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Good evening to everyone. We begin with Lord Robert Baden-Powell's final directive to the members of the organization he started and note that when it comes to children, even if the letter is more from an inner child trying to make a joke, the responses will be sincere and informative. Where else will you have the President of a casino tell you that the only way to win there is not to play? (In the comments, they note that this is not a new idea...but even then, the responses are good.)
I sincerely hope everyone reading this, if they live in the United States, has voted already. Even now, as polls close and results arrive, we still uncover evidence of Astroturf and poltiical spam on Twitter, attempting to seem like a broad-based grassroots movement but actually being only a few people and their sockpuppet accounts.
The New York, err, San Franscisco Giants defeated the Texas Rangers 3-1 to capture the American baseball championship, with a postseason that proved the maxim "Good pitching beats good hitting".
Last out, a mother shook her infant to death because the child's crying interrupted her FarmVille game. Augh. Would that things were more like the Tezuka characters promoting safety.
Out in the world today, you would think with the global economic crunch that driving away businesses from your country would be a bad idea, but Australia has sent Abby Winters, producer and distributor of adult films, off to Amsterdam after repeatedly charging them with making "objectionable" adult films and fining them once for it. Rather han stick around for the rest of the witch hunt, they declared they'd had enough and took their business elsewhere. Moral crusaders one, revenue for the country minus lots.
Regarding the attempted plot to ship explosives from Yemen to locations around the world, United States intelligence officials now believe they had intercepted a "dry run" of the plot in September, searched the packages in use, and then sent them on their way. So not only did the system work once, it worked twice as it was supposed to. That intelligence now thinks it was a dry run is because of the live run that followed. Otherwise, it would have been just another suspicious package. (Even so, Germany has suspended passenger flights from Yemen.) And it's not like it's totally an al-Qaeda thing - Greece had at last one mail bomb explode and arrested perpetrators who had other mail bombs ready to be sent by courier.
A bloody standoff between militants and Iraqi forces in a Catholic church finally ended, with the total dead standing at 52.
Finally, the United States will come under review by the United Nations Human Rights Council starting 5 November, a move sure to inflame the American Exceptionalist stance into loudly proclaiming America's Perfectness, or at least Better Than Those Systemic Human Rights Violators in That Joke of a Committee. They are correct, Unlike Iran, who still plans on stoning a woman to death, the United States doesn't usually engage in religiously-motivated executions. That's not to say the record is perfect - the U.S. has a lot of things to answer to at home and abroad, and hopefully this will give some starting points to investigations and journalism that brings light to those dark places.
Inside the United States, a slip to the usual story involving Christian clergy and gay revelations - a pastor has come out of the closet before he is pilloried by soem sort of scandal or being caught in the act. Of course, if his church sacks and disowns him for doing so, then they've failed to learn the lesson.
In technology and the human spirit - with assistance from another Marine and a recumbent bicycle-like contraption, Seargeant Eddie Ryan completed the Marine Corps marathon after having suffered traumatic injuries form being shot in combat.
Into opinions, where Mr. Klein points out the thing that's gotten lost in the myopic focus on the economy - the last Congress was remarkably adept at getting stuff done. It wasn't always to spec or to ideal, but they've done more for getting bills pushed through to fix inequalities and problems than anybody else. If the Republicans regain control of a legislative house, one can rightly expect that ability to get stuff done to be shattered, considering the Tarantino as it works now will be augmented by a house under Republican control that will sink whatever it can (or, if it's the House, try to defund whatever it can). On the other side, though, the gloating is focused significantly on the perceived comeuppance coming to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who chose the path of getting stuff done, spending capital and making unpopular decisions, which collapses simply into "arrogance" and "elitism" when viewwed from the side that believe cooperation is doing what they want with no exceptions or deviations. Or when searching for a convenient way to make unfavorable comparisons between President Obama and President F. Roosevelt. The comparison of quotes in that last article is apples-oranges, by the way - FDR was saying that the people can take the worst news and not lose their optimism that things will get better or that we can get through the difficulties, President Obama was saying people don't make the best decisions when stuck in a fear state. People can still believe that things will get better, and even more, that their decisions will help make things get better for them and everyone else, while deciding to do the thing that will help them the least. Risk-avoidance means that sometimes we choose suboptimally, and attack ads designed to put us in fight or flight mode stop our higher cognitive processes and make us more vulnerable to choosing suboptimally. America doesn't lose heart in its government or its people - if it had, there wouldn't be such a furious campaign to get people to vote, or such a campaign would have been greeted with a collective "Eh." The fact that social wedge issues are doing just as well now as they were before says that the fear campaign works, too - and that people are banking on voters not making their best decisions because they're too afraid to think rationally.
Mr. Carroll demonstrates how to read something without context by taking Jon Stewart's statement about how the governmental parties in Washington don't get along and using it as a prelude to claiming government has already taken over too much and needs to be trimmed back.
Last for tonight, we return to Worldometers, numbers moving at various speeds tracking various conditions here on Terra.
