![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Up top, now I know why Nickel and Dimed made the top ten chalenged books of 2010, and why it was challenged for being "inaccurate" - it unflinchingly tells the truth about how poverty is both a vicious cycle and criminalized on several ways, like making it illegal to feed those without homes who are staying in public places. Did you think that the rioting going on in London was caused by $PET_CAUSE? Pay better attention. The neighborhoods where these things have happened have more than just one $PET_CAUSE behind them. That's where the longevity and seriousness of the riots comes from. But punditry and those who like simple answers, or those who are unwilling to look at real causes, will lay the blame for the riots squarely at the feet of the rioters, accusing them of never having been properly whipped and learning discipline from school, parents, or government because none of those institutions has taught them that people are not entitled to anything and cannot just do whatever they want. Because they weren't properly beaten at home, at school, or becuase their family situation isn't a perfect monogamous, religious, heterosexual marriage with children, those rioters are essentially feral, they tell us, and should be treated as we treat feral animals.
If you'd like a close analogue in the United States, look at Detroit or Flint. (And Michigan in general, but Detroit and Flint in specific.) Those places have all the right reasons to ignite in the future. They have ignited in the past. Why isn't there rioting in Detroit? There hasn't been the right spark yet. It's coming... and when it happens, we'll have the same pundits saying that Detroit went up because of $PET_CAUSE. Pay better attention - these issues are structural, not formed from whole cloth out of a single thing. There are corporations looting the country of its resources and giving nothing back. Neither political party intends on stopping them.
Elsewhere, there are other issues. Women with education are routinely running into men that are belittling it or have their masculinity threatened (despite there being no reason for it) by those women. Or a residual where white children in the Deep South are alleged to go out to find a black man and to kill him, and also to catch the whole thing on video. Issues polite society deems resolved have this awful habit of resurfacing...
For those who speak other languages natively, there's a fest going on to allow you to talk in your native language to others who will be doing the same. Those of us who are native English speakers are asked to refrain for the moment until invited in. If invited in.
Finally, some civil complaints have been allowed to move forward against Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense during the toture program of the last administrator. It's not criminal charges, but it might at least be able to bring to light everything that was involved.
Out in the world today, right-wing nationalists in Germany snapped up donated T-Shirts proclaiming their message...only to have that message replaced with one offering help to get them out of that scene after the first wash. Trojan Horse T-Shirts. Faaaaaantastic!
Domestically, the Defense of Marriage Act needs to be repealed, as it is now preventing a legally-married couple from living together in the United States, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has decided that the legally-married spouse cannot get a spousal visa from the federal government.
If it should reappear in the next Presidential debate, one should keep in mind that the history of who supports and who opposes gun control and gun restriction flips, flops, wibbles, wobbles, and reverses itself routinely through history. Usually, when there's a big push to do something that affects a lot of people, the reaction that results determines organizational outlooks and state and federal policies.
A photograph of the President saluting the return of the dead from Afghanistan sparked a controversy because the Pentagon had apparently required no photography at the request of the families. There weren't any caskets photographed, just a picture of the President. Read the comments, and you'll see all sorts of people levying commentary on whether the President did it for photo-opportunities to burnish his false credentials, whether he's qualified to salute the dead, and a lot of anti-Obama sentiment, given new life from an old argument.
The current crop of Republican candidates, minus Governor Perry of Texas, who will declare his intent on Saturday, squared off in a debate in Iowa, attempting to position themselves as the frontrunners for the first caucus of 2012 and a winner of a straw poll.
