Another Sunday down.
Jan. 8th, 2007 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptToday was another semi-sick day, although I did get more medicine and a humidifier to attempt to keep my nasal passages clear and unblocked. The humidifier’s cute, too. It’s a penguin.
Leading off tonight, we have worst. high school. analogies. ever.
Continuing the trend of dim bulbs at work, though, we get Pelosi saying Congress won't fund an escalation, but she and the Dems do support sending in more troops. (Link has Flash) The progressive wing of America is not going to be happy about that, since they probably elected Democrats on the proposition that they would start getting troops out, not adding more potential corpses. At least Pelosi’s being honest about not being the perfect progressive. Some pundits on the conservative side, as The American Conservative notes, are having some rather selective amnesia about their positions. There’s also the spycopter in the skies over Jackson, Mississippi to wonder about - what it can and can’t do in terms of surveillance and what it’s actually going to do in regard to privacy are questions that really need to be sorted out before the chopper takes flight.
Getting dimmer still, In Iraq, a bill that the U.S. is helping to draw up would give major oil companies 30-year contracts to Iraqi oil and keep up to 75 percent of the profits until drilling costs are recovered. Afterward, they’ll have a mere 20 percent of profits, still double the industry average. But we went into Iraq for Freedom and Democracy, right? This oil stuff must just be a fringe benefit. Nothing to see here, citizen, move along.
In a classic case of the left hand not having a clue what the right hand is doing - The LA Times Reports on the "Dark Cloud" over the Gates Foundation - namely that the corporations that they invest in are often behind the pollutions and problems that the Foundation’s grants are trying to fix. One wonders whether the Gates Foundation will actually decide to try and steer the companies themselves in a positive direction, as well as trying to fix the messes left behind. According to the article, though, it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon.
Of course, some dimness could be alleviated by paying attention to warning labels. The threat of lawsuits, however, produces some award-winning warning labels. (Hey, that group’s from Michigan! M-Law's Wacky Warning Labels.) There are some other warning labels that are pretty silly, and a bigger list of some real doozies of warnings, but there are few that can unseat the granddaddy of all stupid warnings, The Cobb County Board of Education "Evolution is a theory" warning. Not to say you can’t try yourselves with the Warning Label Generator. That said, occasionally a warning label can be put to good use - not by having it proclaim All Your Base Are Belong To Us, but instead making a poignant political comment in French.
Going from just dim to pitch-black, though, we get the Family Foundation of Virginia trying to force couples with children to stay married by requiring consent by both parents before divorce. There are exceptions for abuse and cruelty, but really, if there has to be consent to divorce, claiming abuse is like some of the Islamic statutes on rape - the woman has to bring forward four male witnesses who saw it, and even then, for all I know, she could get charged with adultery. If a motion like this passes in Virginia, we could all be in for a very rocky road of morality legislation, hiding behind the “zOMG! Think of the Children!” defense.
This is actually a rather bright idea, I’d say. Dark restaurants where the food, and the dining experience, is in total darkness. Not only a good idea of how the blind view the world, but someone who was blind could work there with no significant disadvantages. Sighted staff use night-vision goggles, apparently. A dark restaurant might be the perfect place to try those foods you’ve been told are delicious, but that you can’t look at for fear of being ill. Or maybe just as a place to try something new, with no preconceptions.
Craftiness striking again creates Domo-kun iPod containers. I still haven’t seen an episode of Domo-kun, to my knowledge. Maybe I should watch some to get what the craze is about. Other creative things include Harry Potter and the Lego Chess Set, three-dimensional cookie cookie cutters, - the duplication is intentional, I assure you - and the world's first 4'33" ringtone.
Something useful to visualize - what does 200 calories look like? For several foods, drinks, and liquids, if you want an idea of how much 200 calories (10% of the standard RDA) is, you can see how much more or less you can eat of certain foods to maintain your caloric requirements.
That’s it for me tonight. Hopefully, the cold goes away!
Leading off tonight, we have worst. high school. analogies. ever.
