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Gyah - 11 January 2011
Jan. 12th, 2011 05:12 pmGreetings. A few things up top for us to start today.
First, Mr. Greenwald notes an elephant in the room - the climate of fear engendered by the government, started in the 1950, and progressively amped up each decade with a convenient threat or disaster, all the way up to today, where we see its effects - Bradley Manning in solitary as a disincentive to whistleblowers against the government, Wikileaks subpoenaed for data, causing many people to stop following or donating to them because of the fear of government retribution, despite Wikileaks still not having been formally charged with a crime, nor doing anything substantively different than any news agency, excepting that they report on the things that hurt the government, persons associated with Wikileaks being border-searched in a harsh manner, foreign dignitaries and entities choosing to have lawyers meet them at their gates or to fly into Canada instead, because of what the United States government might do to them because of their associations. The Obama administration is continuing this practice as well - the government wants anyone that could express something embarrassing or harmful to them to be afraid of their retribution, despite the liberties supposedly afforded to citizens in the country to let them criticize and petition their government for a redress of grievances.
We find out why Joan of Arc is a singular entity in history, why she should be rightly taken as the patron and personal saint of feminists, cross-dressers, QUILTBAG types, blasphemers, female soldiers those uncomfortable with the sexism in the Catholic Church, those who survived rape and sexual assault, and those who run toward gunshots because people need help. Among other things, because Joan is the badass saint of the Church.
Additionally, a look into how the digital life of Mac Tonnies, futurist and author of Posthuman Blues, was preserved after his unexpected death, and the difficulties of preserving everything when the deceased did not leave behind a list of his passwords, as well as looking forward into how we can preserve our digital selves for the future's historians, with services mentioned that are in the business now, but with the caveat that businesses go out at times, so archiving our digital selves may require a foundation (Long Now, anyone?) or a university, somewhere unlikely to suddenly disappear and take all that digital archive with us. It's an important thought for those of us "born digital" - since we're supposed to plan with our physical possessions, why not include our digital possessions, too?
And finally, remember the rules of marketing, that good customer service is normal, but bad customer service gets complained about? What do you think happens when, during a cavalcade of misses, snowstorms, and delays, a gate agent curses and attacks a passenger, then lies to his boss and to the police about what he did? And those same people notice that said gate agent is back on a public-facing job when they came back through on their return flight? And they haven't responded at all to the formal complaint filed yet, either?
Out in the world today, a reminder that the CIA deliberately gave Iran nuclear plans that had flaws in them - and that the person handing over the plans knew full well that they were flawed.
As General Petraeus says Taliban influence is declining in Afghanistan, Wikileaks releases prove the systemic nature of lying done by the United States government to the people of the United States about how the First Land War in Asia is actually going, how many times innocents have been killed, and just how much ill will is being generated through our continued bumbling.
China seems cool to the idea of engaging in strategic talks with the United States. This as they allow reporting on their stealth fighter design.
Violence in Sudan with tribesmen killing herders.
A person claiming he had a bomb was overpowered by passengers on their way into Istanbul. Police found the alleged terrorist with a passenger sitting on him to keep him restrained.
Inside the U.S., since Deepwater Horizon was never officially declared a disaster, any payments from BP to the victims could be taxed at the highest allowable rate.
Tom DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in money laundering in transferring money to Texas candidates in 2002.
A fraud on Facebook involved a man using a dead soldier's picture to seduce women. For those treating soldiers with more respect, full military honors for a mass funeral service for members who have died and whose remains remain unclaimed or unburied.
A man who gave an alias, thinking it was clean, ended up spending more than a year in jail without anyone cleaning up the mess of the two names and extricating the one from the other.
In technology, new Goggles, powerul enough to beat a Sudoku champ at the game, and new contacts for the eyes that will monitor vital functions and possibly give the wearer that information in a HUD.
Into opinions, where everything new is old again?: or, how the modern world's power structure resembles that of the medieval period.
Talking about the United States, Mr. Rozeff says that ince the United States government is already insolvent, it's really only a matter of time before the crash comes, in the form of severe cutbacks or major tax hikes, so the best way to prepare for it is to become as independent of government spending as you can. This, I think, is where we have the infrastructure talk, about the only way to be truly independent of government spending is to be completely self-sufficient - in food, in manufacture of goods needed for survival, and the rest.
Mr. Boot flails about in a panic about the continued defense cuts, claiming that the armed forces are too small to prepare us for when something else requires the services of Team America: World Police, and that while we do need to cut the budget, defense spending should be spared any cuts at all. It's not a claim that the sky is falling, it's a claim that he's certain the sky will fall somewhere and the U.S. military will be the only people who can save us all from the calamity. Here, I think, is where the talk about just how much actual good the military's ventures of the last decades have been goes.
