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Greetings, folks. Kicking things into higher gear at the outset, in the same vein as What the Frak Has Obama Done So Far, So, Why is WikiLeaks A Good Thing Again? And speaking of Mr. Assange, Reuters confirms that the rape accusations against Mr. Assange were sparked by STD fears from two women he had unprotected sex with due to a broken condom. According to Reuters, the women wanted him to get tested with them, and then they filed charges when he disappeared after not getting tested. The actual charges, however, read as the definition of rape, as opposed to the "oh, it was just a broken condom. Nothing to see here." that the Reuters article makes them out to be.
He may have just gotten one of the most powerful cyber-organizations on his side - at least one faction of the great and powerful Anonymous is ready to distribute his work far and wide in both electronic and human methods. And there's also the threat of a destructive release should WikiLeaks be completely shut down.
In any case, Mr. Assange willingly surrendered himself to United Kingdom police, and has been denied bail, despite many people being willing to post it.
Mr. Greenwald continues to point out where there are Lies and Damned Lies, including taking Senator Feinstein to task for singling out Assange and Wikileaks as liable under the Espionage Act while giving the other publications that have published cables a pass, along with other falsehoods about what has happened and the consequences thereof. Other entrants from the Department include Mr. Crovitz, claiming that Mr. Assange is an "Information Anarchist" hoping to hurt the United States government, of which "anarchist" might be a compliment in proper context and Mr. Assange is certainly not specifically focused on the United States. And any stopping of the flow of information will solely be the fault of the paranoids and the secret-keepers that don't want their material to get out, even though most of it should be public data.
Finally, continue to keep in mind that the detractors of WikiLeaks will happily use it if the information released suits their agenda instead of someone else's.
6 December was the anniversary of a shooting in Montreal where the gunman deliberately separated the women from the men out of his hostage group and shot them, as his way of rebelling against the idea of feminism. Fourteen women died then. Geneviève Bergeron, civil engineering student, Hélène Colgan, mechanical engineering student, Nathalie Croteau, mechanical engineering student, Barbara Daigneault, mechanical engineering student, Anne-Marie Edward, chemical engineering student, Maud Haviernick, materials engineering student, Maryse Laganière, budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department, Maryse Leclair, materials engineering student, Anne-Marie Lemay, mechanical engineering student, Sonia Pelletier, mechanical engineering student, Michèle Richard, materials engineering student, Annie St-Arneault, mechanical engineering student, Annie Turcotte, materials engineering student, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, nursing student were all killed, because they were women who were or intended to be successful in their lives independently. They're not the only people who die because of who they are. Disabled people are killed, because they can't get out of fires, because the police shoot them, despite knowing full well they're disabled, because desperate parents face a society that says the disabled should be killed as a mercy and that accommodation of disability is wasteful and unnecessary. QUILTBAG suffer greatly as well, not only being the targets of violence and death, but also being punished more and more harshly than their straight counterparts.
It's a very different feel than the 7 December attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The Dead Pool claims Elizabeth Edwards, lawyer, activist, author, and scandaled wife, by breast cancer at 61 years of age.
Finally, a copy of a picture making the rounds about who benefits when the TSA releases new invasive screening procedures, and the politician who says that new procedure is promoting the "Homosexual Agenda" and that you might get patted down by an agent who secretly enjoys fondling you. But you don't dare enjoy it yourself, as any male ejaculating during a pat-down will be arrested. (ETA: Okay, so the last one is bogus, but you know that someone's going to do it, either intentionally or otherwise. Just give Anonymous enough time...)
In the world, A WikiLeaks cable release suggests that the United States could have been ready for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, except that the ambassador there was fooled by a cordial manner and the position of the United States itself on those affairs.
Residents of Guantanamo Bay were given an anti-malarial drug with significant side effects without their consent, utilized as guinea pigs for the drug tests. If it were a place where laws applied, of course this would be frighteningly illegal, but because it's a black hole, I guess we can expect people to justify it by saying "Enemy combatant. La-la-LA-LA-LA-CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
The release of persons captured by NATO forces in Afghanistan is predicatbly angering those persons that are seeing their work undone. Many of them consider it a symptom of the corruption of government, and others are worried that those released are now going to go back to the business of killing.
