For great writing - 18 December 2007
Dec. 19th, 2007 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptEarly day start, early day finished. That was nice. Although I really need to remember to start to defrost/thaw things before I go off to work. Otherwise, it just takes time to do the defrosting afterwards. But eventually all things, like dinner, are set on their merry way. And that is definitely a good thing.
Zo, onward to the news, and things made in the pursuit of Nollij. James Patterson, in PARADE magazine, wants to give his child the best gift possible - teaching him how to read. My professional self goes “Awwwwww. So true.” If he can also teach his son not to be afraid of numbers and how to manipulate them in the important ways, he’ll have done quite well.
What does it take to hack, change, and otherwise corrupt a United States voting machine? Little more than a magnet and a PDA, according to a report released by the Secretary of State of Ohio. That’s on the machines that are most commonly used in the country. We knew Diebold machines were hackable, but the Election Systems & Software machines are poorly programmed, and people with a magnet and an infrared-enabled PDA or cell phone could wreak all sorts of havoc, including changing the options such that a machine “misbehaves” when it comes to certain elections, doesn’t show the election, or secretly records a vote for one candidate even if another is selected.
In an agreement between Russia and Iran, Russia has sent nuclear fuel into Iran for a power-generating reactor. This is supposedly to prevent Iran from utilizing enriching technologies and manufacturing weapons-grade materials, and Russia is supposed to recover the spent fuel and reprocess it themselves. This agreement supposedly lets Iran use the plant for the stated “civilian use” that Iran claims it is for. I doubt this agreement will be a permanent one, and I’m not sure that it will deter Iran from producing or enriching materials, if they really are determined to do so.
The Carpetbagger Report finds that conservative bloggers have much to object to in Mike Huckabee, even if evangelicals will flock to his side. Because Mr. Huckabee has done things that may violate the sacred principle of various flavors of conservative, he is a “liberal”, and thus, if nominated, several of those bloggers will vote Democratic, who openly claim their liberal-ness, rather than the closet liberal Republican. For each, their own reasons, but is it really that much of a problem among conservatives that there has to be a perfect candidate or none at all? And for that matter, is it the same among liberals?
If elected, Hillary Clinton plans on sending Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush abroad to fix the damage of George W. Bush. George H.W. Bush said that he hasn’t signed on to anything yet. But, after their pairing in the Katrina disaster response, the two of them would make a good fit for restoring America’s image - perhaps they could appear bipartisan?
Perhaps in response to my financial worries,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
2dlife graciously pointed out to me the following New York Times article. A Little Here, A Little There, and It's Gone says that the little expenses are the ones that can sneak up on you - the things that you’re not really spending a lot of money on at any given time. The article is ambivalent about the amount of money that had been spent in that sort of manner, preferring it to be a nice big surplus to do great things with, but realizing that those small expenses make life a bit more livable, so eliminating them entirely isn’t a really great idea, either.
A tourist from Iceland came to the United States and was turned away and deported because of a mark on her record that she had overstayed a visa received ten years earlier. So far, so sane. The tourist, however, claims she was shackled, denied food, water, and telephone contact in her two-day interrogation before being deported. The government of Iceland has requested there be an investigation into the claims.
A study that followed twins has indicated that having boys as friends increases the chances that young girls will drink. So hanging out with the guys makes your darling daughter more likely to imbibe. Possible because of peer pressure, according to the article. Well, you know what this means. Yep. Another reason for overprotective parents to shield their child by cutting off boy contact - that way, no chance of hanky-panky, and no truck with that foul thing, alcohol. (Nevermind the resourcefulness of young children, and the possibility that your daughter might like the girls more...)
In the baked goods competition category. WingNutDaily sees Muslims using a nondenominational "meditation room" and claims that it's become a "mosque". Perhaps, while the person screaming that the sky is falling was visiting, it was Friday, and thus, the Muslim students were using the room for prayers. Supposedly, there was literature available that was unkind to Christians and Jews, an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca, as well as dividers for sex-segregated prayer and requests to remove shoes and for women to cover their faces. The school says the school has placed no icons in the room and denies that it is somehow favoring Muslims and their practices. When the President visited the area, there were no posting or proclamations other than that the space was a meditation room. Perhaps the “reporter” who visited should go more than once, on days and times when other faiths are using the meditation room, and see whether or not all that Muslim material is still there. It would be, y’know, good journalism. Doing what WND absolutely fails to do, that is, find the source and provide a link to it, considering it is a public blog post, let’s have a look at what was written. Normandale's "Meditation Room" Is Home to a Single Faith, she proclaims. And nowhere in it do I see any mention of having gone back for a second visit at some other point in time. From someone who is a reporter for the local paper, if Muslim panic was all that was sought and intended, the reporter got it. It’s probably in the personal blog of the reporter because any editor asked to print such a thing as news would laugh at the shoddy method, if not docking the pay of or sacking the reporter for botching an assignment like that.