Continuing the trend of dim bulbs at work, though, we get Pelosi saying Congress won't fund an escalation, but she and the Dems do support sending in more troops. (Link has Flash) The progressive wing of America is not going to be happy about that, since they probably elected Democrats on the proposition that they would start getting troops out, not adding more potential corpses. At least Pelosi’s being honest about not being the perfect progressive. Some pundits on the conservative side, as The American Conservative notes, are having some rather selective amnesia about their positions. There’s also the spycopter in the skies over Jackson, Mississippi to wonder about - what it can and can’t do in terms of surveillance and what it’s actually going to do in regard to privacy are questions that really need to be sorted out before the chopper takes flight.
Getting dimmer still, In Iraq, a bill that the U.S. is helping to draw up would give major oil companies 30-year contracts to Iraqi oil and keep up to 75 percent of the profits until drilling costs are recovered. Afterward, they’ll have a mere 20 percent of profits, still double the industry average. But we went into Iraq for Freedom and Democracy, right? This oil stuff must just be a fringe benefit. Nothing to see here, citizen, move along.
In a classic case of the left hand not having a clue what the right hand is doing - The LA Times Reports on the "Dark Cloud" over the Gates Foundation - namely that the corporations that they invest in are often behind the pollutions and problems that the Foundation’s grants are trying to fix. One wonders whether the Gates Foundation will actually decide to try and steer the companies themselves in a positive direction, as well as trying to fix the messes left behind. According to the article, though, it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon.
Of course, some dimness could be alleviated by paying attention to warning labels. The threat of lawsuits, however, produces some award-winning warning labels. (Hey, that group’s from Michigan! M-Law's Wacky Warning Labels.) There are some other warning labels that are pretty silly, and a bigger list of some real doozies of warnings, but there are few that can unseat the granddaddy of all stupid warnings, The Cobb County Board of Education "Evolution is a theory" warning. Not to say you can’t try yourselves with the Warning Label Generator. That said, occasionally a warning label can be put to good use - not by having it proclaim All Your Base Are Belong To Us, but instead making a poignant political comment in French.
Going from just dim to pitch-black, though, we get the Family Foundation of Virginia trying to force couples with children to stay married by requiring consent by both parents before divorce. There are exceptions for abuse and cruelty, but really, if there has to be consent to divorce, claiming abuse is like some of the Islamic statutes on rape - the woman has to bring forward four male witnesses who saw it, and even then, for all I know, she could get charged with adultery. If a motion like this passes in Virginia, we could all be in for a very rocky road of morality legislation, hiding behind the “zOMG! Think of the Children!” defense.
This is actually a rather bright idea, I’d say. Dark restaurants where the food, and the dining experience, is in total darkness. Not only a good idea of how the blind view the world, but someone who was blind could work there with no significant disadvantages. Sighted staff use night-vision goggles, apparently. A dark restaurant might be the perfect place to try those foods you’ve been told are delicious, but that you can’t look at for fear of being ill. Or maybe just as a place to try something new, with no preconceptions.
Craftiness striking again creates Domo-kun iPod containers. I still haven’t seen an episode of Domo-kun, to my knowledge. Maybe I should watch some to get what the craze is about. Other creative things include Harry Potter and the Lego Chess Set, three-dimensional cookie cookie cutters, - the duplication is intentional, I assure you - and the world's first 4'33" ringtone.
Something useful to visualize - what does 200 calories look like? For several foods, drinks, and liquids, if you want an idea of how much 200 calories (10% of the standard RDA) is, you can see how much more or less you can eat of certain foods to maintain your caloric requirements.
That’s it for me tonight. Hopefully, the cold goes away!
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 12:28 pm (UTC)My favorite example of this was in art class; we were tasked to draw a landscape that contained at least one conifer, one tree with leaves (don't feel like trying to spell the d-word at this time of the morning), one man-made object (examples of a road or barn were given), clouds, and something that showed distance. So I drew a snowy mountainscape with pine-dotted hills fading into the distance. In the foreground was a mountain peak with a barren tree perched on it. Next to the tree sat a 1960's-era avacado green refridgerator. The fridge was plugged into the tree. As I recall, I got a C+ on it because the art teacher pulled some symbolism out of her ass and pronounced it a statement on environmental impact. It was beautiful. Looking back, I should have done one of the clouds in the shape of a rabbit.
