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Quick weekend update - 21 May 2010
May. 23rd, 2010 09:19 amGood morning, evaluators of satire and judgers of the funny. Provide your opinions, please, on Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, another attempt to propagate the Web with images of the Muslim prophet, so as to point out the ridiculousness of threatening bad things to people because you believe images are profane.
for those that need an uplifting story, in the same mode as Densha Otoko, check out the stellar response of Ask Metafilter's posters to a worry that someone's friends might be going into a human-trafficking trap. The scenario is a textbook trafficking set-up, and the tireless efforts of the main poster and several friends across the country resolves successfully, with the potential victims diverted from their rendezvous. There's another thread devoted to the metatalk about the thread and for people to clamor however they like about the authenticity or lack therof for the story. Long thread is long, basically.
And for those looking to pick up some new skills, a flight attendant shows off how to fit ten days worth of clothing into a single carry-on piece of luggage.
Out in the world today, one notes that when criminalizing an activity, one should probably not engage in that activity - in this case, it looks like Argentina’s anti-plagarism law plagarized the Spanish-language Wikipedia in a complete copy-and-paste without attribution. Hilarity, party of one.
In the Department of Awesome, students of ninjutsu foiled an attempted mugging in Australia. The timing was just right - the students were getting out of training, and they saw what was going on, and then Holy crap, ninjas.
Significantly less awesome, the still-active war between the two Koreas could return again, if South Korea attempts to punish North Korea on the alleged sinking of a South Korean ship.
Domestically, the United States Senate decided it was okay with states not being able to cap usury rates, which apparently makes all the bankers headquartered in Delaware breathe a sigh of relief. The Slacktivist points out why this might not be a good thing for people who have credit cards, with a side note that he would love to see both sides of a story covered in the local paper.
Speaking of banks, the Senate passed their versino of a Wall street reform bill over a Republican filibuster, although to read the opinion woven in with the reporting, you would think that was the worst thing to happen to the country, and that government is to blame for the latest crisis. Mr. Caroll provides a far more explicit opinion on how useless and freedom-destroying the bill is supposed to be.
The Attorney General of Pennsylvania has subpoenaed Twitter, alleging violations of Pennsylvania law regarding two accounts that tweeted attacks on him throughout most of his campaign. The specifics ahve not been released yet, so for now it looks like a fishing suit or perhaps a SLAPP of some sort to try and intimidate people from using their social media platforms to make political commentary.
Mexico's president visited the Senate to deliver a denunciation of the Papers Please law, during which several members in attendance gave stand-up applause. This, naturally, irks those people who think the Papers Please Law is just explicitly enforcing what is already on the books and that it doesn’t do any sort of racial profiling at all.
The missing Mojave cross that was recently ruled allowed to stay now has a replica in its place, one that will be taken down, likely to prevent it from being stolen by whomever swiped the original.
Lest one think that Rand Paul is an inveterate racist, which is not necessarily the conclusion based on the material we linked yesterday (but makes for great soundbites), analysis here that points out Rand Paul didn't answer the question, but ducked it entirely and Ms. Maddow's staff go to great pains to correct the New York Times' assertion that Rand Paul is racist because the transcript they're quoting from does not give you the context you need to tell whether he's answering affirmatively or simply acknowledging that he's listening. Roll the tape - he’s being a consistent libertarian about government intervention, but he states clearly and definitively that he’s opposed to racism and discrimination. He just thinks that private-sector individuals and businesses should figure out not to discriminate through the ever-impressive power of The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) instead of through government fiat. While there are lots of reasons to oppose that kind of thinking, especially if you believe that The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) will happily tolerate discimination and keep them in business if there are enough people who believe in that kind of discrimination who want to patronize that establishment, the accusation that Rand Paul is a racist is not true. He’s not even opposed to making accomodations for the disabled, but he doesn’t want things like the ADA requiring the building of an expensive elevator for a wheelchair-bound worker when giving the worker an office on the ground floor will do. Trust us, he's a bog-standard libertarian, at least according to some other libertarians.
Last out, The Panera Bread company has re-opened a shop in St. Louis on the "pay what you can afford" model, with encouragement to volunteer time at teh store if customers can't pay anything at the time they get the bread.
Welcome to technology, where even William S. Burroughs made stereographic cut-ups, which is not the use most people put their computers to. Past this point, MIT thinks they have a good gesture interface - a multicolord glove that could be manufactured for about a dollar and that will catch information about the entire hand, Google TV is going forward and will be arriving this fall, and some giveaways to the community - Microsoft's Robotics studio robot-programming software, and Google's VP8 video codec, both of which hope they will find wider use among the people because they’re free to use. Google wants VP8 to combine with Vorbis to create WebM, a standard that can be utilized in HTML5 to embed video directly into the page (instead of calling forth plugins like Flash).
