First weekend half - 18-20 June 2009

Greetings, all. Spent some time away from the world, and am ready to come back to it and report on what’s been going on. And recommendations to toss Tollhouse cookie dough before it makes you toss your cookies is the least of our worries. We have to deal with PETA's stink about Presidential fly-swatting, knife-wielding gorillas, infections resulting from multiple surgeries to "restore virginity", and public declarations of infidelity (actually, more on that later...), too.

Additionally, it seems that one of my major news sources is going very single-sources, weighting heavily to the Washington Times as opposed to the more mixed series of material previously seen. I knew that source had conservative leanings (it’s where I get many of the opinions I line up for a shallow parody of Countdown’s Worst Persons in the World, after all), but in the news section, anyway, it seemed pretty source-agnostic. I’m not sure I like the shift, and so I may have to be shopping around for a non-Google-News-type aggregator or person who puts together good cogent dispatches from the sea of weird. It’s unfortunate, because I like that source’s work.

Before getting into the bad and evil stuff, here's a nice story of how Ray Bradbury continues to use his public library at his age, how he’s trying to raise money so that those libra and he paid us such a nice compliment about how libraries fill the gap where schools and universities aren’t or are out of affordability.

Pixar gives a dying girl her wish by providing a private screening of ":UP", bringing along a DVD, despite the film not being released to it yet. A little while after viewing the movie, the girl died.

On the international stage, Timeline data from Iran - anything that purports to come from there, of course, should be taken with salt grains - the media does their best to comfirm actual sources, but nothing guaranteed. The WSJ has short pieces solicited in Iran. The Supreme Leader has declared the protests must stop, with the implicit threat of violence following for those who do not. The protests are still scheduled to go on. Supposedly, the government has caught up with social media and will not be tracking dissenters and protesters, so Twitter may soon not be our best feed for information.

Rumors are up that North Korea will fire a missile in the direction of Hawai'‘i, for which missile defense materials have appeared, just in case.

Pakistan continues their assault against the Taliban - sometimes, in the media world, you have to remember that multiple fronts are happening at the same time. Iran’s the focus now, but there’s other stuff going on, too.

When you have quotas, they must be met, even if it means stopping people of certain races to balance out the proportions and thus not appear to be targeting certain population segments. Of course, doing so exposes the underside of stopping people in teh first place - it tends to irritate them a lot.

Domestically, need a reminder on what the President currently plans to do about LGBT rights? When peoples such as the president of the Unitarian Universalists of America have already made their statements in favor of equality for all? And people are generating thousands of words (in picture form) to express their hopes for equality for all? (Although, The SCOTUS made a higher standard of proof on age discrimination to the person making the claim).

Other political matters - Another Republican with an affair, this one a Promise Keeper, which just means we have the hypocrisy problem. Wait. The person he was having an affair with doubled her pay, apparently for taking on extra responsibilities, and her son got paid for doing work at the RNC, too? Now things look dicey. The General has recommendations on how to proceed.

The Republican Party also complained that ABC was doing a primetime special on the President, after unearthing information indicating ABC employees donated more to the Obama campaign than, say, Fox. Thus, the media bias accusations go flying (ex. Mr. Thomas and . Well, we probably would do the same if Fox were doing a piece on the McCain White House. Republicans also claim they were not permitted to buy advertising or participate in the program to provide their views. Which is the prerogative of the private broadcasting company known as ABC.

Redux, file-sharer. Verdict, still guilty, punishment: $80,000 per song, for a total of $1.92 million in awards. Eighth amendment? Any time now... The settlement option offered is a “mere” 3,000 to 5,000 per song. This is disturbing. And there are a lot of questions as yet unanswered about the accuracy of file-sharing sniffing and other parts of the case that the jury declared guilt on.

The Thomas Kincade Company had an arbitration award restored, meaning the company is on the hook for more than $2.1 million in damages and attorney's fees resulting from gallery owners who sued the company for ruining them by having them invest in the paintings, then turning around and undercutting the retail operations with direct discount sales.

Economy sucks. Which means budget shortfalls have to be made up. Which means choices that suck on closing or stopping important services. Which can make trying to run a scam with billions in fake Treasury bonds all the more mystifying. To underscore the point of the economy sucking, Esquire sent a journalist out to apply for more than three hundred jobs. He got eight interviews. Which is probaly more than you would get in, say, Michigan, where yoking the economy to one industry continues to pay out suck for dividends. Of course, when someone rolls out a plan to possibly reform and prevent this from happening like it has, criticism abounds, often from the people who think they don’t need any extra regulation after dumping this mess into the hands of the taxpayer.

Elsewhere, the former fiancee of Bristol Palin is settling into a modeling and acting career, riding the fame that he gatehred from being part of the political scandal.

For those interested in sustainability measures, another plea to use hemp instead of petroleum-based products when it comes to clothing and other fibers, as well as a possible fuel source, and many other uses.

In the opinions, Mr. Farley ruminates on how empires and governments die - when the soldiers refuse to shoot to protesters.

After staying out of the headlines and nocommenting on his successor's decisions, the previous administrator finally broke his silence and criticized President Obama. While still attempting to maintain his official nocommenting, occasionally switching back and forth between the two.

Mr. Blankley indicates his distate for new economic regulations, believing it will exacerbate what the next likely financial crisis will be, as well as being a compilation of special interests and occasionally-contradicting philosophies combined into a bill. I knew there was a reason I like listening to him on Left, Rigth, and Center - he’s sane.

