![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Up top, a rejection letter sent by an author to editors that didn't work for him, modeled in the style and form of the form rejection letters sent to him as an author by editors. And then some advice for those stuck in artistic blocks - persist.
Further along, suggestions on how one can be a good ally to anyone doing sex work.
Staying on the theme (ish), a school in Brazil provided excellent sex education for teen peers by designating several of the male and female students as "pregnant" and forcing them to go through the process of what pregnancy, birth, and infant care would be like, including missing out on athletic activities, social events, and otherwise making an example of some of the class to get across to the rest of what happens when they get people pregnant. Apparently, it works, and is also part of an excellent curriculum at gender equality and autonomy of teenagers. Elsewhere, the prosecutors attempting to drop the rape charges against Dominic Strauss-Kahn based on past behavior of the accuser are making a big mistake - past behavior does not mean that present action didn't happen, and there's also a good amount of physical evidence arguing in favor of what happened. Dropping the case makes it easier for men to rape and then get away with it and forces an additional burden on the victim that they muse be seen as scrupulously honest and innocent in the past as well as for this incident. It's entirely the wrong way to go about investigating and prosecuting.
Finally, an unfortunate juxtaposition that should be paid attention to: while driving in a protest against mandatory helmet laws, a motorcyclist struck his unprotected head after he lost control of the vehicle and died. So, mandatory helmet laws, anyone?
Out in the world today - Despite promises that things are going better in Afghanistan, the rate of deaths in soldiers fighting has not gone down.
Iceland proposes making tobacco cigarettes a prescription-only product, which would ban the sale or use of it as a recreational product.
In Thailand, cheers for the first female prime minister elected to the office.
In their relentless pursuit of a story, the News of the World, hacked into a missing girl's phone voicemail box and deleted some of the voice messages. This would seem to be well beyond the pale of actual journalism, but then one realizes that it's a Murdoch newspaper, that lies and deception have become part of the media these days, and that the police might have very well allowed them to do it by claiming other things had higher priorities. And things only get so much worse...
In domestic news, about thirty-nine percent of the country believes that the decline is permanent, not temporary. To hopefully break out of that funk, and even better, actually get something done, Mr. Klein says that we need to stop behaving like the last century's economy is our economy.
Mr. Sanders, Independent Senator of Vermont, demands that the President stop caving completely to the demands of the Corporate Party and start seeing and championing the views of the people who don't have lobbyists on their side, who can't spend millions on TV ads and in purchasing politicians, and who have to work for their living, sometimes with multiple jobs, and still can't make enough to afford the basics of life, housing, and health, much less repay loans and other things they made as investments in the future.
Out of one hundred and one possible cases against the CIA for their alleged role in detaining, torturing, and otherwise violating the laws of the United States in their treatment of captured persons, only two are going forward to be prosecuted by the Justice Department. And thus, we continue in the trend of trying to sweep that chapter of the country under the rug rather than investigate it, expose it, learn from it, and fix it so that it never happens again. Congratulations, Bush administraion, you've got immunity, thanks to the Obama administration. Can we please have someone other than the Corporate Party in office now?
Related to Ms. Coulter's insistence that only liberals can be impolite, apparently a slip-up followed by a profuse apology for the use of coarse language describing the President's actions has become an opportunity for conservative columnists and commentators to use the word as a joke, sometimes also imputing the coarse meaning to the President or his party. Who's the impolite people harassing others in public?
Why, that would be the police, who even after being informed repeatedly that the teenager they were pursuing was mentally handicapped, used their stun guns, pepper spray, and fists to beat him, claiming that he was being disrespectful of them, and then arrested him. Or federal agents that raided the house of a law-abiding citizen, looking for someone who hadn't lived there in a year and furthermore was on record as living somewhere else, using a ram and pointing weapons at the family inside. Or the police department considering the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in what are now emergency situations, but can just as easily be expanded to routine work - so not only can you be stungunned, there doesn't even have to be a person firing the weapon present with you.
Or maybe the legislators that criminalize miscarriage by assuming every pregnancy that doesn't go to term was deliberately aborted, whether through doctors or possible drugs.
The City of Benton Harbor, Michigan, no longer has access to a park deeded to its people "in perpetuity", as the dictator-in-charge has determined that the park will only be open during certain hours and not at all during six months of the year where it gets cold and snowy in Michigan. This is after some part of the park was sold to private developers to create high-price housing next to the golf course. Given the power to do so, it appears dictators-in-charge like to enrich themselves and their political friends at the expense of the people. who knew?