On the back stretch of the competition, in Texas, the Institute for Creation Research may be able to offer a master's degree in science. Based on a ruling not to impose secular values on seminaries, the Institute is getting an evaluation by the state accrediting board. The Institute requires that all students and faculty believe in inerrant literal creationism. While there have been no decisions made yet, the commissioner of higher education revealed himself to be a “teach the controversy” sort of person. Why is this important? With a master’s in science, and one in education, it’s thoroughly possible that accredited teachers who are creationists could be teaching, legally, in public school science classes. Not necessarily that they will be, as they might find lucrative jobs in religious education, where nobody insists that they actually teach science in science class. Still, this is a potentially disturbing trend.
Coming around the corner, gaining some steam for the final is Movieguide.org, whom the Slacktivist turns an inquisitve eye toward. They’re contenders tonight because of their unique rating system, which adds additional sins and warnings to movies that they review, their awarding of a crystalline Teddy Bear to someone for “Redeeming the Values of the Mass Media of Entertainment”, and some other fun stuff. The Slacktivist points out a bit of an inconsistency in their recommendations. It’s a Wonderful Life tops their list of must-see movies, and according to the logic they display, it shouldn’t. George Bailey is a socialist, not a capitalist, and so the movie should be disqualified for extremely anticapitalist sentiments and for George’s continual refusal to get his family a better life. I think I’ll stick to the recommendations of friends, and possibly
But, I think the winning entry for tonight’s contest is the societal pressure that bore down on a woman, generating the lengths she went to in appeasement of her parents with regard to a traditional Muslim marriage. After having gone to university in the Western world, and having had relations, she had an operation to sew her hymen back up and keep a blood capsule so that she will appear to be a virgin on her wedding night. After having spent time outside her belief system, upon her return, the weight of guilt and shame and the possibility of being disgraced, her family ostracized, and the spectre of an honor killing crushed her. And she counts herself lucky, because she can afford the surgery. I realize that in previous eras and societies, the virginity of the bride was something that could be used to ensure that she was not bringing disease, a bastard son, or any other potentially home-wrecking problems to the marriage (the guys, of course, have no such compulsions), but in today’s world, the STDs can be tested for, the pregnancies can be stopped (at least, they can at the moment), and previous boyfriends should be buryable, so long as there’s no legal or other repercussions from the matter. I guess I’m one of those people who thinks that love should be the gold standard in marriages. Silly me.
Potential food for our thinking caps is an article in the New York Times about how universal the laws of science are, including speculation that the laws themselves could be the universe, that mathematics is the universe, and several other possibilities that make Einstein’s hopes for a grand unified universal theory quake and run away.
Going less theoretical, Software avatars are being paired with real-world robots that they can control. The avatar does something software-wise, and the robot mimics it after appropriate translations between software desire and the programmed behaviors of the robot. Well, that’s one way of letting avatars act in the real world. Should we be waiting to see when humaniform avatars can take an ASIMO out for a spin?
And perhaps the most practical of the bunch, Glenn Reynolds talks about the double-edged sword of an increased-surveillance society. Sure, nobody gets any privacy, but with a camera-enabled populace, no institution or other official, whether of law, corporations, municipalities, or the federal government, does either. If everyone’s on camera, the truth is recorded somewhere. Then it becomes a matter of having and seeing the true video. What can’t happen, however, is that somehow one person or entity gets the right to spy on people and is not subjected to the spying of their targets in return, or is successful at suppressing video taken by the populace to cast actions in another light.
Not quite a grand unified theory, but a way of making a lot of jokes make more sense, The Annotated Pratchett File is for those occasions when you’ve read something and know you’ve seen it before somewhere, or suspect there’s a joke or reference being made that you don’t quite grasp. After reading a Pratchett book, one can consult the file to see just how many jokes got missed.
