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Subject of Utility - 8-9 September 2010
Sep. 10th, 2010 07:12 amGood morning, everyone. That you can read this is a testament to your literacy. 8 September is International Literacy Day, so for those who are in a position to help someone pick up literacy in their language, please help them to become more literate. So that if they should turn out to be against exposing children to any sort of harm in the mass media, they will at least read and understand the things they want to stop other people from reading. As for how to encourage the matter? Well, forget what you think you know about it - most of the classical advice on studying turns out not to actually help people learn and recall.
For those in school, going back, or continuing their education in other ways, The Library at the University of Queensland offers a comprehensive review of what plagarising entails and how to avoid doing it, even unintentionally.
For those who want to puzzle over something, find your answers to the question of why, for being such an important god-man, there aren't accounts of Jesus of Nazareth by many of the contemporary heavies in philosophy.
And for those of us who want to look at the world in a new way, consider how neurodiversity in your workplace and your academics can benefit your company by putting the strengths of the neurodiverse to appropriate work for them.
Finally, some advice to the people who are unhappy at work - decide whether you need a career change. If you can't do that, then get happy at your workplace! Laugh if you have to, and don't get frustrated when you end up losing work in a crash or you can't find the solution - you're still getting paid. Which sounds like advice for unhappiness in all sorts of places - change if you can, fake being happy until you are if you can’t. Nothing there at all about, y’know, whether your happiness might be caused by something else that can and should be fixed in your workplace. It’s all just your attitude. Smile, citizen. Do it. Do it now.
In the world today, Iran defends its right to bar weapons inspectors, the U.S. media reiterates that many prominent Iranians deny the killing of Jews by Hitler happened, because, y’know, not fond of Israel, we're reminded that in the chaos following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a lot of treasures and valuables were looted from Iraq, with some of them returning to the country and their displays, and extortion and organized crime appear to be the methods of preference to fundraise for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
several soldiers ahve been accused of killing Afghan civilians for fun and then collecting fingers from the dead men to use as trophies and mementoes.
The United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo admitted that it could not stop systematic rape of women in the country by rebel forces and then was silent about the atrocities committed.
Elsewhere, a sign of increasing unrest and uncertainty - accusations of child witchcraft are up in Africa, usually with boys as the accused. Witchcraft accusations in general are signs of stress, but moving them to children indicates to me that things have gone fantastically south. Additionally, a religiously-motivated mob in Belize burnt down a crocodile sanctuary after a psychci told the natives that the Americans had fed two children to the crocodiles.
Last out, Fidel Castro indicates the communist system of Cuba needs some changes and isn't working for them. What he did not say is “Communism doesn’t work”, but I’m betting the prevailing narrative will be just that - “Castro says Communism doesn’t work! Eat that, socialists!”
Domestically, The Obama Justice Department successfully used the State Secrets doctrine to prevent prisoners from suing the CIA over alleged torture while they were in custody, with the court agreeing that such things could not be brought because they might reveal secret and classified information. Obama’s verse, same as the first, just a little bit louder and a whole lot worse. The candidate that criticized excessive state secrets has become the President in favor of it, and six judges said that allegations of lawbreaking and convention-breaking are not enough grounds to send a case to trial if the government says that secret information would be revealed in trying it. Really, though, why are the judges protecting the alleged torturers, and why is this administration following the same course as the predecessor it criticized?
The President pressed for passage of his aditional jobs bill while also returning to the Party of NO argument against the Republicans, as a way of trying to generate support and get the Democratic voter base to turn out for the midterm elections. The President needs a kickstart somewhere so as to try and counteract the still-high unemployment rate and slow growth.
Expect nothing more than an AP Newswire post about the scheduled book burning on 11 September. That is, assuming that it actually happens - supposedly, Park 51 agreed to move from its current spot and so the book-burning is cancelled. The actual truth? The Park 51 people haven’t moved anything, there’s just a meeting, and if there’s no actual movement, the book burning will be back on. If it suddenly returns with a vengeance, there will be no pictures from the AP (and maybe some others), nor anything more than just the one story. It is a newsworthy event, but that seems to be about the right amount of coverage for it. As for the thing they’re protesting, irresistible force, meet immovable object - whether the Park 51 project goes ahead as planned or is moved to some other location, somebody's going to get pissed off. And with this latest development, it’s now a toss-up as to whom it will be.
