And we're back - 27 May 2007
May. 28th, 2007 02:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptAnd back from the Land of No-Net - the 90th birthday party went well, there was much merriment and food to be had all around. For the majority of the audience, when the ice cream came out, they were up for it, but it wouldn’t have hurt to know about some healthier alternatives. Of course, considering many of them are farmers, and my family does dairy farming, it’s generally full-bore ice cream. It’s always nice to get together with the family.
I’ll lead tonight with a poignant piece of information dispensed in a library. Regarding libraries, the border may tighten some on a pair of villages on the U.S.-Canada border that can basically walk across the street into each other's country. The library straddles the border.
Working off libraries into books, "The Dangerous Books for Boys" offers up a how-to on old-fashioned play... and talking to girls. For the girls segment by itself, I think it merits being called “dangerous”. Although it’s apparently taking a 1930’s book as source material, so the advice in it may be, well, dangerous.
Touching on a previous article, the women who lost their jobs over gossiping have lost their appeal.
Proving that ingenuity always finds a way around, underneath, or over top of a block in its way, rural villagers in China routinely sidestep the one-child policy with fertility drugs and having multiple births. Simple, cheap, effective. Assuming that the multiple pregnancy is healthy, there you have it.
Tick-tock. The politics bomb arrives. After President Bush signed the bill giving him funding without a timetable, Democrats and Liberals say that while Democrats on the Hill are calling it a victory, the Democrats lost big by caving in. The Wall Street’s OpinionJournal concurs, calling the entire debate "merely for show" and pointing out that the Congress never really intended on cutting the purse strings. Considering a large part of the country elected Democrats on the premise they would be ending or at least scaling back the conflict in Iraq, I think they got screwed pretty badly. Such that they might start requesting that the protesters dressed as a Republican chain gang become prophets of the truth. (Also, Bush is a soldier, Ms. Guilt? As I recall, he was part of the National Guard, which would make him a militiaman, correct? And at the moment, he is a civilian, regardless of any past service.)
There may be some rumblings that next year, there could be fewer troops in Iraq, but it’s probably not likely that there will be any significant decrease, unless in about a year and a half, a fully stable and functioning government friendly to the Untied States, or perhaps just the corporations in the United Sates, can be constructed. It might be doable, were the soldiers not out doing things like rescuing kidnapped Iraqis, for example.
Tick-tock. Bigger bombs, religious in nature, approach. The Army and Air Force denied and took steps to distance themselves from having formal ties to the religious portions of a Memorial Day event. Initial billing had the Air Force doing flyovers coinciding with prayers, and claiming “official” status on their services. Since then, while the Army and Air Force will still be involved in the event, it appears to be a much less perfectly-timed affair. What will make more potential for explosives, however, is that the Creation Museum is open. Have a look at some of the exhibits yourself. And then read as Pharyngula collects comments and reviews about the place. More comments can be found atthe National Center for Science Education’s response page.
Stanford students had a bit of an awakening when it was discovered that there was a non-student living in the dorms, claiming to be a student. There didn’t appear to be any theft involved, or damage, or assault, just a student who wasn’t. Stanford officials are trying to think of ways to prevent this from happening. I note that like many hacks and exploits, there was a high degree of social engineering going on here, and that may not be a fixable thing.
Speaking of disguising, have a look at the process by which a fan built a Giger Alien (from the Alien series) costume.
Science and Technology stuff - A Finnish court rules that breaking "ineffective" copy protection is not a violation of Finnish copyright law (which means that they can also probably go to work on HD-DVD, assuming that the ruling holds all the way up the court chain), Sony's 2.5-inch full-color flexible display, subterranean cavern entrances on Mars (also, Mars as Art), an atlas of the visible universe, and finally, The Great Firewall of China - which lets you test whether or not any page on the Internet would be blocked by the curtain that the Chinese government has placed over Internet access.
