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Greeting, all. I’m beginning to worry a bit here and there about things that I need to get done, but not in the full-blown panic that I used to have with class assignments. Helps when you’re actually employed and thus don’t have to worry about whether or not getting your assignment graded well will let you get employed.
Starting up at the top, Random facts, thanks to the Creative Generalist and The Random Fact List.
To get you out and about, we present the Legway, the pedual replacement to the Segway. (Man = hand, ped = foot, ya?)
Out in the world, Famed actor Jackie Chan will catch flak for suggesting that control is necessary for the Chinese people, because he is unsure as to whether letting the billion-plus Chinese loose in their own self-interest will be better for the country than exercising some amount of shaping on them.
Suicide bomber attack, wearing Iraq army uniform. Elsewhere, Hamas used the cover of Israel's attack on Gaza to eliminate several political opponents, and President Obama reaffirmed the idea that talking to one's enemies is strengthening, not weakening, even as the pols back home press to see action from those enemies as a sign they’re serious.
IAEA chief indicates greater desire for nuclear power could make for very hairy nuclear situations, including unsafe technology and nuclear weapon proliferation. Perhaps we’re getting to a Seldon crisis on the matter? If we can safely pass into the nuclear age, I think it would do lots of all of us.
Domestically, A Cold War bunker has been retrofitted to become a luxury mansion.
Stephen Hawking has taken ill and is hospitalized.
The Detroit Free Press wins a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Kwame Kilpatrick scandal. I’m happy for the Freep, and hopefully that will keep it goign for a bit longer, but... a mayorial scandal wins the best award? How many other possibilities could have been done (or done right) in the last year so as to present a Pulitzer winner on something with national or international scope?
The Democrats and Republicans continue to have differences on the budget, with the Republicans claiming they have good alternatives and the party in power wondering when they will stop being the Party of NO. Newsweek's Denis Calabrese joins on and says the Republican Party needs to differentiate itself from the Democrats, and provide an actual aternative instead of being the other side of the same coin.
Talking torture, Two Hundred Sixty-Six waterboardings on two suspected Qaeda operatives. Intelligence-gathering purposes required that many waterboardings? Really? Those must have been hardened battle veterans, then, to require that much torture for them to divulge all their intelligence. And the lack of prosecution for the same suggests the nation has stopped being a nation of laws, but instead one where important men, no matter who they are, will get a pass on whatever they do. And perhaps more disturbingly, a significant portion of the country thinks torturing other people is okay.
In further “He’s not the guy we elected” news, The President tapped another lwayer who has worked for the RIAA to a Justice Department position, making five of them appointed to his department. I suspect we can give up on the idea of reforming or providing sane alternatives to cabals suing music customers.
Making opinions, Mr. Borelli believes that President Obama will not shy away from pursuing his ideological slate, even as he comes up chronically short on details and lets Congress fill them in, which, considering Congress’s job as legislators, is kind of how the system works. While the President can advise and ultimately veto, it’s up to the Congresscritters to write the actual thing itself. Mr. Borelli also is certain that this idological stance will continue, even if it leads to things that are already proven to be unprofitable (because the necessary innovation that would come from adoption hasn’t happened yet). Ms. Saunders joins on, insisting that America has to face economic reality and drill for domestic oil, thus creating high-paying jobs, reducing our dependence on oil, and single-handedly saving our economy, all for the piddling price of cheesing off some environmentalists and adding some carbon to the atmosphere.
Mr. Benson says that for all the post-fear campaigning Candidate Obama did, President Obama is quite adept as fearmongering and does it as much as he can, whether against Boss Limbaugh, Mr. The Plumber, and (somehow) by releasing the DHS report that indicated people with conservative beliefs may act violently on them, depending on the issue. All in a concerted campaign to tell conservatives to shut up, apparently. (What, like the branding liberals-as-terrorists that the last administration did? Why complain when the scales get balanced?)
