Coming up for air!
Dec. 2nd, 2006 02:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptOr something like that. Did what I wanted to do today for the last parts of work, turned in what’s due up, and am ready to get everything in order and done for this upcoming week. So I think I’m going to survive into the next semester. That means... assuming nothing weird happens, I have one semester left of university. And it might be the most important one in the whole time.
Dec. 1 was World AIDS day, and on such a day, we find out that South Africa may finally be getting on the right path to HIV prevention. This is good. We’d also like the United States to help prevent AIDS spread by promoting safe sex. It can scream “abstain” as much as it likes, but if it does, it should drill into the heads of its kids the idea that if you’re going to have sex, have safe sex.
Chocolate may be the new aspirin. And probably more tasty than those pills, too.
Perhaps a lesson or a warning to American Homeland Security, who want to make sure every citizen has their papers to travel in or out of the country, it's not that hard to find fakes that will pass border security. (At least, in the UK. I don’t doubt that people could forge proper passports, no matter what DHS put together as a security package.) Of course, with the way that Homeland Security is assigning secret "terrorist probability" scores to all travelers, and deciding to install ever more sensitive X-ray machines for bomb detection, even with good, legitimate documents, you might be sent away to a place you can’t appeal from, based on a score you can’t see and can’t appeal.
On a related note (if you can see the fnords, I suspect, but related nonetheless), read the reasoning behind why a man set himself on fire in protest of the current society. Much that he has to say is true, and reading it does two things - makes me hope that the people in government grow a conscience and take those words to heart, and despair somewhat that the populace is unlikely to do anything to fix their own problems. Even I’m mostly unwilling to start the riot. I don’t know if it’s really a country of people looking at each other, waiting for someone to start, or whether a significant enough part doesn’t really care enough that any efforts to start will die from lack of support. Since the Federal Election Comission is asking people to report their own indiscretions, with the reward of paying a smaller fine, you can guess where my opinion goes. Perhaps the creation of a temporary TAZ, based on the idea of the rotating three-month utopia might get a lot of people in the right mood to aim for a more permanent version of the utopia.
A personal pet-peeve of mine. I read this article about Yale Library's need to increase security after rare maps were stolen, and what comes to mind first is “Yeah, it’s necessary, but why should any library, whose principles are based on access to everyone, have to beef up security? Ah, yes, because there is a statistically significant part of the populace that has no qualms about stealing material from a library, be it pages or works that don’t fit with their ideological views (for which I firmly consign them to the appropriate place of their Hell) or because of the value that some of the collections have to private individuals and collectors (for which I consign them to the fate of having their own lives sold at auction, with a maximum bid of one dollar). Really, people. As publicly funded institutions, when you steal from a library, you’re stealing from yourself. And from the person who might have needed that book, or that page, or that map. And you’re giving the librarians extra worry on top of what they already have. It’s very ideologically aggravating for an institution that prides itself on the fact that anyone can access its resources to have to adopt restrictive security policies so that people can access those resources, rather than having idiots spirit away with the stuff.
You know about the penny-stock spam that clogs the inboxes of us all these days? Know how much of an annoyance it is? Imagine what it's like to be the company that's being promoted in the spam. Not only do you get your good name besmirched, you get the ire of all the people who call and say ”Why are you spamming me like this?!“ It’s got to suck. Wish that spam like that could be cut off at the source.
"Animal Terrorism" act signed into law, imposing penalites on those that cause harm to places where animal testing may occur. Perhaps in a show of solidarity for the people against the law, one of the killer whales attacked its trainer not too long ago. (Anthropomorphism? Why not? It could be worse...)
SCOTUS agrees to hear whether or not someone can challenge the constitutionality of the Faith-Based Initiatives. Not whether the initiatives themselves are constitutional, but whether or not someone has the right, as a taxpayer, to sue on constitutional grounds. Maybe they’ll actually rule on the actual constitutionality if they let the challenge go forward.
It was a big rock that did in the dinosaurs, a new report claims. That would be, to put it mildly, a bad day to be alive on Earth. Along with the times that followed. The iridium band and a crater in the Yucatan that dates to about the same time gives some weight to the theory. But it’s not completely resolved yet. (For some reason, I’m now trying to figure out why FLEET needed to disseminate such a story... perhaps to cover up another of the Gunnery Sergeant’s indiscretions with the orbiting laser platforms?
