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Much for material - 17-20 January 2010
Jan. 21st, 2010 08:14 amGreetings, troops, protesters, and rabble-rousers. A question to ponder - what would Martin Luther King Jr. have tweeted if Twitter were around while he was alive? How would he have reacted to the people like this against integration? And would he have had good humor when a plaque mistakenly celebrated his assassin instead of the African-American actor it was intended for? After all, there’s a lot that people still don’t know about him, including his strenuous opposition to the Vietnam conflict and his aggressive stance toward reparations for African-Americans in real terms and not just affirmative action preferences.
The Century of the Fruitbat makes a remarkable step forward - the nation of Pakistan has formally recognized a third gender, hijra, which includes transvestites, transgendered persons, and eunuchs. How hard would it be for us to do the same thing? It would certainly remove a lot of the identity angst.
Deserving of a top-billing and Worst People mention all at once, a manufacturer of rifle sights for the military has been inscribing references to the Christian Foundational Writings next to their serial numbers. Because giving justification to religious extremists that you are fighting them in a religious war is always a good idea, shit-for-brains. Worse, I know there are people who do see it as a holy war against false gods, and a lot of them are in the military. Worst, the people manufacturing it are dismissing the group raising the objections as “not Christian”, as if that solved everything and made it so they can be laughed off. I have a suggestion for the lot of them - both sides convinced of the holiness of their cause to the Sahara, and nobody leaves until they’re either cured of their bloodlust or dead. Might even help the overpopulation crisis.
Additionally sharing the Worst Persons honours are the people who did something that resulted in the death of three Guantanamo Bay inmates at a camp of the prison not previously known to exist, the other people who covered it up and ruled their deaths to be suicides, and the administrations that have not investigated this and all the other crimes of Guantanamo and the Concept War seriously, flagrantly in dereliction their duties under the Convention on Torture and other applicable laws and accepting, in this case, an official account of events that is impossible.
Two different religious organizations are sending what they believe to be relief to the Haitian people - Scientology is sending along e-meters, the basic measuring devices of their belief, and a Christian group is sending solar-powred bibles that speak the writings aloud. Faith may be needed in Haiti, but money and supplies are needed more. Afterwards, perhaps, you can send your Bibles and e-meters.
Fat lot of good either of them will do as a 5.9 Richter aftershock hits the country, making rescue work that much more difficult as already collapsed objects shift around and new items collapse.
On saner ground, a tradition of sixty years may be skipping one, as the person who comes to toast at Poe's grave on his birthday has not shown. In other literary stuff, the New Yorker examines Neil Gaiman.
The Dead Pool claims Glenn W. Bell, Jr., creator of Taco Bell, at 86.
Professionally, Libraries are, of course, one of the biggest reasons why publishers don't make as much money as they could.
And finally, the rise and fall of many magazines on the topic of Anime, of which we have in print the oldest and one of the newest, the others having gone belly-up.
Out in the world, those text-message donations people make? Could take a long time to get where they are intended, because, y’know, they go through when you pay your bill (unless you’re on Verizon, and they’re going to send it along trusting you will pay).
A new report suggests that Iran did not stop work on nuclear proliferation and weapons design, contradicting an earlier report saying they has stopped.
Yet more evidence that one cannot racially profile a terrorist.
Domestically, California steps closer to legalizing marijuana possession in the state.
The previous administrator, now tasked to help with Haitian relief, pushed back against the comments made by Boss Limbaugh, perhaps indicating that once out of office, one is free to express opinions that would be heterodox to the party.
The Massachusettes special election has gone ot the Republican. For hose looking for reasons why, other than the mailed-in campaign by the Democrat, perhaps the people in the “fuck you” constituencies that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks says could stay home for that election, because they've been milked for money and hours without any discernible effort toward getting their issues into play decided to stay home and let the Republican have it. Some in the commentary circles suggest the Republican election is good, as it will require the Democrats to get off their asses and do stuff, and others suggest it’s bad, because now it will let Republicans filibuster-threaten everything into a deadlock. All told, however, the people who expected Mr. Obama to be a liberal instead of a centrist are voicing their displeasure.