We’ve landed in pastry territory, clearly. Ms. Lopez is shocked and appaled that Time would feature someone at the forefront of the movement declaring people have the right to end their own lives on their terms, drawing abortion into it as the first spot where people should have held the line for life, no exceptions, and now worrying that the second one will also be lost, so that people will pick suicide over living when it gets too hard for them. The people who are going to kill themselves are going to do it anyway. Giving them the tools to do it with a minimum of pain seems humane, rather than having them, say, purchase a pistol and then use it.
Ms. Parker's regales us with a story of how much diversity hurts our neighborhoods, and plans to try and integarate more neighborhoods are anticapitalist, being careful to note that she’s not one of those CEKSM that doesn’t trust their neighbor because they’re black/Latino/gay/Martian, and that she’s just warning us that the government will soon be actively trying hard to make your community more diverse.
Mr. Hill earns better dishonors by declaring that most of the followers of Mr. Obama are mindless zombies who prefer to attack anyone who questions the Glorious Leader instead of thinking for themselves, because he feels they’re not addressing his questions when they try to bring in historical context, they’re all attacking him personally, and they are defending a blameless president. I could point out the jingoism on the decisions of the last President, but that would make me one of those zombies, too. Mr. Hill also chooses to ignore the specifics of the plans in favor of debating the general outlines of it, and believing he’s smarter than his callers when he does so, rather than acknowledging the specifics and then wanting to bring the debate into a more abstract level (He also treats his own assumptions and conclusions as correct without explaining himself).
Mr. Hill is however, topped by Mr. Miller, who dismisses Megan McCain as a useful idiot of liberals criticizing something she can’t possibly understand, the party that fought Communism, the Klan, slavery, and that stand up against the liberals who want to turn everyone into government-dependent sheep. It’s actually a pretty good example of what Ms. McCain is campaigning against - rabid jingoism, believing they are the last bastion of liberty and all others are out to get them, and belief that they’re the only party that ever did any good for the country, and a dismissal of youth and their ideas in their entirety. On the podium with Mr. Hill is Mr. McCullough, who beleives tea party protestors are True Patriots that Liberals Hate, mostly because they can’t stop them from Taking Back America from the dire vision of the left, sprinkled with his belief that Rachel Maddow and Jeanine Garafolo may be lesbians, and his dismissal of the facts that corporate interests, the GOP, and others attempted to leverage the protestors to their own ends.
Winning top honors, though, beating out this marvelous field of contenders, who else but Bill'O, railing against the decline of civilization through secularism, homosexual marriage, and just about everything going on in Vermont these days, including what he thinks of as a green light to child sexual predators (a justice system that focuses on rehabilitation instead of incarceration), the move to not slap teens who send images of themselves to each other with child sexual predator offenses, the ability of children to get abortions without telling their parents, and what he thinks of as a lack of the government telling people that things are morally wrong and shouldn’t be done. That’s right, Bill’O equates the ability for teenagers to send explicit pictures of themselves without being categorized the same as the person who raped children as “the slippery slope” that we’re on and have to fight before we all get consumed by secular progressivism.
Let’s do science and technology. A new theory of quantum tunneling might be able to prove/disprove the string theory hypothesis, a suggestion that all our trips to the stars will be in virtual space, because the cameras can take better and better pictures, discovering solar systems around dead stars, for example, and we still haven’t developed the appropriate c-fractional or FTL drives to go looking ourselves, Oracle bidding to purchase Sun Microsystems, attempting to figure how many slashdots one can measure Oprah's mention of Twitter in, a look in on the founder of the Comic Sans font and the movement to ban the font, and harnessing the underworld's natural tendency to break security as a force for solving complex AI problems.
Last out, the need to fix the electrical grid, pronto-like, and Fred Phelps as the ultimate defense against "the government will restrict my rights because of my religion" people. So long as Fred Phelps can continue to do his thing, there clearly is no government interest in restricting you over the matter of gay marriage, at least. I’d say that extends all the way through all the other arguments, too, excepting in those spots where your beliefs come in conflict with the job you were hired to do. At that point, gloves should come off and people should be encouraged to find work that better suits their strong moral sense.