BitTorrent scores $20million U.S. in financing. Here’s hoping that it’s still available for the other uses that we’re accustomed to, without needing to worry about our BT clients suddenly having DRM or anything like that. With the government supporting an RIAA position that could potentially mean the act of putting any file, whether you own the copyright or not, on the Internet becoming illegal, BitTorrent may not have enough time to sell out properly. (The Inquirer has a similar document.)
A USA Today columnist objects to what he calls "propogandistic" material for young children. Apparently, because Happy Feet and And Tango Makes Three don’t trumpet from the parapets that they have certain views, they can be accused of skullduggery and trying to influence the minds of young children. Having read And Tango Makes Three myself (a user suggested that it be reviewed and/or removed from the shelves at one of the public libraries I worked at over the summer), The commentators take Mr. Medved to task for not taking shots at both sides, as well as praising, both sarcasitcally and seriously, as best I can tell, Mr. Medved’s point of view and their own distrust and disgust of the liberal/progressive component of society, affirming that there’s some insidious plot somewhere by progressives to turn the nation’s children into little progressive clones. I’m sure he’d be just as critical of, say, conservative or religiously fundamentalist institutions that disguise their agenda but are aiming to produce little conservative clones, right? Well, at the very least he’s not accusing children of performing witchcraft against their relatives, As American Samizdat adds snidely, ”Fortunately, things are totally different here in the USA. There are no teenagers kicked out of their parent’s house because their parent’s superstition can’t accept them being gay. And all of the babies born because their mother’s superstition can’t accept abortion are adopted immediately by loving, capable families. Thank goodness that in the United States, superstition doesn’t breed homeless children“. A-men. We’re all past that nonsense about how Bronze Age books interpreted by charismatic, if clueless, priests can dictate every facet of our lives, right?
In other ”Think of the Children!“ ideas, A PTA letter urging involvement is not taken well by some of the parents. I suspect they weren’t prepared for a big a dose of potential truth, and it shocked them. (No, I don’t actually believe that not participating in the PTA will have your kids grow up to be thieves, drug addicts, or prostitutes. But then again, I also assume that the parents is actively involved in the education of their child, so that may be why.)
The fun bits for tonight start with Flickr Time - a clock that displays Flickr photos as the blocks that it builds the clock with. Switching gears entirely, we then note that the annual Bad Sex Prize has been awarded, meaning there is, indeed, a standard for the lowest depictions of literary sex in the world. Perhaps he could have benefited from Rosina Lippi's guide to writing good sex scenes. (The link goes to part one of the multi-part series. The later parts get NSFW, or essential to your work, depending on what you do for work.) Finally, at least in sex talk, scientists are developing the idea of a spray-on condom. I wonder waht the applications of that are going to be, especially if it takes longer to spray on that put on a regular rubber.
Getting away form sex for the moment, there’s also the 33 meter-deep pool, which has it’s own accompanying philosophy and acquatics exercises.
And now, the most fun part of the whole routine - going to bed and sleeping on things. Yay, sleep! Maybe tomorrow, I’ll be able to take the advice of my music selection.
Dec. 1 was World AIDS day, and on such a day, we find out that South Africa may finally be getting on the right path to HIV prevention. This is good. We’d also like the United States to help prevent AIDS spread by promoting safe sex. It can scream “abstain” as much as it likes, but if it does, it should drill into the heads of its kids the idea that if you’re going to have sex, have safe sex.
Chocolate may be the new aspirin. And probably more tasty than those pills, too.
Perhaps a lesson or a warning to American Homeland Security, who want to make sure every citizen has their papers to travel in or out of the country, it's not that hard to find fakes that will pass border security. (At least, in the UK. I don’t doubt that people could forge proper passports, no matter what DHS put together as a security package.) Of course, with the way that Homeland Security is assigning secret "terrorist probability" scores to all travelers, and deciding to install ever more sensitive X-ray machines for bomb detection, even with good, legitimate documents, you might be sent away to a place you can’t appeal from, based on a score you can’t see and can’t appeal.
On a related note (if you can see the fnords, I suspect, but related nonetheless), read the reasoning behind why a man set himself on fire in protest of the current society. Much that he has to say is true, and reading it does two things - makes me hope that the people in government grow a conscience and take those words to heart, and despair somewhat that the populace is unlikely to do anything to fix their own problems. Even I’m mostly unwilling to start the riot. I don’t know if it’s really a country of people looking at each other, waiting for someone to start, or whether a significant enough part doesn’t really care enough that any efforts to start will die from lack of support. Since the Federal Election Comission is asking people to report their own indiscretions, with the reward of paying a smaller fine, you can guess where my opinion goes. Perhaps the creation of a temporary TAZ, based on the idea of the rotating three-month utopia might get a lot of people in the right mood to aim for a more permanent version of the utopia.
