More work? Right-o - 27 November 2007
Nov. 27th, 2007 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptWork was accomplished today (no different than any other day, of course), and now visions are clearer, purchases have been made for other programs, and I had a really good look at the storytelling collection today, so hopefully I can pick up the stories that I want for the next reading sequence. Tomorrow, I’ll go back after some of the objects in the realia collections and see what I want. After the training, of course.
My professional self leads with Eyewitness to History, offering accounts of historical events from the perspective of those who were there. May come in handy for someone’s report and they need a primary source.
Despite cautious optimism from the United States and elsewhere about the leaders of Israel and the PLO agreeing to start talks and possibly develop a solution by the end of 2008, in Bethlehem, things are definitely not like the story of the manger. Long-standing grudges and wars make for a walled society where three religions all agree something sacred happened, but almost none of those groups want to get along with each other.
After all the stuff about how much Iraq is improving and that people might get their hopes up that troops would be on their way home, then comes the other shoe. Iraq might be offering the United States a deal to stay longer and help the domestic security forces on a long-term basis. Just when you thought things might actually improve and people would be coming home. Psych.
Nice to know that pets are eligible for joining a group life insurance plan at a community college, but domestic partners can't. Yep, the dogs get better treatment than the people. Even though it wouldn’t have cost extra to cover the partners, because they would be paying their own premiums. Hopefully, a light will turn on, and the community college trustees will fix the problem.
Big Head DC speculates that Trent Lott has also been meeting with gay escorts, but the escort has declined to comment about any relationship that he may have had with Mr. Lott, citing that it would be against his professional ethics to reveal anything. So, sorry, speculation is all you’ll get. With the trend of Republicans that shout loud against homosexual relations being somewhat closeted themselves, it’s always possible that Lott was hiring and not just meeting.
OpinionJournal manages to endorse an idea without endorsing a person by saying that Barack Obama has a good idea in visiting Tehran, but for the way that it can be used to swing the world’s opinion of the United States to backing us if we should go to war with Iran. If we look like we’re trying all the diplomacy that we can, and then, reluctantly but decisively, we go to war, that looks better. We get the high ground and moral authority and people don’t talk about a war of aggression. So the whole peace thing is out, but the manipulation of people’s viewpoints is definitely in. And the focus on Iran is detrimental to our interests, according to David Remnick, who says that we ignore Russia in the current world at our own peril. In more general terms, Liberal Seagull offers perspective and a suggestion to Americans on how patriotism should be viewed - not as “my country, right or wrong, and we’ll beat you up if you say otherwise”, but more of a “For as much as I love this country, it does some really embarrassing things at times. We’re trying to fix those so they don’t happen again.”
Wouldn’t be a government database without error. In the case of the Social Security Administration, however, errors are critically bad. Four percent of the SSA database having errors is unacceptably high. Especially if you plan on requiring Social Security information to be verified before employment is possible.
You may not want to be eating when viewing the following link. It’s not gross in the sense of blood and gore, but seeing animals preserved in formalin might be a little unsettling, just with how things look. Much more entertaining is the holiday album, "A Very Scary Solstice",, from the same demented folks that brought you A Shoggoth on the Roof.
Stranger than this, however, is that some computers start playing random classical music as their way of signaling that things have gone outside tolerances.
For as much as Guitar Hero and Rock Band let you rock out, Peter Hartlaub says that learning to play the real thing is probably going to make you happier. Thsoe who want to learn the real thing, will, I suspect, with our without the video games to rock out with. After all, we know that playing a four-arrow rhythm game does not make one a breakdancer. Or a waltzer. Or anything else. But the games are still fun anyway. For the person who wants to take things One! Step! Further!, however, Wikihow produces How to make your Christmas Lights Flash to Music.
This can’t be the first time it’s been discussed, but for those who wonder whether medicine really is taking a look at technology, there's a new paper published about the potential dangers of RFID chips for medical uses. All I get are the excerpts, though, so I have no idea if the data locked therein is also useful, or would require some translation and decryption to be intelligible.
Tonight’s Big Losers, who may not even enjoy the honor of being smacked in the face with pastry, may be doing their jobs perfectly correctly and according to the letter of the law. That still means, though, that the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously passed the language of a proposed constitutional amendment that would define life at fertilization. The arguments for the measure sound remarkably like the same ones that were used to deny civil unions and the possibility of marriage between homosexuals. “We’re defining something. That it also happens to have consequence X is noted, and if this passes, we’ll take full advantage of it, but we’re not deceiving anyone with our langauge.” Right. So marriage was “defined”, and then there was that action about “preferential treatment” that had consequences, and in this case, now it’s that they’re defining when life begins. The courts may be doing their jobs, ruling correctly. But then that places the issue in the hands of people who may not have any idea what sort of planned secondary effects will happen if they pass such an initiative. Or they do know and actually want that sort of thing to happen. Even with the respect that would be granted for correctly doing the job assigned to them, the Colorado Supreme Court loses big time.