And tomorrow, we'll have an official idea about how it all turned out. Whatever happens, though, pay attention to the pundits and see whether or not you can fill up your election night excuses, untruths, and platitudes bingo card.
I sincerely hope everyone reading this, if they live in the United States, has voted already. Even now, as polls close and results arrive, we still uncover evidence of Astroturf and poltiical spam on Twitter, attempting to seem like a broad-based grassroots movement but actually being only a few people and their sockpuppet accounts.
The New York, err, San Franscisco Giants defeated the Texas Rangers 3-1 to capture the American baseball championship, with a postseason that proved the maxim "Good pitching beats good hitting".
Last out, a mother shook her infant to death because the child's crying interrupted her FarmVille game. Augh. Would that things were more like the Tezuka characters promoting safety.
Out in the world today, you would think with the global economic crunch that driving away businesses from your country would be a bad idea, but Australia has sent Abby Winters, producer and distributor of adult films, off to Amsterdam after repeatedly charging them with making "objectionable" adult films and fining them once for it. Rather han stick around for the rest of the witch hunt, they declared they'd had enough and took their business elsewhere. Moral crusaders one, revenue for the country minus lots.
Regarding the attempted plot to ship explosives from Yemen to locations around the world, United States intelligence officials now believe they had intercepted a "dry run" of the plot in September, searched the packages in use, and then sent them on their way. So not only did the system work once, it worked twice as it was supposed to. That intelligence now thinks it was a dry run is because of the live run that followed. Otherwise, it would have been just another suspicious package. (Even so, Germany has suspended passenger flights from Yemen.) And it's not like it's totally an al-Qaeda thing - Greece had at last one mail bomb explode and arrested perpetrators who had other mail bombs ready to be sent by courier.
A bloody standoff between militants and Iraqi forces in a Catholic church finally ended, with the total dead standing at 52.
Finally, the United States will come under review by the United Nations Human Rights Council starting 5 November, a move sure to inflame the American Exceptionalist stance into loudly proclaiming America's Perfectness, or at least Better Than Those Systemic Human Rights Violators in That Joke of a Committee. They are correct, Unlike Iran, who still plans on stoning a woman to death, the United States doesn't usually engage in religiously-motivated executions. That's not to say the record is perfect - the U.S. has a lot of things to answer to at home and abroad, and hopefully this will give some starting points to investigations and journalism that brings light to those dark places.
Inside the United States, a slip to the usual story involving Christian clergy and gay revelations - a pastor has come out of the closet before he is pilloried by soem sort of scandal or being caught in the act. Of course, if his church sacks and disowns him for doing so, then they've failed to learn the lesson.
In technology and the human spirit - with assistance from another Marine and a recumbent bicycle-like contraption, Seargeant Eddie Ryan completed the Marine Corps marathon after having suffered traumatic injuries form being shot in combat.
Into opinions, where Mr. Klein points out the thing that's gotten lost in the myopic focus on the economy - the last Congress was remarkably adept at getting stuff done. It wasn't always to spec or to ideal, but they've done more for getting bills pushed through to fix inequalities and problems than anybody else. If the Republicans regain control of a legislative house, one can rightly expect that ability to get stuff done to be shattered, considering the Tarantino as it works now will be augmented by a house under Republican control that will sink whatever it can (or, if it's the House, try to defund whatever it can). On the other side, though, the gloating is focused significantly on the perceived comeuppance coming to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who chose the path of getting stuff done, spending capital and making unpopular decisions, which collapses simply into "arrogance" and "elitism" when viewwed from the side that believe cooperation is doing what they want with no exceptions or deviations. Or when searching for a convenient way to make unfavorable comparisons between President Obama and President F. Roosevelt. The comparison of quotes in that last article is apples-oranges, by the way - FDR was saying that the people can take the worst news and not lose their optimism that things will get better or that we can get through the difficulties, President Obama was saying people don't make the best decisions when stuck in a fear state. People can still believe that things will get better, and even more, that their decisions will help make things get better for them and everyone else, while deciding to do the thing that will help them the least. Risk-avoidance means that sometimes we choose suboptimally, and attack ads designed to put us in fight or flight mode stop our higher cognitive processes and make us more vulnerable to choosing suboptimally. America doesn't lose heart in its government or its people - if it had, there wouldn't be such a furious campaign to get people to vote, or such a campaign would have been greeted with a collective "Eh." The fact that social wedge issues are doing just as well now as they were before says that the fear campaign works, too - and that people are banking on voters not making their best decisions because they're too afraid to think rationally.
Mr. Carroll demonstrates how to read something without context by taking Jon Stewart's statement about how the governmental parties in Washington don't get along and using it as a prelude to claiming government has already taken over too much and needs to be trimmed back.
Last for tonight, we return to Worldometers, numbers moving at various speeds tracking various conditions here on Terra.
And tomorrow, we'll have an official idea about how it all turned out. Whatever happens, though, pay attention to the pundits and see whether or not you can fill up your election night excuses, untruths, and platitudes bingo card.
