And then one more - 15 March 2008
Mar. 15th, 2008 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptWorking Saturdays are a disruption to anyone's schedule. In public service jobs like mine, though, they're necessary. And they don't happen all that often, so I'm not completely out of sorts, anyway. And the news happens regardless of what day it is. So, let's go for it.
On the radio today and yesterday were protests in Tibet that turned violent with a Chiense government crackdown, resulting in damage, police control, and accusations from the Chinese government that followers of the Dalai Lama organized the entire affair. At least 100 are dead from the violence, and that number is likely only to grow as the Chinese government attempts to stomp out the protests.
Domestically, tornadoes and severe weather struck at the downtown Atlanta area, with some fatalities and a lot of damage. I hope that everyone in the path of those storms is safe and that not too much damage happened.
AmericaBlog is incensed that there's no outcry for the "free market" to do its work in the housing crisis. Which is true - if people really were interested in letting the free market take its course, the economy would probably free-fall for a while, crash violently and then start building itself again. Lots of disruption to people lives and livelihoods. Of course, the government insists that things aren't really that bad - while the Federal Reserve bank bails out investment institutions left and right.
The FBI attempted to justify and cover it's abuses of warrantless wiretapping with blanket subpoenas a year after the event happened. Because giving the government new powers and a go-ahead to use them first and think about them later never resulted in abuses in the past.
For Ashley Dupre, a little scandal translates into a lot of money. On-line, at Amie Street, the escort's music has suddenly become rather popular. Not everyone gets to have their name slung about the presses this easily. I wonder if she could turn this escort business into a successful musical career. She's obviously already comfortable with schmoozing with rich and powerful people. She might manage a recording contract and national tour, for all we know.
As for Governor Spitzer, Greg Palast says there needs to be law reform in the United States because a man who exercised his vices is getting a baleful media eye while a man who is responsible for the deaths of many thousands smirks and sings songs of his accomplishment while the press laughs.
With regard to the statements made by Pastor Jeremiah Wright,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks remarks that what Wright says is all true, is part of the history of the country, but is Forbidden Lore because of that, and the natural reaction of the populace is to assume it to be crazy talk. In comments, the readers point out that Senator Obama's repudiation of the remarks is not necessarily saying anything against their truth value, but that the Senator's campaign is based on a delivery style that is antithetical to the pastor's. It's still all true, it's just not delivered properly. Having a convenient example at hand, an African-American reporter was attacked physically and verbally while doing a report from the streets. In South Carolina. The attack was filmed by another camera crew, who were not attacked. The reporter was doing a piece on the arrest of one of the relatives of the attacking family. It's not known, of course, whether or not the family would have had the same reaction if it was the crew that filmed the attack doing the reporting, but Pam's House Blend thinks the attack was racially-motivated.
A citizen in Virginia is facing murder charges after he shot a police officer while they raided his house. The raid began in the night while the citizen was asleep, and apparently the informant who sparked the raid had broken into the citizen's house a few days before. All of this, by the way, was over the information that the citizen was growing marijuana plants, none of which were found. Even more so, there was no indication at any point that the citizen was violent or inclined to violence. The raid provoked the citizen shooting the police officer in self-defense, believing that his house might under invasion by violent criminals. Sounds like everything went wrong that could have, but that the prosecutors and judges aren't listening, believing that a citizen should be able to determine, upon waking from a sound sleep, whether or not it is the police that are invading his home or criminals, and thus be able to determine whether or not to fire on the invaders.
Something really scary, although obviously Minitrue-approved - A device that purports to track the emotional states of those who wear them. "Quality assurance", indeed, by making sure that the drones in the call centers or the peons at their desks don't experience forbidden emotions. Or they'll get really good at not letting it show when they're looking at unapproved content from work. I can only see bad results from trying to put this in a workplace environment. As such, I expect Wal-Mart to be the first to adopt them.
