A steady media diet - 13 January 2011

Cheers, yo. Check out the absolutely wrong way to try and provide closure from peopel shocked by a tragedy - telediagnosis doesn't really work all that well, y'know...

Observe the following example of either sheer boneheadedness or an attempt at making a political statement that falls on its face - a school district in North Carolina has repealed its integration policy, saying they wanted to "say no to the social engineers!" and that the idea of keeping poor children in just a few schools has merit. Sure - it lets all the affluent kids keep their test scores and look really good, instead of having Those Undesirables dragging their test scores down and introducing unwanted perspectives to the education system.

Out in the world today, a man who had been previously shot in the head sneezed out the bullet that had struck him.

United States Secretary of State Clinton visited Yemen to press for more cooperation between Yemen and the United States in fighting and defeating terrorist operations.

Elements of the Iranian government demonstrated that their on-paper commitment to religious freedom is not practiced by the people supposed to uphold those words.

The government of Lebanon collapsed after Hezbollah, one of the major players, resigned and took their allies with them.

The United States Secretary of Defense considers the problem of North Korea's government and long-range nuclear arsenal to be one that will directly affect the United States. In his assessment, North Korea could be one of those stupid actors that decides to attack with nukes even though they know what the response will be.

Finally, United States regulations on reporting large monetary transactions and foreign money movements are cited as the reason why United States banks are closing the accounts of foreign diplomatic missions.

Domestically (or close to it), A United States judge declined to release a Guantanamo Bay prisoner based on his association with a United States declared terrorist, rejecting the argument that his mere presence did not indicate he was collaborating with the accused terrorist. It's unlikely that anyone currently detained there will be released, as the current Defense budget contains language prohibiting the current administration from closing the facility or moving its residents anywhere. This makes many on the conservative side shake themselves with glee, because now they can not only crow about a broken promise, but use that failure to close to tar the administration as being no better than the previous administration and of being hypocrites, always neglecting to explain why and how someone who promised and tried to get the place closed was forced to keep it open. And they can keep claiming that it actually serves a proper and good purpose.

Several Republicans in the Congressional Prayer Caucus demanded a correction to an Obama speech wherein the motto "E pluribus unum" was used instead of the more recent official motto, "In God We Trust". The complaint also accused the President of serially omitting God and The Creator in his speeches, despite the many references to God in that speech and other ones. Think Progress correctly notes, as well, that the current one was only adopted as a Take That against the spectre of the godless Communists that Joe McCarthy thought he saw in every corner. It is a reflection that they are not as fond of the idea of "out of many, one" as they probably should be.

In sciences, lab-grown tissue now also has lab-grown blood vessels, letting the tissue stay alive and healthy for much longer. Also, a report claiming we already have the technology and capacity to house the projected 9 billion population of 2050, and we'll be able to feed the lot without destroying nature.

In technology, Google improves its voice command abilities by storing voiceprints and analyzing them so as to tune itself better to your commands.

In opinions, Mr. Sowell highlights the necessity of a good message to the rubes, regardless of what the truth is about how your policy will shake out. So he hopes the Republicans get their good messaging on, or they're going to get tarred over refusing to raise the debt ceiling without concessions.

Mr. Bluey thinks the administration should throw open wide the doors for offshore drilling because the economy demands cheap energy to recover, and those accidents were "isolated incidents", and definitely don't pay any attention to the fact that there is still no demonstrable way of sealing off a disaster before it becomes a major disaster, nor have those companies with offshore permits made much in the way of putting things in place that will make the drilling much less likely to cause disasters.

Last out of opinions, Mr. Gordon says that political rhetoric has always been inflamed and prone to violent imagery being thrown about, and the fact that we haven't had massive amounts of political violence over the years proves that violent rhetoric doesn't actually inspire people to go do things. At least, not in people who are sane. We think that Mr. Neiwert would consider that to also be part of the cop-out that wants to paint the systematic violence as a series of isolated incidents.

We hope that everyone who wants to advocate for more guns in people's hands as a result of this tragedy also advocates for their responsible use, as the tragedy could have been compounded had the other person with a gun decided to shoot first and not take the time to figure out if the person with the gun in their hand was actually the shooter.

