Going long - 14 January 2008
Jan. 15th, 2008 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptLate day today, but things went well, all told. A little shopping, too. If I still have time, I might try to repair the button on one of my khaki pairs before bed tonight, but if not, I’ll just crash and do it tomorrow.
Regarding the transition to digital television - digital does not necessarily mean high-definition. In fact, most of those subscribed to cable or satellite providers will be unaffected. It’s only antenna stuff that’s going to go all-digital. And the solutions to that situation are pretty cheap. That way you can keep watching the Smurfs, who are fifty smurfing years old in October.
While not having happened yet to me, be careful of anyone calling you to say that you missed jury duty. The government prefers snail-mail, for one thing, and for another, they’re usually pretty good about notification and giving you plenty of time to get things in order for your service. More information about the jury duty scam at Snopes.
Lots of newslike stuff for us today, so let’s get right to it. We’ll start with some FUD as al-Qaeda is apparently recruiting white British Muslims to carry out terror attacks. Damn. Screws the profiling system up enough that actual investigation and police work might be required. Like intercepting shortwave communications discussing a possible attack plot on the Eiffel Tower.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Brown, is supporting a proposal to make posthumous organ donation mandatory for all citizens that have not opted out or had family members object. If they can be used to save someone else’s life, then they probably should be. But we understand if people want to keep their bits inside them, in case of a resurrection or other afterlife event. In other UK Government news, a motion calling for the Church of England to lose its official religion status was given the number 666. Obviously, someone has a sense of humor in the Houses of Parliament.
And some others do not. A proposal from the Ministry of Justice entails the use of GPS-enabled RFID tags on convicted criminals, as a method of relieving overcrowding in prisons, enforcing home curfews, and tracking registered sex offenders wherever they may go. Privacy advocates think such treatment would be degrading to the inmates, and might be the first push in a national chipping programme. Big Brother is still watching, and in the case of those chips, he never blinks.
Here in America, the Department of Homeland Security, tired of using the carrot for the REAL ID program, has decided to break out the stick. While REAL ID implementation has been pushed back some, DHS says that residents in states that are still combating REAL ID will not be able to use their driver's license to enter federal buildings or board airplanes, and that federally approved identification, such as a passport, will be needed instead. And now I have to wonder whether I’m in a resisting state or not, because Anime Central is right after that deadline. If DHS really intends on snubbing my driver’s license, I’d like to know what they will accept, so that I can have it sent out, and then chew out whomever the first person is that tells me my license isn’t good, because some prick in Homeland Security thinks that their idea is so good everyone has to implement it at their own cost.
WND has their own chip worries - to prevent rolling blackouts, California is considering utilizing remote control of thermostats that could adjust the temperature up or down as needed to prevent power outages.
Mr Bush says he's perfectly okay with no more troop reductions. So there will still be about 130,000 United States soldiers in Iraq, doing what work they can to try and build a house that will stand in Iraq when they are gone. If they are ever gone.
The United Nations' weather agency, the WMO, is asking member countries to permit the WMO usage of their satellites to monitor climate change data. Both sides would certainly have a want to ensure the WMO could access the data, just to prove their side is correct. I foresee no difficulties.
Senator Clinton's attempts at distancing herself from her voting record do not always reflect the facts, considering she voted to support a White House proposal, while she has been speaking about a plan that was being drafted by Senator Hagel. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I do not necessarily trust that she would actually be against the war sufficiently to begin removing troops.
In the opinion pages, W. Burt Prelutsky believes that Obama's church affiliations make him a smooth-talking black power racist. Well, then. He’ll be a welcome change of pace from the other church affiliations that make other people potentially look like a bunch of white-power racists, then, won’t he? After all, for a long time, some Christians endorsed slavery, and others still seem to think it’s okay for a man to beat his wife and children if they cross him. Just saying, y’know. If you’re going to sling something like that about, why not point to something the Senator has actually said or done, rather than poking into something that ostensibly doesn’t matter in the selection of one’s President. I wonder if this opinion column was spawned by the perception that a remark made about the necessity of authenticity in politics by one of Senator Clinton’s supporters was actually a racist comment denigrating Senator Obama.
