So, what's going on? - 22 June 2007
Jun. 23rd, 2007 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptTomorrow is not currently totally set in stone. It depends on a multitude of things - and it would figure that Piro would be signing books tomorrow, considering that there’s all the other stuff that’s going on tomorrow that basically guarantees I won’t be able to make the session. Which is a shame, because if I could manage to get book 4 signed, I wouldn’t be caught up, but I’d at least be only one book behind. It’s probably not likely that there will be any more opportunities outside of conventions, and I’m still always one bit behind. Maybe if someone sticks around in town long enough for me, I’ll be able to make it work out that all my books end up getting signed. Maybe, maybe not. Considering the lag time between books, it might be possible to get it all sorted out before book six arrives, but again, that requires people being in the right places at the right time.
Tonight’s leading object is something I’ve been sitting on a while, waiting for completion. It probably already was when I was linked to it, I just didn’t realize it - the account of someone's experience with Japan's prison system - although not the actual prison, but a place where someone can be held for almost a month without contact with the outside world. On the other end of it, the whole story comes out, but while in the holding area, precious little for information is actually permitted in or out. Such a thing pales in comparison to an FBI informant's account of being arrested and treated like an insurgent - it took the military ninety-seven days to release him and clear him of charges. He was subjected to quite the inhumane treatment, denied rights and while there was no physical torture, there was always the threat thereof. This concurs with a lot of what has been said about military prisons in Iraq. Yet some people still believe that the people there are treated humanely, and others believe that those in the prison are receiving as many rights as they should be entitled to, namely, zero or close to that. It’s a wonder there aren’t more lawsuits like this from those that actually manage to be released without being convicted of something.
The CIA was doing its very best to break the laws and rules of its charter in previous years. According to a 693-page file that will be fully declassified on Monday, the CIA engaged in illegal wiretaps, surveillance, assassination plots, and human experiments before reforms were enacted in the 1970s. Far enough in the past that it won’t bite the agency, I suspect. It would be nice to know if these documents are just for that era, and whether or not some or all of those illegal activities continued even after the reforms. Transparency is definitely something you’d like to have for things like this. We’re hoping, then, that we’ll get to find out more as more information reaches the mandatory declassification point.
In certain places of India, however, charging a three-year-old with rioting doesn’t even garner a second blink as to whether such a thing would be possible, feasible, or worth prosecuting. Of course, at times, what the criminals are doing is similarly silly, like trying to steal Herman Munster's identity. On the other end of the spectrum, and in the United States, if you think someone in your family has an FBI file, and said person is deceased, then Get Grandpa's FBI File offers to generate the appropriate forms for filing with the FBI to be sent such a file. Now you can know whether there are any convicted horse-thieves on either side of the family tree.
In Australia, alcohol and pornography are set to be banned for the aboriginal peoples. Said people who this will affect are complaining that they weren’t consulted, nor are they being allowed to have a say in whether the decision should be enacted. The measure also includes tighter welfare controls and is supposed to be in response to child sexual abuse being found in the remote communities visited.
Something slightly lewd which resulted in injury - a gent on amphetamines had a marathon masturbation session, earning him a couple stab wounds from his friend when he continued to wank on her bed, possibly in the field of vision of her children. (Even after being stabbed, he continued to wank in the garage waiting for the police). Beyond that, and actually dangerous, in a courtroom in Nebraska, the words rape, sexual assault, assailant, victim, and rape kit/sexual assault kit have been banned in a rape trial. The thinking behind this is that apparently jurors will hear those words and decide on emotion rather than fact. But the jurors don’t get to know that those words have been scrubbed from the trial, either. There was a motion to include sex and intercourse on the list of banned words, but the judge refused that. So now the rape trial can’t actually use any of the words commonly used to describe what potentially happened.
