Yet more to be had - 25 September 2007
Sep. 25th, 2007 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptMade it through alive. Felt clunky and unnatural, and my audience wasn’t very responsive in some ways, until I got to a story I could play with, and then I had a perfectly good audience and it felt natural. So now I know my own storytelling style, and thus I will endeavour to do things in that style from here on out. Things should be better tomorrow, when I get another shot with a different crowd. And maybe this time I’ll remember to bring everything with me, and I’ll end on time. No clock in that room meant I went a bit over time today, but that’s okay. I’ll find that refined point, or I’ll start wearing my watch again.
So, onward from there to the things that are important, like Bush swearing a veto on a Congressional plan to expand health care for uninsured children. Apparently because it would raise taxes and cost us another $35-$50 billion. Mr. Bush? Have a look at some spending charts, please. If you were really concerned about financial waste, you shouldn’t have engaged in a venture in Iraq that would be costly and drag on. Or wouldn’t keep badgering others to spend money on programs which are constitutionally questionable. More on that later.
Light pollution is making starry nights less likely, so much so that people start calling observatories when there’s actually a cloudless, starry sky, because they have no idea what they’re looking at.
Taking the idea of silly-stupid and running with it, Stupid Monsters of Dungeons and Dragons. There is one kernel of truth in there - if the Game Master decides you’re going to die this adventure, there’s enough monsters that can do it to you without you being able to fight back at all.
Ah, something a bit more intelligent - NASA wants to put Terrans on Mars in thirty years. Considering current propulsion technologies, they’d better have something ready and done in the next fifteen or so, so that it can be built and sent out. Private industries are competing for the next X-type prize, which is to land a rover on the moon and have it be able to move at least five hundred meters.
Mother Jones magazine wants to pry into Senator Clinton's religious beliefs. Because she’s got the look of being a religious conservative and hanging out with some very conservative people, yet vies for the Democratic party’s nomination. For some, this seems to be an unacceptable contradiction. For others, that sounds fairly solidly like what the Democratic candidates and party are like. The group that the Senator subscribes to is made out to be a bit shadowy, “cell”-based, and intent on pushing politics and belief further in the conservative direction, regardless of what party achieves power. Almost like they’re setting them up to be Christian terrorists, just without the suicidal bombing. It’s certainly no glowing review of the Senator, suggesting that she would do better in the other party, excepting that she doesn’t get agreement on some of the “core” religious conservative issues, like birth control and the like.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greyweirdo offers something like the inverse of this idea of social conservatives who suddenly get very liberal when they or someone near them needs things to be liberal, linking to this edition of the Talking Points Memo, where the same idea is espoused - conservatives don’t mind restricting everyone’s rights, but they’ll be the first in line to torch them if it turns out that said restrictions might actually hurt them or someone they care about. Perhaps they do need more life experience. Which to me, seems antithetical to a lot of what American neoconservatism is about, which is isolating people away from the rest of the world, raising and working and playing in a bubble where there aren’t any pesky outside ideas that might disrupt the group’s mentality. Where Senators can earmark one hundred thousand federal dollars to creationists, and nobody blinks or bats an eye, at best complaining that it’s not enough money to really effectively spread the word. And where images such as a poster for the Folsom Street Fair parodying da Vinci's "Last Supper" by replacing the table of apostles with leather devotees is so beyond the pale that anyone who thought of such a thing would be shunned immediately and cast out. Once the outside world forces itself inside and can’t be pushed back out or ignored, suddenly there’s a swift impetus to do something that will get the intruder out, even if it means sacrificing a little bit of utopia for long enough to get the interlopers and their ideas out of the community, and then building better walls next time. Would be easier in a lot of ways if they’d just take the wall down and assimilate some, but a lot of interpretations of YHWH seem to like his people walled up, condemning the Other, and trying very hard not to do anything that might introduce a change in their thoughts or actions.