A personal pet-peeve of mine. I read this article about Yale Library's need to increase security after rare maps were stolen, and what comes to mind first is “Yeah, it’s necessary, but why should any library, whose principles are based on access to everyone, have to beef up security? Ah, yes, because there is a statistically significant part of the populace that has no qualms about stealing material from a library, be it pages or works that don’t fit with their ideological views (for which I firmly consign them to the appropriate place of their Hell) or because of the value that some of the collections have to private individuals and collectors (for which I consign them to the fate of having their own lives sold at auction, with a maximum bid of one dollar). Really, people. As publicly funded institutions, when you steal from a library, you’re stealing from yourself. And from the person who might have needed that book, or that page, or that map. And you’re giving the librarians extra worry on top of what they already have. It’s very ideologically aggravating for an institution that prides itself on the fact that anyone can access its resources to have to adopt restrictive security policies so that people can access those resources, rather than having idiots spirit away with the stuff.
You know about the penny-stock spam that clogs the inboxes of us all these days? Know how much of an annoyance it is? Imagine what it's like to be the company that's being promoted in the spam. Not only do you get your good name besmirched, you get the ire of all the people who call and say ”Why are you spamming me like this?!“ It’s got to suck. Wish that spam like that could be cut off at the source.
"Animal Terrorism" act signed into law, imposing penalites on those that cause harm to places where animal testing may occur. Perhaps in a show of solidarity for the people against the law, one of the killer whales attacked its trainer not too long ago. (Anthropomorphism? Why not? It could be worse...)
SCOTUS agrees to hear whether or not someone can challenge the constitutionality of the Faith-Based Initiatives. Not whether the initiatives themselves are constitutional, but whether or not someone has the right, as a taxpayer, to sue on constitutional grounds. Maybe they’ll actually rule on the actual constitutionality if they let the challenge go forward.
It was a big rock that did in the dinosaurs, a new report claims. That would be, to put it mildly, a bad day to be alive on Earth. Along with the times that followed. The iridium band and a crater in the Yucatan that dates to about the same time gives some weight to the theory. But it’s not completely resolved yet. (For some reason, I’m now trying to figure out why FLEET needed to disseminate such a story... perhaps to cover up another of the Gunnery Sergeant’s indiscretions with the orbiting laser platforms?
BitTorrent scores $20million U.S. in financing. Here’s hoping that it’s still available for the other uses that we’re accustomed to, without needing to worry about our BT clients suddenly having DRM or anything like that. With the government supporting an RIAA position that could potentially mean the act of putting any file, whether you own the copyright or not, on the Internet becoming illegal, BitTorrent may not have enough time to sell out properly. (The Inquirer has a similar document.)
A USA Today columnist objects to what he calls "propogandistic" material for young children. Apparently, because Happy Feet and And Tango Makes Three don’t trumpet from the parapets that they have certain views, they can be accused of skullduggery and trying to influence the minds of young children. Having read And Tango Makes Three myself (a user suggested that it be reviewed and/or removed from the shelves at one of the public libraries I worked at over the summer), The commentators take Mr. Medved to task for not taking shots at both sides, as well as praising, both sarcasitcally and seriously, as best I can tell, Mr. Medved’s point of view and their own distrust and disgust of the liberal/progressive component of society, affirming that there’s some insidious plot somewhere by progressives to turn the nation’s children into little progressive clones. I’m sure he’d be just as critical of, say, conservative or religiously fundamentalist institutions that disguise their agenda but are aiming to produce little conservative clones, right? Well, at the very least he’s not accusing children of performing witchcraft against their relatives, As American Samizdat adds snidely, ”Fortunately, things are totally different here in the USA. There are no teenagers kicked out of their parent’s house because their parent’s superstition can’t accept them being gay. And all of the babies born because their mother’s superstition can’t accept abortion are adopted immediately by loving, capable families. Thank goodness that in the United States, superstition doesn’t breed homeless children“. A-men. We’re all past that nonsense about how Bronze Age books interpreted by charismatic, if clueless, priests can dictate every facet of our lives, right?