The tour of the law ends with a triple-shot of school-related material, courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lordmork: A student suspended after voicing his opinion on marijuana's harms, and then planning and walking out of class to protest what he felt were free-speech violations. As a good student, however, he’s going to pass the grade even without the ability to take his examinations. That said, I note that at least according to the article, the statement made was that marijuana was no more dangerous than tobacco or alcohol. That’s not to say it was harmless, just no more so than the other drugs that we use regularly. I suspect the suspension involved has something to do with a Zero Tolerance policy about “promoting drug use”. Second incident, new location - a "no-touching" rule being enforced in a school in Virginia. That’s no touching at all - no hugging, no high-fives, no handshakes, no nothing. Supposedly, there’s discretion among the staff, but as a way of trying to combat, say, gang handshakes or people who feel uncomfortable being hugged, it seems to be trying to smash water with a sledgehammer. Plus, how many touches happen during a normal school day that nobody would think about? Even with discretion, I suspect there would be some incidents where an innocuous pat on the back might lead to discipline. Last, and I think this one’s been done before, a girl who wants to wear her chastity ring to school is taking her case to Britain's High Court, fighting a rule that stops her from wearing it as an adornment, but allows Sikhs to wear steel bracelets as an essential part of their faith. I wonder where the rationale for removing jewelry from the classroom comes from - to stop people from displaying their bling in the classroom? For each of these cases, lordmork considered them to be part of a bigger problem - schools aren't letting kids do things that are harmless, and so not teaching them how to respect differences and get along. Instead, the schools are teaching their kids to put their heads down, conform, obey, and not make waves. Which makes it into a prison more than a school, in my opinion. But I’ve seen that sort of trend in the public schooling sphere here - people who are different are pressured, sometimes threatened, to conform
So, after all that stuff that expressly invokes laws or rules being broken or enforced, The New York Times has an article about freeganism, the pracice of living "one man's trash is another's treasure".
Hrm. Part of me wants to say this is proof of the myth that radio is liberal, and some other part says that saying something like that is likely to be untrue, but a study from the Center for American Progress concludes that talk radio is more than ninety percent conservative. Of course, depending on what is considered “talk” radio, and which stations were sampled, and a host of other factors, the numbers may or may not reflect reality. (And would it kill places writing articles like these to link to the sources, if they’re available? Even if it is just a press release from the place mentioned in the article. Here's the official CAP release, including a link to the report. On the web, it’s pretty easy to cite your sources and link directly to them. Wish more would do that.)
Some other part of me wants to know what the difficulty some people in England are having with an increasing amount of Muslim women choosing to wear the niqab, a full-length covering garment that really only shows the eyes of the woman wearing it.
After all this weighty material, however, the Cool Things department saves the day, serving up a DIY guide to becoming a cyborg, all based on technologies that are available, if expensive, to obtain. If that’s not on your list, or you’re not so fond of that, it’s worth several laughs to look at The Bane of My Existence, cataloging the various types of trying-to-be-trendy folk around in the city. Definitely worth a study to see if you can’t spot some of those people yourself.
For thinking and mulling over, a list, alphabetic-like, of Don Brown's "universals", which appear to be short thoughts and ideas that Borwn thought would be true throughout existence. Some of them are being called into question, others seem like they’ll never go away. Which ones do you want, and which would you like to see gone?
The Last, Really Cool Thing for tonight, however, is the Angel Sword guitar - an axe that will play great thrash and kill teen pop stars. All yours, if you can outbid everyone else who wants their hands on it. I, however, do not have that kind of spare money lounging about with which to attempt to purchase such an instrument of destruction. Thus, I will go to bed, and instead dream of the time when I will have my millions. (It’s a fantasy-land, I know. At some point, though, I will have made $1 million, assuming I live long enough. It’s just that I will have spent most of it by that time, too.)
Tonight’s leading object is something I’ve been sitting on a while, waiting for completion. It probably already was when I was linked to it, I just didn’t realize it - the account of someone's experience with Japan's prison system - although not the actual prison, but a place where someone can be held for almost a month without contact with the outside world. On the other end of it, the whole story comes out, but while in the holding area, precious little for information is actually permitted in or out. Such a thing pales in comparison to an FBI informant's account of being arrested and treated like an insurgent - it took the military ninety-seven days to release him and clear him of charges. He was subjected to quite the inhumane treatment, denied rights and while there was no physical torture, there was always the threat thereof. This concurs with a lot of what has been said about military prisons in Iraq. Yet some people still believe that the people there are treated humanely, and others believe that those in the prison are receiving as many rights as they should be entitled to, namely, zero or close to that. It’s a wonder there aren’t more lawsuits like this from those that actually manage to be released without being convicted of something.
The CIA was doing its very best to break the laws and rules of its charter in previous years. According to a 693-page file that will be fully declassified on Monday, the CIA engaged in illegal wiretaps, surveillance, assassination plots, and human experiments before reforms were enacted in the 1970s. Far enough in the past that it won’t bite the agency, I suspect. It would be nice to know if these documents are just for that era, and whether or not some or all of those illegal activities continued even after the reforms. Transparency is definitely something you’d like to have for things like this. We’re hoping, then, that we’ll get to find out more as more information reaches the mandatory declassification point.
