Right, and more - 23 October 2007

[silveradept]

Today was today, not good, not bad, mostly normal - except that whole stuffed up nose thing. Which is a pain in the butt. Wish it would go away.

I have fallen back into the curse of receiving no comments, so if I am slow or nonresponsive, this is why. If it’s something properly important, draw it to my attention with regular e-mail or other communication methods, please.

Leading with a positive thing for once, Cranking Widgets offers six simple ways to be a nicer person. I hope I’ve got most of those internalized, especially on the job.

The good mood is crushed swiftly, however, A possible system of flagging LiveJournal entries for "inappropriate" content may be coming soon. As it is described in the post, it looks bad and pretty easy for someone to abuse-spam and troll those who they don’t agree with. (Although, wasn’t there already a flagging system implemented somewhere? Or are those still hypotheticals?)

Even worse (for some of us), The Japanese government has made an official appeal to United States authorities to suppress fansubs. Which could kill the licensing companies’ best inexpensive market research.

(Another) report saying that peak oil has already arrived. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this before, at other times, but the fact that it’s even making it into the news indicates that it would be a good idea to find a method to generate the required amounts of energy from a source that is renewable... while we can still generate the cheap power to manufacture the expensive stuff with.

Atari's founder calls current video games "trash". Well, to each their own opinion - it’s true that a lot of games get published that probably shouldn’t. I’d like to see more in-depth reasoning, but the founder doesn’t have any specifics on the record.

Before we get into quiche, the CIA gets special mention for pure, unmalicious stupidity. Feast your eyes on the "Terrorist Busters" logo. This has apparently been in existence for a while. (And Keith made it his Worst Person in the World for today.) Perhaps following suit, or trying to appeal to the same demographic is the National Security Agency’s Cryptokids. Teaching cryptology with young, attempting to be hip anthropomorphs. Think this strategy will work or backfire horribly? Or worse, will it be co-opted as a resource to work through if and when such a unit should appear in their schoolwork?

On the fringes of quiche territory, yet another dittohead saying that every time things go well in Iraq, Democrats are ready to slit their political wrists. You know, if Iraq turns out well, everyone will give credit where it is due - to the people who managed to rebuild it and keep it safe until the domestic powers took over - or those who brought it back from the depths of civil war into a stable democracy. The people who will try to take credit for it, however, are likely the people who will least deserve any of it, regardless of which side of the aisle they sit on.



It’s quiche time, as the graphic above notes. Our leading SSRC says that the people who are having their homes burned in California are the people who hate America. Luckily, the rest of the country does not hold the same opinion, and has mobilized the National guard and fire teams, as well as declaring a state of emergency. Having learned a bit about disasters with the hurricane one, hopefully this one will be controlled better.

In a different style of insensitivity, Angry Asian Man has a roundup of "Asian" Halloween costumes, all aiming for sexuality. Yeah. There’s plenty of costumes that you can do - or, if you’re going to go for that aim, find yourself an anime character so that you can do the makeup in the drawing style and be accurate. Between that and Hogwarts Headmasters, you could easily offend every fundamentalist Christian within your neighborhood. You may want someone who’s a copy of Dungeons and Dragons to drive the point home, however.

Moving in toward our quiche criteria, the Pentagon co-opted an "editorially independent" newspaper as part of a PR campaign for Mr. Bush's war in Iraq, transferring funds away from the paper into the coffers of a PR firm hired to do the selling to Americans. Without notifying the editors. I’d hate to believe that this sort of thing is turtles all the way down, though.

Different malevolence, different result, but environmental regs were suspended to permit the construction of a fence through a national conservation area, under the auspices of the director of homeland security. The wall to keep out the immigrants is more important than the preservation of what little natural scenery and land we have left.And even better, said director actually has the authority to do so.

But, deserving and earning a quiche to the face for being the most Stupid, Stupid Rat Creature in this entry is a mult-quiche winner, Michelle Malkin, who derides and dismisses those objecting to the "Islamo-Facism Awareness Week" project of David Horowitz. If you want, you can have a look at the student's guide to IFAW.

To clear your mind of this (and perhaps to instill a different line of questioning), PETA has convinced an Australian model to appear nude for a campaign poster extolling vegetarianism. How, precisely, does PETA manage this, with their general perception as a fringe group?

