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Greetings. An Argentinian archbishop told his parishoners that Santa Claus did not exist, and not to confuse the Christmas celebration with the popular man in the red suit. It's as if someone were reading the last post and decided to find somewhere that was actually trying to separate the religious and the secular.
In light of the Wikileaks rage going across the web, have some context - letters exchanged between Upton Sinclair and President Roosevelt about how to best uncover the abuses of the meat packing industry. The suggestion is for the agents to be secret, but for the information to be public. And in that case, there was a clear need for the public to know what was going on. We need disclosure, and we need to have agents who will ferret out the things being kept secret and making decisions about whether that information should be public instead. Several members of the Columbia school of journalism indicated they feel Wikileaks' work is protected under the preedom of the press in the United States. Which brings the question of whether Wikileaks is an organization that falls under those freedoms. Is it an American organization if the servers hosting the data are no longer found in the United States? If it employs persons who work in the United States? That may be an important question to resolve in the cases of governmental charges - where, if anywhere, has national jurisdiction over Wikileaks?
Furthermore, despite not having been convicted of any crimes, despite being a model detainee, and despite showing no reason for anyoen to believe he is a threat to others, PFC Bradley Manning is being held in solitary confinement and regularly administered with anti-depressant drugs. I think that sends the intended message nice and clear - even allegations of leaks will get you punished and held in inhumane conditions. Whistleblowers, even before they are charged with crimes, will be punished. Are you sure you want to let those important documents out?
Out in the world today, Kosovo independence may have hit a major stumbling block - the prime minister has been identified as the leader of a crime ring involved in things such as organ trafficking, human rights violations, weapons smuggling, and other illegal acts.
Protestors gathered in the United Kingdom to express their displeasure at a plan to close a mental health crisis center and delay two day centers for mental health slated to open soo.
attackers detonated themselves outside of a mosque, killing thirty-nine people in what appears to be sectarian strife in Iran. Sort of a reminder that while the United States is afraid of any Muslim anywhere, those people who are Muslims have more reason to be afraid of other sects than they do the West, if you're talking where the attackers are coming from.
Finally, South Korea staged a large-scale evacuation drill, in case the hostilities between the two countries are resumed and North Korea starts to attack and invade.
Domestically, a Wisconsin owner has posted a "no negroes allowed" sign outside his business. The story says that the owner needed to craft that kind of policy after he had trouble with some black customers, but I wonder if he's also emboldened by the fact that a Senator-elect has publicly stated he thinks private businesses should be allowed to discriminate on whatever basis they like, and that only public institutions should be forced to be open to everyone.
Residents of a mobile home community buy out their landlord, meaning the residents are secure and free from eviction and their land starts to appreciate, instead of their houses depreciating. This is good news. Elsewhere, a list of five states that most people will be fleeing, for various reasons including cost of living and availability of work.
The Commandant of the Marine Corps continues to believe the worst about his soldiers and obsess over the possibility of openly gay people in his uber-macho branch of service.
In technology, the benefits of using items like CouchApp and CouchDB to decentralize things like social networking services. With those items installed, if the central servers ever went offline or were deactivated, the people who were using the services could still keep using the service with each other, rather than having to migrate somewhere else and move their community of fans. Kind of wish this had been in place for things like the early beZerk applications, so that I could continue those habits well past the point when the central servers were shut down.
Cancer research indicates tumors grow with help from the body's immune response to a wound - the cancer cell just never shuts off the cry for help. Staying in immune responses, University of South Central Florida researchers indicate that low levels of a particualr compound could help reverse the effects of a weakened immune system due to age.
Then, there's another test of a rail gun prototype from the United States Navy. Soon enouh, we'll all be able to hurl things exceedingly long distances with accuracy.
And finally, Google releases an Android application that will help refine their ability to recognize voices and spoken commands, by tuning the recognition software to the individual patterns of the phone user.
Into the opinion realms, where we find someone who decided to tie their tubes off at 27, and what kind of response she's gotten to that decision being made that young, mostly a lot of people thinking that she'll regret it later on in life, soem decades down the road. I don't think she will. If she ends up finding a maternal instinct, there's plenty of kids needing adoption and raising, so it's not like she won't have any children ever.
Staying in the realms of sexuality, A Tiger Beatdown for Michael Moore, who contributed $20,000 USD to the bail of Julian Assange, because of Moore's insistence that the "official story" regarding anything relating to a person a government hates is never to be believed - such claims are tantamount to Mr. Moore telling people never to believe a rape accusation, making it easier (than it already is) for rapists to rape and get away with it. There is a strand of the media narrative that is supposed to investigate whether such claims are propaganda or being used as entry points to pin him down enough to file the charges they really want to try him on, and that strand has returned back that there's no connection or government coercion behind the accusers. If you want to be paranoid, you can assume that the conclusion was foregone, but in all these cases, the charges themselves need to be treated seriously as independent events, instead of being steamrolled by the larger narrative. Once the investigative angle has panned out connecting the one story to the other, they should be treated separately, with the weight due to each of them as independent issues. And while it's easy, from a position of dudley privilege, to say "That's not what Moore meant! He was clearly talking about this", the Beatdown is right, too - the way it was phrased made it also sound like any person making an accusation against a powerful or famous person should be treated with suspicion and disbelief. That's how things are right now, and in the case of sexual assault, it doesn't have to be someone famous for that lens to apply in our culture.
