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Cheers all around! - 11-12 February 2011
Feb. 12th, 2011 11:54 pmGreetings, everyone. Here's a question for you - what would you like your media to show you, considering how many things there are that they don't show and probably never will show?
Great cheers and chants from Freedom Square in Egypt as Hosni Mubarak officially resigns his post and hands control of the country over to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The day before, Mr. Mubarak had handed control to his vice president and wanted to keep the title of President, which infuriated the protesters. In response to the resignation, many of the opposition groups called off their protests, and everybody else partied!
This result appears to be much better than the one the Orange Revolution in Ukraine has. The question now is whether the protests will be satisfied with this result or will also demand the ouster of the vice president.
Algeria faces its own revolution, and its government is already trying to make sure they don't have another Egypt or Tunisia. Despite that, 400 people were arrested during the protests. Syria might have been doing significant ground work on avoiding sparking their own.
Then, in the waged battle between rights conglomerations and the artists and consumers of those artistic works, Mr. Gaiman likens the idea of piracy to the idea of lending, and that the real goal of everyone involved in the publishing industry is to get people to buy books, which they are more likely to do if they are introduced to an author they like, which usually happens through lending or sharing of copies of books and other material. In a sense, some form of piracy has to happen to expand the reading audience, whether it's the library's ability to lend out their books to people without having to buy one copy of the book for everyone who has an interest in it, or the digital realm's brisk trade in materials. Thinking of it in terms of "lost sales" doesn't always work, because not everyone who pirates would have bought the books. It might be better to think of it as "found sales" when the pirates like the thing so much they buy a copy. Doctorow's regular releases of his material makes it much easier for me to recommend him, because I can say "It's cool, and you can go read it in its entirety on Craphound." Mr. Gaiman revisits this and more, and we get to see some interpretations of the Endless characters, too.
Finally, An addon for Mozilla and Google browsers that allows someone to generate a proper Creative Commons attribution citation from the metadata around a C.C. object.
Out in the world today, the interview process, as done in several places, is really geared away from people who have disabilities of the mind. We need to retool the process so that everyone feels better and is able to succeed in an interview setting. That might very well mean accomodation for people who get entirely flustered by face-to-face contact but would be able to do all the work they need apart from that.
A horse that has never won a race is now a national hero in Japan, because despite not winning, the effort in trying has become the most important part of the horse and jockey.
News of dubious celebration - the United States is not the fattest country any more...but that's because other conutries have surpassed them, not because the U.S. is slimming down.
Finally, The Pakistani government has issued an arrest warrant for Pervez Musharraf in connection with the assassination attack on Benazir Bhutto.
Inside the United States, feeling the political wind, Governor Tim Pawlenty shed his mild-mannered identity in a bid to become the most conservative candidate for President in 2012.
Perhaps also doing the same, the current administration suggested that home ownership should not be the goal of everyone in the United States, and offered several possible ways of getting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be more limited in scope. The Republicans responding, said, "MOOOOOOOORE. Mammon and the Tea Party Demand MORE."
Like, we want more things cut out of the budget, but don't ask us for specifics - we don't want to actually cut anything specific.
In technology, the Clorox corporation is disclosing all the ingredients that go into their products...which doesn't make them any less toxic, but now you know what you're using.
Mr. Henry Jenkins talks about what an open-book examination looks like in the age of devices with wireless access to the Internet, and whether we should start thinking about examinations that provide collective grades rather than individual ones (and the issues that come with group assignments, like exploiting the brains). It's an interesting discussion, and I hope that some semblance of a resolution appears.
Yet another piece claiming the United States government and crucial infrastructure is vulnerable to attack through the Internet.
And in sciences, reminding us that proper nutrition is important in healthy development of children.
In opinions, Ms. Porter suggests that those who want to help places such as Haiti should not engage in voluntourism, but rather use the money such a tour would cost to pay a Haitian to do the job you would be doing for a year instead of for two weeks. (There are exceptions, of course.)
Mr. Stephenson traces how accidents of timing locked the US and the USSR into rockets as the primary vehicle for launching, first in the ICBM/H-Bomb motif, and then up into space, and that this lock-in has hurt us immeasurably, because we've pretty well achieved perfection on how rockets work and need to go outside the paradigm to something else.
Ms. Strassel sees the current intraparty fight over how much to propose cutting from the federal budget as healthy - so long as the Republicans eventually come up with a number and a budget and submit it. They have lots of voices contributing to the clamor, but almost all of them want to present themselves as the sensible alternative to the already-big-spender Obama, and that the problem is relatively easy to fix - prioritize paying off the debt first, and the debt limit won't have to be messed with. What's not being said is what happens elsewhere if that prioritization takes place - who finds themselves at the end fo the line for federal money? That's what the Republicans and Democrats want to fight over.
