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Up top today - Willard "Mitt" Romney wins the Florida Republican primary. And the Nevada caucuses. This is, perhaps, where Republicans supposedly stand in line behind the chosen candidate, despite not really liking him?
And for something infinitely better - an evening spent with Dr. Demento.
For the U.S. Football championship, the song Rock and Roll, Part II has been forbidden, leaving the New England Patriots bereft of their usual post-touchdown celebration song.
Out in the world today, Ireland may have a version of SOPA passed by ministerial fiat rather than by any decision of the legislators, precluding any sort of public input on the matter. Speaking of media cabal machinations, 22 EU countries became signatories to ACTA, the media-cabal treaty that had originally demanded ISPs disconnect users accused of copyright infringement. Such signing puts it before the European Parliament, whose vote is scheduled for June - if they pass and sign it, then it becomes law for the EU. After the signing, the ACTA rapporteur to the European Parliament resigned and made strogne statements against the method by which ACTA has come to this point. Here in the States, we're used to money steamrolling any type of democratic voice, to the point that our Supreme Court decided corporations could contribute unlimited amounts of money to political causes, but in the EU, the tactics of our media cabals may yet provoke enough outrage at being left out of the process that the member countries make it tough or defeat the proposal.
In our continuing Internet world of content, those who want to make content available, and those who would rather not see content be available, Twitter deploys the ability to selectively not display content based on national law and IP address detection, a restriction that Twitter points out can be lifted, perhaps temporarily, by entering in a manual override of what country one's IP address is actually part of, or by using the "worldwide" option. This could be a model solution to the persistent problems of how media cabals want ever-tighter controls over everything, everywhere - enact based on locality, but offer a prominent option to be able to change your locality so as to get to your prefered set of local laws. Knowing the media cabals, they'd probably cite the DMCA and provisions about attempting to defeat the technology in place that's supposed to keep you from using your products in the way you intended.
The founder of Megaupload was denied bail by a New Zealand court, apparently because he was too much of a flight risk.
The city of Bogota appointed a trans woman as an official in the city's Social Integration Department, the first for the city. The Conservative government of Canada enacted new regulations demanding that trans people be denied passage on airplanes unless they present as the gender on their identification or they carry medical paperwork with them. When pressed on the issue, the Conservative MPs in the House of Commons were uninterested in taking the matter seriously.
The United States Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans to install and utilize X-ray or gamma radiation devices to image the insides of cars crossing the country's border, which involves significanly more power than the current body scanners and could be a cancer risk for travelers.
The United Nations Security Council was unable to approve a resolution condemning the actions of the govenment of Syria due to vetoes by permanent members, leaving the Syrian people in a continuing nightmare of violence and without any end in sight for protesters. Elsewhere, a Hatian judge rules that the statute of limitations had expired on Jean-Claude Duvalier and any alleged crimes he committed against the Haitan people. However, he could and should still be tried on corruption charges, according to the same judge.
Members of the group Anonymous lsitened in to a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard and then published details and recordings of the call, one that concerned suspected members of the collective.
Finally, a website that ran an article encouraging male university students to rape their fellow students has been suspended, and the website author faces disciplinary action from the university for running the article.
Domestically, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked his new library commissioner to improve the summer reading programs in the city, after having cut the budget of the library system.
The composer of the tune "Eye of the Tiger" has sued Republican candidate Newt gingrich in an attempt to force the candidate to stop using the song for his political appearances. I wonder whether something like this falls under the blanket performance license or not...
A Untied States marine that admitted to the killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2005 was recommended...no time in detention for his actions, based on his plea agreement. The marine will be reduced in rank to private.
