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A quick news-type dump - 5 February 2010
Feb. 7th, 2010 02:44 pmSalutations, viewers of animation and live action! If looking for good geeky programming for children, PBS's Arthur seems to be an excellent choice and there's enough there for the adults to appreciate, too. We're also a bit tickled by the library shanty, a temporarily building on top of a frozen lake built by library users.
The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department offers some perspective on what you should fear more - for every one person killed in terrorism around the world, 58 more people have died in the United States alone for lack of health care.
Out in the world today, the beginning of an interview with someone claiming to be a reformed 419 scammer, with a severe caveat that all of this is "as-is" and unverifiable.
Attempts in the United Kingdom to provide greater availability of pregnancy tests to teenagers ahs been met with predicatble backlash. A comment of choice, however, and the one that drew the eye and ire of our Unabashed Feminism Bureau Chief![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ldragoon, is "Schools would be far better holding group discussions about the stupidity, the seriousness, and the damaging effects of immature teenage girls who indulge in early sex." Because, as everyone knows, only women are sluts and always pressure our pure boys to sin before they're married. Another telling quote - "Sexual health clinics on school premises send out the message that it is normal for school children to engage in sexual activity. In the past, natural inhibitions combined with fear of pregnancy, legal proceedings and being found out by parents offered a powerful disincentive to underage sex. Confidential health clinics in schools are part of a mix that is removing the restraints which previously limited underage sexual activity." So, really, the conservative element wants you to be afraid of your own sexuality by threatening you with the spectre of pregnancy, criminal charges, and the possibility of being found out by your or her parents, who then might press those criminal charges against the boy for deflowering their prized asset, err, daughter. Fear, ignorance, and abstinence are their three weapons... all nicely skewered by this Skepchic post about what pregnant women won't tell you about the reality of their experience.
And speaking of fear and ignorance, a school system responded to a concern about having to read parts of Anne Frank's diary about sexual maturation aloud by forcing the book up to higher grade levels, going above and beyond the actual request to just not have to read it aloud. I can see where that would be embarrassing for eighth-graders, but I also believe eighth-graders are mature enough to read about those sorts of things. The school overracted in an unbidden manner. As The Librarienne puts it, "can we stop pretending that our adolescents and teens are living in a perfect bubble of innocence, and wake up to what they really need to know?"
We can do worse than that, though, in the near-suspension of a student by an overzealous principal because he put a two-inch plastic toy gun in the hand of a toy police officer.
Domestically, Miami Beach police are under an internal investigation after a tourist received epithets, slurs, and trumped-up charges for reporting the beating of a handcuffed man to 911. We hope the investigation results in discipline of semi-permanent desk work or sacking, because that kind of bullying behavior by law enforcement is not tolerable.
a former chairman and CEO of Citigroup went to Congress to tell them that Wall Street and the banks cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, based on his experience at the head of Citigroup, and to make recommendations for politicies and regulations that would prevent another disaster from happening by separating segments of the industry and mandating exchanges for things like derivatives.
On more traditional politics, the White House pushed back against assertions by Senator Kit Bond that the administration denied secrecy requests by the FBI and is revealing data that undermines the national security of the United States. This sounds familiar. I believe the last administration was all about "Tell nobody nothing and redact it all just in case" because they felt that revealing anything about the methods used woule endanger national security. We've seen some amount of what that has been hiding, like torture and abuse. I think sunshine is the best course of action. And furthermore, the critics of this administration's decision to do criminal trials, despite precedent, were up in arms about how this would reveal information that was critical to national security. If nothing else, they're consistent in their belief that telling anyone anything about anything even tangentially connected to the Concept War is dangerous to national security. And will pen letters declaring the Attorney General to be ignorant about policy and precedence in prosecution of terror suspects, while fellating the policies of the previous administrator, who gave them all the extralegal cover and practice they could want.
