Solstice night - 21 December 2007

[silveradept]

To those who celebrate or have already celebrated the changing of the days, a happy solstice to you, and thank Prime that the days will be getting longer. I’m off for the weekend and the two days that the library is closed, so huzzah and four day weekend. Got a package today from greyweirdo that had an adorable lion on the bag and an equally adorable roaring lion in the bag. I’ve got lots of sound-making stuff so far for Christmas, including the rocking, “Jingle Bells”-barking sled dog, and the DVD of A Christmas Carol that also came with the lion. And today was payday. Happy Solstice, indeed.

Another two additions to the Nice Guy(TM) Collection - tscheese presents what I call Trophy-Seeking Nice Guy(TM), and terrestrial_cel has Manic Razor-Carving Nice Guy(TM).

With regard to the string of padded rugby games being played at the collegiate level, lest one think that the postseason matchups are strictly about pride and the possible BCS championship, ESPN puts out another annual roundup of the goodies of the bowl games - each of the football players receives some perks for participation in that particular game. The marching band members are lucky to be somewhere warm in January, if they’re from Michigan, and there’s a lot of costs covered, but it would have been nice to get a $400 shopping spree or a Wii for performing in the game. Ah, well, we’re not the stars. Free good seats are always a plus, even with the requirement to play.

Internationally, I think the Washington Times is doing a little fear-mongering, reporting on a Chinese spying operation that was discovered and stopped in 2005. The Chinese intelligence agencies had obtained raw and analyzed intelligence through a translation company contracted to the government. I suspect the implication from that article is supposed to be that China is continuing to spy on America, and that we should do our best to be suspicious of anyone who looks Chinese, because they’re furthering the cause of China’s world domination. After reading that sentence again, I don’t think it’s outrageous enough that plenty of people believe it.

Israel and Hamas may be considering long-term truce agreements, if both sides can get the concessions they want from the other group. It would be a step toward actually completing a peace deal between Israel and Palestine, but I’m not holding my breath on whether any proposed truces will actually hold.

The Canadian Prime Minister spoke a profound truth today, saying that the Dalai Lama is not a call girl, and thus he shouldn’t have to meet with him in hotel rooms in secret. China has condemned Mr. Harper for his actions, calling it “disgusting conduct” that the head of state of Canada was willing to meet with who they would consider a rebel leader, but that much of the world considers a venerable religious leader and exiled head of state.

Michelle Malkin gives us a snapshot of the American populace, putting selected comments next to a story about the expiration of FEMA Katrina rent subsidies in Houston. Malkin’s selection has one comment reminding those who claim Christianity as their religion that Jesus has a lot of teachings about how his followers should help the poor, and then four or five surrounding it that preach the Republican Gospel that God helps those who help themselves, and anybody who is receiving government assistance is doing so because they’re too lazy or stupid to obtain a proper job and work. Malkin herself refrains from expressing an opinion either way, which is probably a smart idea.

The suicide rate for adults 45-54 is the highest it has been in the last 25 years, according to a United States government survey. Let’s see, 45-54 is traditionally around the mid-life crisis, the increased costs of children going to university, mortgage woes, the possible odd disaster, and the like. That figure is 16.6 completed suicides per 100,000, so while it’s not necessarily many, anything that drives someone to take their own life needs to be looked into.

The Associate Press released their list today of the top ten news stories of 2007, ranging from Virginia Tech killings to climate change through poisoned Chinese exports and Iran’s nuclear program.

Mr. Bush, while not getting into the discussion about presidential candidate qualifications, would supposedly ask them about what "principles" they relied on for decisions, and who they would rely on in the Oval Office to get straight talk. I’d call that an admission from Mr. Bush that his own principles and advice-givers have not done their jobs properly, but I see the world with a lens that slants away from his world view, so I am not a reliable source.

