved your computer to a new locale. So, it's options time - either running long cable down stairs and under carpets, possibly under doors as well, or potentially ponying up some cash so as not to be inconvenient. *sigh*. Makes you wish you could take your fire-spitting robot down and politely explain why this is a bad idea. We'd think about dragging the Terminator-type robots, but they never seem to work as intended. Maybe they can always tell it's a machine.
Across the world, Earth Hour, where big buildings and landmarks turned their lights off to raise awareness about emissions makes for interesting photographs, although the efficacy of a singe hour's turnoff in the wider scale of things is in dispute.
The defamation of religion resolution passed the HRC, prompting a new round of worries that it would actually suppress necessary and protected speech in the name of avoiding defamation, no doubt making many conservative writers worried that after this, we'll all be forced to only say nice things about Islam and not be able to criticize the agenda that takes Islam as its base and makes it into a world-conquering political movement. Well, they could go afer the church that can brew hallucinogenic tea for religious services, but I don't quite think that's high-profile enough to be effective.
The Israeli army is investigating after testimony from its own soldiers admitted to the deliberate killing of Gazan civilians during the last short war between Israel and Palestine,
a gigantic electronic spy ring has looted documents from computers worldwide, including some associated with the Dalai Lama. The control point of the network is suspected to be in China, but no-one can officially say whether the Chinese government is involved
One of the most Googled women in the world says that a Pope's comments about the beautiful state of nudity inspired her to be comfortable with her own. The State of New Jersey isn't quite so much, considering placing a ban on the "Brazillian" waxing. Speaking of the female form, have a look at all these athletic women and see how beautiful they are, as well. Just proves that what you see in images is not the complete picture, but a carefully chosen segment of it.
Domestically, an army officer with tuberculosis was convicted of not deploying to Iraq and disobeying orders, against his claim that the TB should have precluded him from the deployment. Considering how contagious it can be, I would think the Army would be more interesting in having healthy bodies deployed instead of just having bodies deployed.
Having tortured who they believed to be a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative into confessing the plots, they found out there weren't any. Which is exactly what the Bush Amdinistration got for using methods designed to extract confessions, whether real or not.
The weird and squicky in this paragraph - skip if you don't need that in your news roundup. A woman was arrested for sending a video of her engaged in bestial acts while she was watching child pronography to a friend. I think they'll find a conviction, there. Further dumb or icky things include the gent attempting to rob a police officer during a police officer's convention, what shows up if you search "Girl Scout Cookies" on Amazon, and the gentleman with a urine fetish who liked to collect and drink such of young boys, currently not illegal, but will be soon. Romania is considering decriminalizing incest between two consenting adults.
United Airlines has settled a lawsuit over wrongful termination regarding complaints a female pilot made over continually finding caches of pornography in the cockpits of the planes she was flying. Insufficient response to a situation, certainly. For one where things went too far, a fourteen yer-old who posted pictures of herself nude to Myspace has been charged with child pronography. Before getting into the merits of the charge, one thing must be said. Stupid, stupid girl. If you're going to do something like that, MySpace is not the palce to put it. And you should be sure you trust the person you're giving those to before you do. Now, onward. Under the law, she could be registered as a sex offender because she wanted to show her boyfriend what she looked like nude. That's clearly an overraction, but as we know, The Law is a big unwieldy club.
In the new green economy, community college education might be the key to retraining lots of people to work according to the new paradigm. Short courses, quick retraining classes, and then many of the industries we already have are retooled to the new green practice. At least, in theory. It may be better to ask Where's my f--king bailout, instead, or to wonder if tent cities are the way of the future. That seems defeatist, though, so maybe suggesting that the Detroit bailout money would be better spent buying cheap and small cars and giving them away for nothing to those who would otherwise buy giant SUVs is a start for suggestions. Truthfully? We're up the creek and around the bend, at least, if everyone really believes in the ultimate optimism of the current plan to let the market handle itself, instead of believing that the government should wield the power it has to regulate and make changes so that this situation doesn't happen again.
In politics, Democrats level hypocrisy accusations against GOP lawmaker who hates earmarks now but had many of them beforehand, as others complain about Rep. Murtha's use of the earmark, Minnesota continues to be a political battle zone over the Senate elections, and Catholic bishops begin denouncing the pro-choice President Obama as Notre Dame's commencement speaker (for which The General offers alternative shows to put on more in keeping with the Catholic traditions).
