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Greetings, comic-book readers and graphic-novel enthusiasts. After reading the application letter one Hunter S. Thompson sent to the Vancouver Sun, I think I understand more of the background character to Spider Jerusalem.
For those looking for different material, a short anthropomorphization of the various social network tools and the anatomical structure of Gamera and other kaiju.
If that's still not your thing, old postcards are more fun when aliens and ships are present, which is the work of Franco Brambilla. The full suite of Invading the Vintage is available on his website.
Last, we continue to be amazed at the speed of recover for Congressperson Giffords - she left the hospital and moved to a physical rehabilitation facility in Houston on Friday, 13 days after having been shot in the head.
Out in the world today, Erik Prince and Xe, nee Blackwater, have surfaced in Somalia, training various troops in the country to fight widespread piracy originating there. Xe's presence re-opens the debate about whether having contractors and mercenaries in a country helps or harms the creation and retainment of national armies and allows them to gather the best available staff for the job.
An audio message claiming to be Osama bin Laden demanded the withdrawal of France from Afghanistan.
Finally, signs of progress in Iraq's ability to find and disrupt terror groups in their own country, perhaps strategically being deployed now that the deadline of complete United States troop withdrawal looms in the distance.
Inside the United States, forensic techniques corroborate the accusation that Kalid Sheik Mohammed was responsible for the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Just after seeing the FCC approve a merger deal between GE-owned NBC and Comcast, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt will lead the President's panel on Jobs and Competitiveness. People on the left will likely dismiss this as yet another corporate / Wall Street head honcho working against the real interests of the people and providing cover for him and his colleagures to strip the country of resources and outsource all the jobs, while people on the right will likely make much of Immelt's ownership of NBC to paint him as an Administration flunky who will work against the real interests of the people, who want corporations to rule their lives and hate whenever the government tries to make their lives better or freer from the grip of the oligarchy.
a gentleman charged with assault and battery for spraying mace into a crowd of Westboro Baptist Church protesters at a military funeral has been fined $300 for his actions. And thus, the law works, defending the right of tasteless protests and charging those who disrupt them violently with crimes.
Congressperson Lewis of Georgia mixes his founding documents, citing the pursuit of happiness as justification for the individual insurance mandate in the health care bill. After doing a gentle facepalm about the mix-up, the article notes the Constitutional objection to the mandate and then asks a question that may be more liberal than they think - "...what happens [if] many people’s 'pursuit of happiness' doesn’t include buying health insurance, or what if being forced to buy health insurance infringes on people’s 'pursuit of happiness?'" It's a solid question, but it can be taken either in the direction of "...so we should repeal this mandate because it infringes on people's choices" or "...so we should break people free of the insurance monopoly and misery by providing them with a government alternative that actually works and is affordable."
Into technology, where ultraviolet light may help certain polymer materials heal themselves, assuming they can do it in an oxygen-free environment.
There's also the educator that takes the wealth of statistical data that Wii Sports provides and uses it for mathematics instruction, while other students get to play games for their excellent classroom decorum.
Finally, a very good round-up of the issues that arise when it comes to buying books in countries other than the United States, regarding price points, accessibility, and the driving force behind "piracy" of materials that are otherwise unaffordable or out of reach because accessible versions aren't always available.
In opinions, Mr. Gillmor says that while anonymity should be preserved on the Internet, anyone who chooses to go that route should be treated as incredible at best and part of the worst cesspits of the Internet at worst. He damns pseudonyms with faint praise, figuring they're one step above anonymity, and that perhaps they can be useful if someone sticks to the same one over time and builds a reputation, but he really wants everyone to use their real names when it comes to on-line discourse. If we all did that, and didn't tolerate anonymous trolls, then the discourse level would improve. Or so he thinks.
Ms. Coontz says that traditionalists worried about how same-sex marriage will destroy the institution should note that their institution has already been changed irrevocably based on what marriage and relationships are now about, compared to their past. When marriage was about property, then control was to those people whose interest was in seeing the property go to the right people and build family wealth. Once marriage became about love, those parts of laws disappeared. Then, as gender roles stopped being rigidly husband-and-wife, dominant-male-head-of-household and sexually-submissive-housekeeping-woman, and started being about equal partners who choose to be together, then the reasons why one man, one woman marriages are to be encouraged retreat swiftly to the realm of religious preference and practice. Thus, same-sex marriage (and possibly multiple-persons-in-one-contract marriages) are not radical departures, they're societal evolutions. Unless the society suddenly retreats as conservatism and certain religions want it to, the battles over same-sex marriage will always eventually end the same way, with the right of two people to marry, regardless of sex or gender, upheld.