Mr. Elder believes the numbers of those without health insurance are greatly exaggerated for the sake of nationalization of health care, and that The Market (all praise to its mighty hand) could fix the problem by being more competitive, and that really, there’s always the emergency room, regardless as to whether you have insurance or paying for it will bankrupt you completely. It’s a consistent conservative position, even while it acknowledges the elephant in the room - the emergency room should be a backstop, not the primary point of contact for people. Mr. Goldberg leaves Mr. Tyrell to raise the spectre of care rationing for senior citizens in an Orwellian ObamaCare situation, and Ms. McCaughey to tell you that you won't be able to keep your insurance if the Kennedy bill passes, and The WSJ to tell you it will be too expensive right from the beginning, thus leaving the only option available to be making health insurance more subject to The Market (all priase to its name) to cut costs with, if not simply being the party of NO on the matter. (What they should be looking at, in that article, are the ways that Safeway encourages their healthy behavior - writ large, across companies, and into our urban planning, we might be able to do some dent work of our own, public option or not.)

Elsewhere, The WSJ praises Governor Schwarzenneger's prposals for a flat tax and spending cuts to make up California's bedgetary shotrfalls, lavishing great praise on the flat tax because it will stop Californians from vanishing to other states where they don’t have to pay income tax at all. If they don’t want to pay taxes, they’re still going to go away. Conservative economics hinges on the idea that if you don’t tax the rich all that much, your revenues will increase because they won’t try to dodge paying their share, which seems rather odd to me, but it makes a perverse sort of sense - not enough income versus none.

Mr. Sowell still sees Sonia Sotomayor as a racist and someone who will operate in "pay-back" mode against the white folk who were oppressing her ancestors.

The WSJ is bitter at the NEA, accusing them of lying when they talk about the ineffectiveness of the Washington D.C. school voucher system.

Just missing out on hot flaky doom, Mr. Hanson believes he has a handle on how the Age of Obama works, with all the standard talking points about up is down and left is right, and Bush can be blamed for everything.

Getting in our quiche competition, Mr. Goldberg believes that the President should speak out on the Iran matter in favor of the opposition, and that his continued support for democracy without supporting a candidate is useless. Mr. Goldberg is not insane enough to suggest a third land war in Asia, but he feels the President is being too quiet. Perhaps when the matter becomes more about a revolution intending to overthrow the Supreme Leader and his government, then the U.S. could step in, but for now, this is Bush v. Gore in Iran, not the Revolutionary War. Mr. Krauthammer disagrees with my assessment, down to referencing hanging chads, believing this has mushroomed into the requisite regime versus populace, and thus the United States would be eminently justified stepping in to bring it to a successfull conclusion, as opposed to the bloody crackdown that will inevitably happen without that support. I’m sure he considers that stepping in gives the regime an excuse to engage in that crackdown as being part of “foreign interference” or something like that. Providing a breath of sanity needed here, Ms. Noonan realigns the sights to make mention that we may not have to do formal declarations because it should be an obvious fact by now whom the United States supports, as well as talking about why it still may be wise for the President to continue making nuanced remarks about that support. Ms. Charen turns in a sane column supporting a watch-and-wait idea based on the knowledge that Mr. Mousavi's positions are not yet known, despite his popular groundswell. If he turns out to direct the populace toward crushing the Supreem Leader and the ayatollahs, I suspect there will be some support dashing in fast. If, instead, he’s there to enforce the will of the people, but not to disrupt the system of government, then the United States probably does much better by staying out of it entirely.

The American Civil Rights Union, the conservative attempt to confuse people about who really fights for them, is shilling REAL ID again, painting a picture of F.U.D. where terrorists and illegal aliens will get driver licenses and use them like the 11 September attackers did to move freely about the country and attack again. But if we had the REAL ID secure licenses, of course, only Americans would be able to get them, only Americans would be able to vote in elections, and terrorists and illegal aliens would be stopped from getting into the country and staying here to do their nefarious work. do you seriously believe that? If you do, I have a bridge in Tacoma that’s looking for a buyer...

Sharing dubious honors there is less-populated-but-still-unfunny comedian David Limbaugh, who is certain that the cultish adoration of the President everyone has will evaporate eventually, to our horror at what we went along with.

When it comes to the worst people in the world today, though, opinion writers cannot hold a candle to the city of Bozeman, Montana, which, as part of its background check, asks you to give up logins and passwords to your social networking sites. Pushing into the private lives as a background check for city employees? Don’ think so. Private matters are private, yo.

In technology, Microsoft is offering a contest to get you to download IE8 - so you can follow the clues and possibly get money... of course, you also get IE8. Plus, old, frozen microbes revived and ready for new action, a nest discovered that has been in use for 2,500 years, some concept renderings of a physically possible warp starship, assuming certain speculative parts of the unvierse turn out to be true, Collecta, an engine that scours social media updates to provide the freshest of fresh,

and pictures of how the earth has changed over time, as viewed from the eyes in the sky.

Last for tonight, animals made out of electronic parts, and if you’re looking to learn more about history and the things that the presidents of the United States have done, visiting their presidential libraries is not a bad idea. (Although, for Gerald Ford, his papers are actually in Ann Arbor, and his effects are in Grand Rapids.) Having been inside and looking at some of the documents, there’s a lot there that someone could see, just with the federal researcher pass that gives you access to the unclassified documents. If you have clearance, there’s probably even more interesting things locked away in the secret and top secret vaults.

You may not, however, find out whether the presidents posted reviews of snackfoods. For that, you’ll need taquitos.net. If seeking physical landmarks of similar oddities, The Altas Obscura will help.

If, however, iamges are more your thing, peruse the young girl tipping the older woman,

and Portwiture, a service that mashes up recent Flickr content with the substance of your Twitter posts. Mostly an experiment in combining social services, but the pictures produced can be interesting.