And thus, opinions, where executives complaining about death threats are reminded how much money they're making and are told to STFU. Further on, Mr. Greenwald praises Seantor Jim Webb's stance that the prison-profit complex and much of what we call criminal justice needs to be dismantled, and then reformed, starting with stopping the imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders, which crowds the prisons, disproportionately targets African-Americans, and makes us into the nation that has almost 25% of the world's incarcerated people. Mostly for nonviolent drug stuff. Austin Cline shreds the President's flippant and dismissive response to a question about possible legalization, because the arguments for legalization deserve serious responses and serious inquiries, not the "Just Say No" campaigns of the past.
In technology, looking to see whether an experimental ebola vaccine will work, after a scientist accidentally pricked herself with a needle containing the virus, (although they're not sure if she was actually infected), using a noninvasive finger device to predict heart attacks, new methods to make DNA sequencing cheaper, discovering a mechanism by which cancer cells move, which could lead to inhibitors so that when the cancer dies, it stays ded, instead of having little bits migrate off, red-cyan three-dimensional photographs of Mars, using light pulses to unlock drug releases, artificial skin creams modeled on the coating that protects fetal skin, and the hypothesis that the Tunguska event was the result of a hydrogen peroxide bomb, dropped as a comet fragment.
Of special interest: Tesla Motors unveils and electric 5-seat sedan, price tag $57,400 USD, and learning musical instruments with the assistance of computers and distance learning, a company intending to grow the first lunar flowers, and an artificial protein that can carry oxygen, which could be developed into an artificial blood.
And last for tonight, No, it's still not a joke. The Nightline Faceoff on Satan - (permalink needed. Once one is available, I'd love to have it.) Also not a joke, the James Randi Education Foundation is apparently currently banned from YouTube, as well as several other skeptical channels, with speculation for how being an "offensive content" flagging campaign or false DMCA claims filed against the organization. Actual factual details are slim at the moment.
Ugh. So we're almost all settled in, but now there are those tiny bits here and there that make it all that much more... wonderful. Including having to deal with the OS lock-in that Comcast almost forces on you to get yourself re-set if you've say, moved your computer to a new locale. So, it's options time - either running long cable down stairs and under carpets, possibly under doors as well, or potentially ponying up some cash so as not to be inconvenient. *sigh*. Makes you wish you could take your fire-spitting robot down and politely explain why this is a bad idea. We'd think about dragging the Terminator-type robots, but they never seem to work as intended. Maybe they can always tell it's a machine.
Across the world, Earth Hour, where big buildings and landmarks turned their lights off to raise awareness about emissions makes for interesting photographs, although the efficacy of a singe hour's turnoff in the wider scale of things is in dispute.
The defamation of religion resolution passed the HRC, prompting a new round of worries that it would actually suppress necessary and protected speech in the name of avoiding defamation, no doubt making many conservative writers worried that after this, we'll all be forced to only say nice things about Islam and not be able to criticize the agenda that takes Islam as its base and makes it into a world-conquering political movement. Well, they could go afer the church that can brew hallucinogenic tea for religious services, but I don't quite think that's high-profile enough to be effective.
The Israeli army is investigating after testimony from its own soldiers admitted to the deliberate killing of Gazan civilians during the last short war between Israel and Palestine,
a gigantic electronic spy ring has looted documents from computers worldwide, including some associated with the Dalai Lama. The control point of the network is suspected to be in China, but no-one can officially say whether the Chinese government is involved
One of the most Googled women in the world says that a Pope's comments about the beautiful state of nudity inspired her to be comfortable with her own. The State of New Jersey isn't quite so much, considering placing a ban on the "Brazillian" waxing. Speaking of the female form, have a look at all these athletic women and see how beautiful they are, as well. Just proves that what you see in images is not the complete picture, but a carefully chosen segment of it.
Domestically, an army officer with tuberculosis was convicted of not deploying to Iraq and disobeying orders, against his claim that the TB should have precluded him from the deployment. Considering how contagious it can be, I would think the Army would be more interesting in having healthy bodies deployed instead of just having bodies deployed.
