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Throwing more links at you - 14 July 2009
Jul. 15th, 2009 12:00 amUp top, some true bits about Ada Lovelace, then some tinkering to try and make things more exciting. But the true bits are still good.
In the professional realm, booksellers and libraries can and do get along, really. It’s not competition between the two, and a good relationship means dividends for both organizations.
Internationally, the South Korean authorities are indicating that lists files were extracted from infected computers in the most recent attack against their governmental systems. This does not mean the files themselves were extracted, making the combination DoS and probe look like an attempt to find where to strike in a more precise manner, while using the cover of the DoS.
The United Kingdom is having a debate over whether the troops currently in Afghanistan are sufficiently equipped to do the job and to avoid death by IED.
Additionally, A jinn has been sued in Saudi Arabia - reminiscent of someone’s attemtp to sue God soem time before.
Domestically, The General is overflowing with praise for some art on the back of a truck, involving scantily-clad women, rifles, and cannabis.
More seriously, Dr. Regina Benjamin is the nominee for the Surgeon General of the United States. From the biographical description in the article, will the Republicans be concerned about the doctor’s “empathy” when it comes to treating patients? Since they seem to be concerned about a lack of empathy coming from the health care proposals, I wonder what they’ll be asking her with regard to how she feels about patients.
Liz Cheney, brought farther into the political sphere than she was before the previous administrator left office, is considering a political run of her own, reports the Washington Times.
NYT claims journalists are first, then coem the blogs, but the Nieman Journalism Lab suggests that the obscure pick up on something first, then the MSM does, and then it goes back to the obscure. It’s just that most people don’t notice it on the obscure before something big like the NYT picks it up. Looks like it’s not just parasitic blogs feeding on the professionals - at least some of those blogs are talking about it before the professionals do. (Which may be a case of someone saying something and then journalists unveiling the proof they have.)
Welcome to opinions, where Mr. Hannah, who served in the previous administration, says the previous administrator deserves more credit for good policy on Iran, because protests happened when he was using his strongest rhetoric, and that the current administrator should do more to strengthen his rhetoric and pit the people who want to be free against their leaders, who do not want that.
In economics, Mr. Zywicki says our housing bubble was generated by perverse incentives, not predation on borrowers, so any sort of consumer protection comission for financial products is unnecessary. If we change The Market, the problem goes away without more government intervention. On the obverse side, Mr. Frank chides the Washington Post for their hypocrisy in the "salon" solicitation, while referring to the city of Washington, D.C. as a sort of hyper-powered example of The Market at work. He’s not believing the explanations and excuses offered by the Post, and believes that scandal will hasten the demise of the newspaper industry. Well, I don’t know if it will, but this may have been an unintended peek into how things really get done in Washington - and how very little influence the common person actually has there.
In the worrisome flaky pastry competition, Mr. Jenkins, Jr. goes after the antitrust chief of the current administration, claiming the decisions of airlines to create alliances is not collusion, but trying to stop major losses, and that once things pick up again, they’ll go back to competing against each other. Otherwise, they’d all fall apart and there would be more taxpayer money shelled out to keep companies flying. He misses out on the winning material, though.
Also not making the cut, Mr. Fund defends the decision of Sarah Palin to resign her governorship by painting her as a governor beseiged by evil media scrutiny, cheap blogger attacks repeated far and wide, and plagued by nusiances upon nusiances of FOIA requests, so that she decided to resign to get her paralyzed government going forward again. This creates bad precedent, according to Mr. Fund, because it sends a signal that you can nag someone out of office, and because the whole Palin affair will not encourage women to become part of politics, but he thinks Sarah Palin will have the last laugh because now she can be effective without being bashed at every turn for not being the model of a liberal and politically correct feminist woman.
And the last of our almosts, Mr. Durstewitz predicts the demise of Europe and the United States - because Europe has been free-riding on the United States, btoh economically and in military defense, so they can keep their own welfare states together, and that if the United States emulates Europe well, then the U.S. will collapse under our own welfare state, taking Europe down with us.
Competing on the bronze level, more from the WSJ about how reducing the number of nuclear warheads in our arsenal makes us less safe and brings our power down to parity with players like China and Russia, and makes our allies doubt we're actually going to protect them from nuclear aggression and intimidation. Because anything that threatens our perceived Inherent Military Superiority is a bad thing. It’s not like we won’t still have enough material to destroy the world several times over. On the same level, the WSJ lionizes Robert McNamara and the previous administrator, saying McNamara was derided for continuing to fight the war liberals started when they chickened out, and the difference between what happened in Vietnam and what happened in Iraq is that the previous administrator never lost heart and just kept going, replacing generals and trying new strategies until he found one that worked. Or, at least, quelled the violence sufficiently for something else to try and take root. We’ll find out within the next few years whether that stretegy was an effective one.
