Way Late and Very Short - 14 January 2011

Good morning,everyone. If you don't know what you've got until it's gone, then perhaps some visual aids are in order. More specifically, a town's residents checked out all 16,000 of their public library's volumes in protest that their library was up for cutting to make a budget shortfall. I don't know if it will make a difference, but I'd like to see something like that happen, say, in California, where the new governor's budget, as proposed, cuts out all funding for libraries in the state.

A relaxation fo the dress code for local sports prde resulted in a dismissal of a student who turned up wearing colors supporting another team who was playing on Saturday. Really, people? There's no room for supporters of other teams? We've had that lesson written large in our political processes for the last two years!

And finally, a vintage advertisement against letting women get to vote, that claimed the majority of women didn't want it, that socialists, feminists, Wobblies, and Mormons, all enemies of Christendom, wanted it, and that giving women voting rights would increase taxes, divorce rates, and was injurious to those women. As the caption wryly notes, it's nice to know our discourse has improved significantly in the years since.

Out in the world today, a mass uprising in the nation of Tunisia drove out the president and dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the person first appointed to succeed him. And this is the first I've heard of it happening. What the Hell, mainstream media? Furthermore, the portrayal of the change as riots and looting, instead of a protest, is not helping produce the truth.

Feminism in Lebanon, holding strong, and planning on expanding their influence to more people. Thriving in places you might not expect. Also of interest, Nepal and India will provide a third gender option on their national censuses for those who do not identify with either of the gender binary.

Pakistan, like other countries with a vocal and prone to extremism religious population, has to balance between remaining a secular society and cutting down casualties and incidents when the extremists go out marauding.

The Vice President of the United States, Mr. Biden, assured Iraqi lawmakers and figues that the United States would continue to support the Iraqi security forces even as a final withdrawal date approaches for the removal of all United States military personnel from the country. Considering that there are still incidents where Iraqi troops deliberately fire upon United States troops, one can appreciate the worries of the Iraqi people.

Economists in the United States believe that China's policy of linking its currency to the United States dollar is generating inflation on staple goods as the United States economy recovers and China's continues to grow. Elsewhere, Mr. Krugman points out the absurdity of one-solution-fits-all economic thinking, especially in relation to the crises in Europe, as he details how the case for the Euro was not as strong as it could have been.

Last out, other places where there is major flooding, not nearly as likely to receive major press coverage.

Domestically, a Catholic Church got a tresspass order issued against a mother and her daughter after publicly refusing them participation in the Eucharist ritual, over a priest having seen the daughter dispose of the wafer improperly. I know that the Church considers it to be a significant sin, but a banning offense? That seems a bit on the harsh side. And the public humiliation thing is probably not the best idea, either, but I suppose that's going to become more standard in the "back to the fundamentals" Catholic Church that the current Bishop of Rome seems to have in mind.

A Tea Party group exercised their right to peaceful redress, demanding the state allow for the popular election of an attorney general or the creation of a popularly elected position resembling the same, because they don't like that the current office-holder hasn't joined the Obamacare lawsuits, and that the state's education curriculum be revised so that hagiography of the Founding Fathers be taught instead of history and that minority issues on the formation of the country or how the country treated minorities be footnoted or sidebar'd when there is a white dude in the narrative. They'd find an ally in Mr. Pendry, who insists that Founding Fathers be taught as God-fearing upstanding men, not slave-owners and fathers of illegitimate children, that removing God from government makes us all worse (his insistence that Creator refers to the Christian God is unsubstantiated), and that politicians are out to both kill your children through allowing abortions and take your guns away.

Mr. Steele withdrew from the running for the Republican National Committee chairship in the fourth round of voting, leading to the election of Mr. Reince Priebus in the seventh round of the voting. While Mr. Steele has been an entertaining figure for the last few years, Mr. Priebus is widely expected to be able to raise significant money in anticipation of the 2012 elections. Money is what the Republicans need, as they are currently running significant amounts of debt.

The blood relation mentioned by an author doing a YA tour indicates that the blood-related family has never been her family from the point forward that she emancipated herself from them, and the sibling claiming to have grown up with her is lying and rewriting her life to make her less radical and less of herself. Pay attention as well to how much legal documentation she has to carry to ensure that her legal wishes are actually enforced and respected. The Author responds, saying "I've respected your wishes, I never named you, the character isn't based on you, the person I mentioned is a current friend, everything you said I said was totally wrong, and I'm entitled to express my views. And did I mention I was gay, too?"

There is some good stuff, though - Stud magazine, for example, a publication highlighting the fashions of non gender-conforming females.

Finally, A quick sketch of how the proper use of the term "blood libel" in response to the Tuscon shootings can rapidly mutate around a particular corner of the web to land in a possibly wildly inappropriate use of the term, devoid of context or understanding, by someone else. In the case of that particular person, she's just enough of rube and brilliant strategist all mixed together that you can't always tell when it's malice and when it's ignorance. Much like the rest of us.