In certain places of India, however, charging a three-year-old with rioting doesn’t even garner a second blink as to whether such a thing would be possible, feasible, or worth prosecuting. Of course, at times, what the criminals are doing is similarly silly, like trying to steal Herman Munster's identity. On the other end of the spectrum, and in the United States, if you think someone in your family has an FBI file, and said person is deceased, then Get Grandpa's FBI File offers to generate the appropriate forms for filing with the FBI to be sent such a file. Now you can know whether there are any convicted horse-thieves on either side of the family tree.
In Australia, alcohol and pornography are set to be banned for the aboriginal peoples. Said people who this will affect are complaining that they weren’t consulted, nor are they being allowed to have a say in whether the decision should be enacted. The measure also includes tighter welfare controls and is supposed to be in response to child sexual abuse being found in the remote communities visited.
Something slightly lewd which resulted in injury - a gent on amphetamines had a marathon masturbation session, earning him a couple stab wounds from his friend when he continued to wank on her bed, possibly in the field of vision of her children. (Even after being stabbed, he continued to wank in the garage waiting for the police). Beyond that, and actually dangerous, in a courtroom in Nebraska, the words rape, sexual assault, assailant, victim, and rape kit/sexual assault kit have been banned in a rape trial. The thinking behind this is that apparently jurors will hear those words and decide on emotion rather than fact. But the jurors don’t get to know that those words have been scrubbed from the trial, either. There was a motion to include sex and intercourse on the list of banned words, but the judge refused that. So now the rape trial can’t actually use any of the words commonly used to describe what potentially happened.
The tour of the law ends with a triple-shot of school-related material, courtesy of
lordmork: A student suspended after voicing his opinion on marijuana's harms, and then planning and walking out of class to protest what he felt were free-speech violations. As a good student, however, he’s going to pass the grade even without the ability to take his examinations. That said, I note that at least according to the article, the statement made was that marijuana was no more dangerous than tobacco or alcohol. That’s not to say it was harmless, just no more so than the other drugs that we use regularly. I suspect the suspension involved has something to do with a Zero Tolerance policy about “promoting drug use”. Second incident, new location - a "no-touching" rule being enforced in a school in Virginia. That’s no touching at all - no hugging, no high-fives, no handshakes, no nothing. Supposedly, there’s discretion among the staff, but as a way of trying to combat, say, gang handshakes or people who feel uncomfortable being hugged, it seems to be trying to smash water with a sledgehammer. Plus, how many touches happen during a normal school day that nobody would think about? Even with discretion, I suspect there would be some incidents where an innocuous pat on the back might lead to discipline. Last, and I think this one’s been done before, a girl who wants to wear her chastity ring to school is taking her case to Britain's High Court, fighting a rule that stops her from wearing it as an adornment, but allows Sikhs to wear steel bracelets as an essential part of their faith. I wonder where the rationale for removing jewelry from the classroom comes from - to stop people from displaying their bling in the classroom? For each of these cases, lordmork considered them to be part of a bigger problem - schools aren't letting kids do things that are harmless, and so not teaching them how to respect differences and get along. Instead, the schools are teaching their kids to put their heads down, conform, obey, and not make waves. Which makes it into a prison more than a school, in my opinion. But I’ve seen that sort of trend in the public schooling sphere here - people who are different are pressured, sometimes threatened, to conformSo, after all that stuff that expressly invokes laws or rules being broken or enforced, The New York Times has an article about freeganism, the pracice of living "one man's trash is another's treasure".
Hrm. Part of me wants to say this is proof of the myth that radio is liberal, and some other part says that saying something like that is likely to be untrue, but a study from the Center for American Progress concludes that talk radio is more than ninety percent conservative. Of course, depending on what is considered “talk” radio, and which stations were sampled, and a host of other factors, the numbers may or may not reflect reality. (And would it kill places writing articles like these to link to the sources, if they’re available? Even if it is just a press release from the place mentioned in the article. Here's the official CAP release, including a link to the report. On the web, it’s pretty easy to cite your sources and link directly to them. Wish more would do that.)
Some other part of me wants to know what the difficulty some people in England are having with an increasing amount of Muslim women choosing to wear the niqab, a full-length covering garment that really only shows the eyes of the woman wearing it.
After all this weighty material, however, the Cool Things department saves the day, serving up a DIY guide to becoming a cyborg, all based on technologies that are available, if expensive, to obtain. If that’s not on your list, or you’re not so fond of that, it’s worth several laughs to look at The Bane of My Existence, cataloging the various types of trying-to-be-trendy folk around in the city. Definitely worth a study to see if you can’t spot some of those people yourself.