Beginning tonight’s big finish are Maxim's 10 sidekicks that deserve some credit. We’re not talking Science Hero sidekicks too much, but the unrecognized ones that make the lives of their heroes that much more fun. From there, into a large amount of optical illusions, to trick your brain and test abilities you thought you forgot after the Magic Eye fad fizzled. But if it’s desktop wallpaper you’re looking for, National Geographic Magazine has quite a few images to browse.
Zo, onward to the news, and things made in the pursuit of Nollij. James Patterson, in PARADE magazine, wants to give his child the best gift possible - teaching him how to read. My professional self goes “Awwwwww. So true.” If he can also teach his son not to be afraid of numbers and how to manipulate them in the important ways, he’ll have done quite well.
What does it take to hack, change, and otherwise corrupt a United States voting machine? Little more than a magnet and a PDA, according to a report released by the Secretary of State of Ohio. That’s on the machines that are most commonly used in the country. We knew Diebold machines were hackable, but the Election Systems & Software machines are poorly programmed, and people with a magnet and an infrared-enabled PDA or cell phone could wreak all sorts of havoc, including changing the options such that a machine “misbehaves” when it comes to certain elections, doesn’t show the election, or secretly records a vote for one candidate even if another is selected.
In an agreement between Russia and Iran, Russia has sent nuclear fuel into Iran for a power-generating reactor. This is supposedly to prevent Iran from utilizing enriching technologies and manufacturing weapons-grade materials, and Russia is supposed to recover the spent fuel and reprocess it themselves. This agreement supposedly lets Iran use the plant for the stated “civilian use” that Iran claims it is for. I doubt this agreement will be a permanent one, and I’m not sure that it will deter Iran from producing or enriching materials, if they really are determined to do so.
The Carpetbagger Report finds that conservative bloggers have much to object to in Mike Huckabee, even if evangelicals will flock to his side. Because Mr. Huckabee has done things that may violate the sacred principle of various flavors of conservative, he is a “liberal”, and thus, if nominated, several of those bloggers will vote Democratic, who openly claim their liberal-ness, rather than the closet liberal Republican. For each, their own reasons, but is it really that much of a problem among conservatives that there has to be a perfect candidate or none at all? And for that matter, is it the same among liberals?
If elected, Hillary Clinton plans on sending Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush abroad to fix the damage of George W. Bush. George H.W. Bush said that he hasn’t signed on to anything yet. But, after their pairing in the Katrina disaster response, the two of them would make a good fit for restoring America’s image - perhaps they could appear bipartisan?
Perhaps in response to my financial worries,
2dlife graciously pointed out to me the following New York Times article. A Little Here, A Little There, and It's Gone says that the little expenses are the ones that can sneak up on you - the things that you’re not really spending a lot of money on at any given time. The article is ambivalent about the amount of money that had been spent in that sort of manner, preferring it to be a nice big surplus to do great things with, but realizing that those small expenses make life a bit more livable, so eliminating them entirely isn’t a really great idea, either.A tourist from Iceland came to the United States and was turned away and deported because of a mark on her record that she had overstayed a visa received ten years earlier. So far, so sane. The tourist, however, claims she was shackled, denied food, water, and telephone contact in her two-day interrogation before being deported. The government of Iceland has requested there be an investigation into the claims.
A study that followed twins has indicated that having boys as friends increases the chances that young girls will drink. So hanging out with the guys makes your darling daughter more likely to imbibe. Possible because of peer pressure, according to the article. Well, you know what this means. Yep. Another reason for overprotective parents to shield their child by cutting off boy contact - that way, no chance of hanky-panky, and no truck with that foul thing, alcohol. (Nevermind the resourcefulness of young children, and the possibility that your daughter might like the girls more...)
In the baked goods competition category. WingNutDaily sees Muslims using a nondenominational "meditation room" and claims that it's become a "mosque". Perhaps, while the person screaming that the sky is falling was visiting, it was Friday, and thus, the Muslim students were using the room for prayers. Supposedly, there was literature available that was unkind to Christians and Jews, an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca, as well as dividers for sex-segregated prayer and requests to remove shoes and for women to cover their faces. The school says the school has placed no icons in the room and denies that it is somehow favoring Muslims and their practices. When the President visited the area, there were no posting or proclamations other than that the space was a meditation room. Perhaps the “reporter” who visited should go more than once, on days and times when other faiths are using the meditation room, and see whether or not all that Muslim material is still there. It would be, y’know, good journalism. Doing what WND absolutely fails to do, that is, find the source and provide a link to it, considering it is a public blog post, let’s have a look at what was written. Normandale's "Meditation Room" Is Home to a Single Faith, she proclaims. And nowhere in it do I see any mention of having gone back for a second visit at some other point in time. From someone who is a reporter for the local paper, if Muslim panic was all that was sought and intended, the reporter got it. It’s probably in the personal blog of the reporter because any editor asked to print such a thing as news would laugh at the shoddy method, if not docking the pay of or sacking the reporter for botching an assignment like that.
