I was going to do work today... 20 Jan 2007

[silveradept]

...but then things appeared. Like lunch with the family, And then social events. Now that I’m actually back in, I have about enough time to compose a journal entry before sleeping. Tomorrow, there will be work involved. Because I have to have everything in order for Monday, when I turn most of it in.

Plus, there’s still some reading to be done.

A columnist in Iran says that Iran is not hostile to the U.S. - but they will defend their country to the last person if attacked. Which makes policy decisions that aren’t based on what people actually think in Iran disasters if executed. Yet another reason not to expand an already overstretched military. P! has published a letter of apology to the peoples of the Middle East and Asia for past, present, and future actions that the Bush administration may take in pursuing their policies to the point where it destroys them. It’s kind of an echo of “Sorry, world. Even though 51% of the people voted for the other guy, he got elected.” that appeared after the Bush administration began waging its campaign against the world. The letter of apology is too narrow in scope, for me - it should be an apology to everyone. The people who get shot and the people who get sent over to shoot them. The vets who see services cut, the people who have to shoulder the reckless spending, everyone deserves an apology from the people who have permitted and encouraged all the bad things to continue. It’s more probably we’ll see people who protest jailed than an administration admitting to actually having done wrong and trying to fix it.

Wanna know what’s going into the rivers of the country? Well, if it's the Potomac, there are chemicals that could end up changing your sex. A significant number of the bass in the river are displaying intersex features. The endocrine disruptors were in pesticides, flame-retardant chemicals, and personal care products that all were in the bass and in the river. Perhaps it’s not so long in front of us that we’ll be seeing Simpsons-style three-eyed fish.

We knew this was going to happen, but Hillary finally made it official. Hillary Clinton has decided to run for the Democratic presidential nomination of 2008. My uninformed opinion is that she will lose because the country does not feel comfortable electing a woman candidate for president, much less actually letting her try to win it.

Two articles on video games - one about the ability to turn a Wii console into a portable gaming machine - no plans yet, but they are apparently coming. The other talks about the differences in style between Western and Japanese games - and why hit games made in one country may flop totally in the other.

Getting into the habit of apologizing for misleading material - new information appears that says the PEER release about National Park Service Employees being pressured to not be totally scientific in their work is false. Or at least, uncorroborated and generally bringing in a skeptical atmosphere now, according to the Huffington Post. So as quickly as the blogosphere can disseminate things, hopefully, it can then correct them. Mea culpa on parroting, and hopefully this better information serves you in a more effective capacity.

Anyway, I get to get up early tomorrow to see one of my cousins play basketball. So tomorrow’s work will probably have to wait until after that.

Comments

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

The Wii laptop....isn't a Nintendo thing? It looks pretty decent then for being pieced together. Question, didn't Sony release some kind of portable playstation - not a handheld console like the PSP, but one that sort of resembled a portable DVD player? I sort of recall a friend talking about wanting it, but I'm not sure if it was wishful thinking, or an actual product....

[shenalia.livejournal.com]

Clinton won't lose because she's a woman. She'll lose because she's Hillary Clinton. She's of the breed of the worst kind of politicians - the ones that won't even let themselves be seen unless it's been carefully planned and skewed to make people think they're something they're not. And enough people, nowadays, are actually seeing that.

She's not what her husband was. She's worse.

[silveradept]

The redesigned Playstation (the PSOne) had a much smaller footprint and looked more like a portable CD player - as did the redesigned small PS2. Both systems also have a means by which small portable screens can be attached to them, although I'm not sure whether those have really caught on too much.

As for the Wii laptop object - there's no official Nintendo product of that as far as I know. It's likely, though, the people putting together that one thought pretty hard about what they wanted to do and how they could enclose a regular Wii for maximum effectiveness.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

ah okay. So It didn't come with the screen, it was an extra attachment?