Finally, The current Treasury Secretary will remain in his job, even after the political default crisis, and the wild fluctuations of the stock market. It's kind of interesting to watch the reactions to both the Standard and Poor's downgrade decision (only one of three agencies) and the stock market fluctuations. For example, some fire salvos in all directions, believing the downgrade is a good idea, focusing on Democrats because they believe the presence of nonserious proposals are better than no proposals at all, others blame the whole thing entirely on the spending policies of the current and last admininstrator (or, more commonly, just blaming the current administrator, claiming the current problems are based in a popular revolt against him, and claiming that the people responsible, those Democrats and Barack Obama, are dodging taking responsibility for what they and they alone did), refusing to consider the idea that tax revenues might help with the idea, whether for ideological reasons involving Tea Party philosophy or because they're convinced that any new revenues will only be gobbled up by greedy politicians that want to do more programs instead of used to balance the budget and/or pay down the debts. If pressed for things that actually might require spending, it's almost always that defense should get everything it wants, because there are all these threats still around, and that social programs should be gotten rid of, mostly for the reasons of "those social programs create weak people who game the system and pay no taxes instead of Working Hard, Making Money, and being producers rather than parasites. But otherwise, the clamor is mostly the same as we've seen from the conservative movement - less regulations, less impediment to the wildly-profitable private sector, hoping they will choose to give some largesse to the rest of us, less "burdens" on the people who are already making money hand-over-fist. And they accused the Democrats of trying to not let a crisis go to waste. Well, the Republicans seem more than willing to manufacture the crisis and then take advantage of it.
The funniest part of it, though, is that when confronted with the same data, both liberals and conservatives can draw conclusion that claim their way of thinking is the correct one. The people do not like a bureaucracy that looks out for its own interests. That's the fact. For Mr. Barone, that means government should be axed and the private sector given more freedom, because the people want to feel like they earned their wealth. Likely for the person he is quoting, however, it means that government should be reformed, to streamline it and return it to something that works for the interests of the people, not corporations and the class that funds political campaigns - less loopholes, less Citizens United, less of money being able to buy laws and court decisions in your favor. Same data, different conclusions.
In technology, Pew research indicates that smartphones are a growing population of cell phones, and that certain demographics (the young, those unlikely to have broadband internet access at home) have a much higher smartphone usage and likelihood to access the Internet through their smartphone. So optimizing or providing a mobile version of your website is a good idea, if you're in the producer segment, and if you're on the infrastructure side, remember all those stories you keep hearing about countries that get all their news through mobiles? It's not just on foreign shores - there's a big chunk of the population here that does the same. If that's the case, though, we could do with strengthening the security on the protocol that carries our wireless communications data.
A hypersonic military aircraft prototype intended to see if destruction could be delivered at hypersonic speed anywhere in the world stopped delivering telemmetry during the flight. Not to say they won't try again with something else. But this program is finished.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used a modified version of HIV to infect T cells in leukemia patients, rewriting the cells to be able to destroy the cancer and then spawning them in great quantities. Of the three patients the therapy has been tested on, the results are promising - the T cells killed off the cancer, and the only side effects noted were that of a body fighting off an infection. Promising idea...that the standard channels, like the National Institute of Cancer and pharmaceutical companies, have turned down so far. MIT may have managed to develop a general-purpose antiviral drug, as their treatment can identify virus-infected cells and destroy them. And right now, I just realized that this might be Kellis-Amberlee in the making, as it's a cancer cure and a virus cure, developed separately. Brrrrr. Hopefully, we don't have that result.
And in the sciences, retractions of published studies are rising along with the rising amount of papers published, but the percentage of retractions compared to total is going up, too. Questions abound, as to whether the pressure to publish or perish is causing more people to take risks and possible errors, whether we're better at catching plagarism now, or some other combination of factors...but the amount of eventually-retracted science being published is greater. The grains of salt must apparently be bigger. (Says the news blogger at the end of a section where he mentions possible generic antivirals...)
In opinions, Mr. Stossel rails against fleet efficiency requirements, claiming that the ways those efficienceies are being met is by making smaller and lighter cars that will crumple entirely when in a collision with other cars, killing their occupants. Heavier cars, of course, would absorb that energy better, and besides, says he, if fuel efficiency were something the people really wanted, they could demand it of car companies without government requirements. Really, Mr. Stossel? The people would be able to out-shout petroleum companies that prefer as much gasoline inefficiency as possible and that are making record amounts of profits? I wouldn't be sure of that, sir.
