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silveradeptWell, I got done with an important task tonight - my taxes. With the help of my fantastic parents walking me through what I actually did and can claim this year, I’ve got numbers in all the right places, and they’re ready to be shipped off to the appropriate entities. It’s going to be a banner year in some respects, in terms of monies returned. And probably the last time I’ll ever see something like that.
Onward to news of more interest to all of you.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uncle_pervy has probably put on his mourning black as Howard the Duck's creator, Steve Gerber, died at 60 years of age.
After Fidel Castro announced his stepping down as President of Cuba, Cubans are looking at his brother as a possible reformer of his brother's policies and actions.
The Serbian province of Kosovo declared independence on Sunday, a move currently suppported by the United States and the European Union, but opposed by Serbia and Russia. Tensions are likely running a bit high, but so far, it doesn’t sound like major violence has yet broken out or been declared.
The party of Pavez Musharraf took a thrashing in elections held in Pakistan. The opposition party led by the recently-assassinated Benazir Bhutto and the other main opposition took a majority of the contested seats in the Pakistani Parliament. Musharraf’s party admitted defeat and appears not to be contesting or putting roadblocks in the way of a peaceful transition of government.
An FDA screwup that evaluated the wrong Chinese factory in trying to figure out where some heparin ingredient that caused allergic reactions came from. There’s also a frozen beef recall underway, if one isn’t concerned enough for one’s health.
An immigration foul-up ended up costing an infant coming to the United States for heart surgery his life. Despite the baby and the nurse being naturalized with passports and the mother having all her papers in order, they were all stopped at the border and delayed for 30 minutes. Which was too long when the infant started having problems.
Possibly of interest is the woman who married a State Department employee as her third husband and used him to get access to sensitive information.
Austin Cline notes that perhaps some of the reasons why the Bush Administration is still able to say that torture is Constitutional is because several of the Supreme Court Judges seem to think it is. Which bodes really ill for everyone in this country, if the justices of the highest court in the land aren’t saying unequivocally that torture is against the laws of the country and the world.
The website Wikileaks, which allowed whistle-blowers to anonymously break scandals and post documents has been shut down by court order.
Ingenious yet sad at the same time, the housing crisis and attendant foreclosures are giving the homeless new options for finding a place to squat. At the same time, it’s strongly implied in the article that drug dealers and prostitutes are also enjoying the new digs.
The Biology department says that there were some pretty big frogs about 70 million years ago. Imagine seeing one of those hopping toward you. Perhaps of better interest to all of us is the likelihood of battery-operated boyfriends and girlfriends evolving into fully robotic sexual partners, with cultural norms shifted to make that an acceptable item to have. For some, it might spell the doom of the birth rate, if robots are perfect lovers. For others, it may be that having an EDS to fall back on (sorry, Ping!), possibly able to be synced with a brainwave control device is exactly what they need to experience good loving and go out and find a real girl to do things with . Most important (and perhaps tangentially related to the idea of sexually servicing robots) is how colony collapse disorder could affect ice cream makers - all those fruit flavorings depend on pollination, and bees are excellent pollinators. And from one set of insects to another, humans prefer the path they have been led on, even when shown a shorter pathway. The fear of getting lost tends to do that to people.
The following commentary sounds familiar. As If I’ve been hearing it for the last four years - Thomas Sowell, dittohead, beats a decayed horse about how much liberals are intolerant of the un-PC, censors of the good the military does and exploiters of the bad. Seriously, I swear I’ve seen this before from a lot of places. Something a bit more novel, however, is Robert D. Novak's accusation that Nancy Pelosi's killing of the FISA bill with immunity was because of tort lawyers seeking damages, rather than, say, it being the right thing to do. The Wall Street Journal joins the bashing with conservative talking points saying without immunity, telecommunications companies will demand warrants before wiretapping, which to them means that intelligence gathering will be slow and/or degraded. As a side effect that I’m sure wasn’t intended, they would also be legal. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. It’s that easy. Considering how easy the government can get a FISA warrant, I don’t think it’s unfair to require them to do so first before tapping phones.
Landing in the next-to-last segment, two bits, related in various ways. One, MechaMonkey at Destructoid e-mailed Jack Thompson, offering to put him on a podcast so he could defend himself. The results were, unfortunately, pretty predictable: Jack declared gamers to be ill-mannered and uninformed, and was quite happy tarring the entire gaming population even with one of them trying to be polite, articulate, and offering him a chance to speak his mind and defend himself from the assault he gets from gamers. I guess Mr. Thompson felt he wouldn’t get a fair shake from the podcast, and then went on to say that the people who were organizing memorials for the victims at NIU were doing it for themselves and not others. Not smart, Jack. You missed an opportunity to repair some of your damage.
Going to a more abstract level, though, are Americans hostile to knowledge? I’ve heard that America has an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide, but according to one of the writers mentioned in the article, it has now fused with an anti-rational streak to become a monster that doesn’t care about learning important knowledge, and doesn’t think their ignorance is shocking or something that needs remedying. The librarian in me encounters this on occasion, and it really is enough to make someone cringe. How much do we know we don’t know, and how much more do we not care that we don’t know anything? With the way we do politics, it’s pretty easy to see that this monster is winning and infecting new souls every day.
Last for tonight, our Listmania department offers up thirty easy ways to save money. All helpful and useful. Sleep is also helpful and useful, and will be enjoyed right... now. Snooze!
Onward to news of more interest to all of you.
uncle_pervy has probably put on his mourning black as Howard the Duck's creator, Steve Gerber, died at 60 years of age. After Fidel Castro announced his stepping down as President of Cuba, Cubans are looking at his brother as a possible reformer of his brother's policies and actions.
