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Greetings, everyone. 21 November is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a reminder that there are still people in this world that suffer violence because others are uncomfortable with their existence and physical selves. Especially those trans* people that also have some other "minority" status, like being a person of color or a woman. Not to mention that the world is still not really well set-up to accommodate them. Here's 32 points of failure in current society, just to get started. It often seems odd how much we humans compartmentalize big lessons. Equality should not have to be fought for over and over again so that new people can be treated as people instead of Other. Equality should be the default by now.
Let's start with the creative process at work, as well as meditations on the voice, its lack, or other situations where the voice changes, trivia and notes about songs, and some recommended books about the history of reading. There's also the question of what happened to the first immigrant passing through Ellis Island.
Out in the world today, Israel and Palestine are fighting again. With the inevitable deaths of civilians, innocents, and plenty of other people in awful and inhumane ways.
the Indian equivalent of conservative propaganda in schools - a textbook claims that meat eaters are liars, cheaters, and more likely to commit crimes, including sexual crimes.
In Ireland, a woman was denied an abortion and died of blood poisoning. This is what happens when you do not even allow for life/health of the mother exceptions. You get a dead child and a dead mother. Neither of which sounds particularly pro-life.
Domestically, Willard "Mitt" Romney, defeated political candidate, claimed Barack Obama won because he bribed black and brown people, the poor, and women with the promises of free stuff to get them to vote for him. Which only confirms the "47 percent" idea that was captured on camera is what Mitt Romney really thought about people. It's not just Mitt Romney, though. the CEO of Hostess blamed the unions of the workers for the company's bankruptcy, after tripling their own salary. Which is joining the long line of corporate CEOs throwing tantrums and doing their very best to make sure they don't have to actually provide health care for their workers, including threatening layoffs, cutting hours from workers, tellingthe customer to stiff their servers on tips if they want to complain about the cost of the food going up because of the Affordable Care act, and grudgingly increasing the price of their pizza by 10 cents per unit to cover the projected costs of the Affordable Care Act.
Paul Ryan attributed the victory for the President to his "urban" turnout, which was the beginning of several whistles to the base about much the same topics that Mr. Romney talked about openly as the reasons for the Obama victory. Elsewhere, some white evangelicals don't understand why black voters didn't fall in line with the white evangelicals' candidate, claiming that President Obama quite clearly offended their religious values. Because he's pro-choice, never mind all the things he's done for the least of our people. Ah, yes, and because he, like a lot of other African-Americans, supports marriage equality.
After the conservative media spun the idea that Susan Rice, ambassador to the United Nations, was involved in some sort of cover-up of the Benghazi terror attack, President Obama said conservatives should direct their ire at him instead of someone who was doing her job. Speaking of the conservative media, they've been very hard at work making sure the people in their purview are in a fact-free zone.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, when asked about whether or not the age of the Democratic leadership was stifling younger Democrats from taking leadership roles, described the question accurately as "offensive". The reporter persisted, not understanding, until he got an answer from the Minority Leader. It's like asking whether or not the fact that Ms. Pelosi is a woman is stifling leadership roles for men.
Oh, hey, did you see that the Southern Poverty Law Center started designating Men's Rights Advocates as hate groups? If you're not sure what an MRA is (because you have had the fortune of not being female and not having had to hear an MRA complaint about how women are making men's lives miserable), then you can see many of the common positions advanced by MRAs, and their appropriate refutations. If you'd like an example of what a MRA might look like outside of a clinical environment, observe this tale of a movie reviewer who found himself subjected to new editorial control, based entirely on whether or not the movie had a strong female protagonist in it. The new boss reads as an MRA to me.
To counter that, the Echidne of the Snakes offers web links and biographies of United States feminist literature.
A Florida Republican candidate demanded a recount to avoid having to concede, despite clearly having lost the race. In Wisconsin, state legislators backed a bill to arrest any federal entities that want to implement the Affordable Care Act.
