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Cheers, to all. We live in a world where olive oil's uses other than as a foodstuff migrate to teh web. Isn't that neat?
Out in the world, The United States formally withdrew all its combat troops from the streets of Iraq back into bases, where they are only deployable at the request of the Iraqi government. Advisory and training officers and soldiers are not restricted in this manner. So, in a way, many years after it was first declared, mission accomplished, although not entirely so until the formal troop pullout in 2011.
In Iran, the problems of trust magnify when it comes to the Internet and repressive regimes, so not only is misinformation and disinformation possible, you never know who's looking, and the authorities are rapidly adapting to use those tools to identify people they want arrested. The rhetoric on the United States side has ratcheted up to match claims by Ahmadinejad for the United States to apologize for interfering as well as further unrest and the government acting against United Kingdom embassy staff. This will make Mr. Anzar happy, as he calls for more people to protest more about Iran, lest our silence enable the regime to continue.
A United States official was quoted as saying a North Korean ship suspected of carrying banned goods will not be searched by force, which could give call for more commentary about "weakness" on security. (Lo, and behold, the WSJ complains about cuts in missile defense at the time when they feel we should be building it up against Iran and North Korea, as well as printing Mr. Kyl and Mr. Perle's similar opinion about the necessity of missile defense. At least Mr. Schoenfeld offers some variety, suggesting we need to rebuild intelligence capabilities to spy on and topple other governments when the situation warrants it.)
And lest we think there aren't other land wars going on, Pakistani officials reported 20 Taliban killed in a raid.
Last out before coming home, Honduras is now in a bind, with the international community recognizing a recently-ousted-by-coup leader as the legitimate one, and the powers that be inside the country recognizing the ouster as legitimate. Depending on who you listen to, the President was trying to overstep his constitutional authority and declare himself dictator-for-life and the refusal and subsequent deposition of the President was acting to defend the Constitution, or it's another Central American military coup with trumped-up charges.
Domestically, Fifteen percent of grades 7 to 12 students think they're going to die before they hit 35. According to the study authors, this may help with more explanation why teenagers and college-age students are such giant risk-takers.
Seeking consensus may exclude the best ideas from the mix and generate rewards for the wrong people, according to a study at Stanford's Graduate School of Business - making the game as much about who you know (and who thinks fondly of you) as much as whether or not you have the best ideas. If you can get people talking about your idea, then it may stick around a bit longer than if it's just a good idea.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell continues to take qualified military members off the rolls in fear of phantom morale problems, so maybe someone could change that? Suspend the rules and lean hard on the lawmakers to get rid of a stupid law? I mean, we've still got stupid people in relation to believing that children born to loving parents who happen to be homosexual are harmed and hurt by not having a parent of either gender, which, through fear of homosexuals and an unwillingness to budge on what a family definition is, are probably doing more harm to the developing children than anything you think their two same-sex parents are doing to them. And, of course, the incessant question as to whether children of homosexuals turn out to be homosexual themselves. Need more adopted children so that way they stop becoming a curiosity and start becoming a regular part of life.
The Waxman-Markey climate bill made it through the House of Representatives on a close vote and now travels to the Senate to see if it will make a similar pass or be voted down. The President urged the Senators not to listen to misinformation and to pass the bill.
Now that we've lost him, Michael Jackson has become a plaform to reminisce and to make social commentary on. Witness Mr. Wyman description of Mr. Jackson's life as a celebrity suicide, considering he never really had a normal life to start with, so nowhere to really return to when things continued to get weirder. Mr. Kunstler compares the living zombie Michael to the living zombie America and find them both lacking braaaaaaains. On the other side of the coin, though,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imomus sees Mr. Jackson as the vanguard of what humanity might become, if we can move away from what we consider normal into the world where we are completely self-constructed.
Last before opinions, the Internet was unprepared for Michael Jackson's death, with several popular sites experiencing slowdowns or service interruptions with all the activity surrounding the announcement.
Welcome to opinions, where a Canadian clinical psychologist writes in to debunk myths about the Canadian social insurance system with regard to health care - it's not perfect, but if you want to make comparisons, Canada does better in a lot of statistically measurable categories with their system and covers more people than the United States does in theirs. Mr. Cline takes up that call and details how insurance companies have been making sure they stay profitable by buying off politicians, denying the claims people buy insurance for, and then finding ways to dump the unprofitable off their policies.
