Going for even more - 13 November 2007
Nov. 13th, 2007 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptWhee for yet another day of being able to influence kids that books are good for you! And remember, people, as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cmpriest comments, even if you think that writing is the easiest thing in the world, being a professional at it is not. Thus, those who do it for a profession deserve to get income for all the times their writing is used. Otherwise, they tend to stop writing because they can’t afford having such an irregular job.
Out in the rest of the world, however, things look pretty... sucky. The opposition leader in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, has been put under house arrest again to prevent her from staging and joining marches against Musharraf. Musharraf continues to look weaker and weaker the more he tries to repress Bhutto’s campaign. In fair and free elections, he’d probably take a beating now. So the question then becomes whether fair and free elections will be what we see in January.
Ratzinger plans to visit the United States at some point next year. He’ll tour New York, including the site of the 11 September attacks, and speak at the Untied Nations. (Edit: That's actually the United Nations, but unintentional comedy has resulted from this, so it will stay.)
Giant trash piles in the Pacific ocean create giant trash piles washing up on the beach. In Hawaii. Nothing says suckitude like turning a paradise spot into a trash-riddled heap. Why not, instead, created inspired fashion like dresses made entirely out of clothespins?
Fox Noise decides it’s a good idea to talk about stuff we really already know. Although I’m not sure which is worse, Faux reporting on the results, or the study that determined that heroes tend to be good leaders, selfless, and often don't see themselves as the unafraid superheroes of the movies. I wonder where the money for that study came from.
More serious matters. Ron Paul may be in line with Bill'O with regard to the nonexistent "War on Christmas". Admittedly, the source material is from 2003, but that doesn’t mean that Mr. Paul might still believe in such things. Have a read for yourself.
Taking advantage of fuzzy matching algorithms, synthetic identity theft is now the main way of stealing identites. Rather than masquerading as someone, the thief gets a second file opened in their name and someone else’s information or SSN, builds up credit, then vanishes in a flash, potentially sticking the real consumer with debt collection and bad credit reporting. What’s worse, is that it’s not necessarily going to be caught by simply getting your credit report checked up on.
Democrats continue to try to prove to the country that they actually have done something other than get walked on. They’re still not succeeding. I think they’d have to actually stop war funding for anyone to believe they’ve done anything. Yet I suspect they’ll get a little longer lease, assuming a friendly president is elected. A Red State columnist is vehemently opposed to putting a Democrat in the White House, because while the U.S. dollar is weakening, the effects are being felt more by other countries than the United States, and that this sort of trend should be allowed to continue, trusting businesspeople and the market to work things out on their own.
Michelle Malkin thinks that its "seditious" that children appear at anti-war protests, calling them "human shields", after a protest stopped a caravan of military supplies from leaving the area it was in. The protest did something potentially very stupid - they blocked the road. The children were likely the reason they were saved from being savaged for their stupidity. Stupidity all around - laying down in front of the road will likely get you run over, but saying that people brought their children along to intentionally put them in danger like that is also pretty stupid.
The stupidity, however, increases in leaps and bounds in the next segment. In continuing to note the striking similarities between schools and prisons, a school in New Jersey has a live feed to the police department. So not only are the cameras rolling, but the police have the opportunity to scrutinize things live. This is purported to be something that will help with the whole school shooting thing, but I also wonder whether police will start showing up and citing/arresting kids for things they do in school, because the cameras saw them. Best behavior, all, Big Brother is watching.
A pop art exhibit at London's National Portrait Gallery unwittingly makes social comment on itself - while the artists were shameless about remixing things, taking things that were copyrighted, with the aim of producing new art, where things that might come out of it are something like the Ming period aluminium soda cans, the exhibit has a very strict “No Photography” policy, because all the images and art are under copyright. Even the No Photography sign couldn’t be photographed, because the layout and typography of the sign was also under copyright. So in celebrating the culture that thought of copyright as a guideline to prevent duplication without invention, we prevent anyone from violating the copyright on the images. If that was the intended effect, bravo. If not, perhaps they should consider that sort of thing.
And then it tops out with the account of a woman being drowned during an exorcism ceremony. Not only that, but there were family members there that didn’t move to stop the ceremony. The girl was dead nine hours before family contacted police. The ritual was supposed to get rid of a curse, but instead it ended up killing her. Can we please not have the ceremonies where there’s the chance of dying going on? Something like this is a quiche-worthy event.
If you have fears of things, including colors, the following page may not be for you - The Absolutely Scariest Colors Imaginable talks about people who are afraid of certain colors, and the color profiles for other, potentially more common fears.
