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Back from a nice long weekend of fun. Before we delve into the n00s, be reminded that having anyone copy-edit and/or proofread for too long will result in mistakes. Speaking of possible mistakes, simple visual interpretation of all those who stand to gain should Sarah Palin return to the political spotlight in 2012. To balance that with some inspiration - nothing is impossible.
Oh, and it's hot out there.
Out in the world, Snake! Snake! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!
More seriously, rumblings of American military personnell being asked to stay beyond the original 2011 deadline, the execution of a woman in North Korea, with distributing the Bible in the country as the reason alleged for her death, unrest in Israel about settlements and Biblical obligations to conquer the land, and the Revolutionary Guard having to exercise tighter controls on the Iranian populace, because the unrest is growing. All without any sort of overt interference by the preferred scapegoat, the United States.
Domestically, combat operations are brutal, and lots of soldiers who should be tested for effects aren't, are lying to get through them, and the results are often tragic. This is while plenty of qualified servicepeople are still being fired for being gay - on which the Senate will be holding a hearing.
While banks report billions in profits, billions that were given to them by taxpayers, the peons down here are still suffering hard, and the states have had to cut their services past unacceptable and down into bare-bones. It’s quite probable that the money spent to keep the banks afloat would have been put to better use had it been done as relief for regular people instead. And maybe the banks would have been propped up enough had their customers had sufficient ability to pay their mortgages and debt payments. So we clearly need reform. David Cay Johnston offers some solutions on how to get there from here, and much of it involves getting corporations and the really rich to tell the truth about their assets, income, and what taxes they really owe and pay their share, by removing the loopholes, shelters, and accounting practices that let someone appear to be a pauper to the tax man and a money machine to the investors. Ariana Huffington says we need to not be fooled by the illusion of a recovery as an excuse to stop real reforms...if we’re doing any real reforms in the first place. And then, of course, there’s health care, where people commplain that new agencies are driving up the cost of the Democratic plan (unnecessarily, sez they),
Onto opinions, where The Infamous Brad points out that racial allegations aside, the policeman who responded to the call and ended up arresting Dr. Gates was being an idiot and a bully, and that the President’s remarks were spot-on, based on the facts that neither party disputes.
Mr. Maher proposes a New Rule for our game of Fluxx: Not everything has to make a profit. Things like news, prisons, health care, and the like could and probably should be run as non-profits, instead of those companies pushing for more people to be incarcerated, more advertising dollars interfering with unbiased news, and more insurance companies dropping people once they actually have to pay a claim that someone got the insurance to avoid paying. Spinning back to Mr. Hicks, the reason why health care costs so damn much? The AMA and ADA, back in the 70s, said we had to restrict the number of doctors and dentists, so they could get paid more. Which means nowadays, when we need more and more of doctors and dentists, we run into the difficulty of increased supply making for lower salary. Nevermind that more people could possibly be covered with insurances and that care would cost less. It’s basic economics - to make things more affordable, increase the supply. And Gonzo Mehum lets loose on the conservative argument that dooms people to suffer because they do not have real health and medical care as the canard that it is.
Mr. Cline speaks to the popularity and persistence of the birther conspiracy, and how it plays well into the power triggers of conservatism and modern Republicans.
Mr. Daley sees expanding Humes to other compatible worlds and space as our way of preserving ourselves against extinction events, and possibly expanding our lifespan to much more than it is now.
The WSJ suggests that green environmentalism will be the next thing for disguising heavy trade protectionism and taxes, and that Mr. Biden knows the truth about Russia, and because of that truth, the United States is acting opposite to its interests.
Mr. Stephens flogs the United States for continuing to do diplomacy and negotiations with countries and regims that jail democracy activists and opposition people, saying tht the U.S. needs to stand by those activists instead of aiding the regimes that keep them jailed.
In the competition for quiche, returning to an old column (because I’m sure I’ve seen this before), Billy Graham describes Christianity as a cult in a column supposedly helping good Christians recognize cults.
Stepping up one from there, Bill'O makes one good point - the length and complexity of the health care bill makes it tough for people to understand what's really going on - and then buries it in a pile of bull pucky about managed care, giant expenses, and the government screwing up everything it touches. Sort of contrasts nicely with Mr. Matthews's piece saying the Blue Dogs, for all their conservative stylings, don't have the voting record to match. Which could mean “Oh, woe, gloom and doom, for the Dems shall unite to screw us all”, but it’s a much more reasonable piece. Speaking of that woe and gloom piece, I think the WSJ's insistence that the Blue Dogs kill the health care bill because it doesn't deliver on any savings at all will qualify.
At the top, though, because real events beat opinion columnists just about every time, EA puts a bit of a bounty on their Comic-Con booth babes as a promo for a new game, exposing them to "Acts of Lust" from contest entrants. There is such a thing as going too far, and we hope none of the booth babes suffered mental scarring (or at least have some brainbleach handy) in the process.
In technology, more concerns about our robots becoming smarter than us and what happens then, a routine policy trigger by AT&T created a temporary blocking of the image domain of the popular website 4chan, whose residents seemed to have assued malice before ignorance and planned retaliation. The block has been lifted since then, and moot has noted that it was indeed ignorance before malice. Elsewhere, contact lenses for animals, and a blue dye apparently helping correct spinal injury in mice, with the side effect of temporary blueness, reserach indicating that the ancient Maya survived when they were practicing good conservation of their envrionment, a robot with an iPhone for a head and control scheme, bacteria as possible biological computers, and robots playing batting practice.