My professional self once again hopes that the books used in these art projects are old, withdrawn, and have no interest in being preserved in an archival collection. That said, MonkeyFilter links to several artists that use books as their medium.

Staying in the cool stuff department, Fire Ants Versus... pits fire ants versus other insects, with the fire ants winning a least one bout.

If technology is your thing, try building your own 50s-era satellite, like the Russian one that went up. Components and housing for such would be pretty inexpensive. Getting sufficient lift to put it up into orbit might take a bit more expense. So, instead, it might be better-utilized for some other purpose here on Gaia.

Almost taking top honors tonight as the best thing in this entry is a page that has Christopher Walken reading Poe's The Raven. Of course, there’s also all sorts of background sound effects and an echo effect on Walken’s reading. Still good, and would work well for your Halloween parties. And if you’re in the are, perhaps seeing the all-female version of the Dreaded Scottish Play is good for getting into the right mood.

Our far-and-away winner of Best in Show tonight goes to josh g.‘s notes, for coming up with the rules to Escalating Office-isms, a game that not only requires a good knowledge of buzzword bingo, but requires the players to play a bit of a game of one-upmanship while around the water cooler. Wins are counted by laughs from your opponents, losses when people have to go back to work. Try it yourself.

Since I have to get up early again, bedtime is on the horizon. There’s been another study that says sleep is excellent for your memory and learning, and that REM sleep and dreaming is a great place for all that association to take place in, so make sure you get sufficient amounts of it to stay smart. I’m going to try for some so that I can stay healthy. Or get healthy, rather.

Comments

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

I be torn. I love when you post these news links. But I hate reading them because EVERYTHING SUCKS!!! I kinda want to move to Canada. :( According to most people, I already talk like I'm from there anyway, when I get going (thanks, Upstate New York Childhood!). :P

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way sometimes.

[silveradept]

It's my sources - they like to concentrate on depressing things and all the things going wrong. Occasionally, they get something happier, and I get to pass that along. But much like the nightly newscasts, when it's 35 minutes of gloom and doom, 20 minutes of commercials, and 3 minutes of "human-interest", there's not much to work with.

[nebris.livejournal.com]

The CIA 'Terrorism Busters' link times out. ;P

~M~

[silveradept]

Might be a Slashdot effect, for all I know. It worked for me the morning that I was linked to it, but now the world is curious to see what sort of stupidity is in order.

Christopher Walke

[redrab.livejournal.com]

LOL. Love Christopher Walken. Love the Raven. Love Poe. I've often imagined how great it would be to hear Walken reading Faulkner. That's a match made in run-on sentence heaven.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I really hope LJ doesn't go through with the abuse buttons. I mean, that means that if someone is mad at someone else, they can just start flagging their entries....and I know a few assholes (even on my own friends list) who would do that.

how does japan expect the US government to stop the torrenting of anime? I mean, sure they can attampt to shut down some of the bigger sites, but it will still exist elsewhere.

[silveradept]

Not going to, already has. Strikethrough and Bolding incidents that have prompted these new measures are precisely that kind of thing.

In the same way that the United States can go after people who download copyrighted American music and movies to a computer in America, they could do the same for Japanese movies and music that are downloaded to a computer in America. The way they do so is much like the techniques they have already - suing the hell out of anyone who looks crosswise at it.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Entires don't (yet) have the abuse buttons on them, though.

[silveradept]

Not yet. But they probably will. And then the Abuse team will proabbly get snowed under in all the requests that come through - and will have to dedicate some time to separating wheat from chaff. And it's still mostly a black box as to how they make their decisions.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Perhaps though if they start getting an influx of non-abuse things on the abuse button, they will discontinue it's use?

[silveradept]

Or they'll just default to some sort of "Sorry, you got three abuses flagged. You're banned, with no appeals, have a nice day." I would hope they don't implement any sort of easily-abusable abuse feature, but that doesn't seem to be likely.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

The thing is, if something really DOES scream "ABUSE" at you, you can go and report it to LJ. You can go to the "support" link, and send them the URL for teh entry with your reason for reporting it. Why isn't this method good enough?

