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Another news bite - 28 March 2011
Mar. 29th, 2011 10:44 amCheers, troops! We start today with someone doing to Twilight what Slacktivist has been doing to the Left Behind series - a deconstruction of its themes and why they're rather harmful to the society of the readers. To follow the line so far, the blog deconstruction tag has all the Twilight Saturdays material so far.
The language receives an update, as the OED adds OMG, LOL, and a few other words to its official rolls. Which should soon make them eligible for usage in Scrabble. Now you can spell hentai and have it count...
Finally, Dead Pool Technical Support hires Paul Baran, inventor of the packet-switching concept that would be part of the architecture of ARPANet, at 84 years of age.
Out in the world today, for those who are in Canada, would you talk up acccessibility to the persons running for office in your riding?
A Lance Corporal medic was awarded a Military Cross for bravery in resuscitating a casualty in an exposed position, and then returning to that position to drag another casualty to cover. While the Afghan soldiers she was patrolling with complained that as a woman, she shouldn't be treating male soldiers. Is that why the United States is still not letting women into combat roles? Because they're worried that at a crucial point, the men soldiers will object to her doing anything with them because she's a woman?
Elsewhere, what women are doing to advance their own causes in the world and more of what women are doing to advance their own causes in the world.
Remember the piece yesterday that was completely "ANARCHISTS ATTACK! VIOLENT THUGS AND HOODLUMS ATTACK CORPORATIONS!"? Yeah. Have a look at the grand majority of the people who were actually at the protests, and didn't do anything that gave the media an excuse to paint them all as extremists. And then, when you've stomped down one of those stories, another appears, this time about armed gangs roving the streets in Syria...without any mention at all as to whether this was the majority of the protests or a small and stupid minority.
Libyan rebels claim to have retaken Gaddafi's home town and to have killed at least one of Gaddafi's sons. Which, if substantiated, could turn out to send the conflict toward the end rather than the stalemate, if an angered and grief-stricken father throws all of his might at the rebels at once. Elsewhere, NATO has assumed formal command of air operations in Libya, making the United States President look good on his promises not to be directly leading another war halfway around the world. The keyboarders clacking still suggest that providing arms to the Libyan rebels will basically be allowing al-Qaeda and others to stockpile supplies as they pilfer them from the rebels or claiming that UN resolution 1973 is really a way to allow the UN, and conservative boogeyman George Soros at the helm as puppetmaster, to interfere with the operations of sovereign nations...and to allow Arab nations to use Western millitary forces to attack Israel, (A bit of all over the map, there) and the military is flying blind on this and should have demanded a more defined objective from the people pushing them into this action. (Hey, that last one made sense, at least in summary. the article itself may be a bit holier.) And they always want the Commander In Chief to be dictating those objectives, because it gives them an excuse to talk about the dithering, Janus-faced Obama, rather than realizing that the people that probably should be blamed for it are the military leaders with the expertise to figure these things out. There are brighter spots, however, like Mr. Kucinich taking a look at the cost of the operation and wanting it zeroed out as unaffordable. Hopefully to avoid a different hypothetical situation being thought about - another semi-permanent war, in the vein of 1984, where we can safely make sure our excesses are disposed of to keep the people properly subservient and impoverished.
As the conflict in Iraq continues to wind down, soldiers are returning to more austere conditions, with less of food courts and more of MREs, as well as trying to figure out what to do with all the clutter that has accumulated over the eight years of occupation.
Finally, Germany has announced a decision to stop using its nuclear power plants and find another way to provide energy to its citizens. Perhaps they will utilize a method of making hydrogen gas from electrolysis of urine as one of their power sources?
Domestically, another interesting tidbit in the budget bill the Republican House passed - it would eliminate funding for poison control centers. You know, those places you can call when your child has swallowed something they shouldn't and you want to know how to safely get it out of them. For being a Family Values party, the Republicans are remarkably callous about actual families. If they're really about reducing the debt and deficit, let's see whether they decide to reduce the deficit by doing absolutely nothing at all about the expiration of Bush tax cuts.
Studies now being produced indicate that the major claims of the recording cabals about piracy are not borne out by the evidence. Instead, "quality" material, based on critic reviews, is still having success at about the same rates, and new acts are becoming popular and successful at about the same rates as they were before widespread file-sharing. The only thing is, in the post-sharing world, indie acts are taking a greater share of the quality work and new good acts distinctions. So the base of the recording cabals may be eroding underneath them.
If you look like something other than a WASP, airlines are suspicious of you. Your fellow passengers are suspicious of you, as well, and will report anything that they think look ssuspicious because they are afraid of you. Which means a Muslim woman is escorted off a plane because she&qpos;s wearing a hijab and a passenger misheard her conversations, and Orthodox Jews that are praying are mistaken for terrorists, because they had their tefillin with them, as their sect requires.
