![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Out in the world these days, technology starts blending in with nature. And people develop diagrams to explain what mythical creatures are composed of. And, of course, John Scalzi turns his scornful eye to Star Trek design flaws.
In the working world, Facebook and social networking sites apparently take away about 1.5% of the workday on average. Does that mean baninate it to try and recapture lost productivity, or let it happen because workers who can take breaks and check sites are actually more productive and happier at their jobs? At least one black decided six minutes a month (on average) is too much Facebooking time and blocked access. Businesses try to capture the social web and make it marketable or monetizable. The social web tends to resist that idea. While there do ahve to be rules about what can and can’t be said regarding the business and work, I wonder if more people would be better off if employees could do more on the social media while they worked. There’s always the chance they’ll say something detrimental (if honest) to the company, but they might also say something like “My workplace is the best! Their policies are awesome, and the stuff we make it top-notch and affordable.”
Internationally, on the eve of starting talks about sanctions, suddenly Iran says it has a new nuclear plan.
Afghanistan continues to look like somewhere we've been wasting time in, with a new attack that claimed the deputy chief of intelligence for the government. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Things have progressed to such a point that a conservative personality like George Will is now calling for the United States to pull out the troops and send in the robots to do what they can in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. With the rhetoric of Afghanistan being “Obama’s Vietnam”, one must remember that the President inherited the seven-year conflict from his predecessor. If it’s that bad now, where were the calls when the Republican was in the house? Oh, yes, Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, that’s right.
The “that’s not ironic, but it is something” department tells us known tax haven Cayman Islands is facing bankruptcy and might have to introduce... taxation to pay for the debts, after the United Kingdom thumbed their nose at them on a bailout request.
At least the Guardsmen coming home from Iraq say it's a better palce than when we started. Thus, we might be able to successfully say that we cleaned up the mess and left it better than when we invaded. Or it might all fall apart after we leave and nobody can claim credit for anything.
Domestically, the Democrats are taking to the streets to get out the truth about health care reform. On the other side? Well, we’ll swee what the other side has when we roll the dice to see whose heads roll in the Worst Persons Derby.
The President addressed and praised Muslim contributions and Muslims in America at a celebration of a day of Ramadan at the White House. The address, at least in Mr. Gilgoff's eyes, was intended to promote the good Muslims do in America for Muslims abroad, and to make Muslims into us, instead of a foreign and scary "them".
Our daily, “Th’ hell?” department offering is thus - The President is going to address school children across the nation. School systems are debating on whether or not to broadcast the message in their classrooms. Apparently, parents are being given the option to have their students opt-out of listening to the broadcast. Why is this? Well, if some of them believe the same thing as Florida Republican Jim Greer, who sees the speech as a way for the President to spread his socialist agenda to the vulnerable young minds of our children, then it would follow that parents would want to be able to take their children away from the Obama-hypnotism and ensure that their tin foil hats are on solidly. It’s being couched in, “But I want my children to hear both sides, not just the one from their teachers and the President” (because every teacher is always aligned with the President on everything) or “I don’t know if they should be taking part in this.” Because, what? you think schoolchildren are too stupid to have intelligent discussions on big issues? With good teachers that can keep it at the appropriate level, children are brilliant people! You should listen to them more often, or provide some discussion fodder of your own and listen to what they say, instead of only listening to see if your propaganda was properly installed.
If you opted out of that last paragraph for worries of socialist indoctrination, your punishment is to have to read this parragraph about a peeper who was looking up pit toilets, and who is now... a repeat offender.
The opinions start with technology, as well, with an argument from Mr. Krauss that missions to Mars should probably be one-way - the people who want to go will probably be able to do more there, and make such a mission cost-effective and doable. Throw enough pilgrims at the place and they might be able to build something for their successors to live in.
Mr. Speiser says that if managers and companies want effective and excellent workers, they need to be able to provide feedback almost continuously, instead of at once-a-year appraisals and performance reviews.
Mr. Stokes has no worries about speaking ill of the dead, and reminds us of a communication between Ted Kennedy and the Soviets to do some outreach and possibly undermine Reagan as his contribution toward trying to make Ted Kennedy less of a pedestal-statue and more of a regular person, with foibles and problems and potential treason, which is what the comment squad seizes on most, because it fits their narrative that all liberals are traitors, communists, and out to get the country.
On the economy, the WSJ says the FDIC is going to need a bailout soon, with all the failing banks drawing on depositor insurance, and because of the consequences of raising the insured deposit limit to $250,000.
Mr. Hill thinks that there's more than naivete when it comes to the President and the economy, with some sort of nefarious agenda already in motion, not only to bankrupt us, but to make us less safe in the world from terrorists.