Less major party political, but still political, take a look at the Pew study about how people use their libraries with regard to e-books. In comparison, the Librarian in Black says we should divorce ourselves from e-books until the publishing houses decide to play fair with their consumers and libraries. And then there's the potential problem of Works In Progress appearing as finished products, having people buy it before it's complete.
In technology, applied cryptography, again, but this time with an algorithm that deciphers ciphers, including a really complex one describing the initiation ritual of a hundreds-year-old secret society.
The adult toy company Real Touch just removed DRM from their products, which allows anyone to develop both video content and control for the devices - which is one of their signature items for that particular (expensive) toy. More details at the link. Obviously not safe for work. Another good example, however, of how removing access barriers expands the likelihood that your product will be used.
Large-scale productions of energy from waste matter appears to be juuuuust about ready to go.
ISPs are ready to roll out a program designed to restrict your access and bandwidth if you get accused of copyright infringement.
And a lot about search, recall, plagarism, and a few other things.
Think about this: TurnItIn, a service that specializes in spotting plagarism, released some statistical data about the type and degree of plagarism in the papers they spot. Surpisingly enough, they still get mostly verbatim copy of everything. Which means most people willing to plagarize aren't trying to do it intelligently.
So, if we want more intelligent searching and/or plagarizing and essay-writing, we have to rethink some things, like letting go of the Boolean operators and teaching students and searchers how to evaluate and follow provenance of sources, even in places like Wikipedia. Especially Wikipedia, where a class on hoaxes has been trying to consstruct and fool the Internet, using the credibility of Wikipedia to try and stitch together their stories. When they tried to get a subreddit to buy in on it, however, the hoax failed horribly - the expertise of the various redditors picked up on enough details to get suspicious. So, also, some additional help on how to determine if someone making a science claim is speaking the truth.
Then there's also the need to keep people safe on-line from their peers as well as strangers, because, much like in real life, there's more danger from people you know than from strangers in the bushes.
If you really want to make your Google-fu rock, use the operators that Google provides to narrow, widen, and contextualize your search. (Or, get your doctorate in Googling.)
Into opinions where we see how aggressive policing of the geek subculture produces accusations of "fake" geek girls.
Last for tonight, a portrait and all the reasons why it should be there, portraits drawn in latte foam, and vintage action figures for 80s-type horror movie characters.
Also, - Ooh, shiny!
Let's start with the creative process at work, as well as meditations on the voice, its lack, or other situations where the voice changes, trivia and notes about songs, and some recommended books about the history of reading. There's also the question of what happened to the first immigrant passing through Ellis Island.
Out in the world today, Israel and Palestine are fighting again. With the inevitable deaths of civilians, innocents, and plenty of other people in awful and inhumane ways.
the Indian equivalent of conservative propaganda in schools - a textbook claims that meat eaters are liars, cheaters, and more likely to commit crimes, including sexual crimes.
In Ireland, a woman was denied an abortion and died of blood poisoning. This is what happens when you do not even allow for life/health of the mother exceptions. You get a dead child and a dead mother. Neither of which sounds particularly pro-life.
Domestically, Willard "Mitt" Romney, defeated political candidate, claimed Barack Obama won because he bribed black and brown people, the poor, and women with the promises of free stuff to get them to vote for him. Which only confirms the "47 percent" idea that was captured on camera is what Mitt Romney really thought about people. It's not just Mitt Romney, though. the CEO of Hostess blamed the unions of the workers for the company's bankruptcy, after tripling their own salary. Which is joining the long line of corporate CEOs throwing tantrums and doing their very best to make sure they don't have to actually provide health care for their workers, including threatening layoffs, cutting hours from workers, tellingthe customer to stiff their servers on tips if they want to complain about the cost of the food going up because of the Affordable Care act, and grudgingly increasing the price of their pizza by 10 cents per unit to cover the projected costs of the Affordable Care Act.
Paul Ryan attributed the victory for the President to his "urban" turnout, which was the beginning of several whistles to the base about much the same topics that Mr. Romney talked about openly as the reasons for the Obama victory. Elsewhere, some white evangelicals don't understand why black voters didn't fall in line with the white evangelicals' candidate, claiming that President Obama quite clearly offended their religious values. Because he's pro-choice, never mind all the things he's done for the least of our people. Ah, yes, and because he, like a lot of other African-Americans, supports marriage equality.