Up one grade from that, The WSJ accuses the Speaker and Democrats of hypocrisy for defeating an amendment that would have required the CIA to produce and release a declassified version of their briefings to the Congress, while passing a requirement that interrogations be videotaped. So we can look forward to page upon page of black lines, redactions, and occasional words, and claim that the CIA is being transparent and accountable about programs that are secret and classified, and that’s somehow equivalent to requiring the videotaping (and lack of subsequent destruction) of interrogations to hey, maybe ensure that torture is caught and punished? What a novel concept!
At the top, though, a lawyer representing Guiness World Records sent a cease-and-desist to FAIL Blog for using a screencap of the website that had their name and logo...while not paying any attention to the complaint made, namely that a link encouraging people to attempt to break the record of Most People Killed in a Terrorist Act was probably in poor taste. Thus, FAIL Blog has reposted the letter and the screencap - with the logo censored out, and the link still in. Not only for intimidation on copyright, but for, well, failing to at least acknowledge, much less possibly fix, the problem, the lawyer from Guiness World Records, today’s winner of the World’s Fastest High-Velocity Quiche.
In our science and technology realms today, machines that will grade, rank, and then print your smile when you come in to work today, which could lead to some “Re-Neducation” if one is judged to be insufficiently happy, the continuing progress toward slowing the body's natural aging process so that Humes can live well beyond the mere century we have now, scientists suggesting that we change over the eras and become the Anthropocene, robotic crickets that would chirp upon finding a survivor of a disaster or terror attack, or to indicate the presence of chemical or biological agents on a battlefield, (as opposed to Japanese attempts to build insect robot swarms from the ground up), the discovery of the repulosr force of light, meaning that we may be able to design chips that use light to move the transistors, and a study that suggests H1N1 was a worse flu strain than previously thought.
And YouTube looks to be ditching IE6 support.
Last out, the robot that will hopefully take part in the ancient festival, by being a cheerleader to get the people to do a call-and-response of clapping. Humand and robots performing the sacred and ancient rites. This will hopefully be a good idea. And it also sounds like many plots for a science fiction book.
In the professional realm, booksellers and libraries can and do get along, really. It’s not competition between the two, and a good relationship means dividends for both organizations.
Internationally, the South Korean authorities are indicating that lists files were extracted from infected computers in the most recent attack against their governmental systems. This does not mean the files themselves were extracted, making the combination DoS and probe look like an attempt to find where to strike in a more precise manner, while using the cover of the DoS.
The United Kingdom is having a debate over whether the troops currently in Afghanistan are sufficiently equipped to do the job and to avoid death by IED.
Additionally, A jinn has been sued in Saudi Arabia - reminiscent of someone’s attemtp to sue God soem time before.
Domestically, The General is overflowing with praise for some art on the back of a truck, involving scantily-clad women, rifles, and cannabis.
More seriously, Dr. Regina Benjamin is the nominee for the Surgeon General of the United States. From the biographical description in the article, will the Republicans be concerned about the doctor’s “empathy” when it comes to treating patients? Since they seem to be concerned about a lack of empathy coming from the health care proposals, I wonder what they’ll be asking her with regard to how she feels about patients.
Liz Cheney, brought farther into the political sphere than she was before the previous administrator left office, is considering a political run of her own, reports the Washington Times.
NYT claims journalists are first, then coem the blogs, but the Nieman Journalism Lab suggests that the obscure pick up on something first, then the MSM does, and then it goes back to the obscure. It’s just that most people don’t notice it on the obscure before something big like the NYT picks it up. Looks like it’s not just parasitic blogs feeding on the professionals - at least some of those blogs are talking about it before the professionals do. (Which may be a case of someone saying something and then journalists unveiling the proof they have.)
Welcome to opinions, where Mr. Hannah, who served in the previous administration, says the previous administrator deserves more credit for good policy on Iran, because protests happened when he was using his strongest rhetoric, and that the current administrator should do more to strengthen his rhetoric and pit the people who want to be free against their leaders, who do not want that.