Declaring oneself for President means all statements made will get scrutiny to the nth degree, at least if someone takes your candidacy seriously. For Mr. Romney, this means his claim that his father, George Romney, marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is fact-checked and turns out false, unless you interpret it that Dr. King and Mr. Romney marched in separate marches in the same “series”. So “with” in this case turns out to be “on the same side of” rather than “physically near”. If that’s really the case, then English grammar is at fault. If he meant something more intimate, though, there’s no evidence that any sort of march where the two were together happened.

Mr. Huckabee has more dirt dug up on him (strange how this all seems to appear as he looks like an actual contender for the candidacy) - in 1996, Huckabee basically called out the National Guard to remove the previous governor after said governor decided not to resign as he had promised to do beforehand. There’s nothing in the law requiring the governor to resign when he promises to. He did resign again when the soldiers were surrounding the capital building, but at the time that Huckabee called them in, he had no power or authority to do so. bradhicks points out that we usually call this a coup d’etat. I’m not sure how to parse how that reflects on Huckabee’s presidential-candidate self, but he’s got quite a few shady dealings in his past.

Even Green party candidates are not immune from dirt-digging - Radar Online has a look at Cynthia McKinney's candidacy and what she brings to the Green Party. Ralph Nader thinks John Edwards is swell, though, for taking an anti-corporate stance.

I’m skipping over a few TownHall columns that continue to repeat the Republican party line - the surge is working (and the Troops are Giving Us All the Gift of Freedom), waterboarding isn’t torture, Iran’s still trying to make nukes, and everything’s going so very well around the world that Democrats and the liberal media are scrambling for any bad news they can find. Instead, we’ll sum it up in one article - Republican Unity Trumps Democratic Momentum. By being the party with something resembling a backbone, even in the minority, and wielding the veto pen, they stopped any sort of meaningful change. With that solidarity, they're going to basically shut down the Federal Election Comission, demanding that all the candidates get voted on in a block. William Wilson thinks the FEC's mothballing is a perfectly good thing.

Several people in Oregon are very frustrated - their tax refund checks never appeared, apparently due to a glitch in software that marked them as donating their refunds to the state. Very much not good in that situation, as one of the people in the article was depending on that money to pay for some gifts. The state of Oregon does not appear to be moving quickly toward issuing any additional checks.

A University of Arkansas researcher thinks that tattoos are a way for people to construct their identity - behind each inking, there is a narrative, and in the combination and recitation of those narratives, as well as the symbols chosen for it in the actual ink picture.

For a moment, I wondered why WingNutDaily was covering an energy bill. But, given the chance to say the government is getting rid of incandescent lightbulbs and the compact fluorescent bulbs they’re replacing them with have “highly toxic mercury” in them, it makes more sense. They can then have Great Concern that if they should break, or be disposed of in great numbers, like when they burn out in Congress, then the mercury will be an environmental problem and solutions on their recycling are at least five years off. If advocates claims that the CFL will last five years longer and use 75 percent less energy are on, however, we’ll know how to recycle them when they burn out, and we’ll have saved a significant amount of energy expenditure and other pollution in the process. WND, of course, is too busy saying, “Look! Enviro-tards are advocating for something that will cause more environmental problems!” to pay attention to what’s actually being said. A more respectable paper, the New York Times, reports that the Environmental Protection Agency is blocking individual states from setting higher vehicle emissions standards than the federal mark. The crowning jewel in this environment-hostile environment is the headline on a report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Office of the Ranking GOP Member (read - Republican in the SE&PW Committee) claiming "U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007". Two comparisons - one, what does the rest of the Senate think, and two, how many more scientists outside of that 400 are in the majority opinion, which is, by definition, a consensus?

A church in Washington D.C. holds midnight services to combat curses and witchcraft, all in the name of Jesus. It’s no surprise to me that the church is composed of mostly African congregants, where beliefs about the contagiousness of demons and witchcraft and a Pentecostal view of actual spiritual warfare fuse easily. I do find it interesting that they want to kick up the prayers a notch, thinking that the demons are actively seeking sacrifice and the curses are happening more frequently around what is supposedly one of the essential Christian holidays. I would think that proximity to such a holy day would make it difficult for “witches” or demons to do anything.