After the conservative media spun the idea that Susan Rice, ambassador to the United Nations, was involved in some sort of cover-up of the Benghazi terror attack, President Obama said conservatives should direct their ire at him instead of someone who was doing her job. Speaking of the conservative media, they've been very hard at work making sure the people in their purview are in a fact-free zone.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, when asked about whether or not the age of the Democratic leadership was stifling younger Democrats from taking leadership roles, described the question accurately as "offensive". The reporter persisted, not understanding, until he got an answer from the Minority Leader. It's like asking whether or not the fact that Ms. Pelosi is a woman is stifling leadership roles for men.
Oh, hey, did you see that the Southern Poverty Law Center started designating Men's Rights Advocates as hate groups? If you're not sure what an MRA is (because you have had the fortune of not being female and not having had to hear an MRA complaint about how women are making men's lives miserable), then you can see many of the common positions advanced by MRAs, and their appropriate refutations. If you'd like an example of what a MRA might look like outside of a clinical environment, observe this tale of a movie reviewer who found himself subjected to new editorial control, based entirely on whether or not the movie had a strong female protagonist in it. The new boss reads as an MRA to me.
To counter that, the Echidne of the Snakes offers web links and biographies of United States feminist literature.
A Florida Republican candidate demanded a recount to avoid having to concede, despite clearly having lost the race. In Wisconsin, state legislators backed a bill to arrest any federal entities that want to implement the Affordable Care Act.
Less major party political, but still political, take a look at the Pew study about how people use their libraries with regard to e-books. In comparison, the Librarian in Black says we should divorce ourselves from e-books until the publishing houses decide to play fair with their consumers and libraries. And then there's the potential problem of Works In Progress appearing as finished products, having people buy it before it's complete.
In technology, applied cryptography, again, but this time with an algorithm that deciphers ciphers, including a really complex one describing the initiation ritual of a hundreds-year-old secret society.
The adult toy company Real Touch just removed DRM from their products, which allows anyone to develop both video content and control for the devices - which is one of their signature items for that particular (expensive) toy. More details at the link. Obviously not safe for work. Another good example, however, of how removing access barriers expands the likelihood that your product will be used.
Large-scale productions of energy from waste matter appears to be juuuuust about ready to go.
ISPs are ready to roll out a program designed to restrict your access and bandwidth if you get accused of copyright infringement.
And a lot about search, recall, plagarism, and a few other things.
Think about this: TurnItIn, a service that specializes in spotting plagarism, released some statistical data about the type and degree of plagarism in the papers they spot. Surpisingly enough, they still get mostly verbatim copy of everything. Which means most people willing to plagarize aren't trying to do it intelligently.
So, if we want more intelligent searching and/or plagarizing and essay-writing, we have to rethink some things, like letting go of the Boolean operators and teaching students and searchers how to evaluate and follow provenance of sources, even in places like Wikipedia. Especially Wikipedia, where a class on hoaxes has been trying to consstruct and fool the Internet, using the credibility of Wikipedia to try and stitch together their stories. When they tried to get a subreddit to buy in on it, however, the hoax failed horribly - the expertise of the various redditors picked up on enough details to get suspicious. So, also, some additional help on how to determine if someone making a science claim is speaking the truth.
Then there's also the need to keep people safe on-line from their peers as well as strangers, because, much like in real life, there's more danger from people you know than from strangers in the bushes.
If you really want to make your Google-fu rock, use the operators that Google provides to narrow, widen, and contextualize your search. (Or, get your doctorate in Googling.)
Into opinions where we see how aggressive policing of the geek subculture produces accusations of "fake" geek girls.
Last for tonight, a portrait and all the reasons why it should be there, portraits drawn in latte foam, and vintage action figures for 80s-type horror movie characters.
Also, - Ooh, shiny!
