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silveradeptOne telephone interview in the books. One tomorrow. If the telephone interview today goes well, I’m going to have to borrow videoconferencing equipment so that I can do a skills demonstration for them in a secondary interview. I’ll know before the beginning of next week, apparently. It’s a flurry of activity, which is a nice change of pace from what normally happens as I try to find myself employment. Hopefully something out of this tour of interviews ends up getting me work. I probably need good luck more than good skills now, but having more of both would never be a bad thing.
I really haven’t played any of the Metal Gear franchise, just keeping an eye on it because of the people who mention some of its oddities, quirks, and metafictional techniques involved in the gameplay and unfolding storyline. Well, after having seen the trailers, I was linked to Hideo Kojima's demo of Metal Gear Solid 4 gameplay and the graphics and gameplay look very interesting. It looks to be from the chapter of the game that the trailers have come from, and Kojima demonstrates quite a few options for Snake to use in his missions. Again, not having played it, I have no idea if this is normal for a Metal Gear Solid game, but it might be enough to get me to try my hand at it, if I ever get the appropriate hardware involved.
A story thought finished and dead has revived with a vengeance. Recall earlier, the story of Reverend Magdalen, the SubGenius who had her child taken away from her because of some X-Day celebrations. The matter was thought closed, with the custody of her child awarded toher husband the father of the child, when the father racked up a drunk driving incident of sufficient proportions that the Rev. now has her child back, temporarily. New custody hearing to follow, but even more weird, the judge who determined the first case has inserted himself back into the case, bumping out the judge who was assigned to it. Even with claims that he sees things in a different light, a lot of things could get hairy quickly. More news as the saga unfolds, I guess.
Cindy Sheehan is going forward with the challenge to Pelosi's Congressional seat. Question is whether or not she decides to go for it now, or to wait for some time closer to the actual vote to make her campaign loud and visible.
There are probably a lot of people looking at an alimony case in California where a divorced man is paying alimony to his ex-wife, even though she registered as a domestic partner with another woman. According to what the law says, had she remarried, his alimony obligations would have stopped. But because it’s not marriage, then the agreement for alimony continues on. This is probably not what anyone envisioned as an example of what happens when you have separate institutions with separate definitions trying to coexist, but it is a case in the system from which an opinion has been written. While this situation is probably an outlier, statistically speaking, it could be cited as a test case for a lot of people looking for reasons why it would be simpler, cheaper, and altogether less confusing to offer same-sex couples marriage.
Cracked takes a swipe at six movie formulas that must be stopped, in their opinion. What’s a bit disappointing in this bit is how it ends. The rest of it is pretty funny, though. At least, I laughed more, or nodded thoughtfully there than I did in Michelle Malkin taking exception to Senator Joe Biden's response to a question about guns in the country. While the Senator’s jibe at the questioner’s mental state in referring to his weapon as his “baby” is not necessarily tasteful, his point about trying to ensure that those persons who could do great damage with gun because of mental instability is taken. I doubt that he was inferring, as Malkin wants to claim, that all gun-owners are mentally imbalanced or are looking for excuses to shoot people. Furthermore, I’d be very surprised if either Democrats or Republicans said they wanted to ban firearms completely or wanted to take them away from ordinary citizens. We’ll have to see how something like this gets spun out in upcoming political contests. We haven’t had a whole lot of “they’re coming to take our guns!” debate recently.
That could be, of course, because of the rather dominant that the conflict in Iraq is taking in the national discourse. It appears that the neoconservative wing of the country has all come to the same conclusion of an Iraqi genocide should the United States remove their military presence there. Having so concluded, they are unafraid to say that liberals condone the genocide of Iraq while opposing other genocides occurring in the world. I still don’t find the argument of “we have to stay there now or it’ll all collapse” compelling or appealing, because that would indicate how large of a screw-up really took place, as well as reveal just how long it will take to fix said screw-up. Considering the size and cost of the new embassy in Iraq, and seeing that timetables for Iraq security and possible troop drawdowns have already been pushed to 2009, I’m beginning to wonder whether there was any supporting structure at all in place before this insanity began. Even then, the troops may not get rest from Iraq, as an Air Force General wants the military to more than triple its terrorist-response teams, believing that there are already terror cells or those who want to start them inside the country..
