![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Up top, we begin with what may be the sad state of literature in our world - an interview with Snooki, a Warhol-style celebrity, on her book displaced the interviews with the winners of the Newberry and Caldecott medals for this year on the Today show. The Newberry/Caledcott winners will be read for much longer than Snooki. Although, if I step back and look at who gets to be icons and who makes it to the point of even possibly being read, maybe I have to wonder whether Snooki and other pan-flashes should stick around for a little longer than their 15 minutes. And to wonder what voices we're missing by concentrating only on celebrities and award-winners.
Then again, when I see another government planning on zeroing out its library funding, I wonder if we're going to be around long enough to have that conversation.
Elsewhere, when Rick Santorum and others compare abortion to slavery, they are using an assumption that isn't true - slaves were not helpless and passive, nor did they wait for white people to come to their rescue and protect them. And slaves were a necessity, not something that the country could have done without or denied existence to. Making those comparisons does a disservice to all the outspoken people of color who were tireless advocates for their own freedom, who achieved their own freedom, or who were otherwise a lot more than merely passively waiting and helpless to decide their own fates.
Then there's the department of the odd, where we are profoundly disturbed by the willingness of everyone to jump to conclusions about what's behind the appearance of some animal heads - almost everyone moves toward some sort of religious ritual cult instead of talking about individual cruelty or other things that would probably make Occam happier. But only if that focus is turned outward - for example, despite the evidence that the God of Abraham is a bloodthirsty being and most arguments meant to smooth over the rough parts make it easy for someone to discount the whole thing and point out how much the premises of many of those faiths are on very shaky ground at best, most people will not think their own in-group engages in the same kinds of bloodthirsty pursuits they accuse The Other of, or will believe their own justifications while discounting those of The Other, despite being the same justifications. I think this kind of mindset is how we can answer the question of how we manage to keep blood sacrifice relevant in our own times, despite (most of) our major practices claiming that blood sacrifice is something that the people of the past did and that civilized folk don't do.
And on the economy that has been continually enriching the rich and leaving the rest of us to struggle, automation killed the chances of wages rising because it reversed the relationship between capital and labor - no longer did capitalists need increasing amounts of workers, so they flattened wages and benefits, outsourced, and mechanized to their own increased productivity and profits, leaving their workers without any sort of standard of living increase. And when government was bullied into not raising taxes on the newly rich and enforcing collection, into not regulating the wild speculations, into being very hands-off with the concentrating capital, the people suffered more under raised taxes and reduced public service burdens. And the rich got richer. And bailed out by the poor.
Not all our stuff is depressing, however, as we have a letter from Joseph R. Biden, Jr, Senator from Delaware, to an otherwise-articulate young man about his own struggles and eventual conquering of stuttering. Senator Biden also asks the young man to keep in mind the feelings that he experienced when others teased him about stuttering when he thinks about teasing someone else about their difficulties.
Out in the world today, the reality of life intrudes again. A well known advocate for equality of sexual orientations in Uganda was beaten to death. Despite official stories moving swiftly to class it as a robbery, the prominence of Mr. Kato on the list of "known homosexuals" that were supposed to be hung at the urging of the paper makes it much less likely to have been merely such a thing. This is one of those places where I wish I could say, "Well, at least here in the States, we don't kill people for this", but if I did, I'd be lying. Can we please not make me a liar, for both the States and the world? And not continue to insist that people seeking asylum in other countries because they will be killed for being LGBT should go back to those countries, especially since Uganda is not at all hiding the fact that they plan on punishing LGBT people, possibly even killing them, for being open about their sexuality?
As the technology to defend against weapons advances, the weapons become more sophisticated - IEDs in Afghanistan are creating more casualties. According to United States military brass, however, it's mostly due to more fighting and more troops being in the country.
The chief of the IAEA would like to politely remind everyone that in their austerity measures, they still should fund international measures designed to keep nuclear materials secure and out of the hands of stupid and dangerous people. Speaking of, Mr. Medvedev signed the New START treaty, bringing it into force for both the United States and the Russian Federation.