Ms. Noonan returns to the Empty Suit argument in claiming that the President's supposed rhetorical gifts have run out, and were never, in fact, any good in relation to the debt ceiling deal, where a reasonable President was running up against a deadline and a Republican Party playing chicken with the economy in a recession. With Congress the way it is, it seems like the only way to get anything done is either to give in or to wield the executive powers of regulation to achieve desired ends.
Of course, when he does so to relieve states and schools of the onerous burden of No Child Left Behind (a law championed by the previous administrator and the conservative movement when they were in the office and abandoned as soon as the current President looked like he might be interested in keeping it), they complain that the President is using his powers to circumvent the Congressional process. Thus, they want to close off his options to "do whatever it is the Republicans want, no questions asked or concessions wrought" or "resist the demands and watch things fall apart". Both of which are what the conservative movement wants, as it intends to destroy any power that government has outside of the things they want government to do, like start wars and prevent women from using birth control or family planning services.
On a similar line, Mr. McGurn is also running the Empty Suit argument, but in the case of "Obama could never live up to his hype, and once the people are disillusioned, they see him for exactly what he is - impotent, partisan, and powerlessquot;.
Mr. Rove wants on that train, believing that the best thing for the President to do right now is stop trying to be a liberal and start by proposing things that seem possible and that Republicans want to do - give in, and he might get re-elected.
Making a new entry into the argument department, however, is Mr. Stephens, who brushes all of the other items aside to go straight to an unvarnished conclusion - Mr. Obama is stupid and overconfident, and the overconfidence got him elected. Wait, didn't we hear that argument before...against the previous administrator? Didn't exactly work there...or it was spun that such apparent knowlessness is actually a positive thing, as it made him more relatable.
Elsewhere, Mr. Spencer defends himself from allegations that he's unfairly scapegoating Muslims as extremists and terrorists by... pointing to all his work accusing Muslims of being extremists and terrorists, and declaring his work to be the truth and all others must prove him false using his own words and conclusions, and then accuses the mainstream media of misrepresenting him and people who hold his same view o fThe Bloodthirsty Religion. The presence of other evidence is apparently not allowed, nor is the usage of other writers, and all arguments must conform to the worldview that he sets up. I wonder if he sees Mr. Tapson's commentary on the dwindling membership of the Council on American-Islamic Relations because of CAIR's perception as an aggressive and non-representative group as vindication that his point of view is right or as something to be ignored because it doesn't fit his worldview that CAIR and other groups are extremist fronts teeming with terrorists. Considering Mr. Spencer is also signal-boosting the Florida Family Association's claims that the Tampa Police Department swept a murder under the rug because of fears of "Muslim reprisal" for calling Fatimah Abdallah's death a Muslim honor killing over apostasy from the faith and I think he's in the "ignore" camp. Not that he's alone in his designation. Mr. Greenfield believes that one must call Muslims by their real name - terrorists, instead of avoiding making the obvious-to-him connection, like the federal government is doing.
Out of opinions, Mr. Borwnfield says that an EMP burst will destroy most of the country's infrastructure, whether delivered by missile or solar flare, and Mr. Tooley boldly asserts that the use of a weapon of mass destruction is justified under Christian theology and made for a safer world after its usage by preventing greater amounts of deaths. The Religious Left, of course, should be dismissed as weak pacifists who have no idea what The Real World is like, and their dreams and arguments for a WMD-free world should also be dismissed as nonsense.
Oh, and speaking of religion, Mr. Infranco believes he has atheists in a Gotcha moment regarding their objection to the inclusion of a cross-shaped girder rescued from the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, because they either must admit something intentionally created those girders, or they're reading religious meaning into random objects, something they normally pooh-pooh in their skepticism. Or, Mr. Infranco, they could be objecting to the fact that everyone else seems to be reading quite a bit of religious meaning and "God has not forsaken us!" into the presence of a random piece of wreckage because it conforms to their symbol. Had they seen a crescent and star, would they have read in that God was saying the attackers were correct in their faith and the U.S. deserved what they got? Certainly not. What the atheists are objecting to is the pervasive assumption that Christianity deserves to be part of the memorial, that all the people who died on that day would appreciate a Christian symbol as part of their memorial, and that the symbol's religious meaning will be present in a civic memorial. Those are all pretty good objections to it that don't require turning the atheists into starwmen or people devoid of rationality and intelligence.