Mr. Hansons sees a microcosm of the current climate in California, but adds on that he thinks Californias are particularly stupid at managing themselves, as they keep making it harder to collect revenues while making it easier to spend more money. I would guess that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ldragoon would know how that happens - you have a state composed of people who are liberal in outlook so as to elect liberal politicians to the state legislature, but then are phenomenally conservative on taxes and other issues that are required to be put to referenda. Kind of like where I am now - they love their services, but will routinely try to pass ordinances and the like that force the government to be utterly unable to raise revenues in any sort of timely way, because they want Everything and to not have to pay for Anything, because They Hate Taxes.
All of these things lead into the need to be able to listen to conflicting voices and make decisions about which of them should be followed - whether to celebrate Joseph's usage of prophetic visions to enslave mass amounts of people, or to follow the narrative and side with those who condemn that usage. Extend the metaphor wherever it needs to go so that it fits, I guess.
Mr. Sowell is sour at the disclosure of data on United Kingdom missiles, because it "undermines our allies", and then complains about President Obama saying anything publicly to Hosni Mubarak about his protestors, because it makes them look like a United States puppet. It's basically Mr. Sowell saying, "No, there's nothing he can do right, and no matter what he does, it's wrong." Because a lot of conservatives were saying that the President had to be very vocal about his demands before, but made sure to say how stupid his speaking up was when Hosni Mubarak didn't make the expected announcement of resignaion on Thursday, of course.
Mr. Moran says that Mr. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, must resign his post, because he didn't conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood are agents of the Bloodthirsty Religion set on Destroying The West, Democracy, and Freedom, he must resign for being incompetent. It requires that you interpret the writings of a group according to their definition, of course. At least when Mr. Kaufman tries to paint someone as scary, violent, and living off the taxpayer while enjoying a favorable smokescreen from the media, he provides as many examples as he can.
Last out, a pseudonymous Mr. Ramsey is very worried about the way Fox News is warping his otherwise conservative parents into wingnuts, and an informal poll of his friends finds a similar situation in their older generation. It's not just Fox, of course - Mr. Cashill, in the American Thinker, gives credence to Birthers by claiming that the official story of Barack Obama's birth is a lie. And he wrote a book on it that's getting published, probably because of the demand created by those incited with Foxfire.
At the end of the day, A post detailing what people should know about the practice of paleontology to make it make sense. And so that all those dinosaur drawings and fossils are that much cooler. Plus, how to photograph army ants and get them clearly...without also getting stung by a colony of angry army ants.
And a review of various programs of College Hockey. I miss the atmosphere of Yost Ice Arena. Even though the television commentators bleep the students and the band is often instructed to play over them.
Great cheers and chants from Freedom Square in Egypt as Hosni Mubarak officially resigns his post and hands control of the country over to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The day before, Mr. Mubarak had handed control to his vice president and wanted to keep the title of President, which infuriated the protesters. In response to the resignation, many of the opposition groups called off their protests, and everybody else partied!
This result appears to be much better than the one the Orange Revolution in Ukraine has. The question now is whether the protests will be satisfied with this result or will also demand the ouster of the vice president.
Algeria faces its own revolution, and its government is already trying to make sure they don't have another Egypt or Tunisia. Despite that, 400 people were arrested during the protests. Syria might have been doing significant ground work on avoiding sparking their own.
Then, in the waged battle between rights conglomerations and the artists and consumers of those artistic works, Mr. Gaiman likens the idea of piracy to the idea of lending, and that the real goal of everyone involved in the publishing industry is to get people to buy books, which they are more likely to do if they are introduced to an author they like, which usually happens through lending or sharing of copies of books and other material. In a sense, some form of piracy has to happen to expand the reading audience, whether it's the library's ability to lend out their books to people without having to buy one copy of the book for everyone who has an interest in it, or the digital realm's brisk trade in materials. Thinking of it in terms of "lost sales" doesn't always work, because not everyone who pirates would have bought the books. It might be better to think of it as "found sales" when the pirates like the thing so much they buy a copy. Doctorow's regular releases of his material makes it much easier for me to recommend him, because I can say "It's cool, and you can go read it in its entirety on Craphound." Mr. Gaiman revisits this and more, and we get to see some interpretations of the Endless characters, too.
Finally, An addon for Mozilla and Google browsers that allows someone to generate a proper Creative Commons attribution citation from the metadata around a C.C. object.
Out in the world today, the interview process, as done in several places, is really geared away from people who have disabilities of the mind. We need to retool the process so that everyone feels better and is able to succeed in an interview setting. That might very well mean accomodation for people who get entirely flustered by face-to-face contact but would be able to do all the work they need apart from that.
A horse that has never won a race is now a national hero in Japan, because despite not winning, the effort in trying has become the most important part of the horse and jockey.
News of dubious celebration - the United States is not the fattest country any more...but that's because other conutries have surpassed them, not because the U.S. is slimming down.
Finally, The Pakistani government has issued an arrest warrant for Pervez Musharraf in connection with the assassination attack on Benazir Bhutto.