At the end, Governments and leaders less friendly to the United States are asking the Nobel Committee to rescind their Peace Prize award to Barack Obama, based on his continuation of the various wars of his predecessor, continuation of the Guantanamo Bay facility, and now getting the United States involved in Libya. Mr. Kucinich raised the spectre of impeachment against Mr. Obama for the way he brought the war into being, a prospect unlikely to succeed, as his own party won't listen and the other party would have to admit something they don't want to about their wars to bring such charges against Mr. Obama.
In technology, a processor on a plastic sheet, which opens up a lot of possibilities.
Additionally, Microsoft is attempting to pass an anticompetitive law that would allow them to sue and block distribution of a product in a state if Microsoft alleges that pirated Microsoft software was used in any way associated with the product. They also want to make it so that open source software creators can't do the same thing should they be able to allege their own licenses were being violated. Such a bill has already passed the Washington State legislature. One would hope that someone would look at that law and stomp it into the ground, but the way the judges are, the business almost always wins in a case like this. And the government is Corporate Lackeys, so expect no murmurs from the parts of government that govern those sorts of contracts and laws.
In opinions, a self-style documentarian wants you to pity disabled people and think of him as a Do-Gooder for his volunteering work with them and his film that lets you pity the dissabled people. So pity them already, because they need your pity. It's not like they could use some actual help, or better yet, people just relating to them normally, instead of people pitying them, telling them they're proud of them for overcoming their disability, or telling them that they don't look all that affected.
Dispatches from Conservapedia, highlighting the presence of a "iberal trap", the Conservapedia version of the Stonewall Riots, and what they think of Van Jones.
Mr. Trzupek thinks class warfare is an argument liberals cannot win, in relation to the spending cuts proposed by the current coalition government in the UK, because they either have to explain why it's better for government to keep running up debt or they have to believe that people will sympathize with them if they shout a lot and carry signs. Nary an item in there about the persuasive argument offered by groups like UK-UNCUT that say the budget and the debt could possibly be worked out pretty well if tax dodgers were brought to heel and required to pay the actual amount of taxes they should be paying, instead of their greatly-reduced or zero amounts. Or perhaps corporations that have been improving their tech and squeezing out their workforce could shuttle some of those profits back into hiring people, which some economists think is coming, eventually, once demand picks up. (Which sort of assumes people ahve money to buy stuff with, which they do when they have jobs.)
Last for tonight, a quick list of the toxicity of common houseplants, to make it easier for someone to decide what to buy if there will be small children around. For those of you with pets, the ASPCA maintains a list of plants that are toxic to dogs, cats, and/or horses.
And as a postscript, good books can save lives.
The language receives an update, as the OED adds OMG, LOL, and a few other words to its official rolls. Which should soon make them eligible for usage in Scrabble. Now you can spell hentai and have it count...
Finally, Dead Pool Technical Support hires Paul Baran, inventor of the packet-switching concept that would be part of the architecture of ARPANet, at 84 years of age.
Out in the world today, for those who are in Canada, would you talk up acccessibility to the persons running for office in your riding?
A Lance Corporal medic was awarded a Military Cross for bravery in resuscitating a casualty in an exposed position, and then returning to that position to drag another casualty to cover. While the Afghan soldiers she was patrolling with complained that as a woman, she shouldn't be treating male soldiers. Is that why the United States is still not letting women into combat roles? Because they're worried that at a crucial point, the men soldiers will object to her doing anything with them because she's a woman?
Elsewhere, what women are doing to advance their own causes in the world and more of what women are doing to advance their own causes in the world.
Remember the piece yesterday that was completely "ANARCHISTS ATTACK! VIOLENT THUGS AND HOODLUMS ATTACK CORPORATIONS!"? Yeah. Have a look at the grand majority of the people who were actually at the protests, and didn't do anything that gave the media an excuse to paint them all as extremists. And then, when you've stomped down one of those stories, another appears, this time about armed gangs roving the streets in Syria...without any mention at all as to whether this was the majority of the protests or a small and stupid minority.
Libyan rebels claim to have retaken Gaddafi's home town and to have killed at least one of Gaddafi's sons. Which, if substantiated, could turn out to send the conflict toward the end rather than the stalemate, if an angered and grief-stricken father throws all of his might at the rebels at once. Elsewhere, NATO has assumed formal command of air operations in Libya, making the United States President look good on his promises not to be directly leading another war halfway around the world. The keyboarders clacking still suggest that providing arms to the Libyan rebels will basically be allowing al-Qaeda and others to stockpile supplies as they pilfer them from the rebels or claiming that UN resolution 1973 is really a way to allow the UN, and conservative boogeyman George Soros at the helm as puppetmaster, to interfere with the operations of sovereign nations...and to allow Arab nations to use Western millitary forces to attack Israel, (A bit of all over the map, there) and the military is flying blind on this and should have demanded a more defined objective from the people pushing them into this action. (Hey, that last one made sense, at least in summary. the article itself may be a bit holier.) And they always want the Commander In Chief to be dictating those objectives, because it gives them an excuse to talk about the dithering, Janus-faced Obama, rather than realizing that the people that probably should be blamed for it are the military leaders with the expertise to figure these things out. There are brighter spots, however, like Mr. Kucinich taking a look at the cost of the operation and wanting it zeroed out as unaffordable. Hopefully to avoid a different hypothetical situation being thought about - another semi-permanent war, in the vein of 1984, where we can safely make sure our excesses are disposed of to keep the people properly subservient and impoverished.
