Got to go to bed now. - 27 April 2009

And here we go - lots happened over the weekend, so we may not cover everything, all the time. There are alternatives, however, if you need them. And, unfortunately, Bea Arthur, known for her many roles, including one of the titular Golden Girls as well as playing counterpart to Archie Bunker, passed away at 86 years.

[This paragraph has been edited after being reamed out by rimspace about participating in media panics.]Internationally, swine flu is the next outbreak. For a response to it, follow the Guide: Don't panic. Seriously. The CDC says don't panic - there's only a small number of nonfatal cases. If you’re feeling vindictive, you can note flu preparedness money was stripped out of the stimulus bill by the Republican party, but that's about all you should be worried about.

Faced with the prospect of becoming a bride at 12 in India, Rekha Kalinda said "No." And this time, people listened. Slowly but surely, the world turns and moves toward the future. the United States Secretary of State indicates her support for contraceptives, abortions, education on sexuality, and good family planning. It looks good for a lot of people. Excepting the Dominican Republic, which just passed a constituional amendment outlawing abortion, with no exceptions at all. And thus the future and the past continue to war with each other - the future must learn from the past, while trying to change it, and the past must learn that not all change is detrimental.

Checking in the archives, a researcher found copies of letters from Benajmin Franklin in the British Library's collection, detailing information that had been alluded to in other letters and correspondence. And from old to new, Friday, the Espresso Book Printing machine, which prints on-demand title in about five minutes, launched in a London bookstore.

And the usual news from the Middle East - Christians still feeling unwelcome in Iraq, because lots fo Christians turn up dead, Jordan strongly suggesting that the US get more involved in teh Israel-Palestine peace process, unless they want a war to break out (again),

Domestically, Tweeting death threats at the government, under cover of protesting at a tea party, generally results in your arrest.

Arizona, an entity that was not even a state at the time of the Civil War, nonetheless held a "Confederate Memorial Day" on Sunday, so they could lionize and heroicize the pro-slavery faction of the United States.

A Pulitzer Prize was given to a journalist whose story has almost seen no play across the media - that the military analysts employed by many television news networks are also employed by companies or the Pentagon, entitites with a vested interest in influencing decisions on the issues the analysts are supposed to be talking about, and those interests are not disclosed.

More governmental skullduggery - Alyssa Peterson, after refusing to take part in the torture in Iraq, killed herself. The account comes from someone who knows her well and also objected to torturing prisoners. So some people on the ground were objecting to this while those in the highest ranks were approving of it, as well as the Loyal Opposition probably going along with it, considering that nobody seemed to raise that much for objections on the timeline.

Again, this is fairly moot discussion - the U.N.‘s top torture envoy repeats what the people know - there is no wiggle room - there must be prosecutions if the United States wants to claim that it lives up to treaty obligations. Regardless of whether you believe they did their job or not (and a nice dick move there, saying “I was waterboarded and I’m just fine” as part of your defense). And, as part of that knowledge, if there are photographs, then they should also be part of the record, regardless of whether you think they'll make excellent propaganda fodder for the enemy. Most of those things have already been out and used, anyway.

The Republican party has become advocates for nuclear energy, possibly as a way of wanting to be for greening without having to embrace renewables. Or, they could be seriously interested in how little nuclear energy costs. Soudns like they’re mostly interested in trying to snipe subsidies, though. Still, if you can even get the Republicans on board for it, might be worthwhile.

Several institutions of higher education are being visited by an anonymous fairy, one that insists nobody knows his or her name. Two checks, one for women and minority scholarships, the other for the general scholarship fund. And the guessing games begin.

On the opinions, Mr. Cline on why conservative elements are making fuss about the DHS report, much of which sounds like “We’re admitting that we’re the fringe and protesting that the government should be watching out for us”. Besides, the courts are not taking away your right to own a gun. They never have. They will, however, regulate within an inch of your life where you can buy them and the ammunition, and impose as many checks as needed to ensure that you are not a fringe element person who intends on using that weapon against others.

Ms. Bandes believes the increase in Iraqi violence is driectly related to the public announcement that Iraq will have to stand on its own feet soon, with insurgents trying to do as much damage as possible. What I’m missing out on is... why? If you’re trying to make the Iraqis look bad, you only prolong the presence of United States troops in official or unofficial capacities. It would be better to go silent until the U.S. troops were gone, make it look like Iraq was competent, and then start again.

The AP has nothing better to do than report on Barack Obama's self-awareness at his oratorical skills, which could easily be used as fodder for criticism of an egotistical president. Mr. O'Grady thinks Mr. Chavez embarrassed himself on the world stage with the book he gave to President Obama, derisively echoing an earlier work calling it “the idiot’s bible” among those who proclaim capitalism as their god.