Last for tonight, a letter of congratulations to a hospital staff on how they handled a particularly trying week in history - when a President and his assassin were both killed.
If you'd like a close analogue in the United States, look at Detroit or Flint. (And Michigan in general, but Detroit and Flint in specific.) Those places have all the right reasons to ignite in the future. They have ignited in the past. Why isn't there rioting in Detroit? There hasn't been the right spark yet. It's coming... and when it happens, we'll have the same pundits saying that Detroit went up because of $PET_CAUSE. Pay better attention - these issues are structural, not formed from whole cloth out of a single thing. There are corporations looting the country of its resources and giving nothing back. Neither political party intends on stopping them.
Elsewhere, there are other issues. Women with education are routinely running into men that are belittling it or have their masculinity threatened (despite there being no reason for it) by those women. Or a residual where white children in the Deep South are alleged to go out to find a black man and to kill him, and also to catch the whole thing on video. Issues polite society deems resolved have this awful habit of resurfacing...
For those who speak other languages natively, there's a fest going on to allow you to talk in your native language to others who will be doing the same. Those of us who are native English speakers are asked to refrain for the moment until invited in. If invited in.
Finally, some civil complaints have been allowed to move forward against Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense during the toture program of the last administrator. It's not criminal charges, but it might at least be able to bring to light everything that was involved.
Out in the world today, right-wing nationalists in Germany snapped up donated T-Shirts proclaiming their message...only to have that message replaced with one offering help to get them out of that scene after the first wash. Trojan Horse T-Shirts. Faaaaaantastic!
Domestically, the Defense of Marriage Act needs to be repealed, as it is now preventing a legally-married couple from living together in the United States, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has decided that the legally-married spouse cannot get a spousal visa from the federal government.
If it should reappear in the next Presidential debate, one should keep in mind that the history of who supports and who opposes gun control and gun restriction flips, flops, wibbles, wobbles, and reverses itself routinely through history. Usually, when there's a big push to do something that affects a lot of people, the reaction that results determines organizational outlooks and state and federal policies.
A photograph of the President saluting the return of the dead from Afghanistan sparked a controversy because the Pentagon had apparently required no photography at the request of the families. There weren't any caskets photographed, just a picture of the President. Read the comments, and you'll see all sorts of people levying commentary on whether the President did it for photo-opportunities to burnish his false credentials, whether he's qualified to salute the dead, and a lot of anti-Obama sentiment, given new life from an old argument.
The current crop of Republican candidates, minus Governor Perry of Texas, who will declare his intent on Saturday, squared off in a debate in Iowa, attempting to position themselves as the frontrunners for the first caucus of 2012 and a winner of a straw poll.
Finally, The current Treasury Secretary will remain in his job, even after the political default crisis, and the wild fluctuations of the stock market. It's kind of interesting to watch the reactions to both the Standard and Poor's downgrade decision (only one of three agencies) and the stock market fluctuations. For example, some fire salvos in all directions, believing the downgrade is a good idea, focusing on Democrats because they believe the presence of nonserious proposals are better than no proposals at all, others blame the whole thing entirely on the spending policies of the current and last admininstrator (or, more commonly, just blaming the current administrator, claiming the current problems are based in a popular revolt against him, and claiming that the people responsible, those Democrats and Barack Obama, are dodging taking responsibility for what they and they alone did), refusing to consider the idea that tax revenues might help with the idea, whether for ideological reasons involving Tea Party philosophy or because they're convinced that any new revenues will only be gobbled up by greedy politicians that want to do more programs instead of used to balance the budget and/or pay down the debts. If pressed for things that actually might require spending, it's almost always that defense should get everything it wants, because there are all these threats still around, and that social programs should be gotten rid of, mostly for the reasons of "those social programs create weak people who game the system and pay no taxes instead of Working Hard, Making Money, and being producers rather than parasites. But otherwise, the clamor is mostly the same as we've seen from the conservative movement - less regulations, less impediment to the wildly-profitable private sector, hoping they will choose to give some largesse to the rest of us, less "burdens" on the people who are already making money hand-over-fist. And they accused the Democrats of trying to not let a crisis go to waste. Well, the Republicans seem more than willing to manufacture the crisis and then take advantage of it.