The Slacktivist uses Judge Roll's selfless act of shielding another person from bullet fire, and the almost universal acknowledgment of that as a heroic act as a definitive and final refutation of John Galt and Ayn Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness". He's still a bit shocked that the Republican Party campaigned on the anti-empathy platform as anything other than exaggerated satire, but the point is that Ayn Rand must be wrong, because we believe our own eyes and reactions to accounts of heroism instead of brushing it aside with the cold-heartedness that says helping others is foolish.
Mr. Elder believes that all accusations of racism can be adequately explained by other means, and that if someone deploys a stereotype against another person, it's because that person deserves to be stereotyped. People getting nervous at black passengers on rail systems? Totally justified, because black people commit more violent crime against black people and white people. The assumption that someone who is tall and black plays basketball? A culture of victimhood, nothing more. The syndrome known as Driving While Black? Completely justified, because black people drive faster than white people and are thus more likely to be pulled over by cops. The study, that only looked at the data set of people who got pulled over, said so. Clearly, anyone claiming that people are still being judged by the color of their skin is a huckster trying to make blacks feel like victims of an oppressive system and entitled to compensation.
Staying on that theme of victimhood, although changing who is supposedly oppressed now, Mr. Sayet insists that liberals have an ingrained hatred of anyone who challenges their perfect utopia and their policies, and the lashing-out against he climate of violent rhetoric in realtion to the Tuscon shooting only proves this, because liberals were talking about it despite having no evidence that the shooter was influenced by such things. He extrapolates, based on a quote by Howard Zinn that says those who have aims to push are uninterested in the objective truth, that liberals know they can't win with actual facts or policies, which are Inherently Inferior and Deficient, and no Democrat can actually successfully answer the question "Why are those policies bad?" or "Whay are Democratic policies better?", so liberals must devolve to painting their opponents as irredeemably evil if they want to win an argument. At the end, Mr. Sayet is credited as being a satirist, which raises the antennae as to whether he's exaggerating for comedic effect. If he thinks he is, he needs to look at the tone and tenor of his fellow columnists and realize that his satire game has to get almost Swiftian before anyone will believe it might be satire. And there's the part where the outlined column could change names and issues and be just as much about conservative rhetoric.
For all of those people who take Mr. Sayet seriously and insist that he's right in all his particualrs, they should consult with Ms. Strassel, who thinks the Obama administration is now trying to do the great leap to the Right by getting out in front of the GOP's talking points and co-opting them so as to make himself seem reasonable and in touch with them. Ms. Strassel says the GOP needs to hold the Presidential feet to the fire on whether it's all talk or whether he's serious about it enough to let things like legislative bans on federal funding for abortions, something like Clintonian welfare reform, or to advocate for other clearly Republican bills to get through the Senate so he can sign them. Otherwise, he's just a shrewd politician undercutting his opposition and letting the Senate stand as a bulwark against actualy having to make decisions. Were the Senate a stronger Democratic majority, that might hold water. As it is, the Senate's not a safe body to hide behind and hope that nothing controversial or damaging reaches his desk. There's always enough conservaDems willing to cross the aisle on some issues.
Mr. Brown continues the parade of glee that comes from President Obama keeping Guantanamo Bay open and proceeding with military commission trials, making sure to insinuate as often as possible that this is because the President has finally come around to believing that the Bush way is the best way, and not because all of his other avenues were blocked by Congress. He also rejoices at the prospect that all the torture-obtained evidence will still be usable and that the intelligence community continues to be able to operate in cloak-and-dagger ways that will never be exposed to sunlight. A victory for a place that is outside the laws of the United States and in repeated violation of the treaties the United States is a signatory to, and a victory for an administration that knowingly violated the laws of the United States and the treaties it is signatory to. How is this something to be celebrated?
Mr. Michael Reagan talks about his father, Ronald Reagan, as a President who helped black people out a lot, both personally and Presidentially, better than the Democratic Clinton, called a "black president", and the current Obama, based mostly on unemployment rates and the economy. I think he wants to use Saint Reagan as a broader argument that conservatives are not actually racists, despite their stereotypes. It's a very muted argument, though, if it's there.
Last for tonight, Major Turner of the Marine Corps thanks someone for their interest but politely declines to let them in to the Corps, on account of being twelve years old. They also suggest that the Corps prefer people who stay in school and do well.