Mr. Gardiner is up in arms that the United States said France, of all nations, was the strongest ally of the United States, instead of the United Kingdom. It's contemptuous of allies and shows just how much Barack Obama is out of his depth in foreign policy, he says. To snark, one might point out how the assistance of France was vital in getting the United States off the ground, but we think that Mr. Gardiner is feeling slighted that the United States is trying to cultivate better relationships with everyone, not just the UK.
A Mr. McCarthy thinks that liberals hate the Constitution as it was written, and venerate the Supreme Court decisions that made all their dreams of big government, new agencies, and disruption of the moral order possible, such that when liberals accuse conservatives and Tea Party types of fetishizing the Constitution, conservatives should be able to ignore them or retort that liberals fetishize Supreme Court decisions and treat them with the same immutability that the liberals claim conservatives treat the Constitution with. And possibly tell their copy of the Constitution "It's okay, baby. I'd never do anything to hurt you. They don't understand our love."
I don't think liberals believe that Supreme Court decisions are set in stone once they bend the way liberals would like. If they did, I don't think there would be as active a lobby on protecting the decision that made abortions legal, even as Congresscritters continue to pass laws that forbid the federal government from providing any funding to it. Or many of the other active groups out there trying to make sure that rights and privileges accorded to them don't suddenly vanish with the composition of a new Court.
Last out of opinions, The Washington Times is up in arms that the new State Department passports for children have been adapted to the new legal reality that a child's parents may both be of the same physical sex, calling it "political correctness" that "mother" and "father" have been replaced with "parent A" and "parent B", and that this only further advances the breakdown of the family and the natural order that demands one man, one woman households to the exclusion of all other things, because only a one man, one woman relationship produces the children that are the reason why anyone would marry or partner up. And even worse, once you have just "parent one" and "parent two", what's to stop anyone from adding a "parent three" and "parent four" or more? Horror of horrors, the poly people might also get recognition! And then society just unravels because all our moral values have been trod on by letting Those People claim they're actually families and parents and legally joined together, and God smites us all for not killing the deviants whenever we encounter them! AIEEEEEEE.
...or, they could grow up and realize that doing these things will not result in the end of the world, nor of the country, and if they can't handle that, perhaps they should move to Uganda or somewhere else that still has the same values and beliefs that they do.
First, Mr. Greenwald notes an elephant in the room - the climate of fear engendered by the government, started in the 1950, and progressively amped up each decade with a convenient threat or disaster, all the way up to today, where we see its effects - Bradley Manning in solitary as a disincentive to whistleblowers against the government, Wikileaks subpoenaed for data, causing many people to stop following or donating to them because of the fear of government retribution, despite Wikileaks still not having been formally charged with a crime, nor doing anything substantively different than any news agency, excepting that they report on the things that hurt the government, persons associated with Wikileaks being border-searched in a harsh manner, foreign dignitaries and entities choosing to have lawyers meet them at their gates or to fly into Canada instead, because of what the United States government might do to them because of their associations. The Obama administration is continuing this practice as well - the government wants anyone that could express something embarrassing or harmful to them to be afraid of their retribution, despite the liberties supposedly afforded to citizens in the country to let them criticize and petition their government for a redress of grievances.
We find out why Joan of Arc is a singular entity in history, why she should be rightly taken as the patron and personal saint of feminists, cross-dressers, QUILTBAG types, blasphemers, female soldiers those uncomfortable with the sexism in the Catholic Church, those who survived rape and sexual assault, and those who run toward gunshots because people need help. Among other things, because Joan is the badass saint of the Church.
Additionally, a look into how the digital life of Mac Tonnies, futurist and author of Posthuman Blues, was preserved after his unexpected death, and the difficulties of preserving everything when the deceased did not leave behind a list of his passwords, as well as looking forward into how we can preserve our digital selves for the future's historians, with services mentioned that are in the business now, but with the caveat that businesses go out at times, so archiving our digital selves may require a foundation (Long Now, anyone?) or a university, somewhere unlikely to suddenly disappear and take all that digital archive with us. It's an important thought for those of us "born digital" - since we're supposed to plan with our physical possessions, why not include our digital possessions, too?
And finally, remember the rules of marketing, that good customer service is normal, but bad customer service gets complained about? What do you think happens when, during a cavalcade of misses, snowstorms, and delays, a gate agent curses and attacks a passenger, then lies to his boss and to the police about what he did? And those same people notice that said gate agent is back on a public-facing job when they came back through on their return flight? And they haven't responded at all to the formal complaint filed yet, either?
