First day of freedom - 28 April 2007
Apr. 28th, 2007 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptSo what did I do on the first day of my new-found freedom? Stay in and play video games, watch hockey, and generally loaf about. This is a good thing. Tomorrow will be Breakfast and Bowling, a great way of spending time with the family. Thanks to all the people who gave graduation congratulations. It’s not quite sunk in yet that I’m all done. I’m pretty sure that on Monday, it’ll roll close to class time and I’ll go “Wait, have to go to cl... wait, no more class.” or something like that.
A part of James Doohan's ashes went up into space today, along with several others who had requested a space burial for their remains. The problem with growing older is that all the people that you know or grew up around end up dying.
The current President famously asked “Is our children learning?” Stephen Bezruchka says our children are lagging behind the rest of the world in a lot more than just learning, and this realization should be spurring everyone to build a better country for the children, one hopefully where if there are any chemicals in the water, they are supposed to be there for well-documented and researched reasons, not appearing without people knowing why they're there or what they do. Which is probably a semi-minor issue compared to other countries, where children raiders, soldiers, and bandits are common, but they’re not fighting for grand causes anymore. Our version of child soldiers, for the moment, appears to be the children steeped and drowned in certain religious cultures and then sent out into the world to convert the rest or die trying.
Japan's supreme court rejected compensation for the "comfort women" of World War II, but did acknowledge they were coerced. The more the government dances around any admission of responsibility, the more suspicious things look. Other women’s issues (although that seems a bit odd to say, considering a lot of issues that involve women primarily also have consequences for men) include a comparison between the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortions and China's continuing policy of trying to engineer their population, and an attempt at terrorism in Austin being foiled by the police. We used to hear lots of stories about people trying to blow up clinics or kill doctors. Has that abated, or has the media eye simply turned elsewhere in its quest for blood?
Climate change is a hot campaign issue for all political candidates. Whether anything actually comes out of it is another matter entirely. Michael Bloomberg wants to institute congestion taxes for cars that drive through the high-traffic areas of New York City as part of a pollution-reduction initiative designed to get people on mass transit and think before driving. If I recall correctly, the city of London has instituted such taxes. For those in the area, is it a useful deterrent to motor vehicles?
Adding another into the Ideologically Two-Faced category, Think Progress informs us that the director accused of utilizing an escort service for massages also forced organizations applying for funds to combat HIV/AIDS to not make outreach to sex workers. Must be nice being able to see in opposite directions at the same time like that. In the Stretching the Truth department, the highly-touted drop in violence in Iraq left out an important category - explosive devices like car bombs. This is matters of “lies, damn lies, and statistics”, it appears. The last from this category is a simple phrase - It's a lot easier to persuade people to be "saved" from their sins if there's a gigantic laundry list of sins already present.
Here’s a couple other things of potential political interest - Saudi Arabia arrested one hundred seventy-two people and claimed they were all involved in a single terror plot against the country, which seems a bit odd with as much as several conservative bloggers and media outlets want to paint Saudi Arabia as the heart of anti-West sentiment. Something more in line with their sentiment is the Times Online saying the chief architect of the London subway bombings has been captured as he tried to enter Iraq.
Monica Goodling has immunity. So now she has no reason to hid behind the Fifth Amendment. Let’s figure out what her secret is, and why she chose to hide rather than come forward. Additionally, the Justice Department has stopped political appointees from making decisions about who interns at the Department, after complaints surfaced that there appeared to be a consistent conservative/Republican bias to those being chosen. Staying in the realm of lawyers, Adventus talks about the lack of lawyers available to those in Guantanamo, and some of the things that have happened there in response to this lack of representation.
Ralph Peters writes in the Armed Forces Journal that the Army should write doctrine for occupation, so that the next time someone's supposed to be toppled, there's a plan on how to be successful, documentation of that plan, and most, if not all, of the requirements will be laid out up front. It might make it harder for war and occupation to be sold to the country and the politicians, but Peters is confident it will also make any war that successfully gets through the political process will be executed smartly and efficiently by the military.