Following up from yesterday’s demonstration of a race-blind society in America, one of the country’s most self-inflated pundits (Bill O’Reilly) was surprised at there being no difference between a restaurant run primarily by blacks and one run by whites when he visited Sylvia’s in New York City. He was apparently expecting some sort of ghetto-fabulous and rude/crude behavior between black people in the restaurant. But America doesn’t see race, remember. We absolutely don’t have a former leader of the KKK encouraging white people to go down to Jena and say "No, we're not racist! It's the blacks that are taking our jobs and increasing violence! Stop them, not us", and that some names and addresses of people involved in the Jena 6 incident have been published with the incitement to lynch them. Who are you going to believe, me, or Your Lying Eyes? After all, if we can not be concerned about the amount of body ink that a person has in relation to them applying for an apartment, then obviously we don’t have to worry about bigger issues.
As I have been informed, there is a nationwide strike of the United Auto Workers union, which makes Detroit, already choking on a black pretzel, feel like there’s someone squeezing what little air is still getting in out by crushing its throat in a vise. For a sampling of opinions regarding the possible hostility toward the UAW, look at the comments of this Detroit Free Press article about a picketer struck by a car and then ticketed for blocking traffic. I wonder if/when the hostility toward UAW and/or unions in general got this bad.
In Iraq, the Iraqi government has finished a draft of legislation that would end any legal immunity for contracted security forces in the wake of Blackwater's scandal. The fledgling steps of a new government trying to assert itself. Let’s see just how fast this gets crushed by the American boot.
Changing a letter over, and probably confusing George W. Bush immensely, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the United Nations today, after an interesting talk at Columbia University, where even his hosts seemed confrontational about his positions. Mr. Ahmadinejad attempted to dispel the hostility with a joke, but it fell flat. He also apparently denied the existence of homosexuals in Iran. The visit has some people fuming about the apparent inability of a conservative speaker to have a good speech, while liberals, dictators, and anti-Semites appear to have a free in to the podiums of universities. Or at least don’t get disrupted nearly as much. Should I remind the chambers that someone who is probably a liberal by United States standards got heckled inside the chamber of the United States Senate? And that people who simply wear T-shirts espousing liberal causes are removed from those chambers for being disruptive? One might suspect that the younger generation, who always has a bit more of a liberal streak, are reflecting the values of their parents, just in the opposite direction of the spectrum, that’s all.
Things perhaps of less interest, but more cool factor, involve Roman winter footwear - big wooly socks. Perfect for the snows of Gaul. Even better would be powered armor, of course. MIT students have decked out the statue of John P. Harvard with a SPARTAN helmet and assault rifle, proving that even when there are midnight releases of video games, there’s always enough time for a hack. In fact, in some ways, perhaps video games are the way that we keep MIT students from taking over the world, as whiskey was supposedly invented to keep certain other people from doing so in jokes. If not those, then perhaps water-cooling systems that also function as steampunk mods for computer cases.
Anyway, it’s winding down into night-time, which means that it’s time for sleep, since I have more stories to tell tomorrow. Hopefully with better rhythm and rhyme than today’s.
So, onward from there to the things that are important, like Bush swearing a veto on a Congressional plan to expand health care for uninsured children. Apparently because it would raise taxes and cost us another $35-$50 billion. Mr. Bush? Have a look at some spending charts, please. If you were really concerned about financial waste, you shouldn’t have engaged in a venture in Iraq that would be costly and drag on. Or wouldn’t keep badgering others to spend money on programs which are constitutionally questionable. More on that later.
Light pollution is making starry nights less likely, so much so that people start calling observatories when there’s actually a cloudless, starry sky, because they have no idea what they’re looking at.
Taking the idea of silly-stupid and running with it, Stupid Monsters of Dungeons and Dragons. There is one kernel of truth in there - if the Game Master decides you’re going to die this adventure, there’s enough monsters that can do it to you without you being able to fight back at all.
Ah, something a bit more intelligent - NASA wants to put Terrans on Mars in thirty years. Considering current propulsion technologies, they’d better have something ready and done in the next fifteen or so, so that it can be built and sent out. Private industries are competing for the next X-type prize, which is to land a rover on the moon and have it be able to move at least five hundred meters.