Other technology includes floating ideas and working on a backup of human civilization, to be stored on Luna in case of disaster. Placing it there, of course, requires that there be some method of retrieval developed eventually, but if there happens to be a situation where there are people on Luna that can then return to Terra and rebuild, then we might manage to survive our own stupidity.
Linden Labs creator Philip Linden is stepping down as CEO of Second Life, transitioning to become the chairman of the executive board and trying to find a different CEO.
GoDaddy unceremoniously shut down a site called RateMyCop that was dedicated to letting citizens provide ratings of their interactions with uniformed police officers. Apparently, the police were worried that their names and identification numbers were publicly available. RateMyCop tried to get back on-line with a different host, only to have them nix the deal. GoDaddy's official line was that the site became too popular for its payment plan. Radley Balko notes that all the information there is public, and that having open citizen and police comment on their interactions is beneficial to everyone. Best to know when you're dealing with a power-tripper from the beginning, rather than finding it out after a gun gets pulled on you and your arms broken because you didn't obey fast enough.
Weird news includes a person who can cook fish with his hands, to the point of blackening the outsides, sculptures and masks created with hair and Nike Air Jordans, which is pretty expensive art, I would guess. More of Brian Jugen's works available at Catriona Jeffries.
Making sure there are lists in every entry, ReadWriteWeb discusses applications for iPhone that will integrate the physical and digital worlds more closely.
Last for tonight is something really, really, cute, although you do have to be a fan of the BBC Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood to fully get it. Torchwood Babies scales the series down to the diapers-and-playhouses crowd, and stays adorably cute while doing so.
The postscript (because both this and Torchwood Babies deserve to be at the end for the skimmers) involves turning debates with opposing viewpoints into games for charity, with wagers being applied so that both sides have an interested stake in the matter. In Part II, the rules for the deabtes are outlined, with scoring done based on the severity of offense against the ethics of debate, and Part III has some additional ideas that explain why these debates are needed and what beenfits they could have. Even if they don't end up convincing anyone to change sides, through ethical and respectful debate, maybe both sides can agree to disagree.
And thus, we're gone and away from here. Have fun, people!
On the radio today and yesterday were protests in Tibet that turned violent with a Chiense government crackdown, resulting in damage, police control, and accusations from the Chinese government that followers of the Dalai Lama organized the entire affair. At least 100 are dead from the violence, and that number is likely only to grow as the Chinese government attempts to stomp out the protests.
Domestically, tornadoes and severe weather struck at the downtown Atlanta area, with some fatalities and a lot of damage. I hope that everyone in the path of those storms is safe and that not too much damage happened.
AmericaBlog is incensed that there's no outcry for the "free market" to do its work in the housing crisis. Which is true - if people really were interested in letting the free market take its course, the economy would probably free-fall for a while, crash violently and then start building itself again. Lots of disruption to people lives and livelihoods. Of course, the government insists that things aren't really that bad - while the Federal Reserve bank bails out investment institutions left and right.
The FBI attempted to justify and cover it's abuses of warrantless wiretapping with blanket subpoenas a year after the event happened. Because giving the government new powers and a go-ahead to use them first and think about them later never resulted in abuses in the past.
For Ashley Dupre, a little scandal translates into a lot of money. On-line, at Amie Street, the escort's music has suddenly become rather popular. Not everyone gets to have their name slung about the presses this easily. I wonder if she could turn this escort business into a successful musical career. She's obviously already comfortable with schmoozing with rich and powerful people. She might manage a recording contract and national tour, for all we know.
As for Governor Spitzer, Greg Palast says there needs to be law reform in the United States because a man who exercised his vices is getting a baleful media eye while a man who is responsible for the deaths of many thousands smirks and sings songs of his accomplishment while the press laughs.