The WSJ uses the hiding fo the Bank of America/Merril deal/threat as a good reason why nobody in banking trusts the government. Ms. Shelton says nobody in the government should trust the IMF, and block its attempt to ensure its own perpetuity, Mr. Winegarden says the only way back to prosperity is for the government not to spend anything, or, failing that, as little as possible, because only the private sector makes growth, and government borrowing and taxes disinclines people to save and invest their money, Ms. Cushman still believes the Obama amdinistration will go big-government socialist on us, and if we're not careful, it will happen to us incrementally until we are enmeshed in it before we can stop it, and Mr. Sununu thinks nobody in government should trust the government either, with the threat to use a budget reconciliation process on a national health-care bill, that would limit debate and only require a simple majority to pass. If it went that way, that would be dirty pool. Go the long way, and force the hand of your opposition if they really threaten that filibuster.

The WSJ has advice for the Republican Party - want to get back into power, field a candidate who can win. Which is sound and solid advice, unlike Bill'O, who believes that only papers with liberal leanings are suffering and going bankrupt, and it is precisely those liberal leanings that are hurting them. Because the country are conservatives and traditionalists, and don’t like papers or programs that are “openly contemptuous” of America’s national conservatism. Mr. Stokes weighs in on the Miss California issue, praising Miss Prejean for standing up for herself, vilifying Perez Hilton's respone to it, and almost making a good plea to the more hardcore evangelical elements. It starts off well - be more compassionate, follow the example of Jesus, love the sinner. And then, the bottom drops out when he says “but don’t go too far, or the fundamental message gets lost, and we can’t have homosexuals thinking we actually approve of them.” Because, in the end, they’re still degenerate sinners who have to be told what they’re doing is wrong and repent of it before God will accept them.

In technology, the rise of Playstation, or how Nintendo backing out of a deal meant they got stomped in the game market for a while, where do your electronics components originate, because they might come from somewhere not well known for human rights, sending photons through even highly dense material, which could scale up into a communications system, using Flickr description and geotags to build a map of what people are looking at, research on HUDs to deliver digital images straight to the eye, microholographic writing technique to put the data equivalent of 100 DVDs on a single disc, staving off locust attacks with Led Zeppelin, using "Joepardy!" as a testing ground for artificial intelligence, and using face recognition technology on Star Trek as a demonstration of all the things you can do just by being able to know who’s on screen.

Tonight’s competition for worsts dishonors begins and ends with one person - the landlord sending a rent due notice and a fee for early termination to the dead man's mother. Yes, because he didn’t give notice that he was going to be killed, the company is trying to put his mother on the hook for him. And yes, they know he’s dead. They don’t care.

Last for tonight, business cards made with actual meat.

It's all bits - ones and zeros, the lot. - 28 April 2009

Shall we begin with some oddball material? Like the license plate design that would have stuck a big Jeezis in the middle? Issues of separation of church and state, and those involving the dubious legality of things like “Choose life” plates, there are a lot of sacreligious things one could pair with such an image, and I suspect many of them would show up soon. The lawsuits and the like are already on their way. Further sacreliege comes from an old logo that has taken on a new and suggestive meaning.

Internationally, The United States just deployed troops and equipment in Israel to guard against Iran attacking. That chill that just ran up your spine? That would be the realization that Israel may very well have a green light to go bombing, and that the U.S. will back them up and help against any retaliation. Remember that alliances being tripped was how World War I got started...

Kim Jong Il's son appointed to National Defense Commission, could be favorite to succeed.

Domestically, Happy Equal Pay Day, and while the “women earn X for each male dollar” is still not 1.0, even when controlled for factors like career choice, the government is apparently doing better than the private sector at closing the wage gap. Probably because much of their hiring data, including salary, is a matter of public record. All around, though, educational attainment and women moving up into management positions is helping to close the gap.

Speaking of minorities, more atheists feel comfortable being atheists in the country.

An intended photo op trying to get an Air Force One-looking craft on the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty turned into a PR CF because nobody in New York knew it was happening beforehand. Frightening New Yorkers with planes is a bad idea.

FOX network will be showing the scheduled entertainent program isntead of the Presidnet's news conference on his one hundredth day, with the conference on FOX news and Fox Business Channel. No other major network will be showing programming.

What the news cycles will be talking about for a bit, however, is Arlen Specter's decision to leave the Republican Party and become a Democrat, which theoretically puts the Democratys at 59 Senate votes, with one possibly incoming. That 60 number, in the hands of Barack Obama? It’s a conservative’s worst nightmare, I suspect. Well, if all 60 were all on board totally with the President’s agenda, and would rubber-stamp anything he put through. (Yes, you may point, laugh.)