The Washington Times notes that Europe is now a valuable ally, and that any time Mr. Obama doesn't attend a summit or appears to snub someone in the EU, it should be seen as a shocking breach of protocol. That, or the Times is trying to take pleasure in the discomfort Europe has over Mr. Obama's attitude toward them after having spent a significant amount of time to build the narrative that Europe saw Mr. Obama as some sort of Superman here to fix all the problems of Bush and to put the United States as a subordinate to Europe's interests. Either way, they're trying very hard to ignore the history of the last administration's alienation of Europe and its own narrative of unilateralism so they can paint the successor in a bad light.
Of course, had Mr. Obama gone, there would no doubt be complaints from his detractors that the problems of the United States were more important than jetting off to Europe and that he shouldn't have gone. Funny how it always seems lik no matter what options he chooses, they're the wrong ones.
The official unemployment rate went down through January, less than one percentage point, but that still leaves a lot of people out of work. And because you can't mention jobs without someone criticizing government spending, Senator Charlese Grassley is complaining that simulus money is being spent on projects he finds questionable, including a lot of scientific research creating jobs.
In technology, a triumph of fooling the eyes and the technology - disguising an airplane production plant so that it looked like a suburb from the air, which is just flat-out awesome, building your own cartoon-looking prop bomb, which is great for those situations when you need something threatening but not very high-tech, a slime mold as the next inspiration for excellent rail service design, and an "Internet telescope" to map the locations of cybercrime, malware, botnets, and other bad spots and then either buy them or interfere with them such that the perpetrator gives up information useful to law enforcement.
Welcome to opinions, where the Slacktivist notes that corporations being able to buy airtime doesn't mean the information they provide will be anywhere near true, and then follows it with an example of how the newsmedia is distorting history to drum up fear right now, by quoting statistics that do not have the full history of the country behind them.
Also here, we have people suing that signs displaying an atheist message for the holidays next to religious displays of those holidays are considered state endorsement of hostility to religion. Because the sign had words on it, instead of being a dispaly of symbols. Isn't it a bit silly to expect atheists to find some sort of symbolism other than words to express the idea of no God, no religion?
Gallup confirms what the populace thinks - the South is deeply conservative, the Northeast and West are fairly liberal, and conservatives are much more willing to say they are conservatives, while liberals and moderates sort of trade the two labels between themselves. If ranked objectively, instead of on self-reported data, I wonder how many people would match their label, or whether we'd suddenly see a large swell in moderates and liberals and a shrinking of conservatives.
On the politics of the day, there's a lot being said about taxes, defecits, and spending. Messrs. Holtz-Eakin and Brill decry that the Obama administration and Democratic proposals makes it harder for lower-income people to become prosperous, because their marginal tax rates will be increased. The graphs presented in comparison note something that they both leave out in their rush to condemn all taxes as bad and damaging to the incentive to work and disproportionately affecting the poor. Notice the spike above the poverty level, where government benefits recede but there's nothing there to kick in excepting hoping that you start making more money swiftly? Why is that? Whose brilliant idea is it to strand someone on the other side of poverty in a Sisyphean feat? Those same people that think tax credits are really socialist income redistribution when they're given to the poorer people and would rather see many of them starve because they believe poor people are lazy.
Mr. Will dismisses the President as a spender who will ingore even his own fig leaf of freezes, while trying to make you afraid of China's economy and the cost of health care for the elderly. Throughout the column, Mr. Will's position is fairly uniform - cut the spending I see as wasteful, like public broadcasting, and find a way to deal with spending that will get out of control, like Medicare, which spends almost half of its money on the last two years before people die. And then be afraid that this increased spending will stop us from bein gable to defend ourselves when China takes over the world! *lightning flash*. So, Mr. will, you'd like us to find an efficient and cost-effective way of providing health care to everyone? We've got it, if only someone would actually make it so. Then you can fearmonger all you like about China's economic engine.
