silveradept | Huzzah and Sundays

It’s the Capital One Bowl for the padded rugby squad this year, which means despite a four-loss season, a January 1 bowl in Florida has been achieved. (If I recall correctly, this bowl was the Citrus Bowl not too long ago.) In other padded rugby news, Doctor Football has been sighted somewhere in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area.

Actual news in

news for once, namely that Six Apart will no longer be in charge of Livejournal. Instead, a company called SUP will set up Livejournal, Inc, and take control of all of us. SUP has some experience with LJ, apparently being the company SixApart contracted to take control of the Russian-language LiveJournals. This could be considered an improvement for the LJ service over what SixApart has done. Time will tell, but the new company is more actively soliciting information and opinion from the community. The community

lj_2008 has been set up to talk to the users and to get some input about new things coming down the pipe. For those concerned about the way that things have gone downhill with the new policy initiatives and placements,

lj_policy is your spot. From the early entires, it looks like the new overlords are going to have to give real answers regarding Strikethrough, Abuse policies, appeals processes, and rolling LJ back towards what it was when it was by invite - a small journaling site that let people post what they wanted, so long as it wasn’t obviously illegal.

Rejoice, citizens of the world, and fear not. Just because the United States asserts that it can kidnap foreign citizens who are wanted in the United States, and uses the precedent of the United States Supreme Court to justify it, does not mean that anyone should be afraid for their safety. Our agents in Blackwater USA and other professional security companies will do their best to ensure your hooding and disappearance is as painless as possible. Those of you complaining about how this violates your rights will be expected to assume the submission position as our associates at Taser field-test their new prototypes.

For our audience at home, rejoice, citizens, for the official death toll of Iraqis has gone down this month, to a mere 718. And thanks to this great achievement and others, Mr. Bush continues to demand more money for his conflicts, considering them the top priority of the Congress, and threatening to eliminate 200,000 civilian jobs if his demands are not met. Hrm. Maybe we can rework that some to be clearer. American Samidzat? How about you? Rogue "Defense" Mercenaries Holding 200,000 American Citizens Hostage! Well, that’s certainly different.

Less of rejoicing and more of baring teeth and snarling, the Republicans want to divide California's electoral votes by Congressional district - but only California, which would give them twenty more electoral votes without risking any elsewhere. In for a penny, in for a pound, Republicans. If you want to change things like that, you should let the whole nation do that. We’ll all show our colors as a deeply-divided house, and we can do things as normal. If we’re doing election reform, though, how about some nationwide IRV?

And then, now moving a more serious tone (even though the material before is Serious Business), Paul Jacob thinks Wal-Mart's swell, and that those opposing them are spoiled brats throwing tantrums. Yes, including the unions, who generally chafe at Wal-Mart’s union-busting policies and general refusal to even permit the idea of organizing to percolate. And yes, Wal-Mart does make money. Plenty of money. They squeeze suppliers, hire on part-time and don’t pay benefits for most of the workforce, right? That easily eliminates a large amount of operating costs and makes it possible to profit immensely. Sure, people like Wal-Mart. It’s cheap stuff. How it gets there is usually what people are complaining about. And then there also complaint that Wal-Mart tends to shove out competition, through the ability to offer the lowest prices. So I think there’s a little more there than a child in the middle of a store, throwing a fit.

Um, while the idea of giving the homeless work and employ is a good idea, but I’m not sure that the idea of Bumvertising should take off that much. Of course, it could be a parody, which would be easier to laugh off of, but I think someone will try to turn this into a serious thing at some point in their life.

The WGA strikers caught a nasty shock today - while Letterman and Conan will pay their workers salaries, and Carson Daly's non-union show is going back to work, Leno's crew just took a layoff.

An appeal to Canadian citizens is to replace or toss their old beer fridges, as the old models are energy-suckers. A nice, compact, energy-efficient fridge for your beers, and you could save money to get more beers. Everybody wins!

Lest people think that Radiohead’s idea of “pay what you feel is appropriate” for a product is novel and scary, the Seattle Times points out museums, plays, and other art institutions have been doing "pay what you can" for a while now, and they get people who pay full price even on those days.

At the end, because everyone can use some cute names, for critters or for children, The Comprehensive Bunny Name List. It is supposedly only for bunnies, but there’s enough coincidence around that if you should decide to use it for other purposes, someone will probably not prosecute you. If you’re up for cute that shades into much creepier and stranger territory, it sounds like the film Innocence is going to be your thing. At least, according to this review of Innocence, anyway.

If that’s not your thing, try some Strange Maps. Might be just the thing someone needs for a campaign.

If the creative mood should strike you, but you have trouble getting things done, Wishful Thinking's author has posted Time Management For Creative People, which offers some tips on setting up a simple system of Getting Things Done as well as providing plenty of time for you to be your creative self. It's short, too, so it won't tax too much of that creative time.