Dec. 7th, 2009

silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
Good day, you who are wonderful and take time out to read our roundup. Do suggest if there are better signposts we can use to make it easier for you to find the information you seek. And possibly whether we need to use disclosure signs such as these to meet our new FTC overlords’ requirements. Don’t bee too frightened if you find yourself in a culture shock, however - all will return to normal.

Today’s world is focused on both the important, such as a marriage ceremony between a person and his two-dimensional girlfriend, complete with ceremony and wedding addresses, and the unimportant, such as charting the evolution of the Hipster look over time.

We have both the internationally significant, including a bill in Uganda that would make homosexuality a crime, not reporting a known homosexual a crime, and death as a possible penalty for engaging in homosexual sex, and it supposedly claims that Ugandans elsewhere in the world should be extradited back to Uganda to be tried, a bill fostered from the attitudes of many American evangelicals, and the pretty insignificant, such as the Lingerie Football League. (Incidentally, Scientists at the University of Montreal attempted to find a male in his 20s who had not viewed pornography up to that point in his life and failed. Thus, Rule 34 wins again, and as it turns out, The Internet Is For Porn.)

Leading off tonight’s International section, a sensation of deja vu should be smacking the Obama administration in the face by now, regarding a decision to use a lot more unmanned aerial vehicles in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan suffered a bomber attack at a mosque in a zone supposedly very secure. Perhaps this will induce the authorities there to be a bit more aggressive toward removing terrorists. On a more positive note for the United States President, NATO allies have offered up some amount of troops to helkp, although short of the 10,000 soldiers supposedly needed to make up the difference between the American commitment and what the General request was. What may be worse is... this could all be a fool’s errand, as there hsan't been new information on Osama bin Laden in years.

On top of the domestic issues of the day, some of the thirty Republican Senators who voted against preventing companies that don't let their employees sue them for sexual harrassment and/or rape from getting federal contracts are complaining that Al Franken, amendment creator, hasn't stopped the media characterization of those Senators as pro-rape. Despite having voted in a pro-rape direction. Furthermore, in what bizarro world is Mr. Franken responsible for telling anyone that they didn’t really mean it when they voted pro-rape?

Additionally, Alaska half-governor and almost-Vice President Sarah Palin is apparently sympathetic to birtherism, now, in her contual quest to try and catch as much of the shifting political wind as she can. No doubt next week she will be explaining why she is now against war with Eurasia, when this week she was clearly for it on the record.

In the opinions, Mr. Fund recognizes teh pro-military stance of sending more troops to Afghanistan will hurt the President's approval rating with the liberal base, as Mr. Cohen says the President has to focus on Afghanistan if he wants to win it, despiate all the apparent signals going on that the administration is not at all interested in wnining, using his definition of win in both cases. Mr. Rove says the President can win, assuming he doesn't lose his nerve and move away from the path that will alienate him from his base and thus trap him between two hostile forces, although Mr. Rove and others do not say as much explicitly, I suspect that is their hope - the Dems will hate him for his war stuff, the Republicans will hate him on principle, and thus, one-term President. Ms. Noonan laments the opportunity the President had to make his part take a bold step on winning and to get the public behind him and victory-hungry. Mr. Krauthammer complains about the perceived ambivalence of the President, wanting him to be more “open-ended commitment” and less “here's an exit strategy”. Mr. Cline goes the other way, indicating how much Mr. Obama is still a tool of the ruling classes and not a change agent, and thus those wanting real change should seize it.

On the matter of the East Anglia e-mails, Mr. Henninger makes a bold assertion that science itself is now standing on a credibility bubble, with the threat of the hard sciences being dismissed as politicized or agenda-driven because of how much politics and attempted dissent-silencing is shown in the leaked e-mails. The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department congratulates Mr. Henninger on his insight and points him in the direction of catching up on several decades worth of various opinions and papers published claiming the hard numbers have been fudged to fit one conclusion or another. Comedian David Limbaugh, already well-schooled in this, does his best to declare that the anthropogenic side are dishonest frauds who fix numbers, intimidate people, claim there's no dispute, and never have accountability for their wild doomsday predictions, while also advocating for policies that will ruin the country. With a treatment like this, who would you trust?