It is Mr. Flax, however, who truly sparkles in this den of shadow puppetry, blaming this administration for a budget that makes mockery of the word while shouting his unremitting praise for the Free Market (All Praise to Its Name), and forecasting inflation and devaluing of the currency as the way out of paying debts and deficits, along with all the other talking points about how Taxes are Bad, Spending is Bad, Almost Half Of The Country Pays No Income Tax, and other things that would have made Ayn Rand cheer.
On other politics matters, Mr. Pruden attempts to drive a wedge between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the other generals of the military on the issue of Don't Ask, Don&apos&t Tell, by implying that the leadership, a group that excludes the Chairman and the Secretary of Defense becuase they are "military bureaucrats" instead of those on the ground, does not want to see the ban repealed. He offers further justification for the ban by declaring the right of the military to discriminate against people who can't physically do the job the military need them to, a group he feels homosexuals (or, rather, "men who look on other men with lust") belong to. Because being gay suddenly strips you of the ability to fire weapons, drive and fly vehicles, and perform impressive physical feats.
Mr. Carney considers the President a liar on his promise about lobbyists in the White House, and sees that as a further detriment that the President is willing to mislead the people with statements he can weasel his way out of. Yep, broken promise. Mitigating question, though, is "how many now compared to before?" Even if the promise is broken, he could still get credited for reducing influence by having many fewer lobbyists in positions.
At the end of opinions, Mr. Turd Blossom accuses the President of being a liar and an ultrapartisan, and that unless the President becomes a Republican, he will continue to lose Democrats in Congress, and Mr. Finley says the President, instead of capitualting to reality and becoming a Republican, made a bad decision in continuing to campaign as the ultrapartisan Mr. Finley believes he is. He blames the President for the partisan affair of the question and answer session, despite it being Republicans posing the questions, says the Presdent could have easily passed all his wish list with the 60-seat majority the Democratic caucus had, painting the Democrats as an ideologically-unified unit like the Republicans (who only have to delay and refuse to pass anything to be ideologically sound for the last session), and accusing the President of hypocrisy when talking about deficits with his trillions of deficits in the budget.
Last for tonight, a brilliant picture of the night sky and a soundtrack to set that picture to. If you're looking for frights, however, enjoy these illustrations of traditional Japanese monsters.
The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department offers some perspective on what you should fear more - for every one person killed in terrorism around the world, 58 more people have died in the United States alone for lack of health care.
Out in the world today, the beginning of an interview with someone claiming to be a reformed 419 scammer, with a severe caveat that all of this is "as-is" and unverifiable.
Attempts in the United Kingdom to provide greater availability of pregnancy tests to teenagers ahs been met with predicatble backlash. A comment of choice, however, and the one that drew the eye and ire of our Unabashed Feminism Bureau Chief
ldragoon, is "Schools would be far better holding group discussions about the stupidity, the seriousness, and the damaging effects of immature teenage girls who indulge in early sex." Because, as everyone knows, only women are sluts and always pressure our pure boys to sin before they're married. Another telling quote - "Sexual health clinics on school premises send out the message that it is normal for school children to engage in sexual activity. In the past, natural inhibitions combined with fear of pregnancy, legal proceedings and being found out by parents offered a powerful disincentive to underage sex. Confidential health clinics in schools are part of a mix that is removing the restraints which previously limited underage sexual activity." So, really, the conservative element wants you to be afraid of your own sexuality by threatening you with the spectre of pregnancy, criminal charges, and the possibility of being found out by your or her parents, who then might press those criminal charges against the boy for deflowering their prized asset, err, daughter. Fear, ignorance, and abstinence are their three weapons... all nicely skewered by this Skepchic post about what pregnant women won't tell you about the reality of their experience.And speaking of fear and ignorance, a school system responded to a concern about having to read parts of Anne Frank's diary about sexual maturation aloud by forcing the book up to higher grade levels, going above and beyond the actual request to just not have to read it aloud. I can see where that would be embarrassing for eighth-graders, but I also believe eighth-graders are mature enough to read about those sorts of things. The school overracted in an unbidden manner. As The Librarienne puts it, "can we stop pretending that our adolescents and teens are living in a perfect bubble of innocence, and wake up to what they really need to know?"