German schools are not giving immigrants good education and preparing them for German society, concludes a report. When queried about it, the schools defensively claim that foreigners have to have good German-speaking skills before schooling can help them any. This sounds very familiar, as if there are other places, very close to home, that claim that learning a language is a necessity to schooling, and then don't actually provide a way for the children of immigrants to achieve that language proficiency. And then the comments put the cherry on top - "Those damn foreigners need to abandon their culture and take on ours completely."
Domestically, Democrats and Republicans have theoretically come to a deal about what to do about the Bush tax cuts - and the Republicans got everything they wanted in this deal. Hooray, "bipartisanship". The Obama tendency to not stand firm on anything and negotiate away whatever advantage he had continues. Read more of the details at the NYT. Of course, there's always the possibility that the Democrats are finally pissed off enough that they tell the deal to get frakked.
It is apparently newsworthy that Bristol Palin is responding to critics through someone who writes flowery prose and political statements. Perhaps because her mother is scripted to appear more unscripted? Frankly, I find the firing of a Macy's Santa over a gently adult joke he tells all adults that come to sit on his lap more important, as another victory in the March of the Censors, then wondering whether a celebrity has a PR person to handle their counter-insults. The Media Censorship Bureau, for example, wants you to think that the music industry is morally decadent because many of its nominees for the Best Song of the Year are rap songs with expletives and lyrics describing criminal acts. The two that escape are the "wholesome" ones, the rap song about fidelity, which gets a pass because it suits them, and the "lovely" country song, which is clearly the MCB's choice for Best Song.
A Philadelphia newpaper peers into yet another religious group that thinks prayer is sufficient cure for all ills and that medicine is not to be trusted or turned to, with the requisite "We're being persecuted because we think differently!" defense against the logic of "You're being prosecuted because you let children die that could have been saved."
In their zeal to plant informants and attempt to encourage would-be-terrorists to become terrorists, the FBI is straining tensions between themselves and mosques, especially when one of their informants has an FBI restraining order taken out against him because he was trying to incite people to violent action.
Ever try to be a black person making a film starring mostly black characters that isn't a comedy? Good luck getting Hollywood to pick it up, even if it does well internationally.
In technology, prominent people finally speaking out against the practice of installing stealth plug-ins into Web browsers without giving the user any choice in the matter. Furthermore, AT&T is throwing their lot in with spammers by including web bugs - 1 pixel by 1 pixel graphics - in the e-mails they send to customers or others as a way of confirming whether that e-mail is read.
The United States military is pushing to have their cyber command's authority expanded so they can strike around the world. One can hope that sanity prevails, or at least establish lines of emergency communication so they can keep each other informed of what they're doing, even if it is beyond the law. And especially if they take Zuckerman's advice and treat cyber-attacks like they would treat nuclear attacks.
Speaking of illegal actions, the United States government has been monitoring credit card transactions and other data without ever requesting a warrant to do so, or following their request with a gag order forbidding anyone from discussing the fact that they just did it.
The founder of The Pirate Bay suggests that a distributed, peer-to-peer DNS system should be implemented so as to prevent meddlesome governments from seizing things they don't like and kicking them off the Internet.
Google enters another business venture - electronic books. They are, however, allowing for infestations of DRM into the books.
The secret to properly balancing your MMO - make it fun, and keep the balance somewhere in the ballpark of correct, and you'll do fine. In other words, the players will find loopholes. Deal.
Elsewhere, in the sciences, researchers find that word puzzles are easier to solve by insightful leaps after an exposure to comedy routines. Considering how much of comedy hinges on double-meanings and other tricks of language, this makes sense. Priming the brain through the use of language tricks as well as making people have a laugh, so they're not uptight or stressed about things, makes puzzle-solving that much easier.