The funniest part of it, though, is that when confronted with the same data, both liberals and conservatives can draw conclusion that claim their way of thinking is the correct one. The people do not like a bureaucracy that looks out for its own interests. That's the fact. For Mr. Barone, that means government should be axed and the private sector given more freedom, because the people want to feel like they earned their wealth. Likely for the person he is quoting, however, it means that government should be reformed, to streamline it and return it to something that works for the interests of the people, not corporations and the class that funds political campaigns - less loopholes, less Citizens United, less of money being able to buy laws and court decisions in your favor. Same data, different conclusions.
In technology, Pew research indicates that smartphones are a growing population of cell phones, and that certain demographics (the young, those unlikely to have broadband internet access at home) have a much higher smartphone usage and likelihood to access the Internet through their smartphone. So optimizing or providing a mobile version of your website is a good idea, if you're in the producer segment, and if you're on the infrastructure side, remember all those stories you keep hearing about countries that get all their news through mobiles? It's not just on foreign shores - there's a big chunk of the population here that does the same. If that's the case, though, we could do with strengthening the security on the protocol that carries our wireless communications data.
A hypersonic military aircraft prototype intended to see if destruction could be delivered at hypersonic speed anywhere in the world stopped delivering telemmetry during the flight. Not to say they won't try again with something else. But this program is finished.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used a modified version of HIV to infect T cells in leukemia patients, rewriting the cells to be able to destroy the cancer and then spawning them in great quantities. Of the three patients the therapy has been tested on, the results are promising - the T cells killed off the cancer, and the only side effects noted were that of a body fighting off an infection. Promising idea...that the standard channels, like the National Institute of Cancer and pharmaceutical companies, have turned down so far. MIT may have managed to develop a general-purpose antiviral drug, as their treatment can identify virus-infected cells and destroy them. And right now, I just realized that this might be Kellis-Amberlee in the making, as it's a cancer cure and a virus cure, developed separately. Brrrrr. Hopefully, we don't have that result.
And in the sciences, retractions of published studies are rising along with the rising amount of papers published, but the percentage of retractions compared to total is going up, too. Questions abound, as to whether the pressure to publish or perish is causing more people to take risks and possible errors, whether we're better at catching plagarism now, or some other combination of factors...but the amount of eventually-retracted science being published is greater. The grains of salt must apparently be bigger. (Says the news blogger at the end of a section where he mentions possible generic antivirals...)
In opinions, Mr. Stossel rails against fleet efficiency requirements, claiming that the ways those efficienceies are being met is by making smaller and lighter cars that will crumple entirely when in a collision with other cars, killing their occupants. Heavier cars, of course, would absorb that energy better, and besides, says he, if fuel efficiency were something the people really wanted, they could demand it of car companies without government requirements. Really, Mr. Stossel? The people would be able to out-shout petroleum companies that prefer as much gasoline inefficiency as possible and that are making record amounts of profits? I wouldn't be sure of that, sir.
Ms. Noonan returns to the Empty Suit argument in claiming that the President's supposed rhetorical gifts have run out, and were never, in fact, any good in relation to the debt ceiling deal, where a reasonable President was running up against a deadline and a Republican Party playing chicken with the economy in a recession. With Congress the way it is, it seems like the only way to get anything done is either to give in or to wield the executive powers of regulation to achieve desired ends.