They’re probably finding more material as the government is unable to find fraud cases against wall street firms, which makes the liberals scream “Not fraud, morons! Profiteering! Selling products that they knew were unsafe and were betting would fail, and then leaving the buyer with the bag.” and other such things that are still legal, distasteful and cannibalistic as they are. It offends the sense of fairness, but isn’t necessarily illegal.
They may be of a more mixed opinion about states planning on passing nullification laws to whatever health care package, if any, passes the federal government, depending on how they feel about the federal health-care package. Mr. Armstrong Williams believes the current plan is full of bribes to individual constituencies, and should thus be killed. By the way, lose, not loose. A published columnist should not make such mistakes.
In their bids to become ecologically green, some couples are actually having fights about their various levels of green-ness, much like they would potentially fight about what religion to raise the children.
In the science and tech department, it may be possible to create liquid diamond on outer planets in the Sol system, a slug that produces chlorophyll, three-dimensional printers from HP, a walking robot maid from South Korea, cultural commentary suggesting that the Japanese are afraid of the Internet because the things that make the Internet awesome are things that are societally not accepted in Japan, a suggestion that loneliness is contagious (and that contagion possibly can be modelled), a twit tweeted and got arrested on attempted terrorism charges, which shows paranoia in the government, and thus it will be that much easier for someone else to commit actual damage against them, and a sound cannon that can kill a person if fired less than ten meters from them.
Oh, yes, and ten robots, available free to those with the ten best pitches on what they’re going to do with them.
Furthermore, Two governments, first Germany and then France, warn against the usage of Internet Explorer, because it is a security risk.
And last out, tailor your encouragement based on the person you're encouraging - the perfectionist does better when told to strive for excellence, the less-motivated person does better when told (and shown) it's fun.Textbooks for the achievers, Math Blaster for the slackers! (Or something.)
In the opinions, a big question mark to CBS, who apparently found some lost archives of Jack Benny and then decided to leave them lost, even with the blessing of the estate and an offer to have them produced at no cost to CBS.
The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department has a laugh - although with no real scientific backing to make correlations with, states that ban homosexuals from marrying have a harder time keeping their heterosexuals married. That’s not going to stop anyone, though, from trying to pull together groups that campaign against Houston because of the openly homosexual mayor and a large Planned Parenthood clinic. But, lest one demonize all conservatives and Fox-viewers as completely against homosexual marriage, at least one anchor is for it and is working to make things equal. Perhaps, instead, the anti forces could do something more about the best man robbing the DJ at the wedding reception?
More seriously, Haiti’s earthquakes have generated a lot of opinion, both on why things happened the way they have, and various calls to smite others as stupid or uninformed. For example, when David Brooks assumes the underlying causes of the poverty are related to child-rearing practice and a lack of being dictated to by others how they should do things, because other countries have other factors Haiti has, and they’re doing fine, he gets hammered by The Professor for myopic and wrong-headed thinking, for insisting that his preferred filter is the only explanation. Doug Giles's attempt to twist the natural human impulse to help into "look how wonderful these Christian Americans are" praise, complete with “Libruls hate America and badmouth it constantly, so they won’t help any in this” is turned back by the Non-Believers Giving Aid fund, as well as the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department quietly pointing out how many more people identify as Christian in the country before bashing him upside the head with the conclusion: “So it would naturally look like Christians are giving and doing more than others.”
For a more historically-viable explanation,bradhicks takes things one step further - it’s not that Haiti has just been dirt-poor and thus is affected heavily by the quake, it's that Haiti has been the victim of a sustained financial war against them by America and Europe to ensure that nobody in the world ever sees that a true slave revolt can be successful, using dictators, weapons, and economy-crushing loans with murderous strings attached to make sure Haiti cannot ever have a functional debt-free economy. Naomi Klein comes to the same conclusion, and hopes that those forces are prevented from reasserting themselves on the country. How about a $100 million USD grant to Haiti, instead of a loan, huh, IMF? Mr. Stephens says, instead, we should stop all aid to Haiti past humanitarian aid, because Haiti has no capacity at all to handle it, and it will all only go to corrupt politicians and black markets. Which, if Mr. Hicks is right, has been happening by design. Stopping aid will probably not fix that problem, instead, the corrupted system would have to be overthrown and the war against Haiti would have to stop.