Regarding health care, Adamy and Wiseman get it - a lot of concern is not over whether health care reform is a good or bad thing, it's anxiety on whether or not the government is trying to do too much too quickly. It could make for trouble for the Dems at the midterms, or they might manage to pull through and get their agenda passed, which could help them lots at the midterms.
Shooting himself in the foot yet again is RNC chairman Michael Steele and his latest ad, championing to protect seniors and their government-run health care program from... the government. The highlights of the ad are mostly the debunked claims of previous attacks - death panels, bureaucratic interference, illegals getting health care, and the like. Perhaps this is where the Republicans find they’ve run out of dirty tricks to pull and thus must finally stand on what they’ve put out and hope enough people are scared that they can convince their Congresscritters to vote in favor of the insurance companies greedily waiting to screw them? Well, they might, but I’d bet on the insurance lobbyists first. Besides, The GOP defending the Medicare it continually tries to destroy brings a word to mind... hypocrite.
And after a day of a shining example of good things, well, we’re back to scraping the bottom of the barrel for the very worst of the worst. Tonight’s bronze recipient? Mr. Meltzer provides what will likely be the blueprint for conservative talking points in the next few years if the economy stabilizes and starts growing, declaring that all the growth is due to The Market (all praise to its name), the recession is not as bad as it was made out to be (for political purposes), and the next sensible course of action is to repeal the stimulus, the cap-and-trade bills, and basically undo any work the government has done, including regulations, because the government always interferes with market and thus economic, recovery, and then reduce taxes on corporations and require banks to have less reserves. In other words, “If we put it all back the way it was before the crash, everything will be fine!”
Stepping up one from there, because you can’t really get away with saying that people who broke he law should not be investigated or punished, Ms. Saunders, for rationalization, "ends justify the means" reasoning, and downplaying of lawbreaking and advocating for the pardon of those involved, and Mr. Gerecht, for claiming any invesitgation will make the country unable to gain actionable intelligence, harms the ability of the CIA to have competent counterterrorist intelligence-gatherers, and reduces the country back to being unable to do what is necessary to continue fighting terrorists, mostly because people covering their asses won’t do what is necessary to get information (and using the ambiguity of proof on whether torture worked to indicate that there’s a probability torture worked), you’re both the Worst People in the World. While evidence of absence is not absence of evidence, if you want to claim that things have been working properly because there have been lots and lots of plots stopped, remember that we were still able to stop lots and lots of plots before we decided to break treaties and laws and then demand the government look the other way on it.
But our winners, the "Christian Adoption" ring, that uses things like "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" that advocate entirely for "choosing life" by railing against abortion, but then turn around and pressure the mother to give up the child for adoption because the mother can't possibly take care of the child, trying to sucker her into fundamentalist dogma about how worthless she is because she got pregnant, and because she can’t care for the child, but she should become a fundie and devote herself to God and let her child be adopted be fundies so he or she can be raised to be a proper martyr for God or Purity Ball attendee, with no chance of the birth mother ever knowing who adopted her child. As Unabashed Feminism Bureau Chief![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ldragoon points out, we've been down this road before, and it was not a particularly good road the first time we traversed it. For people who feel that every child has a right to be born but that not every child then has a right to be raised by their parents and supported by their community, campaigning for the sinless child while trying to make the mother feel as much like a sinner and slut as they can, yeah, you’ve become today’s Worst People in the World.
To cleanse the palate of yet more people declaring that clear evidence of breaking the law does not deserve investigation, and people advocating against abortion so that they can try to indoctrinate a mother into self-hatred and put the child in a place where they will be raised to think of themselves as warriors, and possibly martyrs, for God, here’s tonight’s best person in the world, The Reverend Jim Rigby, who gives us the reasons why those in favor of universal health care are not just patriotic Americans and good Christians, they're closer to the definition of a good human being.
In technology, the Indian space program looks to a Mars mission after giving up on re-establishing contact with their lunar orbiter, a robot developed from plasmodium, a state of a common mold, the possibility of using strategically placed, wind-powered yachts to spray sea salt into the air, making the clouds reflect more light and radiation - a stopgap solution, admittedly, but one that would need the research to begin now for feasibility, according to the proponents, ways of making nanoprinting large-scale, ways of producing tiny robots in large quantities, using a computer input device originally developed for people with wrist injuries with autistic children, with positive results, iPhone apps that track the spread of infectious diseases, robots learning how to navigate by the magnetic field of Terra, having learned the trick from lobsters, and JAXA is putting up serious cash to put a microwave power collector (and wireless transmitter) up into space, to collect all that very nice solar power and beam it back to the country.
Oh, and Happy Freakin Birthday, ARPAnet. Hope you don’t have anything like a GMail outage with shockwaves to steal your thunder.
Last for tonight, a lesson about skill levels in certain professions, and houses that have gone feral, where nature takes over the technology (and thus, nicely bringing the end back to the beginning). Just remember, in all things, even technology, there are some laws you must obey. Obey! Obey!