Also attempting to make the country better than it was, GE's Jeff Immelt spoke of the need to refocus on research and development, as well as manufacturing and exporting, so as to make the country better - innovate, look long term, and then export those innovations to others.
Mr. Herbert suggests that passing the Waxman-Markey bill (or a watered-down version thereof) may end up helping the country go greener as a cost-cutting measure, with efficiency gains from farmers to household and manufacturers, as well as producing some new technologies to cut, sequester, or reduce carbon emissions.
Take what opinion of it you will, but there's an awuful lot of red up top in divorces, teen pregnancies, and actually paying for pornographic content. That is, if you want to engage in red-stae, blue-state politics. If you're moer a unification person, then perhaps Barack Obama is the new George W. Bush is your cup of caffeinated beverage, or ddjango's belief that the current President is in over his head and has abdicated rule to various factions.
The WSJ lambasts North Carolina for their attempts to collect taxes on commerce done by Amazon through affiliates and referrals happening in their state, as well as he now-developing Canada-United States trade war over sloppily-written alternative fuel subsidization.
Mr. Keller feels victory for charter schools in Boston, now that the mayor is experimenting with them, as part of a commitment to make schools better. Not missing a beat, of course, Mr. Keller also spends most of the article needling the teachers' unions as blocking progress and reform for selfish reasons, in addition to explaining why the mayor took his step to secure funding and results. Thus, association complete of teacher unions bad, charter schools good, Mr. Keller warns that the governor should start supporting charter schools, because everyone else in his state does (As goes Boston, so goes the state, apparently.)
Mr. Roger Robinson gives his testimony to a Congressional committee about the need to make American companies, the government, and those who do business with America feel mightily uncomfortable about also doing business with places we consider terror sponsors, including the possibility of contract revocation or defunding of investment dollars in their company, as well as putting stricter conditions or blocking the IMF from loaning money we provide them to places that we don't like.
Mr. Nichols thinks the Congresscritters he feels are responsible for our housing drop should lay off of trying to meddle in other areas of the economy (nice throwaway, by the way, about how the Dems are also apparently dedicated to the destruction of the health care and financial sectors, too). What could have been a decent column about hoe the market needs time to fix itself is instead name-calling, socialist-baiting, and otherwise burying the point he was aiming for. It's not quiche-worthy, though.
Ms. Saunders opines that the decision to award reimbursement for a private school disability tuition, withotu taking the public school special ed, to a child who had apparently done well enough in public school before an ADHD diagnosis and a marijuana problems was made without much for common sense, and that it reinforces the idea that kids with clever lawyers and those willing to make diagnoses are the ones winning out, instead of all the other kids who are fine and attending public school (and whose funding will be reduced in all these tuition payouts that will theoretically happen.
Ms. Malkin accuses the EPA of predetermined conclusions and dismissing sctudies that raised doubts about their desired climate change end, accusing the administration that was supposedly about science trumping politics of hypocrisy of high order, and further insinuating that it's an unwritten policy of the current administration to fire or dismiss those who go against the orthodoxy. Points for paranoia, but that's about all you've got going for you.
On the top of the inverted pyramid we call the quiche competition, Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, speculating that the only way to save newspapers would be to criminalize paraphrasing or linking to news sites as a violation of copyright law. Well, if that were the case, than this blog would dry up in a hurry, ya? Not to mention the Internet would basically become unnavigable, as the hyperlink is sort of the bedrock of how things work around here.
But, doing better than that, Bill'O decides he's a crusader against Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, now that it suits him to criticize a poll by the New York Times, believing that the poll was deliberately skewed by the Times to produce a favorable result, destroying any "scientific" credibility that it had, because it also asked what the political leanings of the respondents were. The people in favor of higher taxes also voted for the current President. Which is the good science that lets people like Bill'O bloviate about how unscientific the poll was. If the Times was really trying to put one over on the populace, they wouldn't include any of that other data that lets people make correlations like that, Bill. And who knows? Maybe the people who would oppose the public option also declined to consent in the survey, too.