We can do worse than that, though, in the near-suspension of a student by an overzealous principal because he put a two-inch plastic toy gun in the hand of a toy police officer.
Domestically, Miami Beach police are under an internal investigation after a tourist received epithets, slurs, and trumped-up charges for reporting the beating of a handcuffed man to 911. We hope the investigation results in discipline of semi-permanent desk work or sacking, because that kind of bullying behavior by law enforcement is not tolerable.
a former chairman and CEO of Citigroup went to Congress to tell them that Wall Street and the banks cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, based on his experience at the head of Citigroup, and to make recommendations for politicies and regulations that would prevent another disaster from happening by separating segments of the industry and mandating exchanges for things like derivatives.
On more traditional politics, the White House pushed back against assertions by Senator Kit Bond that the administration denied secrecy requests by the FBI and is revealing data that undermines the national security of the United States. This sounds familiar. I believe the last administration was all about "Tell nobody nothing and redact it all just in case" because they felt that revealing anything about the methods used woule endanger national security. We've seen some amount of what that has been hiding, like torture and abuse. I think sunshine is the best course of action. And furthermore, the critics of this administration's decision to do criminal trials, despite precedent, were up in arms about how this would reveal information that was critical to national security. If nothing else, they're consistent in their belief that telling anyone anything about anything even tangentially connected to the Concept War is dangerous to national security. And will pen letters declaring the Attorney General to be ignorant about policy and precedence in prosecution of terror suspects, while fellating the policies of the previous administrator, who gave them all the extralegal cover and practice they could want.
The Washington Times notes that Europe is now a valuable ally, and that any time Mr. Obama doesn't attend a summit or appears to snub someone in the EU, it should be seen as a shocking breach of protocol. That, or the Times is trying to take pleasure in the discomfort Europe has over Mr. Obama's attitude toward them after having spent a significant amount of time to build the narrative that Europe saw Mr. Obama as some sort of Superman here to fix all the problems of Bush and to put the United States as a subordinate to Europe's interests. Either way, they're trying very hard to ignore the history of the last administration's alienation of Europe and its own narrative of unilateralism so they can paint the successor in a bad light.
Of course, had Mr. Obama gone, there would no doubt be complaints from his detractors that the problems of the United States were more important than jetting off to Europe and that he shouldn't have gone. Funny how it always seems lik no matter what options he chooses, they're the wrong ones.
The official unemployment rate went down through January, less than one percentage point, but that still leaves a lot of people out of work. And because you can't mention jobs without someone criticizing government spending, Senator Charlese Grassley is complaining that simulus money is being spent on projects he finds questionable, including a lot of scientific research creating jobs.
In technology, a triumph of fooling the eyes and the technology - disguising an airplane production plant so that it looked like a suburb from the air, which is just flat-out awesome, building your own cartoon-looking prop bomb, which is great for those situations when you need something threatening but not very high-tech, a slime mold as the next inspiration for excellent rail service design, and an "Internet telescope" to map the locations of cybercrime, malware, botnets, and other bad spots and then either buy them or interfere with them such that the perpetrator gives up information useful to law enforcement.
Welcome to opinions, where the Slacktivist notes that corporations being able to buy airtime doesn't mean the information they provide will be anywhere near true, and then follows it with an example of how the newsmedia is distorting history to drum up fear right now, by quoting statistics that do not have the full history of the country behind them.
Also here, we have people suing that signs displaying an atheist message for the holidays next to religious displays of those holidays are considered state endorsement of hostility to religion. Because the sign had words on it, instead of being a dispaly of symbols. Isn't it a bit silly to expect atheists to find some sort of symbolism other than words to express the idea of no God, no religion?
