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Cheers, people in search of government efficiency! Behold that at least one person understands - the national labor relations board appointee is supposed to promote unions and union membership, not be a person opposed to them.
For those, instead, looking for games that aren’t actually games, the evolutionary psychology bingo board provides a way for one to keep track of the many science-twisting arguments in favor of the idea that “men on top, women on bottom” is a natural evolutionary occurence.
And for those looking for games that have no downside, check this out - credit unions using the lure of lottery sweepstakes to get people to save money. If my credit union offered the chance at small prizes and one really big one, yeah, I think I’d be more inclined to save there, in whatever fashion I could. ($25 is one ticket in the drawing, in the article. We’re regular savers as it is, but it would be nice to have a shot at some big money while doing what we normally do.)
Finally, a primer on the BBC television show Doctor Who, starting from the very beginnings to the current incarnation, and the best of this year's Washington Post annual Peep Diorama contest, Peeps Show (IV).
Out in the world today, al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against foreign embassies. The conventional wisdom appears to be divided between the people who think this is a blip brought on by the unrest of the election results and those who see this as further proof that Iraq is backsliding into what it was before the United States troop surge.
The Prime Minister of Israel called off attendance at a summt on nuclear weapons convened by the United States for fear that he would be pressured to officially acknowledge that his country held nuclear weapons. Back home, several Republicans held off their support for the new START treaty because of perceived deficiences in missile defense and verification of compmliance sections of the treaty, while also calling for a modernization of the nuclear weapons program.
Technology has but one item - we're getting closer to developing chameleon circuits.
Bring forth opinions, sound and otherwise. On the “sound” side, the important question of anyone advocating for an official religious government - which sect should be in charge? And what does it mean to be a member of that sect? And how do you check? On the “otherwise” side, the suggestion that government should not be in the business of helping people, because there will always be enough private charity to do that. According to Mr. Stossel and his allies, government help makes people feel entitled to that help, and it makes people dependent, rather than willing to work hard and pull themselves up to the point where they don’t need charity any more. And, of course, governemnt is incompetent at what it does, so not only does it foster dependency, it prevents The Market (A.P.T.I.N) from pulling people out of poverty as only it can. It’s a shame-based system, and it lets the people giving charity feel superior to those who receive it, or to attach the requirement that those receiving charity also be blasted constantly with messages and conversion attempts (or, even better, require conversion before any charity is given). While Mr. Stossel is right that people will band together to assist each other if there is no alternative, he leaves out that they generally tend to do so because there is an antagonist working to crush them, and that antagonist generally has more money and power than they do. I wonder if he’d be so very quick to adopt the libertarian perspective if he wasn’t in the position to say I Got Mine, Frak You. And then, taking that position to its logical conclusion, Mr. Williams suggests that all the freedom-loving, limited-government people secede from the United States that continues to overstep its Constitutional authority every day and create their own nation. Sounds Randian to me. We hope that if they do, they’ve got enough cash, land, and materials in their personal possession to build out the infrastructure they’re going to need immediately just to support their limited-government populace. And then we’ll see how well they negotiate with other nations for trade.
Mr. Kuhner declares that in changing their Nuclear posture to say "No, we won't retaliate with nuclear strikes if you're part of the NPT", the United States has abandoned leadership on the international stage and invited their enemies to attack them with everything they can, including biological and chemical agents, safe in the knowledge that the United States would never retaliate against them with nuclear attacks. He believese the threat of the bomb is what’s been keeping the peace, and if the U.S. doesn’t modernize, they’re conceding defeat to those countries that do. Where it really goes unhinged, though, is where this posture is supposed to be an abandonment of the Concept War and an invitation for the world to see the United States as a joke, as Iran’s president seized the opportunity to do. Apparently, by changing the conditions of the use of the bomb, the President doomed America to be run roughshod over by “Chinese militarism, Russian gangsterism, Iranian adventurism and Islamist imperialism”, the “caretaker of a declining hyperpower”.