Finally, because opinion columnists still can't hold a calendar to what actual representatives and elected officials do, Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern has a proclamation she wants the State to sign and distribute, declaring the causes of the economic crisis to be our moral crisis, and then proceeds to enumerate said causes of the moral crisis - "abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery". She believes the declaration of June as an LGBT pride month is against "the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives". She then calls on the country, the President, and everyone else to return to the mythical Christianity of the far right's hagiographic Founding Fathers, including repenting of our sins and attending the National Day of Prayer.
In a way, you know, fundamentalist Christians remind me of Confucians. If the man of the house is rectified, his family will be rectified. If the leader of the state is rectified, the people of the state will be rectified. If the Emperor is rectified, the people will be rectified. And all it takes is doing the right rituals, at the right time, speaking the right words, and the country will be rectified, and all will be well. (At least, until troublemakers like Laozi and Mengzi show up...) I have no idea whether they would take offense at comparing an ancient Chinese philosophy to their Revealed Truth and finding similarities or not.
Regardless, Representative Sally Kern, sho can be expecting all sorts of calls, letters, and investigations as to whether public money has been spent or will be spent on this tripe, today's quiche recipient (and quite possibly, worst person in the world.)
In technology, without a browser plugin, Firefox 3.5 can resize images in a non-linear fashion, while supposedly preserving the important content in the picture, which, speaking of, Firefox 3.5 releases tomorrow, odd objects in space, the banning of RMT in China, which is likely to kill a significant amount if the RMT economy, a motorcycle with a full-size sidecar, the retirement of Kodachrome film, the possibility of simulating reality's rules in virtual worlds (which kind of takes the fun out of the virtual worlds, if you ask me), and the possibility that Africa has sufficient land to feed the world's hungry and increased populace, if cultivated right.
Oh, and single-use water bottled constructed from paper.
Last for tonight, taking the style and adding things that jar the eye, make sure you spell check and have someone proof your signs before they get made, and then have someone look it over one more time just to be sure you're not juxtaposing anything.
If that all fails, make sure that the Cheetos are handy to attack people with.
Out in the world, The United States formally withdrew all its combat troops from the streets of Iraq back into bases, where they are only deployable at the request of the Iraqi government. Advisory and training officers and soldiers are not restricted in this manner. So, in a way, many years after it was first declared, mission accomplished, although not entirely so until the formal troop pullout in 2011.
In Iran, the problems of trust magnify when it comes to the Internet and repressive regimes, so not only is misinformation and disinformation possible, you never know who's looking, and the authorities are rapidly adapting to use those tools to identify people they want arrested. The rhetoric on the United States side has ratcheted up to match claims by Ahmadinejad for the United States to apologize for interfering as well as further unrest and the government acting against United Kingdom embassy staff. This will make Mr. Anzar happy, as he calls for more people to protest more about Iran, lest our silence enable the regime to continue.
A United States official was quoted as saying a North Korean ship suspected of carrying banned goods will not be searched by force, which could give call for more commentary about "weakness" on security. (Lo, and behold, the WSJ complains about cuts in missile defense at the time when they feel we should be building it up against Iran and North Korea, as well as printing Mr. Kyl and Mr. Perle's similar opinion about the necessity of missile defense. At least Mr. Schoenfeld offers some variety, suggesting we need to rebuild intelligence capabilities to spy on and topple other governments when the situation warrants it.)
And lest we think there aren't other land wars going on, Pakistani officials reported 20 Taliban killed in a raid.
Last out before coming home, Honduras is now in a bind, with the international community recognizing a recently-ousted-by-coup leader as the legitimate one, and the powers that be inside the country recognizing the ouster as legitimate. Depending on who you listen to, the President was trying to overstep his constitutional authority and declare himself dictator-for-life and the refusal and subsequent deposition of the President was acting to defend the Constitution, or it's another Central American military coup with trumped-up charges.
Domestically, Fifteen percent of grades 7 to 12 students think they're going to die before they hit 35. According to the study authors, this may help with more explanation why teenagers and college-age students are such giant risk-takers.