In other ”Think of the Children!“ ideas, A PTA letter urging involvement is not taken well by some of the parents. I suspect they weren’t prepared for a big a dose of potential truth, and it shocked them. (No, I don’t actually believe that not participating in the PTA will have your kids grow up to be thieves, drug addicts, or prostitutes. But then again, I also assume that the parents is actively involved in the education of their child, so that may be why.)
The fun bits for tonight start with Flickr Time - a clock that displays Flickr photos as the blocks that it builds the clock with. Switching gears entirely, we then note that the annual Bad Sex Prize has been awarded, meaning there is, indeed, a standard for the lowest depictions of literary sex in the world. Perhaps he could have benefited from Rosina Lippi's guide to writing good sex scenes. (The link goes to part one of the multi-part series. The later parts get NSFW, or essential to your work, depending on what you do for work.) Finally, at least in sex talk, scientists are developing the idea of a spray-on condom. I wonder waht the applications of that are going to be, especially if it takes longer to spray on that put on a regular rubber.
Getting away form sex for the moment, there’s also the 33 meter-deep pool, which has it’s own accompanying philosophy and acquatics exercises.
And now, the most fun part of the whole routine - going to bed and sleeping on things. Yay, sleep! Maybe tomorrow, I’ll be able to take the advice of my music selection.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 05:44 pm (UTC)Sex story - sorry, didn't sit well with me. It reads half like a rape, and mostly makes the guy out to be an ass. Not the type of sex scene this girl wants to be reading in her stories, thanks. I will admit, I'm rubbish at writing sex, so much so that I've only written two sex...no, three...stories, and each time it pretty much embarrassed me. Hmm. Maybe I ought to try my hand at it again. Any volunteers to be my beta?
Bad sex award:
Pynchon's long-awaited, 1,000-page novel Against the Day was nominated for a scene involving a spaniel that ends: "Reader, she bit him.
But if the judges/nominators bother to read Pynchon's work...that's HOW HE WRITES. I mean, that's his whole hook, what gets people to read his stuff (though I will admit to never finishing Mason & Dixon) Bad sex scene or not, it's not so much BAD as in the way it was written, because it was probably deliberately written bad.
”Fortunately, things are totally different here in the USA. There are no teenagers kicked out of their parent’s house because their parent’s superstition can’t accept them being gay. And all of the babies born because their mother’s superstition can’t accept abortion are adopted immediately by loving, capable families. Thank goodness that in the United States, superstition doesn’t breed homeless children“.
Uhm, I disagree. Someone is looking to the USA through rose colored glasses if they can't see that kids DO get thrown out of their homes for being gay, and the orphanages are FULL OF CHILDREN who haven't been adopted yet. There was a statistic somewhere that even said there were more homeless children in the USA than homeless adults (stemming from the whole single parent with multiple kids being left homeless, i'm sure). OPEN YOUR EYES. I'm glad you're doing something to help out the Conga, but for goddesses sake, take a look at the situations here, and maybe try to help those kids out too?
Happy Feet - I haven't seen it, but I also thought it was a pleasant cartoon about penguins. I'm kind of happy to see that it isn't all sunshine and daisies. Perhaps this is the type of message we need our children to see. Certainty March of the Penguins was anything but happy-go-lucky, and yet parents took their kids to see that! They didn't have any problems with showing their kids the harsh realities of penguins trying to survive the long winter and how some of them don't survive....what makes a cartoon any different? or is it because it's a cartoon and is supposed to be happy?
"The internet needs to be shut down". HA! No, the RIAA needs to loosen their britches is that they need to do. Really, they aren't losing any money if I send you a single MP3 of a song I think you'll like. Even Napstser started being a subscription service a while back. I like the Canadians take on things much better.
stupid char limits.
Date: 2006-12-02 05:47 pm (UTC)And there's the problem. They don't bother to check and see if the person actually purchased their mp3s, or ripped them themselves, and the problem with sites like Kazaa, Limewire, and WinMX is that when you load up the program, unless you tell it NOT to share anything, it pulls every single media file you have for sharing, and some people don't realize that.
I tend to share music files that are of live shows (mostly BNL) because those aren't available to the public anyway, and I know BNL to have an open trading policy. What happens in those situations if the "investigator" doesn't bother to check where the files are from or anything like that?
on to animal terrorism:
"The bill reads: if you do something illegal that affects the economics of a company then you can be punished."