If your fear is, however, that you’re not getting all the story about events and ideas, then maybe The Hour's Disinformation segments will be of use to you in filling in all the cracks, or finding where the cracks are in the first place.
ldragoon says that cliches about gay men are so beyond passe and are signs of horrible writing. There’s a lot of good characterization going on in graphic novels. In fact, DC’s Vertigo imprint manages to take cliche characters, the fables of our tales, and turn them into three-dimensional characters. The least that someone in the regular superhero genre could do is provide three-dimensional characters rather than cliche cutouts. Is it really that hard? If so, perhaps some character series need to gracefully fade away? And sooner, rather than later, especially if Think Progress’s belief that Mr. Bush will appoint a homophobe for Surgeon General when the Congress is in recess is accurate. For all we know, he’s drawing on those kinds of cliches in making his appointments.
ABC news speculates that about one in ten men has multiple sexual partners, taking a reported rate of about 6.6 percent and suggesting that it might be as high as ten percent because some men aren’t reporting, remembering, or otherwise admitting to it. The article notes that multiple partners could potentially permit the quicker spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, because someone could infect someone else before even the first symptoms of an infection appeared. They then say that having a good HIV-prevention and education program is an excellent idea and a good vector for stopping this potential problem. So far, so good. Then the Family Research Council weighs in. Rather than being concerned about the statistic in any form, the FRC decries the report as "a club to bring graphic sex ed straight to your kids", also believing that it's easy to spot the men who have multiple sexual partners, thinking that it’s confined to a couple subgroups. The Slacktivist pops an eyebrow at this conclusion, and says "Y'know, when you say that, you're telling women that if their partner is roaming, it's their fault", in addition to noting that the FRC seems wickedly obsessed with sex in all forms, be it education, infidelity, or multiple partners. More and more, the Republicans getting caught out in sexual indiscretion seem to be just doing what their backers are championing. Or something.
Being made of large quantities of Win is the story of firearms versus computer. Additionally, Space Cookies are yummy, nutritious, and win-filled. They are unlikely to cause food side effects that may not be known to all.
Also made of much win is sleep, which I will now be attending to.
cmpriest comments, even if you think that writing is the easiest thing in the world, being a professional at it is not. Thus, those who do it for a profession deserve to get income for all the times their writing is used. Otherwise, they tend to stop writing because they can’t afford having such an irregular job.Out in the rest of the world, however, things look pretty... sucky. The opposition leader in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, has been put under house arrest again to prevent her from staging and joining marches against Musharraf. Musharraf continues to look weaker and weaker the more he tries to repress Bhutto’s campaign. In fair and free elections, he’d probably take a beating now. So the question then becomes whether fair and free elections will be what we see in January.
Ratzinger plans to visit the United States at some point next year. He’ll tour New York, including the site of the 11 September attacks, and speak at the Untied Nations. (Edit: That's actually the United Nations, but unintentional comedy has resulted from this, so it will stay.)
Giant trash piles in the Pacific ocean create giant trash piles washing up on the beach. In Hawaii. Nothing says suckitude like turning a paradise spot into a trash-riddled heap. Why not, instead, created inspired fashion like dresses made entirely out of clothespins?
Fox Noise decides it’s a good idea to talk about stuff we really already know. Although I’m not sure which is worse, Faux reporting on the results, or the study that determined that heroes tend to be good leaders, selfless, and often don't see themselves as the unafraid superheroes of the movies. I wonder where the money for that study came from.
More serious matters. Ron Paul may be in line with Bill'O with regard to the nonexistent "War on Christmas". Admittedly, the source material is from 2003, but that doesn’t mean that Mr. Paul might still believe in such things. Have a read for yourself.
Taking advantage of fuzzy matching algorithms, synthetic identity theft is now the main way of stealing identites. Rather than masquerading as someone, the thief gets a second file opened in their name and someone else’s information or SSN, builds up credit, then vanishes in a flash, potentially sticking the real consumer with debt collection and bad credit reporting. What’s worse, is that it’s not necessarily going to be caught by simply getting your credit report checked up on.
Democrats continue to try to prove to the country that they actually have done something other than get walked on. They’re still not succeeding. I think they’d have to actually stop war funding for anyone to believe they’ve done anything. Yet I suspect they’ll get a little longer lease, assuming a friendly president is elected. A Red State columnist is vehemently opposed to putting a Democrat in the White House, because while the U.S. dollar is weakening, the effects are being felt more by other countries than the United States, and that this sort of trend should be allowed to continue, trusting businesspeople and the market to work things out on their own.
Michelle Malkin thinks that its "seditious" that children appear at anti-war protests, calling them "human shields", after a protest stopped a caravan of military supplies from leaving the area it was in. The protest did something potentially very stupid - they blocked the road. The children were likely the reason they were saved from being savaged for their stupidity. Stupidity all around - laying down in front of the road will likely get you run over, but saying that people brought their children along to intentionally put them in danger like that is also pretty stupid.
The stupidity, however, increases in leaps and bounds in the next segment. In continuing to note the striking similarities between schools and prisons, a school in New Jersey has a live feed to the police department. So not only are the cameras rolling, but the police have the opportunity to scrutinize things live. This is purported to be something that will help with the whole school shooting thing, but I also wonder whether police will start showing up and citing/arresting kids for things they do in school, because the cameras saw them. Best behavior, all, Big Brother is watching.
