silveradept | And-a-one, and-a-two

So! While there was no snow accumulation, and mostly a melting-in-the-face of rain, it was still a rather cold day today. I seem to have traded one climate that gets beastly cold and occasionally beastly cold and windy and that likes snow for one that is cold, gets icy when windy, and prefers rain. Well, ya can’t win ‘em all. Much as you might like to try on occasion. There were meetings of various sorts, where lots of things were done and lots of things needed to be thought about.

Then, after work tonight, I watched Mirrormask. All told, I like the film, more for the visuals, the actors, the music, and the setting, rather than the actual plot. It’s definitely a Gaiman story, that’s for sure, and mostly a green-screen movie. All told, I’ll probably watch it again with the commentary on, and then possibly think about adding it to my collection. The surreality of it all is what entranced me.

In interplanetary news, an asteroid will pass close by to Terra, but there's no chance of it striking the planet. Breathe relief, citizens, and watch as the scientists focus their telescopes so as to get good pictures and readings as the rock hunk whooshes by.

Internationally, Canada has threatened to remove its troops from Afghanistan if NATO does not send reinforcements and support to them. In Afghanistan itself, women protested the kidnapping of an American and her driver. And in Iraq, more fighting and dying between insurgents and occupiers.

The government of the United Arab Emirates has detained someone based on OTC drugs and dirt, according to

_yungfuktoi_, who is rather close to the person being detained. The Asian look of the detainee didn’t help any, according to the account, but the hope is that things will turn out clear, and there will be release and apology. This is an apt account of what happens when you let “homeland security” run the checkpoints and make the decisions about who is arrested and profiled. In addition to the government and justice systems apparently deciding to drag the trial out as much as possible so as to see if there’s anything to convict on.

The Republican race lost at least one candidate tonight, after John McCain won the Florida primary. Mayor 9/11 is confirmed to be endorsing Senator McCain after his bid to win Florida was a failure. The race now looks to be a McCain-Romney fight. I’ll leave it to other pundits about whether one is more “electable” than the other, and report, instead on Romney's attacks on McCain, accusing him of following a "liberal Democrat course" in some of the bills Senator McCain sponsored. I’m wondering whether the “flip-flopper” argument will stick against Governor Romney in this campaign.

Continuing our theme from yesterday of a Lame Duck being lame in his last year, The Carpetbagger Report correctly surmises that the United States population is eagerly awaiting the exodus of George W. Bush. Oh, and several of the political figures can't wait to get him out, either. Not only that, but if you fact-check the statements in the State of the Union address for 2008, you find that several of the statements made are stretched truths at best. Further fact-checking confirms that context is sometimes left out of the president's statements.

Civil disobedience Blackwater massacre re-enactors arrested after protest on Blackwater grounds, tried behind closed doors, retried after ACLU appeal, sentenced to time served. The Alternet story reporter pointedly remarks that even “time served” is more than anyone in Blackwater involved in the original incident has spent in jail, in addition to pointing out several juxtapositions that make the trial and sentencing carry many more possibly deeper layers.

There’s got to be some sort of logic to the following article - persons who traded in Hollywood movies that had been edited to remove sex, violence, nudity, and language was arrested for soliciting sex from fourteen year-old girls. There’s the “Bet they’re socially conservative Republicans” joke, wide stance or no. Also, possibly the “repressed religious right going pedophile” angle. In all these cases, this story fits into a larger trend of some sort where “methinks the lady doth protest too much” really applies.

A followup to an earlier story - apparently, Homeland security did censor someone's blog, and not only that, he took an involuntary trip to the local FBI office. Yep, whatever codenamed terror-filtering software there was tripped on his blog one too many times, and the FBI got convinced that someone who works in biochem, can accurately speak about weaponization of viruses, posts mock interviews with members of al-Qaeda, and then posts the ingredient recipies for a few lame explosive devices is going to start posting on how to be a homegrown terrorist with stronger stuff. For all I know, the FBI had to investigate. But in the process, the software machine, DHS, and the FBI come out looking like chumps for trusting that their machine knew what was going on. My professional self knows about the dangers of trusting the machines. As a fitting cap to this particular segment, Rolling Stone exposes the federal government's efforts to find terrorists anywhere it can, including encouraging truly clueless people to talk about their harebrained schemes.