In other matters, Cheney was given the same power to talk to the Justice Department that Bush had, and only now, Gonzalez seems to have noticed and “be troubled” by it. More evidence that there’s a puppet in the White House, and that someone else is running things? You never know. Maybe that recent rectal exam was to make sure that someone could still shove their hand up there and control the dummy appropriately. In any case, two White House aides may be facing contempt of Congress charges if the full House of Representatives vote for it, after the Judiciary Committee voted to start the process. The spokesman for Mr. Bush called it “pathetic”. In any case, as Mr. Gonzalez took fire from the Senate committee, Fox News reported on the sudden defection of Arlen Specter to the Democrats. This is the second sudden defection reported by Fox, following Representative Mark Foley’s abrupt departure from the Republican party. To cap things off with a quick trip to Bizarro-world, John Bambenek filed a Federal Election Comission complaint against the Daily Kos, claiming that it is a political action committee that spends enough money trying to influence political outcomes to subject it to disclosure rules. The Kos coughs politely and crowns John the "Wanker of the Year", pointing out several rulings from the FEC on this sort of subject that exempt Kos from those requirements, because they fall under the category of “press entity”. Even fully biased “press entities” are exempt from such reporting requirements, no matter how much they spend. The costs of Kos aren’t counted as expenditures or contributions to a particular political campaign or organization, and thus never reach the reporting requirement plateau. To drive the knife in and twist, Kos notes several conservative blogs that say an action like this is not in the interests of free speech and that conservatives should fight this action as well.
Ah, while I was fuming, it appears that Liberty called and left us a message. We want things to get done, we want to do them, yet they seem to find ways to not get done. And thus, we turn to other ways of getting the message out.
Something about the following seems suspicious - The United Nations Economic and Social Council granted consultative status to the European arm of an organization started by Pat Robertson. Which could be innocuous, but from the way I’m reading this bit, it sounds a lot more like “Goody! Now we can get the U.N. to recognize the special status of Christians all over the world! Yippee!” I could, however, be reading this entirely wrong. Anyone with details on this?
Something I would think is more in line with the teachings, although not something I can give a full endorsement to is an Ethics Daily piece about a book that blames churches for routinely directing abused wives back to their abusers, believing that if the wife becomes a model wife, the abuse will stop. Because, in these situations, of course, divorce is not an option that a church will recommend with any haste, if at all. Combined with a tendency to point toward the “submissive wife” verses, a situation happens where women are blamed for the abuse and then told they can’t do anything but go back to the abuser and hope to placate them in some miraculous way
Last out of the matters of law is an oddity - a website is suing the federal government to repeal a law criminalizing the sale of depictions of animal cruelty, so they can broadcast Puerto Rican rooster fights over the Internet into the United States. So, Mr. Vick is indicted on charges of raising and betting on dog fighting, and a website would like to broadcast rooster fights into the states. Once you start paying attention, all sorts of twenty-threes start appearing.
Engage Cool Things! Although the following may be a bit gross or graphic for some, the details of the galvanic frog webserver project are interesting to behold - in much the same vein as Wave 2 the Cats was (is?), this allows control of a frog’s legs over the web, with the results viewable through a web camera set up to monitor the exhibit. A thinking Cool Thing is In Defense of Dangerous Ideas, which would like to see much more of open debate about ideas that we consider to be taboo and so utterly wrong that they dare not be uttered at all. If they’re wrong, he argues, all the better to smash them before they infect others. If hey’re right, then we can figure out why they are and whether that has any bearing at all. I’ll pair this with Five Ways to Develop Independent Thought, since it sounds like the two of them would go well together.
The Happiness Project tries to work with an old adage in the Wednesday list - “money can’t buy happiness”. The Project offers eight tips on how money can help you achieve being happy, not by necessarily buying every good that you can set your eyes and wallet on, but by targeting your purchases in ways that will contribute to things that do make you happy. Positive thinking is a nice thing that can help try to make you happy, but the inverse-square law beats the law of attraction, so use it as a way of setting your mind to notice the things that are making you happy. Like imaginatively playing with trucks, for example. Or rewriting famous poems into limericks.
Leading into the last parts for tonight is the appeal to have San Francisco cab medallion number 666 retired based on bad luck and misfortune befalling those who have it and the results of the appeal - 666 stays in use. I like the comment, though, that says the cab with that medallion should embrace the kitsch of 666 and pimp out the cab in the best devil-gear. Might have the effect of being able to laugh off any misfortunes, and such an obviously devilishly handsome cab might pick up more fares by flaunting its status.
Next-to-Last for tonight is a simple reminder. Jesus loves you. C'thulhu loves you with ketchup. Which means there should be a Crud Puppy/Old One 2008 campaign sticker coming out at an appropriate time. Only in America do we think we can make the fervor over elections last for eighteen months before they actually happen.
Very Last for tonight is... 99 bottles of lolcat beer on the wall - which is an implementation of the 99 bottles of beer song in lolcode, which appears to be a programming language that uses kitty pidgin to do work. On the site, are many other ways of doing 99 Bottles of beer in several programming languages. At least a couple of the Ruby implementations made sense to me. Lots of setting up definitions and detailing what they actually do. The actual execution code is generally no more than one of two lines. With the limited experience I have, I’d probably not do it efficiently or nicely. Perhaps with practice and guidance.
