Glorious idle day - 24 November 2007
Nov. 25th, 2007 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHuzzah for the rare day spent in idleness - I am now within striking distance of the end of Final Fantasy XII, and can go forward to finish the game just to see the ending, and then go back and do more of the optional materials, in case I should ever actually want to feel like I have completed all the sidequest bits they put in. Which would take quite a while, considering this game takes Jiminy’s Journal to a new art form in terms of side material. And I doubt there are any Final Fantasy XIII previews awaiting us at the end. Once that game is finished, I may go back to either Disgaea or Soul Calibur III in terms of doing more work toward optional completions and unlockables.
Scandal-thrashed Oral Roberts president resigns post, but has not yet actually admitted he’s done anything wrong. Don’t know if there will be any actual admission of wrongdoing, but there are a few lawsuits already pending.
Internationally, Australia's Labor party has won the government, displacing conservative John Howard. Elsewhere, the French prosecutors' office dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld
People are returning to Iraq, certainly, but it's a different capital than the one they left.
Domestic-like, one of the boys in Michigan made himself into a national newspaper. The Attorney General of Michigan, Mike Cox, comments on an upcoming SCOTUS case about whether the Second Amendment means individuals can hold firearms, or only the state's militia force. Mr. Cox is a very pro-gun person (along with a lot of hunters in Michigan, and/or people in plenty of places who feel threatened by others), and so he offers several reasons why he believes that criminals have not been deterred in their attempts to obtain weapons, and that regular citizens should have access to weapons as well. American Samidzat posts up two videos, only the first of which I find to be informative (and yes, it’s Faux), about a Boston police program that sends officers to knock on doors and ask if they may search the house for guns that teenagers may have. There are no warrants involved, and it is supposed that if consent is refused, the police will not enter the house. Additionally, according to the program. there would be no prosecutions if weapons were found, excepting weapons which may be connected with crimes (for which, I guess, a warrant would be needed to enter the house). Gun control has a polarizing effect almost anywhere it touches. Regulations and rules do not stop the determined from obtaining firearms, legally or otherwise, it is argued, in addition to the Constitutional authority cited above, so everyone who wishes to have a firearm should be allowed. I worry about ease of access to firearms potentially increasing their use in crimes of passion, ill-thought-out plans for revenge, or perhaps even accidents.
While information may want to be free, Jaron Lanier says we can build a content distribution system that pays creators if we really want to. Which is true - if the system gives content to those who want it at a price they’re willing to pay for it, and doesn’t try to sue its customers when they borrow media from friends to see if it’s worth buying.
David Limbaugh believes the reports of Bush insider defections have been greatly exaggerated. And at the same time, lays the blame on Democrats for not wanting to work with Republicans and claims they rebuffed the President’s overtures toward bipartsanship. Excepting that when the President really pushed, for the majority of things, the Democrats have been more than willing to work with him in giving him exactly what he wanted. Or wrote himself a signing statement that said he could do things his way. That the Democrats occasionally appear to be doing something other than rolling over, and are forcing Mr. Bush to utilize his veto is an improvement over previous years, I think.
Preheating the oven for quiche tonight, I think I agree with Cap’n Marrrrk when he says a 1.5 foot, 3 lb sausage should not be marketed as a "yard of beef". Trying to sell a unit of weight as a unit of length is just not kosher.
Our winners tonight, however, are the Discovery Institute, who, as DailyKos reports, took a Harvard animation about the inner life of a cell and replaced it with creationist dubbing . I think that’s definitely beyond fair use, considering that the credits were also stripped from the original. The original and doctored videos are available side-by-side at ERV.
Jacob Pederson blames television for the way things have gone downhill, always talking, never conversing, compressing things down to the lowest common denominators, and generally serving as the mechanism of control for young children and adults alike. The alternate title for the article could be “Everything I needed to know about American television culture I learned from MST3K”, but I don’t think it would have done it justice.