Basically, you can't even PROTEST is what it sounds like. Now, I'm not a PETA flag waving vegetarian, or even a PETA supporter, but I am conscious of animal testing and try my best to get products that haven't been tested on animals. I can understand people who want to protest against this, and as long as their not doing something like setting fire to the facility, why can't they picket outside? And shouldn't we be worried about other forms of terrorism a bit more?
A Scottish "Utopia" you say? Hmmm. interesting, though why can you only stay three months?
the man that set himself on fire - was that his suicide note? given the "Without fear I go now to God - your future is what you will choose today." it sort of reads like one. That's a bit sad.
okay, i think i'm done....
Re: stupid char limits.
Date: 2006-12-02 06:22 pm (UTC)AmSam was being sarcastic - I thought the setup was enough to point that out, but as you can see, I've added a little more to prevent confusion.
As for Happy Feet, we notice a trend in animated features - those that do well are not saccharine children's fare, but have material in them that is more mature, trusting the audience to understand, try to understand, or talk to their parents about it. The current prevailing assumption in the United States is that cartoons are for children, and cartoons for children should be cleansed of anything that might have controversy. (Of course, violence is perfectly acceptable, so put that on in spades.)
The RIAA (and the MPAA) have had their heads up their asses for a very long time now. This is no different, except, as always, they're trying to get the government to validate their old model, their monopoly, and punish people who innovate.
Regarding animal terrorism: Since there's money involved, the government is generally going to come down on the side of those that have the money. In the current environment, where someone telling the President they disagree with him might mean spending a night in jail, it's not that much of a surprise that such stiff penalties would result from those who "interfere" in the rights of businesses to exploit people and animals for their own profits.
You can only stay in Utopia's for three months at a time so that ideas continue to be fresh and innovation continues to happen, because the mix of people is forever-changing. It prevents (or tries to) stagnation or the establishment of an orthodoxy of thought.
And yeah, that was his suicide note.
Re: stupid char limits.
Date: 2006-12-02 06:30 pm (UTC)Eh, I'm sure I'm the only one who got confused. I'm good at doing that.
I don't really think cartoons are just for children, and I don't mean things like Beavis & Butthead or Southpark, though those are good examples - Even an afternoon of watching the Disney Channel or Nicelodeon yields more jokes geared towards the adults than the kids. I can go back and watch a kid's cartoon with one of my cousins and laugh at places they wouldn't be. I think that the assumption that cartoons are for kids is what causes people to get up in arms when there is a cartoon that's NOT happy and sunshiney, though.
It makes sense to only stay in the Utopia for three months, given that they're calling it a utopia...but I'd love to have my own little hippie commune where it's me and those I care about living together in harmony, you know?
I still think I have the right to protest whatever the heck I want, as long as I'm not physically causing harm to other people.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 06:38 pm (UTC)Much like the library, cartoons, comic books, and the like have dangerous ideas in them. If you want to be sure you're not exposed, you have to abstain. But much like abstaining from sex, it's probably not too fun to abstain from reading.
You and I believe we have the right to protest. Our government disagrees with us, and will bring the police down on us if we're protesting in the wrong places or protesting too effectively.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 06:43 pm (UTC)*nods* but aren't most manga in the "young adult"/teen section? I mean, that's not to say that a youger kid isn't going to look at it, but by the time someone is in their teens, I think they're able to handle the images.
On protesting - that brings up something else- how is it that your group is able to protest without getting in trouble, then?
Abstaining from reading? HECK NO! Really, that's the worst thing someone could do to themselves.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 03:42 pm (UTC)Most protest groups survive because the government doesn't want to go through the hassle of arresting them, plus, if protest groups do get arrested without extraordinarily good legal reasons, then it gathers ill will, and there might be more protesters the next time. As unfortunate as it sounds, in America, "out of sight, out of mind" works for the majority of the populace. They might have issues, but they get ignored by media and by government, and so those issues never find friends.
With the way some parents raise their children, where the parents have to approve everything, even for the teenagers, they're telling them not to read, nor develop a like of reading, that reading is for school and for church and for "approved" books. I think that's sad.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 05:07 pm (UTC)*nods* I'm aware of books having more adult themes than others, but I still don't see that as a reason to NOT let your children read them. Like i was earlier to you, you're preaching to the choir. I've read a ton of books ob the banned book list, not so much because they were banned, but because they looked interesting to me.
Speaking of books, we need to figure out a schedule for Eragon ...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 08:24 pm (UTC)