Humans are not rational creatures, which is something that makes effective economic predictions really hard. For example, when faced with the possibility of "losing", people are willing to take less money just so that they didn't have to feel like they'd missed out.
For those that consume alcohol, another reason to drink Guinness - less calories than some other brews. And if you can get yours live and proper, then all the better.
True Jeans, doing a little bit of swiping at the competition, reminds us that women's clothing is nonstandardized, and says other companies are using "vanity sizing", a practice of cutting something larger, but putting a smaller number on it than it actually is. The thought is that people will buy certain brands of clothes because they’re marked as being smaller sizes in those brands compared to others. I don’t know if it works, being male, and thus, having a relatively standardized set of clothes. Although, in my case, I have to watch which kind of “fit” the clothes have - 36 classic in one brand may be the same as 34 relaxed in another. So, as the comment crew notes, even men get hit by “vanity sizing”. I think people should have measurements taken, and then start noticing the sizes of the clothes compared to the measurements of the body. How much wiggle room is there, really?
The new nondestructive stem cell extraction technique may not be eligible for federal funding, because of one of Mr. Bush's executive orders that sets the standard at doing no harm to the embryos. To test the method, the embyros would have to be implanted into women and allowed to develop, an experiment that would be deemed ethically unacceptable.
But, singled out for displeasure, mockey, and pastry tonight is Kevin McCullough. Why? The "Sex-Box" Race for President, where he tries to make the romantic subplot in “Mass Effect”, combined with the customizability of characters in that game, into some sort of deranged fantasy world where young men create big-breasted, tiny-waisted completely subservient sexual slaves. Or is claiming that such a deranged fantasy world will soon follow, be wildly popular, and be a catalyst for young men deciding they want to take that fantasy world out into the real one. This opinion piece highlights a problem I’ve had with a lot evangelical or dominionist conservative reasoning. Instead of taking children along to older-themed books and movies, and then asking their opinion and answering their questions, this breed seems to believe that children have great difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, have no will to resist any sort of temptation that comes their way, and will dive in headfirst and spend the rest of their life in service to those temptations. They believe that young people can’t do anything but wrong when exposed to it. They won’t give the smart and savvy children and teenagers of this age any credit at all. How stupid. How condescending and “holier-than-thou”. I think the article writer has more trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality than the teenagers he wants to protect. (Idly, related, my professional self found a book giving the straight talk about sexuality to men on top of one of the shelving units - I wonder if it was put there deliberately by someone who wanted it to disappear.)
LEDs may be replacing light bulbs in households soon - the energy efficiency would certainly help, and if they can be made to have the same brightness, then that would really be a neat idea. Of course, each good thing gets a countered bad thing. In this case, shopping carts that automatically pull up your purchase data and then serve you targeted ads based on your place in the store and that shopping history.
Last for tonight, however, is Heart-stopping excess in a deep-friend package. The calorie count on that must be huge. And I really wonder what such a thing tastes like, if it’s palatable at all.
Anyway, to the realm of bedtimes and dreams! Night, everyone.
Regarding the transition to digital television - digital does not necessarily mean high-definition. In fact, most of those subscribed to cable or satellite providers will be unaffected. It’s only antenna stuff that’s going to go all-digital. And the solutions to that situation are pretty cheap. That way you can keep watching the Smurfs, who are fifty smurfing years old in October.
While not having happened yet to me, be careful of anyone calling you to say that you missed jury duty. The government prefers snail-mail, for one thing, and for another, they’re usually pretty good about notification and giving you plenty of time to get things in order for your service. More information about the jury duty scam at Snopes.
Lots of newslike stuff for us today, so let’s get right to it. We’ll start with some FUD as al-Qaeda is apparently recruiting white British Muslims to carry out terror attacks. Damn. Screws the profiling system up enough that actual investigation and police work might be required. Like intercepting shortwave communications discussing a possible attack plot on the Eiffel Tower.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Brown, is supporting a proposal to make posthumous organ donation mandatory for all citizens that have not opted out or had family members object. If they can be used to save someone else’s life, then they probably should be. But we understand if people want to keep their bits inside them, in case of a resurrection or other afterlife event. In other UK Government news, a motion calling for the Church of England to lose its official religion status was given the number 666. Obviously, someone has a sense of humor in the Houses of Parliament.