In the working world, Facebook and social networking sites apparently take away about 1.5% of the workday on average. Does that mean baninate it to try and recapture lost productivity, or let it happen because workers who can take breaks and check sites are actually more productive and happier at their jobs? At least one black decided six minutes a month (on average) is too much Facebooking time and blocked access. Businesses try to capture the social web and make it marketable or monetizable. The social web tends to resist that idea. While there do ahve to be rules about what can and can’t be said regarding the business and work, I wonder if more people would be better off if employees could do more on the social media while they worked. There’s always the chance they’ll say something detrimental (if honest) to the company, but they might also say something like “My workplace is the best! Their policies are awesome, and the stuff we make it top-notch and affordable.”
Internationally, on the eve of starting talks about sanctions, suddenly Iran says it has a new nuclear plan.
Afghanistan continues to look like somewhere we've been wasting time in, with a new attack that claimed the deputy chief of intelligence for the government. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Things have progressed to such a point that a conservative personality like George Will is now calling for the United States to pull out the troops and send in the robots to do what they can in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. With the rhetoric of Afghanistan being “Obama’s Vietnam”, one must remember that the President inherited the seven-year conflict from his predecessor. If it’s that bad now, where were the calls when the Republican was in the house? Oh, yes, Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, that’s right.
The “that’s not ironic, but it is something” department tells us known tax haven Cayman Islands is facing bankruptcy and might have to introduce... taxation to pay for the debts, after the United Kingdom thumbed their nose at them on a bailout request.
At least the Guardsmen coming home from Iraq say it's a better palce than when we started. Thus, we might be able to successfully say that we cleaned up the mess and left it better than when we invaded. Or it might all fall apart after we leave and nobody can claim credit for anything.
Domestically, the Democrats are taking to the streets to get out the truth about health care reform. On the other side? Well, we’ll swee what the other side has when we roll the dice to see whose heads roll in the Worst Persons Derby.
The President addressed and praised Muslim contributions and Muslims in America at a celebration of a day of Ramadan at the White House. The address, at least in Mr. Gilgoff's eyes, was intended to promote the good Muslims do in America for Muslims abroad, and to make Muslims into us, instead of a foreign and scary "them".
Our daily, “Th’ hell?” department offering is thus - The President is going to address school children across the nation. School systems are debating on whether or not to broadcast the message in their classrooms. Apparently, parents are being given the option to have their students opt-out of listening to the broadcast. Why is this? Well, if some of them believe the same thing as Florida Republican Jim Greer, who sees the speech as a way for the President to spread his socialist agenda to the vulnerable young minds of our children, then it would follow that parents would want to be able to take their children away from the Obama-hypnotism and ensure that their tin foil hats are on solidly. It’s being couched in, “But I want my children to hear both sides, not just the one from their teachers and the President” (because every teacher is always aligned with the President on everything) or “I don’t know if they should be taking part in this.” Because, what? you think schoolchildren are too stupid to have intelligent discussions on big issues? With good teachers that can keep it at the appropriate level, children are brilliant people! You should listen to them more often, or provide some discussion fodder of your own and listen to what they say, instead of only listening to see if your propaganda was properly installed.
If you opted out of that last paragraph for worries of socialist indoctrination, your punishment is to have to read this parragraph about a peeper who was looking up pit toilets, and who is now... a repeat offender.
The opinions start with technology, as well, with an argument from Mr. Krauss that missions to Mars should probably be one-way - the people who want to go will probably be able to do more there, and make such a mission cost-effective and doable. Throw enough pilgrims at the place and they might be able to build something for their successors to live in.
Mr. Speiser says that if managers and companies want effective and excellent workers, they need to be able to provide feedback almost continuously, instead of at once-a-year appraisals and performance reviews.
Mr. Stokes has no worries about speaking ill of the dead, and reminds us of a communication between Ted Kennedy and the Soviets to do some outreach and possibly undermine Reagan as his contribution toward trying to make Ted Kennedy less of a pedestal-statue and more of a regular person, with foibles and problems and potential treason, which is what the comment squad seizes on most, because it fits their narrative that all liberals are traitors, communists, and out to get the country.
On the economy, the WSJ says the FDIC is going to need a bailout soon, with all the failing banks drawing on depositor insurance, and because of the consequences of raising the insured deposit limit to $250,000.
Mr. Hill thinks that there's more than naivete when it comes to the President and the economy, with some sort of nefarious agenda already in motion, not only to bankrupt us, but to make us less safe in the world from terrorists.
Regarding health care, Adamy and Wiseman get it - a lot of concern is not over whether health care reform is a good or bad thing, it's anxiety on whether or not the government is trying to do too much too quickly. It could make for trouble for the Dems at the midterms, or they might manage to pull through and get their agenda passed, which could help them lots at the midterms.