Last for tonight is the 10 most commonly used passwords, according to an upcoming issue of PC Magazine. Of that list of ten, there is a musical group, a simian, and several phrases that would be used in any system running MovieOS.
Anyway, on that note, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I get to go bowling, which makes me happy, regardless of how poorly I do.
A part of James Doohan's ashes went up into space today, along with several others who had requested a space burial for their remains. The problem with growing older is that all the people that you know or grew up around end up dying.
The current President famously asked “Is our children learning?” Stephen Bezruchka says our children are lagging behind the rest of the world in a lot more than just learning, and this realization should be spurring everyone to build a better country for the children, one hopefully where if there are any chemicals in the water, they are supposed to be there for well-documented and researched reasons, not appearing without people knowing why they're there or what they do. Which is probably a semi-minor issue compared to other countries, where children raiders, soldiers, and bandits are common, but they’re not fighting for grand causes anymore. Our version of child soldiers, for the moment, appears to be the children steeped and drowned in certain religious cultures and then sent out into the world to convert the rest or die trying.
Japan's supreme court rejected compensation for the "comfort women" of World War II, but did acknowledge they were coerced. The more the government dances around any admission of responsibility, the more suspicious things look. Other women’s issues (although that seems a bit odd to say, considering a lot of issues that involve women primarily also have consequences for men) include a comparison between the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortions and China's continuing policy of trying to engineer their population, and an attempt at terrorism in Austin being foiled by the police. We used to hear lots of stories about people trying to blow up clinics or kill doctors. Has that abated, or has the media eye simply turned elsewhere in its quest for blood?
Climate change is a hot campaign issue for all political candidates. Whether anything actually comes out of it is another matter entirely. Michael Bloomberg wants to institute congestion taxes for cars that drive through the high-traffic areas of New York City as part of a pollution-reduction initiative designed to get people on mass transit and think before driving. If I recall correctly, the city of London has instituted such taxes. For those in the area, is it a useful deterrent to motor vehicles?
Adding another into the Ideologically Two-Faced category, Think Progress informs us that the director accused of utilizing an escort service for massages also forced organizations applying for funds to combat HIV/AIDS to not make outreach to sex workers. Must be nice being able to see in opposite directions at the same time like that. In the Stretching the Truth department, the highly-touted drop in violence in Iraq left out an important category - explosive devices like car bombs. This is matters of “lies, damn lies, and statistics”, it appears. The last from this category is a simple phrase - It's a lot easier to persuade people to be "saved" from their sins if there's a gigantic laundry list of sins already present.
Here’s a couple other things of potential political interest - Saudi Arabia arrested one hundred seventy-two people and claimed they were all involved in a single terror plot against the country, which seems a bit odd with as much as several conservative bloggers and media outlets want to paint Saudi Arabia as the heart of anti-West sentiment. Something more in line with their sentiment is the Times Online saying the chief architect of the London subway bombings has been captured as he tried to enter Iraq.
Monica Goodling has immunity. So now she has no reason to hid behind the Fifth Amendment. Let’s figure out what her secret is, and why she chose to hide rather than come forward. Additionally, the Justice Department has stopped political appointees from making decisions about who interns at the Department, after complaints surfaced that there appeared to be a consistent conservative/Republican bias to those being chosen. Staying in the realm of lawyers, Adventus talks about the lack of lawyers available to those in Guantanamo, and some of the things that have happened there in response to this lack of representation.
Ralph Peters writes in the Armed Forces Journal that the Army should write doctrine for occupation, so that the next time someone's supposed to be toppled, there's a plan on how to be successful, documentation of that plan, and most, if not all, of the requirements will be laid out up front. It might make it harder for war and occupation to be sold to the country and the politicians, but Peters is confident it will also make any war that successfully gets through the political process will be executed smartly and efficiently by the military.
Last for tonight is the 10 most commonly used passwords, according to an upcoming issue of PC Magazine. Of that list of ten, there is a musical group, a simian, and several phrases that would be used in any system running MovieOS.
Anyway, on that note, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I get to go bowling, which makes me happy, regardless of how poorly I do.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 11:10 pm (UTC)it always pissed me off and I kept asking for them to just give us all our own log in, but noooooo