And the hawk that watches the researchers in the Library of Congress.
For those looking for different material, a short anthropomorphization of the various social network tools and the anatomical structure of Gamera and other kaiju.
If that's still not your thing, old postcards are more fun when aliens and ships are present, which is the work of Franco Brambilla. The full suite of Invading the Vintage is available on his website.
Last, we continue to be amazed at the speed of recover for Congressperson Giffords - she left the hospital and moved to a physical rehabilitation facility in Houston on Friday, 13 days after having been shot in the head.
Out in the world today, Erik Prince and Xe, nee Blackwater, have surfaced in Somalia, training various troops in the country to fight widespread piracy originating there. Xe's presence re-opens the debate about whether having contractors and mercenaries in a country helps or harms the creation and retainment of national armies and allows them to gather the best available staff for the job.
An audio message claiming to be Osama bin Laden demanded the withdrawal of France from Afghanistan.
Finally, signs of progress in Iraq's ability to find and disrupt terror groups in their own country, perhaps strategically being deployed now that the deadline of complete United States troop withdrawal looms in the distance.
Inside the United States, forensic techniques corroborate the accusation that Kalid Sheik Mohammed was responsible for the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Just after seeing the FCC approve a merger deal between GE-owned NBC and Comcast, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt will lead the President's panel on Jobs and Competitiveness. People on the left will likely dismiss this as yet another corporate / Wall Street head honcho working against the real interests of the people and providing cover for him and his colleagures to strip the country of resources and outsource all the jobs, while people on the right will likely make much of Immelt's ownership of NBC to paint him as an Administration flunky who will work against the real interests of the people, who want corporations to rule their lives and hate whenever the government tries to make their lives better or freer from the grip of the oligarchy.
a gentleman charged with assault and battery for spraying mace into a crowd of Westboro Baptist Church protesters at a military funeral has been fined $300 for his actions. And thus, the law works, defending the right of tasteless protests and charging those who disrupt them violently with crimes.
Congressperson Lewis of Georgia mixes his founding documents, citing the pursuit of happiness as justification for the individual insurance mandate in the health care bill. After doing a gentle facepalm about the mix-up, the article notes the Constitutional objection to the mandate and then asks a question that may be more liberal than they think - "...what happens [if] many people’s 'pursuit of happiness' doesn’t include buying health insurance, or what if being forced to buy health insurance infringes on people’s 'pursuit of happiness?'" It's a solid question, but it can be taken either in the direction of "...so we should repeal this mandate because it infringes on people's choices" or "...so we should break people free of the insurance monopoly and misery by providing them with a government alternative that actually works and is affordable."
Into technology, where ultraviolet light may help certain polymer materials heal themselves, assuming they can do it in an oxygen-free environment.
There's also the educator that takes the wealth of statistical data that Wii Sports provides and uses it for mathematics instruction, while other students get to play games for their excellent classroom decorum.
Finally, a very good round-up of the issues that arise when it comes to buying books in countries other than the United States, regarding price points, accessibility, and the driving force behind "piracy" of materials that are otherwise unaffordable or out of reach because accessible versions aren't always available.
In opinions, Mr. Gillmor says that while anonymity should be preserved on the Internet, anyone who chooses to go that route should be treated as incredible at best and part of the worst cesspits of the Internet at worst. He damns pseudonyms with faint praise, figuring they're one step above anonymity, and that perhaps they can be useful if someone sticks to the same one over time and builds a reputation, but he really wants everyone to use their real names when it comes to on-line discourse. If we all did that, and didn't tolerate anonymous trolls, then the discourse level would improve. Or so he thinks.
Ms. Coontz says that traditionalists worried about how same-sex marriage will destroy the institution should note that their institution has already been changed irrevocably based on what marriage and relationships are now about, compared to their past. When marriage was about property, then control was to those people whose interest was in seeing the property go to the right people and build family wealth. Once marriage became about love, those parts of laws disappeared. Then, as gender roles stopped being rigidly husband-and-wife, dominant-male-head-of-household and sexually-submissive-housekeeping-woman, and started being about equal partners who choose to be together, then the reasons why one man, one woman marriages are to be encouraged retreat swiftly to the realm of religious preference and practice. Thus, same-sex marriage (and possibly multiple-persons-in-one-contract marriages) are not radical departures, they're societal evolutions. Unless the society suddenly retreats as conservatism and certain religions want it to, the battles over same-sex marriage will always eventually end the same way, with the right of two people to marry, regardless of sex or gender, upheld.