Peer inside the high school in Michelle Bachmann's district where anti-gay bullying is rampant, suicides have been common, and the teachers are functinoally barred from discussion about being gay or lesbian, thanks to a policy the ultraconservatives put in place. The students are given a free hand to bully, the town supports the bullies, and any teacher that might want to speak out against this risks losing their job. If that kind of thing triggers you, best to stay away, but if you can, it's an accurate look into what sort of monsters we let into schools when we say that it's okay to bully certain people. On a different front, a federal appeals court rules that the tapes made of the arguments on Proposition 8 should stay sealed, denying us to see the looks on the faces of the arguers during some of the more choice peices of the transcript. Re-enactors will swiftly move to fill the void, I'm sure.
In technology, Apple, Google, and several other companies were named in a lawsuit alleging that the management of the companies colluded to not try and hire their software engineers away from each other so as to keep the wages for all of them down.
The CEO of AT&T took swipes at the FCC for not letting them eat T-Mobile, and then threatened to raise the price of data plans and enact restrictions as a result. Having made such a statement, PC Magazine took a look into whether AT&T really needed more spectrum and whether they couldn't get it elsewhere, and concluded they were doing quite a bit in spectrum buying as it was.
In the sciences, not having enough water affects your mental capacities as well as your physical ones, and a continuing crusade to remove as much sugar as possible from United States foodstuffs and drinks, against the wishes and large lobbying efforts of the food and beverage industry.
Finally, robotic fortune tellers, costumed not as, say, caricatures of ethnic groups but as things that would work out pretty well in a science fiction movie.
In opinions, what happens when a fat celebrity admits to having diabetes, and what should happen when any fat person appears in public. After all, exposure to a high-pollution environment made a mouse fatter than a lower-pollution environment, even when the mice had the same diet. So the opinions that invariably follow people around about their bodies? Not usually anywhere near the truth.
Mr. Scalzi asks writers to talk and think and discuss about the now, because within even one hundred years, the culture will have shifted sufficiently that most people works will nto become timeless. The impermanence of us all and our work is not an easy thing to confront. Which kind of makes praising one format over another based on its apparent permanence not much better than a fool's errand.
Last for tonight, a request for a singer to sing a song about the creepy ex appearing and the girl not noticing, or being polite and moving on, rather than yearning for him or accepting his demands that they get back together.
And for something infinitely better - an evening spent with Dr. Demento.
For the U.S. Football championship, the song Rock and Roll, Part II has been forbidden, leaving the New England Patriots bereft of their usual post-touchdown celebration song.
Out in the world today, Ireland may have a version of SOPA passed by ministerial fiat rather than by any decision of the legislators, precluding any sort of public input on the matter. Speaking of media cabal machinations, 22 EU countries became signatories to ACTA, the media-cabal treaty that had originally demanded ISPs disconnect users accused of copyright infringement. Such signing puts it before the European Parliament, whose vote is scheduled for June - if they pass and sign it, then it becomes law for the EU. After the signing, the ACTA rapporteur to the European Parliament resigned and made strogne statements against the method by which ACTA has come to this point. Here in the States, we're used to money steamrolling any type of democratic voice, to the point that our Supreme Court decided corporations could contribute unlimited amounts of money to political causes, but in the EU, the tactics of our media cabals may yet provoke enough outrage at being left out of the process that the member countries make it tough or defeat the proposal.
In our continuing Internet world of content, those who want to make content available, and those who would rather not see content be available, Twitter deploys the ability to selectively not display content based on national law and IP address detection, a restriction that Twitter points out can be lifted, perhaps temporarily, by entering in a manual override of what country one's IP address is actually part of, or by using the "worldwide" option. This could be a model solution to the persistent problems of how media cabals want ever-tighter controls over everything, everywhere - enact based on locality, but offer a prominent option to be able to change your locality so as to get to your prefered set of local laws. Knowing the media cabals, they'd probably cite the DMCA and provisions about attempting to defeat the technology in place that's supposed to keep you from using your products in the way you intended.
The founder of Megaupload was denied bail by a New Zealand court, apparently because he was too much of a flight risk.