For thinking and mulling over, a list, alphabetic-like, of Don Brown's "universals", which appear to be short thoughts and ideas that Borwn thought would be true throughout existence. Some of them are being called into question, others seem like they’ll never go away. Which ones do you want, and which would you like to see gone?
The Last, Really Cool Thing for tonight, however, is the Angel Sword guitar - an axe that will play great thrash and kill teen pop stars. All yours, if you can outbid everyone else who wants their hands on it. I, however, do not have that kind of spare money lounging about with which to attempt to purchase such an instrument of destruction. Thus, I will go to bed, and instead dream of the time when I will have my millions. (It’s a fantasy-land, I know. At some point, though, I will have made $1 million, assuming I live long enough. It’s just that I will have spent most of it by that time, too.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 02:22 pm (UTC)The no touching thing appears because of the ridiculous number of sexual harassment cases popping up. Did you know teachers aren't allowed to hug or tough students in the majority of schools? We're advised on certain ways to hug so it's not "too intimate." (My kids are six, and they hug me constantly) In a world of lawsuits and crazy people, the rules have come to be because we have to protect ourselves...not becuase we want it this way.
It's so sad that some parents would accuse a teacher...or another six year old (this has happened) of being a pedophile because they hugged a kindergartener.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 03:36 pm (UTC)And the no-touching thing is rule, not exception? That's sad. I would think people know the difference between friendly hugs and sexual harassment or pedophilia. Apparently, though, we can't trust kids, parents, or teachers to be able to understand the difference, and so nobody can touch anybody else at all!
What a wonderful prison school is. Not just for the inmates, but for the wardens, too.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 04:39 pm (UTC)Unfortunately in my six hours a day I can control them in the room, but everything I do is undone when they go home. And no, society does not value its schools, nor its children, I think.
And yeah, the no touching thing is awful. I hug my kids all the time, but their parents don't care, so I don't risk much.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-24 06:30 am (UTC)f society valued schools and children, we'd have an education system that actually taught things regularly and well. If the public school systems could have the funding that the branches of the military get, even for one year, we'd probably see marked improvements across the board, and almost every school, I suspect, could actually fund itself, pay the teachers a good salary and ensure everyone had access to enough supplies and resources. God luck convincing he Army they have to hold a bake sale to raise money for their new Humvees, though.
That the parents aren't hugging their children, or don't particularly care that their child receives affection is just sad. Sounds like the parents need to come back to first grade and learn a few things along with their kids. Might do them both good.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-24 02:03 pm (UTC)The problem is, it's not most teachers, it's what's available. I made my kids at Academy function at 98%, and my class this year scored at 83%. However this year's class had 18 kids, 12 of whom had parents in prison, 3 born addicted to drugs, and 6 severe abuse cases. Of course they can't perform like schools in more affluent areas. Also, our kids do not get art, science, social studies, technology or library classes. Under NCLB, if a school is on probation, we teach 90 mins of reading, 75 mins of math, 40 mins of gym or music, 60 mins of writing and 30 mins of language intervention. I was able to beg the government liasons to let me teach either science or social studies 20 mins a day to my gifted kids.
I totally agree with you about military funding; if we had even a portion of it, I could teach my kids with more than old highlights magazines. The problem is that our society assumes that poor or disabled children are worthless and they won't put anything into them. I'm writing a book right now about my class in the hopes that people will see that they're amazing, bright kids who will have no chance if someone doesn't really help them.
My school offers a lot of free parenting classes to tech parents how to be affectionate and not hurt their kids. I just wish more parents would take them.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-24 04:24 pm (UTC)So many kids from those backgrounds, wow. And all they get to get are "basics" that were probably boring on day one and only continue to be boring every day after that. Maybe if they could get art and the other classes, the government liaisons would find out that many of these kids have an aptitude for something, and that aptitude will make school bearable for them.
No money for books, or not enough money to get books for everyone? Wow. I'll bet a lot of people wonder why the kids are doing so bad in school. You could probably present a laundry list of reasons why this keeps happening, and try to get the society to rally around giving the kids a chance, but from the attendance on parenting classes (which many parents probably see as some personal affront to their ability to be good parents), it doesn't look like that many people in the area care, and nobody outside who could do help out cares, either.
I hope that the book succeeds really well, and that people are inspired to help bring all their schools up to a good education level, without backhanded punishments like No Child Left Behind does.
I cringe to ask, because I suspect I know what the answer is, but how's the library system where you are? Could they be of any help at all?