Out in the world today, a reminder that the CIA deliberately gave Iran nuclear plans that had flaws in them - and that the person handing over the plans knew full well that they were flawed.
As General Petraeus says Taliban influence is declining in Afghanistan, Wikileaks releases prove the systemic nature of lying done by the United States government to the people of the United States about how the First Land War in Asia is actually going, how many times innocents have been killed, and just how much ill will is being generated through our continued bumbling.
China seems cool to the idea of engaging in strategic talks with the United States. This as they allow reporting on their stealth fighter design.
Violence in Sudan with tribesmen killing herders.
A person claiming he had a bomb was overpowered by passengers on their way into Istanbul. Police found the alleged terrorist with a passenger sitting on him to keep him restrained.
Inside the U.S., since Deepwater Horizon was never officially declared a disaster, any payments from BP to the victims could be taxed at the highest allowable rate.
Tom DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in money laundering in transferring money to Texas candidates in 2002.
A fraud on Facebook involved a man using a dead soldier's picture to seduce women. For those treating soldiers with more respect, full military honors for a mass funeral service for members who have died and whose remains remain unclaimed or unburied.
A man who gave an alias, thinking it was clean, ended up spending more than a year in jail without anyone cleaning up the mess of the two names and extricating the one from the other.
In technology, new Goggles, powerul enough to beat a Sudoku champ at the game, and new contacts for the eyes that will monitor vital functions and possibly give the wearer that information in a HUD.
Into opinions, where everything new is old again?: or, how the modern world's power structure resembles that of the medieval period.
Talking about the United States, Mr. Rozeff says that ince the United States government is already insolvent, it's really only a matter of time before the crash comes, in the form of severe cutbacks or major tax hikes, so the best way to prepare for it is to become as independent of government spending as you can. This, I think, is where we have the infrastructure talk, about the only way to be truly independent of government spending is to be completely self-sufficient - in food, in manufacture of goods needed for survival, and the rest.
Mr. Boot flails about in a panic about the continued defense cuts, claiming that the armed forces are too small to prepare us for when something else requires the services of Team America: World Police, and that while we do need to cut the budget, defense spending should be spared any cuts at all. It's not a claim that the sky is falling, it's a claim that he's certain the sky will fall somewhere and the U.S. military will be the only people who can save us all from the calamity. Here, I think, is where the talk about just how much actual good the military's ventures of the last decades have been goes.
Mr. Gardiner is up in arms that the United States said France, of all nations, was the strongest ally of the United States, instead of the United Kingdom. It's contemptuous of allies and shows just how much Barack Obama is out of his depth in foreign policy, he says. To snark, one might point out how the assistance of France was vital in getting the United States off the ground, but we think that Mr. Gardiner is feeling slighted that the United States is trying to cultivate better relationships with everyone, not just the UK.
A Mr. McCarthy thinks that liberals hate the Constitution as it was written, and venerate the Supreme Court decisions that made all their dreams of big government, new agencies, and disruption of the moral order possible, such that when liberals accuse conservatives and Tea Party types of fetishizing the Constitution, conservatives should be able to ignore them or retort that liberals fetishize Supreme Court decisions and treat them with the same immutability that the liberals claim conservatives treat the Constitution with. And possibly tell their copy of the Constitution "It's okay, baby. I'd never do anything to hurt you. They don't understand our love."
I don't think liberals believe that Supreme Court decisions are set in stone once they bend the way liberals would like. If they did, I don't think there would be as active a lobby on protecting the decision that made abortions legal, even as Congresscritters continue to pass laws that forbid the federal government from providing any funding to it. Or many of the other active groups out there trying to make sure that rights and privileges accorded to them don't suddenly vanish with the composition of a new Court.
Last out of opinions, The Washington Times is up in arms that the new State Department passports for children have been adapted to the new legal reality that a child's parents may both be of the same physical sex, calling it "political correctness" that "mother" and "father" have been replaced with "parent A" and "parent B", and that this only further advances the breakdown of the family and the natural order that demands one man, one woman households to the exclusion of all other things, because only a one man, one woman relationship produces the children that are the reason why anyone would marry or partner up. And even worse, once you have just "parent one" and "parent two", what's to stop anyone from adding a "parent three" and "parent four" or more? Horror of horrors, the poly people might also get recognition! And then society just unravels because all our moral values have been trod on by letting Those People claim they're actually families and parents and legally joined together, and God smites us all for not killing the deviants whenever we encounter them! AIEEEEEEE.
...or, they could grow up and realize that doing these things will not result in the end of the world, nor of the country, and if they can't handle that, perhaps they should move to Uganda or somewhere else that still has the same values and beliefs that they do.
