This one arrives early - 13 July 2007
Jul. 13th, 2007 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGoing away for the weekend, so everybody gets an early update from the network. Take a quick entry about perceived versus real responsibilities from The Bellman as your starting point, and please hold on tightly throughout the ride. Beware of allegations of a North Carolina state legislature exposing himself to a staff member and chasing her about the room asking for oral sex and other hazards.
The Department of Rich and Poor reminds us all that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is hitting record highs, even as we complain about the prices of goods being exorbitant. I’d say the two are related in some way, wouldn’t you?
Speaking of prices going haywire, come Monday, many Internet radio stations will be shut down or required to pay many thousands of dollars in retroactive royalties. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did not stay a decision urged by the recording industry to strongly increase royalty fees and to assess them retroactively to 2006. For many sites that operate with no profit at all, or even necessarily any revenue stream, finding money to pay royalties is not possible, and so they will shut down. Once again, the recording industry, the people that want you to only be able to play music that you have purchased on their terms, pushed through a royalty increase that punishes Internet radio stations. I guess we’ll have to wait for brave judges or legislators smack them around a bit before they’ll actually do anything that benefits the music customers. Our corporate department also provides a handy business-buzzword-compliant translation device for you so that you can sift through what is being said. Economist’s view has already tested it on a graph in the Wall Street Journal purporting that less taxes makes for more revenue, and you can see the results for yourself.
Diana West, in Townhall, says that the United States should be looking at Iran if it wants to stop global terror, not Iraq, in such that even if Iraq succeeds according to spec, that doesn’t gain the United States anything in terms of ground against terror. So she says to snuff out the terrorists in Iraq, sure, but then to smash Iran as the real enemy. That’s been a little silent for a while, admittedly. Perhaps because there’s been an attempt to shore up the situation in Iraq, with plenty of opinion columnssuggesting different categories of metrics to evaluate whether or not the troop surge is working.
A shirt listing the names of dead soldiers from the Iraq conflict underneath a message "Bush lied, they died" has been banned from a third state. Arizona joins Oklahoma and Louisiana in prohibiting the sale of the shirt, calling it “commercial speech” that can be subjected to regulation, as opposed to a protected political statement. This does not make people happy. With similar subjects, just juggled into new relationships, Reason Magazine takes a look at Burning Man's decision to include corporations demonstrating environmentally-friendly objects at the gathering this year. As with many things, the corporate that Burning Man tries to escape sneaks back in, sure, but this is a time where they’re letting it in the front gates, I suspect, and that makes people who really want as pure a TAZ as they can get unhappy.
The new surgeon general nominee says that he's committed to science over politics. Much of the concern has been over a 1991 paper he wrote (wow, we dig up old stuff) claiming that sex between men was unnatural and associated with diseases. His more recent material is better, including supporting an increase on tobacco taxation and supporting the use of condoms as a pregnancy preventer as well as a disease stopper. Sixteen years does give someone time to rethink their positions. But there will likely be some close watching just to make sure that there isn’t any backsliding away from sound science.
In an attempt to cut down on the number of selective abortions in India, the government of Inida ha smandated that all pregnancies be registered with the government. While the idea is noble, in trying to keep alive female foetuses and newborns, the precedent set may be more disturbing. And it may not end up being effective if there aren’t more places where women can have a hospital delivery, rather than a pregnancy where almost half never see a doctor. On our own shores, the teen birth rate has dropped to record lows, while condom usage is increasing (and, according to the figures quotes, less teenagers are having sex). They’re also more likely to be completing high school. Regarding the lower birth rate, the availability of Plan B as a nonprescription emergency contraceptive may have something to do with it as well, despite the increased howling of winds that say such availability promotes promiscuity or is immoral. (Be careful about the statistics quoted - some people might be cherry-picking their numbers)
Something that could be interesting to a significant number of people wondering where (U.S.) Democratic candidates stand on LGBT issues - a debate dedicated solely to those issues will occur on August 9. An interesting resource to tap for those voting in the primaries.
The following is not funny. It is cruel, and an indication of just how far things have gone. A mother claims that she and her baby were forced off a plane because her baby uttered the phrase "Bye-by, plane" many times. You can never be too careful in this day and age. Those 19 month-old children are really harboring plots to blow up commercial airliners.
This incident, however, is funny. Advice to aspiring h4xx0rs who want to goof around in class - make sure that you understand the setup that your instructor has. Otherwise, the instructor may decide to get a humorous revenge by flexing their own knowledge about the system you’re trying to compromise.