In opinions, a print matter publication believes its editorial endorsements are superior to the "entertainers" on MSNBC who were suspended for actually giving money to campaigns. Setting aside the grave insult delivered to both of the gentlemen in question, tell me truthfully how many of the people who vote in that area read the print publication versus watching one of the cable networks to get their political information?
Ms. Altman thinks the payroll tax cut will be the slow squeeze on Social Security that conservatives want and that Democrats are dumb enough to go along with, and dismissing any idea that a conservative Congress will let a temporary tax cut expire, much less let the tax rates for the wealthy go back to where they should go, with the associated small increase in what they would actually be paying. Plus, all that deficit spending suddenly dries up just in time for the next election, so there's no benefit to the deal, not really. And truthfully, it's not like the people being compromised with will be happy and praise the President for his actions. Instead, they'll insist the unserious suggestions of the debt commission be enacted as soon as possible and task the Republicans with making it happen. (We snicker, as well, at the WSJ basically admitting they were wrong and that the debt commission was not the liberal trap they were complaining about, and is instead something they have to now work to praise.) And they'll declare that people who are out of work deserve to starve or be forced into minimum wage jobs (that don't exist), and that a household that makes $250,000 USD a year isn't actually rich and shouldn't be taxed higher.
The Founder of the Tea Party Nation group believes that you should be a property owner to be able to vote, claiming that property owners are the people who have a real stake in the community. I wonder if he's also in favor of the other requirements that one be white and male to vote that were originally there, too.
Ms. Malkin insists the DREAM Act is yet another amnesty for illegal immigrants, and that the government should get tough on them instead of letting them become citizens and all teh other generous benefits we're already giving them. Ah, there's that familiar tune again, the one that says "we're too kind to immigrants - we should just send them all home and shoot anyone who tries to come across."
Mr. Fund believes the Obama Administration is going to executively-fiat increased pressure on employers and overburden investigators of union corruption through Department of Labor procedures. Because those pesky unions are just evil, and it's only a matter of time before they manage to strangle capitalism completely. At least, where they're allowed to exist.
Because it's December, expect plenty of correspondence from our War On Christmas Department, starting officially today with Mr. Pendry's insistence that naked capitalism and Protestant Fundamentalist Christitanity are the things that made the United States great, and will continue to do so in future, so make sure all the QUILTBAG people are second-class, keep women barefoot and pregnant, and tell anyone else who isn't Protestant Fundamentalist Christian to shut up. Oh, and Merry Christmas.
Mr. O'Reilly believes President Carter's continued commentary about media bias expose him as a sore loser and a man demeaning the office he once held. This, coming from someone who is unafraid to tout his own ratings as the justification as to why he's right, with no other justification behind it, and whose network regularly shills for political candidates. I do not believe he has the standing nor the credibility to make substantive, serious commentary on this particular matter.
Mr. Tyrell, Jr. proclaims liberalism dead in America, laying the seeds of its demise with John F. Kennedy's attempts to inspire the nation, which Johnson then added to, dooming us irrevocably to places like the Two Land Wars in Asia (started by a conservative), and our current problems of deficits and overruns (exacerbated most by conservatives). So, liberalism is dead, conservatism is supreme, and only radicals that should be ignored exist on the left anyomre - just look at how the socialist (totally centrist and right-leaning) Barack Obama's party was defeated in the midterms!
Out of opinions, consider this: bullying in school is a sign that the system as a whole needs changing - school needs to be less authoritarian-prison-atmosphere and more caring-nuturing-parenting, yes, but society also needs to have instutions and actually dedicate itself to parenting rather than insisting that mothers take on all the burden themselves and manage to parent their child in the tiny amount of time they actually have with them. For the most part, after all, children are not with their parents during the day - they're in school-prison, or they're in activities where they mimic what they've expereinced in school-prison, or they're being babysat by impersonal technologies while their parents struggle to have enough money to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table. A possible way out takes advantage of the fact that mobile devices will outnumber PCs soon to design a curriculum that allows the students to learn what they want at their own pace, instead of being stuck in a classroom moving at the instructor's pace.