Starting up at the top, Random facts, thanks to the Creative Generalist and The Random Fact List.
To get you out and about, we present the Legway, the pedual replacement to the Segway. (Man = hand, ped = foot, ya?)
Out in the world, Famed actor Jackie Chan will catch flak for suggesting that control is necessary for the Chinese people, because he is unsure as to whether letting the billion-plus Chinese loose in their own self-interest will be better for the country than exercising some amount of shaping on them.
Suicide bomber attack, wearing Iraq army uniform. Elsewhere, Hamas used the cover of Israel's attack on Gaza to eliminate several political opponents, and President Obama reaffirmed the idea that talking to one's enemies is strengthening, not weakening, even as the pols back home press to see action from those enemies as a sign they’re serious.
IAEA chief indicates greater desire for nuclear power could make for very hairy nuclear situations, including unsafe technology and nuclear weapon proliferation. Perhaps we’re getting to a Seldon crisis on the matter? If we can safely pass into the nuclear age, I think it would do lots of all of us.
Domestically, A Cold War bunker has been retrofitted to become a luxury mansion.
Stephen Hawking has taken ill and is hospitalized.
The Detroit Free Press wins a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Kwame Kilpatrick scandal. I’m happy for the Freep, and hopefully that will keep it goign for a bit longer, but... a mayorial scandal wins the best award? How many other possibilities could have been done (or done right) in the last year so as to present a Pulitzer winner on something with national or international scope?
The Democrats and Republicans continue to have differences on the budget, with the Republicans claiming they have good alternatives and the party in power wondering when they will stop being the Party of NO. Newsweek's Denis Calabrese joins on and says the Republican Party needs to differentiate itself from the Democrats, and provide an actual aternative instead of being the other side of the same coin.
Talking torture, Two Hundred Sixty-Six waterboardings on two suspected Qaeda operatives. Intelligence-gathering purposes required that many waterboardings? Really? Those must have been hardened battle veterans, then, to require that much torture for them to divulge all their intelligence. And the lack of prosecution for the same suggests the nation has stopped being a nation of laws, but instead one where important men, no matter who they are, will get a pass on whatever they do. And perhaps more disturbingly, a significant portion of the country thinks torturing other people is okay.
In further “He’s not the guy we elected” news, The President tapped another lwayer who has worked for the RIAA to a Justice Department position, making five of them appointed to his department. I suspect we can give up on the idea of reforming or providing sane alternatives to cabals suing music customers.
Making opinions, Mr. Borelli believes that President Obama will not shy away from pursuing his ideological slate, even as he comes up chronically short on details and lets Congress fill them in, which, considering Congress’s job as legislators, is kind of how the system works. While the President can advise and ultimately veto, it’s up to the Congresscritters to write the actual thing itself. Mr. Borelli also is certain that this idological stance will continue, even if it leads to things that are already proven to be unprofitable (because the necessary innovation that would come from adoption hasn’t happened yet). Ms. Saunders joins on, insisting that America has to face economic reality and drill for domestic oil, thus creating high-paying jobs, reducing our dependence on oil, and single-handedly saving our economy, all for the piddling price of cheesing off some environmentalists and adding some carbon to the atmosphere.
Mr. Benson says that for all the post-fear campaigning Candidate Obama did, President Obama is quite adept as fearmongering and does it as much as he can, whether against Boss Limbaugh, Mr. The Plumber, and (somehow) by releasing the DHS report that indicated people with conservative beliefs may act violently on them, depending on the issue. All in a concerted campaign to tell conservatives to shut up, apparently. (What, like the branding liberals-as-terrorists that the last administration did? Why complain when the scales get balanced?)
