Dec. 29th, 2009

silveradept: The emblem of the Heartless, a heart with an X of thorns and a fleur-de-lis at the bottom instead of the normal point. (Heartless)
Cheers, holiday-goers and returners. There was probably much entertainment over the weekend, so you may have seen disturbing commercials, advertisements for zoos that look like the constrictor is crushing the bus, and someone taking figurative language a bit too literally by noting the classic description of the angels mean, scientifically, the wings are for decoration, not function. That said, angels, powered by a god being. Science may or may not apply.

Out in the world, on a holy day, Iranian police and military forces kill 8 protesters and arrest many more, giving the protestors and the opposition even more fuel for their fire to continue the protest, with new dead and new people to fight for. Furthermore, the protest and violence was for a celebration of people killed for their activism. Bad juju, there. Really bad juju. Some security forces refused their orders to fire. This could be severe enough instability to topple, but the question then is what goes up in its place. OF course, for some opinion writers, any revolution is a good one, so the United States should be and should have been supporting this one every way that it could.

Attempting to spread a message of Christmas, an American preacher crossed a border into North Korea, calling for the leader of the country to step down. the preacher was apprehended, and we have not heard of him since.

In the United Kingdom, taking pictures of manhole covers can get you arrested.

Some good news, though, to round out the section - The Family has come forward and stated their opposition to the anti-homosexuality bill under consideration in Nigeria, which is great, because they had serious connections to a lot of the people involved in its crafting.

Domestically, the Senate passes their health care bill, sending the process to a conference committee to hammer out differences, and then see what comes back to be passed by the two houses. Additionally, The Senate also voted in favor of raising the debt ceiling fo the United States, to permit it to continue borrowing money. Predictably, the WSJ came down on the Senate bill, claiming it is worse than nothing, completely partisan, and the compromise bill will be rushed through both houses much as the current bill was rushed through both houses, implying that it was a thoroughly radically leftist bill to have alienated all these Republicans who wanted to compromise with the Democrats, at the cost of various parts of the bill that were too liberal, or too taxing or spent too much or cut from the wrong places.

In Detroit, terrorist gets past security, detonates device. Device creates fire in his pants, and then he is subdued by the passengers. Had the thing been constructed properly, we'd be reading about the plane that was blown up in Detroit, and not about the attempted heroism of a passenger who acted to subdue the terrorist. apparently, the person in question was on a terror watch list as well, yet still evaded security and was given no special screening. Nice to know the security theather apparatus of the last administration is working as intended...and, predictably, after the fact, issues new regulations intended at stopping the threat just past.

The Defense Department has interpreted a law granting extra benefits to veterans in a very narrow way, denying eligibility to a lot of those same veterans who thought they were covered. The country is still not really able to make good on its promises to those who fight for it. Something isn't working here. A smaler military might work, and so might going after all the tax-evading corporations and businesses to ensure they pony up. It's for the troops, after all.

The Arrow Trucking Company, after laying off all its workers, suspended their gasoline cards and gave them a number to call where they could find somewhere to drop off their trucks and get a bus ride home. Merry Freakin' Christmas to you, too.

In science and technology, Detroit as fertile ground for urban farmland, the necessity of imagination for good child cognitive development, and how even scientists have to guard against dismissing failures as irrelevant or unimportant - because Humes are wired to believe that the world workd in a particular way and discard or otherwise work against data that doesn't match those expectations. For scientists, it gets in the way of learning things from their experiments, especially when the error keeps happening consistently. That said, there are ways of getting around those problems - and sometimes, short-circuiting the scientific method results in progrss.

Our opinion section is a motley crew of things - we'll start with declarations that there really are only two parties, and even the moderates will go along with fringe laws and decisions when their leaders demand it - that which used to be called "party unity" positively when the other party was doing it, and the only solutino for the moderates is to switch parties, because the voters are only voting for party affiliation and not for the people running for office. Actually, that might be true. Wonder if we could generate statistical data about the percentage of voters that vote the "straight ticket" when given the option to do so.

Ms. Charen berates organizations and feminists like NOW for complaining about the general order punishing pregnancy with a court-martial, saying the order was solid, necessary, and sane for people in a combat zone, where every soldier is needed, the mission comes first, and getting preggers is behaving irresponsibly and should be punished as such. People even do that to get out of the service (from my inside sources, however, they say that it really doesn't work all that well, as one is still doing things until it's basically time to give birth...), the harlots and morale-killers. And rape and assault was exempted, what more could those people want, right? Excepting the part, as she notes, where it's much easier for men to get away with not being court-martialed, even as she dismisses it only happening if the woman hides who knocked her up. That still doesn't get rid of the fact that the order will disproportionately affect women, because they can't hide the pregnancy.

Last out, Mr. Crook says the first year of President Obama has been exactly what he campaigned on, and thus it disappoints the liberals who believed he was one of them, the conservatives who thought he could be like them, and the independents who were expecting a consensus-builder and got a partisan, the people who Mr. Crook believes are the ones who have reason to be most disappointed.

Last for tonight, utilizing the Christian Foundational Writings as a text for financial decisions and investments. We think Polonius's advice in Hamlet is probably easier to digest and interpret, although harder to follow.

As a postscript, many interpretations of Calvin and Hobbes, reminding us again of how much we miss the kid and his tiger.

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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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