Last for tonight, we were here: footprints and human detritus left on other worlds, and skills that will be helpful when industrialized society collapses and the United States must build again from nothing, without electricity or the supply chains we're used to.
He may have just gotten one of the most powerful cyber-organizations on his side - at least one faction of the great and powerful Anonymous is ready to distribute his work far and wide in both electronic and human methods. And there's also the threat of a destructive release should WikiLeaks be completely shut down.
In any case, Mr. Assange willingly surrendered himself to United Kingdom police, and has been denied bail, despite many people being willing to post it.
Mr. Greenwald continues to point out where there are Lies and Damned Lies, including taking Senator Feinstein to task for singling out Assange and Wikileaks as liable under the Espionage Act while giving the other publications that have published cables a pass, along with other falsehoods about what has happened and the consequences thereof. Other entrants from the Department include Mr. Crovitz, claiming that Mr. Assange is an "Information Anarchist" hoping to hurt the United States government, of which "anarchist" might be a compliment in proper context and Mr. Assange is certainly not specifically focused on the United States. And any stopping of the flow of information will solely be the fault of the paranoids and the secret-keepers that don't want their material to get out, even though most of it should be public data.
Finally, continue to keep in mind that the detractors of WikiLeaks will happily use it if the information released suits their agenda instead of someone else's.
6 December was the anniversary of a shooting in Montreal where the gunman deliberately separated the women from the men out of his hostage group and shot them, as his way of rebelling against the idea of feminism. Fourteen women died then. Geneviève Bergeron, civil engineering student, Hélène Colgan, mechanical engineering student, Nathalie Croteau, mechanical engineering student, Barbara Daigneault, mechanical engineering student, Anne-Marie Edward, chemical engineering student, Maud Haviernick, materials engineering student, Maryse Laganière, budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department, Maryse Leclair, materials engineering student, Anne-Marie Lemay, mechanical engineering student, Sonia Pelletier, mechanical engineering student, Michèle Richard, materials engineering student, Annie St-Arneault, mechanical engineering student, Annie Turcotte, materials engineering student, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, nursing student were all killed, because they were women who were or intended to be successful in their lives independently. They're not the only people who die because of who they are. Disabled people are killed, because they can't get out of fires, because the police shoot them, despite knowing full well they're disabled, because desperate parents face a society that says the disabled should be killed as a mercy and that accommodation of disability is wasteful and unnecessary. QUILTBAG suffer greatly as well, not only being the targets of violence and death, but also being punished more and more harshly than their straight counterparts.
It's a very different feel than the 7 December attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The Dead Pool claims Elizabeth Edwards, lawyer, activist, author, and scandaled wife, by breast cancer at 61 years of age.
Finally, a copy of a picture making the rounds about who benefits when the TSA releases new invasive screening procedures, and the politician who says that new procedure is promoting the "Homosexual Agenda" and that you might get patted down by an agent who secretly enjoys fondling you. But you don't dare enjoy it yourself, as any male ejaculating during a pat-down will be arrested. (ETA: Okay, so the last one is bogus, but you know that someone's going to do it, either intentionally or otherwise. Just give Anonymous enough time...)
In the world, A WikiLeaks cable release suggests that the United States could have been ready for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, except that the ambassador there was fooled by a cordial manner and the position of the United States itself on those affairs.
Residents of Guantanamo Bay were given an anti-malarial drug with significant side effects without their consent, utilized as guinea pigs for the drug tests. If it were a place where laws applied, of course this would be frighteningly illegal, but because it's a black hole, I guess we can expect people to justify it by saying "Enemy combatant. La-la-LA-LA-LA-CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
The release of persons captured by NATO forces in Afghanistan is predicatbly angering those persons that are seeing their work undone. Many of them consider it a symptom of the corruption of government, and others are worried that those released are now going to go back to the business of killing.