Oh, and Ms. Regan? The mainstream media you speak of, the one with the supposedly pervasive left-wing bias and publications/shows that nobody should read or watch because of how filled with untruths they are? That also contains the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and any other conservative outlet with a strong readership or a television channel presence. Also, your apparent smug satisfaction with the "fact" that all of those institutions are going broke hurts your attempt at an argument. Complain all you like about the bias in the supposedly unbiased media, and all the untruths in the supposed facts, and try to be graceful when we point out the bias in your preferred papers and their untruths as well, by the way, but using readership and ratings as the measure of who's right and who's not, well, that's Clownish. Elementary. The work of Some Other Bozos.

And last for tonight, how a Kinder Surprise egg can result in a giant headache for anyone coming into the United States.

And yet more piled on - 13 January 2010

Welcome aboard, futurists, and those who live in the future. We have achieved many of the things that our science fiction used to dream of, but we consider them part of daily life, not The Future. We have almost a decade of The Future behind us now...so what will be use to get inspiration for the future?

The President of the United States spoke at a memorial service for the victims of the Tuscon shooting. Those are his prepared remarks, on transcript, and one departure from script to deliver a happy piece of news. Watching it live will show the crowd's cheers and applause for the heroes of the day, as well as the reaction to a piece of unscripted information that is very, very promising to recovery - Congressperson Giffords opened her eyes of her own volition. The crowd reacts to that news as one would hearing the call of a game-winning touchdown. They applauded the actions of those who sought to shield innocents, sacrificing their own lives to try and protect others. They roared their approval at those heroes that were still here, even for those who will deny that they did anything heroic at all. They listened as the President called for everyone to take this tragedy and make productive debate out of it, to cease useless finger-pointing, point-scoring, and trying to blame everyone else and to work together to uplift and make the discourse better, to look to problem-solving instead of blame-assigning. What we saw there, in the President, in the audience, and in all the things that were said, and all the things done, was the best of America. It was the ray of sun going through the dark clouds that normally cover our politics. And it begs a question - why does it take tragedy for us to show how we can do it right? Why not just do it right from the beginning? The President said we can be better, and he's right. The President said there's a we that binds all Americans and their fortunes together, and he's right there, too. Why does it take tragedy to show those bonds that we all know are there, if we just stopped and thought about it for a moment?

Queensland, Australia is suffering from a significant amount of flooding, which reminds us of another disaster that is still recovering - despite a significant amount of pledging done, most of the relief money for Haiti has not materialized.

Out in the world today, a Wikileaks volunteer was detained and thoroughly searched by the Customes and Border Patrol at Seattle-Tacoma airport upon re-entry from a vaction to Iceland. This, despite Wikileaks not having been charged formally with anything. It's the climate of fear trying to intimidate anyone else into helping bring important information to light.

An former officer of the police who worked on secret projects also used the same alias to advertise as a corporate espionage expert, working his police training to the advantage of those hiring him.

Back in the country, a director doesn't see why casting white people to play people of color would be a bad thing, nor why it might engender explosive expletives, ejaculations, and epitaphs.

A previous employee of the CIA is sitting trial for allegedly lying to immigration authorities about his past in Cuba. His defense insists that he came clean during the process and that the government's case is built solely on one unreliable paid informant.

The manner in which the Wall Street Journal excepted a book generated a firestorm about stereotypes of Asian parenting - and completely missed the point of the book entirely in doing so. Genie's been let out of the bottle, though - and hopefully it was mostly productive material, instead of having to go back to 101 conversations about race, parenting, and the stereotypes of certain methods and ethnicities.

I think now would be a good time to mention that lots of outlets will do their very best to edit you, whether in speech, action, or writing, so as to sensationalize, dramatize, or otherwise create controversy where there is none. Add exponents the further away from "mainstream" you are, and the more layers of editing and post any footage shot is put through before it airs, if it airs.

Last out, zebras that escaped a ranch were shot by the neighbors, who claimed the animals were threatening their horses. There are shades of "It's coming right for us!" from South Park here...

In technology, it might become very important to know what your technology is rated at in terms of cold as well as heat, as manufacturers may decide to deny you warranty coverage for a device used in colder-than-specifications temperatures.