The Slacktivist uses Judge Roll's selfless act of shielding another person from bullet fire, and the almost universal acknowledgment of that as a heroic act as a definitive and final refutation of John Galt and Ayn Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness". He's still a bit shocked that the Republican Party campaigned on the anti-empathy platform as anything other than exaggerated satire, but the point is that Ayn Rand must be wrong, because we believe our own eyes and reactions to accounts of heroism instead of brushing it aside with the cold-heartedness that says helping others is foolish.
Mr. Elder believes that all accusations of racism can be adequately explained by other means, and that if someone deploys a stereotype against another person, it's because that person deserves to be stereotyped. People getting nervous at black passengers on rail systems? Totally justified, because black people commit more violent crime against black people and white people. The assumption that someone who is tall and black plays basketball? A culture of victimhood, nothing more. The syndrome known as Driving While Black? Completely justified, because black people drive faster than white people and are thus more likely to be pulled over by cops. The study, that only looked at the data set of people who got pulled over, said so. Clearly, anyone claiming that people are still being judged by the color of their skin is a huckster trying to make blacks feel like victims of an oppressive system and entitled to compensation.
Staying on that theme of victimhood, although changing who is supposedly oppressed now, Mr. Sayet insists that liberals have an ingrained hatred of anyone who challenges their perfect utopia and their policies, and the lashing-out against he climate of violent rhetoric in realtion to the Tuscon shooting only proves this, because liberals were talking about it despite having no evidence that the shooter was influenced by such things. He extrapolates, based on a quote by Howard Zinn that says those who have aims to push are uninterested in the objective truth, that liberals know they can't win with actual facts or policies, which are Inherently Inferior and Deficient, and no Democrat can actually successfully answer the question "Why are those policies bad?" or "Whay are Democratic policies better?", so liberals must devolve to painting their opponents as irredeemably evil if they want to win an argument. At the end, Mr. Sayet is credited as being a satirist, which raises the antennae as to whether he's exaggerating for comedic effect. If he thinks he is, he needs to look at the tone and tenor of his fellow columnists and realize that his satire game has to get almost Swiftian before anyone will believe it might be satire. And there's the part where the outlined column could change names and issues and be just as much about conservative rhetoric.
For all of those people who take Mr. Sayet seriously and insist that he's right in all his particualrs, they should consult with Ms. Strassel, who thinks the Obama administration is now trying to do the great leap to the Right by getting out in front of the GOP's talking points and co-opting them so as to make himself seem reasonable and in touch with them. Ms. Strassel says the GOP needs to hold the Presidential feet to the fire on whether it's all talk or whether he's serious about it enough to let things like legislative bans on federal funding for abortions, something like Clintonian welfare reform, or to advocate for other clearly Republican bills to get through the Senate so he can sign them. Otherwise, he's just a shrewd politician undercutting his opposition and letting the Senate stand as a bulwark against actualy having to make decisions. Were the Senate a stronger Democratic majority, that might hold water. As it is, the Senate's not a safe body to hide behind and hope that nothing controversial or damaging reaches his desk. There's always enough conservaDems willing to cross the aisle on some issues.
Mr. Brown continues the parade of glee that comes from President Obama keeping Guantanamo Bay open and proceeding with military commission trials, making sure to insinuate as often as possible that this is because the President has finally come around to believing that the Bush way is the best way, and not because all of his other avenues were blocked by Congress. He also rejoices at the prospect that all the torture-obtained evidence will still be usable and that the intelligence community continues to be able to operate in cloak-and-dagger ways that will never be exposed to sunlight. A victory for a place that is outside the laws of the United States and in repeated violation of the treaties the United States is a signatory to, and a victory for an administration that knowingly violated the laws of the United States and the treaties it is signatory to. How is this something to be celebrated?
Mr. Michael Reagan talks about his father, Ronald Reagan, as a President who helped black people out a lot, both personally and Presidentially, better than the Democratic Clinton, called a "black president", and the current Obama, based mostly on unemployment rates and the economy. I think he wants to use Saint Reagan as a broader argument that conservatives are not actually racists, despite their stereotypes. It's a very muted argument, though, if it's there.
Last for tonight, Major Turner of the Marine Corps thanks someone for their interest but politely declines to let them in to the Corps, on account of being twelve years old. They also suggest that the Corps prefer people who stay in school and do well.
And the hawk that watches the researchers in the Library of Congress.
