More information for all - 23 April 2009

Greetings, all. While we’ve been away, others have been busy, making sand into giant scultupres and putting them on display. Some have been deciding that their work is worth noting as a donation rather than as volunteering, and suggesting that other people think about which they want to use for their own work.

Our Odd File has some entries - a mug shot of an unrepentant offender, a "ninja" who was neither stealthy nor concealed his identity, and actual lairs of villainy, constructed and ready.

[Edit: Well, it's gone, but the ignominy lives on.] Grab the brainbleach and keep it nearby as you read [the now nonexistent eHow page on] How to Date your Daughter. Remember, Electra complexes are not something to be encouraging. There’s a strong scent, spelled out with some explicit text, of certain religious practices that say a daughter’s heart is Daddy’s to get and then to give away to his approved choice, for which daughter will obediently love and obey her dad (sometimes to the point of fawning servitude of Dad and his male friends) and then obediently transfer her love and servitude over to the man chosen by her father. The one funny part, though? The difficulty was rated “Moderately Easy”.

Here’s a chaser that should work pretty well - The FDA is complying with a ruling, bucking the previous administrator, and making it possible for 17 year-olds to buy emergency contraception without a doctor’s prescription.

Internationally, The Taliban of Pakistan have moved northwest from the Swat valley and are now occupying the Buner area, where they fight with government forces.

Blackwater, now Xe, will be expelled from Iraq as soon as feasible, according to Iraqi authorities, who are continuing to press for compensation of a 2007 shooting in Nissor Square.

A member of the House of Lords in teh United Kingdom has gone on the record that saying successive curtailments of civil liberties in the name of fighting terror is playing by the terrorists' rules - and they’re winning that battle, because we’re doing their work for them. Specifically, he was talking about the possibility of chipping people at birth, which isn’t going to necessarily happen soon, but could come to pass.

Domestically, cities facing budget shortfalls turn to private contractors to augment their police force. There’s got to be a story about private police taking... is this an unholy combination of the beginnings of the police force and Metal Gear? Or is this the part where we get to see what PMCs will do when tasekd with killing and patrolling other American citizens? Police power in the hands of private corproations? Ick. I’m sure it’s someone’s fantasy come true, but it makes my skin crawl.

More material comes to light on the recent torture disclosures - a petition for Congress to impeach a currently-sitting federal judge who wrote one of the opinions legalizing torture before he became a judge is at the tip. As part of the Senate Armed Services Report, we find out that planning for the use of torture predates any of the memos used to legalize it, and ignored warnings about legality and quality of information. Their prize? Trying to manufacture a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, to give justification for a war that was to follow. All that waterboarding and torture was to manufacture a link that wasn’t showing up at all. All of this goes to the top, certainly, where we find a rather cavalier attitude and endorsements of the use of torture by Rumsfeld and others, including approvals for CIA waterboarding from Dr Rice. This rabbit hole goes very deep, it looks like. More material needs to be released and pored over. And yes, if members of Congress knew about these things and approved of them, they should be investigated as well. If you believe Mr. Greenwald, though, expect no help from mainstream media in getting to the bottom of this, as they will dismiss anything they don’t like as coming from the fringe of the Left, even though it doesn’t, insist that elites be allowed to break the law and get away with it, and thus will do their very damndest to make sure no more secrets get out unless they have to report on them (and even then, only to the minimum required.)

A different issue that could get ugly for both sides on it. Here’s the setup - as part of the Miss USA pageant, judge Perez Hilton asked Miss California, Carrie Prejean, about her stance on gay marriage, and got an opposition answer steeped well in religious tones - for which then Perez Hilton ripped into her on his blog later. So, potential homophobia on one end (interesting because of the various homosexuals and those for homosexual marriage in Miss Prejean's rise to her position), and on the other, a reaction that shows about as much tolerance for her position as she showed for his, which could become ammunition for those wanting to advance the “angry misogynist gays that Hate America, because Perez Hilton called Miss California a bitch” angle. All this has attracted the attention of The General, of course, and could very well turn the Kerfuffle into yet another CF. Most of the commenters on Pam’s say the question itself was good, the candidate demonstrated her merits (or lack thereof) in her place, but then the savaging beyond that was uncalled for.