Dueling responses from the United States regarding uprisings in African countries. If you're Lebanon, where Hezbollah is still a significant presence, the United States considers slashing aid to your country, because you haven't gotten rid of the people they don't like. If you're Egypt, however, The United States is definitely behind the protestors right to demonstrate, and hedges on whether they support the government in place. Possibly hoping that if things go for government-toppling, the next person to come in will be more friendly? Or perhaps because they're aware of the checkered history of the current government, and want not to be seen propping up dictators an undemocratic elections. That position gets much more complicated when you also throw in the deliberate restriction of Internet access by the government to the people of the country and accounts that have all the hallmarks of the police state imposing itself on peaceful demonstrations. If Wikileaks cables are to be believed, though, there will be no strong statements condemning the actions from the United States government, for risk of losing Egypt as a strategic ally. That will no doubt anger the columnists who are worried they will see the same sort of diplomatic ball-dropping that lead to the Iranian hostage crisis.
Inside the United States, the military is rolling out training for its members that gets them adjusted to the change in the laws that removed the prohibition against gays and lesbians serving openly in their ranks.
A piano has appeared on the high point of a sandbar just off the coast of Florida. It doesn't play at all, though, because all the water, air, salt, and sand.
The Department of Homeland (in)Security is changing the color-coded fear and terror system to one that has specific threats mentioned, supposedly with end dates attached. Not that it will change the climate of fear, as I suspect there will always be a warning somewhere that's in effect, but at least we don't have to stare at the same shades of yellow and orange day in and day out.
Finally, Lyon-Martin Health Services, a clinic especially well-loved and excellent at serving alternative communities, needs a serious cash infusion to stay open.
In technology, hydrangeas that react to the presence of chemicals found in explosives.
Two billion Internet users, mostly likely a large percentage of them are also part of the five billion mobile phone users in the world. Which we put next to a general declaring the United States needs to show that it can stomp mudholes in cyberspace so that others will think twice about attacking mostly because we want to show the size of the audience they would have to impress. And to point out that small vials of nerve agent gone missing and recovered are just as important to your perception of security.
Oh, and that even when a government is not deliberately restricting your Internet access, private companies may choose to censor your searches, and not always in a sane or rational manner.
Finally, research suggesting that body dysphoria on gender may have origins in white matter regions of the brain and that could be used to spot someone who will have that dysphoria and delay the onset of puberty for them, with the idea of successful transitioning later. SCIENCE, yo.
In opinions, The Slacktivist details a concept of Heaven that would be a just reward for the followers of Christ, but that is not necessarily a happy place to be without the grace of that same being. Heaven is a place where all things are healed - bodily deformity, mental acuity, memory, everything - and a place without sin, which means that all those things that we did in life will be brought back to us with perfect recall and without any way at all to dampen the magnitude, dismiss it, or turn aside from it. In Heaven, everything that we did, right or wrong, will be before us, and we will be able to see all the consequences of our actions, everywhere. For those of us who are limited beings and realize our limited-ness, that's a terrifying prospect.
Mr. W. Williams insists that the only way to dig ourselves out of the deficit hole is to cut all spending, whether to people, to corporations, or through federal agencies, in the name of liberty, and to be strong enough to resist the wave of antagonism that will come from doing so.
Opposite from him, Mr. Grieder proclaims the death of the New Deal liberals, and the choking of American democracy by American capitalism, aided and abetted by both parties that will destroy the protections of the people against the corporations and then subsidize the corporations with the taxes collected from the people. Despite what people believed about Obama, the reality of his center-rightism continued to show up in his policy initiatives. Congressional Democrats had major majorities and then squandered them by letting the Republican Democrats derail the agenda and the best work they could do in exchange for getting something through. It's not a completely hopeless phase - after all, angry people do all sorts of interesting things, and there's always the chance that one of the other political party will go back to being a party that advocates for the people against the corporations and makes it stick, especially if they suddenly find themselves staring down Leftists With Pitchforks in large number. He also suggests really listening to your left-right opponents and then forging alliances with those who are on the side of the people against the corporations, distributing democracy on our own terms and through our own tools.
Mr. J. Williams believes the way forward to re-election for Mr. Obama is whether he can become adequately Republican to be re-elected and convince Congress to go along with becoming a full body of Republicans.
Tait Trussel revisits a familiar well, complaining that far too much money has been spent on the climate change hoax, useless research on renewable energy sources, and the EPA should not have the power to institute what couldn't be done through legislation.