On the back stretch of the competition, in Texas, the Institute for Creation Research may be able to offer a master's degree in science. Based on a ruling not to impose secular values on seminaries, the Institute is getting an evaluation by the state accrediting board. The Institute requires that all students and faculty believe in inerrant literal creationism. While there have been no decisions made yet, the commissioner of higher education revealed himself to be a “teach the controversy” sort of person. Why is this important? With a master’s in science, and one in education, it’s thoroughly possible that accredited teachers who are creationists could be teaching, legally, in public school science classes. Not necessarily that they will be, as they might find lucrative jobs in religious education, where nobody insists that they actually teach science in science class. Still, this is a potentially disturbing trend.
Coming around the corner, gaining some steam for the final is Movieguide.org, whom the Slacktivist turns an inquisitve eye toward. They’re contenders tonight because of their unique rating system, which adds additional sins and warnings to movies that they review, their awarding of a crystalline Teddy Bear to someone for “Redeeming the Values of the Mass Media of Entertainment”, and some other fun stuff. The Slacktivist points out a bit of an inconsistency in their recommendations. It’s a Wonderful Life tops their list of must-see movies, and according to the logic they display, it shouldn’t. George Bailey is a socialist, not a capitalist, and so the movie should be disqualified for extremely anticapitalist sentiments and for George’s continual refusal to get his family a better life. I think I’ll stick to the recommendations of friends, and possibly
But, I think the winning entry for tonight’s contest is the societal pressure that bore down on a woman, generating the lengths she went to in appeasement of her parents with regard to a traditional Muslim marriage. After having gone to university in the Western world, and having had relations, she had an operation to sew her hymen back up and keep a blood capsule so that she will appear to be a virgin on her wedding night. After having spent time outside her belief system, upon her return, the weight of guilt and shame and the possibility of being disgraced, her family ostracized, and the spectre of an honor killing crushed her. And she counts herself lucky, because she can afford the surgery. I realize that in previous eras and societies, the virginity of the bride was something that could be used to ensure that she was not bringing disease, a bastard son, or any other potentially home-wrecking problems to the marriage (the guys, of course, have no such compulsions), but in today’s world, the STDs can be tested for, the pregnancies can be stopped (at least, they can at the moment), and previous boyfriends should be buryable, so long as there’s no legal or other repercussions from the matter. I guess I’m one of those people who thinks that love should be the gold standard in marriages. Silly me.
Potential food for our thinking caps is an article in the New York Times about how universal the laws of science are, including speculation that the laws themselves could be the universe, that mathematics is the universe, and several other possibilities that make Einstein’s hopes for a grand unified universal theory quake and run away.
Going less theoretical, Software avatars are being paired with real-world robots that they can control. The avatar does something software-wise, and the robot mimics it after appropriate translations between software desire and the programmed behaviors of the robot. Well, that’s one way of letting avatars act in the real world. Should we be waiting to see when humaniform avatars can take an ASIMO out for a spin?
And perhaps the most practical of the bunch, Glenn Reynolds talks about the double-edged sword of an increased-surveillance society. Sure, nobody gets any privacy, but with a camera-enabled populace, no institution or other official, whether of law, corporations, municipalities, or the federal government, does either. If everyone’s on camera, the truth is recorded somewhere. Then it becomes a matter of having and seeing the true video. What can’t happen, however, is that somehow one person or entity gets the right to spy on people and is not subjected to the spying of their targets in return, or is successful at suppressing video taken by the populace to cast actions in another light.
Not quite a grand unified theory, but a way of making a lot of jokes make more sense, The Annotated Pratchett File is for those occasions when you’ve read something and know you’ve seen it before somewhere, or suspect there’s a joke or reference being made that you don’t quite grasp. After reading a Pratchett book, one can consult the file to see just how many jokes got missed.
