Yesterday's entry.
Nov. 5th, 2006 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptI know what happens if I try to condense two days worth of material into one entry: "tl; dr". Although the same could probably be said for one day's entry for me in a lot of cases, but that's because I usually have a fountain of links and things spilling over and all rushing my way and threatening to drown me in their goodness. So this is what would have appeared last night, had I not gone and watched Seven Samurai with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greyweirdo last night (good film, by the way. For people expecting something like the Crazy 88 from Kill Bill, there's going to be no appeal. But if you appreciate tactics, films about honor and Doing What's Right and a certain standard of historical accuracy in your fights, then this movie is definitely worth seeing.), and then proceeded to chat about issues numerous until odd hours of the morning.
So let's consult the spirits to see whether it was a good idea. First question - can we crush many girls' hearts by revealing to them that Doogie Howser is a homosexual? "Answer Hazy. Try again Later." Hrm, maybe we should try again, not in the Magic 8-Ball style, but with the homemade Ouija board. If the answers still aren't to our liking, or there's someone in the house convinced that it's a tool for luring people into possession by malevolent forces, then we can use the handcrafted morning star to smash it into bits, right? If what we were consulting were something like this pigheaded cyclops, then I'd probably want to take a couple whacks myself.
A very strong WTF for this story: A gent pulls an awl out of his arse at gunpoint, according to the headline. We find out that he had it for some undisclosed reason, and removed it by himself after he had been arrested for indecent exposure (wanking off in a public place). The police weren't taking chances, so he pulled it out while they had their guns on him. What I want to know is why that person has an awl in his arse in the first place.
Commendable camera work in this flash that shows just what bored engineers and geeks will do with their time. Office Goldberg looks like it got taken all in one shot, with sufficient pauses built into the machine for the cameraperson to get situated. In much similar silly veins, the top 10 reasons to convert from the Church of the Subgenius to Pastafarianism.
A foolproof way of making sure your drives don't have sensitive data left on them - slag them in a crucible.
In International affairs - assuming that automatic appeals fail, Saddam and his top advisers will hang. The court has spoken, and people are second-guessing as to whether this was a foreordained result. Anyone who's been following the trial want to comment about how much Saddam has admitted to or justified that would get him hung in an impartial court? In other bits, if you bank with HSBC, realize they loan money to states the U.S. says sponsor terrorism, with the implication that there are plenty of other businesses that happily sell and buy from those same nations. The free market imposes its will, I suppose, in pursuit of profit, that even things such as sanctions and official disapprovals will be stepped around. Gives some credence, perhaps, to the idea that "Y'know, if you stopping handing them money hand over fist, you might be able to work some change." Last scary bit for international - 2005 was a record greenhouse gas year. Kind of explains why the climate is shifting around in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, doesn't it?
Domestically, be reminded: This is one of the faces of "family values" voters helped by "faith-based initiatives". In hoping for Christian behavior, she seems to have gotten everything but instead. Douglas Rushkoff adds on why it's time to go beyond sheeplike "true believers" into people who take charge and actually read and extract useful information from the mythologies and stories of their past, without having to believe them literally or even historically true, word for word for every God-forsaken word. And to put the nail in the coffin on what we really need to start voting and working for in this country, America 101 says, in language backed by damning facts, that we need to stop saying "Wouldn't it be nice if schools had all the money they needed and the air force had to hold a bake sale to buy new jets?" and start making it happen. Education, infrastructure, deficit spending, and more, all covered, and all part of the argument that if we want the country to succeed, we need to pour a lot more money into making sure that everyone has the basics. If the country wants to turn itself around, the number-one priority on all state and federal budgets should be to ensure that all public schools in the country are adequately funded, their instructors are paid comparable, if not more, than their educated peers, the infrastructure, including roadways and power grids, can handle the increasing loads being demanded of them, and spending within our limits so that we can pay down our debts. The sooner, the better, because if we wait, it only means we cut deeper when we have to shape up. America 101 also says that the gap between the rich and the poor has to come down, the government shouldn't be giving them more breaks and ways to avoid taxation, and to make the rich pony up their millions and billions to where it's most needed - not in paying tuition for private school, but in ensuring that the public school has textbooks from this decade, rather than 1950. The government needs to go progressive again and not only reaffirm its belief that all persons are created equal, but find and put its money where its mouth is. No ifs, ands, or buts.
greyweirdo last night (good film, by the way. For people expecting something like the Crazy 88 from Kill Bill, there's going to be no appeal. But if you appreciate tactics, films about honor and Doing What's Right and a certain standard of historical accuracy in your fights, then this movie is definitely worth seeing.), and then proceeded to chat about issues numerous until odd hours of the morning. So let's consult the spirits to see whether it was a good idea. First question - can we crush many girls' hearts by revealing to them that Doogie Howser is a homosexual? "Answer Hazy. Try again Later." Hrm, maybe we should try again, not in the Magic 8-Ball style, but with the homemade Ouija board. If the answers still aren't to our liking, or there's someone in the house convinced that it's a tool for luring people into possession by malevolent forces, then we can use the handcrafted morning star to smash it into bits, right? If what we were consulting were something like this pigheaded cyclops, then I'd probably want to take a couple whacks myself.