Following up on that with something positive appearing in a very negative situation, Indian women in Banda have taken on pink saris and formed a gang intending to help women in the area. They refuse cooperation with government and NGOs because they want to continue doing things, and in their doings, they’ve uncovered corruption in officials and given thrashings to men who abandon or beat their wives.
The Big Winners for tonight are the crew of French restoration artists that built a studio and repaired an antique clock to working status inside one of Paris's monuments, all without being detected. Of course, when they revealed the depths of their plan, the first reaction was prosecution. They have, happily, been cleared of charges.
Our parting shot, however, is the fifty greatest fictional weapons of all time, according to Wizard magazine.
And so, bed time.
My professional self leads with Eyewitness to History, offering accounts of historical events from the perspective of those who were there. May come in handy for someone’s report and they need a primary source.
Despite cautious optimism from the United States and elsewhere about the leaders of Israel and the PLO agreeing to start talks and possibly develop a solution by the end of 2008, in Bethlehem, things are definitely not like the story of the manger. Long-standing grudges and wars make for a walled society where three religions all agree something sacred happened, but almost none of those groups want to get along with each other.
After all the stuff about how much Iraq is improving and that people might get their hopes up that troops would be on their way home, then comes the other shoe. Iraq might be offering the United States a deal to stay longer and help the domestic security forces on a long-term basis. Just when you thought things might actually improve and people would be coming home. Psych.
Nice to know that pets are eligible for joining a group life insurance plan at a community college, but domestic partners can't. Yep, the dogs get better treatment than the people. Even though it wouldn’t have cost extra to cover the partners, because they would be paying their own premiums. Hopefully, a light will turn on, and the community college trustees will fix the problem.
Big Head DC speculates that Trent Lott has also been meeting with gay escorts, but the escort has declined to comment about any relationship that he may have had with Mr. Lott, citing that it would be against his professional ethics to reveal anything. So, sorry, speculation is all you’ll get. With the trend of Republicans that shout loud against homosexual relations being somewhat closeted themselves, it’s always possible that Lott was hiring and not just meeting.
OpinionJournal manages to endorse an idea without endorsing a person by saying that Barack Obama has a good idea in visiting Tehran, but for the way that it can be used to swing the world’s opinion of the United States to backing us if we should go to war with Iran. If we look like we’re trying all the diplomacy that we can, and then, reluctantly but decisively, we go to war, that looks better. We get the high ground and moral authority and people don’t talk about a war of aggression. So the whole peace thing is out, but the manipulation of people’s viewpoints is definitely in. And the focus on Iran is detrimental to our interests, according to David Remnick, who says that we ignore Russia in the current world at our own peril. In more general terms, Liberal Seagull offers perspective and a suggestion to Americans on how patriotism should be viewed - not as “my country, right or wrong, and we’ll beat you up if you say otherwise”, but more of a “For as much as I love this country, it does some really embarrassing things at times. We’re trying to fix those so they don’t happen again.”
Wouldn’t be a government database without error. In the case of the Social Security Administration, however, errors are critically bad. Four percent of the SSA database having errors is unacceptably high. Especially if you plan on requiring Social Security information to be verified before employment is possible.
You may not want to be eating when viewing the following link. It’s not gross in the sense of blood and gore, but seeing animals preserved in formalin might be a little unsettling, just with how things look. Much more entertaining is the holiday album, "A Very Scary Solstice",, from the same demented folks that brought you A Shoggoth on the Roof.
Stranger than this, however, is that some computers start playing random classical music as their way of signaling that things have gone outside tolerances.
For as much as Guitar Hero and Rock Band let you rock out, Peter Hartlaub says that learning to play the real thing is probably going to make you happier. Thsoe who want to learn the real thing, will, I suspect, with our without the video games to rock out with. After all, we know that playing a four-arrow rhythm game does not make one a breakdancer. Or a waltzer. Or anything else. But the games are still fun anyway. For the person who wants to take things One! Step! Further!, however, Wikihow produces How to make your Christmas Lights Flash to Music.
This can’t be the first time it’s been discussed, but for those who wonder whether medicine really is taking a look at technology, there's a new paper published about the potential dangers of RFID chips for medical uses. All I get are the excerpts, though, so I have no idea if the data locked therein is also useful, or would require some translation and decryption to be intelligible.