Seeking consensus may exclude the best ideas from the mix and generate rewards for the wrong people, according to a study at Stanford's Graduate School of Business - making the game as much about who you know (and who thinks fondly of you) as much as whether or not you have the best ideas. If you can get people talking about your idea, then it may stick around a bit longer than if it's just a good idea.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell continues to take qualified military members off the rolls in fear of phantom morale problems, so maybe someone could change that? Suspend the rules and lean hard on the lawmakers to get rid of a stupid law? I mean, we've still got stupid people in relation to believing that children born to loving parents who happen to be homosexual are harmed and hurt by not having a parent of either gender, which, through fear of homosexuals and an unwillingness to budge on what a family definition is, are probably doing more harm to the developing children than anything you think their two same-sex parents are doing to them. And, of course, the incessant question as to whether children of homosexuals turn out to be homosexual themselves. Need more adopted children so that way they stop becoming a curiosity and start becoming a regular part of life.
The Waxman-Markey climate bill made it through the House of Representatives on a close vote and now travels to the Senate to see if it will make a similar pass or be voted down. The President urged the Senators not to listen to misinformation and to pass the bill.
Now that we've lost him, Michael Jackson has become a plaform to reminisce and to make social commentary on. Witness Mr. Wyman description of Mr. Jackson's life as a celebrity suicide, considering he never really had a normal life to start with, so nowhere to really return to when things continued to get weirder. Mr. Kunstler compares the living zombie Michael to the living zombie America and find them both lacking braaaaaaains. On the other side of the coin, though,
imomus sees Mr. Jackson as the vanguard of what humanity might become, if we can move away from what we consider normal into the world where we are completely self-constructed.Last before opinions, the Internet was unprepared for Michael Jackson's death, with several popular sites experiencing slowdowns or service interruptions with all the activity surrounding the announcement.
Welcome to opinions, where a Canadian clinical psychologist writes in to debunk myths about the Canadian social insurance system with regard to health care - it's not perfect, but if you want to make comparisons, Canada does better in a lot of statistically measurable categories with their system and covers more people than the United States does in theirs. Mr. Cline takes up that call and details how insurance companies have been making sure they stay profitable by buying off politicians, denying the claims people buy insurance for, and then finding ways to dump the unprofitable off their policies.
Also attempting to make the country better than it was, GE's Jeff Immelt spoke of the need to refocus on research and development, as well as manufacturing and exporting, so as to make the country better - innovate, look long term, and then export those innovations to others.
Mr. Herbert suggests that passing the Waxman-Markey bill (or a watered-down version thereof) may end up helping the country go greener as a cost-cutting measure, with efficiency gains from farmers to household and manufacturers, as well as producing some new technologies to cut, sequester, or reduce carbon emissions.
Take what opinion of it you will, but there's an awuful lot of red up top in divorces, teen pregnancies, and actually paying for pornographic content. That is, if you want to engage in red-stae, blue-state politics. If you're moer a unification person, then perhaps Barack Obama is the new George W. Bush is your cup of caffeinated beverage, or ddjango's belief that the current President is in over his head and has abdicated rule to various factions.
The WSJ lambasts North Carolina for their attempts to collect taxes on commerce done by Amazon through affiliates and referrals happening in their state, as well as he now-developing Canada-United States trade war over sloppily-written alternative fuel subsidization.
Mr. Keller feels victory for charter schools in Boston, now that the mayor is experimenting with them, as part of a commitment to make schools better. Not missing a beat, of course, Mr. Keller also spends most of the article needling the teachers' unions as blocking progress and reform for selfish reasons, in addition to explaining why the mayor took his step to secure funding and results. Thus, association complete of teacher unions bad, charter schools good, Mr. Keller warns that the governor should start supporting charter schools, because everyone else in his state does (As goes Boston, so goes the state, apparently.)
Mr. Roger Robinson gives his testimony to a Congressional committee about the need to make American companies, the government, and those who do business with America feel mightily uncomfortable about also doing business with places we consider terror sponsors, including the possibility of contract revocation or defunding of investment dollars in their company, as well as putting stricter conditions or blocking the IMF from loaning money we provide them to places that we don't like.