Mother Jones magazine wants to pry into Senator Clinton's religious beliefs. Because she’s got the look of being a religious conservative and hanging out with some very conservative people, yet vies for the Democratic party’s nomination. For some, this seems to be an unacceptable contradiction. For others, that sounds fairly solidly like what the Democratic candidates and party are like. The group that the Senator subscribes to is made out to be a bit shadowy, “cell”-based, and intent on pushing politics and belief further in the conservative direction, regardless of what party achieves power. Almost like they’re setting them up to be Christian terrorists, just without the suicidal bombing. It’s certainly no glowing review of the Senator, suggesting that she would do better in the other party, excepting that she doesn’t get agreement on some of the “core” religious conservative issues, like birth control and the like.
greyweirdo offers something like the inverse of this idea of social conservatives who suddenly get very liberal when they or someone near them needs things to be liberal, linking to this edition of the Talking Points Memo, where the same idea is espoused - conservatives don’t mind restricting everyone’s rights, but they’ll be the first in line to torch them if it turns out that said restrictions might actually hurt them or someone they care about. Perhaps they do need more life experience. Which to me, seems antithetical to a lot of what American neoconservatism is about, which is isolating people away from the rest of the world, raising and working and playing in a bubble where there aren’t any pesky outside ideas that might disrupt the group’s mentality. Where Senators can earmark one hundred thousand federal dollars to creationists, and nobody blinks or bats an eye, at best complaining that it’s not enough money to really effectively spread the word. And where images such as a poster for the Folsom Street Fair parodying da Vinci's "Last Supper" by replacing the table of apostles with leather devotees is so beyond the pale that anyone who thought of such a thing would be shunned immediately and cast out. Once the outside world forces itself inside and can’t be pushed back out or ignored, suddenly there’s a swift impetus to do something that will get the intruder out, even if it means sacrificing a little bit of utopia for long enough to get the interlopers and their ideas out of the community, and then building better walls next time. Would be easier in a lot of ways if they’d just take the wall down and assimilate some, but a lot of interpretations of YHWH seem to like his people walled up, condemning the Other, and trying very hard not to do anything that might introduce a change in their thoughts or actions.Following up from yesterday’s demonstration of a race-blind society in America, one of the country’s most self-inflated pundits (Bill O’Reilly) was surprised at there being no difference between a restaurant run primarily by blacks and one run by whites when he visited Sylvia’s in New York City. He was apparently expecting some sort of ghetto-fabulous and rude/crude behavior between black people in the restaurant. But America doesn’t see race, remember. We absolutely don’t have a former leader of the KKK encouraging white people to go down to Jena and say "No, we're not racist! It's the blacks that are taking our jobs and increasing violence! Stop them, not us", and that some names and addresses of people involved in the Jena 6 incident have been published with the incitement to lynch them. Who are you going to believe, me, or Your Lying Eyes? After all, if we can not be concerned about the amount of body ink that a person has in relation to them applying for an apartment, then obviously we don’t have to worry about bigger issues.
As I have been informed, there is a nationwide strike of the United Auto Workers union, which makes Detroit, already choking on a black pretzel, feel like there’s someone squeezing what little air is still getting in out by crushing its throat in a vise. For a sampling of opinions regarding the possible hostility toward the UAW, look at the comments of this Detroit Free Press article about a picketer struck by a car and then ticketed for blocking traffic. I wonder if/when the hostility toward UAW and/or unions in general got this bad.
In Iraq, the Iraqi government has finished a draft of legislation that would end any legal immunity for contracted security forces in the wake of Blackwater's scandal. The fledgling steps of a new government trying to assert itself. Let’s see just how fast this gets crushed by the American boot.