Well, the people who did design that did a pretty god job, IMHO. I haven't seen the Wii up close, but it looks like they even kept the casing as well as they could.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Unless we get another female running in the primaries, she'll still get a large percentage of the vote based on the sole fact that she's a woman. I know plenty of women who have said that it didn't matter WHO the female was that was running, they'd vote for her regardless. That's not to say she'll necessarily WIN the primaries, but still, I think she has a lot going for her, especially since the speculation of her being the first female president has been around since 2002. A lot of people have been waiting since then for her to toss her name into the ring. While you may be right about what kind of politician she is, heck, she even canceled her own press conference where she was going ot announce her candidacy because Obama announced his that day, I still think she'll get a good amount of the votes. Between the folks who have already declared that they're running, and the names that are being tossed about in speculation, it looks like the democrats are going to have a tough descision.

[(Anonymous)]

Regarding the transgendered fish, it's been happening downstream from Las Vegas for a while now. They say it's largely due to the amount of estrogen from birth control pills from women vacationing there. Unfortunately I don't have any cites off-hand.

Regarding the election, see http://www.sorryeverybody.com/.

That was me

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I have a new computer at work and I'm still configuring.

[silveradept]

The Wii, up close, is about as wide as two or three DVD cases. Building a housing for it wouldn't be any trick at all. Because of that, they can probably do a lot with pretty standard components.

Re: That was me

[silveradept]

No worries. Thanks for recalling what it was - I know I've linked to it, because I thought the concept was rather novel. It was probably just after the election, when they were having problems keeping the server stable.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that's pretty small. I think while the PS2 is thin, isn't it a bit deeper?

Re: That was me

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

How does the estrogen in the birth control pills that are ingested by women affect the water?

[silveradept]

If stood next to each other, the Wii is shorter, possibly a little bit wider, and shallower than the thin PS2.

Re: That was me

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

IANAMB (I am not a marine biologist), but as I understand it, the increased amounts of estrogen cause the male fish to become neuter. It's the increased concentration that triggers the change in the male fish.

Here's a link (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=estrogen+fish+sex+change) to Yahoo on the general topic, and I think this is the original article (http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2001-08-09/news_full.html) that I first read. Or maybe not, as I think it was more recent than 2001.

Re: That was me

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

No, I meant how is it that the FISH are getting HUMAN birth control pills in their water.

Re: That was me

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Women are known to occasionally use the bathroom. ;-)

Re: That was me

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

EW! So it's going straight from the toilet to the lake? EW

Re: That was me

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That's the thing that I find odd. I would not be surprised if the water treatment system did not remove all of the estrogen from the waste water, but just what is going on here for such mutagenic levels to build up? I think that we can safely assume that the semi-solids in the waste water are being processed, but it seems to me to be a demonstration as to a problem in their waste water treatment system(s).

Re: That was me

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

The only good way to remove all the estrogen would be to use activated carbon. And that would clog up so very quickly on all the other compounds in the water (such as any cell debris of any type).

Re: That was me

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

*nods* I would think that a water treatment system would remove all of that type of stuff as well. Then again, I really didn't think women could discharge (for lack fo a better word. excrete? pee away?) that much estrogen that it would cause a problem.

Re: That was me

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The population of the City of LV is 600,000, tripled for the surrounding area. They had 38 million people visit in 2005, that is approximately 100,000 people per day. That's a HUGE transient population. With an average visitor age of under 50, that's a lot of women who are in their child-bearing years with a significant subset being on birth control pills.

(source: Wikipedia and news report (http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=4701335))

And it's possible that estrogen lingers in the fish tissue, i.e. the mutagenic effect is cumulative, though this statement is speculation on my part.

Re: That was me

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we use a dual-filter system here: Pur on the sink and a Britta pitcher filter for the fridge. Unfortunately it just doesn't work for large-scale water treatment, that's where chlorine and intense UV exposure come into play, and that isn't as effective against stuff like this.

[shenalia.livejournal.com]

You missed the point entirely. I don't care what she has going for her or going against her due to people's stupidity - that they'd vote for or against her because of something as trivial as that. That they'd be prejudiced one way or the other because of sex or race. I wasn't trying to predict what people will or will not do.

My point was, she's a horrible candidate and the worst kind of politician, and that I hope enough people realize that to never let her even get close to being the primary candidate for the Democrats, much less actually elect her. She's a manipulative bitch with a track record that makes me shudder in horror if she were put in any kind of position that gave her more power or influence than she has now, or has had in the past.