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown have got the cause of Obama's sinking numbers: It's the spending, stupid, choosing to blame the stimulus bill and the possible second (or fifth, depending on your count) stimulus as only making the problem worse. Pretty standard stuff from the conservative side.
Dick Armey, chair of FreedomWorks and likely a host of other astroturf, corporate-sponsored entities masquerading as grass roots organizations, talks about the potential for Republican leadership coming from the tea party movement, a movement he, his organization, and their as-yet-undisclosed corporate backers have had quite a bit of influence on. He could almost qualify for some sort of Worst Persons nomination, because he’s serious about this, but then again, someone might actually generate something sane out of all the insane energy expended so far, so we’re giving the tea partiers the benefit of the doubt.
Besides, he’s outclassed. Witness Phyllis Schlafly, harping that achievement in schools is directly tied to whether there is a father in the house, and blaming social assistance programs for creating "a society of single moms", and insisting that a curriculum redesign in Minnesota that will make explicit notions like white privilege, heternormativeness, and male privilege will teach children that America is oppressive, racist, sexist, and a host of other bad things. We’ll call it American History, Ms. Schlafly, which as far as I know is still mandatory. Your final suggestion, a plug for your book and an insistence that the best thing minority children can get is reading by phonics by first grade mars good advice (everyone should be able and willing to read at a very early age) with shameless commercialism and an unwillingness to accommodate different learning styles. As someone who is actually involved in reading and literacy, let me tell you - there are as many successful methods of fostering reading as there are readers.
That said, it’s tough race for silver (the gold having already been given above) between her and Mr. Prager, who believes that America is no longer making men, but instead has young boys and older boys. The older boys don’t provide the atmosphere of respect men command, don’t have older male role models (lack of fathers and male teachers, doctors, and macho film men), masculinity and femininity have been deleted (and there are no male roles), by which he means men are raised as women, without Male toys like soldiers and Male games that allow rough-housing, we’re all whiners about our rights instead of being backhanded across the face and told to live up to our responsibilities and “be a man”, there are no places for men to bond with other men, like sport teams, the military, and the Boy Scouts, our religion is feminized by having a loving, caring God, and worse, female clergy, instead of the judgemental bastard of the Old Testament who only wants boys in his club and thinks women aren’t fit for it, machismo is being discarded in favour of “feelings” and there are no winners or losers anymore, and nobody’s getting married, so there are no models for male-dominated single provider households with barefoot, pregnant, and cowed women taking care of the domestic tasks and the children, afraid to leave. And as a final insult to women, he believes the increased depression rate of women is because they’re taking on male roles that the men are abandoning in droves, roles they are unsuited for, as frail and fragile women who need big strong men to dominate them.
The short response to such a screed is two or three words, with one of them being some variant of the F-word. It is clear from his piece that Mr. Prager is under the impression that Real Men are square-jawed, are physically incapable of a full range of emotions, at least not while there is someone watching them, glorify violence, strength, and winning above all, believe women to be second-class persons, only good for bearing kids, raising them, and keeping the dwelling clean, and is a fundamentalist evangelical homophobic Christian who favours judgement and wrath over forgiveness. He may also be a father who beats his children to discipline them, but at that point, I’m speculating. He’s the worst of that high-school jock and Fred Phelps. He’s a member of a mythical past that doesn’t exist but that people like Mr. Prager believe was real a mere two generations ago. He is a Cross-Eyed Knuckle-Scraping Moron, and we are better off not trying to emulate him. We are better served as a species by our continuing attempts to make it acceptable for women to wear pants and men to show emotions other than anger, violence, and rage.