The WSJ defends itself from the suggestion that they were looking at the numbers the wrong way on stimulus success, claiming they’re right and their measures are superior, and that the stimulus has actually been worse overall because it sucked money that the private sector (All Hail The Market!) could have put to better use than all the “transfer payments” the WSJ claims the stimulus is primarily composed of. The WSJ also hopes that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is replaced instead of reconfirmed, because they feel he won't do what's necessary when it comes to tightening up the money supply.

Mr. Lester lays out the ambitious plans that would be needed if America were to achieve what the likely Copenhagen-promised carbon emission reduction goals on schedule, reading as a litany of new renewable and nuclear power, enforced efficiencies in construction and the like, and a country that is mostly independent of fossil fuels. He’s not dismissing that it could happen, but it will take the machinery of infrastructure to do so - so here’s an opportunity for all the unemployed people, yes? Mr. Inhofe says the trip should be scrapped in the first place because it would be dishonest of the President to say America will do something when the bill to do so will never see the light of day in the Senate.

Mr. Scully warns of a domino effect on the elimination of tax deductability in employer retiree drug coverages, usually culminating in lots of people being unceremoniously dumped onto Medicare Part D as their former employers decide the cost of coverage is too much for them to handle. The worst part of it is he could be right, because he may be properly forecasting the ruthless behavior of many companies to ensure their bottom line and bonuses remain as fat as possible. Elsewhere on health care, The WSJ returns to a very classical argument - that Europe can't provide military forces anywhere because their economies are comprised mostly of welfare-state expenditures, and because of that welfare-state, their economies have also been slow or stagnant in real growth. Only in America are we prosperous, because we make sure the weak, the unlucky, and the poor die, either through lack of a saftey net or by making military service, where they have a high chance of being killed, the most attractive, if not the only, option for them. Thus, corporations and bankers can get wealthy off of everyone because they don’t have to worry about taking care of anyone but themselves, and the people who could change this are too busy dying or being killed.

Landing in the fringe before technology, making the case that homosexuals should be allowed, in fact, forced, to marry each other, so that they die out from lack of reproduction. Too bad for the sperm banks and the IVF and the like, ya? Beyond this, A Tennesean mayor claimed the President timed his Afghanistan speech specifically to pre-empt the Charlie Brown Christmas special, while also calling him and his supporters Muslims and expressing a desire for the original rules regarding voting in the United States. Suffice to say, this one holds himself up nicely as a Worst Person In the World.

In technology, a study indicates those who text, blog, and use other forms of technology feel more confident about their writing. The study author suggests that we now need to teach when to use particular writing style to our already-literate and wordy children.

Elsewhere, SPACE BEER!, an amputee, with the help of electrodes, maniuplates and receives feedback from an artificial hand, and growing a nanoscale carpet on a surface so as to repel dust and water, creating potentially self-cleaning windows and solar panels as well as better batteries and charged surfaces.

Also, a winner announced for the DARPA Red Baloon challenge. To no persons’s surprise, the winning team is from MIT.

From there, vegetarian diets retaining links to longevity, getting around the law to provide synthetic cannabinoids to people, with the same high, but not coming from a banned or restricted substance, and science fiction becoming science fact more than two decades ago, with the case of a person becoming addicted to their pleasure implant - I don’t know who the oldest example it, but we’ve got lots of them scattered about the novelsphere.

Last for tonight, From Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the men living in a cave who have inherited millions, with which they hope to return to a normal life, the list of the most popular questions asked of Ask, and your VEWPRF moment, riding the coattails of a person with too much time to put up lights.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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