On craftster we have a "report this" button that appears on every single post in a thread. When you click it, you have to tell the mods WHY you are reporting it (usually it's for advertising stuff). it then goes into the big giant inbox of stuff for the mods to look at. If you report too many "non abuse" things, you will get a PM informing you to please stop abusing the report this button. I think if you continue to send false abuse reports, you'll eventually get yourself banned. Hopefully, LJ will do the same thing.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

"How, precisely, does PETA manage this, with their general perception as a fringe group?"

Because they're not perceived as a fringe group by most people. Those of us who are actually educated and bother to do research know how crazy they are, but the less-research-inclined masses of the general public think of PETA as only being crazy because they love animals so much. Loooooooooooooooooooove for the happy kittens and puppies! Most people are not even aware that PETA is anti-pet. Witness the fact that in that sad story of PETA killing pets, shelters actually handed adoptable animals over to PETA to find homes for them! If most people knew that PETA endorses the ending of all animal "slavery" (i.e. the keeping of pets and of domestic animals) would they have done that? I doubt it!

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Oh, and most artists I know who use books use old Reader's Digest condensed novels. So they're not hurting any real literature.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

That. Is. Genius.

[silveradept]

Brilliant. Probably turns the RD bits into something actually useful, too.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

My dad used to buy those. Man, we got rid of a ton of those after he died. And the library didn't want them, because they were condensed things. I think we wound up giving them to salvation army.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I get asked all the time why I don't support PETA. I mean, after all, I'm a vegetarian, and don't all vegetarians support PETA? It's for the exact reasons you mention that I refuse to support the organization. I've always used their paint dumping on fur coats as an example of why I don't like them - I might not like fur being used for coats, but someone else spent their hard-earned (well, or inherited) money on a coat. What right do I have to dump paint on it just because I don't like it? Does that mean that if I see someone walking down the street wearing a shirt I don't like I should dump paint on them, too? such a stupid, stupid organization.

I also question the model laying down on real chili peppers. Even the outsides of those things can leave oils on your skin that cause a burning sensation if it touches certain delicate areas.

[silveradept]

Unlikely to be real chilis. Probably just a background 'shopped in.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

You're right, it probably is. Which in some ways defeats the purpose of the ad.

[(Anonymous)]

From GwenOphelia:

I waded through ALL the comments on the Michelle Malkin post on Islamo-Facism Week. If you (the general you, all of you out there) haven't done it, do it. While there is some stupid flaming (but really, when you have almost 300 comments, what do you expect?), there is a lot of commentary that humanizes the argument for IFW. The comments (not all, but many) are very insightful, showing that the people in favor of IFW arrived at that opinion through reasonable thought, rather than the "Down with Islam! We hate everything except God, America, Mom and Apple PieTM" mentality I first attributed such an event to. Let me stress, I think IFW is abominable, but the comments highlighted that people in favor of it are not incomprehensible monsters, and that we all look at the same facts and draw different conclusions.

My comment is this (which I did not post, it's just for the entertainment of those here): Much is said about how the MSA should be joining forces with IFW, not protesting it. It just doesn't make any sense to them (in fact, it means MSA members are the enemy) that MSA's aren't on board. SHOULD is a dangerous word when coming from the mouth of IFW supporters. The FACT of the situation is that MSA's on many campuses is protesting it.

What the IFW supporters are really saying is "If you're Muslim and not the infidel, your world view should be congruent with my world view of what your world view is." (following me here?) Problem is, the world view of the members of the MSA is different (hence the protesting) and they are being told to discount their personal experiences in favor of how they SHOULD view their personal experiences.

The first parallel that jumps to mind is a 1960's husband saying, "But dear, you should be fulfilled by keeping a great home and cooking dinner every night and not working!" It's the difference between what people outside an oppressed group think about the idea, and what the people in the oppressed group think about the idea. The husband thinks the wife should be fulfilled at home (therefor she must be, because he thinks she should think that way), but the actual participant thinks something quite different and is told to ignore her own personal experiences because they just don't carry as much weight.

Am I reaching too far here? I value the opinions of the regular bloggers here, you all seem like intelligent folk. I'm always open to having my argumentation skeelz sharpened.