This is a most interesting story - a man was arrested for firing his AK-47 into his lawn to try and scare off a large group of people he claims were threatening him and might have been gang members. the interesting part is that the law says that if he saw someone pull a gun and point it at him, he would have been justified in firing, but that because there weren’t any guns visible, he’s charged. Second Amendment people, like the article writer, will be understandably aggravated by that decision, but it might also be that in firing, the gun owner might have escalated a situation. Hell, in grabbing the gun, he might have escalated the situation past what it would have normally been.
However, in this take-no-chances world, even suspicious toy ponies will be given the detonation treatment. I suspect that means even the squeakiest of squeakyponies would be destroyed if considered suspicious.
As an endcap to all of this, take a look at the things that parents are most worried about happening to their children, and what they should actually be worrying about.
Last out of deomstic news, the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department presents a graph - supposedly, under Democratic presidents, all income percentiles do pretty well, but under Republican presidents, only the very richest of the rich do well.
In technology and science, the ACLU is suing the United States government to stop it from performing warrantless searches of laptops, computers, and smart devices that are crossing into the United States.
Pretty purple aurora pictures.
Consumer Reports weighs in and finds that it agrees with Zagat - In-N-Out and Five Guys have the best fast food burgers, while McDonalds, Burger King, and Jack in the Box have the worst. Yet another reason we wish that In-N-Out was a national chain instead of California hoarding it all to themselves.
Google has released Instant, a method that streams results back to you based on the query you type into their search box. google claims this will save searchers a few seconds every search by showing them the results they want a few keystrokes earlier than they would normally have gotten them.
Thanks to a filtration system composed of cotton, carbon nanotubes and silver, water can be purified at reasonably high rates for a small amount of electrical current - enough that a solar panel, battery, or a hand crank would be enough to do the job.
And finally, the release of an album on a wax cylinder sends tech-heads into the parts bin to DIY up a phonograph that will play it back with acceptable quality.
Into opinions, where, in a bit of a break from the usual fare, Ms. Charen says that Europe should stop wallowing in its guilt about the past and start moving forward into being a strong and prosperous continent again, offering encouragement that while Europe was responsible for many of the heinous acts done in the name of white superiority or other philosophies, it also discarded those philosophies as they proved not to work and are beyond them now. Move on, she says. Even though you fought tooth and nail to defend flawed policies, it’s okay. We all do that. You can let go and remember what you did wrong without moping over it. Get back to being those capitalists who started the whole thing and you’ll do fine and be prosperous!
We find the WSJ laying out what will likely be the conservative attack on the economy - it's all the Obama Administration's fault for being recklessly spendthrift and for enacting all their programs before getting to the economy. It will likely be seasoned with a healthy dose of private businesses are too scared or unwilling to hire because of the administration, and aren't they socialists, too? And for dessert, you’ll get lots of If the government would just stop doing things and leave the economy to The Market (A.P.T.I.N.), then we'd go back to the prosperity we had. If you really want to speed recovery, though, you've got to make sure you cut the budget in all the places we don't like - like welfare.
In terms of foreign policy, however, the exemplar will include how much the President has tried to make friends of enemies, abandoned our classical alliances, and made the world a more dangerous place by not being Team America, World Police. Which doesn’t exactly jibe with how not too long ago, there were complaints that Europe wasn’t pulling their defense weight...oh, wait, that was framed as a “Hey, we’ve helped you out for decades by being Team America, World Police, and so when we say ‘Bomb Iraq’, you say ‘How many planes?’” instead of a call for the rest of the world to take care of its own defense spending for a while. Nevermind. Besides, it’s moved on to Bomb Iran, preferrably by Israel before the whole Middle East gets nuclear and then jihadists use the weapons not caring about the destruction of the region, a rather long train of events that hinges on the stupid not realizing that if they go blow up some infidels somewhere, when the return nuke arrives, all the holy warriors go onward and there’s nobody left to carry on the mission. It’s kind of the Risk 2010 scenario - wastleands in the Middle East and fallout that moves into multiple countries. Unless the whole region goes collectively insane all together, I’m pretty sure there will be pressure exerted on the stupid by the people who don’t want to deal with the fallout of the stupid being stupid.
