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Compact, yet dense. - 12-20 August 02012
Aug. 20th, 2012 12:25 pmGood morning, everyone. Nice to see you again. Have we mentioned how it's just an order of politics these days to have organizations and businesses that could be engaging in illegal activities contribute plenty to the campaigns of the prosecutors that would otherwise be charging or investigating them.
San Francisco Giant Melky Cabrera was susepnded for fifty games after tesing positive for excessive levels of testosterone. This is not an isolated incident - whether for the Giants organization or for Major League Baseball teams at all.
a very comprehensive look at all the Chick-fil-A material, including the arguments that apply that aren't specifically about Chick-fil-A.
Finally, a gunmnan attacked a security guard in the Washington, D.C. offices of the Family Research Council. There's a very strong strain in my body that wants to shout "See how you like it when people are goaded into committing violent acts against ideological opponents!" and feel smug about it, but truthfully, that's stooping to a lower level, and it's not the right impulse to move forward with. It encourages reprisals on the most basic level. Instead, we'll let Tony Perkins do all the stooping, as he blames liberal groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center for giving the shooter "license" to attack them. He should beware of that blame boomeranging, though - we wouldn't blame conservative writers and columnists for the actions of their followers, assuming they weren't inciting people to violence with their speech, so he shouldn't be doing that, either. More perniciously, though, if we take Perkins at his word and apply his logic, then he, and groups like Operation Rescue and Focus on the Family can be held entirely responsible and accountable for the actions of people who kill abortion doctors, beat and kill QUILTBAG people for being "deviant", and all the deaths of soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anywhere else the United States military goes, so long as they endorsed the idea of the conflict. It's ridiculous to do so, and he has protested stridently when anyone has looked in the direction of the Family Research Council or any other conservative organization as a "reason" why someone commits a violent act.
Just another example of the double standard.
Out in the world, Ecuador's embassy offered sanctuary to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for which the government of the United Kingdom threatened to remove him from the premises anyway and extradite him to the United States.
Domestically, a Missouri Republican state represenative said that conception wouldn't be possible for a woman during a "legitimate rape". He has since retracted those remarks and apologized. That's not his only issue, though - he's against federal school lunches and a lot of other things.
A man is being denied a place on a heart transplant list because of his autism and the symptoms from.
Captin Awkward talks about creepy people - if you are one, stop. If you're encountering one, tell them that they're being creepy. If for no other reason than you will be able to determine whether or not this is a place that you want to hang out at with people you want to hang out with. If you're not sure, Scalzi offers a prety easy list to run down of the most obvious creeper behaviors. Also, from Dissent of a Woman, don't let the creepy people hide behind claims of social akwardness or enablers that will make excuses for them. And then, you might not want to make rape jokes or otherwise engage in acts on the domestic violence wheel. One last thing: love spells and potions are right out.
And then there's politics. Let's just declare this a rule - if it comes from the Womney/Ryan campaign, it must be assumed ot be untrue until proven otherwise. Because Paul Ryan claims he never asked for the stimulus dollars he took credit for, and does so repeatedly. On the budget they're touting... well, they haven's run the numbers on when the budget balances, and they haven't really decided whether Romney is running toward or away from the Ryan Kills Medicare part of that budget.
And then there's the issue where the Romney tax plan will necessarily increase the tax burden on the middle class while making the very wealthy pay less. If you ask Mitt Romney about his own taxes, however, he says that he's paid taxes at a certain percentage, but will provide no proof for it. And he has no reason to be trusted, considering he's not been forthright about tax issues before.
Or on other things, for that matter. And the media is complicit in helping Romney lie to the voters and get away with it.
So, what that boils down to is: Mitt Romney has been lying to you, with the help of media elements, for nearly the entire time he has been campaigning for the Presidency in this election cycle. (Unsurprisingly, constructing a thirty-word sentence to describe this phenomenon so that all the links can be added is harder than actually fact-checking Mitt Romney's statements.)
$470 million for roads work - it's not full infrastructure investment, but it'll help.