Last for this sequence, no links, just a question - I realize that I throw out a lot of material all at once. Does the format work where you get drowned in linkspam in a daily-ish sort of manner, or should there be more decisions for editing to leave a more streamlined, headline-focused post sequence? I like to believe that big stories will out themselves by reappearing in multiple days, but that probably only indicates where the journalism biases are going.
Then again, when I see another government planning on zeroing out its library funding, I wonder if we're going to be around long enough to have that conversation.
Elsewhere, when Rick Santorum and others compare abortion to slavery, they are using an assumption that isn't true - slaves were not helpless and passive, nor did they wait for white people to come to their rescue and protect them. And slaves were a necessity, not something that the country could have done without or denied existence to. Making those comparisons does a disservice to all the outspoken people of color who were tireless advocates for their own freedom, who achieved their own freedom, or who were otherwise a lot more than merely passively waiting and helpless to decide their own fates.
Then there's the department of the odd, where we are profoundly disturbed by the willingness of everyone to jump to conclusions about what's behind the appearance of some animal heads - almost everyone moves toward some sort of religious ritual cult instead of talking about individual cruelty or other things that would probably make Occam happier. But only if that focus is turned outward - for example, despite the evidence that the God of Abraham is a bloodthirsty being and most arguments meant to smooth over the rough parts make it easy for someone to discount the whole thing and point out how much the premises of many of those faiths are on very shaky ground at best, most people will not think their own in-group engages in the same kinds of bloodthirsty pursuits they accuse The Other of, or will believe their own justifications while discounting those of The Other, despite being the same justifications. I think this kind of mindset is how we can answer the question of how we manage to keep blood sacrifice relevant in our own times, despite (most of) our major practices claiming that blood sacrifice is something that the people of the past did and that civilized folk don't do.
And on the economy that has been continually enriching the rich and leaving the rest of us to struggle, automation killed the chances of wages rising because it reversed the relationship between capital and labor - no longer did capitalists need increasing amounts of workers, so they flattened wages and benefits, outsourced, and mechanized to their own increased productivity and profits, leaving their workers without any sort of standard of living increase. And when government was bullied into not raising taxes on the newly rich and enforcing collection, into not regulating the wild speculations, into being very hands-off with the concentrating capital, the people suffered more under raised taxes and reduced public service burdens. And the rich got richer. And bailed out by the poor.
Not all our stuff is depressing, however, as we have a letter from Joseph R. Biden, Jr, Senator from Delaware, to an otherwise-articulate young man about his own struggles and eventual conquering of stuttering. Senator Biden also asks the young man to keep in mind the feelings that he experienced when others teased him about stuttering when he thinks about teasing someone else about their difficulties.
Out in the world today, the reality of life intrudes again. A well known advocate for equality of sexual orientations in Uganda was beaten to death. Despite official stories moving swiftly to class it as a robbery, the prominence of Mr. Kato on the list of "known homosexuals" that were supposed to be hung at the urging of the paper makes it much less likely to have been merely such a thing. This is one of those places where I wish I could say, "Well, at least here in the States, we don't kill people for this", but if I did, I'd be lying. Can we please not make me a liar, for both the States and the world? And not continue to insist that people seeking asylum in other countries because they will be killed for being LGBT should go back to those countries, especially since Uganda is not at all hiding the fact that they plan on punishing LGBT people, possibly even killing them, for being open about their sexuality?
As the technology to defend against weapons advances, the weapons become more sophisticated - IEDs in Afghanistan are creating more casualties. According to United States military brass, however, it's mostly due to more fighting and more troops being in the country.
The chief of the IAEA would like to politely remind everyone that in their austerity measures, they still should fund international measures designed to keep nuclear materials secure and out of the hands of stupid and dangerous people. Speaking of, Mr. Medvedev signed the New START treaty, bringing it into force for both the United States and the Russian Federation.
Dueling responses from the United States regarding uprisings in African countries. If you're Lebanon, where Hezbollah is still a significant presence, the United States considers slashing aid to your country, because you haven't gotten rid of the people they don't like. If you're Egypt, however, The United States is definitely behind the protestors right to demonstrate, and hedges on whether they support the government in place. Possibly hoping that if things go for government-toppling, the next person to come in will be more friendly? Or perhaps because they're aware of the checkered history of the current government, and want not to be seen propping up dictators an undemocratic elections. That position gets much more complicated when you also throw in the deliberate restriction of Internet access by the government to the people of the country and accounts that have all the hallmarks of the police state imposing itself on peaceful demonstrations. If Wikileaks cables are to be believed, though, there will be no strong statements condemning the actions from the United States government, for risk of losing Egypt as a strategic ally. That will no doubt anger the columnists who are worried they will see the same sort of diplomatic ball-dropping that lead to the Iranian hostage crisis.