The White House dithers on its duty to release all the information about torture it can. Cheney claims it will vindicate him, the rest of us want to know how far down the rabbit hole we’re going. Well, at least, that’s what we thought. According to a Rasmussen poll, fifty-eight percent of the population doesn't want any more investigation. thers would prefer to snipe partisanly at one person or another, trying to turn a statement of fact (clearly, Congresscritters need to be investigated) into one of politics (Democrats are only going to go after Republicans on this, and are burying their own big involvement.) On teh politicization front, Mr. McGurn agrees, calls for more information to be released, and...displays that he doesn't quite understand that waterboarding was already illegal, and that there’s no real need to pass another law to explicitly say so. Still, for mroe transparency and release of the record, good for you, sir. Ms. Byrd, on the other hand, indicates her complete support for torture, by comparing a simulated drowning of a terrorist to the gas chambers of the Holocaust and claiming the former is necessary and supported by the populace, while the latter is not, that the torture worked, and that the absence of evidence is, indeed, evidence of absence, so naturally, the last amdinistrator kept us safe, and because the enemy out there does not have our morals and ideals, we should behave like them. Mr. Bialosky sums all this up in his column, declaring that torture does work, the Demcorats need to prove that torture recruits for al-Qaeda, that we should only stop if we have an alternative interrogation style to switch to that will work as well as torture, and of course, that everybody knew about it and approved of it, so it must have been okay then.

Luckily, it’s not up to the populace, or anyone else, to decide to stop until all the evidence is out and analyzed, at which point the independent Special Prosecutor(s) indicts whomever s/he damn well pleases.

Let’s play “spot the shift” on the following piece - an accusation that former Vice President Al Gore lied to a representative about where he put the money he made from his speaking, movie, book, et cetera. Mr. Gore says that he invested everything he made from the book/movie/etc. into a non-profit. The accusation declares that he said he put all of his money from his “business” into the non-profit, which would be a lie because of the cited proof that Mr. Gore has invested quite a bit in for-profit renewable energy enterprises. I do not know whether the “business” and the movie/book sales are the same thing, or whether there are spots that don’t overlap. Perhaps we could get a clarification from Mr. Gore and his accuser?

Speaking of climate, less than one thousand scientists being skeptical on climate change does not a consensus challenge make, but I will say that it’s important they exist, because heterodoxy often makes for better science.

The economy has sapped much of the strength and fire of Obama supporters, especially in areas that were already depressed before everyone else went south with them, making the first one hundred days a pretty rough ride.

In the opinions, let’s play one hundred days stuff. The New York Post claims one hundred mistakes already committed by the Obama administration for their first one hundred days in office, many of which smack of being very petty and people trying to find something to fill space with. Neal Boortz doesn't give the President any positive achievements at all for this time period. Mr. Prlutsky wanders everywhere he can go to call the President wrong, stupid, and destroying the country, making a great case for an example of jingoism and “America! F**k yeah!”, where the United States has done everything in virtuous light for the betterment of the world and those ingrates don’t show the proper respect they should and don’t come jumping like lapdogs when we request help, settling eventually on calling the Congressional Black Caucus racist because, well, they segregate.

Lee Woodruff on the new phenomenon of our lives - the Panini generation, stuck between caring for children and for parents, while holding work together, with heat and pressure all around and no real room to have a mental health day.

The Secretary of State spun the spate of suicide strikes into something positive, indicating the explosions are a sign that the opposition is losing and knows it. Mr. Aly says that Egypt is now becoming a target for Iran, because they have decided to pursue peace instead of continuing to antagonize the Israel-Palestine process. And then, Ms. Parker claims that the Untied States&aposs; special relationship with Israel is what's keeping peace in the region, and that the Obama administration plans on throwing Israel to the wolves and cozying up to all the unfree countries around it. Reference above, re: missile defense on whether Israel is truly being abandoned.

Mr. Sobel of the EFF says that the administration promised us transparency...and we're still waiting on fulfillment of that promise.

Mr. Dvorsky muses on what should be considered personhood, looking both to elevate“ lesser” creatures into personhood and to guard against the point at thich we become the “lesser” creatures in need of protected personhood status.

Mr. Troy points out actions of the previous administrator that are helping the current administrator fight the flu, while also indicating that the Congresscritters should confirm appointees to HHS so that the populace feels reassured that people are actually working on it.

And the Slacktivist compares the current economic crisis to It's A Wonderful Life and makes it stick. More George Bailey, less Old Man Potter.

In technology, genetic engineering of crops to be enriched with multiple nutrients enters test phase. If the crops are safe, non-toxic, and have their nutrients metabolized correctly, the developing world could get a jolt from some of the supercrop. Assuming, of course, that someone actually gives it to them at the price they can afford. Additionally, sensors that can detect lung cancer in the breath, stem cell engineering to generate cardiac muscle,

Last for tonight, we go back to the oddballs with the world's weirdest festivals.