With regard to the statements made by Pastor Jeremiah Wright,
bradhicks remarks that what Wright says is all true, is part of the history of the country, but is Forbidden Lore because of that, and the natural reaction of the populace is to assume it to be crazy talk. In comments, the readers point out that Senator Obama's repudiation of the remarks is not necessarily saying anything against their truth value, but that the Senator's campaign is based on a delivery style that is antithetical to the pastor's. It's still all true, it's just not delivered properly. Having a convenient example at hand, an African-American reporter was attacked physically and verbally while doing a report from the streets. In South Carolina. The attack was filmed by another camera crew, who were not attacked. The reporter was doing a piece on the arrest of one of the relatives of the attacking family. It's not known, of course, whether or not the family would have had the same reaction if it was the crew that filmed the attack doing the reporting, but Pam's House Blend thinks the attack was racially-motivated.A citizen in Virginia is facing murder charges after he shot a police officer while they raided his house. The raid began in the night while the citizen was asleep, and apparently the informant who sparked the raid had broken into the citizen's house a few days before. All of this, by the way, was over the information that the citizen was growing marijuana plants, none of which were found. Even more so, there was no indication at any point that the citizen was violent or inclined to violence. The raid provoked the citizen shooting the police officer in self-defense, believing that his house might under invasion by violent criminals. Sounds like everything went wrong that could have, but that the prosecutors and judges aren't listening, believing that a citizen should be able to determine, upon waking from a sound sleep, whether or not it is the police that are invading his home or criminals, and thus be able to determine whether or not to fire on the invaders.
Something really scary, although obviously Minitrue-approved - A device that purports to track the emotional states of those who wear them. "Quality assurance", indeed, by making sure that the drones in the call centers or the peons at their desks don't experience forbidden emotions. Or they'll get really good at not letting it show when they're looking at unapproved content from work. I can only see bad results from trying to put this in a workplace environment. As such, I expect Wal-Mart to be the first to adopt them.
Other technology includes floating ideas and working on a backup of human civilization, to be stored on Luna in case of disaster. Placing it there, of course, requires that there be some method of retrieval developed eventually, but if there happens to be a situation where there are people on Luna that can then return to Terra and rebuild, then we might manage to survive our own stupidity.
Linden Labs creator Philip Linden is stepping down as CEO of Second Life, transitioning to become the chairman of the executive board and trying to find a different CEO.
GoDaddy unceremoniously shut down a site called RateMyCop that was dedicated to letting citizens provide ratings of their interactions with uniformed police officers. Apparently, the police were worried that their names and identification numbers were publicly available. RateMyCop tried to get back on-line with a different host, only to have them nix the deal. GoDaddy's official line was that the site became too popular for its payment plan. Radley Balko notes that all the information there is public, and that having open citizen and police comment on their interactions is beneficial to everyone. Best to know when you're dealing with a power-tripper from the beginning, rather than finding it out after a gun gets pulled on you and your arms broken because you didn't obey fast enough.
Weird news includes a person who can cook fish with his hands, to the point of blackening the outsides, sculptures and masks created with hair and Nike Air Jordans, which is pretty expensive art, I would guess. More of Brian Jugen's works available at Catriona Jeffries.
Making sure there are lists in every entry, ReadWriteWeb discusses applications for iPhone that will integrate the physical and digital worlds more closely.
Last for tonight is something really, really, cute, although you do have to be a fan of the BBC Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood to fully get it. Torchwood Babies scales the series down to the diapers-and-playhouses crowd, and stays adorably cute while doing so.
The postscript (because both this and Torchwood Babies deserve to be at the end for the skimmers) involves turning debates with opposing viewpoints into games for charity, with wagers being applied so that both sides have an interested stake in the matter. In Part II, the rules for the deabtes are outlined, with scoring done based on the severity of offense against the ethics of debate, and Part III has some additional ideas that explain why these debates are needed and what beenfits they could have. Even if they don't end up convincing anyone to change sides, through ethical and respectful debate, maybe both sides can agree to disagree.
And thus, we're gone and away from here. Have fun, people!