The city of Bogota appointed a trans woman as an official in the city's Social Integration Department, the first for the city. The Conservative government of Canada enacted new regulations demanding that trans people be denied passage on airplanes unless they present as the gender on their identification or they carry medical paperwork with them. When pressed on the issue, the Conservative MPs in the House of Commons were uninterested in taking the matter seriously.
The United States Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans to install and utilize X-ray or gamma radiation devices to image the insides of cars crossing the country's border, which involves significanly more power than the current body scanners and could be a cancer risk for travelers.
The United Nations Security Council was unable to approve a resolution condemning the actions of the govenment of Syria due to vetoes by permanent members, leaving the Syrian people in a continuing nightmare of violence and without any end in sight for protesters. Elsewhere, a Hatian judge rules that the statute of limitations had expired on Jean-Claude Duvalier and any alleged crimes he committed against the Haitan people. However, he could and should still be tried on corruption charges, according to the same judge.
Members of the group Anonymous lsitened in to a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard and then published details and recordings of the call, one that concerned suspected members of the collective.
Finally, a website that ran an article encouraging male university students to rape their fellow students has been suspended, and the website author faces disciplinary action from the university for running the article.
Domestically, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked his new library commissioner to improve the summer reading programs in the city, after having cut the budget of the library system.
The composer of the tune "Eye of the Tiger" has sued Republican candidate Newt gingrich in an attempt to force the candidate to stop using the song for his political appearances. I wonder whether something like this falls under the blanket performance license or not...
A Untied States marine that admitted to the killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2005 was recommended...no time in detention for his actions, based on his plea agreement. The marine will be reduced in rank to private.
Peer inside the high school in Michelle Bachmann's district where anti-gay bullying is rampant, suicides have been common, and the teachers are functinoally barred from discussion about being gay or lesbian, thanks to a policy the ultraconservatives put in place. The students are given a free hand to bully, the town supports the bullies, and any teacher that might want to speak out against this risks losing their job. If that kind of thing triggers you, best to stay away, but if you can, it's an accurate look into what sort of monsters we let into schools when we say that it's okay to bully certain people. On a different front, a federal appeals court rules that the tapes made of the arguments on Proposition 8 should stay sealed, denying us to see the looks on the faces of the arguers during some of the more choice peices of the transcript. Re-enactors will swiftly move to fill the void, I'm sure.
In technology, Apple, Google, and several other companies were named in a lawsuit alleging that the management of the companies colluded to not try and hire their software engineers away from each other so as to keep the wages for all of them down.
The CEO of AT&T took swipes at the FCC for not letting them eat T-Mobile, and then threatened to raise the price of data plans and enact restrictions as a result. Having made such a statement, PC Magazine took a look into whether AT&T really needed more spectrum and whether they couldn't get it elsewhere, and concluded they were doing quite a bit in spectrum buying as it was.
In the sciences, not having enough water affects your mental capacities as well as your physical ones, and a continuing crusade to remove as much sugar as possible from United States foodstuffs and drinks, against the wishes and large lobbying efforts of the food and beverage industry.
Finally, robotic fortune tellers, costumed not as, say, caricatures of ethnic groups but as things that would work out pretty well in a science fiction movie.
In opinions, what happens when a fat celebrity admits to having diabetes, and what should happen when any fat person appears in public. After all, exposure to a high-pollution environment made a mouse fatter than a lower-pollution environment, even when the mice had the same diet. So the opinions that invariably follow people around about their bodies? Not usually anywhere near the truth.
Mr. Scalzi asks writers to talk and think and discuss about the now, because within even one hundred years, the culture will have shifted sufficiently that most people works will nto become timeless. The impermanence of us all and our work is not an easy thing to confront. Which kind of makes praising one format over another based on its apparent permanence not much better than a fool's errand.
Last for tonight, a request for a singer to sing a song about the creepy ex appearing and the girl not noticing, or being polite and moving on, rather than yearning for him or accepting his demands that they get back together.