And then there’s the domestic agenda: a cherry-picked pair - a defector who says that Obama is clearly a socialist and that people need to wake up, and the communist who tried to get the people to wake up, but was greeted with a wall of nationalism. Yet it is the communist who was apparently hurling insults in the pairing. This might be related to the Inigo Montoya School of Political Thought re: Tea Partiers and "Obama is a Fascist", with bonus amounts of misspelled signs, coming to us as a blast from the past about conservative events of last year. The series continues into the Glenn Beck event as a liveblog, where well, he starts out by lying, continues into lying, makes a pit stop in deception, and continues on through ignorance of history all the way to the conclusion, also with Bonus! People with signs that clearly have no idea what they’re talking about. In Part III, it's all about the pictures. Part IV is The 9/12 Project, the second foray into ignorance and ginned up anger at things most of the protestors have no clue about, but have been told to be angry at by their corporate backers disguised as grassroots groups, and lots of, you guessed it, pictures. And then, time passes, and we land at Part V - the poorly-spelled, ignorant of the Constitution fake controversy over the Park 51 cultural center, as well as the latest speech starring, yet again, Glenn Beck and the new squadron of fighting keyboarders. (“MOSK” is the keyword for this enterprise)
In all this, the evangelical sometimes debate among themselves whether it’s okay to let Beck lead the flock, or, because of his non-Protestant religious affiliations, it would be like letting the Antichrist into the driver’s seat. The Slacktivist makes mention that Glenn Beck's Mormonism is not the thing people should be discussing in discussing whether or not to take his things to heart. It's that Glenn Beck hates his brother and campaigns against his fellows. That's why he shouldn't be followed as a Christian prophet. He’s playing up to the people who believe that white men are an oppressed minority, that Christians are persecuted, and other things that are only appropriate on Topsy-Turvy Day. And he’s often using the military, the veterans, and support for the troops as a smokescreen to justify his appeals, trying to paint them as universally in line with him. Excepting, of course, that there is no such thing as a unified group of people, especially not veterans.
Despite all of this, conservatives feel pretty confident they're going to win big this election, and the Democrats don’t seem to be doing a whole lot to dissuade them of this.
Mr. Williams tries to swing for the fences and lays down a bunt instead, lamenting that black students are unequipped for college, but are hustled in by recruiters looking more for diversity than for talented students, after having been passed out of high school despite being several greade levels below the average white student. So it’s all politics driving this forward, then, Mr. Williams? You mean, the politics of social promotion that says everyone has to go through, regardless of ability, or teachers are harming the self-esteem of the child? The politics of property taxes and assessments, where schools have to fight voters bred on “TAXES BAD AND SOCIALIST” routinely just to stay operating, leaving them no actual money to improve their lot and try to make their students actually educated? The politics of white flight that left schools in the middle of neighborhoods that don’t have the tax base to support an excellent school, and the politics that continues to jump at any excuse not to go back there because the Scary Black and Brown people are violent drug-addicted thugs with no jobs? (And anyone who points out that the jobs left when the whites took their businesses and ran from the Scary Black and Brown People is racist against white people, of course.) The politics that say a teacher trying to teach should immediately be censured because they’re deviating from the acceptable script of America Great, White People Good, Jesus Loves America, Science Bad, Brains DoublePlusUngood, you nerd? Of course not. It’s just race hustlers and people deceiving blacks into thinking they’re ready when they’re not.
And out of opinions, Mr. Stossel thinks that the disabled are just another lawsuit-happy special interest group. Which lets us say, unequivocally: That man is an idiot.
