Playing catch-up - 9-14 January 2009

Good morning, everyone, after quite a hiatus. Lots has happened while we were away. I think the best advice is the one outlined on the sign.

For those looking to revisit their childhoods, or just have a great way of getting down the stairs, spiral staircase up, slide going down. Other people looking for uplifting materials may want to see an artist who did Ren and Stimpy encouraging a young artist to develop good habits. As part of a bigger site, Letters of Note, which looks to be pretty awesome.

And then there are the science fiction vanity plates. To continue the laughs, a poorly-thought, poorly-researched tract claiming Christians should beware of science fiction, because so many atheists, humanists, evolution-believers and God-deniers wrote really good science fiction. Noting one person in sci fi not mentioned - Orson Scott Card ,who has shown himself to be quite the religious person...but I doubt Ender Wiggin is.

In matters pertaining to my profession, after the abrupt firing of their director by the trustees, a library in Vermont has closed because the rest of the staff walked out in protest. Apparently, this is things coming to a head after several other disputes involving library trustees criticizing budget decisions, accusing the director of lying, and accusations that the trustees violated open meeting laws as well. For something different, The Analog Divide is rather aggravated that someone is calling out the library to...do the job the library has been doing for years, but apparently, the message isn't getting out. Perhaps because a lot of people use us for free DVD rental among all our other tasks.

In the real news world, the Dead Pool claimed Miep Gies, the last living member of the family that helped to hide Anne Frank, at 100 years of age.

Haiti suffered a Richter 7.0 earthquake o n12 January and several strong aftershocks, leaving buildings flattened and infrastructure collapsed. International aid arrived very soon afterward. For some, the disaster is as big as it is at least partially because humans, both local and foreign, funded and built things in places they shouldn't have and without any codes or considerations of the local population and economy. For others, it was the result of a pact with the devil. More on who spouted that nonsense in Worst Persons.

Google and other companies suffered a hacking attack intended on gathering information about dissidents in China. Needless to say, Google was not pleased. The United States government and Google asked China to look into the hacking attacks, As a result of this, Google said they would stop censoring their results for Chinese IPs, setting themselves up to be banned or blocked in those IPs. Which would mean China would shoot itself in the foot. The sound of the shotgun cocking? China blocked Google's threats of pulling out of China. I'm not sure if that's a tail-bite or a downward spiral, but it produces the same effect.

Domestically, in Michigan, UAW protests outnumber the teabaggers. Plus, the very interesting contention that there are no teabaggers in soup lines, presumably because anyone affected by that much poverty is unlikely to be against things like providing real health care reform.

A Guantanamo Bay prisoner spent some time with one of his guards, outside of the prison environment - the guard apologized for treatment given there, the prisoners recounted their tale of wanting to go somewhere and smoke dope...which somehow landed them in the prison. Context is everything, really.

Former half-term governor of Alaska Sarah Palin joins up at Fox News. This was certainly an expected result of things. We'll see whether she can compete with the likes of Bill'O in keeping her inflammatory remarks up enough to stay there.

Not that the Democrats can stay out of stupid statements, with Senator Reid in 2008 also talking about the "articulate light-skinned black man" angle we thought was the sole province of Joe Biden. Why does this return? Book came out with the quote. Why is it still here? The GOP threw a s--tfit because people weren't calling for Reid's head like they were calling for Trent Lott's when he remarked that if America had endorsed the segregationist candidate, we wouldn't have nearly as many problems as we have today.

The court trial of Proposition 8 was going to be televised...until the anti forces got an emergency decision to prevent the broadcast. And thus, we lost out on a great educational opportunity, and the opposition successfully managed to make it so the populace couldn't put faces to the people that kept couples from their marriages. And we don't get to see the big slog and legal battle and ugly commentary being played out live for us. That's really too bad. We really did lost a big learning opportunity here. In its wake, I would hope that all persons, Christian and otherwise, adopt the John Shelby Spong manifesto and declare that they will no longer give time nor energy to persons who wish to discriminate against homosexuals and instead treat homosexuals as full persons in their government and in their churches.

Marvel, now owned by Disney, is suing the heirs of Jack Kirby to prevent the reversion of copyright on Kirby's characters to his family. What, Disney couldn't just get a law passed declaring those copyrights were theirs? Do they not have a patsy in the Legislatures that will do their work for them?