Mr. McGurn suggests that if Republicans want to win the Class War argument, they start talking about the moral dimension to the argument for amoral capitalism, instead of simply making the functional ones about revenues, out-of-control spending as the real culprit, and unintended effects. (He is making a moral argument when he claims that it is not people and corporations hiding as much of their taxable income from the government that is the problem, but the government that spends money they don't have that is responsible for the difficulties. Lying is good, he says, but overspending is bad.) Mr. McGurn suggests that the Republicans argue that private sector greed is good and public sector greed is bad, and that government taxes are direct threats to everyone realizing The American Dream of making good for themselves, retiring comfortably, and then passing most of that wealth on to their children after they die. That particular situation is routinely derailed through layoffs, bubbles, crashes, and other effects of private sector greed. Mr. McGurn is right - if they want to win the arguments, the Republicans will have to find some sort of moral dimension to their arguments. But to argue that greed is good when it's the private sector and bad when it's the public sector won't fly. Nor is he going to win any points by talking about the American Dream - most people these days are lucky if they manage to avoid living perpetually in the American Nightmare, and they know their lot isn't going to improve any time soon.
Mr. McGurn is also hampered by the vocal and paranoid right that has, under the direction of the Tea Party and figureheads such as Limbaugh, Beck, and others, resurrected conspiracies, racism, and other things that sane people, liberal and conservative alike, purged from their politicvs generations before.
Last out of opinions, The Slacktivist condemns newspapers for abandoning the idea that they should characterize the good news as good and the bad news as bad, because it leads to abandonment of seeink out and reporting the truth, which then leads to the lazy journalism of "he-said, she-said, both get column space" and a product nobody wants, because we can get both our incensed blowhards and our
Last for tonight, a rejection letter sent without mincing words to an artist by his hero about the quality of his work. Sound advice included, certainly, but the packaging was not kind. For those receiving rejection letters today, hopefully none of yours will ever be this harsh. Instead we hope for you to receive letters from your love expressing their desire for you...although hopefully without the beheading bit at the end.
In light of the Wikileaks rage going across the web, have some context - letters exchanged between Upton Sinclair and President Roosevelt about how to best uncover the abuses of the meat packing industry. The suggestion is for the agents to be secret, but for the information to be public. And in that case, there was a clear need for the public to know what was going on. We need disclosure, and we need to have agents who will ferret out the things being kept secret and making decisions about whether that information should be public instead. Several members of the Columbia school of journalism indicated they feel Wikileaks' work is protected under the preedom of the press in the United States. Which brings the question of whether Wikileaks is an organization that falls under those freedoms. Is it an American organization if the servers hosting the data are no longer found in the United States? If it employs persons who work in the United States? That may be an important question to resolve in the cases of governmental charges - where, if anywhere, has national jurisdiction over Wikileaks?
Furthermore, despite not having been convicted of any crimes, despite being a model detainee, and despite showing no reason for anyoen to believe he is a threat to others, PFC Bradley Manning is being held in solitary confinement and regularly administered with anti-depressant drugs. I think that sends the intended message nice and clear - even allegations of leaks will get you punished and held in inhumane conditions. Whistleblowers, even before they are charged with crimes, will be punished. Are you sure you want to let those important documents out?
Out in the world today, Kosovo independence may have hit a major stumbling block - the prime minister has been identified as the leader of a crime ring involved in things such as organ trafficking, human rights violations, weapons smuggling, and other illegal acts.
Protestors gathered in the United Kingdom to express their displeasure at a plan to close a mental health crisis center and delay two day centers for mental health slated to open soo.
attackers detonated themselves outside of a mosque, killing thirty-nine people in what appears to be sectarian strife in Iran. Sort of a reminder that while the United States is afraid of any Muslim anywhere, those people who are Muslims have more reason to be afraid of other sects than they do the West, if you're talking where the attackers are coming from.
Finally, South Korea staged a large-scale evacuation drill, in case the hostilities between the two countries are resumed and North Korea starts to attack and invade.
Domestically, a Wisconsin owner has posted a "no negroes allowed" sign outside his business. The story says that the owner needed to craft that kind of policy after he had trouble with some black customers, but I wonder if he's also emboldened by the fact that a Senator-elect has publicly stated he thinks private businesses should be allowed to discriminate on whatever basis they like, and that only public institutions should be forced to be open to everyone.