Last out, the attention to detail plus the tools means a very, very good replica prop of a lightsaber. For comparison, Nintendo players in the United Kingdom will be able to have a sonic screwdriver-style Wiimote. I doubt such a controller will see a Stateside release, considering that while there is more than a devoted fandom, The Doctor is not a mainstream of primetime television here in the U.S. (Shame, really.)
For those in school, going back, or continuing their education in other ways, The Library at the University of Queensland offers a comprehensive review of what plagarising entails and how to avoid doing it, even unintentionally.
For those who want to puzzle over something, find your answers to the question of why, for being such an important god-man, there aren't accounts of Jesus of Nazareth by many of the contemporary heavies in philosophy.
And for those of us who want to look at the world in a new way, consider how neurodiversity in your workplace and your academics can benefit your company by putting the strengths of the neurodiverse to appropriate work for them.
Finally, some advice to the people who are unhappy at work - decide whether you need a career change. If you can't do that, then get happy at your workplace! Laugh if you have to, and don't get frustrated when you end up losing work in a crash or you can't find the solution - you're still getting paid. Which sounds like advice for unhappiness in all sorts of places - change if you can, fake being happy until you are if you can’t. Nothing there at all about, y’know, whether your happiness might be caused by something else that can and should be fixed in your workplace. It’s all just your attitude. Smile, citizen. Do it. Do it now.
In the world today, Iran defends its right to bar weapons inspectors, the U.S. media reiterates that many prominent Iranians deny the killing of Jews by Hitler happened, because, y’know, not fond of Israel, we're reminded that in the chaos following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a lot of treasures and valuables were looted from Iraq, with some of them returning to the country and their displays, and extortion and organized crime appear to be the methods of preference to fundraise for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
several soldiers ahve been accused of killing Afghan civilians for fun and then collecting fingers from the dead men to use as trophies and mementoes.
The United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo admitted that it could not stop systematic rape of women in the country by rebel forces and then was silent about the atrocities committed.
Elsewhere, a sign of increasing unrest and uncertainty - accusations of child witchcraft are up in Africa, usually with boys as the accused. Witchcraft accusations in general are signs of stress, but moving them to children indicates to me that things have gone fantastically south. Additionally, a religiously-motivated mob in Belize burnt down a crocodile sanctuary after a psychci told the natives that the Americans had fed two children to the crocodiles.
Last out, Fidel Castro indicates the communist system of Cuba needs some changes and isn't working for them. What he did not say is “Communism doesn’t work”, but I’m betting the prevailing narrative will be just that - “Castro says Communism doesn’t work! Eat that, socialists!”
Domestically, The Obama Justice Department successfully used the State Secrets doctrine to prevent prisoners from suing the CIA over alleged torture while they were in custody, with the court agreeing that such things could not be brought because they might reveal secret and classified information. Obama’s verse, same as the first, just a little bit louder and a whole lot worse. The candidate that criticized excessive state secrets has become the President in favor of it, and six judges said that allegations of lawbreaking and convention-breaking are not enough grounds to send a case to trial if the government says that secret information would be revealed in trying it. Really, though, why are the judges protecting the alleged torturers, and why is this administration following the same course as the predecessor it criticized?
The President pressed for passage of his aditional jobs bill while also returning to the Party of NO argument against the Republicans, as a way of trying to generate support and get the Democratic voter base to turn out for the midterm elections. The President needs a kickstart somewhere so as to try and counteract the still-high unemployment rate and slow growth.
Expect nothing more than an AP Newswire post about the scheduled book burning on 11 September. That is, assuming that it actually happens - supposedly, Park 51 agreed to move from its current spot and so the book-burning is cancelled. The actual truth? The Park 51 people haven’t moved anything, there’s just a meeting, and if there’s no actual movement, the book burning will be back on. If it suddenly returns with a vengeance, there will be no pictures from the AP (and maybe some others), nor anything more than just the one story. It is a newsworthy event, but that seems to be about the right amount of coverage for it. As for the thing they’re protesting, irresistible force, meet immovable object - whether the Park 51 project goes ahead as planned or is moved to some other location, somebody's going to get pissed off. And with this latest development, it’s now a toss-up as to whom it will be.