As the conflict in Iraq continues to wind down, soldiers are returning to more austere conditions, with less of food courts and more of MREs, as well as trying to figure out what to do with all the clutter that has accumulated over the eight years of occupation.
Finally, Germany has announced a decision to stop using its nuclear power plants and find another way to provide energy to its citizens. Perhaps they will utilize a method of making hydrogen gas from electrolysis of urine as one of their power sources?
Domestically, another interesting tidbit in the budget bill the Republican House passed - it would eliminate funding for poison control centers. You know, those places you can call when your child has swallowed something they shouldn't and you want to know how to safely get it out of them. For being a Family Values party, the Republicans are remarkably callous about actual families. If they're really about reducing the debt and deficit, let's see whether they decide to reduce the deficit by doing absolutely nothing at all about the expiration of Bush tax cuts.
Studies now being produced indicate that the major claims of the recording cabals about piracy are not borne out by the evidence. Instead, "quality" material, based on critic reviews, is still having success at about the same rates, and new acts are becoming popular and successful at about the same rates as they were before widespread file-sharing. The only thing is, in the post-sharing world, indie acts are taking a greater share of the quality work and new good acts distinctions. So the base of the recording cabals may be eroding underneath them.
If you look like something other than a WASP, airlines are suspicious of you. Your fellow passengers are suspicious of you, as well, and will report anything that they think look ssuspicious because they are afraid of you. Which means a Muslim woman is escorted off a plane because she&qpos;s wearing a hijab and a passenger misheard her conversations, and Orthodox Jews that are praying are mistaken for terrorists, because they had their tefillin with them, as their sect requires.
At the end, Governments and leaders less friendly to the United States are asking the Nobel Committee to rescind their Peace Prize award to Barack Obama, based on his continuation of the various wars of his predecessor, continuation of the Guantanamo Bay facility, and now getting the United States involved in Libya. Mr. Kucinich raised the spectre of impeachment against Mr. Obama for the way he brought the war into being, a prospect unlikely to succeed, as his own party won't listen and the other party would have to admit something they don't want to about their wars to bring such charges against Mr. Obama.
In technology, a processor on a plastic sheet, which opens up a lot of possibilities.
Additionally, Microsoft is attempting to pass an anticompetitive law that would allow them to sue and block distribution of a product in a state if Microsoft alleges that pirated Microsoft software was used in any way associated with the product. They also want to make it so that open source software creators can't do the same thing should they be able to allege their own licenses were being violated. Such a bill has already passed the Washington State legislature. One would hope that someone would look at that law and stomp it into the ground, but the way the judges are, the business almost always wins in a case like this. And the government is Corporate Lackeys, so expect no murmurs from the parts of government that govern those sorts of contracts and laws.
In opinions, a self-style documentarian wants you to pity disabled people and think of him as a Do-Gooder for his volunteering work with them and his film that lets you pity the dissabled people. So pity them already, because they need your pity. It's not like they could use some actual help, or better yet, people just relating to them normally, instead of people pitying them, telling them they're proud of them for overcoming their disability, or telling them that they don't look all that affected.
Dispatches from Conservapedia, highlighting the presence of a "iberal trap", the Conservapedia version of the Stonewall Riots, and what they think of Van Jones.
Mr. Trzupek thinks class warfare is an argument liberals cannot win, in relation to the spending cuts proposed by the current coalition government in the UK, because they either have to explain why it's better for government to keep running up debt or they have to believe that people will sympathize with them if they shout a lot and carry signs. Nary an item in there about the persuasive argument offered by groups like UK-UNCUT that say the budget and the debt could possibly be worked out pretty well if tax dodgers were brought to heel and required to pay the actual amount of taxes they should be paying, instead of their greatly-reduced or zero amounts. Or perhaps corporations that have been improving their tech and squeezing out their workforce could shuttle some of those profits back into hiring people, which some economists think is coming, eventually, once demand picks up. (Which sort of assumes people ahve money to buy stuff with, which they do when they have jobs.)
Last for tonight, a quick list of the toxicity of common houseplants, to make it easier for someone to decide what to buy if there will be small children around. For those of you with pets, the ASPCA maintains a list of plants that are toxic to dogs, cats, and/or horses.
And as a postscript, good books can save lives.