Elsewhere, the Washington Times comes out against requiring internships to be paid, because unpaid interns should be grateful for the experience they get and not ask to rise above their station, despite, y’know, doing actual work for the company. The Times justifies it by saying that interns don’t stay very long and they’re hard to train and get up to functioning team members. The administration has suggested paying all interns because unpaid work necessarily closes out from contacts and experience those young students who have to be paid or they don’t have enough money to continue their lives. The Times counters this idea by saying “if we pay interns, then almost nobody gets internships, because corporations don’t want to justify the expense, and besides, if interns really were that awesome, The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) would dictate they get paid as an incentive to lure them away from the competition!” So yeah, interns should just be glad they’re working and not actually believe they should be paid for that work.
Mr. Krisinger believes the conclusion to a review of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was foreordained, and that regardless of what the review committee recommends, the law will be repealed. So, politics trumps the military, and Mr. Krisinger believes this a bad thing. He would find agreement from Mr. Gaffney, who says that Iraq is falling apart and losing all the gains the previous administrator made, because the current administrator is following the previous administrator's timetable for leaving the country. Because of that, Iran is takign over through proxies, and so when we leave, Iraq will be an Iranian puppet, and That’s Not Acceptable.
The WSJ suggests that the current spat between the Afghan and American presidents only helps the Taliban, and that Mr. Obama should suck it up, smile, and stand by his man through as much governmental corruption as he can stomach, because it’s mroe important to overthrow the insurgents.
On health care, The Heritage Foundation believes the real way to pay for the new entitlements is through the creation of a Value-Added Tax, which naturally, gives more power and money to government so they can spend even more and perpetuate the cycle, while also choking off the free-market economy that makes us great.
Economically, Messrs. Wallison and Skeel say new financial regulations proposed by Senator Dodd should be opposed because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation lacks the resources and the expertise to successfully cushion the fall of large firms like AIG, and that doign so would only make other too big to fail firms bigger, and that bankruptcy and liquidation worked well enough for Lehman Brothers to stay the default, Market-(A.P.T.I.N.)-based system to use. We admit that had nonbank entities failed in such a manner the first time that this question would not be before us. One would almost hope that actually letting them fall down would encourage less high-risk derivatives and other instruments, but it seems that the economic engines require regulators installed rather than trusting the driver will stop going so fast after being in a wreck.
And last out tonight, because I freely admit that someone using their column space as an evangelical message is almost always interesting, Ms. Hagelin cloaks her worldview about evil in the world today in a book review. So, for your edification, these are the things that are evil and the work of a delibarate but shadowy cabal intent on destroyign your Judeo-Christian values, ethics, and churches - people forsaking their traditional faiths of Christianity and Judaism in favor of witchcraft and other pagan or New Age practices, angry in-your-face atheist manifestos at the top of bestseller lists, and a culture of sexual anarchy that produces same-sex marriage, people attempting to surgically morph into the opposite gender, pedophiles and polygamists striving to ride the gay-rights bandwagon to acceptance, and an epidemic of female schoolteachers sexually preying on their students. (And on a claim like that, there had better be numbers to back it up.) The way to fight it, other than the obvious “accept our savior into your heart and be saved?” go after the people who are “confused”, seduced by the lies of the world but not yet fully believing in them. Attack the young and impressionable, those off-balance, and those who are questioning, because that’s the best time to convince them to join your group instead of the others they might be considering, like, say, Not In Our Town. Oh, and to be aware that the people in power are constantly trying to stop you from proclaiming your message and having all people see it and be converted.
Last for tonight, the question of whether good writers having bad lives, especially in romance, impacts our reading of their work, and whether they should still be considered god writers. In our times, I think the best example of the quandary is Orson Scott Card. And then the reason why students hate poetry - teachers don't teach it properly, choosing “safe” poems and trite meanings from the pool of material that contains sufficient doses of madness, sexuality, and despair so as to be interesting to crack and interpret and reinterpret and re-read. The solution, according to Mr. Kilgore, is to pick better stuff and then force the students into talking and discussing it, instead of providing a safe and pat interpretation to use. I think he suggests that we treat poetry like the students treat music and movies - discuss, analyze, criticize, say that stuff sucks and why. Maybe if they do, then they won’t come out like I did, with no real appreciation of poetry not set to a beat.
