Mar. 25th, 2011

silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (kodoma)
Greetings, everyone. We start with a reminder that while you can hope for the best, sometimes people will defy expectations. For example, when Mr. Samuel Clemens gave a honest and unflinching review of a book of a friend of his, leaving the people who had hoped to generate a positive blurb from a well-known author without a quote they could use.

Also, have a look at Historically Hardcore posters, designed to make the audience that needs to learn their history the most get more interested in it. It's too bad the Smithsonain chose to ask for them to be taken down rather than to ask to buy their copyright and print lots of them for themselves.

Out in the world today, the struggles of the disenfranchised and the people that government and the white, male, able-bodied majority desperately wants to continue ignoring and marginalizing.

Speculation about the content of a conversation between the assistant Secretary of State of the United States and Libya's top foreign official.

The situation in Yemen leaves the United States in an unenviable position of having supported the government the protests want to topple, while also trying to make sure that it supports the people who want to topple the government. It's the Egypt situation once again, and we can expect pressure from all sides to pick theirs.

Domestically, yet another reminder that the conservative candidates and appointees in government, for however much they would like you to believe they're focusing on jobs, are really using their time in office to push for their social agenda. the appointee to a panel that reviews judicial nominees expressed that he would like to see the government prosecute anyone who has sex outside of a legally-recognized marriage. Among other standard social conservative, anti-"activist liberal" positions. He claims that his beliefs will not influence his decisions on who is advanced judgeship. Forgive me if I expect him to prove such a thing before I believe him.

The national Republican Party has a different thing in mind, however - they want to make it so that if one person in a family goes on strike, the entire family is not eligible for food stamps for as long as the person strikes. As if it wasn't already hard enough to have to make that decision, the Corporate Lackeys want the federal and state government to actively punish you for exercising your strike rights. In those states that don't already do so, anyway.

An interview with the author of the various Gor novels, by which it becomes fairly clear that the book is less science fiction writing and more in the vein of Tolkein - a world constructed to fit a philosophy. Although significantly less well-regarded as Tolkein, for reasons that most people who come across Gor have very little trouble discerning.

Additionally, handwritten notes by one of the architects of the torture program undertaken by the last administration (and likely continued by the current one) indicate that it was designed to be used for coercion and compliance, rather than intelligence-gathering, and that it was prone to eliciting false confessions.

Finally, despite having obtained uniforms of the Marine Corps of the United States, persons attempting to immigrate across the border illegally were captured when their vehicle didn't look right and the men could not answer the most basic of basic questions. Once again, law enforcement wins the day without the need to do anything drastic. Not that it would have been that hard - after all, the cover was paper-thin.

Of course, the high-terror, high-suspicion syndrome isn't always on - it took a few weeks before someone thought to screen a suspicious package and found out it was an explosive device, because they were used to things just being lost, so they dumped it in the lost and found. Had it exploded and hurt people, that would have been a tragedy, but it would have also been understandable - being on red alert all the time is incredibly stressful and draining. It leads to decisions like running someone off the road and shooting them because their family called and indicated they might be going into insulin shock or affected by a sleeping pill.

In technology, the use of mobile robots to provide cameras and eyes inside the various parts of the Fukushima nuclear power plants.

Also, the construction of a machine based on the Turing machine out of wood and scrap metal.

Finally, the use of stolen credit cards to hire a hit man from his website through the use of Paypal. Despite all that, the person responsible was still caught and arrested.

Into opinions, where Mr. Stossel opens by singing the first creed of The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) - The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) is perfect when left entirely to itself, without subsidy or interference from government. He's a little short with his condemnation of various conservative corporate welfare clauses, while a little long in the liberal ones, but it basically boils down to that. It also has the second creed of The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) - government has no wealth, and can only redirect and steal resources from the private sector to achieve its ends, ends that are Inherently Inferior to The Market (A.P.T.I.N.). And interconnected infrastructure that everyone can use be damned - unless, of course, it makes sense for the private sector to share, which the private sector rarely does. Mr. Stossel might have to work out a problem with Mr. Williams, who says that disasters are not economically stimulative, because the destruction of the property sucks resources that could have been used elsewhere, rather than being economically stimulative during the process of rebuilding because thoes resources move and buy products and pay wages. How does The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) rule when you have the possiblity of more things being bought and created versus those things still being there and the money that could have been circulated simply sitting somewhere, maybe earning interest, maybe not? And does It care about the dimensinos of people's lives being impacted, or is It only looking at the numbers?

Ms. Coulter claims that liberals have no respect at all for science, despite their proclaimed position of being the people of science in opposition to the moralist conservatives. Her examples? Hormesis - the idea that certain radiation exposures are beneficial, the ban on the use of alar because of its effects multiplied on rats, her certainty that HIV/AIDS should still be called Gay-Related Immune Disorder based on exposure rates still being predominantly among gay men, the general stall of nuclear power following incidents like Three Mile Island, "cancer clusters", and climate change. Apparently, celebrities who have no actual experience are the liberals' gold standard for most of their "science", and government agencies, who are involved in a conspiracy, along with mainstream media, to lie to the population about things like Gay-Related Immune Disorder's prevalence among other people in the country, are the others. Ms. Coulter also believes that because she was the only one who cited sources, her argument must be valid. Of which the scientific community opens an eye, stares at her, and laughs. Credibility matters, too, and Ms. Coulter and the people she cites are lacking.

Last for tonight, on the centennial anniverary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, where exits were sealed to prevent workers from exiting the building before their workday was done, recall just how much we owe our current workplace regulations, wages, and hours, to the ceaseless struggle of unions and working people against corporations, and what is at stake when Republican governors and legislators rubber-stamp their Corporate Overlords' desire to return us to a time where child labor and the Triangle Shirtwaist's conditions were considered legal working conditions.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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