And those friends don't really need anything more. When the head of Citibank, despite supposedly taking a $1 USD salary, might end up making $200 million USD, you know the game is rigged. And even those who are caught and sentenced enjoy preferential treatment - stealing billions nets you forty months. Stealing $100 gets you fifteen years.
Last for tonight, another case where Catholic bishops were aware of the presence of child pornography on the computer of one of their priests and withheld it instead of immediately turning it over to police.
In technology, why the idea of digital watermarking as a DRM measure is a very dangerous thing indeed - it necessarily ties some personal information to something, somewhere, and that means the security had better be pretty damn tight or the thieves will be looking to crack the servers with the customer DBs on them.
High-speed cameras show off how singing bowls cause water droplets to bounce and dance as waves of energy create chaos inside.
In opinions, Mr. Clark, now at Patheos, explains the methods of evangelism that actually work, rather than the ones that are taught, many of which involve the same skills as building good relationships - listening as much as talking, not framing it as an argument, and other conversational methods for telling people about your story.
Mr. Feith makes a plea for the country to not forget there are some prisoners of war in the Two Land Wars in Asia, and to advocate for their release.
The Heritage Foundation accuses the President of not being a leader and demagouging, and then says that only the plan that totally cuts spending without raising revenues is worthy of their endorsement seal. Cuts, that is, everywhere excepting in defense and military spending, where they should continue to get more than they ever want.
A peer in at services that market themselves to parents that demand their children get into prestigious universities, and a prolific comic artist and a journalist say that tiger parenting might have been right.
We must point out the...hypocrisy, perhaps? of a conservative columnist claiming that the war in Libya is primarily about oil fields and oil flow, and techniques that cast doubts on the nobility of the cause employed to get that oil. It was apparently nonsense when liberals said the Second Land War In Asia was about oil, but now that there's a Democrat in charge, apparently war for oil has become a legitimate attack again.
And finally, because of the American holiday just past, the opinions turn their eyes to it and to those people who created the founding documents of the country. Mr. Dowd insists that all the Founding Fathers were his type of Christian, instead of deists who believed in a god instead of The Being Represented By The Tetragrammaton, based on their writings and the invocations that reference the name God. (One hopes he knows that one of the common names for that entity translates roughly to "The Name". (I believe it's Ha-Shem, but English is poor at translating Hebrew.)) And of course, since many of us moderns are his kind of Christian, and that The Name is so invoked in our modern times, and intertwined with government in spite of the prohibition against it, it must be true in the ancient times as well.
On the same subject, Mr. Pendry regales us with tales of The World That Never Was, when Opportunity was afforded to all, and only Effort and Work determined whether you were successful or not. Certainly there was no resentment toward the wealthy, only envy that they were so successful. Summer baseball meant that some boys would ride the pine because they didn't put in enough Effort, not because they might not have been talented enough for the coach to use them. (This is why we like the official Little League rule that requires all players either have an at-bat or play three consecutive outs in the field.) And there was prayer in schools, led by teachers, and things were just Better then. There was no victim mentality taught by liberal elites and Christian conservatism brough prosperity to everyone through hard work. Like I said, the World That Never Was, populated by Nobodies and the Heartless.
And then, some Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, interpreted in various ways, possibly each side pointing a finger at the other about a nefarious plot to politicize what's supposed to be a celebration of the founding of the country. To wit, A Harvard study found that 4 July celebrations were more likely to have children grow up Republican, have parade-watchers vote Republican, and be slightly more likely to vote and give money to political causes. The researchers indicate they believe this happens because Republicans are far more likely to cloak themselves in the flag and other symbols, promote "patriotism" as an important value, and demand jingoistic unquestioning loyalty to the conservative movement and Republicanism be the definition of "patriotism" in the United States. The celebrations on display and their rah-rahness is sympathetic to Republican and conservative values. To Mr. Trzupek, however, this is a thinly-veiled attempt to accuse Republicans of brainwashing children and hijacking the symbols of the nation, a clearly erroneous conclusion because Republicans are the defenders of the country and its symbols from the evil libruls and their constant attempts to destroy patriotism and American Exceptionalism. Kids who view parades and vote Republican do so because Republican households are stable households, with two-parent, heterosexual marriages that promote good values, so naturally, kids want to vote for the party that provided them with such a wonderful upbringing, and Republicans are proud of their country and believe it exceptional, instead of promoting a one-world government led by others as libruls do.
Maybe it's me, but it seems like the Lies and the Damned Lies proceed from the statistics instead of following them.