A bright spot, however - young immigrants brough over by their parents illegally can request a two-year period where the government will not activey attempt to deport them, which will allow them to engage in citizenship processes and be eligible for working in the United States. It's not citizenship nor amnesty, but it could be the breathing room that some immigrants need to get started on the path to citizenship. Perhaps predictably, the governor of Arizona directed her state to bar any sort of public benefit nor issue driver licenses to anyone in the federal program. This is the land of the Papers Please law, so it's not out of character, but it is still an indication of what sort of extreme views are present.
Last out, possibly just for myself, but now I know why the Thomas More Law Center takes that name...and why I always thought they were full of it when they started talking about cases.
In technology, A content site was scraping journals and other feeds from RSS data obtained through the Friend Of A Friend protocol and then claiming the data originated on their site. There was much WTF involved and several DMCA claims made against the site.
Harvard scientists have found a way of storing data on DNA - 700 terabytes in one gram of organic storage. You can fit almost the entirety of, what, the Internet, on one gram of DNA? (I think you wouldn't even need a kilo to store all the data produced in one year at that ratio, but that's rough maths - please correct if I'm wrong.)
In opinions, for fighting bad feelings or other mental traps, Lifehacker offers some information on knowing how to recognize mental loops and beat them back.
a very nice discussion that asked artists to rank the body size of male superhero characters and female superhero characters - a lot of agreement in the men, not so much in the women. Point being, there should be more diversity in body types - even if all the body types are, well, super-athletic because of the line of work of the various characters.
There's also some Ana Mardoll Basic Knowledge, in case you feel the need to brush up or you have someone that you need to show off the 101 to in an understandable-by-even-CEKSM sort of manner - What consent is, and isn't, a basic example of how gamer culture's internalized misogyny hurts everyone, why content notes and trigger warnings matter and should be respected, and the proper things to do when confronted with, or wanting to use, the words "can't", "shouldn't", and "won't".
There are some good spots in this post, though - A Seattle Mariners pitcher, Felix Hernandez, threw the third perfect game this baseball season. 27 up, 27 down, with 12 of those 27 being strikeouts. The Mariners won 1-0 in that game. And vintage sport photogaphs, including the oldest women's Olympic champion. And women fighters in reasonable armor.
Enjoy the links, even if the contents may turn your stomach.
San Francisco Giant Melky Cabrera was susepnded for fifty games after tesing positive for excessive levels of testosterone. This is not an isolated incident - whether for the Giants organization or for Major League Baseball teams at all.
a very comprehensive look at all the Chick-fil-A material, including the arguments that apply that aren't specifically about Chick-fil-A.
Finally, a gunmnan attacked a security guard in the Washington, D.C. offices of the Family Research Council. There's a very strong strain in my body that wants to shout "See how you like it when people are goaded into committing violent acts against ideological opponents!" and feel smug about it, but truthfully, that's stooping to a lower level, and it's not the right impulse to move forward with. It encourages reprisals on the most basic level. Instead, we'll let Tony Perkins do all the stooping, as he blames liberal groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center for giving the shooter "license" to attack them. He should beware of that blame boomeranging, though - we wouldn't blame conservative writers and columnists for the actions of their followers, assuming they weren't inciting people to violence with their speech, so he shouldn't be doing that, either. More perniciously, though, if we take Perkins at his word and apply his logic, then he, and groups like Operation Rescue and Focus on the Family can be held entirely responsible and accountable for the actions of people who kill abortion doctors, beat and kill QUILTBAG people for being "deviant", and all the deaths of soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anywhere else the United States military goes, so long as they endorsed the idea of the conflict. It's ridiculous to do so, and he has protested stridently when anyone has looked in the direction of the Family Research Council or any other conservative organization as a "reason" why someone commits a violent act.
Just another example of the double standard.
Out in the world, Ecuador's embassy offered sanctuary to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for which the government of the United Kingdom threatened to remove him from the premises anyway and extradite him to the United States.
Domestically, a Missouri Republican state represenative said that conception wouldn't be possible for a woman during a "legitimate rape". He has since retracted those remarks and apologized. That's not his only issue, though - he's against federal school lunches and a lot of other things.