Gallup confirms what the populace thinks - the South is deeply conservative, the Northeast and West are fairly liberal, and conservatives are much more willing to say they are conservatives, while liberals and moderates sort of trade the two labels between themselves. If ranked objectively, instead of on self-reported data, I wonder how many people would match their label, or whether we'd suddenly see a large swell in moderates and liberals and a shrinking of conservatives.
On the politics of the day, there's a lot being said about taxes, defecits, and spending. Messrs. Holtz-Eakin and Brill decry that the Obama administration and Democratic proposals makes it harder for lower-income people to become prosperous, because their marginal tax rates will be increased. The graphs presented in comparison note something that they both leave out in their rush to condemn all taxes as bad and damaging to the incentive to work and disproportionately affecting the poor. Notice the spike above the poverty level, where government benefits recede but there's nothing there to kick in excepting hoping that you start making more money swiftly? Why is that? Whose brilliant idea is it to strand someone on the other side of poverty in a Sisyphean feat? Those same people that think tax credits are really socialist income redistribution when they're given to the poorer people and would rather see many of them starve because they believe poor people are lazy.
Mr. Will dismisses the President as a spender who will ingore even his own fig leaf of freezes, while trying to make you afraid of China's economy and the cost of health care for the elderly. Throughout the column, Mr. Will's position is fairly uniform - cut the spending I see as wasteful, like public broadcasting, and find a way to deal with spending that will get out of control, like Medicare, which spends almost half of its money on the last two years before people die. And then be afraid that this increased spending will stop us from bein gable to defend ourselves when China takes over the world! *lightning flash*. So, Mr. will, you'd like us to find an efficient and cost-effective way of providing health care to everyone? We've got it, if only someone would actually make it so. Then you can fearmonger all you like about China's economic engine.
It is Mr. Flax, however, who truly sparkles in this den of shadow puppetry, blaming this administration for a budget that makes mockery of the word while shouting his unremitting praise for the Free Market (All Praise to Its Name), and forecasting inflation and devaluing of the currency as the way out of paying debts and deficits, along with all the other talking points about how Taxes are Bad, Spending is Bad, Almost Half Of The Country Pays No Income Tax, and other things that would have made Ayn Rand cheer.
On other politics matters, Mr. Pruden attempts to drive a wedge between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the other generals of the military on the issue of Don't Ask, Don&apos&t Tell, by implying that the leadership, a group that excludes the Chairman and the Secretary of Defense becuase they are "military bureaucrats" instead of those on the ground, does not want to see the ban repealed. He offers further justification for the ban by declaring the right of the military to discriminate against people who can't physically do the job the military need them to, a group he feels homosexuals (or, rather, "men who look on other men with lust") belong to. Because being gay suddenly strips you of the ability to fire weapons, drive and fly vehicles, and perform impressive physical feats.
Mr. Carney considers the President a liar on his promise about lobbyists in the White House, and sees that as a further detriment that the President is willing to mislead the people with statements he can weasel his way out of. Yep, broken promise. Mitigating question, though, is "how many now compared to before?" Even if the promise is broken, he could still get credited for reducing influence by having many fewer lobbyists in positions.
At the end of opinions, Mr. Turd Blossom accuses the President of being a liar and an ultrapartisan, and that unless the President becomes a Republican, he will continue to lose Democrats in Congress, and Mr. Finley says the President, instead of capitualting to reality and becoming a Republican, made a bad decision in continuing to campaign as the ultrapartisan Mr. Finley believes he is. He blames the President for the partisan affair of the question and answer session, despite it being Republicans posing the questions, says the Presdent could have easily passed all his wish list with the 60-seat majority the Democratic caucus had, painting the Democrats as an ideologically-unified unit like the Republicans (who only have to delay and refuse to pass anything to be ideologically sound for the last session), and accusing the President of hypocrisy when talking about deficits with his trillions of deficits in the budget.
Last for tonight, a brilliant picture of the night sky and a soundtrack to set that picture to. If you're looking for frights, however, enjoy these illustrations of traditional Japanese monsters.