Last for tonight, a Florida teen walks for her senior night. Which would not normally seem different, but for the fact that she has one leg gone and another that is still building bones. In contrast, the faith healing rooms, a reminder that people will latch onto whatever they can to have hope - thankfully, this group doesn’t advocate for only faith healing or against the use of medicine and medical professionals. To sum it up, perhaps in pictures, Fire and Ice.
The Century of the Fruitbat makes a remarkable step forward - the nation of Pakistan has formally recognized a third gender, hijra, which includes transvestites, transgendered persons, and eunuchs. How hard would it be for us to do the same thing? It would certainly remove a lot of the identity angst.
Deserving of a top-billing and Worst People mention all at once, a manufacturer of rifle sights for the military has been inscribing references to the Christian Foundational Writings next to their serial numbers. Because giving justification to religious extremists that you are fighting them in a religious war is always a good idea, shit-for-brains. Worse, I know there are people who do see it as a holy war against false gods, and a lot of them are in the military. Worst, the people manufacturing it are dismissing the group raising the objections as “not Christian”, as if that solved everything and made it so they can be laughed off. I have a suggestion for the lot of them - both sides convinced of the holiness of their cause to the Sahara, and nobody leaves until they’re either cured of their bloodlust or dead. Might even help the overpopulation crisis.
Additionally sharing the Worst Persons honours are the people who did something that resulted in the death of three Guantanamo Bay inmates at a camp of the prison not previously known to exist, the other people who covered it up and ruled their deaths to be suicides, and the administrations that have not investigated this and all the other crimes of Guantanamo and the Concept War seriously, flagrantly in dereliction their duties under the Convention on Torture and other applicable laws and accepting, in this case, an official account of events that is impossible.
Two different religious organizations are sending what they believe to be relief to the Haitian people - Scientology is sending along e-meters, the basic measuring devices of their belief, and a Christian group is sending solar-powred bibles that speak the writings aloud. Faith may be needed in Haiti, but money and supplies are needed more. Afterwards, perhaps, you can send your Bibles and e-meters.
Fat lot of good either of them will do as a 5.9 Richter aftershock hits the country, making rescue work that much more difficult as already collapsed objects shift around and new items collapse.
On saner ground, a tradition of sixty years may be skipping one, as the person who comes to toast at Poe's grave on his birthday has not shown. In other literary stuff, the New Yorker examines Neil Gaiman.
The Dead Pool claims Glenn W. Bell, Jr., creator of Taco Bell, at 86.
Professionally, Libraries are, of course, one of the biggest reasons why publishers don't make as much money as they could.
And finally, the rise and fall of many magazines on the topic of Anime, of which we have in print the oldest and one of the newest, the others having gone belly-up.
Out in the world, those text-message donations people make? Could take a long time to get where they are intended, because, y’know, they go through when you pay your bill (unless you’re on Verizon, and they’re going to send it along trusting you will pay).
A new report suggests that Iran did not stop work on nuclear proliferation and weapons design, contradicting an earlier report saying they has stopped.
Yet more evidence that one cannot racially profile a terrorist.
Domestically, California steps closer to legalizing marijuana possession in the state.
The previous administrator, now tasked to help with Haitian relief, pushed back against the comments made by Boss Limbaugh, perhaps indicating that once out of office, one is free to express opinions that would be heterodox to the party.
The Massachusettes special election has gone ot the Republican. For hose looking for reasons why, other than the mailed-in campaign by the Democrat, perhaps the people in the “fuck you” constituencies that
bradhicks says could stay home for that election, because they've been milked for money and hours without any discernible effort toward getting their issues into play decided to stay home and let the Republican have it. Some in the commentary circles suggest the Republican election is good, as it will require the Democrats to get off their asses and do stuff, and others suggest it’s bad, because now it will let Republicans filibuster-threaten everything into a deadlock. All told, however, the people who expected Mr. Obama to be a liberal instead of a centrist are voicing their displeasure.They’re probably finding more material as the government is unable to find fraud cases against wall street firms, which makes the liberals scream “Not fraud, morons! Profiteering! Selling products that they knew were unsafe and were betting would fail, and then leaving the buyer with the bag.” and other such things that are still legal, distasteful and cannibalistic as they are. It offends the sense of fairness, but isn’t necessarily illegal.