Brian Williams talks about the indispensable nature of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, as well as the fact that because the Daily Show doesn't seem to ever run short of material, there's a lot of error-prone journalism going on in the world, too.

Last out, a seasonal ingredient finder. Tell it where you are, it will tell you what's local and where to find it.

In technology, those full-body scanners in vogue right now can transmit images to a remote place when in test mode, which we are assured is turned off before shipping. And also, implicitly, that machines like that cannot be hacked to transmit their images. Yeah. In protest to such devices, some Germans converged on a particular airport and then stripped off their clothes. For thsoe not willing to bare all, AppleGeeks suggests a different way of protesting.

A three hour technical support call to Verizon has become the inspiration for a new song. No, it's not going to be a positive review. And Verizon might find themselves on the end of some very negative publicity if the song gets popular.

Note to Amazon - if you're going to include text-to-speech, don't half-ass it, make it so all of the components have text-to-speech, and that way you avoid complaints that blind users can't use your device.

As for the sciences, how about an ant species that has no males, and the Chinese population, which has far too many in relation to their women, and the Y chromosome as one of the genome's fastest evolvers, which makes maleness possible.

Also, transforming wood into bone-like structure, which segues, sort of, into the 13,000 year-old tree, the worlds oldest currently-living organism, impersonal cameras documenting a Google Street View vehicle-deer collision and uploading it to Google Maps, where it stayed until someone noticed it, a break down of body parts mentioned in song genres, a feature on the increased usage of unmanned drones and the people being rush-trained to fly them, and more cool pictures from Mars taken by unmanned robots. Which hopefully means when we take people to Mars, we find all sorts of really awesome stuff.

Starting off the opinions, Mr. Arends says that anyone believing California is about to collapse needs to take a closer look at the numbers, and see that there's actually very good structure in place to make sure California doesn't fail.

Mr. Mitchell notes that one of the best ways to ensure that stupid people gain no followings or traction is to let them talk about their ideas openly, instead of trying to ban them.

Some analysis on what prompted th eLeno move, and why it's turning out to be a bad one, with the reversion of Leno to late night and the possible pushing of Conan later.

In our Worst Persons in the World tonight, the bronze to Galatically vile hate-monger Pat Robertson, claiming that the Haitian earthquake was a result of residents making a pact with Satan two hundred years ago, and is just the latest in YHWH's vengeance upon them. Pat Robertson, who believes that all natural disasters are punishments from on high for whatever deviant behavior he's fascinated by this time. Odds are good this time it's because a lot of Haitians practice a religion other than his. Worse, he claims that the pact and the disasters that followed are well-researched scolarship...from people who are religious figures. Our prognosticators have looked into the future and have what we feel is a fairly accurate transcript of the conversation Pat will have when he meets the god he claims to follow.

The silver to Wal-Mart, who continues to destroy unsold goods and then throw them out, instead of donating them to charities or other organizations that would make much better use of them than the dumpster. H&M used to do this, but has supposedly stopped the practice.

But full marks and a high-velocity golden quiche to the Monsato corporation, not only for their practices that encourage monoculture, prevent farmers from saving seed stock, and patenting a different variety just so they can keep making profits and don't have to release their seed to the public or competition, but also for developing seeds and grain that, because it tolerates herbicides and pesticides, permits those chemicals to persist in the fully-grown grains... to the obvious detrimental effects. Save the world by feeding it, yes, but do so in a manner that is sustainable and won't, y'know, poison the people eating it. Plus, we're waiting for the blight that will affect the Roundup Ready strain and kill it off, devastating entire stocks at a time. Nature does not like monogenetic breeding and engineering.

Sharing that honor is Rep. J. Gresham Barrett, introducing legislation that would deport everyone who entered the country from Iran, Yemen, Syria, or Cuba and ban anyone from those countries from entering. He's doing this in response to the Fort Hood shooting and the Fruit of the Boom bomber. The problem? His legislation wouldn't have stopped either of them from what they did. Instead, he just wants to display his prejudices and try to get them implemented as law.

Last for tonight, another example of the correct way for corporations to use their social media presences - responding to customer complaints swiftly and keeping them in the loop. Perhaps Google's new interface will generate similar stories of complaint and response.

And, on a postscript, One hundred game cupcakes. I got 89/100. Would have had more, but the games that I thought they were ended up being later on, so I was right, but I was wrong at that point. This, and the sarcasm punctuation mark. Really.