Remember the slap bracelet fad? (Was popular in elementary school while I was in the upper echelons of it). Well, Instructables offers step-by-step instructions on creating your own. I can imagine this being a boomerang fad, somehow. Perhaps a new fad, although, probably not for the living, is the Harley-Davidson motorcycle-drawn hearse, so that bikers in life can have their casket drawn by choppers to their final resting place.
Jack Kevorkian will be released from prison on 1 June. This would not be news, unless you’re someone who believes strongly in or against physician-assisted suicide (or what it’s actually being called. Yahoo! news has a little on how the cause Kevorkian fights for has fared while he's been in prison . (Not well, is the answer.) On the opposite side of the equation, doctors flying on a Delta flight helped deliver and then resuscitate a baby. So “Is there a doctor on this flight?” is a serious question, on occasion. In other health bits, drinking lots of coffee daily may strongly help combat gout. Too bad I can’t stand the taste or the smell of the stuff.
Talking about food - I feel like I’ve linked to something like these before, but Slashfood offers a handy way of making sure that breakfast can be gotten, even by office warriors on the move - Cereal on the Go, a way of keeping a bowl, a serving of cereal, milk, and a spoon in an easily carried object. Starting the day off right is always a good thing. Peeking a glimpse in on what teenagers actually do for fooding, the Telegraph has the food diaries of five teenage girls through a typical week's diet. Along with the food are some comments about their attitude toward food and diet. They look to be less calorie-counting and more intent on exercising, which is a healthy attitude. So long as they don’t go strongly overboard on the calories, I think they’ll do fine. They all acknowledge the pressure on them to look their best, though. Which makes you wonder if some of them are only a few steps away from the mania of “must-be-size-minus-one”.
In regard to Memorial Day, which will have already begun by the time of this posting, if you can get past the “America’s the Greatest because we’re so free, and all you war protesters should slink away because you’re ungrateful to the people who died so you could be cowards and traitors” first part, Fred Thompson actually makes a good point in saying if college students are not learning their American history or civics, then we have a problem. It makes it easier for people to pervert and distort the documents and the history of the American people. Such a history and government should be learned from both sides - the part that the winners write and call history, and the fragments of the losers’ accounts that survive despite history having been written.
The outtro for this entry is another piece of wisdom - the collective unconscious can be hacked. It might take something like the Codex Seraphinianus to do it, even by accident, but it can be done.
I’ll lead tonight with a poignant piece of information dispensed in a library. Regarding libraries, the border may tighten some on a pair of villages on the U.S.-Canada border that can basically walk across the street into each other's country. The library straddles the border.
Working off libraries into books, "The Dangerous Books for Boys" offers up a how-to on old-fashioned play... and talking to girls. For the girls segment by itself, I think it merits being called “dangerous”. Although it’s apparently taking a 1930’s book as source material, so the advice in it may be, well, dangerous.
Touching on a previous article, the women who lost their jobs over gossiping have lost their appeal.
Proving that ingenuity always finds a way around, underneath, or over top of a block in its way, rural villagers in China routinely sidestep the one-child policy with fertility drugs and having multiple births. Simple, cheap, effective. Assuming that the multiple pregnancy is healthy, there you have it.
Tick-tock. The politics bomb arrives. After President Bush signed the bill giving him funding without a timetable, Democrats and Liberals say that while Democrats on the Hill are calling it a victory, the Democrats lost big by caving in. The Wall Street’s OpinionJournal concurs, calling the entire debate "merely for show" and pointing out that the Congress never really intended on cutting the purse strings. Considering a large part of the country elected Democrats on the premise they would be ending or at least scaling back the conflict in Iraq, I think they got screwed pretty badly. Such that they might start requesting that the protesters dressed as a Republican chain gang become prophets of the truth. (Also, Bush is a soldier, Ms. Guilt? As I recall, he was part of the National Guard, which would make him a militiaman, correct? And at the moment, he is a civilian, regardless of any past service.)
There may be some rumblings that next year, there could be fewer troops in Iraq, but it’s probably not likely that there will be any significant decrease, unless in about a year and a half, a fully stable and functioning government friendly to the Untied States, or perhaps just the corporations in the United Sates, can be constructed. It might be doable, were the soldiers not out doing things like rescuing kidnapped Iraqis, for example.