Shooting himself in the foot yet again is RNC chairman Michael Steele and his latest ad, championing to protect seniors and their government-run health care program from... the government. The highlights of the ad are mostly the debunked claims of previous attacks - death panels, bureaucratic interference, illegals getting health care, and the like. Perhaps this is where the Republicans find they’ve run out of dirty tricks to pull and thus must finally stand on what they’ve put out and hope enough people are scared that they can convince their Congresscritters to vote in favor of the insurance companies greedily waiting to screw them? Well, they might, but I’d bet on the insurance lobbyists first. Besides, The GOP defending the Medicare it continually tries to destroy brings a word to mind... hypocrite.
And after a day of a shining example of good things, well, we’re back to scraping the bottom of the barrel for the very worst of the worst. Tonight’s bronze recipient? Mr. Meltzer provides what will likely be the blueprint for conservative talking points in the next few years if the economy stabilizes and starts growing, declaring that all the growth is due to The Market (all praise to its name), the recession is not as bad as it was made out to be (for political purposes), and the next sensible course of action is to repeal the stimulus, the cap-and-trade bills, and basically undo any work the government has done, including regulations, because the government always interferes with market and thus economic, recovery, and then reduce taxes on corporations and require banks to have less reserves. In other words, “If we put it all back the way it was before the crash, everything will be fine!”
Stepping up one from there, because you can’t really get away with saying that people who broke he law should not be investigated or punished, Ms. Saunders, for rationalization, "ends justify the means" reasoning, and downplaying of lawbreaking and advocating for the pardon of those involved, and Mr. Gerecht, for claiming any invesitgation will make the country unable to gain actionable intelligence, harms the ability of the CIA to have competent counterterrorist intelligence-gatherers, and reduces the country back to being unable to do what is necessary to continue fighting terrorists, mostly because people covering their asses won’t do what is necessary to get information (and using the ambiguity of proof on whether torture worked to indicate that there’s a probability torture worked), you’re both the Worst People in the World. While evidence of absence is not absence of evidence, if you want to claim that things have been working properly because there have been lots and lots of plots stopped, remember that we were still able to stop lots and lots of plots before we decided to break treaties and laws and then demand the government look the other way on it.
But our winners, the "Christian Adoption" ring, that uses things like "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" that advocate entirely for "choosing life" by railing against abortion, but then turn around and pressure the mother to give up the child for adoption because the mother can't possibly take care of the child, trying to sucker her into fundamentalist dogma about how worthless she is because she got pregnant, and because she can’t care for the child, but she should become a fundie and devote herself to God and let her child be adopted be fundies so he or she can be raised to be a proper martyr for God or Purity Ball attendee, with no chance of the birth mother ever knowing who adopted her child. As Unabashed Feminism Bureau Chief
ldragoon points out, we've been down this road before, and it was not a particularly good road the first time we traversed it. For people who feel that every child has a right to be born but that not every child then has a right to be raised by their parents and supported by their community, campaigning for the sinless child while trying to make the mother feel as much like a sinner and slut as they can, yeah, you’ve become today’s Worst People in the World.To cleanse the palate of yet more people declaring that clear evidence of breaking the law does not deserve investigation, and people advocating against abortion so that they can try to indoctrinate a mother into self-hatred and put the child in a place where they will be raised to think of themselves as warriors, and possibly martyrs, for God, here’s tonight’s best person in the world, The Reverend Jim Rigby, who gives us the reasons why those in favor of universal health care are not just patriotic Americans and good Christians, they're closer to the definition of a good human being.
In technology, the Indian space program looks to a Mars mission after giving up on re-establishing contact with their lunar orbiter, a robot developed from plasmodium, a state of a common mold, the possibility of using strategically placed, wind-powered yachts to spray sea salt into the air, making the clouds reflect more light and radiation - a stopgap solution, admittedly, but one that would need the research to begin now for feasibility, according to the proponents, ways of making nanoprinting large-scale, ways of producing tiny robots in large quantities, using a computer input device originally developed for people with wrist injuries with autistic children, with positive results, iPhone apps that track the spread of infectious diseases, robots learning how to navigate by the magnetic field of Terra, having learned the trick from lobsters, and JAXA is putting up serious cash to put a microwave power collector (and wireless transmitter) up into space, to collect all that very nice solar power and beam it back to the country.
Oh, and Happy Freakin Birthday, ARPAnet. Hope you don’t have anything like a GMail outage with shockwaves to steal your thunder.
Last for tonight, a lesson about skill levels in certain professions, and houses that have gone feral, where nature takes over the technology (and thus, nicely bringing the end back to the beginning). Just remember, in all things, even technology, there are some laws you must obey. Obey! Obey!