This is a most interesting story - a man was arrested for firing his AK-47 into his lawn to try and scare off a large group of people he claims were threatening him and might have been gang members. the interesting part is that the law says that if he saw someone pull a gun and point it at him, he would have been justified in firing, but that because there weren’t any guns visible, he’s charged. Second Amendment people, like the article writer, will be understandably aggravated by that decision, but it might also be that in firing, the gun owner might have escalated a situation. Hell, in grabbing the gun, he might have escalated the situation past what it would have normally been.
However, in this take-no-chances world, even suspicious toy ponies will be given the detonation treatment. I suspect that means even the squeakiest of squeakyponies would be destroyed if considered suspicious.
As an endcap to all of this, take a look at the things that parents are most worried about happening to their children, and what they should actually be worrying about.
Last out of deomstic news, the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department presents a graph - supposedly, under Democratic presidents, all income percentiles do pretty well, but under Republican presidents, only the very richest of the rich do well.
In technology and science, the ACLU is suing the United States government to stop it from performing warrantless searches of laptops, computers, and smart devices that are crossing into the United States.
Pretty purple aurora pictures.
Consumer Reports weighs in and finds that it agrees with Zagat - In-N-Out and Five Guys have the best fast food burgers, while McDonalds, Burger King, and Jack in the Box have the worst. Yet another reason we wish that In-N-Out was a national chain instead of California hoarding it all to themselves.
Google has released Instant, a method that streams results back to you based on the query you type into their search box. google claims this will save searchers a few seconds every search by showing them the results they want a few keystrokes earlier than they would normally have gotten them.
Thanks to a filtration system composed of cotton, carbon nanotubes and silver, water can be purified at reasonably high rates for a small amount of electrical current - enough that a solar panel, battery, or a hand crank would be enough to do the job.
And finally, the release of an album on a wax cylinder sends tech-heads into the parts bin to DIY up a phonograph that will play it back with acceptable quality.
Into opinions, where, in a bit of a break from the usual fare, Ms. Charen says that Europe should stop wallowing in its guilt about the past and start moving forward into being a strong and prosperous continent again, offering encouragement that while Europe was responsible for many of the heinous acts done in the name of white superiority or other philosophies, it also discarded those philosophies as they proved not to work and are beyond them now. Move on, she says. Even though you fought tooth and nail to defend flawed policies, it’s okay. We all do that. You can let go and remember what you did wrong without moping over it. Get back to being those capitalists who started the whole thing and you’ll do fine and be prosperous!
We find the WSJ laying out what will likely be the conservative attack on the economy - it's all the Obama Administration's fault for being recklessly spendthrift and for enacting all their programs before getting to the economy. It will likely be seasoned with a healthy dose of private businesses are too scared or unwilling to hire because of the administration, and aren't they socialists, too? And for dessert, you’ll get lots of If the government would just stop doing things and leave the economy to The Market (A.P.T.I.N.), then we'd go back to the prosperity we had. If you really want to speed recovery, though, you've got to make sure you cut the budget in all the places we don't like - like welfare.
In terms of foreign policy, however, the exemplar will include how much the President has tried to make friends of enemies, abandoned our classical alliances, and made the world a more dangerous place by not being Team America, World Police. Which doesn’t exactly jibe with how not too long ago, there were complaints that Europe wasn’t pulling their defense weight...oh, wait, that was framed as a “Hey, we’ve helped you out for decades by being Team America, World Police, and so when we say ‘Bomb Iraq’, you say ‘How many planes?’” instead of a call for the rest of the world to take care of its own defense spending for a while. Nevermind. Besides, it’s moved on to Bomb Iran, preferrably by Israel before the whole Middle East gets nuclear and then jihadists use the weapons not caring about the destruction of the region, a rather long train of events that hinges on the stupid not realizing that if they go blow up some infidels somewhere, when the return nuke arrives, all the holy warriors go onward and there’s nobody left to carry on the mission. It’s kind of the Risk 2010 scenario - wastleands in the Middle East and fallout that moves into multiple countries. Unless the whole region goes collectively insane all together, I’m pretty sure there will be pressure exerted on the stupid by the people who don’t want to deal with the fallout of the stupid being stupid.