Beginning tonight’s big finish are Maxim's 10 sidekicks that deserve some credit. We’re not talking Science Hero sidekicks too much, but the unrecognized ones that make the lives of their heroes that much more fun. From there, into a large amount of optical illusions, to trick your brain and test abilities you thought you forgot after the Magic Eye fad fizzled. But if it’s desktop wallpaper you’re looking for, National Geographic Magazine has quite a few images to browse.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 08:29 am (UTC)And that's how my first foray into drinking was when I was 16 with my *female* best friend, my first exposure to drugs was with a female, and I was convinced sex wasn't an awful thing by female friends. Mmm-hmmm. Boys are a bad influence.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 04:16 pm (UTC)(we won't mention that it's usually me who winds up corrupting the male friends....)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 08:27 pm (UTC)Oops, one more thing - I would be much more interested in seeing a study on whether the risk increases or decreases for female heterosexual teenage sex if a girl has guy friends. More likely because rather than familiarity breeding contempt, simply familiarity breeds? Less likely because she knows how to relate to guys in some way other than sexually?More likely because her pool of dudes she knows is bigger? Less likely because she's already practicing how to weed out the assholes that just want to sleep with her?
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 08:21 pm (UTC)It's interesting to me that the twins studied in the drinking article were from Finland. I thought they had more relaxed attitudes (read: realistic and not puritanical) towards teenage drinking there...?
I dunno, this is more of a press release than an article - a couple of good talking points, rather short on details. Makes it hard to draw any useful conclusions without methodology and a more detailed description of their conclusions. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to throw some food for thought out there:
1)How did they defined "friend" in the study? Girls who hang out with guys in high school could have a variety of relationships - romantic, fuckbuddy, genuinely just friends, puppy dogs boys following the girl around (see yesterday's NG rant instead. HA). And keep in mind, these are teenage girls we're talking about - relationships of all varieties, with anyone, are subject to change at a moment's notice. Is there something deeper here, maybe that the schema these girls for how to relate to guys has an influence on their susceptibility to the EEEE-vils of underage drinking? *gasp*
[aside] Sorry, I'm not really making fun of my question, I think it's legit. I'm making fun of why underage drinking is such a BAD BAD BAAAAAAAD thing. Despite not doing much of it myself, I think American attitudes towards "underage" drinking are ridiculous. [/aside]
2) How many guy friends constitutes an increase in risk? 1? 12? Is it worse if your best friend is a guy?
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 08:26 pm (UTC)I also REALLY don' think boys have anything to do with it. I've always been "one of the guys" and hanging out with more boys than girls and I don't think the boys had any influence over my behavior - except maybe for my enjoyment of watching sports and taking things apart.
Perhaps the study is just trying to keep girls from becoming tomboys, and they think if they publish these "boys are a bad influence" type articles, it will keep girls from being allowed to play with boys and then all the girls will be meek little girls wearing lacey dresses.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 11:07 pm (UTC)From the Meditation Room Article
Date: 2007-12-19 10:54 am (UTC)I understand that she was shooting for some parallelism and wanted three items, but the Torah comprises the first five books of the Bible.
Doesn’t sex-segregation present a constitutional problem in a public educational institution? “I don’t want to comment on that,” he said.
That's ridiculous.
Last year on Fridays, he says, he often entered the bathroom to find that “every sink and toilet stall had someone washing his feet.” Other students couldn’t use the bathroom at these times, and those who tried felt awkward.
Lunaas finally expressed his concerns to a Muslim student who “seemed to be in charge.”
“His attitude was, ‘We don’t have to listen to you, we can do whatever we want,’ ” he said.
So they're assholes, but that has nothing to do with oppressing or catering to Muslims. You picked the wrong time and place to pee; you'll be OK.
I find it ridiculous that any time someone encounters another religion; they feel threatened by it's presence. Honestly, when on campus, if I knew that any religious organization was meeting, I would avoid it by choice. This never prevented me from using all the facilities and amenities that were my right as a tuition-paying student. People need to grow up.
Re: From the Meditation Room Article
Date: 2007-12-19 04:15 pm (UTC)Re: From the Meditation Room Article
Date: 2007-12-19 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 08:28 pm (UTC)p.s., I'm sorry I suck at responding to the right thread and getting my posts in the right spot. I'm a livejournal idiot ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 09:22 pm (UTC)Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
"Reclaiming Honor in Jordan"
no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 06:39 pm (UTC)