Residents of a mobile home community buy out their landlord, meaning the residents are secure and free from eviction and their land starts to appreciate, instead of their houses depreciating. This is good news. Elsewhere, a list of five states that most people will be fleeing, for various reasons including cost of living and availability of work.
The Commandant of the Marine Corps continues to believe the worst about his soldiers and obsess over the possibility of openly gay people in his uber-macho branch of service.
In technology, the benefits of using items like CouchApp and CouchDB to decentralize things like social networking services. With those items installed, if the central servers ever went offline or were deactivated, the people who were using the services could still keep using the service with each other, rather than having to migrate somewhere else and move their community of fans. Kind of wish this had been in place for things like the early beZerk applications, so that I could continue those habits well past the point when the central servers were shut down.
Cancer research indicates tumors grow with help from the body's immune response to a wound - the cancer cell just never shuts off the cry for help. Staying in immune responses, University of South Central Florida researchers indicate that low levels of a particualr compound could help reverse the effects of a weakened immune system due to age.
Then, there's another test of a rail gun prototype from the United States Navy. Soon enouh, we'll all be able to hurl things exceedingly long distances with accuracy.
And finally, Google releases an Android application that will help refine their ability to recognize voices and spoken commands, by tuning the recognition software to the individual patterns of the phone user.
Into the opinion realms, where we find someone who decided to tie their tubes off at 27, and what kind of response she's gotten to that decision being made that young, mostly a lot of people thinking that she'll regret it later on in life, soem decades down the road. I don't think she will. If she ends up finding a maternal instinct, there's plenty of kids needing adoption and raising, so it's not like she won't have any children ever.
Staying in the realms of sexuality, A Tiger Beatdown for Michael Moore, who contributed $20,000 USD to the bail of Julian Assange, because of Moore's insistence that the "official story" regarding anything relating to a person a government hates is never to be believed - such claims are tantamount to Mr. Moore telling people never to believe a rape accusation, making it easier (than it already is) for rapists to rape and get away with it. There is a strand of the media narrative that is supposed to investigate whether such claims are propaganda or being used as entry points to pin him down enough to file the charges they really want to try him on, and that strand has returned back that there's no connection or government coercion behind the accusers. If you want to be paranoid, you can assume that the conclusion was foregone, but in all these cases, the charges themselves need to be treated seriously as independent events, instead of being steamrolled by the larger narrative. Once the investigative angle has panned out connecting the one story to the other, they should be treated separately, with the weight due to each of them as independent issues. And while it's easy, from a position of dudley privilege, to say "That's not what Moore meant! He was clearly talking about this", the Beatdown is right, too - the way it was phrased made it also sound like any person making an accusation against a powerful or famous person should be treated with suspicion and disbelief. That's how things are right now, and in the case of sexual assault, it doesn't have to be someone famous for that lens to apply in our culture.
Mr. McGurn suggests that if Republicans want to win the Class War argument, they start talking about the moral dimension to the argument for amoral capitalism, instead of simply making the functional ones about revenues, out-of-control spending as the real culprit, and unintended effects. (He is making a moral argument when he claims that it is not people and corporations hiding as much of their taxable income from the government that is the problem, but the government that spends money they don't have that is responsible for the difficulties. Lying is good, he says, but overspending is bad.) Mr. McGurn suggests that the Republicans argue that private sector greed is good and public sector greed is bad, and that government taxes are direct threats to everyone realizing The American Dream of making good for themselves, retiring comfortably, and then passing most of that wealth on to their children after they die. That particular situation is routinely derailed through layoffs, bubbles, crashes, and other effects of private sector greed. Mr. McGurn is right - if they want to win the arguments, the Republicans will have to find some sort of moral dimension to their arguments. But to argue that greed is good when it's the private sector and bad when it's the public sector won't fly. Nor is he going to win any points by talking about the American Dream - most people these days are lucky if they manage to avoid living perpetually in the American Nightmare, and they know their lot isn't going to improve any time soon.
Mr. McGurn is also hampered by the vocal and paranoid right that has, under the direction of the Tea Party and figureheads such as Limbaugh, Beck, and others, resurrected conspiracies, racism, and other things that sane people, liberal and conservative alike, purged from their politicvs generations before.
Last out of opinions, The Slacktivist condemns newspapers for abandoning the idea that they should characterize the good news as good and the bad news as bad, because it leads to abandonment of seeink out and reporting the truth, which then leads to the lazy journalism of "he-said, she-said, both get column space" and a product nobody wants, because we can get both our incensed blowhards and our
Last for tonight, a rejection letter sent without mincing words to an artist by his hero about the quality of his work. Sound advice included, certainly, but the packaging was not kind. For those receiving rejection letters today, hopefully none of yours will ever be this harsh. Instead we hope for you to receive letters from your love expressing their desire for you...although hopefully without the beheading bit at the end.