Inside the United States, the military is rolling out training for its members that gets them adjusted to the change in the laws that removed the prohibition against gays and lesbians serving openly in their ranks.
A piano has appeared on the high point of a sandbar just off the coast of Florida. It doesn't play at all, though, because all the water, air, salt, and sand.
The Department of Homeland (in)Security is changing the color-coded fear and terror system to one that has specific threats mentioned, supposedly with end dates attached. Not that it will change the climate of fear, as I suspect there will always be a warning somewhere that's in effect, but at least we don't have to stare at the same shades of yellow and orange day in and day out.
Finally, Lyon-Martin Health Services, a clinic especially well-loved and excellent at serving alternative communities, needs a serious cash infusion to stay open.
In technology, hydrangeas that react to the presence of chemicals found in explosives.
Two billion Internet users, mostly likely a large percentage of them are also part of the five billion mobile phone users in the world. Which we put next to a general declaring the United States needs to show that it can stomp mudholes in cyberspace so that others will think twice about attacking mostly because we want to show the size of the audience they would have to impress. And to point out that small vials of nerve agent gone missing and recovered are just as important to your perception of security.
Oh, and that even when a government is not deliberately restricting your Internet access, private companies may choose to censor your searches, and not always in a sane or rational manner.
Finally, research suggesting that body dysphoria on gender may have origins in white matter regions of the brain and that could be used to spot someone who will have that dysphoria and delay the onset of puberty for them, with the idea of successful transitioning later. SCIENCE, yo.
In opinions, The Slacktivist details a concept of Heaven that would be a just reward for the followers of Christ, but that is not necessarily a happy place to be without the grace of that same being. Heaven is a place where all things are healed - bodily deformity, mental acuity, memory, everything - and a place without sin, which means that all those things that we did in life will be brought back to us with perfect recall and without any way at all to dampen the magnitude, dismiss it, or turn aside from it. In Heaven, everything that we did, right or wrong, will be before us, and we will be able to see all the consequences of our actions, everywhere. For those of us who are limited beings and realize our limited-ness, that's a terrifying prospect.
Mr. W. Williams insists that the only way to dig ourselves out of the deficit hole is to cut all spending, whether to people, to corporations, or through federal agencies, in the name of liberty, and to be strong enough to resist the wave of antagonism that will come from doing so.
Opposite from him, Mr. Grieder proclaims the death of the New Deal liberals, and the choking of American democracy by American capitalism, aided and abetted by both parties that will destroy the protections of the people against the corporations and then subsidize the corporations with the taxes collected from the people. Despite what people believed about Obama, the reality of his center-rightism continued to show up in his policy initiatives. Congressional Democrats had major majorities and then squandered them by letting the Republican Democrats derail the agenda and the best work they could do in exchange for getting something through. It's not a completely hopeless phase - after all, angry people do all sorts of interesting things, and there's always the chance that one of the other political party will go back to being a party that advocates for the people against the corporations and makes it stick, especially if they suddenly find themselves staring down Leftists With Pitchforks in large number. He also suggests really listening to your left-right opponents and then forging alliances with those who are on the side of the people against the corporations, distributing democracy on our own terms and through our own tools.
Mr. J. Williams believes the way forward to re-election for Mr. Obama is whether he can become adequately Republican to be re-elected and convince Congress to go along with becoming a full body of Republicans.
Tait Trussel revisits a familiar well, complaining that far too much money has been spent on the climate change hoax, useless research on renewable energy sources, and the EPA should not have the power to institute what couldn't be done through legislation.
Last for this sequence, no links, just a question - I realize that I throw out a lot of material all at once. Does the format work where you get drowned in linkspam in a daily-ish sort of manner, or should there be more decisions for editing to leave a more streamlined, headline-focused post sequence? I like to believe that big stories will out themselves by reappearing in multiple days, but that probably only indicates where the journalism biases are going.