Changing a letter over, and probably confusing George W. Bush immensely, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the United Nations today, after an interesting talk at Columbia University, where even his hosts seemed confrontational about his positions. Mr. Ahmadinejad attempted to dispel the hostility with a joke, but it fell flat. He also apparently denied the existence of homosexuals in Iran. The visit has some people fuming about the apparent inability of a conservative speaker to have a good speech, while liberals, dictators, and anti-Semites appear to have a free in to the podiums of universities. Or at least don’t get disrupted nearly as much. Should I remind the chambers that someone who is probably a liberal by United States standards got heckled inside the chamber of the United States Senate? And that people who simply wear T-shirts espousing liberal causes are removed from those chambers for being disruptive? One might suspect that the younger generation, who always has a bit more of a liberal streak, are reflecting the values of their parents, just in the opposite direction of the spectrum, that’s all.
Things perhaps of less interest, but more cool factor, involve Roman winter footwear - big wooly socks. Perfect for the snows of Gaul. Even better would be powered armor, of course. MIT students have decked out the statue of John P. Harvard with a SPARTAN helmet and assault rifle, proving that even when there are midnight releases of video games, there’s always enough time for a hack. In fact, in some ways, perhaps video games are the way that we keep MIT students from taking over the world, as whiskey was supposedly invented to keep certain other people from doing so in jokes. If not those, then perhaps water-cooling systems that also function as steampunk mods for computer cases.
Anyway, it’s winding down into night-time, which means that it’s time for sleep, since I have more stories to tell tomorrow. Hopefully with better rhythm and rhyme than today’s.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 06:58 pm (UTC)But THAT'S THE POINT!!! ARGH! so allies are more important than our children's health? you know, the people who will be running the country in 30 or so years? I take it to mean we won't be seeing universal health care before he's out of office.
I am so glad that I've always lived in areas that still gave the ability to look at the stars. How's the sky where you are now?
The comments on that article are HORRID. Personally, I understand why she was given a ticket for obstructing traffic, but the guy who hit her HIT A PERSON WITH HIS CAR. he should have gotten a ticket as well. Any other time, a pedestrian is in the middle of a road and gets hit by a car, people jump all over the driver of the vehicle for not stopping or seeing the person. But because it involves someone striking for wanting medical insurance....it's the person's fault. Maybe instead of telling GM to take the jobs to Mexico and China, people should be working with GM to resolve the problem. Besides which, if the plants close down, that would be even more people on unemployment compensation, and I'm sure they don't want their tax dollars going to that!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 07:30 pm (UTC)Cloudy, is usually the answer to that question, but the sky is fairly dark around here. There's still good street lighting, but I could probably see some stars if I looked in the right places.
Regarding the person being hit/hitting someone, if you were ever around when Bernie was talking about his experience with Planned Parenthood, the protestors aren't allowed to step in front of cars or try to stop them or otherwise disrupt traffic flow. That's where the ticket for the person hit comes from. If that's the case, then the driver doesn't need a ticket, because the person that stepped out in front of them did so deliberately and is at fault. All those other times tend to be accidents, and believe that there was enough time for the driver to stop or swerve around.
Union representation is actually pretty expensive for workers and companies alike - pensions, benefits, and union dues are all paid for by the people working. Like any other system, if there are more people drawing on it than putting in, there's stress put on the system. Any company that outsources wants to cut costs, and most of the costs that involve people in America are for benefits and because of the higher minimum wage. In some ways, the union may be contributing to the bankrupting of the company, just because of the way that things have turned out.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 07:37 pm (UTC)I really don't understand the whole union thing. I had to join a union when I worked at Rite Aid, and I really didn't understand what the reasoning was, since I was a seasonal employee.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 08:11 pm (UTC)I'm part of a union myself, and for the most part, I'm not completely sure myself all of what goes on in the backend. It's an opportunity to learn, though, and to see what's around and available.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 08:14 pm (UTC)I am surprised this big strike has managed to stay out of national news, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 09:57 pm (UTC)Glad they're going back to work though.
Hey, I thought you said you couldn't pick up NPR? Or am I imagining things?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 10:09 pm (UTC)You dream when I complained about picking up NPR. NPR picks up just fine, it's the radio transmitter for digital music transmission that's been crowded out.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 10:25 pm (UTC)