Overheard at work today...

So, I walk in and hear the following...

"We don't get paid well enough to think. I dare you to find the requirement to think in my job description."

These are priceless gems that I get when I walk into the middle of a conversation. I thought I would start documenting them when I hear them.

Yet another Monday - 21-22 June 2009

It’s Monday, which always means the weekend’s material is on display today. Considering there was a Solstice passed, there will be a few articles about paganism, temporally relevant but otherwise not newsworthy on other days. Thus, we find out that paganism in general is on the rise, although not at percentages that would dent the Christian majority, I’m sure. And then, they will fade back into the shadows until someone wants to use that religious belief in a court case or a new Satanic panic. Until then, we can go back to what we always argue about - whether or not legal government contracts should be subject to the whim of certain religious beliefs.

Additionally, Like anyone didn't know this, but the world's worst beer is American. Anyone who’s had some knows why.

And, because it was Father’s Day yesterday in the States, a celebration of dadhood. I think it does the job far better than calls and missives from the White House for fathers to stay in the lives of their children, although those have their place, as well. I almost think that promoting effective sex education would help, because then you might not have the kinds of situations where someone who isn’t ready for a child bails on the person carrying it. Platitudes about having fathers become Christians as a way of fixing the problem are not the way to go.

Actually importantly, the budget cuts in the state of Ohio means that a lot of libraries (which are all state-funded) are facing tough decisions. Shuttered Library wants to collect the stories of people who love and use their library.

Iran is still top story in many places, and the turnout having more votes than people is a widespread phenomenon, not just in provinces, but in several cities. While not yet to full-on bloodshed, tear gas has been fired into protesting crowds, and indications point to the government not backing down on cracking down on the protests. That they’re continuing is a sign of real progress, according to some, and the potentially encouraging development of the public outing of what was a clerical backroom brawl indicates the situation is more unstable than previously thought. I am still not seeing (because, perhaps I don’t know where to look) that the protest has shifted from “give us the candidate we elected” to “down with the government that fixes results in their favor”, but the longer this goes on, the more likely it will happen. And the clerical fight might be how it gets done.

Of course, there are others who think there's interference coming from outside sources, trying to play up the danger or to inject their particular message into the conversation.

Elsewhere, the plight of the Roma in Belfast and in Kosovo reminds us of the need to truly strive against racism in all forms, and to respect all people.

And on the United States first land war in Asia, one that may have also been conducted under false pretenses during the last administration’s sway, Taliban forces find they can acquite technology on-line that confuses the American military, like patches that IFF as a friend, not a foe.

Of note, today, Greenland becomes significantly mroe indeepndent from Denmark, and could become a big player in resource markets.

Using the human cloud as opposed to the mechanical one, a project that throws MP expense data at a curious project has quite a few takers, and will likely generate some interesting stories for The Guardian to go pursue.

Domestically, speaking of transparency, for a president claiming to want it, Mr. Obama hasn't been really good about transparency of communication. As a reminder, Mr. Cline tells us why this is bad, and why Presidential appropriations of power under the previous administrator have led to this situation, despite the claims of then-candidate Obama to reverse the trend.

News-worthy only in its stupidity, Stanek and company have taken the General's satire seriously and are trying to make you believe there are people threatening "pro-lifers" lives. Naturally, The General responds to the lie with more fun-making.

However, taking advantage of the stupid (but not The Stupid, which is a different thing entirely) and then using people's trust that members of the same cult as you should be more trustworthy than others to bilk them out of money is earning you a one-way ticket to Shepherd Book’s Special Hell.

The President's health-care options face stiffer opposition than his stimulus plan, partially because the stimulus plan cost lots and the CBO estimate indicates health care reforms will also cost significant amounts of money. All of this amounts to unintended consequences making the plans of men and presidents much less smooth.

In the opinions, an editorial comic about how Republicans and insurance companies view the viability of a public health care option, with an apt comparison using a poll to show how much the public supports a public option. Adding a new wrinkle to the attack line, Messrs. Rivkin and Casey wonder if a single-payer health care system with rationing of care, the assumed eventual result of any public-option health care program, would violate Constitutional rights to privacy, because the government would be making what are normally considered private decisions in what care they offer, reimburse, or deny. The good think about having many legislators, however, is that they can create competing bills. Ms. Levy like the option proposed by senator Wyden, requiring everyone to get health care individually, but also believing The Market (all praise to its name) and a tax deduction will give companies and shoppers alike incentives to make and find affordable care.

The Girl with a One-Track Mind reminds journalists that exposing anonymity and sources is a decision that should not be taken lightly, as many people who are doing what they do anonymously because exposure would be damaging, and in some cases, deadly. Journalists expecting to be respected for exposing anonymous people without making those decisions are hacks and attention-seekers at best.

The WSJ pans the market reform measures unveiled by the President, singling out the credit rating agencies as a piece that required real reform or dissolution and was passed over.