We’ve landed in pastry territory, clearly. Ms. Lopez is shocked and appaled that Time would feature someone at the forefront of the movement declaring people have the right to end their own lives on their terms, drawing abortion into it as the first spot where people should have held the line for life, no exceptions, and now worrying that the second one will also be lost, so that people will pick suicide over living when it gets too hard for them. The people who are going to kill themselves are going to do it anyway. Giving them the tools to do it with a minimum of pain seems humane, rather than having them, say, purchase a pistol and then use it.
Ms. Parker's regales us with a story of how much diversity hurts our neighborhoods, and plans to try and integarate more neighborhoods are anticapitalist, being careful to note that she’s not one of those CEKSM that doesn’t trust their neighbor because they’re black/Latino/gay/Martian, and that she’s just warning us that the government will soon be actively trying hard to make your community more diverse.
Mr. Hill earns better dishonors by declaring that most of the followers of Mr. Obama are mindless zombies who prefer to attack anyone who questions the Glorious Leader instead of thinking for themselves, because he feels they’re not addressing his questions when they try to bring in historical context, they’re all attacking him personally, and they are defending a blameless president. I could point out the jingoism on the decisions of the last President, but that would make me one of those zombies, too. Mr. Hill also chooses to ignore the specifics of the plans in favor of debating the general outlines of it, and believing he’s smarter than his callers when he does so, rather than acknowledging the specifics and then wanting to bring the debate into a more abstract level (He also treats his own assumptions and conclusions as correct without explaining himself).
Mr. Hill is however, topped by Mr. Miller, who dismisses Megan McCain as a useful idiot of liberals criticizing something she can’t possibly understand, the party that fought Communism, the Klan, slavery, and that stand up against the liberals who want to turn everyone into government-dependent sheep. It’s actually a pretty good example of what Ms. McCain is campaigning against - rabid jingoism, believing they are the last bastion of liberty and all others are out to get them, and belief that they’re the only party that ever did any good for the country, and a dismissal of youth and their ideas in their entirety. On the podium with Mr. Hill is Mr. McCullough, who beleives tea party protestors are True Patriots that Liberals Hate, mostly because they can’t stop them from Taking Back America from the dire vision of the left, sprinkled with his belief that Rachel Maddow and Jeanine Garafolo may be lesbians, and his dismissal of the facts that corporate interests, the GOP, and others attempted to leverage the protestors to their own ends.
Winning top honors, though, beating out this marvelous field of contenders, who else but Bill'O, railing against the decline of civilization through secularism, homosexual marriage, and just about everything going on in Vermont these days, including what he thinks of as a green light to child sexual predators (a justice system that focuses on rehabilitation instead of incarceration), the move to not slap teens who send images of themselves to each other with child sexual predator offenses, the ability of children to get abortions without telling their parents, and what he thinks of as a lack of the government telling people that things are morally wrong and shouldn’t be done. That’s right, Bill’O equates the ability for teenagers to send explicit pictures of themselves without being categorized the same as the person who raped children as “the slippery slope” that we’re on and have to fight before we all get consumed by secular progressivism.
Let’s do science and technology. A new theory of quantum tunneling might be able to prove/disprove the string theory hypothesis, a suggestion that all our trips to the stars will be in virtual space, because the cameras can take better and better pictures, discovering solar systems around dead stars, for example, and we still haven’t developed the appropriate c-fractional or FTL drives to go looking ourselves, Oracle bidding to purchase Sun Microsystems, attempting to figure how many slashdots one can measure Oprah's mention of Twitter in, a look in on the founder of the Comic Sans font and the movement to ban the font, and harnessing the underworld's natural tendency to break security as a force for solving complex AI problems.
Last out, the need to fix the electrical grid, pronto-like, and Fred Phelps as the ultimate defense against "the government will restrict my rights because of my religion" people. So long as Fred Phelps can continue to do his thing, there clearly is no government interest in restricting you over the matter of gay marriage, at least. I’d say that extends all the way through all the other arguments, too, excepting in those spots where your beliefs come in conflict with the job you were hired to do. At that point, gloves should come off and people should be encouraged to find work that better suits their strong moral sense.
