In the middle of the week - 26 March 2008
Mar. 26th, 2008 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHad a relatively unweird day today (as unweird as my job actually is), with much fun and merriment had by all. The Moisture Festival opens up tomorrow night, and in honor of music to be played, a gallery of odd musical instruments.
Outside my personal life, in and around the monkeysphere, first starting with international news, AmericaBlog is already suggesting that new locations be scouted for the 2008 Olympics. This comes from Sally Jenkins' article in the Washington Post wondering why sponsors and governments are going along with the Games despite Beijing's violation of human rights, surveillance, and hasty construction of structures, among other things. That the IOC hasn’t said or done anything yet seems mighty odd. Maybe they’re trying to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt?
With regard to Iraq, Robert McFarlane suggests that more peace can be achieved by working with the clerics and getting the moderate form of Islam to flourish in the country. Sounds promising. If that could spread to several other nations, and show them that there’s a way to make it all work, it would be good.
In the domestic realms, the Supreme Court may have just opened up a giant can of worms. A 6-3 majority ruling from the justices says that international treaties do not automatically have the force of law in individual states unless specifically noted or accompanied by domestic legislation. I thought the whole point of entering into treaties was because all the parties agreed to them and intended to enforce them. This sounds like a great way for the Bush Administration to justify its ignorance of the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of prisoners. It’s already being used as a way of keeping foreign nationals on death row without giving them the chance to communicate with their home countries. Some are cheering because this supposedly insulates America from international law, which I suppose they see as big and threatening and trying its best to make America do their bidding. I’m waiting for the first time where America attempts to enforce a treaty obligation and if rebuffed by others saying “Well, we didn’t pass any legislation here that says we have to follow it.” For those interested in the source material, read the opinions issued on Medellin v. Texas.
U.S. consumers are at their most pessimistic since the Nixon era. So all that economic stimulus stuff might very well fizzle out because people don’t want to spend more on credit. At the very least, the perception resembles an image from 1937, even if it isn’t actually so. Then again, almost 10% of Ohio residents are on food stamps, and more are eligible. And residents in Alabama are paying up to 25% of their paycheck on gas, because the paychecks are small and the price of gas has only gone up.
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classics_cat has more about torture - it's an old tradition, and the assumptions behind why it's "necessary" to the Greeks and Romans are just as bad as they are today. Torture starts sounding good when you assume that people are lying to you, and are always lying to you. But if you’re already at that assumption, then even through torture, people still assume that they’re being lied to. So the intelligence is suspect, and the methods are brutal. Is that the kind of society and government we really want to be known for? Would it be better to be known more for satirically suggesting that prostate exams are recruitment into a homosexual lifestyle? At least then, when people say that you’re being stupid, the matter is mostly harmless.
Regarding candidates, as it turns out, Hillary Clinton's momory ain't what it used to be, with an account of dodging sniper fire being nothing more than a child reading a poem as she disembarked from a plane. But Hillary's not giving up on her campaign, not until the very end. Well, it’ll make for good drama, that’s for sure.
Here’s the last part from this section - the peace symbol is fifty years old today. And how much closer are we to that aim than we were fifty years ago?
Following up from yesterday, Unabashed Feminism department contributortscheese takes one for the team, signs up, and plays some of Miss Bimbo. The conclusion is that it really is as bad as we thought. When it actually is up and working.
Want to know the father of a baby, even though it won’t stand up in court as admissible evidence? Pay up $150 or so, and the results can be yours.
In science, it's possible that we've found a pheremone-processing olfactory nerve. So knowing that a mate smells just right isn’t something in your head - it might be the truest sense. The pill might interfere with that, though. Which could make things much more interesting when finding a good mate. Mixing in technology with our sex talk, Gizmodo interviews a man who built and then married his girlfriend. Moving back from high-tech to beginning-tech, scientists have played back an audio recording that predates Edison's phonograph, after a little fiddling and adjustment because of human variances. Other science includes rats learning how to use rakes. And there’s the gent recreating characters and locales from Star Trek from beads, wire, and spools.
Last for tonight, a look at 2008 from 1968. While there’s a lot that’s not right, there’s a lot that is. Predictive abilities are still there, but I doubt that the envisioned future of 1968 looks anything like what things are actually today. All we have to do is look at the history of video game consoles to see that. Or the growth of Wal-Mart stores from 1962 to the present day.