Making a bid for high-velocity pastry, but just missing is Bill'O, who commits the same mistakes he says liberals made about Barack Obama in describing why David Letterman’s joke about Bristol Palin went awry - that the generally-conservative people in the United States took offense to a joke about children and mothers who carry traditional values. Well, considering that it was the Palins who decided Letterman was talking about the youngert daughter, rather than the one that had been used as a political football in the last campaign, that’s part of the point. Disingenous reading of statistics (like declaring that liberals are “ounumbered four-to-one” by counting moderates as being against liberals as well as conservatives) and saying, “if it had been Obama and his daughters, someone would have been crushed” does the rest for him. Well, he’s right that if it had been the Obama daughters, people would have been crushed, but that’s also because they are too young and they weren’t used as poster-children for the compelled-childbirth movement during the last political campaign, too. Context, Bill, something you seem to be lacking.

In the running (and you know it’s an interesting day when Bill misses the top three), Mr. Klavan uses the story of a stoning in Iran as his entry point into attacking multiculturalism, or at least his version of it, one where there are no such things as truths, only narratives and excuses. Because everyone is so enamored of this delusion, he says, we let things like stonings happen in Iran and try to justify and excuse them (or let others do it). Thus, we have to abandon the equality of narrative, and re-harness our truths and go spread them to everyone else. Assuming, of course, that we actually do think of stoning as just something certain countries do and it’s no big deal. The WSJ thinks that the President is still being a naif about dealing with North Korea and Iran, and that he will have to start behaving more like his predecessor if he wants results.

The runner-up, who is on track to displace Bill’O as punching-bag of choice, because he seems to be able to out-crazy him every time I’m linked to him writing, is Mr. Bozell III, who forgets Trekkie Monster's song and is so very shocked to find out that pornographic material is available on the Internet, as an iPhone app, and elsewhere, with no real barriers to access so that curious or wandering children can easily discover it - this time, he's targeting YouTube. Because so many under-18s use and look on it, the responsibility falls on YouTube to construct barriers that would prevent those under-18s from accessing the adult content, including profane language and overdubbing of new tracks onto Disney animated features, Mr. Bozell says. We must think of the children, and put these censorious tools in place, because it’s impossible for parents to watch where their kid goes all the time on the ‘Net. Mr. Bozell, a determined child can not only go where they like on the Internet, they can probably cover their tracks (and yours, since you were probably doing research for the piece by wandering in the seedier sides) from most parents. The way we keep children out of 18+ areas in physicality is requiring anyone who looks too young to provide their government-issued identification. For obvious reasons, this will not work on the Internet, nor would anyone want to have to do that. Which means, shucks, that those parents will just have to do what they can to teach their kids about making good Internet choices, like they have to right now about people misrepresenting themselves on-line, either to engage in stat rape, fraud, or mean-spirited teasing. And, maybe, just maybe, some destigmatization of sex, sexuality, and sex education would help, too. If kids are getting much of their sex ed and thoughts about what a sexual relationship looks like from the Internet and/or porn, there’s clearly a gap that needs filling, here. Finally, don’t people make horribly-ineffective but feel-good filtering software that parents can install to try and block access to those kinds of sites? It’s not like there aren’t options. By making YouTube do it, though, I’m guessing Mr. Bozell hopes that they can then be held liable if one gets past, or if he objects to a legitimate usage down the road, and then maybe some Concerned Censors of the Book-Burning Variety can get YouTube shut down for not policing themselves and exposing a minor to adults-only material. Thus, his real goal is accomplished, at least for one site. (Should we tell him about all the Youtube variants that exist that are strictly for porn, or would that fry his head?)

Winning our firey quiche, though, because, despite the fact that they can propound interesting and crazy things, opinion columnists still can’t hold a candle to what elected officials say and do, Meet Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis, advocate for child hunger, who wonders whether programs intended to feed children receiving free or reduced school lunches are warranted and good cost to the taxpayer, believing that, say, sixteen year-old should be looking to find a minimum wage job that will feed them on their break, and that churhes, if they wanted to, could take on the task of feeding the hungry, instead of having the government do the work. Here’s the Republican idea that people who aren’t working are lazy and should either go out and work or starve extended down to children. This reasoning, I believe, was part of why we enacted child labour laws and other such things, so we’ve already declared it a bad line of logic. Why revisit it, again? For this, we’ll take the quiche you would normally get at high velocity and serve it to some hungry children.

In technology, solar power panels that look like normal roofing, which is a key to widespread solar asoption - if it looks like it isn’t there, it’s easier to get the neighborhood association to sign on. Elsewhere, high definition pictures of JAXA's probe seconds before it crashed into Luna, giving us high definition pictures of Luna’s surface, a house fit for a familiy designed as a nautilus shell, the beginning of construction on the world's first commercial spaceport, a working prototype of a wireless power device, charging and powering a speaker from more than a meter away, utilizing cell-phone microphones to classify and mine the reality around a person, research indicating the size of a social circle stays the same, but about half the people in it get replaced every seven years, and advancing computer vision by making it process and track images more like the human eye does.

Last for tonight, if you enjoy adult films (on Mr. Bozell’s YouTube or derivatives), you can thank whatever you like that the FBI's attempt to censor and block the showing of "Deep Throat" failed. Speaking of censors, Mr. Crovitz thinks that American businesses should push back a bit on Chinese demands that computers sold in that country come preinstalled with their censorware of choice, and that doing so would help to preserve good business between the country, and possibly let makers of censorware compete to be the best at blocking Chinese citizens from the Internet at large.

And worthy images to leave you with, paintings of tanuki and their wondrous testicles, part one, and paintings of tanuki and their wondrous testicles, part two.