Last for tonight in strictly political things, and recipient of the American Civil Liberties Union’s scorn, a Woodrow Wilson High School senior, attending I.C. Norcom High School for a class on hotel management, was told to cover her shirt depicting two interlocked Venus symbols. The potential reasons for the request mentioned in the article, either “we are training students to go out into the business world” or “the shirt upset a conservative instructor and interfered with her ability to teach” both don’t carry enough logic or weight to count. The conservative instructor should welcome the reminder that there are other opinions on the world, and be able to teach, considering wearing a shirt is not an active disruption of a class. The “business world” argument really says, in my opinion, “People in the business world, and the majority of your customers, hate change or anything that jolts them out of their comfort zones. If you express yourself as a unique person, you will lose much of your customer base. Conform. Obey! Obey!” With as much as good marketing is now appealing to the appropriate niche, some showing of individuality might just be the right thing to draw in customers. All those items aside, we keep telling students that they have free speech abilities in the world, and that their constitutional rights don’t stop when they enter the school, and then speech or art or shirt-wearing that upsets administration or teachers with clout is censored because it’s “disruptive”. Let’s set a better example for students and not make a gigantic deal out of someone’s shirt-wearing or their orientation or anything that’s not actively interfering with the lesson, and even then, have a listen and see if they’ve got a point about what’s being taught. More learning is done in frank discussion than rote memorization.

In technology, Endgadget takes a peek in at Bug Labs' DIY electronics kit. Unfortunately, neither the screenshots nor the blurb really tell me a whole lot about what’s going on and why this piece-together kit is a neat thing. At least the Brisa 200 fan shows off what it’s supposed to do in the pictures.

Something much easier to understand is AT&T's offer to design and install complete RFID/GPS/GSM systems to track students, buses, and teachers as they go about their day. So, yet another school-to-prison comparison, anyone? ID cards, tracking, the whole works.

Further in technology, Larry Dignan concludes that Mac OSX is a more vulnerable operating system than Windows XP and Vista, based on the amount of flaws reported by Secunia. Upon closer examination, though, a random sampling of those items generates bugs, flaws, and exploits in third-party software being assessed to OSX in the count. Additionally, with Microsoft’s general unwillingness to acknowledge flaws exist until after their patching, the counts may be Microsoft-friendly. I also find the comparison between OSX 10.4/10.5 and Windows XP/Vista a little off - while the comparison that people want is OSX 10.5 = Windows XP SP2, OSX 10.5 is a younger operating system than XP SP2. Plus, nothing is taken into account of XP SP3, which is slated for release soon. I think it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison, in reporting methods, in age of operating system, and in what’s being marked as flaws.

Most importantly in this section, though, is the closure of analog wireless network bandwidth, meaning that older OnStar-equipped vehicles are no longer OnStar-equipped, some alarm systems won’t be effective, and an old generation of mobile phones will fall off the map. Communications companies are building out coverage in their digital network areas, but it remains to be seen whether the deadline in February will cause some areas to have no signal.

One bit of whimsy, right at the end of all this Serious Bizness - Stephen Colbert was selected as the Associated Press's Celebrity of the year. And one more list that’s probably worth looking at - The Explainer's Unanswered Questions of 2007. The one that garners the most votes will get answered.

The question I’m answering right now, however is “Is it bedtime?”. G’night.

Comments

[darkpattern.livejournal.com]

The AT&T thing is so strange. We have problems with students skipping, but I can't imagine that those problems are severe enough to require us to tag and track them. I can't imagine wearing a tag on my badge as a damned adult. I don't think faculty attendance is an issue at all. You don't show? You get fired. End of story.

[silveradept]

Not to mention that the whole ID tracking won't do a whole lot to curb truancy unless someone actually takes their ID with them so they can be tracked. It's taking the herding prisoners mentality one more step into the schools.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Or, what will probably happen is people will give their IDs to classmates so they can sleep in.

[silveradept]

Hadn't even thought of that. And the computer records would say they were there, even if the silly human teachers knew they weren't.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought too.