Having tortured who they believed to be a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative into confessing the plots, they found out there weren't any. Which is exactly what the Bush Amdinistration got for using methods designed to extract confessions, whether real or not.
The weird and squicky in this paragraph - skip if you don't need that in your news roundup. A woman was arrested for sending a video of her engaged in bestial acts while she was watching child pronography to a friend. I think they'll find a conviction, there. Further dumb or icky things include the gent attempting to rob a police officer during a police officer's convention, what shows up if you search "Girl Scout Cookies" on Amazon, and the gentleman with a urine fetish who liked to collect and drink such of young boys, currently not illegal, but will be soon. Romania is considering decriminalizing incest between two consenting adults.
United Airlines has settled a lawsuit over wrongful termination regarding complaints a female pilot made over continually finding caches of pornography in the cockpits of the planes she was flying. Insufficient response to a situation, certainly. For one where things went too far, a fourteen yer-old who posted pictures of herself nude to Myspace has been charged with child pronography. Before getting into the merits of the charge, one thing must be said. Stupid, stupid girl. If you're going to do something like that, MySpace is not the palce to put it. And you should be sure you trust the person you're giving those to before you do. Now, onward. Under the law, she could be registered as a sex offender because she wanted to show her boyfriend what she looked like nude. That's clearly an overraction, but as we know, The Law is a big unwieldy club.
In the new green economy, community college education might be the key to retraining lots of people to work according to the new paradigm. Short courses, quick retraining classes, and then many of the industries we already have are retooled to the new green practice. At least, in theory. It may be better to ask Where's my f--king bailout, instead, or to wonder if tent cities are the way of the future. That seems defeatist, though, so maybe suggesting that the Detroit bailout money would be better spent buying cheap and small cars and giving them away for nothing to those who would otherwise buy giant SUVs is a start for suggestions. Truthfully? We're up the creek and around the bend, at least, if everyone really believes in the ultimate optimism of the current plan to let the market handle itself, instead of believing that the government should wield the power it has to regulate and make changes so that this situation doesn't happen again.
In politics, Democrats level hypocrisy accusations against GOP lawmaker who hates earmarks now but had many of them beforehand, as others complain about Rep. Murtha's use of the earmark, Minnesota continues to be a political battle zone over the Senate elections, and Catholic bishops begin denouncing the pro-choice President Obama as Notre Dame's commencement speaker (for which The General offers alternative shows to put on more in keeping with the Catholic traditions).
And thus, opinions, where executives complaining about death threats are reminded how much money they're making and are told to STFU. Further on, Mr. Greenwald praises Seantor Jim Webb's stance that the prison-profit complex and much of what we call criminal justice needs to be dismantled, and then reformed, starting with stopping the imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders, which crowds the prisons, disproportionately targets African-Americans, and makes us into the nation that has almost 25% of the world's incarcerated people. Mostly for nonviolent drug stuff. Austin Cline shreds the President's flippant and dismissive response to a question about possible legalization, because the arguments for legalization deserve serious responses and serious inquiries, not the "Just Say No" campaigns of the past.
In technology, looking to see whether an experimental ebola vaccine will work, after a scientist accidentally pricked herself with a needle containing the virus, (although they're not sure if she was actually infected), using a noninvasive finger device to predict heart attacks, new methods to make DNA sequencing cheaper, discovering a mechanism by which cancer cells move, which could lead to inhibitors so that when the cancer dies, it stays ded, instead of having little bits migrate off, red-cyan three-dimensional photographs of Mars, using light pulses to unlock drug releases, artificial skin creams modeled on the coating that protects fetal skin, and the hypothesis that the Tunguska event was the result of a hydrogen peroxide bomb, dropped as a comet fragment.
Of special interest: Tesla Motors unveils and electric 5-seat sedan, price tag $57,400 USD, and learning musical instruments with the assistance of computers and distance learning, a company intending to grow the first lunar flowers, and an artificial protein that can carry oxygen, which could be developed into an artificial blood.
And last for tonight, No, it's still not a joke. The Nightline Faceoff on Satan - (permalink needed. Once one is available, I'd love to have it.) Also not a joke, the James Randi Education Foundation is apparently currently banned from YouTube, as well as several other skeptical channels, with speculation for how being an "offensive content" flagging campaign or false DMCA claims filed against the organization. Actual factual details are slim at the moment.