Of course, when he does so to relieve states and schools of the onerous burden of No Child Left Behind (a law championed by the previous administrator and the conservative movement when they were in the office and abandoned as soon as the current President looked like he might be interested in keeping it), they complain that the President is using his powers to circumvent the Congressional process. Thus, they want to close off his options to "do whatever it is the Republicans want, no questions asked or concessions wrought" or "resist the demands and watch things fall apart". Both of which are what the conservative movement wants, as it intends to destroy any power that government has outside of the things they want government to do, like start wars and prevent women from using birth control or family planning services.
On a similar line, Mr. McGurn is also running the Empty Suit argument, but in the case of "Obama could never live up to his hype, and once the people are disillusioned, they see him for exactly what he is - impotent, partisan, and powerlessquot;.
Mr. Rove wants on that train, believing that the best thing for the President to do right now is stop trying to be a liberal and start by proposing things that seem possible and that Republicans want to do - give in, and he might get re-elected.
Making a new entry into the argument department, however, is Mr. Stephens, who brushes all of the other items aside to go straight to an unvarnished conclusion - Mr. Obama is stupid and overconfident, and the overconfidence got him elected. Wait, didn't we hear that argument before...against the previous administrator? Didn't exactly work there...or it was spun that such apparent knowlessness is actually a positive thing, as it made him more relatable.
Elsewhere, Mr. Spencer defends himself from allegations that he's unfairly scapegoating Muslims as extremists and terrorists by... pointing to all his work accusing Muslims of being extremists and terrorists, and declaring his work to be the truth and all others must prove him false using his own words and conclusions, and then accuses the mainstream media of misrepresenting him and people who hold his same view o fThe Bloodthirsty Religion. The presence of other evidence is apparently not allowed, nor is the usage of other writers, and all arguments must conform to the worldview that he sets up. I wonder if he sees Mr. Tapson's commentary on the dwindling membership of the Council on American-Islamic Relations because of CAIR's perception as an aggressive and non-representative group as vindication that his point of view is right or as something to be ignored because it doesn't fit his worldview that CAIR and other groups are extremist fronts teeming with terrorists. Considering Mr. Spencer is also signal-boosting the Florida Family Association's claims that the Tampa Police Department swept a murder under the rug because of fears of "Muslim reprisal" for calling Fatimah Abdallah's death a Muslim honor killing over apostasy from the faith and I think he's in the "ignore" camp. Not that he's alone in his designation. Mr. Greenfield believes that one must call Muslims by their real name - terrorists, instead of avoiding making the obvious-to-him connection, like the federal government is doing.
Out of opinions, Mr. Borwnfield says that an EMP burst will destroy most of the country's infrastructure, whether delivered by missile or solar flare, and Mr. Tooley boldly asserts that the use of a weapon of mass destruction is justified under Christian theology and made for a safer world after its usage by preventing greater amounts of deaths. The Religious Left, of course, should be dismissed as weak pacifists who have no idea what The Real World is like, and their dreams and arguments for a WMD-free world should also be dismissed as nonsense.
Oh, and speaking of religion, Mr. Infranco believes he has atheists in a Gotcha moment regarding their objection to the inclusion of a cross-shaped girder rescued from the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, because they either must admit something intentionally created those girders, or they're reading religious meaning into random objects, something they normally pooh-pooh in their skepticism. Or, Mr. Infranco, they could be objecting to the fact that everyone else seems to be reading quite a bit of religious meaning and "God has not forsaken us!" into the presence of a random piece of wreckage because it conforms to their symbol. Had they seen a crescent and star, would they have read in that God was saying the attackers were correct in their faith and the U.S. deserved what they got? Certainly not. What the atheists are objecting to is the pervasive assumption that Christianity deserves to be part of the memorial, that all the people who died on that day would appreciate a Christian symbol as part of their memorial, and that the symbol's religious meaning will be present in a civic memorial. Those are all pretty good objections to it that don't require turning the atheists into starwmen or people devoid of rationality and intelligence.
Last for tonight, a letter of congratulations to a hospital staff on how they handled a particularly trying week in history - when a President and his assassin were both killed.