On the very tail end tonight, and perhaps countering some of the influence that was talked about in the previous article, twenty-four line-by-line translations the Daodejing all next to each other. For finding the Nameless Way in a sea of attempts to translate its essence. For those seeking beauty in art (or perhaps needing some ideas for their rock gardens), the World Beach Project encourages people to make their art from beach stones and take some photographs.
I will be searching for sleep now. If I find it, perhaps I will tell you about it in the morning.
Scandal-thrashed Oral Roberts president resigns post, but has not yet actually admitted he’s done anything wrong. Don’t know if there will be any actual admission of wrongdoing, but there are a few lawsuits already pending.
Internationally, Australia's Labor party has won the government, displacing conservative John Howard. Elsewhere, the French prosecutors' office dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld
People are returning to Iraq, certainly, but it's a different capital than the one they left.
Domestic-like, one of the boys in Michigan made himself into a national newspaper. The Attorney General of Michigan, Mike Cox, comments on an upcoming SCOTUS case about whether the Second Amendment means individuals can hold firearms, or only the state's militia force. Mr. Cox is a very pro-gun person (along with a lot of hunters in Michigan, and/or people in plenty of places who feel threatened by others), and so he offers several reasons why he believes that criminals have not been deterred in their attempts to obtain weapons, and that regular citizens should have access to weapons as well. American Samidzat posts up two videos, only the first of which I find to be informative (and yes, it’s Faux), about a Boston police program that sends officers to knock on doors and ask if they may search the house for guns that teenagers may have. There are no warrants involved, and it is supposed that if consent is refused, the police will not enter the house. Additionally, according to the program. there would be no prosecutions if weapons were found, excepting weapons which may be connected with crimes (for which, I guess, a warrant would be needed to enter the house). Gun control has a polarizing effect almost anywhere it touches. Regulations and rules do not stop the determined from obtaining firearms, legally or otherwise, it is argued, in addition to the Constitutional authority cited above, so everyone who wishes to have a firearm should be allowed. I worry about ease of access to firearms potentially increasing their use in crimes of passion, ill-thought-out plans for revenge, or perhaps even accidents.
While information may want to be free, Jaron Lanier says we can build a content distribution system that pays creators if we really want to. Which is true - if the system gives content to those who want it at a price they’re willing to pay for it, and doesn’t try to sue its customers when they borrow media from friends to see if it’s worth buying.
David Limbaugh believes the reports of Bush insider defections have been greatly exaggerated. And at the same time, lays the blame on Democrats for not wanting to work with Republicans and claims they rebuffed the President’s overtures toward bipartsanship. Excepting that when the President really pushed, for the majority of things, the Democrats have been more than willing to work with him in giving him exactly what he wanted. Or wrote himself a signing statement that said he could do things his way. That the Democrats occasionally appear to be doing something other than rolling over, and are forcing Mr. Bush to utilize his veto is an improvement over previous years, I think.
Preheating the oven for quiche tonight, I think I agree with Cap’n Marrrrk when he says a 1.5 foot, 3 lb sausage should not be marketed as a "yard of beef". Trying to sell a unit of weight as a unit of length is just not kosher.
Our winners tonight, however, are the Discovery Institute, who, as DailyKos reports, took a Harvard animation about the inner life of a cell and replaced it with creationist dubbing . I think that’s definitely beyond fair use, considering that the credits were also stripped from the original. The original and doctored videos are available side-by-side at ERV.
Jacob Pederson blames television for the way things have gone downhill, always talking, never conversing, compressing things down to the lowest common denominators, and generally serving as the mechanism of control for young children and adults alike. The alternate title for the article could be “Everything I needed to know about American television culture I learned from MST3K”, but I don’t think it would have done it justice.
On the very tail end tonight, and perhaps countering some of the influence that was talked about in the previous article, twenty-four line-by-line translations the Daodejing all next to each other. For finding the Nameless Way in a sea of attempts to translate its essence. For those seeking beauty in art (or perhaps needing some ideas for their rock gardens), the World Beach Project encourages people to make their art from beach stones and take some photographs.
I will be searching for sleep now. If I find it, perhaps I will tell you about it in the morning.
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