I believe this is a new wrinkle in the Anti-Potter crusade. Considering the source, it’s probably just that I haven’t seen it before. The argument itself sounds like something that you could cut-and-paste a number of things into without changing the substance of it. Hat tip to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amenquohi for stomaching this enough to link to it. Anyway, this gist of this particular WND column is that Harry Potter teaches kids to be rebellious to their parents, and engages in and advocates moral relativism and narcissism. Because Mr. Potter is responsible for all these things, and that’s without the extra “rebellion against God” that he advocates by being a practicing wizard. I may have to take up flamespitting as a past-time, just for that extra emphasis when something annoys me that much.
Kudos to the Palm Beach County school board's rejection of a mother's request to pull books referencing homosexuality, atheism, and abortions off high school library shelves. The mother did not precisely make herself a credible and sane source, decrying the school’s insistence on teach the Big Bang, rather than creationism, in addition to her request to remove the books from shelves. The board member quoted indicates a very good position - the board and the school support all their students, regardless of orientation, or pregnancy, or religious beliefs. Would that more organizations took this stance. Besides, examples of microevolution keep popping up, like the blue moon butterfly successfully evolving a gene that suppresses a parasite within 10 generations - about a year, human time. Stands to reason that the bigger evolution patterns are likely to hold true, too.
The Bizarro World news desk gave us a nice story about elephants meandering in the suburbs (one of these days, we’re going to see a successor to Joshua Norton riding a war-elephant, I’m sure), which passed without major incident, and an incident that led to the military of the United Kingdom expressly saying they didn't release man-eating badgers into a populated area. At least it wasn’t procupines. Porcupines have the ability to get past security at nuclear research facilities. And then the guy who robbed a bank using foliage to try and disguise himself.
Our Cool things department once again reaches into the bag of masterful food art and produces an 8-bit Mario square-cupcake cake. It’s a lot easier to see than to describe, I assure you. If things in motion is more your thing, then the story of Tzuki might be a better set for you - be warned, though, there’s a lot of animated material here, so it’ll probably run slowly.
After all that material, I’m going back to the other house. The one that might be my residence if September arrives and no jobs have been found for me. Suffice it to say, I really hope that doesn’t happen.
The Department of Rich and Poor reminds us all that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is hitting record highs, even as we complain about the prices of goods being exorbitant. I’d say the two are related in some way, wouldn’t you?
Speaking of prices going haywire, come Monday, many Internet radio stations will be shut down or required to pay many thousands of dollars in retroactive royalties. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did not stay a decision urged by the recording industry to strongly increase royalty fees and to assess them retroactively to 2006. For many sites that operate with no profit at all, or even necessarily any revenue stream, finding money to pay royalties is not possible, and so they will shut down. Once again, the recording industry, the people that want you to only be able to play music that you have purchased on their terms, pushed through a royalty increase that punishes Internet radio stations. I guess we’ll have to wait for brave judges or legislators smack them around a bit before they’ll actually do anything that benefits the music customers. Our corporate department also provides a handy business-buzzword-compliant translation device for you so that you can sift through what is being said. Economist’s view has already tested it on a graph in the Wall Street Journal purporting that less taxes makes for more revenue, and you can see the results for yourself.
Diana West, in Townhall, says that the United States should be looking at Iran if it wants to stop global terror, not Iraq, in such that even if Iraq succeeds according to spec, that doesn’t gain the United States anything in terms of ground against terror. So she says to snuff out the terrorists in Iraq, sure, but then to smash Iran as the real enemy. That’s been a little silent for a while, admittedly. Perhaps because there’s been an attempt to shore up the situation in Iraq, with plenty of opinion columnssuggesting different categories of metrics to evaluate whether or not the troop surge is working.
A shirt listing the names of dead soldiers from the Iraq conflict underneath a message "Bush lied, they died" has been banned from a third state. Arizona joins Oklahoma and Louisiana in prohibiting the sale of the shirt, calling it “commercial speech” that can be subjected to regulation, as opposed to a protected political statement. This does not make people happy. With similar subjects, just juggled into new relationships, Reason Magazine takes a look at Burning Man's decision to include corporations demonstrating environmentally-friendly objects at the gathering this year. As with many things, the corporate that Burning Man tries to escape sneaks back in, sure, but this is a time where they’re letting it in the front gates, I suspect, and that makes people who really want as pure a TAZ as they can get unhappy.