In opinions, on the matter of Tuscon, Slacktivist suggests that the people who throw out rhetoric that demonizes other people and makes them monsters are insecure about whether they have the virtues they imagine they do. Lacking actual dragons to fight, they invent them, to feed their fantasy about being the star of the show, but they also wonder whether they will be strong and brave should a situation that demands it arrive. The suggestion for those people is for others to show them all the opportunities they already have to demonstrate their virtues - feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, bring medicine to the sick. "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?" The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'"

Also in there is a necessary point - revolutionary action in this time and age would fail just about every criteria for just and legal war under the conventions that we have adopted. Despite what people believe and claim they have to do to fight the un-democracy of the United States, they behave and do things and show that it still does function, even if the Senate gets gridlocked far too much. If it truly were an undemocratic nation, the resistance they spout would be an obligation. But it isn't, and so they don't.

As for those who want to claim it's an isolated incident and that the levels of hatred and infalammatory rhetoric are equal on both sides of the aisle, stop deluding yourselves. There's some on both sides, but the proportions tilt heavily to the right. Now, if you like, you can make the claim that the shooter was not influenced by anything around him, left, right, center, Palin, or otherwise all you want to, and that will be a respectable claim. (To then accuse your opponents of making political hay out of a tragedy by blaming your side is also standard, but a little bit lower on the truth value scale.)

As for the other major claim, Mr. Sullum demonstrates how warped the discussion has become by equating attempts to stop people from using weapons to kill others with disarming entire swaths of the populace in violation of their Second Amendment rights, stifling free speech through the usage of the Fairness Doctrine, or other things pumped up as the taking away of vital American freedoms. That's how much the debate has been warped by the pro-guns lobby that even sensible ideas like "let's not make it easy for people to shoot each other" turns into "GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP AND GRABBING YOUR GUNS TO PREVENT YOU FROM REBELLING!" Mr. Trzupek is in so deep that when he accuses his opposition of using junk science to further the case for stricter gun control, he doesn't notice his later citations contradict his earlier claim that no consistent relationship between gun ownership and crime can be established. Had he said "gun ownership and increased crime", then he would at least be consistent. Perhaps it's a missing word. Mr. Trzupek also succumbs to the madness that insists any time someone talks about wanting to say, keep assault weapons out of the hands of dangerous criminals, it's really super-secret code for "BAN ALL GUNS EVERYWHERE!"

Elsewhere, the propsal to name a United States naval ship after the late Representative John Murtha has brought criticism of both the man and the break from naval naming traditions.

The American Farm Bureau Association is suing the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the new regulatiosn designed to prevent pollution in the water are stopping them from being able to farm. Sounds suspiciously like agribusiness is feeling a pinch because they're not able to wreck soil and water to produce their fields and might actually have to, y'know, farm.

Tait Trussel says that unemployment will be harmful to the President's chances of re-election in 2012 if it doesn't start dropping. While also admitting that the stimulus package as passed wasn't going to be effective at all because it was mostly tax cuts. Let's see if that magnanimity holds through the election period.

Mr. Williams selectively quotes early Presidents' vetoes and commentary on the powers enumerated to Congress and dares his opponents to claim either than the Constitution has been amended as to allow most of what we see in spending, including things like the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System and government spending on the poor, or to claim that those esteemed gentlemen were wrong in their interpretation of the Constitution. Mr. Williams is confident that in either case, the claimant will come out looking like a fool. Thus, for him, the new Republican House should hold fast to the principles of cutting spending he doesn't like and claiming the Constitution prohibits such spending and requiring Congresspersons to justify their spending with something other than an appeal to the general welfare clause.

Last out of opinions, short, salient and ultimately true - the attitude of the average American person toward the poor is confrontationally opposite the mood of the poor person. When they try to do nice things and feel good, they're being shouted at that they can't have nice thigns or do self-improving stuff because they're poor, but when they get depressed and falter, suddenly everyone is telling them that they can pull themselves out of poverty and get to the good life. When tehy feel they can, they're told they can't. When they feel they can't, they're told they can. Why not just tell them they can all the time?

At the end of tonight, however, a reminder of just how many awful things can still manage to get published under certain imprints, including serial offenders against grammar and good language.