Last for tonight, photos from the wildfires that are around the Los Alamos nuclear research laboratory. And a tour of the abandoned Six Flags park in New Orleans, a testament to amusement...before the hurricane.
Further along, suggestions on how one can be a good ally to anyone doing sex work.
Staying on the theme (ish), a school in Brazil provided excellent sex education for teen peers by designating several of the male and female students as "pregnant" and forcing them to go through the process of what pregnancy, birth, and infant care would be like, including missing out on athletic activities, social events, and otherwise making an example of some of the class to get across to the rest of what happens when they get people pregnant. Apparently, it works, and is also part of an excellent curriculum at gender equality and autonomy of teenagers. Elsewhere, the prosecutors attempting to drop the rape charges against Dominic Strauss-Kahn based on past behavior of the accuser are making a big mistake - past behavior does not mean that present action didn't happen, and there's also a good amount of physical evidence arguing in favor of what happened. Dropping the case makes it easier for men to rape and then get away with it and forces an additional burden on the victim that they muse be seen as scrupulously honest and innocent in the past as well as for this incident. It's entirely the wrong way to go about investigating and prosecuting.
Finally, an unfortunate juxtaposition that should be paid attention to: while driving in a protest against mandatory helmet laws, a motorcyclist struck his unprotected head after he lost control of the vehicle and died. So, mandatory helmet laws, anyone?
Out in the world today - Despite promises that things are going better in Afghanistan, the rate of deaths in soldiers fighting has not gone down.
Iceland proposes making tobacco cigarettes a prescription-only product, which would ban the sale or use of it as a recreational product.
In Thailand, cheers for the first female prime minister elected to the office.
In their relentless pursuit of a story, the News of the World, hacked into a missing girl's phone voicemail box and deleted some of the voice messages. This would seem to be well beyond the pale of actual journalism, but then one realizes that it's a Murdoch newspaper, that lies and deception have become part of the media these days, and that the police might have very well allowed them to do it by claiming other things had higher priorities. And things only get so much worse...
In domestic news, about thirty-nine percent of the country believes that the decline is permanent, not temporary. To hopefully break out of that funk, and even better, actually get something done, Mr. Klein says that we need to stop behaving like the last century's economy is our economy.
Mr. Sanders, Independent Senator of Vermont, demands that the President stop caving completely to the demands of the Corporate Party and start seeing and championing the views of the people who don't have lobbyists on their side, who can't spend millions on TV ads and in purchasing politicians, and who have to work for their living, sometimes with multiple jobs, and still can't make enough to afford the basics of life, housing, and health, much less repay loans and other things they made as investments in the future.
Out of one hundred and one possible cases against the CIA for their alleged role in detaining, torturing, and otherwise violating the laws of the United States in their treatment of captured persons, only two are going forward to be prosecuted by the Justice Department. And thus, we continue in the trend of trying to sweep that chapter of the country under the rug rather than investigate it, expose it, learn from it, and fix it so that it never happens again. Congratulations, Bush administraion, you've got immunity, thanks to the Obama administration. Can we please have someone other than the Corporate Party in office now?
Related to Ms. Coulter's insistence that only liberals can be impolite, apparently a slip-up followed by a profuse apology for the use of coarse language describing the President's actions has become an opportunity for conservative columnists and commentators to use the word as a joke, sometimes also imputing the coarse meaning to the President or his party. Who's the impolite people harassing others in public?
Why, that would be the police, who even after being informed repeatedly that the teenager they were pursuing was mentally handicapped, used their stun guns, pepper spray, and fists to beat him, claiming that he was being disrespectful of them, and then arrested him. Or federal agents that raided the house of a law-abiding citizen, looking for someone who hadn't lived there in a year and furthermore was on record as living somewhere else, using a ram and pointing weapons at the family inside. Or the police department considering the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in what are now emergency situations, but can just as easily be expanded to routine work - so not only can you be stungunned, there doesn't even have to be a person firing the weapon present with you.
Or maybe the legislators that criminalize miscarriage by assuming every pregnancy that doesn't go to term was deliberately aborted, whether through doctors or possible drugs.
The City of Benton Harbor, Michigan, no longer has access to a park deeded to its people "in perpetuity", as the dictator-in-charge has determined that the park will only be open during certain hours and not at all during six months of the year where it gets cold and snowy in Michigan. This is after some part of the park was sold to private developers to create high-price housing next to the golf course. Given the power to do so, it appears dictators-in-charge like to enrich themselves and their political friends at the expense of the people. who knew?