A jury convicted Allen Adrande on a bias-motivated murder charge, concluding that he beat the head in of a teenager because he found out about the teen’s transgender status. Good that we’ve finally gotten to adding another “X” to the list of things that don’t work in court when you say “I did it because s/he was X”. Dare I say that the process might even be accelerating a tad?

The worst foreclosure rates (hi, economic problems here, too) are concentrated in California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, according to a report released by RealtyTrac Inc.

In the opinions, Bruce Perens campaigns for mroe distributed infrastructure, so that if, say, someone cuts cables at a central location, the entire town doesn’t suddenly go belly up and lose its essential services and networkds.

The National Post is not impressed with the Homeland Security Secretary for repeating a fib about how the 11 September attackers got in to the country. Ooh, does that mean we have some allies in calling for the deconstruction of DH(i)S?

Mackenzie Eaglen is sure not enough money is being spent on Defense for this year, so the military will not be able to do what they do best with all their money being stolen by those domestic programs, especially the health care programs.

The Secretary of Education says we need an honest assessment of what works and what doesn't in schools, and the courage to then axe what doesn't and promote what does, without being snared in paritsan mires or being pitted along older lines (like charter versus public, or unions versus students).

Earning a quick-flynig quiche, Amy Ridenour says the United States has to get out of the U.N., because the U.S. pays a large part of their budget so they can give a pass to “corrupt dictators” while simultaneously jumping all over an opportunity to prosecute George W. Bush for “keeping Americans safe”. A slightly heavier and higher-velocity quiche to Greg Gutfeld, who spouts nonsense about how liberal women attack conservative women so fiercely because they're jealous of how happy those conservative women are. I think the Unabashed Feminism Derpartment has more than a few swings they’d like to take to that idea.

Talking torture, Mr. Jeffrey sides with "ends justify the means" by stating that the intelligence gathered through torture stopped an attack on Los Angeles, a “Second Wave” that would have happened if we hadn’t decided to waterboard people, and that will happen now that we can’t actually use those techniques when the clock is running on another attack (the “24” defense).

Mr. Bay is convinced the piracy problems will only get worse, and that the chokepoints of the world are all held in the grip of radical states. Which might be an implied suggestion for the freedom-lovers to get out there and stomp them to make the world safe. Or to figure out the alternatives needed for when it happens. Mr. Bozell is pretty sure that the President is mroe interested in talk than action, as evidence by his sitting through all sorts of anti-American rhetoric and apparently not rising to defend the country when it was all done. So Mr. Bozell believes America will tuck itself in nicely as a smaller, less “imperial” entity and watch as the Western Hemisphere dissolves. With the pirates and terror threats, I think we can safely posit that some conservatives believe the world is going to end under President Obama.

Mr. Williams suggests that secession threats or actual secession is the peaceful option for when the federal government oversteps its bounds, or that states have the right to refuse to enforce laws they feel are unconstitutional... if they’re willing to face down the federal govenment’s violence to bring them back in line, a clear and unconstitutional overreach.

The Slacktivist lays a smack down on hegemons who simultaneously believe that they should be the majority and that they are persecuted by the majority, as exemplified by NOM’s Gathering Storm advertisement. He’s cautious, unlike Mr. Rich's enthusiasm to declare the anti-homosexual marriage movement dead, and suggests that they will be back. Perhaps he next time with an advertisement that doesn’t generate laughs at how bad and easily satired it is.

Mr. Sowell sees a mirage in "universal health care", repeating that it always leads to rationing, government control of whether you get care or not, and a sharp drop-off in being able to have the best treatments available and high-tech diagnostics. He also says taht the longer lfie expectancies and better health in universal countries is because they make lifestyle changes that Americans won’t. So our evil habits will continue, and we’ll be ceding control over our medical care to the governemnt to do with as it likes with us and prevent us from going outside them for care if we want to. I think he’s being needlessly dystopian. Also, most people don’t carry insurance because tehy can’t afford it, not because they think the emergency room will be the best place for them to go if they need care. To someone uninsured, emergency care is a death knell. Joining Mr. Sowell in a “the government is going to control our lives” column, Mr. Goldberg beleives the new ability of the EPA to regular car emissions is the door opening for the EPA to regulate anything that produces greenhouse gases, and thus, the government can control our lives, yet again, or at least get their cap-and-trade regulations passed.