Anyway, that’s it for this edition, which is always the late edition simply because I want to squeeze as much stuff into these as possible. Got to get up tomorrow and give another telephone interview.
I really haven’t played any of the Metal Gear franchise, just keeping an eye on it because of the people who mention some of its oddities, quirks, and metafictional techniques involved in the gameplay and unfolding storyline. Well, after having seen the trailers, I was linked to Hideo Kojima's demo of Metal Gear Solid 4 gameplay and the graphics and gameplay look very interesting. It looks to be from the chapter of the game that the trailers have come from, and Kojima demonstrates quite a few options for Snake to use in his missions. Again, not having played it, I have no idea if this is normal for a Metal Gear Solid game, but it might be enough to get me to try my hand at it, if I ever get the appropriate hardware involved.
A story thought finished and dead has revived with a vengeance. Recall earlier, the story of Reverend Magdalen, the SubGenius who had her child taken away from her because of some X-Day celebrations. The matter was thought closed, with the custody of her child awarded to
Cindy Sheehan is going forward with the challenge to Pelosi's Congressional seat. Question is whether or not she decides to go for it now, or to wait for some time closer to the actual vote to make her campaign loud and visible.
There are probably a lot of people looking at an alimony case in California where a divorced man is paying alimony to his ex-wife, even though she registered as a domestic partner with another woman. According to what the law says, had she remarried, his alimony obligations would have stopped. But because it’s not marriage, then the agreement for alimony continues on. This is probably not what anyone envisioned as an example of what happens when you have separate institutions with separate definitions trying to coexist, but it is a case in the system from which an opinion has been written. While this situation is probably an outlier, statistically speaking, it could be cited as a test case for a lot of people looking for reasons why it would be simpler, cheaper, and altogether less confusing to offer same-sex couples marriage.
Cracked takes a swipe at six movie formulas that must be stopped, in their opinion. What’s a bit disappointing in this bit is how it ends. The rest of it is pretty funny, though. At least, I laughed more, or nodded thoughtfully there than I did in Michelle Malkin taking exception to Senator Joe Biden's response to a question about guns in the country. While the Senator’s jibe at the questioner’s mental state in referring to his weapon as his “baby” is not necessarily tasteful, his point about trying to ensure that those persons who could do great damage with gun because of mental instability is taken. I doubt that he was inferring, as Malkin wants to claim, that all gun-owners are mentally imbalanced or are looking for excuses to shoot people. Furthermore, I’d be very surprised if either Democrats or Republicans said they wanted to ban firearms completely or wanted to take them away from ordinary citizens. We’ll have to see how something like this gets spun out in upcoming political contests. We haven’t had a whole lot of “they’re coming to take our guns!” debate recently.
That could be, of course, because of the rather dominant that the conflict in Iraq is taking in the national discourse. It appears that the neoconservative wing of the country has all come to the same conclusion of an Iraqi genocide should the United States remove their military presence there. Having so concluded, they are unafraid to say that liberals condone the genocide of Iraq while opposing other genocides occurring in the world. I still don’t find the argument of “we have to stay there now or it’ll all collapse” compelling or appealing, because that would indicate how large of a screw-up really took place, as well as reveal just how long it will take to fix said screw-up. Considering the size and cost of the new embassy in Iraq, and seeing that timetables for Iraq security and possible troop drawdowns have already been pushed to 2009, I’m beginning to wonder whether there was any supporting structure at all in place before this insanity began. Even then, the troops may not get rest from Iraq, as an Air Force General wants the military to more than triple its terrorist-response teams, believing that there are already terror cells or those who want to start them inside the country..
In other matters, Cheney was given the same power to talk to the Justice Department that Bush had, and only now, Gonzalez seems to have noticed and “be troubled” by it. More evidence that there’s a puppet in the White House, and that someone else is running things? You never know. Maybe that recent rectal exam was to make sure that someone could still shove their hand up there and control the dummy appropriately. In any case, two White House aides may be facing contempt of Congress charges if the full House of Representatives vote for it, after the Judiciary Committee voted to start the process. The spokesman for Mr. Bush called it “pathetic”. In any case, as Mr. Gonzalez took fire from the Senate committee, Fox News reported on the sudden defection of Arlen Specter to the Democrats. This is the second sudden defection reported by Fox, following Representative Mark Foley’s abrupt departure from the Republican party. To cap things off with a quick trip to Bizarro-world, John Bambenek filed a Federal Election Comission complaint against the Daily Kos, claiming that it is a political action committee that spends enough money trying to influence political outcomes to subject it to disclosure rules. The Kos coughs politely and crowns John the "Wanker of the Year", pointing out several rulings from the FEC on this sort of subject that exempt Kos from those requirements, because they fall under the category of “press entity”. Even fully biased “press entities” are exempt from such reporting requirements, no matter how much they spend. The costs of Kos aren’t counted as expenditures or contributions to a particular political campaign or organization, and thus never reach the reporting requirement plateau. To drive the knife in and twist, Kos notes several conservative blogs that say an action like this is not in the interests of free speech and that conservatives should fight this action as well.