And those friends don't really need anything more. When the head of Citibank, despite supposedly taking a $1 USD salary, might end up making $200 million USD, you know the game is rigged. And even those who are caught and sentenced enjoy preferential treatment - stealing billions nets you forty months. Stealing $100 gets you fifteen years.
Last for tonight, another case where Catholic bishops were aware of the presence of child pornography on the computer of one of their priests and withheld it instead of immediately turning it over to police.
In technology, why the idea of digital watermarking as a DRM measure is a very dangerous thing indeed - it necessarily ties some personal information to something, somewhere, and that means the security had better be pretty damn tight or the thieves will be looking to crack the servers with the customer DBs on them.
High-speed cameras show off how singing bowls cause water droplets to bounce and dance as waves of energy create chaos inside.
In opinions, Mr. Clark, now at Patheos, explains the methods of evangelism that actually work, rather than the ones that are taught, many of which involve the same skills as building good relationships - listening as much as talking, not framing it as an argument, and other conversational methods for telling people about your story.
Mr. Feith makes a plea for the country to not forget there are some prisoners of war in the Two Land Wars in Asia, and to advocate for their release.
The Heritage Foundation accuses the President of not being a leader and demagouging, and then says that only the plan that totally cuts spending without raising revenues is worthy of their endorsement seal. Cuts, that is, everywhere excepting in defense and military spending, where they should continue to get more than they ever want.
A peer in at services that market themselves to parents that demand their children get into prestigious universities, and a prolific comic artist and a journalist say that tiger parenting might have been right.
We must point out the...hypocrisy, perhaps? of a conservative columnist claiming that the war in Libya is primarily about oil fields and oil flow, and techniques that cast doubts on the nobility of the cause employed to get that oil. It was apparently nonsense when liberals said the Second Land War In Asia was about oil, but now that there's a Democrat in charge, apparently war for oil has become a legitimate attack again.
And finally, because of the American holiday just past, the opinions turn their eyes to it and to those people who created the founding documents of the country. Mr. Dowd insists that all the Founding Fathers were his type of Christian, instead of deists who believed in a god instead of The Being Represented By The Tetragrammaton, based on their writings and the invocations that reference the name God. (One hopes he knows that one of the common names for that entity translates roughly to "The Name". (I believe it's Ha-Shem, but English is poor at translating Hebrew.)) And of course, since many of us moderns are his kind of Christian, and that The Name is so invoked in our modern times, and intertwined with government in spite of the prohibition against it, it must be true in the ancient times as well.
On the same subject, Mr. Pendry regales us with tales of The World That Never Was, when Opportunity was afforded to all, and only Effort and Work determined whether you were successful or not. Certainly there was no resentment toward the wealthy, only envy that they were so successful. Summer baseball meant that some boys would ride the pine because they didn't put in enough Effort, not because they might not have been talented enough for the coach to use them. (This is why we like the official Little League rule that requires all players either have an at-bat or play three consecutive outs in the field.) And there was prayer in schools, led by teachers, and things were just Better then. There was no victim mentality taught by liberal elites and Christian conservatism brough prosperity to everyone through hard work. Like I said, the World That Never Was, populated by Nobodies and the Heartless.
And then, some Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, interpreted in various ways, possibly each side pointing a finger at the other about a nefarious plot to politicize what's supposed to be a celebration of the founding of the country. To wit, A Harvard study found that 4 July celebrations were more likely to have children grow up Republican, have parade-watchers vote Republican, and be slightly more likely to vote and give money to political causes. The researchers indicate they believe this happens because Republicans are far more likely to cloak themselves in the flag and other symbols, promote "patriotism" as an important value, and demand jingoistic unquestioning loyalty to the conservative movement and Republicanism be the definition of "patriotism" in the United States. The celebrations on display and their rah-rahness is sympathetic to Republican and conservative values. To Mr. Trzupek, however, this is a thinly-veiled attempt to accuse Republicans of brainwashing children and hijacking the symbols of the nation, a clearly erroneous conclusion because Republicans are the defenders of the country and its symbols from the evil libruls and their constant attempts to destroy patriotism and American Exceptionalism. Kids who view parades and vote Republican do so because Republican households are stable households, with two-parent, heterosexual marriages that promote good values, so naturally, kids want to vote for the party that provided them with such a wonderful upbringing, and Republicans are proud of their country and believe it exceptional, instead of promoting a one-world government led by others as libruls do.
Maybe it's me, but it seems like the Lies and the Damned Lies proceed from the statistics instead of following them.
Last for tonight, photos from the wildfires that are around the Los Alamos nuclear research laboratory. And a tour of the abandoned Six Flags park in New Orleans, a testament to amusement...before the hurricane.