For those, instead, looking for games that aren’t actually games, the evolutionary psychology bingo board provides a way for one to keep track of the many science-twisting arguments in favor of the idea that “men on top, women on bottom” is a natural evolutionary occurence.
And for those looking for games that have no downside, check this out - credit unions using the lure of lottery sweepstakes to get people to save money. If my credit union offered the chance at small prizes and one really big one, yeah, I think I’d be more inclined to save there, in whatever fashion I could. ($25 is one ticket in the drawing, in the article. We’re regular savers as it is, but it would be nice to have a shot at some big money while doing what we normally do.)
Finally, a primer on the BBC television show Doctor Who, starting from the very beginnings to the current incarnation, and the best of this year's Washington Post annual Peep Diorama contest, Peeps Show (IV).
Out in the world today, al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against foreign embassies. The conventional wisdom appears to be divided between the people who think this is a blip brought on by the unrest of the election results and those who see this as further proof that Iraq is backsliding into what it was before the United States troop surge.
The Prime Minister of Israel called off attendance at a summt on nuclear weapons convened by the United States for fear that he would be pressured to officially acknowledge that his country held nuclear weapons. Back home, several Republicans held off their support for the new START treaty because of perceived deficiences in missile defense and verification of compmliance sections of the treaty, while also calling for a modernization of the nuclear weapons program.
Technology has but one item - we're getting closer to developing chameleon circuits.
Bring forth opinions, sound and otherwise. On the “sound” side, the important question of anyone advocating for an official religious government - which sect should be in charge? And what does it mean to be a member of that sect? And how do you check? On the “otherwise” side, the suggestion that government should not be in the business of helping people, because there will always be enough private charity to do that. According to Mr. Stossel and his allies, government help makes people feel entitled to that help, and it makes people dependent, rather than willing to work hard and pull themselves up to the point where they don’t need charity any more. And, of course, governemnt is incompetent at what it does, so not only does it foster dependency, it prevents The Market (A.P.T.I.N) from pulling people out of poverty as only it can. It’s a shame-based system, and it lets the people giving charity feel superior to those who receive it, or to attach the requirement that those receiving charity also be blasted constantly with messages and conversion attempts (or, even better, require conversion before any charity is given). While Mr. Stossel is right that people will band together to assist each other if there is no alternative, he leaves out that they generally tend to do so because there is an antagonist working to crush them, and that antagonist generally has more money and power than they do. I wonder if he’d be so very quick to adopt the libertarian perspective if he wasn’t in the position to say I Got Mine, Frak You. And then, taking that position to its logical conclusion, Mr. Williams suggests that all the freedom-loving, limited-government people secede from the United States that continues to overstep its Constitutional authority every day and create their own nation. Sounds Randian to me. We hope that if they do, they’ve got enough cash, land, and materials in their personal possession to build out the infrastructure they’re going to need immediately just to support their limited-government populace. And then we’ll see how well they negotiate with other nations for trade.
Mr. Kuhner declares that in changing their Nuclear posture to say "No, we won't retaliate with nuclear strikes if you're part of the NPT", the United States has abandoned leadership on the international stage and invited their enemies to attack them with everything they can, including biological and chemical agents, safe in the knowledge that the United States would never retaliate against them with nuclear attacks. He believese the threat of the bomb is what’s been keeping the peace, and if the U.S. doesn’t modernize, they’re conceding defeat to those countries that do. Where it really goes unhinged, though, is where this posture is supposed to be an abandonment of the Concept War and an invitation for the world to see the United States as a joke, as Iran’s president seized the opportunity to do. Apparently, by changing the conditions of the use of the bomb, the President doomed America to be run roughshod over by “Chinese militarism, Russian gangsterism, Iranian adventurism and Islamist imperialism”, the “caretaker of a declining hyperpower”.