Then again, this whole post may just be me clearing my head after wading through 300 comments...oy.

[silveradept]

That's not a stretch, Gwen. I guess I have very little faith that something like IFAW will not be used as a broad brush against Muslims in general, with as much as is being done to reinforce the idea that Muslims are terrorists, especially with the buildup toward Iran. Even if it turns out not to be so, that the event itself is being held indicates to me that there's enough people who believe that the majority of Islam is leaning, if not already, "Islamo-fascist.", and that the rest of us need to be informed about it.

Which probably doesn't actually address anything you've said. I agree that it's a matter of people thinking others should think the same way they think they think ("We are the ones who are setting you free,
now you can share our beliefs and be just like we") at the most benign, and that there are several potential levels of malevolence, as the abstraction gets more distorted (perhaps to become understandable to people who don't want to investigate the complexities of the matter).

[(Anonymous)]

From GwenOphelia:

The comments did bring up the point that the reason it's called Islamo-Facism Week is to differentiate between Muslims and radical Muslims. Someone said "If we believed all Muslims were terrorists, we'd call it Muslim Awareness Week", or something similar. While this was one of the comments that humanized the argument for me...

that particular point is poTAYto/poTAHto argument. Conservatism has shown time and time again it isn't good at seeing shades of gray. If you have an abortion you are WRONG WRONG WRONG no matter what the circumstances. There ARE NO circumstances because empathy is the for the WEAK, there is black and white and it's MY black and white...

*cough* uh, sorry, we return you to your regularly scheduled critical analysis.

I think that your casual person who would be inclined to go to these events isn't going to see the distinction between "Islamo-Fascist" and "Muslim", and even if they did, I agree with your commentary that they already believe it's just a matter of time before all of Islam jumps on board. watershed got attacked in the comments for continually saying "These comments already show that it's a short step to paint all of Islam as evil", and no one adequately refuted the claim of broadbased bigotry on the thread. It was mostly just "no, we're discussing the nuances, no one here is pointing fingers broadly, you're the one without facts, neener neener."

Here's my challenge to you - find a blog that has commentary on this from individuals that identify themselves as Muslim, a Muslim equivalent of Michelle's blog, if you will. Bonus points if it's the blog of someone Muslim who actually went to an event. Maybe it's me showing my own racial assumptions, but the comments on Michelle's blog didn't have anyone identifying themselves as Muslim, and I tend to feel no one was. It was a lot of speculation about that "other", be it the radicals or the MSA members. What do the people that this is actually affecting have to say? They are the ones that have the experience that counts, IMHO.

And OT, I'm sorry my comments are always so after-the-fact. I read your blog on my lunch break, which means I'm reading the previous night's post the next day. I appreciate you still engaging me, even if i'm still commenting on a previous post.

[silveradept]

S'okay. We comment when we can.

The chance of finding a Muslim blogging about this after having attended it is probably pretty small. Those who have already conflated Muslim with facism are looking for confirmation of their ideas, and those who already know the difference between moderate Islam and the fundamentalist version are probably pretty well aware of what the fundamentalist branch does. Or they know that those nutters don't really speak for the rest of them.

To be analagous, if there were a Christo-facism Awareness week, I somehow doubt that Malkin et al. would react to it by saying "Yes, we should support this week and participate to show that we're not those crazy fundies!" or "Yes, our religion has been steeplejacked so much by people who want to take over the world and rule it from the pulpit that we need to warn other people about them." I suspect the reaction would be "How dare you accuse our religion of love and peace as being primarily populated by people who hate and fear and want to control." Yet, in its own past, Christianity did (and still does) just that, pointing to plenty of places in the holy book where that's true, and ignoring other places that say violence against others is definitely not the way of Jesus.

I think that most things being written by Muslims about this will be critical, not kind.

[(Anonymous)]

From GwenOphelia:

I agree, chances are slim, hence why it's a challenge ;-) I'm not asking you to find a supportive blog - I'm asking you to find a blog that details authentic Muslim experience with this, supportive or no. I just want to hear their voice because their experience with it will always be more meaningful than mine. And probably more meaningful than all of the people that made the 300+ comments on Michelle's blog. Too bad they don't realize that.