In technology and sciences, spray-on glass, IBM's Watson defeated two human Jeopardy champions in a three-category practice round at the trivia game, a device to scan fingerprints at two meters distance, which I'm sure will be coming to law enforcement near you soon, and a genetic testing sequence that will test for more than 400 inherited diseases, so that parents will really be able to know whether they want their pregnancy to continue.

Oh, and workshops teaching children how to unlock locked vehicles, open car trunks, and bypass key locks so as to start a car.

In opinions, Brit Hume is taken to task for commenting about the peculiarity of a ritual performed during a funeral for one of the Tuscon victims. Mr. Clark is correct - when you mourn with someone, you mourn with them, doing what you can to participate, not stand aloof and evaluate it as to whether it jibes with your personal beliefs about the afterlife.

Ms. Strassel declares that nothing will be done about gun control laws in the United States in the wake of the Tuscon shooting, because the American people have learned that heavey gun bans don't prevent tragedies, and politicians have learned not to cross the NRA and other gun lobbies (which she misrepresents as "the people punish pro-gun control politicians at the polls"). She further insinuates that people calling for the return of sensible restrictions are nothing more than political opportunists hoping to strike while the country is in shock.

Mr. McCain takes the high road with regard to the President's speech in Tuscon, and agrees with the spirit and the country that was laid out in that speech.

Mr. Moran believes that Lebanon will soon be part of the Iran-Syria axis because of the ability of the political Hezbollah to cause government unrest and possibly threaten a return to earlier days of open civil warfare. He may want to consult with Mr. Mauro, who believes sanctions pressure is forcing the Iranian government to cut back their subsidization and assistance to the citizens, and the following unrest and demonstrations will hamstring not only support for Hezbollah, but the ability of Iran to do anything at all with their nuclear programme.

Mr. Jeb Bush offers his advice to Congressional Republicans on how to make progress on their aims, how the Presidential candidate for the Republicans can attract the Hispanic vote, and emphasises the value of finding how to stand on your principles without knee-jerk opposition to others. He sounds like an old-school, pre-Tea Party Republican, and in this climate, that would probably be a welcome attitude to work with. Most notably, Mr. Bush seems to recognize that his views are not in the mianstream of his party. As odd as this sounds, we might need to have a J. Bush-M. McCain tour to remind the republicans that they have moderates and people with ideas more likely to appeal than the uniform opposition that the Congress seems to feel is the right path to go.

On the other end of the spectrum, Mr. Laffer insists that Republicans attach poison pills designed to kill the health care law's provisions to all of the major spending bills that the administration needs to get passed, including raising the debt ceiling, so that way, no matter what happens, spending gets cut and the economy magically recovers without having to raise the debt ceiling (which the Democrats were opposed to in 2006, before they took power and then started spending massively over popular protest, just like their predecessors). As a side benefit, he says, all the lazy people have their benefits cut, forcing them to become working people, and the working people have their taxes cut because they're not subsidizing the lazy people.

Mr. Rove ahs nothing but praise for the selection of William Daley as White House Chief of Staff, believing that it will lead to the dropping of rhetoric that painted businessmen as thieves and robbers, real conversations with the GOP instead of talking only to Democrats, less senior staff in general, allowing outside-the-Beltway people to gain traction and influence on the White House, and a lessening of the arrogance of the White House. It is apparently supposed to be a way for the administration to gracefully move to the Republican position, often misnamed "the center", and away from the polarizing figure who was super-partisan after he claimed he wanted bipartisanship and ruined his presidency by being the arrogant, obstinate politician. I always find it fascinating when a conservative commentator points at the President and says "It's all his fault that things are like this." Or at the opposition, for that matter, when their own record shows they're stalling, delating, refusing, and doing everything they can to offer no help, do no actual work, and otherwise just act as saboteurs instead of collaborators, demanding that everyone do things their way immediately or nothing happens at all. Obama already is a centrist, if not a center-rightist. The continued insistence that he move further to the right into an imagined "center" indicates the partisan levels of the people making the commentary.

Some opinions about the deal between Goldman Sachs and Facebook, including the stereotypes deployed and whether any of them are close to accurate (and how many of them contradict each other).

Last out of opinions for tonight, the difficulties of feedback, in establishing boundaries on which types of feedback you want, accepting that you can't control the direction of the conversation, and for creating spaces where you can be reviewer separate from being author, even if you are commenting in the same space as you are posting. While the original context is fanfaction writing, I think that it applies to all sorts of writing styles. We welcome feedback and criticism, and especially fact-checking. We like depth discussions and kudos - for feedback tells us we are not shouting into the void and nobody notices anything.

Ah, and last for tonight, your zodiac sign may have changed, with the introduction of the thirteenth sign, Ophiuchus. For some people, it might bring them closer to the truth. For others, the truth is that the person who started all of this is being taken out of context - he mentioned that there's a thirteenth constellation used for solar reckoning in astronomy, that's all, and so suddenly everyone's sign changed, or something. Blame the media.