Elsewhere, the Washington Times comes out against requiring internships to be paid, because unpaid interns should be grateful for the experience they get and not ask to rise above their station, despite, y’know, doing actual work for the company. The Times justifies it by saying that interns don’t stay very long and they’re hard to train and get up to functioning team members. The administration has suggested paying all interns because unpaid work necessarily closes out from contacts and experience those young students who have to be paid or they don’t have enough money to continue their lives. The Times counters this idea by saying “if we pay interns, then almost nobody gets internships, because corporations don’t want to justify the expense, and besides, if interns really were that awesome, The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) would dictate they get paid as an incentive to lure them away from the competition!” So yeah, interns should just be glad they’re working and not actually believe they should be paid for that work.
Mr. Krisinger believes the conclusion to a review of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was foreordained, and that regardless of what the review committee recommends, the law will be repealed. So, politics trumps the military, and Mr. Krisinger believes this a bad thing. He would find agreement from Mr. Gaffney, who says that Iraq is falling apart and losing all the gains the previous administrator made, because the current administrator is following the previous administrator's timetable for leaving the country. Because of that, Iran is takign over through proxies, and so when we leave, Iraq will be an Iranian puppet, and That’s Not Acceptable.
The WSJ suggests that the current spat between the Afghan and American presidents only helps the Taliban, and that Mr. Obama should suck it up, smile, and stand by his man through as much governmental corruption as he can stomach, because it’s mroe important to overthrow the insurgents.
On health care, The Heritage Foundation believes the real way to pay for the new entitlements is through the creation of a Value-Added Tax, which naturally, gives more power and money to government so they can spend even more and perpetuate the cycle, while also choking off the free-market economy that makes us great.
Economically, Messrs. Wallison and Skeel say new financial regulations proposed by Senator Dodd should be opposed because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation lacks the resources and the expertise to successfully cushion the fall of large firms like AIG, and that doign so would only make other too big to fail firms bigger, and that bankruptcy and liquidation worked well enough for Lehman Brothers to stay the default, Market-(A.P.T.I.N.)-based system to use. We admit that had nonbank entities failed in such a manner the first time that this question would not be before us. One would almost hope that actually letting them fall down would encourage less high-risk derivatives and other instruments, but it seems that the economic engines require regulators installed rather than trusting the driver will stop going so fast after being in a wreck.
And last out tonight, because I freely admit that someone using their column space as an evangelical message is almost always interesting, Ms. Hagelin cloaks her worldview about evil in the world today in a book review. So, for your edification, these are the things that are evil and the work of a delibarate but shadowy cabal intent on destroyign your Judeo-Christian values, ethics, and churches - people forsaking their traditional faiths of Christianity and Judaism in favor of witchcraft and other pagan or New Age practices, angry in-your-face atheist manifestos at the top of bestseller lists, and a culture of sexual anarchy that produces same-sex marriage, people attempting to surgically morph into the opposite gender, pedophiles and polygamists striving to ride the gay-rights bandwagon to acceptance, and an epidemic of female schoolteachers sexually preying on their students. (And on a claim like that, there had better be numbers to back it up.) The way to fight it, other than the obvious “accept our savior into your heart and be saved?” go after the people who are “confused”, seduced by the lies of the world but not yet fully believing in them. Attack the young and impressionable, those off-balance, and those who are questioning, because that’s the best time to convince them to join your group instead of the others they might be considering, like, say, Not In Our Town. Oh, and to be aware that the people in power are constantly trying to stop you from proclaiming your message and having all people see it and be converted.
Last for tonight, the question of whether good writers having bad lives, especially in romance, impacts our reading of their work, and whether they should still be considered god writers. In our times, I think the best example of the quandary is Orson Scott Card. And then the reason why students hate poetry - teachers don't teach it properly, choosing “safe” poems and trite meanings from the pool of material that contains sufficient doses of madness, sexuality, and despair so as to be interesting to crack and interpret and reinterpret and re-read. The solution, according to Mr. Kilgore, is to pick better stuff and then force the students into talking and discussing it, instead of providing a safe and pat interpretation to use. I think he suggests that we treat poetry like the students treat music and movies - discuss, analyze, criticize, say that stuff sucks and why. Maybe if they do, then they won’t come out like I did, with no real appreciation of poetry not set to a beat.