German schools are not giving immigrants good education and preparing them for German society, concludes a report. When queried about it, the schools defensively claim that foreigners have to have good German-speaking skills before schooling can help them any. This sounds very familiar, as if there are other places, very close to home, that claim that learning a language is a necessity to schooling, and then don't actually provide a way for the children of immigrants to achieve that language proficiency. And then the comments put the cherry on top - "Those damn foreigners need to abandon their culture and take on ours completely."
Domestically, Democrats and Republicans have theoretically come to a deal about what to do about the Bush tax cuts - and the Republicans got everything they wanted in this deal. Hooray, "bipartisanship". The Obama tendency to not stand firm on anything and negotiate away whatever advantage he had continues. Read more of the details at the NYT. Of course, there's always the possibility that the Democrats are finally pissed off enough that they tell the deal to get frakked.
It is apparently newsworthy that Bristol Palin is responding to critics through someone who writes flowery prose and political statements. Perhaps because her mother is scripted to appear more unscripted? Frankly, I find the firing of a Macy's Santa over a gently adult joke he tells all adults that come to sit on his lap more important, as another victory in the March of the Censors, then wondering whether a celebrity has a PR person to handle their counter-insults. The Media Censorship Bureau, for example, wants you to think that the music industry is morally decadent because many of its nominees for the Best Song of the Year are rap songs with expletives and lyrics describing criminal acts. The two that escape are the "wholesome" ones, the rap song about fidelity, which gets a pass because it suits them, and the "lovely" country song, which is clearly the MCB's choice for Best Song.
A Philadelphia newpaper peers into yet another religious group that thinks prayer is sufficient cure for all ills and that medicine is not to be trusted or turned to, with the requisite "We're being persecuted because we think differently!" defense against the logic of "You're being prosecuted because you let children die that could have been saved."
In their zeal to plant informants and attempt to encourage would-be-terrorists to become terrorists, the FBI is straining tensions between themselves and mosques, especially when one of their informants has an FBI restraining order taken out against him because he was trying to incite people to violent action.
Ever try to be a black person making a film starring mostly black characters that isn't a comedy? Good luck getting Hollywood to pick it up, even if it does well internationally.
In technology, prominent people finally speaking out against the practice of installing stealth plug-ins into Web browsers without giving the user any choice in the matter. Furthermore, AT&T is throwing their lot in with spammers by including web bugs - 1 pixel by 1 pixel graphics - in the e-mails they send to customers or others as a way of confirming whether that e-mail is read.
The United States military is pushing to have their cyber command's authority expanded so they can strike around the world. One can hope that sanity prevails, or at least establish lines of emergency communication so they can keep each other informed of what they're doing, even if it is beyond the law. And especially if they take Zuckerman's advice and treat cyber-attacks like they would treat nuclear attacks.
Speaking of illegal actions, the United States government has been monitoring credit card transactions and other data without ever requesting a warrant to do so, or following their request with a gag order forbidding anyone from discussing the fact that they just did it.
The founder of The Pirate Bay suggests that a distributed, peer-to-peer DNS system should be implemented so as to prevent meddlesome governments from seizing things they don't like and kicking them off the Internet.
Google enters another business venture - electronic books. They are, however, allowing for infestations of DRM into the books.
The secret to properly balancing your MMO - make it fun, and keep the balance somewhere in the ballpark of correct, and you'll do fine. In other words, the players will find loopholes. Deal.
Elsewhere, in the sciences, researchers find that word puzzles are easier to solve by insightful leaps after an exposure to comedy routines. Considering how much of comedy hinges on double-meanings and other tricks of language, this makes sense. Priming the brain through the use of language tricks as well as making people have a laugh, so they're not uptight or stressed about things, makes puzzle-solving that much easier.
In opinions, a print matter publication believes its editorial endorsements are superior to the "entertainers" on MSNBC who were suspended for actually giving money to campaigns. Setting aside the grave insult delivered to both of the gentlemen in question, tell me truthfully how many of the people who vote in that area read the print publication versus watching one of the cable networks to get their political information?