A very strong WTF for this story: A gent pulls an awl out of his arse at gunpoint, according to the headline. We find out that he had it for some undisclosed reason, and removed it by himself after he had been arrested for indecent exposure (wanking off in a public place). The police weren't taking chances, so he pulled it out while they had their guns on him. What I want to know is why that person has an awl in his arse in the first place.
Commendable camera work in this flash that shows just what bored engineers and geeks will do with their time. Office Goldberg looks like it got taken all in one shot, with sufficient pauses built into the machine for the cameraperson to get situated. In much similar silly veins, the top 10 reasons to convert from the Church of the Subgenius to Pastafarianism.
A foolproof way of making sure your drives don't have sensitive data left on them - slag them in a crucible.
In International affairs - assuming that automatic appeals fail, Saddam and his top advisers will hang. The court has spoken, and people are second-guessing as to whether this was a foreordained result. Anyone who's been following the trial want to comment about how much Saddam has admitted to or justified that would get him hung in an impartial court? In other bits, if you bank with HSBC, realize they loan money to states the U.S. says sponsor terrorism, with the implication that there are plenty of other businesses that happily sell and buy from those same nations. The free market imposes its will, I suppose, in pursuit of profit, that even things such as sanctions and official disapprovals will be stepped around. Gives some credence, perhaps, to the idea that "Y'know, if you stopping handing them money hand over fist, you might be able to work some change." Last scary bit for international - 2005 was a record greenhouse gas year. Kind of explains why the climate is shifting around in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, doesn't it?
Domestically, be reminded: This is one of the faces of "family values" voters helped by "faith-based initiatives". In hoping for Christian behavior, she seems to have gotten everything but instead. Douglas Rushkoff adds on why it's time to go beyond sheeplike "true believers" into people who take charge and actually read and extract useful information from the mythologies and stories of their past, without having to believe them literally or even historically true, word for word for every God-forsaken word. And to put the nail in the coffin on what we really need to start voting and working for in this country, America 101 says, in language backed by damning facts, that we need to stop saying "Wouldn't it be nice if schools had all the money they needed and the air force had to hold a bake sale to buy new jets?" and start making it happen. Education, infrastructure, deficit spending, and more, all covered, and all part of the argument that if we want the country to succeed, we need to pour a lot more money into making sure that everyone has the basics. If the country wants to turn itself around, the number-one priority on all state and federal budgets should be to ensure that all public schools in the country are adequately funded, their instructors are paid comparable, if not more, than their educated peers, the infrastructure, including roadways and power grids, can handle the increasing loads being demanded of them, and spending within our limits so that we can pay down our debts. The sooner, the better, because if we wait, it only means we cut deeper when we have to shape up. America 101 also says that the gap between the rich and the poor has to come down, the government shouldn't be giving them more breaks and ways to avoid taxation, and to make the rich pony up their millions and billions to where it's most needed - not in paying tuition for private school, but in ensuring that the public school has textbooks from this decade, rather than 1950. The government needs to go progressive again and not only reaffirm its belief that all persons are created equal, but find and put its money where its mouth is. No ifs, ands, or buts.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 06:38 pm (UTC)Bush bigger threat than Kim Jong-il
no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 10:33 pm (UTC)Yarha, Curious
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 01:05 am (UTC)I'm not disagreeing that this might be the case, it's just that your links don't prove it.
Yarha, O Ye of Little Proof
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 10:26 pm (UTC)"That's a big twinkie."
-Ghostbusters
Too bad my job would go, but heck! It'd be rather amusing right before I was laid off. The military finances an awful lot of research; it's amazing. I'm not saying that's a good thing.
Yarha, Twinkies-for-Bombs or Twinkies-as-Bombs?
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 01:14 am (UTC)The whole self-routing packet scheme was so the network could continue functioning even though large parts of it were blown away by a nuke.
The truth is, so much of the good technology stuff we have today was funded by defense research. Commercial research just doesn't have access to the deep collective pockets of the American tax-payer.
The expensive stuff is when they churn out actual aircraft, but then if they can't churn out aircraft, why would they fund research for aircraft gizmos?
It's a catch 22.
Yarha, Catch Caliber .22
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 03:10 am (UTC)My friend Steve teaches in inner-city baltimore, it's so bad that he doesn't even have enough text books for all the kids to be able to do homework. He doesn't have enough desks in his classroom for each student to have a *seat*. The kids use city busses to get to school, so if the city bus is too full, it miht not stop to pick them up, making them late for school. Oh, and he was actually told by a "guidance counselor" that a 60 question scan-tron test was "too long".
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 03:45 am (UTC)From one guy came a quote of timeless and mythical proportions:
"I don't think he was actually trying to conceal a weapon. I think he just wanted something shoved up his ass while he masturbated on a tree stump. It's one of those cases of having the wrong thing shoved up your ass at the wrong time."
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 04:20 am (UTC)