Inside the United States, feeling the political wind, Governor Tim Pawlenty shed his mild-mannered identity in a bid to become the most conservative candidate for President in 2012.
Perhaps also doing the same, the current administration suggested that home ownership should not be the goal of everyone in the United States, and offered several possible ways of getting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be more limited in scope. The Republicans responding, said, "MOOOOOOOORE. Mammon and the Tea Party Demand MORE."
Like, we want more things cut out of the budget, but don't ask us for specifics - we don't want to actually cut anything specific.
In technology, the Clorox corporation is disclosing all the ingredients that go into their products...which doesn't make them any less toxic, but now you know what you're using.
Mr. Henry Jenkins talks about what an open-book examination looks like in the age of devices with wireless access to the Internet, and whether we should start thinking about examinations that provide collective grades rather than individual ones (and the issues that come with group assignments, like exploiting the brains). It's an interesting discussion, and I hope that some semblance of a resolution appears.
Yet another piece claiming the United States government and crucial infrastructure is vulnerable to attack through the Internet.
And in sciences, reminding us that proper nutrition is important in healthy development of children.
In opinions, Ms. Porter suggests that those who want to help places such as Haiti should not engage in voluntourism, but rather use the money such a tour would cost to pay a Haitian to do the job you would be doing for a year instead of for two weeks. (There are exceptions, of course.)
Mr. Stephenson traces how accidents of timing locked the US and the USSR into rockets as the primary vehicle for launching, first in the ICBM/H-Bomb motif, and then up into space, and that this lock-in has hurt us immeasurably, because we've pretty well achieved perfection on how rockets work and need to go outside the paradigm to something else.
Ms. Strassel sees the current intraparty fight over how much to propose cutting from the federal budget as healthy - so long as the Republicans eventually come up with a number and a budget and submit it. They have lots of voices contributing to the clamor, but almost all of them want to present themselves as the sensible alternative to the already-big-spender Obama, and that the problem is relatively easy to fix - prioritize paying off the debt first, and the debt limit won't have to be messed with. What's not being said is what happens elsewhere if that prioritization takes place - who finds themselves at the end fo the line for federal money? That's what the Republicans and Democrats want to fight over.
Mr. Hansons sees a microcosm of the current climate in California, but adds on that he thinks Californias are particularly stupid at managing themselves, as they keep making it harder to collect revenues while making it easier to spend more money. I would guess that
ldragoon would know how that happens - you have a state composed of people who are liberal in outlook so as to elect liberal politicians to the state legislature, but then are phenomenally conservative on taxes and other issues that are required to be put to referenda. Kind of like where I am now - they love their services, but will routinely try to pass ordinances and the like that force the government to be utterly unable to raise revenues in any sort of timely way, because they want Everything and to not have to pay for Anything, because They Hate Taxes.All of these things lead into the need to be able to listen to conflicting voices and make decisions about which of them should be followed - whether to celebrate Joseph's usage of prophetic visions to enslave mass amounts of people, or to follow the narrative and side with those who condemn that usage. Extend the metaphor wherever it needs to go so that it fits, I guess.
Mr. Sowell is sour at the disclosure of data on United Kingdom missiles, because it "undermines our allies", and then complains about President Obama saying anything publicly to Hosni Mubarak about his protestors, because it makes them look like a United States puppet. It's basically Mr. Sowell saying, "No, there's nothing he can do right, and no matter what he does, it's wrong." Because a lot of conservatives were saying that the President had to be very vocal about his demands before, but made sure to say how stupid his speaking up was when Hosni Mubarak didn't make the expected announcement of resignaion on Thursday, of course.
Mr. Moran says that Mr. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, must resign his post, because he didn't conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood are agents of the Bloodthirsty Religion set on Destroying The West, Democracy, and Freedom, he must resign for being incompetent. It requires that you interpret the writings of a group according to their definition, of course. At least when Mr. Kaufman tries to paint someone as scary, violent, and living off the taxpayer while enjoying a favorable smokescreen from the media, he provides as many examples as he can.
Last out, a pseudonymous Mr. Ramsey is very worried about the way Fox News is warping his otherwise conservative parents into wingnuts, and an informal poll of his friends finds a similar situation in their older generation. It's not just Fox, of course - Mr. Cashill, in the American Thinker, gives credence to Birthers by claiming that the official story of Barack Obama's birth is a lie. And he wrote a book on it that's getting published, probably because of the demand created by those incited with Foxfire.
At the end of the day, A post detailing what people should know about the practice of paleontology to make it make sense. And so that all those dinosaur drawings and fossils are that much cooler. Plus, how to photograph army ants and get them clearly...without also getting stung by a colony of angry army ants.
And a review of various programs of College Hockey. I miss the atmosphere of Yost Ice Arena. Even though the television commentators bleep the students and the band is often instructed to play over them.