And I too had the thought about Christo-facism week, and I agree with your thought on the reaction. There was much in the Michelle-blog comments about how Islam is still in the dark ages of violence, and more people are killed in a year in the name of Islam than in the last 600 years for Christianity, and Christianity got over that YEARS ago and after all, violence then was much more common when Christianity was doing it...yada yada. Tell that to the abortion clinic workers who have their faces on wanted posters. Tell that to the people dying of AIDS in Africa because the Catholic missionaries there won't give out condoms despite overwhelming evidence that condoms would help the problem.

Perhaps I should revise my previous statement - conservatives only see shades of gray when it deals with them and THEIR religion (the true religion after all. Everyone else is going to hell. Fools!). The personal is political when it deals with Christianity, and we wouldn't want to paint broad strokes about a diverse religion. But Islam is a black and white issue and conservatives are definitely the authority on it. No one else, just them, not even the people that are actually affected by conservatism "activism".

[silveradept]

Well, the first thing that looked like it might be on target was BlackFive panning the presentation and saying that he had a better time with an after-panel discussion with the Muslims in attendance than he did with the speaker.

The current running newsbit is that Horwitz has inflated the number of schools that are holding events like that, so it may be even harder to find authentic reactions because some of the places claimed aren't doing anything at all and won't be. The general reaction to the event that I've seen from the blogosphere, Islamic or otherwise, is a yawn.

But so as not to be a total disappointment, and to prove that I spent those many thousands of dollars actually doing something useful for my search skills, how about Ali Eteraz? The Myth of Muslim Condemnation of Terror looks like it addresses the key points of that IFAW is supposed to be about. And from there, if anyone ever wondered, Muslims condemn terror attacks. Srsly.

And recall that Christians, some very prominent ones, endorsed or thought that teroor attacks on our soil were good things, to bring us back to the right religion. Others encourage terrorism for much the same manner. Yet everyone here accepts that most Christians are not like those nuts. Why can't they do the same for Muslims? Is it just a lack of having a peaceful Muslim in their monkeysphere?

[(Anonymous)]

From GwenOphelia:

Challenge met. Gee, they did teach you some research skeelz, didn't they? Well done.

It makes me both happy and sad to be more informed about this issue - I value expanding my intellect, but as one person recently commented in your blog "Great stuff to read, but I get so damn depressed and want to move to Canada!"

Happy to be more informed wins out, but I am indeed having a mini-pity party about how f-ed up the world is.

That is all.

[silveradept]

In finding what you want to know, serendipity plays a little bit of a role, but a good starting point and knowing how to sift and tell your agents what to look for is far superior. The serendipity part happens on the latter end, where you're looking through good results for the perfect one. As I jokingly say, "I have all the answers. Some will take longer to find than others."

My general depressing lineup is probably heavily weighted toward what's wrong with the world and needs fixing, because there are very few stories, news or blog, that are about how things have gone right and people were helped (unless there were explosions, sharp objects, or children involved), and plenty of stories about waht people are doing to actively screw over each other. When those people are in positions of political, temporal, or even spiritual power, they deserve to be talked about, but even with this issue, there's probably a great majority of people who have no problem with believing Islam is a peaceful religion and that it has extremists, or that Horowitz and gang are making lava-spewing volcanoes out of paper-mache, baking soda, and vinegar. Every group has a fringe. We all just happen to hear more from it because the fringe is different and catches people's attention.

A handy example: There are fires in California that are burning homes, forests, and people alike. They're destroying years of hard work, precious mementos, and occasionally, they'll kill people. That's bad.

There are also fire crews mobilized, volunteer organizations running round-the-clock, and donations from all sorts of people and companies in all walks of life to try and help make the displaced life comfortable and to take the peoples' minds off of the tragedy that's befallen them. And there are people who will say that this giant fire was God's will to burn out all the America-haters in the country. Which of those two opinions makes top billing in the news? And which one of them is the opinion of the majority of America?

One idiot can get thirty microphones around him, and want them, and thirty people can refuse to let even one microphone near them, because they believe that what they do is not, and should not be, newsworthy. If we could see all the stories that don't make it to the news or the blogs, I think our opinion of our fellow people would change radically.