Tonight’s Big Losers, who may not even enjoy the honor of being smacked in the face with pastry, may be doing their jobs perfectly correctly and according to the letter of the law. That still means, though, that the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously passed the language of a proposed constitutional amendment that would define life at fertilization. The arguments for the measure sound remarkably like the same ones that were used to deny civil unions and the possibility of marriage between homosexuals. “We’re defining something. That it also happens to have consequence X is noted, and if this passes, we’ll take full advantage of it, but we’re not deceiving anyone with our langauge.” Right. So marriage was “defined”, and then there was that action about “preferential treatment” that had consequences, and in this case, now it’s that they’re defining when life begins. The courts may be doing their jobs, ruling correctly. But then that places the issue in the hands of people who may not have any idea what sort of planned secondary effects will happen if they pass such an initiative. Or they do know and actually want that sort of thing to happen. Even with the respect that would be granted for correctly doing the job assigned to them, the Colorado Supreme Court loses big time.
Following up on that with something positive appearing in a very negative situation, Indian women in Banda have taken on pink saris and formed a gang intending to help women in the area. They refuse cooperation with government and NGOs because they want to continue doing things, and in their doings, they’ve uncovered corruption in officials and given thrashings to men who abandon or beat their wives.
The Big Winners for tonight are the crew of French restoration artists that built a studio and repaired an antique clock to working status inside one of Paris's monuments, all without being detected. Of course, when they revealed the depths of their plan, the first reaction was prosecution. They have, happily, been cleared of charges.
Our parting shot, however, is the fifty greatest fictional weapons of all time, according to Wizard magazine.
And so, bed time.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 12:44 pm (UTC)That said, the Supreme Court would have little standing to strike down the wording of such a measure, so I admit they did the right thing. However, if the measure passes on the ballot, then some fun can happen.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 08:40 pm (UTC)The attitude in your last sentence disturbs me. So you see this ballot passing as an intellectually stimulating experiment that would have "fun" possible legal arguments come out of it? Pretty flip attitude, and much easier to have when the consequences don't directly affect you. For some of us this is an organic fight to have legal status as a person instead of just a potential baby incubator. Intellectual curiosity at what clever legal arguments could come out of this is a piss-poor reason to entertain the thought of the ballot passing.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 09:28 pm (UTC)Even if the measure passes, well before any abortion debate comes up, the law will have to be struck for being unenforceable, for reasons already mentioned. (Government by popular opinion has some significant shortcomings, thankfully, there are higher powers.) Since it's patently ridiculous that such a law can be written in the books, it's merely entertainment in speculating at all the ways it could be torn to shreds.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 01:09 pm (UTC)After all "We're staying because they want us here" sounds so much better than "We're staying because we have a vested interest in controlling the area".
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 03:33 pm (UTC)"The state that started it, I think, has an obligation to step up to say it's wrong," he said.
Can I slap him?
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 07:41 pm (UTC)The list also misses tons of things from SF writing - the Soft Weapon from the Larry Niven short story (and later Star Trek: The Animated Series episode) of the same name should be in there somewhere, and I can't believe they missed out the Lazy Guns (and the silly over-the-top weapons from Use of Weapons) from Iain M Banks' Against a Dark Background...
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 09:08 pm (UTC)The argument about playing real guitar vs. Guitar hero is silly. People get so up in arms that you're a "poser" when playing Guitar Hero, and they get so snobby about how it's so much better to really learn to play guitar. Trust me, if you are deluded enough to think GH translates into real-life skeelz and is anything but a game, you need help.
Here is my point:
Time it took me to be as good at Guitar Hero as I wanted: 1 month
Time it took me to be as good at guitar as I wanted: Um, still trying
Hartlaub wants us to believe it's more fun, more satisfying even, to learn guitar than to learn Guitar Hero. It isn't! Wanna know why? Because I KNOW I'm a no-talent hack at playing real guitar. I'm never going to be fantastic at it, no matter how much effort I put in. But with Guitar Hero, I can live my fantasy without making anyone's eardrums bleed. I'm not playing Guitar Hero to make me better at guitar (no hope). I'm playing it because it's a fun g-a-m-e and occasionally I can act like a rock star. Smashing coffee tables included.
My opinion also comes shaded by the fact that I am already a legitimate, pretty-decent musician with another instrument, so I can actually make be-oootiful music if I want to. Just not with a guitar. So take that Hartlaub, a real musician who likes Guitar Hero.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 09:44 pm (UTC)