And some others do not. A proposal from the Ministry of Justice entails the use of GPS-enabled RFID tags on convicted criminals, as a method of relieving overcrowding in prisons, enforcing home curfews, and tracking registered sex offenders wherever they may go. Privacy advocates think such treatment would be degrading to the inmates, and might be the first push in a national chipping programme. Big Brother is still watching, and in the case of those chips, he never blinks.
Here in America, the Department of Homeland Security, tired of using the carrot for the REAL ID program, has decided to break out the stick. While REAL ID implementation has been pushed back some, DHS says that residents in states that are still combating REAL ID will not be able to use their driver's license to enter federal buildings or board airplanes, and that federally approved identification, such as a passport, will be needed instead. And now I have to wonder whether I’m in a resisting state or not, because Anime Central is right after that deadline. If DHS really intends on snubbing my driver’s license, I’d like to know what they will accept, so that I can have it sent out, and then chew out whomever the first person is that tells me my license isn’t good, because some prick in Homeland Security thinks that their idea is so good everyone has to implement it at their own cost.
WND has their own chip worries - to prevent rolling blackouts, California is considering utilizing remote control of thermostats that could adjust the temperature up or down as needed to prevent power outages.
Mr Bush says he's perfectly okay with no more troop reductions. So there will still be about 130,000 United States soldiers in Iraq, doing what work they can to try and build a house that will stand in Iraq when they are gone. If they are ever gone.
The United Nations' weather agency, the WMO, is asking member countries to permit the WMO usage of their satellites to monitor climate change data. Both sides would certainly have a want to ensure the WMO could access the data, just to prove their side is correct. I foresee no difficulties.
Senator Clinton's attempts at distancing herself from her voting record do not always reflect the facts, considering she voted to support a White House proposal, while she has been speaking about a plan that was being drafted by Senator Hagel. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I do not necessarily trust that she would actually be against the war sufficiently to begin removing troops.
In the opinion pages, W. Burt Prelutsky believes that Obama's church affiliations make him a smooth-talking black power racist. Well, then. He’ll be a welcome change of pace from the other church affiliations that make other people potentially look like a bunch of white-power racists, then, won’t he? After all, for a long time, some Christians endorsed slavery, and others still seem to think it’s okay for a man to beat his wife and children if they cross him. Just saying, y’know. If you’re going to sling something like that about, why not point to something the Senator has actually said or done, rather than poking into something that ostensibly doesn’t matter in the selection of one’s President. I wonder if this opinion column was spawned by the perception that a remark made about the necessity of authenticity in politics by one of Senator Clinton’s supporters was actually a racist comment denigrating Senator Obama.
Humans are not rational creatures, which is something that makes effective economic predictions really hard. For example, when faced with the possibility of "losing", people are willing to take less money just so that they didn't have to feel like they'd missed out.
For those that consume alcohol, another reason to drink Guinness - less calories than some other brews. And if you can get yours live and proper, then all the better.
True Jeans, doing a little bit of swiping at the competition, reminds us that women's clothing is nonstandardized, and says other companies are using "vanity sizing", a practice of cutting something larger, but putting a smaller number on it than it actually is. The thought is that people will buy certain brands of clothes because they’re marked as being smaller sizes in those brands compared to others. I don’t know if it works, being male, and thus, having a relatively standardized set of clothes. Although, in my case, I have to watch which kind of “fit” the clothes have - 36 classic in one brand may be the same as 34 relaxed in another. So, as the comment crew notes, even men get hit by “vanity sizing”. I think people should have measurements taken, and then start noticing the sizes of the clothes compared to the measurements of the body. How much wiggle room is there, really?
The new nondestructive stem cell extraction technique may not be eligible for federal funding, because of one of Mr. Bush's executive orders that sets the standard at doing no harm to the embryos. To test the method, the embyros would have to be implanted into women and allowed to develop, an experiment that would be deemed ethically unacceptable.