Tying it all together, and receiving the full-fledged quiche for tonight, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are back on the "he's a socialist!" wagon, documenting what they see as the sneaky tactics the President has used to make us socialists in everything but name, starting with the possibility of converting government preferred stock into common stock, with the ownership bid that comes with that, as well as the way the TARP money is being forced on banks, not being accepted on payback, all to further cement the control the governemnt has over the banks. Apparently, the person that controls how credit is given controls the economy, and thus, we’ll all be socialists. Insert Inigo Montoya clip here. From dictionary.reference.com, which is the Random House Dictionary: “socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.” What you are describing is something more akin to totalitarianism, perhaps fascism if you want to throw in Cult of Obama arguments. What you are advocating is closer to the socialism scale, even if all you want is just corporatist capitalism, than what you are accusing the administration of doing.

In scitech, Bluetooth 3 has arrived, the Pentagon is planning to put more emphasis on cyberwarfare, a possible method, using magnetics, to extend the life of quantum bits, some ruminations on whether the Twitter effect (a tweetbomb) will eclipse the slashdot effect for amount of times happening and for amount of users converging on a single point, a brain-to-Twitter interface demonstrated, a handheld ultrasound device that uses a smartphone to display the images, a race car that runs on chocolate-based fuel, an old celestial object that has scientists very puzzled, and workign off of pretty pixelateed stuff, and a Norwegian report that suggests music pirates end up buying more music than other people, a result that has the media cabal skeptical. I’d say some of that skepticism results from their music not necessarily being the music purchased by the pirates.

Speaking of, new information in the trial of members of The Pirate Bay - the judge and seveal of the prosecuting attorneys all belonged to copyright-lobbying organizations, which should give TPB grounds to appeal their convictions based on the bias of the judge, at the very least.

Last for tonight, pictures of the end of the rainbow. The little green men and their gold were out, apparently, when the photographs were taken. If you would like to be part of art yourself, you can apply to be on the Fourth Plinth for a day.

And Ubuntu released again. 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, available in various incarnations, including a netbook edition. For those who are K-types instead of Nautilus, Kubuntu 9.04 is also out in the wild.

Books are not a major source of lead in your child's diet. Curbstomp anyone who says otherwise.

Oh, hell no. Someone's going to die (in the metaphorical sense), painfully, at the hands of library systems in the area. The culprit? Sensationalism about lead levels in children's books, as reported by a local affiliate. They went into the Seattle Public Library, selected 18 books at random, tested them for lead and found that two of the books, printed before 1983, contained sufficient lead as to need regulation under the new laws. They then extrapolated this into "The books in your library children's section are leaded and dangerous! Who knows what would have happened if a toddler had chewed on these! The ALA is blowing smoke up your ass when they say library books don't have harmful lead concentrations! Their studies proving books aren't harmful are shams! Test all the books!"

...yeah. Remember the part about slow, painful deaths? Here's the rest of the story - those copies were books that were printed from the 1950s and possibly earlier. It's a testament to how gently they've been handled that those books survived that long to become a problem now. The law only applies to books printed (not copyrighted) before 1986, because after that point, the CPSC says "Nope. Not there." Even better, when putting an actual scientific sample to the test, all modern books passed well underneath current and projected lead level caps, as did all the component parts of a standard book. So, if your library hasn't gotten a new book since 1986, then sure, maybe you can be worried (I would be. Where was the materials budget, the selectors, and the weeders that the collection is primarily more than two decades old?), but if your library, like mine, probably doesn't have anything earlier than 1986 in the collection at-freaking-all, then you don't have to worry that little Johnny or Suzie will be ingesting lead content if they chew on their normal books. (Books with toy components, or toys that look like books? They're totally different categories, and will be tested. But the library doesn't often have a lot of those, either. They tend to get broke.)

The decision to play up a "Your Children Are In Danger!" angle on something that doesn't really exist is something perhaps more worthy of out tabloid papers, not an organization that purports itself to give us the news. Hopefully they get the verbal and record-correcting beatdown, head-chopping, and pike-mounting they deserve.