A man is being denied a place on a heart transplant list because of his autism and the symptoms from.
Captin Awkward talks about creepy people - if you are one, stop. If you're encountering one, tell them that they're being creepy. If for no other reason than you will be able to determine whether or not this is a place that you want to hang out at with people you want to hang out with. If you're not sure, Scalzi offers a prety easy list to run down of the most obvious creeper behaviors. Also, from Dissent of a Woman, don't let the creepy people hide behind claims of social akwardness or enablers that will make excuses for them. And then, you might not want to make rape jokes or otherwise engage in acts on the domestic violence wheel. One last thing: love spells and potions are right out.
And then there's politics. Let's just declare this a rule - if it comes from the Womney/Ryan campaign, it must be assumed ot be untrue until proven otherwise. Because Paul Ryan claims he never asked for the stimulus dollars he took credit for, and does so repeatedly. On the budget they're touting... well, they haven's run the numbers on when the budget balances, and they haven't really decided whether Romney is running toward or away from the Ryan Kills Medicare part of that budget.
And then there's the issue where the Romney tax plan will necessarily increase the tax burden on the middle class while making the very wealthy pay less. If you ask Mitt Romney about his own taxes, however, he says that he's paid taxes at a certain percentage, but will provide no proof for it. And he has no reason to be trusted, considering he's not been forthright about tax issues before.
Or on other things, for that matter. And the media is complicit in helping Romney lie to the voters and get away with it.
So, what that boils down to is: Mitt Romney has been lying to you, with the help of media elements, for nearly the entire time he has been campaigning for the Presidency in this election cycle. (Unsurprisingly, constructing a thirty-word sentence to describe this phenomenon so that all the links can be added is harder than actually fact-checking Mitt Romney's statements.)
$470 million for roads work - it's not full infrastructure investment, but it'll help.
A bright spot, however - young immigrants brough over by their parents illegally can request a two-year period where the government will not activey attempt to deport them, which will allow them to engage in citizenship processes and be eligible for working in the United States. It's not citizenship nor amnesty, but it could be the breathing room that some immigrants need to get started on the path to citizenship. Perhaps predictably, the governor of Arizona directed her state to bar any sort of public benefit nor issue driver licenses to anyone in the federal program. This is the land of the Papers Please law, so it's not out of character, but it is still an indication of what sort of extreme views are present.
Last out, possibly just for myself, but now I know why the Thomas More Law Center takes that name...and why I always thought they were full of it when they started talking about cases.
In technology, A content site was scraping journals and other feeds from RSS data obtained through the Friend Of A Friend protocol and then claiming the data originated on their site. There was much WTF involved and several DMCA claims made against the site.
Harvard scientists have found a way of storing data on DNA - 700 terabytes in one gram of organic storage. You can fit almost the entirety of, what, the Internet, on one gram of DNA? (I think you wouldn't even need a kilo to store all the data produced in one year at that ratio, but that's rough maths - please correct if I'm wrong.)
In opinions, for fighting bad feelings or other mental traps, Lifehacker offers some information on knowing how to recognize mental loops and beat them back.
a very nice discussion that asked artists to rank the body size of male superhero characters and female superhero characters - a lot of agreement in the men, not so much in the women. Point being, there should be more diversity in body types - even if all the body types are, well, super-athletic because of the line of work of the various characters.
There's also some Ana Mardoll Basic Knowledge, in case you feel the need to brush up or you have someone that you need to show off the 101 to in an understandable-by-even-CEKSM sort of manner - What consent is, and isn't, a basic example of how gamer culture's internalized misogyny hurts everyone, why content notes and trigger warnings matter and should be respected, and the proper things to do when confronted with, or wanting to use, the words "can't", "shouldn't", and "won't".
There are some good spots in this post, though - A Seattle Mariners pitcher, Felix Hernandez, threw the third perfect game this baseball season. 27 up, 27 down, with 12 of those 27 being strikeouts. The Mariners won 1-0 in that game. And vintage sport photogaphs, including the oldest women's Olympic champion. And women fighters in reasonable armor.
Enjoy the links, even if the contents may turn your stomach.