The new surgeon general nominee says that he's committed to science over politics. Much of the concern has been over a 1991 paper he wrote (wow, we dig up old stuff) claiming that sex between men was unnatural and associated with diseases. His more recent material is better, including supporting an increase on tobacco taxation and supporting the use of condoms as a pregnancy preventer as well as a disease stopper. Sixteen years does give someone time to rethink their positions. But there will likely be some close watching just to make sure that there isn’t any backsliding away from sound science.
In an attempt to cut down on the number of selective abortions in India, the government of Inida ha smandated that all pregnancies be registered with the government. While the idea is noble, in trying to keep alive female foetuses and newborns, the precedent set may be more disturbing. And it may not end up being effective if there aren’t more places where women can have a hospital delivery, rather than a pregnancy where almost half never see a doctor. On our own shores, the teen birth rate has dropped to record lows, while condom usage is increasing (and, according to the figures quotes, less teenagers are having sex). They’re also more likely to be completing high school. Regarding the lower birth rate, the availability of Plan B as a nonprescription emergency contraceptive may have something to do with it as well, despite the increased howling of winds that say such availability promotes promiscuity or is immoral. (Be careful about the statistics quoted - some people might be cherry-picking their numbers)
Something that could be interesting to a significant number of people wondering where (U.S.) Democratic candidates stand on LGBT issues - a debate dedicated solely to those issues will occur on August 9. An interesting resource to tap for those voting in the primaries.
The following is not funny. It is cruel, and an indication of just how far things have gone. A mother claims that she and her baby were forced off a plane because her baby uttered the phrase "Bye-by, plane" many times. You can never be too careful in this day and age. Those 19 month-old children are really harboring plots to blow up commercial airliners.
This incident, however, is funny. Advice to aspiring h4xx0rs who want to goof around in class - make sure that you understand the setup that your instructor has. Otherwise, the instructor may decide to get a humorous revenge by flexing their own knowledge about the system you’re trying to compromise.
I believe this is a new wrinkle in the Anti-Potter crusade. Considering the source, it’s probably just that I haven’t seen it before. The argument itself sounds like something that you could cut-and-paste a number of things into without changing the substance of it. Hat tip to
amenquohi for stomaching this enough to link to it. Anyway, this gist of this particular WND column is that Harry Potter teaches kids to be rebellious to their parents, and engages in and advocates moral relativism and narcissism. Because Mr. Potter is responsible for all these things, and that’s without the extra “rebellion against God” that he advocates by being a practicing wizard. I may have to take up flamespitting as a past-time, just for that extra emphasis when something annoys me that much.Kudos to the Palm Beach County school board's rejection of a mother's request to pull books referencing homosexuality, atheism, and abortions off high school library shelves. The mother did not precisely make herself a credible and sane source, decrying the school’s insistence on teach the Big Bang, rather than creationism, in addition to her request to remove the books from shelves. The board member quoted indicates a very good position - the board and the school support all their students, regardless of orientation, or pregnancy, or religious beliefs. Would that more organizations took this stance. Besides, examples of microevolution keep popping up, like the blue moon butterfly successfully evolving a gene that suppresses a parasite within 10 generations - about a year, human time. Stands to reason that the bigger evolution patterns are likely to hold true, too.
The Bizarro World news desk gave us a nice story about elephants meandering in the suburbs (one of these days, we’re going to see a successor to Joshua Norton riding a war-elephant, I’m sure), which passed without major incident, and an incident that led to the military of the United Kingdom expressly saying they didn't release man-eating badgers into a populated area. At least it wasn’t procupines. Porcupines have the ability to get past security at nuclear research facilities. And then the guy who robbed a bank using foliage to try and disguise himself.
Our Cool things department once again reaches into the bag of masterful food art and produces an 8-bit Mario square-cupcake cake. It’s a lot easier to see than to describe, I assure you. If things in motion is more your thing, then the story of Tzuki might be a better set for you - be warned, though, there’s a lot of animated material here, so it’ll probably run slowly.
After all that material, I’m going back to the other house. The one that might be my residence if September arrives and no jobs have been found for me. Suffice it to say, I really hope that doesn’t happen.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-14 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-14 09:26 pm (UTC)I didn't read the HP article past the "witchcraft means rebellion" because I thought i'd puke, but I do need to point out that Dumbledore never said there were no bad people, only that people had a CHOICE to be bad or good. *Shakes head*
....and now i have the badger badger badger song in my head. Thanks!
on the same page as the mario cupcakes, did you see this link? knitted iPhone! (http://daddytypes.com/2007/07/04/my_mom_handknit_an_iphone.php)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 06:50 pm (UTC)I hope the flight attendant got ripped a new one for wasting time & money to remove a disruptive passenger who wasn't disruptive at all!