And then there’s the domestic agenda: a cherry-picked pair - a defector who says that Obama is clearly a socialist and that people need to wake up, and the communist who tried to get the people to wake up, but was greeted with a wall of nationalism. Yet it is the communist who was apparently hurling insults in the pairing. This might be related to the Inigo Montoya School of Political Thought re: Tea Partiers and "Obama is a Fascist", with bonus amounts of misspelled signs, coming to us as a blast from the past about conservative events of last year. The series continues into the Glenn Beck event as a liveblog, where well, he starts out by lying, continues into lying, makes a pit stop in deception, and continues on through ignorance of history all the way to the conclusion, also with Bonus! People with signs that clearly have no idea what they’re talking about. In Part III, it's all about the pictures. Part IV is The 9/12 Project, the second foray into ignorance and ginned up anger at things most of the protestors have no clue about, but have been told to be angry at by their corporate backers disguised as grassroots groups, and lots of, you guessed it, pictures. And then, time passes, and we land at Part V - the poorly-spelled, ignorant of the Constitution fake controversy over the Park 51 cultural center, as well as the latest speech starring, yet again, Glenn Beck and the new squadron of fighting keyboarders. (“MOSK” is the keyword for this enterprise)
In all this, the evangelical sometimes debate among themselves whether it’s okay to let Beck lead the flock, or, because of his non-Protestant religious affiliations, it would be like letting the Antichrist into the driver’s seat. The Slacktivist makes mention that Glenn Beck's Mormonism is not the thing people should be discussing in discussing whether or not to take his things to heart. It's that Glenn Beck hates his brother and campaigns against his fellows. That's why he shouldn't be followed as a Christian prophet. He’s playing up to the people who believe that white men are an oppressed minority, that Christians are persecuted, and other things that are only appropriate on Topsy-Turvy Day. And he’s often using the military, the veterans, and support for the troops as a smokescreen to justify his appeals, trying to paint them as universally in line with him. Excepting, of course, that there is no such thing as a unified group of people, especially not veterans.
Despite all of this, conservatives feel pretty confident they're going to win big this election, and the Democrats don’t seem to be doing a whole lot to dissuade them of this.
Mr. Williams tries to swing for the fences and lays down a bunt instead, lamenting that black students are unequipped for college, but are hustled in by recruiters looking more for diversity than for talented students, after having been passed out of high school despite being several greade levels below the average white student. So it’s all politics driving this forward, then, Mr. Williams? You mean, the politics of social promotion that says everyone has to go through, regardless of ability, or teachers are harming the self-esteem of the child? The politics of property taxes and assessments, where schools have to fight voters bred on “TAXES BAD AND SOCIALIST” routinely just to stay operating, leaving them no actual money to improve their lot and try to make their students actually educated? The politics of white flight that left schools in the middle of neighborhoods that don’t have the tax base to support an excellent school, and the politics that continues to jump at any excuse not to go back there because the Scary Black and Brown people are violent drug-addicted thugs with no jobs? (And anyone who points out that the jobs left when the whites took their businesses and ran from the Scary Black and Brown People is racist against white people, of course.) The politics that say a teacher trying to teach should immediately be censured because they’re deviating from the acceptable script of America Great, White People Good, Jesus Loves America, Science Bad, Brains DoublePlusUngood, you nerd? Of course not. It’s just race hustlers and people deceiving blacks into thinking they’re ready when they’re not.
And out of opinions, Mr. Stossel thinks that the disabled are just another lawsuit-happy special interest group. Which lets us say, unequivocally: That man is an idiot.
Last out, the attention to detail plus the tools means a very, very good replica prop of a lightsaber. For comparison, Nintendo players in the United Kingdom will be able to have a sonic screwdriver-style Wiimote. I doubt such a controller will see a Stateside release, considering that while there is more than a devoted fandom, The Doctor is not a mainstream of primetime television here in the U.S. (Shame, really.)