Ah, while I was fuming, it appears that Liberty called and left us a message. We want things to get done, we want to do them, yet they seem to find ways to not get done. And thus, we turn to other ways of getting the message out.
Something about the following seems suspicious - The United Nations Economic and Social Council granted consultative status to the European arm of an organization started by Pat Robertson. Which could be innocuous, but from the way I’m reading this bit, it sounds a lot more like “Goody! Now we can get the U.N. to recognize the special status of Christians all over the world! Yippee!” I could, however, be reading this entirely wrong. Anyone with details on this?
Something I would think is more in line with the teachings, although not something I can give a full endorsement to is an Ethics Daily piece about a book that blames churches for routinely directing abused wives back to their abusers, believing that if the wife becomes a model wife, the abuse will stop. Because, in these situations, of course, divorce is not an option that a church will recommend with any haste, if at all. Combined with a tendency to point toward the “submissive wife” verses, a situation happens where women are blamed for the abuse and then told they can’t do anything but go back to the abuser and hope to placate them in some miraculous way
Last out of the matters of law is an oddity - a website is suing the federal government to repeal a law criminalizing the sale of depictions of animal cruelty, so they can broadcast Puerto Rican rooster fights over the Internet into the United States. So, Mr. Vick is indicted on charges of raising and betting on dog fighting, and a website would like to broadcast rooster fights into the states. Once you start paying attention, all sorts of twenty-threes start appearing.
Engage Cool Things! Although the following may be a bit gross or graphic for some, the details of the galvanic frog webserver project are interesting to behold - in much the same vein as Wave 2 the Cats was (is?), this allows control of a frog’s legs over the web, with the results viewable through a web camera set up to monitor the exhibit. A thinking Cool Thing is In Defense of Dangerous Ideas, which would like to see much more of open debate about ideas that we consider to be taboo and so utterly wrong that they dare not be uttered at all. If they’re wrong, he argues, all the better to smash them before they infect others. If hey’re right, then we can figure out why they are and whether that has any bearing at all. I’ll pair this with Five Ways to Develop Independent Thought, since it sounds like the two of them would go well together.
The Happiness Project tries to work with an old adage in the Wednesday list - “money can’t buy happiness”. The Project offers eight tips on how money can help you achieve being happy, not by necessarily buying every good that you can set your eyes and wallet on, but by targeting your purchases in ways that will contribute to things that do make you happy. Positive thinking is a nice thing that can help try to make you happy, but the inverse-square law beats the law of attraction, so use it as a way of setting your mind to notice the things that are making you happy. Like imaginatively playing with trucks, for example. Or rewriting famous poems into limericks.
Leading into the last parts for tonight is the appeal to have San Francisco cab medallion number 666 retired based on bad luck and misfortune befalling those who have it and the results of the appeal - 666 stays in use. I like the comment, though, that says the cab with that medallion should embrace the kitsch of 666 and pimp out the cab in the best devil-gear. Might have the effect of being able to laugh off any misfortunes, and such an obviously devilishly handsome cab might pick up more fares by flaunting its status.
Next-to-Last for tonight is a simple reminder. Jesus loves you. C'thulhu loves you with ketchup. Which means there should be a Crud Puppy/Old One 2008 campaign sticker coming out at an appropriate time. Only in America do we think we can make the fervor over elections last for eighteen months before they actually happen.
Very Last for tonight is... 99 bottles of lolcat beer on the wall - which is an implementation of the 99 bottles of beer song in lolcode, which appears to be a programming language that uses kitty pidgin to do work. On the site, are many other ways of doing 99 Bottles of beer in several programming languages. At least a couple of the Ruby implementations made sense to me. Lots of setting up definitions and detailing what they actually do. The actual execution code is generally no more than one of two lines. With the limited experience I have, I’d probably not do it efficiently or nicely. Perhaps with practice and guidance.
Anyway, that’s it for this edition, which is always the late edition simply because I want to squeeze as much stuff into these as possible. Got to get up tomorrow and give another telephone interview.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Cthulhu Loves You With Ketchup
Date: 2007-07-26 03:30 am (UTC)~M~
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 09:01 am (UTC)and when she has that fatal "accident" where she fell down those stairs, the poor grieving widower is free to marry again..and is welcomed back to the church with open arms.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 03:21 pm (UTC)and why did i totally understand the lolcat thing?