In opinions, Ms. Swenson comes out swinging at the society that privileges males and corporations as things deserving of entitlement and protection while demonizing females and the lower classes, the one as being responsible for all the ills that ever happen, to her or otherwise, and the other as undeserving of any assistance to help them get out of their poverty or build lives for themselves. Thus, the constant cry for “welfare reform” and the outlawing of abortions or contraceptives and the insistence that men can sleep around and be studly, but women who even enjoy sex in a marriage relationship are sluts and deserve whatever they get. One of these days, we’ll elect women to majorities of power, and then we’ll see what sort of legislation gets passed.
A Fox anchors tells it like it is to Chairman Steele, and the Chairman denies reality, claiming that there’s no bad blood between the establishment GOP and the Tea Party Movement, despite the nomination of Rand Paul and the repeated assertions from various Tea Party groups that establishment Republicans are too complacent or too moderate for their tastes.
Remarkably, Mr. Rove does not overstep the evidence or make bold and sweeping predictions in saying that being associated with the administration and its agenda may be a hindrance rather than a help in November elections. It’s a sane, well-thought, rational piece that has every chance of being quite right. I’d like to see more of these, please.
Elsewhere, Mr. Brookes criticizes the new START treaty, because in his reading, it makes the United States have to become much weaker and lets Russia and the loose nuke world strengthen themselves without fear of swift and deadly retaliation. This would be bad, of course, if Iran somehow managed to pull one over on the West, appearing to cooperate by shipping out nuclear material while not stopping the enrichment processes that will lead to nuclear weapons.
Mr. Hanson praises the independent and sometimes unorthodox Marine Corps and tells anyone who wants to look into reining them in to go away, because Marines Get Results.
Mr. Moore plants Calfornia's woes at the feet of the Democrats who don&qpos;t want to do pension reform or program cutting, claiming that increasing the tax rates on the already rich will no nothing toward actually fixing any of the problems in the budget.
The Detroit News weighs in on the climate bill and calls it an economy-killer, because meeting the targets will be a result of slowing economic growth through higher fees, taxes, and regulations instead of taking advantage of new powerhouse technologies. That, and since it’s not global, those Other People Over There will just keep merrily polluting at a cheaper price and laugh at us wihle they do it.
For an alternate opinion, Mr. Krugman says we're not headed for Greece-like collapse, but Japan-like decades of bad economy, unless, that is, we manage to get over an irrational fear of inflation that’s retarding growth and investment in the economy.
Last for tonight, Walt Disney offers 25 million reasons why he should re-release Snow White. By extension, this is why the old movies keep coming back out of the vaults - new customers. Oh, and Puck-Man is 30 years old today - Google’s main page demonstrated an HTML5 application that let you play a version of the game with a maze based on the Google logo. Most likely, productivity was ded across much of the country today.
for those that need an uplifting story, in the same mode as Densha Otoko, check out the stellar response of Ask Metafilter's posters to a worry that someone's friends might be going into a human-trafficking trap. The scenario is a textbook trafficking set-up, and the tireless efforts of the main poster and several friends across the country resolves successfully, with the potential victims diverted from their rendezvous. There's another thread devoted to the metatalk about the thread and for people to clamor however they like about the authenticity or lack therof for the story. Long thread is long, basically.
And for those looking to pick up some new skills, a flight attendant shows off how to fit ten days worth of clothing into a single carry-on piece of luggage.
Out in the world today, one notes that when criminalizing an activity, one should probably not engage in that activity - in this case, it looks like Argentina’s anti-plagarism law plagarized the Spanish-language Wikipedia in a complete copy-and-paste without attribution. Hilarity, party of one.
In the Department of Awesome, students of ninjutsu foiled an attempted mugging in Australia. The timing was just right - the students were getting out of training, and they saw what was going on, and then Holy crap, ninjas.
Significantly less awesome, the still-active war between the two Koreas could return again, if South Korea attempts to punish North Korea on the alleged sinking of a South Korean ship.
Domestically, the United States Senate decided it was okay with states not being able to cap usury rates, which apparently makes all the bankers headquartered in Delaware breathe a sigh of relief. The Slacktivist points out why this might not be a good thing for people who have credit cards, with a side note that he would love to see both sides of a story covered in the local paper.
Speaking of banks, the Senate passed their versino of a Wall street reform bill over a Republican filibuster, although to read the opinion woven in with the reporting, you would think that was the worst thing to happen to the country, and that government is to blame for the latest crisis. Mr. Caroll provides a far more explicit opinion on how useless and freedom-destroying the bill is supposed to be.
The Attorney General of Pennsylvania has subpoenaed Twitter, alleging violations of Pennsylvania law regarding two accounts that tweeted attacks on him throughout most of his campaign. The specifics ahve not been released yet, so for now it looks like a fishing suit or perhaps a SLAPP of some sort to try and intimidate people from using their social media platforms to make political commentary.
Mexico's president visited the Senate to deliver a denunciation of the Papers Please law, during which several members in attendance gave stand-up applause. This, naturally, irks those people who think the Papers Please Law is just explicitly enforcing what is already on the books and that it doesn’t do any sort of racial profiling at all.