The Serbian province of Kosovo declared independence on Sunday, a move currently suppported by the United States and the European Union, but opposed by Serbia and Russia. Tensions are likely running a bit high, but so far, it doesn’t sound like major violence has yet broken out or been declared.
The party of Pavez Musharraf took a thrashing in elections held in Pakistan. The opposition party led by the recently-assassinated Benazir Bhutto and the other main opposition took a majority of the contested seats in the Pakistani Parliament. Musharraf’s party admitted defeat and appears not to be contesting or putting roadblocks in the way of a peaceful transition of government.
An FDA screwup that evaluated the wrong Chinese factory in trying to figure out where some heparin ingredient that caused allergic reactions came from. There’s also a frozen beef recall underway, if one isn’t concerned enough for one’s health.
An immigration foul-up ended up costing an infant coming to the United States for heart surgery his life. Despite the baby and the nurse being naturalized with passports and the mother having all her papers in order, they were all stopped at the border and delayed for 30 minutes. Which was too long when the infant started having problems.
Possibly of interest is the woman who married a State Department employee as her third husband and used him to get access to sensitive information.
Austin Cline notes that perhaps some of the reasons why the Bush Administration is still able to say that torture is Constitutional is because several of the Supreme Court Judges seem to think it is. Which bodes really ill for everyone in this country, if the justices of the highest court in the land aren’t saying unequivocally that torture is against the laws of the country and the world.
The website Wikileaks, which allowed whistle-blowers to anonymously break scandals and post documents has been shut down by court order.
Ingenious yet sad at the same time, the housing crisis and attendant foreclosures are giving the homeless new options for finding a place to squat. At the same time, it’s strongly implied in the article that drug dealers and prostitutes are also enjoying the new digs.
The Biology department says that there were some pretty big frogs about 70 million years ago. Imagine seeing one of those hopping toward you. Perhaps of better interest to all of us is the likelihood of battery-operated boyfriends and girlfriends evolving into fully robotic sexual partners, with cultural norms shifted to make that an acceptable item to have. For some, it might spell the doom of the birth rate, if robots are perfect lovers. For others, it may be that having an EDS to fall back on (sorry, Ping!), possibly able to be synced with a brainwave control device is exactly what they need to experience good loving and go out and find a real girl to do things with . Most important (and perhaps tangentially related to the idea of sexually servicing robots) is how colony collapse disorder could affect ice cream makers - all those fruit flavorings depend on pollination, and bees are excellent pollinators. And from one set of insects to another, humans prefer the path they have been led on, even when shown a shorter pathway. The fear of getting lost tends to do that to people.
The following commentary sounds familiar. As If I’ve been hearing it for the last four years - Thomas Sowell, dittohead, beats a decayed horse about how much liberals are intolerant of the un-PC, censors of the good the military does and exploiters of the bad. Seriously, I swear I’ve seen this before from a lot of places. Something a bit more novel, however, is Robert D. Novak's accusation that Nancy Pelosi's killing of the FISA bill with immunity was because of tort lawyers seeking damages, rather than, say, it being the right thing to do. The Wall Street Journal joins the bashing with conservative talking points saying without immunity, telecommunications companies will demand warrants before wiretapping, which to them means that intelligence gathering will be slow and/or degraded. As a side effect that I’m sure wasn’t intended, they would also be legal. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. It’s that easy. Considering how easy the government can get a FISA warrant, I don’t think it’s unfair to require them to do so first before tapping phones.
Landing in the next-to-last segment, two bits, related in various ways. One, MechaMonkey at Destructoid e-mailed Jack Thompson, offering to put him on a podcast so he could defend himself. The results were, unfortunately, pretty predictable: Jack declared gamers to be ill-mannered and uninformed, and was quite happy tarring the entire gaming population even with one of them trying to be polite, articulate, and offering him a chance to speak his mind and defend himself from the assault he gets from gamers. I guess Mr. Thompson felt he wouldn’t get a fair shake from the podcast, and then went on to say that the people who were organizing memorials for the victims at NIU were doing it for themselves and not others. Not smart, Jack. You missed an opportunity to repair some of your damage.
Going to a more abstract level, though, are Americans hostile to knowledge? I’ve heard that America has an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide, but according to one of the writers mentioned in the article, it has now fused with an anti-rational streak to become a monster that doesn’t care about learning important knowledge, and doesn’t think their ignorance is shocking or something that needs remedying. The librarian in me encounters this on occasion, and it really is enough to make someone cringe. How much do we know we don’t know, and how much more do we not care that we don’t know anything? With the way we do politics, it’s pretty easy to see that this monster is winning and infecting new souls every day.
Last for tonight, our Listmania department offers up thirty easy ways to save money. All helpful and useful. Sleep is also helpful and useful, and will be enjoyed right... now. Snooze!
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hostile to knowledge?
Date: 2008-02-20 09:24 am (UTC)~M~
Re: hostile to knowledge?
Date: 2008-02-20 10:49 am (UTC)On the other hand, there is a difference between general apathy towards knowledge and outright hostility. And while there are a number of areas where the former is more common, the latter is spreading to far too many places now. But that's a longer post for another time.
Freedom Fries!!
Date: 2008-02-20 11:27 am (UTC)~M~
Re: Freedom Fries!!
Date: 2008-03-02 01:02 pm (UTC)Although I am convinced that 5th Grader weeds out everyone with an IQ higher than 90.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 09:37 pm (UTC)Taxes are so huge to be done with - congrats! I have much sympathy, I had to do taxes in 2 states for the first 3 years after I moved because I kept my Michigan license. It was crappy, but at least Illinois and Michigan had reciprocal agreements; I'm betting you didn't get that small grace.
But now I'm all depressed thinking about having to do my taxes, which are still sitting on my desk...bleh.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 10:45 pm (UTC)