Tick-tock. Bigger bombs, religious in nature, approach. The Army and Air Force denied and took steps to distance themselves from having formal ties to the religious portions of a Memorial Day event. Initial billing had the Air Force doing flyovers coinciding with prayers, and claiming “official” status on their services. Since then, while the Army and Air Force will still be involved in the event, it appears to be a much less perfectly-timed affair. What will make more potential for explosives, however, is that the Creation Museum is open. Have a look at some of the exhibits yourself. And then read as Pharyngula collects comments and reviews about the place. More comments can be found atthe National Center for Science Education’s response page.
Stanford students had a bit of an awakening when it was discovered that there was a non-student living in the dorms, claiming to be a student. There didn’t appear to be any theft involved, or damage, or assault, just a student who wasn’t. Stanford officials are trying to think of ways to prevent this from happening. I note that like many hacks and exploits, there was a high degree of social engineering going on here, and that may not be a fixable thing.
Speaking of disguising, have a look at the process by which a fan built a Giger Alien (from the Alien series) costume.
Science and Technology stuff - A Finnish court rules that breaking "ineffective" copy protection is not a violation of Finnish copyright law (which means that they can also probably go to work on HD-DVD, assuming that the ruling holds all the way up the court chain), Sony's 2.5-inch full-color flexible display, subterranean cavern entrances on Mars (also, Mars as Art), an atlas of the visible universe, and finally, The Great Firewall of China - which lets you test whether or not any page on the Internet would be blocked by the curtain that the Chinese government has placed over Internet access.
Remember the slap bracelet fad? (Was popular in elementary school while I was in the upper echelons of it). Well, Instructables offers step-by-step instructions on creating your own. I can imagine this being a boomerang fad, somehow. Perhaps a new fad, although, probably not for the living, is the Harley-Davidson motorcycle-drawn hearse, so that bikers in life can have their casket drawn by choppers to their final resting place.
Jack Kevorkian will be released from prison on 1 June. This would not be news, unless you’re someone who believes strongly in or against physician-assisted suicide (or what it’s actually being called. Yahoo! news has a little on how the cause Kevorkian fights for has fared while he's been in prison . (Not well, is the answer.) On the opposite side of the equation, doctors flying on a Delta flight helped deliver and then resuscitate a baby. So “Is there a doctor on this flight?” is a serious question, on occasion. In other health bits, drinking lots of coffee daily may strongly help combat gout. Too bad I can’t stand the taste or the smell of the stuff.
Talking about food - I feel like I’ve linked to something like these before, but Slashfood offers a handy way of making sure that breakfast can be gotten, even by office warriors on the move - Cereal on the Go, a way of keeping a bowl, a serving of cereal, milk, and a spoon in an easily carried object. Starting the day off right is always a good thing. Peeking a glimpse in on what teenagers actually do for fooding, the Telegraph has the food diaries of five teenage girls through a typical week's diet. Along with the food are some comments about their attitude toward food and diet. They look to be less calorie-counting and more intent on exercising, which is a healthy attitude. So long as they don’t go strongly overboard on the calories, I think they’ll do fine. They all acknowledge the pressure on them to look their best, though. Which makes you wonder if some of them are only a few steps away from the mania of “must-be-size-minus-one”.
In regard to Memorial Day, which will have already begun by the time of this posting, if you can get past the “America’s the Greatest because we’re so free, and all you war protesters should slink away because you’re ungrateful to the people who died so you could be cowards and traitors” first part, Fred Thompson actually makes a good point in saying if college students are not learning their American history or civics, then we have a problem. It makes it easier for people to pervert and distort the documents and the history of the American people. Such a history and government should be learned from both sides - the part that the winners write and call history, and the fragments of the losers’ accounts that survive despite history having been written.
The outtro for this entry is another piece of wisdom - the collective unconscious can be hacked. It might take something like the Codex Seraphinianus to do it, even by accident, but it can be done.