But, singled out for displeasure, mockey, and pastry tonight is Kevin McCullough. Why? The "Sex-Box" Race for President, where he tries to make the romantic subplot in “Mass Effect”, combined with the customizability of characters in that game, into some sort of deranged fantasy world where young men create big-breasted, tiny-waisted completely subservient sexual slaves. Or is claiming that such a deranged fantasy world will soon follow, be wildly popular, and be a catalyst for young men deciding they want to take that fantasy world out into the real one. This opinion piece highlights a problem I’ve had with a lot evangelical or dominionist conservative reasoning. Instead of taking children along to older-themed books and movies, and then asking their opinion and answering their questions, this breed seems to believe that children have great difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, have no will to resist any sort of temptation that comes their way, and will dive in headfirst and spend the rest of their life in service to those temptations. They believe that young people can’t do anything but wrong when exposed to it. They won’t give the smart and savvy children and teenagers of this age any credit at all. How stupid. How condescending and “holier-than-thou”. I think the article writer has more trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality than the teenagers he wants to protect. (Idly, related, my professional self found a book giving the straight talk about sexuality to men on top of one of the shelving units - I wonder if it was put there deliberately by someone who wanted it to disappear.)
LEDs may be replacing light bulbs in households soon - the energy efficiency would certainly help, and if they can be made to have the same brightness, then that would really be a neat idea. Of course, each good thing gets a countered bad thing. In this case, shopping carts that automatically pull up your purchase data and then serve you targeted ads based on your place in the store and that shopping history.
Last for tonight, however, is Heart-stopping excess in a deep-friend package. The calorie count on that must be huge. And I really wonder what such a thing tastes like, if it’s palatable at all.
Anyway, to the realm of bedtimes and dreams! Night, everyone.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 09:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 05:21 pm (UTC)interesting, but it's a 404 message... any other places to find this article?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 05:34 pm (UTC)Well, let's try this again.
the original article
VNUnet's article on it.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 08:05 pm (UTC)either you edited the original mention of it, or there's something weird going on with internet...
anyway, i thought this would make an interesting counter to that.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 08:16 pm (UTC)Regarding cancers and chips, it's possible. After all, it's a foreign device - it might provoke an immune response or interfere with normal cell development around the chip. I guess we'll be seeing some human trials - maybe the UK plan, if it goes forward, will be a live fire test.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 06:57 pm (UTC)To solve this, the organ taskforce plans measures to boost donation, including putting pressure on doctors to identify patients as potential donors before they have died.
As George Carlin says, "They're looking for spare parts!" I'm torn between thinking it's a good idea, and not. When my uncle died, he did not elect to do organ donation, so the people from the organ donors CHASED US DOWN THE HALLWAY to ask us if they could have his organs. Some of us hadn't even been into the room yet to "say goodbye", and they wanted to wheel him off onto the cutting board. We really didn't appreciate that. So, I can see where the idea of automatic donating might be good in that sense. But at the same time - most people get the question when they get their driver's license about organ donating, and if they want to donate, they choose yes. I can see it being a problem if people don't know how to opt out.
As far as your Driver's License, I vaguely recall reading Washington was on the list of states that didn't want to do it. I'd go ahead and apply for a passport anyway. Besides, you need one to get into Canada and you never know when you might decide to jaunt north :D
That burger's description almost made me throw up. Bletch.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 08:20 pm (UTC)But, I do see your point. If you're not planning on traveling out of the country it does seem sort of pointless to get a passport.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 09:11 pm (UTC)If I'm going to be forced into accepting a national ID card, I want to have some national services to go with it. Like health care, social insurance, child care subsidizations for working families, and such. If that ID's going to be used to track me, report on me, and invade the privacy of my actions as an individual and a citizen, I want the national government to pay for it, to stand up and admit that they want to use it for tracking, to repeal the appropriate privacy laws and Constitutional amendments (if applicable) by legislative process, and be transparent through the whole process of what their true intent is.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 09:14 pm (UTC)I think DHS is afraid to say "we want national identification" outright, so they figure if they sneak it in this way, it doesn't look so bad, because your ID would still be issued by the state you live in, and not the federal government.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 09:56 am (UTC)As for the burger - I'll take 3 please, with fries.