In economics, Mr. Zywicki says our housing bubble was generated by perverse incentives, not predation on borrowers, so any sort of consumer protection comission for financial products is unnecessary. If we change The Market, the problem goes away without more government intervention. On the obverse side, Mr. Frank chides the Washington Post for their hypocrisy in the "salon" solicitation, while referring to the city of Washington, D.C. as a sort of hyper-powered example of The Market at work. He’s not believing the explanations and excuses offered by the Post, and believes that scandal will hasten the demise of the newspaper industry. Well, I don’t know if it will, but this may have been an unintended peek into how things really get done in Washington - and how very little influence the common person actually has there.
In the worrisome flaky pastry competition, Mr. Jenkins, Jr. goes after the antitrust chief of the current administration, claiming the decisions of airlines to create alliances is not collusion, but trying to stop major losses, and that once things pick up again, they’ll go back to competing against each other. Otherwise, they’d all fall apart and there would be more taxpayer money shelled out to keep companies flying. He misses out on the winning material, though.
Also not making the cut, Mr. Fund defends the decision of Sarah Palin to resign her governorship by painting her as a governor beseiged by evil media scrutiny, cheap blogger attacks repeated far and wide, and plagued by nusiances upon nusiances of FOIA requests, so that she decided to resign to get her paralyzed government going forward again. This creates bad precedent, according to Mr. Fund, because it sends a signal that you can nag someone out of office, and because the whole Palin affair will not encourage women to become part of politics, but he thinks Sarah Palin will have the last laugh because now she can be effective without being bashed at every turn for not being the model of a liberal and politically correct feminist woman.
And the last of our almosts, Mr. Durstewitz predicts the demise of Europe and the United States - because Europe has been free-riding on the United States, btoh economically and in military defense, so they can keep their own welfare states together, and that if the United States emulates Europe well, then the U.S. will collapse under our own welfare state, taking Europe down with us.
Competing on the bronze level, more from the WSJ about how reducing the number of nuclear warheads in our arsenal makes us less safe and brings our power down to parity with players like China and Russia, and makes our allies doubt we're actually going to protect them from nuclear aggression and intimidation. Because anything that threatens our perceived Inherent Military Superiority is a bad thing. It’s not like we won’t still have enough material to destroy the world several times over. On the same level, the WSJ lionizes Robert McNamara and the previous administrator, saying McNamara was derided for continuing to fight the war liberals started when they chickened out, and the difference between what happened in Vietnam and what happened in Iraq is that the previous administrator never lost heart and just kept going, replacing generals and trying new strategies until he found one that worked. Or, at least, quelled the violence sufficiently for something else to try and take root. We’ll find out within the next few years whether that stretegy was an effective one.
Up one grade from that, The WSJ accuses the Speaker and Democrats of hypocrisy for defeating an amendment that would have required the CIA to produce and release a declassified version of their briefings to the Congress, while passing a requirement that interrogations be videotaped. So we can look forward to page upon page of black lines, redactions, and occasional words, and claim that the CIA is being transparent and accountable about programs that are secret and classified, and that’s somehow equivalent to requiring the videotaping (and lack of subsequent destruction) of interrogations to hey, maybe ensure that torture is caught and punished? What a novel concept!
At the top, though, a lawyer representing Guiness World Records sent a cease-and-desist to FAIL Blog for using a screencap of the website that had their name and logo...while not paying any attention to the complaint made, namely that a link encouraging people to attempt to break the record of Most People Killed in a Terrorist Act was probably in poor taste. Thus, FAIL Blog has reposted the letter and the screencap - with the logo censored out, and the link still in. Not only for intimidation on copyright, but for, well, failing to at least acknowledge, much less possibly fix, the problem, the lawyer from Guiness World Records, today’s winner of the World’s Fastest High-Velocity Quiche.
In our science and technology realms today, machines that will grade, rank, and then print your smile when you come in to work today, which could lead to some “Re-Neducation” if one is judged to be insufficiently happy, the continuing progress toward slowing the body's natural aging process so that Humes can live well beyond the mere century we have now, scientists suggesting that we change over the eras and become the Anthropocene, robotic crickets that would chirp upon finding a survivor of a disaster or terror attack, or to indicate the presence of chemical or biological agents on a battlefield, (as opposed to Japanese attempts to build insect robot swarms from the ground up), the discovery of the repulosr force of light, meaning that we may be able to design chips that use light to move the transistors, and a study that suggests H1N1 was a worse flu strain than previously thought.
And YouTube looks to be ditching IE6 support.
Last out, the robot that will hopefully take part in the ancient festival, by being a cheerleader to get the people to do a call-and-response of clapping. Humand and robots performing the sacred and ancient rites. This will hopefully be a good idea. And it also sounds like many plots for a science fiction book.