Also, the one about the boat floating across the pod the way a bowling ball doesn't just shows that kids are still reading Douglas Adams.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 12:22 pm (UTC)My favorite ones from the linked list are:
Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man." (Which tells you a lot about how she viewed men, how memorable the date was and also that she was romantic enough to think of her life as a movie often. That said, it could use a comma after "movie".)
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again. (In other words, painfully, accidentally and repeatedly.)
and of course
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 01:51 pm (UTC)I read that about the Gates Foundation. Bill Gates giveth and Bill Gates taketh away. Figures. Next we'll learn the GF is surreptitiously funding computer virus development. :p
Yarha, 'cause Any Virus Can Be Spread by MS Outlook
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 07:19 pm (UTC)The Gates Foundation bit doesn't make much sense. Sure, make the money you can, but if you're making money on the companies that are causing the problems and not trying to steer them away from continuing to make those problems, it's more like 1984's perpetual war than any good being done.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 07:34 pm (UTC)She goes to my aunt's church :D
I love crazy warning/disclaimers that pop up on the oddest things - I especially like the common sense warnings, like on coffe cups at McDonald's, Starbucks, etc. that tell you "contents may be hot" - but I guess they have to after that woman sued one of them for getting burned by her coffee spilling onto her lap. There's even a warning on bottles of soda to not aim at your face while opening or something along those lines.
"Recycled flush water unsafe for drinking." -- On a toilet at a public sports facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan. - I don't want to know WHY this warning had to be issued. Any idea which facility it's at? my guess is the Big House.
On the other hand, there are probably people bored out of their minds woh have to design the packaging for products, and I could see them coming up with bizarre warnings/instructions just to see who notices.
--
I think the State of Virginia is taking things a bit too far. If two people get married and have children, and something happens that causes the one to want to leave, they ought to be able to leave and file for a divorce. I don't see what the point is to keep a fighting couple together "for the kids", when in fact, the children's home life might improve by having their parents living in separate houses. I also like how they sneak that line in about filtering software in libraries.
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I like the idea of a dark restaurant, assuming it's safe for everyone. Since the waiters who have the ability to see wear night-vision goggles, I imagine that's also somewhat to protect the patrons. I also would hope there is some kind of emergency "lights on" situation so that in the event that someone needs an ambulance or they need to evacuate people who need the light to see can see.
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3-D cookies. that's so awesome.
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the "what does 200 calories look like" is interesting, though I wish in addition to grams they showed cup amounts for things like the pasta, or some other way of being able to personally measure what you're having. I also found it interesting that you can have more of a doughnut than you can of a bagel for 200 calories. I would have thought it to be the opposite.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 08:32 pm (UTC)Even so, what makes them think that they can pass something like this through? And what right does anyone have to get involved with someone's personal life like that?
I hope this doesn't sound wrong - but whats' the difference between parents getting a divorce and one or the other abandoning the kids, and a parent dying? Either way, the kids are left with one parent to be their caregiver, and there's nothing that anyone can do to prevent someone from dying because it just happens.
I guess it just irks me that so many organizations go on and on about how bad it is for kids whose parents get divorced, but they don't stop to think that kids who have lost a parent are practically in the same situations - the only difference being that in most cases of divorce, the kids still see the other parent, even if it's just twice a year.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 12:17 am (UTC)What right does the government have? Well, they are providing tax benefits to legally married couples, among other things. But in truth, nobody really has the right to get involved like that, unless invited in by the married couple.
Death and divorce are different, though - in one case, the parent decides it's not going to work out and goes away. Everyone knows, even if in the back of their heads, that the other parent is around somewhere. With a parent dying, there's nothing of that revelation. It still means a single-parent household, it still could create problems, but divorce adds on the "What if he had stayed? You could have worked things out" guilt. In most cases, the divorce is because things aren't going to work out, but nobody's going to go after someone who's husband or wife died about the need for the kids to have a father/mother figure... for a couple years.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 05:37 am (UTC)Death and Divorce are different, you're right, but you'd be surprised how quickly people expect the widowed parent to re-wed.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:38 pm (UTC)--
yeah, people started urging my mom to date the January after my dad died, which was a little over two months after he died. INSANE.