Ms. Altman thinks the payroll tax cut will be the slow squeeze on Social Security that conservatives want and that Democrats are dumb enough to go along with, and dismissing any idea that a conservative Congress will let a temporary tax cut expire, much less let the tax rates for the wealthy go back to where they should go, with the associated small increase in what they would actually be paying. Plus, all that deficit spending suddenly dries up just in time for the next election, so there's no benefit to the deal, not really. And truthfully, it's not like the people being compromised with will be happy and praise the President for his actions. Instead, they'll insist the unserious suggestions of the debt commission be enacted as soon as possible and task the Republicans with making it happen. (We snicker, as well, at the WSJ basically admitting they were wrong and that the debt commission was not the liberal trap they were complaining about, and is instead something they have to now work to praise.) And they'll declare that people who are out of work deserve to starve or be forced into minimum wage jobs (that don't exist), and that a household that makes $250,000 USD a year isn't actually rich and shouldn't be taxed higher.
The Founder of the Tea Party Nation group believes that you should be a property owner to be able to vote, claiming that property owners are the people who have a real stake in the community. I wonder if he's also in favor of the other requirements that one be white and male to vote that were originally there, too.
Ms. Malkin insists the DREAM Act is yet another amnesty for illegal immigrants, and that the government should get tough on them instead of letting them become citizens and all teh other generous benefits we're already giving them. Ah, there's that familiar tune again, the one that says "we're too kind to immigrants - we should just send them all home and shoot anyone who tries to come across."
Mr. Fund believes the Obama Administration is going to executively-fiat increased pressure on employers and overburden investigators of union corruption through Department of Labor procedures. Because those pesky unions are just evil, and it's only a matter of time before they manage to strangle capitalism completely. At least, where they're allowed to exist.
Because it's December, expect plenty of correspondence from our War On Christmas Department, starting officially today with Mr. Pendry's insistence that naked capitalism and Protestant Fundamentalist Christitanity are the things that made the United States great, and will continue to do so in future, so make sure all the QUILTBAG people are second-class, keep women barefoot and pregnant, and tell anyone else who isn't Protestant Fundamentalist Christian to shut up. Oh, and Merry Christmas.
Mr. O'Reilly believes President Carter's continued commentary about media bias expose him as a sore loser and a man demeaning the office he once held. This, coming from someone who is unafraid to tout his own ratings as the justification as to why he's right, with no other justification behind it, and whose network regularly shills for political candidates. I do not believe he has the standing nor the credibility to make substantive, serious commentary on this particular matter.
Mr. Tyrell, Jr. proclaims liberalism dead in America, laying the seeds of its demise with John F. Kennedy's attempts to inspire the nation, which Johnson then added to, dooming us irrevocably to places like the Two Land Wars in Asia (started by a conservative), and our current problems of deficits and overruns (exacerbated most by conservatives). So, liberalism is dead, conservatism is supreme, and only radicals that should be ignored exist on the left anyomre - just look at how the socialist (totally centrist and right-leaning) Barack Obama's party was defeated in the midterms!
Out of opinions, consider this: bullying in school is a sign that the system as a whole needs changing - school needs to be less authoritarian-prison-atmosphere and more caring-nuturing-parenting, yes, but society also needs to have instutions and actually dedicate itself to parenting rather than insisting that mothers take on all the burden themselves and manage to parent their child in the tiny amount of time they actually have with them. For the most part, after all, children are not with their parents during the day - they're in school-prison, or they're in activities where they mimic what they've expereinced in school-prison, or they're being babysat by impersonal technologies while their parents struggle to have enough money to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table. A possible way out takes advantage of the fact that mobile devices will outnumber PCs soon to design a curriculum that allows the students to learn what they want at their own pace, instead of being stuck in a classroom moving at the instructor's pace.
Last for tonight, we were here: footprints and human detritus left on other worlds, and skills that will be helpful when industrialized society collapses and the United States must build again from nothing, without electricity or the supply chains we're used to.