The missing Mojave cross that was recently ruled allowed to stay now has a replica in its place, one that will be taken down, likely to prevent it from being stolen by whomever swiped the original.
Lest one think that Rand Paul is an inveterate racist, which is not necessarily the conclusion based on the material we linked yesterday (but makes for great soundbites), analysis here that points out Rand Paul didn't answer the question, but ducked it entirely and Ms. Maddow's staff go to great pains to correct the New York Times' assertion that Rand Paul is racist because the transcript they're quoting from does not give you the context you need to tell whether he's answering affirmatively or simply acknowledging that he's listening. Roll the tape - he’s being a consistent libertarian about government intervention, but he states clearly and definitively that he’s opposed to racism and discrimination. He just thinks that private-sector individuals and businesses should figure out not to discriminate through the ever-impressive power of The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) instead of through government fiat. While there are lots of reasons to oppose that kind of thinking, especially if you believe that The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) will happily tolerate discimination and keep them in business if there are enough people who believe in that kind of discrimination who want to patronize that establishment, the accusation that Rand Paul is a racist is not true. He’s not even opposed to making accomodations for the disabled, but he doesn’t want things like the ADA requiring the building of an expensive elevator for a wheelchair-bound worker when giving the worker an office on the ground floor will do. Trust us, he's a bog-standard libertarian, at least according to some other libertarians.
Last out, The Panera Bread company has re-opened a shop in St. Louis on the "pay what you can afford" model, with encouragement to volunteer time at teh store if customers can't pay anything at the time they get the bread.
Welcome to technology, where even William S. Burroughs made stereographic cut-ups, which is not the use most people put their computers to. Past this point, MIT thinks they have a good gesture interface - a multicolord glove that could be manufactured for about a dollar and that will catch information about the entire hand, Google TV is going forward and will be arriving this fall, and some giveaways to the community - Microsoft's Robotics studio robot-programming software, and Google's VP8 video codec, both of which hope they will find wider use among the people because they’re free to use. Google wants VP8 to combine with Vorbis to create WebM, a standard that can be utilized in HTML5 to embed video directly into the page (instead of calling forth plugins like Flash).
In opinions, Ms. Swenson comes out swinging at the society that privileges males and corporations as things deserving of entitlement and protection while demonizing females and the lower classes, the one as being responsible for all the ills that ever happen, to her or otherwise, and the other as undeserving of any assistance to help them get out of their poverty or build lives for themselves. Thus, the constant cry for “welfare reform” and the outlawing of abortions or contraceptives and the insistence that men can sleep around and be studly, but women who even enjoy sex in a marriage relationship are sluts and deserve whatever they get. One of these days, we’ll elect women to majorities of power, and then we’ll see what sort of legislation gets passed.
A Fox anchors tells it like it is to Chairman Steele, and the Chairman denies reality, claiming that there’s no bad blood between the establishment GOP and the Tea Party Movement, despite the nomination of Rand Paul and the repeated assertions from various Tea Party groups that establishment Republicans are too complacent or too moderate for their tastes.
Remarkably, Mr. Rove does not overstep the evidence or make bold and sweeping predictions in saying that being associated with the administration and its agenda may be a hindrance rather than a help in November elections. It’s a sane, well-thought, rational piece that has every chance of being quite right. I’d like to see more of these, please.
Elsewhere, Mr. Brookes criticizes the new START treaty, because in his reading, it makes the United States have to become much weaker and lets Russia and the loose nuke world strengthen themselves without fear of swift and deadly retaliation. This would be bad, of course, if Iran somehow managed to pull one over on the West, appearing to cooperate by shipping out nuclear material while not stopping the enrichment processes that will lead to nuclear weapons.
Mr. Hanson praises the independent and sometimes unorthodox Marine Corps and tells anyone who wants to look into reining them in to go away, because Marines Get Results.
Mr. Moore plants Calfornia's woes at the feet of the Democrats who don&qpos;t want to do pension reform or program cutting, claiming that increasing the tax rates on the already rich will no nothing toward actually fixing any of the problems in the budget.
The Detroit News weighs in on the climate bill and calls it an economy-killer, because meeting the targets will be a result of slowing economic growth through higher fees, taxes, and regulations instead of taking advantage of new powerhouse technologies. That, and since it’s not global, those Other People Over There will just keep merrily polluting at a cheaper price and laugh at us wihle they do it.
For an alternate opinion, Mr. Krugman says we're not headed for Greece-like collapse, but Japan-like decades of bad economy, unless, that is, we manage to get over an irrational fear of inflation that’s retarding growth and investment in the economy.
Last for tonight, Walt Disney offers 25 million reasons why he should re-release Snow White. By extension, this is why the old movies keep coming back out of the vaults - new customers. Oh, and Puck-Man is 30 years old today - Google’s main page demonstrated an HTML5 application that let you play a version of the game with a maze based on the Google logo. Most likely, productivity was ded across much of the country today.