California plan to get more people on insurance falls apart and dies. The plan was to get everyone on a private plan, with government subsidizing some of the cost for those who can’t afford private insurance. But worries over expense and those who want to see the government at the helm of healthcare killed the plan’s passage. No insurance for you, at least, not in this insurance company-profiting way. The federal government could do something about it, but Mr. Bush wants more money for Iraq instead.

It’s something out of an urban legend, in the New York Times - accounts of illegal kidney transplants. One would have thought Snopes debunked such things, but I guess someone was taking inspiration from them instead. The entire account is strange and sickening.

Matthew Ladner says that having more college graduates in Arizona is not necessary, as those jobs with good growth prospects don’t need college degrees. While acknowledging that the gap between high school and college graduates is mostly the high school graduates earning less rather than the collegians earning more, he doesn’t seem to consider this a problem. As his argument for less college, he points out that poor people who go to college have horrible four-year graduation rates (but better six-year ones, possibly because the six-year ones are working to help pay for college, to), and that a random sample of those in college programs can’t do a basic task like summarize editorial positions. Rather than laying the blame at the feet of those primary and secondary schools that sent persons on to college without a proper education, without the skills that would allow them to obtain and negotiate a living wage for their high school degree, he claims that the proliferation of college and college students is at fault. He can futz around with higher ed all he wants, but if he doesn’t actually look at the place where the problem is happening, there’s no way he can fix it. I’ve heard more than enough stories from teachers and librarians in secondary schools and introductory university courses that wonder why students are at this level of their education without having actually learned anything in the process. If children are failing, fail them and have them repeat the concepts until they are grasped sufficiently to move onward, or they take themselves out of school, having reached the age where they can legally do so. Because right now, that university degree is performing the function a high school diploma did before - it’s the credential that says the person holding this degree has learned how to think and how to learn, so that they will be an effective member of society and a productive worker. In some cases, like mine, the degree is actually the gateway into the profession in question, but along the way, a lot of thinking and learning has been applied.

Human activity has brought about a new Epoch? With as much change as the human race has wrought on the earth, there’s a possibility that we can claim the new epoch as our own. Although that’s not necessarily a good thing, if you consider the changes wrought so far to be malignant.

Lawyers and lawsuits dominate Google-space on medical information, says Amy Ridenour, and those lawyers’ claims about side effects and drug dangers may be convincing some people to get off medication that should stay on, or frightening other people into not accepting the medication in the first place. We have a name for the kinds of lawyers that follow emergency services personnel to accident scenes, so they can convince the injured or their family to sue the other person or corporation involved - ambulance-chasers. If in virtual space, the ambulance-chasers are outweighing the good medical authorities, then we have problems. And why would you trust a lawyer over a doctor when it came to medicine, anyway?

The Unabashed Feminism department, headed by frequent contributor and talented blogger in her own right

ldragoon offers up We Bite Back, which bills itself as the first post-pro-ana forum and website. Parsing that, it appears to be people who thought that anorexia and starvation was the way to go, but have since shaken off that delusion and are more comfortable with their bodies now than they were, and are actively trying to help others do the same. One of their projects, the Orange Revolution, involves the placement of body-positive messages on adhesive memo paper (Post-its by brand name) in all sorts of places around the world, including dressing rooms and public toilets. Guerrilla tactics in service of getting the world to think better about itself? Let’s do it.

Another follow-up item - the file-sharing service Qtrax apparently doesn't have the licenses it claims it does from music companies. Which could mean that a good idea gets shot in the foot and killed before it has a chance to prove that it works.

The weird takes over before we finish this entry, offering up sheep circles and reminding us of shopping cart circles. There’s also a Sanka ad where a father stops beating his child after switching to decaf, and glowing-eyes pollen-sensing robots. Our parting weirdness for tonight is cheeseburger in a can. I’m afraid. Very afraid.

And last, because the lists are almost always present in the entries, 50 things learned in fifty years. Hopefully it won’t take all of us fifty years to figure out fifty things. Like the need for sleep, which I am indulging.