They may be of a more mixed opinion about states planning on passing nullification laws to whatever health care package, if any, passes the federal government, depending on how they feel about the federal health-care package. Mr. Armstrong Williams believes the current plan is full of bribes to individual constituencies, and should thus be killed. By the way, lose, not loose. A published columnist should not make such mistakes.
In their bids to become ecologically green, some couples are actually having fights about their various levels of green-ness, much like they would potentially fight about what religion to raise the children.
In the science and tech department, it may be possible to create liquid diamond on outer planets in the Sol system, a slug that produces chlorophyll, three-dimensional printers from HP, a walking robot maid from South Korea, cultural commentary suggesting that the Japanese are afraid of the Internet because the things that make the Internet awesome are things that are societally not accepted in Japan, a suggestion that loneliness is contagious (and that contagion possibly can be modelled), a twit tweeted and got arrested on attempted terrorism charges, which shows paranoia in the government, and thus it will be that much easier for someone else to commit actual damage against them, and a sound cannon that can kill a person if fired less than ten meters from them.
Oh, yes, and ten robots, available free to those with the ten best pitches on what they’re going to do with them.
Furthermore, Two governments, first Germany and then France, warn against the usage of Internet Explorer, because it is a security risk.
And last out, tailor your encouragement based on the person you're encouraging - the perfectionist does better when told to strive for excellence, the less-motivated person does better when told (and shown) it's fun.Textbooks for the achievers, Math Blaster for the slackers! (Or something.)
In the opinions, a big question mark to CBS, who apparently found some lost archives of Jack Benny and then decided to leave them lost, even with the blessing of the estate and an offer to have them produced at no cost to CBS.
The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department has a laugh - although with no real scientific backing to make correlations with, states that ban homosexuals from marrying have a harder time keeping their heterosexuals married. That’s not going to stop anyone, though, from trying to pull together groups that campaign against Houston because of the openly homosexual mayor and a large Planned Parenthood clinic. But, lest one demonize all conservatives and Fox-viewers as completely against homosexual marriage, at least one anchor is for it and is working to make things equal. Perhaps, instead, the anti forces could do something more about the best man robbing the DJ at the wedding reception?
More seriously, Haiti’s earthquakes have generated a lot of opinion, both on why things happened the way they have, and various calls to smite others as stupid or uninformed. For example, when David Brooks assumes the underlying causes of the poverty are related to child-rearing practice and a lack of being dictated to by others how they should do things, because other countries have other factors Haiti has, and they’re doing fine, he gets hammered by The Professor for myopic and wrong-headed thinking, for insisting that his preferred filter is the only explanation. Doug Giles's attempt to twist the natural human impulse to help into "look how wonderful these Christian Americans are" praise, complete with “Libruls hate America and badmouth it constantly, so they won’t help any in this” is turned back by the Non-Believers Giving Aid fund, as well as the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department quietly pointing out how many more people identify as Christian in the country before bashing him upside the head with the conclusion: “So it would naturally look like Christians are giving and doing more than others.”
For a more historically-viable explanation,
bradhicks takes things one step further - it’s not that Haiti has just been dirt-poor and thus is affected heavily by the quake, it's that Haiti has been the victim of a sustained financial war against them by America and Europe to ensure that nobody in the world ever sees that a true slave revolt can be successful, using dictators, weapons, and economy-crushing loans with murderous strings attached to make sure Haiti cannot ever have a functional debt-free economy. Naomi Klein comes to the same conclusion, and hopes that those forces are prevented from reasserting themselves on the country. How about a $100 million USD grant to Haiti, instead of a loan, huh, IMF? Mr. Stephens says, instead, we should stop all aid to Haiti past humanitarian aid, because Haiti has no capacity at all to handle it, and it will all only go to corrupt politicians and black markets. Which, if Mr. Hicks is right, has been happening by design. Stopping aid will probably not fix that problem, instead, the corrupted system would have to be overthrown and the war against Haiti would have to stop.Floyd and Mary Beth Brown have got the cause of Obama's sinking numbers: It's the spending, stupid, choosing to blame the stimulus bill and the possible second (or fifth, depending on your count) stimulus as only making the problem worse. Pretty standard stuff from the conservative side.