Last for tonight, fire up the time machine, Sherman, and lets go see what the Web looked like many years ago. And some more modern pieces that need interpretation - stick figure warning signs that are a bit more bizarre than usual and blogger warning signs.
Oh, and it's hot out there.
Out in the world, Snake! Snake! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!
More seriously, rumblings of American military personnell being asked to stay beyond the original 2011 deadline, the execution of a woman in North Korea, with distributing the Bible in the country as the reason alleged for her death, unrest in Israel about settlements and Biblical obligations to conquer the land, and the Revolutionary Guard having to exercise tighter controls on the Iranian populace, because the unrest is growing. All without any sort of overt interference by the preferred scapegoat, the United States.
Domestically, combat operations are brutal, and lots of soldiers who should be tested for effects aren't, are lying to get through them, and the results are often tragic. This is while plenty of qualified servicepeople are still being fired for being gay - on which the Senate will be holding a hearing.
While banks report billions in profits, billions that were given to them by taxpayers, the peons down here are still suffering hard, and the states have had to cut their services past unacceptable and down into bare-bones. It’s quite probable that the money spent to keep the banks afloat would have been put to better use had it been done as relief for regular people instead. And maybe the banks would have been propped up enough had their customers had sufficient ability to pay their mortgages and debt payments. So we clearly need reform. David Cay Johnston offers some solutions on how to get there from here, and much of it involves getting corporations and the really rich to tell the truth about their assets, income, and what taxes they really owe and pay their share, by removing the loopholes, shelters, and accounting practices that let someone appear to be a pauper to the tax man and a money machine to the investors. Ariana Huffington says we need to not be fooled by the illusion of a recovery as an excuse to stop real reforms...if we’re doing any real reforms in the first place. And then, of course, there’s health care, where people commplain that new agencies are driving up the cost of the Democratic plan (unnecessarily, sez they),
Onto opinions, where The Infamous Brad points out that racial allegations aside, the policeman who responded to the call and ended up arresting Dr. Gates was being an idiot and a bully, and that the President’s remarks were spot-on, based on the facts that neither party disputes.
Mr. Maher proposes a New Rule for our game of Fluxx: Not everything has to make a profit. Things like news, prisons, health care, and the like could and probably should be run as non-profits, instead of those companies pushing for more people to be incarcerated, more advertising dollars interfering with unbiased news, and more insurance companies dropping people once they actually have to pay a claim that someone got the insurance to avoid paying. Spinning back to Mr. Hicks, the reason why health care costs so damn much? The AMA and ADA, back in the 70s, said we had to restrict the number of doctors and dentists, so they could get paid more. Which means nowadays, when we need more and more of doctors and dentists, we run into the difficulty of increased supply making for lower salary. Nevermind that more people could possibly be covered with insurances and that care would cost less. It’s basic economics - to make things more affordable, increase the supply. And Gonzo Mehum lets loose on the conservative argument that dooms people to suffer because they do not have real health and medical care as the canard that it is.
Mr. Cline speaks to the popularity and persistence of the birther conspiracy, and how it plays well into the power triggers of conservatism and modern Republicans.
Mr. Daley sees expanding Humes to other compatible worlds and space as our way of preserving ourselves against extinction events, and possibly expanding our lifespan to much more than it is now.
The WSJ suggests that green environmentalism will be the next thing for disguising heavy trade protectionism and taxes, and that Mr. Biden knows the truth about Russia, and because of that truth, the United States is acting opposite to its interests.
Mr. Stephens flogs the United States for continuing to do diplomacy and negotiations with countries and regims that jail democracy activists and opposition people, saying tht the U.S. needs to stand by those activists instead of aiding the regimes that keep them jailed.
In the competition for quiche, returning to an old column (because I’m sure I’ve seen this before), Billy Graham describes Christianity as a cult in a column supposedly helping good Christians recognize cults.
Stepping up one from there, Bill'O makes one good point - the length and complexity of the health care bill makes it tough for people to understand what's really going on - and then buries it in a pile of bull pucky about managed care, giant expenses, and the government screwing up everything it touches. Sort of contrasts nicely with Mr. Matthews's piece saying the Blue Dogs, for all their conservative stylings, don't have the voting record to match. Which could mean “Oh, woe, gloom and doom, for the Dems shall unite to screw us all”, but it’s a much more reasonable piece. Speaking of that woe and gloom piece, I think the WSJ's insistence that the Blue Dogs kill the health care bill because it doesn't deliver on any savings at all will qualify.
At the top, though, because real events beat opinion columnists just about every time, EA puts a bit of a bounty on their Comic-Con booth babes as a promo for a new game, exposing them to "Acts of Lust" from contest entrants. There is such a thing as going too far, and we hope none of the booth babes suffered mental scarring (or at least have some brainbleach handy) in the process.
In technology, more concerns about our robots becoming smarter than us and what happens then, a routine policy trigger by AT&T created a temporary blocking of the image domain of the popular website 4chan, whose residents seemed to have assued malice before ignorance and planned retaliation. The block has been lifted since then, and moot has noted that it was indeed ignorance before malice. Elsewhere, contact lenses for animals, and a blue dye apparently helping correct spinal injury in mice, with the side effect of temporary blueness, reserach indicating that the ancient Maya survived when they were practicing good conservation of their envrionment, a robot with an iPhone for a head and control scheme, bacteria as possible biological computers, and robots playing batting practice.
Last for tonight, fire up the time machine, Sherman, and lets go see what the Web looked like many years ago. And some more modern pieces that need interpretation - stick figure warning signs that are a bit more bizarre than usual and blogger warning signs.