Mr. Nichols thinks the Congresscritters he feels are responsible for our housing drop should lay off of trying to meddle in other areas of the economy (nice throwaway, by the way, about how the Dems are also apparently dedicated to the destruction of the health care and financial sectors, too). What could have been a decent column about hoe the market needs time to fix itself is instead name-calling, socialist-baiting, and otherwise burying the point he was aiming for. It's not quiche-worthy, though.
Ms. Saunders opines that the decision to award reimbursement for a private school disability tuition, withotu taking the public school special ed, to a child who had apparently done well enough in public school before an ADHD diagnosis and a marijuana problems was made without much for common sense, and that it reinforces the idea that kids with clever lawyers and those willing to make diagnoses are the ones winning out, instead of all the other kids who are fine and attending public school (and whose funding will be reduced in all these tuition payouts that will theoretically happen.
Ms. Malkin accuses the EPA of predetermined conclusions and dismissing sctudies that raised doubts about their desired climate change end, accusing the administration that was supposedly about science trumping politics of hypocrisy of high order, and further insinuating that it's an unwritten policy of the current administration to fire or dismiss those who go against the orthodoxy. Points for paranoia, but that's about all you've got going for you.
On the top of the inverted pyramid we call the quiche competition, Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, speculating that the only way to save newspapers would be to criminalize paraphrasing or linking to news sites as a violation of copyright law. Well, if that were the case, than this blog would dry up in a hurry, ya? Not to mention the Internet would basically become unnavigable, as the hyperlink is sort of the bedrock of how things work around here.
But, doing better than that, Bill'O decides he's a crusader against Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, now that it suits him to criticize a poll by the New York Times, believing that the poll was deliberately skewed by the Times to produce a favorable result, destroying any "scientific" credibility that it had, because it also asked what the political leanings of the respondents were. The people in favor of higher taxes also voted for the current President. Which is the good science that lets people like Bill'O bloviate about how unscientific the poll was. If the Times was really trying to put one over on the populace, they wouldn't include any of that other data that lets people make correlations like that, Bill. And who knows? Maybe the people who would oppose the public option also declined to consent in the survey, too.
Finally, because opinion columnists still can't hold a calendar to what actual representatives and elected officials do, Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern has a proclamation she wants the State to sign and distribute, declaring the causes of the economic crisis to be our moral crisis, and then proceeds to enumerate said causes of the moral crisis - "abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery". She believes the declaration of June as an LGBT pride month is against "the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives". She then calls on the country, the President, and everyone else to return to the mythical Christianity of the far right's hagiographic Founding Fathers, including repenting of our sins and attending the National Day of Prayer.
In a way, you know, fundamentalist Christians remind me of Confucians. If the man of the house is rectified, his family will be rectified. If the leader of the state is rectified, the people of the state will be rectified. If the Emperor is rectified, the people will be rectified. And all it takes is doing the right rituals, at the right time, speaking the right words, and the country will be rectified, and all will be well. (At least, until troublemakers like Laozi and Mengzi show up...) I have no idea whether they would take offense at comparing an ancient Chinese philosophy to their Revealed Truth and finding similarities or not.
Regardless, Representative Sally Kern, sho can be expecting all sorts of calls, letters, and investigations as to whether public money has been spent or will be spent on this tripe, today's quiche recipient (and quite possibly, worst person in the world.)
In technology, without a browser plugin, Firefox 3.5 can resize images in a non-linear fashion, while supposedly preserving the important content in the picture, which, speaking of, Firefox 3.5 releases tomorrow, odd objects in space, the banning of RMT in China, which is likely to kill a significant amount if the RMT economy, a motorcycle with a full-size sidecar, the retirement of Kodachrome film, the possibility of simulating reality's rules in virtual worlds (which kind of takes the fun out of the virtual worlds, if you ask me), and the possibility that Africa has sufficient land to feed the world's hungry and increased populace, if cultivated right.
Oh, and single-use water bottled constructed from paper.
Last for tonight, taking the style and adding things that jar the eye, make sure you spell check and have someone proof your signs before they get made, and then have someone look it over one more time just to be sure you're not juxtaposing anything.
If that all fails, make sure that the Cheetos are handy to attack people with.