Dick Armey, chair of FreedomWorks and likely a host of other astroturf, corporate-sponsored entities masquerading as grass roots organizations, talks about the potential for Republican leadership coming from the tea party movement, a movement he, his organization, and their as-yet-undisclosed corporate backers have had quite a bit of influence on. He could almost qualify for some sort of Worst Persons nomination, because he’s serious about this, but then again, someone might actually generate something sane out of all the insane energy expended so far, so we’re giving the tea partiers the benefit of the doubt.
Besides, he’s outclassed. Witness Phyllis Schlafly, harping that achievement in schools is directly tied to whether there is a father in the house, and blaming social assistance programs for creating "a society of single moms", and insisting that a curriculum redesign in Minnesota that will make explicit notions like white privilege, heternormativeness, and male privilege will teach children that America is oppressive, racist, sexist, and a host of other bad things. We’ll call it American History, Ms. Schlafly, which as far as I know is still mandatory. Your final suggestion, a plug for your book and an insistence that the best thing minority children can get is reading by phonics by first grade mars good advice (everyone should be able and willing to read at a very early age) with shameless commercialism and an unwillingness to accommodate different learning styles. As someone who is actually involved in reading and literacy, let me tell you - there are as many successful methods of fostering reading as there are readers.
That said, it’s tough race for silver (the gold having already been given above) between her and Mr. Prager, who believes that America is no longer making men, but instead has young boys and older boys. The older boys don’t provide the atmosphere of respect men command, don’t have older male role models (lack of fathers and male teachers, doctors, and macho film men), masculinity and femininity have been deleted (and there are no male roles), by which he means men are raised as women, without Male toys like soldiers and Male games that allow rough-housing, we’re all whiners about our rights instead of being backhanded across the face and told to live up to our responsibilities and “be a man”, there are no places for men to bond with other men, like sport teams, the military, and the Boy Scouts, our religion is feminized by having a loving, caring God, and worse, female clergy, instead of the judgemental bastard of the Old Testament who only wants boys in his club and thinks women aren’t fit for it, machismo is being discarded in favour of “feelings” and there are no winners or losers anymore, and nobody’s getting married, so there are no models for male-dominated single provider households with barefoot, pregnant, and cowed women taking care of the domestic tasks and the children, afraid to leave. And as a final insult to women, he believes the increased depression rate of women is because they’re taking on male roles that the men are abandoning in droves, roles they are unsuited for, as frail and fragile women who need big strong men to dominate them.
The short response to such a screed is two or three words, with one of them being some variant of the F-word. It is clear from his piece that Mr. Prager is under the impression that Real Men are square-jawed, are physically incapable of a full range of emotions, at least not while there is someone watching them, glorify violence, strength, and winning above all, believe women to be second-class persons, only good for bearing kids, raising them, and keeping the dwelling clean, and is a fundamentalist evangelical homophobic Christian who favours judgement and wrath over forgiveness. He may also be a father who beats his children to discipline them, but at that point, I’m speculating. He’s the worst of that high-school jock and Fred Phelps. He’s a member of a mythical past that doesn’t exist but that people like Mr. Prager believe was real a mere two generations ago. He is a Cross-Eyed Knuckle-Scraping Moron, and we are better off not trying to emulate him. We are better served as a species by our continuing attempts to make it acceptable for women to wear pants and men to show emotions other than anger, violence, and rage.
Last for tonight, a Florida teen walks for her senior night. Which would not normally seem different, but for the fact that she has one leg gone and another that is still building bones. In contrast, the faith healing rooms, a reminder that people will latch onto whatever they can to have hope - thankfully, this group doesn’t advocate for only faith healing or against the use of medicine and medical professionals. To sum it up, perhaps in pictures, Fire and Ice.