A pop art exhibit at London's National Portrait Gallery unwittingly makes social comment on itself - while the artists were shameless about remixing things, taking things that were copyrighted, with the aim of producing new art, where things that might come out of it are something like the Ming period aluminium soda cans, the exhibit has a very strict “No Photography” policy, because all the images and art are under copyright. Even the No Photography sign couldn’t be photographed, because the layout and typography of the sign was also under copyright. So in celebrating the culture that thought of copyright as a guideline to prevent duplication without invention, we prevent anyone from violating the copyright on the images. If that was the intended effect, bravo. If not, perhaps they should consider that sort of thing.
And then it tops out with the account of a woman being drowned during an exorcism ceremony. Not only that, but there were family members there that didn’t move to stop the ceremony. The girl was dead nine hours before family contacted police. The ritual was supposed to get rid of a curse, but instead it ended up killing her. Can we please not have the ceremonies where there’s the chance of dying going on? Something like this is a quiche-worthy event.
If you have fears of things, including colors, the following page may not be for you - The Absolutely Scariest Colors Imaginable talks about people who are afraid of certain colors, and the color profiles for other, potentially more common fears.
If your fear is, however, that you’re not getting all the story about events and ideas, then maybe The Hour's Disinformation segments will be of use to you in filling in all the cracks, or finding where the cracks are in the first place.
ldragoon says that cliches about gay men are so beyond passe and are signs of horrible writing. There’s a lot of good characterization going on in graphic novels. In fact, DC’s Vertigo imprint manages to take cliche characters, the fables of our tales, and turn them into three-dimensional characters. The least that someone in the regular superhero genre could do is provide three-dimensional characters rather than cliche cutouts. Is it really that hard? If so, perhaps some character series need to gracefully fade away? And sooner, rather than later, especially if Think Progress’s belief that Mr. Bush will appoint a homophobe for Surgeon General when the Congress is in recess is accurate. For all we know, he’s drawing on those kinds of cliches in making his appointments.ABC news speculates that about one in ten men has multiple sexual partners, taking a reported rate of about 6.6 percent and suggesting that it might be as high as ten percent because some men aren’t reporting, remembering, or otherwise admitting to it. The article notes that multiple partners could potentially permit the quicker spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, because someone could infect someone else before even the first symptoms of an infection appeared. They then say that having a good HIV-prevention and education program is an excellent idea and a good vector for stopping this potential problem. So far, so good. Then the Family Research Council weighs in. Rather than being concerned about the statistic in any form, the FRC decries the report as "a club to bring graphic sex ed straight to your kids", also believing that it's easy to spot the men who have multiple sexual partners, thinking that it’s confined to a couple subgroups. The Slacktivist pops an eyebrow at this conclusion, and says "Y'know, when you say that, you're telling women that if their partner is roaming, it's their fault", in addition to noting that the FRC seems wickedly obsessed with sex in all forms, be it education, infidelity, or multiple partners. More and more, the Republicans getting caught out in sexual indiscretion seem to be just doing what their backers are championing. Or something.
Being made of large quantities of Win is the story of firearms versus computer. Additionally, Space Cookies are yummy, nutritious, and win-filled. They are unlikely to cause food side effects that may not be known to all.
Also made of much win is sleep, which I will now be attending to.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 02:36 pm (UTC)Frankly, being a screenwriter is very different from being an author. The percentage of work that a screenwriter contributes to the marketability of a final product is much much less than for an author. Television, being a visual medium, derives much of its appeal visually: from good production, camerawork, acting, effects and using famous and or attractive central characters. Yes decent writing is essential to a show's success but so are all of the other things, thus a screenwriter should get a massively smaller percentage of the final gross intake than an author.
Second, supply and demand SHOULD determine prices and the sad fact is there's a glut of writers on the market. In fact this is ENTIRELY unlike book authorship. In books, bad authors are punished by poor sales, in the world of screenwriting, 1) the "publisher" needs to commit a huge number of resources well in advance of knowing how well the script will perform 2) standards are much lower because they are compensated for in large part by the other factors.
Fundamentally, screenwriters are screwed by circumstance. They may be able to get popular support once in a while and use their union to force a change in pay distribution and returns, but to suggest (as it has been done repeatedly) that screenwriting should have a similar pay model as authorship with similar returns is simply unrealistic.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 04:54 pm (UTC)I can't get used to Ratzinger as the Pope. I prefer to think of him as "our German shepherd," as Sister calls him in Late Nite Catechism.
Is your use of "Untied Nations" just a typo? or a Freudian slip? In any case, I love it and I'm stealing it.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 07:26 pm (UTC)I'm not sure what to think about Ratzinger, other than that I'm still raising eyebrows that the head of the Inquisition got the white smoke. His positions don't seem to do a whole lot for bringing forth a Catholicism that can work in the modern era, either.
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