On the postscript, because we mentioned video games, The New Yorker has an article that says comic books were one of the original "we have to rate them and restrict sales for the childrens!". Well, they probably did the same thing about moving pictures, and then radio programmes before that, and they’re still doing it to literature today, so maybe it’s not one of the originals, but yet another medium in a proud tradition of having people proclaim its evilness, predict dire consequences, and then watch as nothing happens and society moves on as usual.
Anyway, going to bed. Performance time tomorrow.
Outside my personal life, in and around the monkeysphere, first starting with international news, AmericaBlog is already suggesting that new locations be scouted for the 2008 Olympics. This comes from Sally Jenkins' article in the Washington Post wondering why sponsors and governments are going along with the Games despite Beijing's violation of human rights, surveillance, and hasty construction of structures, among other things. That the IOC hasn’t said or done anything yet seems mighty odd. Maybe they’re trying to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt?
With regard to Iraq, Robert McFarlane suggests that more peace can be achieved by working with the clerics and getting the moderate form of Islam to flourish in the country. Sounds promising. If that could spread to several other nations, and show them that there’s a way to make it all work, it would be good.
In the domestic realms, the Supreme Court may have just opened up a giant can of worms. A 6-3 majority ruling from the justices says that international treaties do not automatically have the force of law in individual states unless specifically noted or accompanied by domestic legislation. I thought the whole point of entering into treaties was because all the parties agreed to them and intended to enforce them. This sounds like a great way for the Bush Administration to justify its ignorance of the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of prisoners. It’s already being used as a way of keeping foreign nationals on death row without giving them the chance to communicate with their home countries. Some are cheering because this supposedly insulates America from international law, which I suppose they see as big and threatening and trying its best to make America do their bidding. I’m waiting for the first time where America attempts to enforce a treaty obligation and if rebuffed by others saying “Well, we didn’t pass any legislation here that says we have to follow it.” For those interested in the source material, read the opinions issued on Medellin v. Texas.
U.S. consumers are at their most pessimistic since the Nixon era. So all that economic stimulus stuff might very well fizzle out because people don’t want to spend more on credit. At the very least, the perception resembles an image from 1937, even if it isn’t actually so. Then again, almost 10% of Ohio residents are on food stamps, and more are eligible. And residents in Alabama are paying up to 25% of their paycheck on gas, because the paychecks are small and the price of gas has only gone up.
classics_cat has more about torture - it's an old tradition, and the assumptions behind why it's "necessary" to the Greeks and Romans are just as bad as they are today. Torture starts sounding good when you assume that people are lying to you, and are always lying to you. But if you’re already at that assumption, then even through torture, people still assume that they’re being lied to. So the intelligence is suspect, and the methods are brutal. Is that the kind of society and government we really want to be known for? Would it be better to be known more for satirically suggesting that prostate exams are recruitment into a homosexual lifestyle? At least then, when people say that you’re being stupid, the matter is mostly harmless. Regarding candidates, as it turns out, Hillary Clinton's momory ain't what it used to be, with an account of dodging sniper fire being nothing more than a child reading a poem as she disembarked from a plane. But Hillary's not giving up on her campaign, not until the very end. Well, it’ll make for good drama, that’s for sure.
Here’s the last part from this section - the peace symbol is fifty years old today. And how much closer are we to that aim than we were fifty years ago?
Following up from yesterday, Unabashed Feminism department contributor
tscheese takes one for the team, signs up, and plays some of Miss Bimbo. The conclusion is that it really is as bad as we thought. When it actually is up and working.Want to know the father of a baby, even though it won’t stand up in court as admissible evidence? Pay up $150 or so, and the results can be yours.
In science, it's possible that we've found a pheremone-processing olfactory nerve. So knowing that a mate smells just right isn’t something in your head - it might be the truest sense. The pill might interfere with that, though. Which could make things much more interesting when finding a good mate. Mixing in technology with our sex talk, Gizmodo interviews a man who built and then married his girlfriend. Moving back from high-tech to beginning-tech, scientists have played back an audio recording that predates Edison's phonograph, after a little fiddling and adjustment because of human variances. Other science includes rats learning how to use rakes. And there’s the gent recreating characters and locales from Star Trek from beads, wire, and spools.
Last for tonight, a look at 2008 from 1968. While there’s a lot that’s not right, there’s a lot that is. Predictive abilities are still there, but I doubt that the envisioned future of 1968 looks anything like what things are actually today. All we have to do is look at the history of video game consoles to see that. Or the growth of Wal-Mart stores from 1962 to the present day.
On the postscript, because we mentioned video games, The New Yorker has an article that says comic books were one of the original "we have to rate them and restrict sales for the childrens!". Well, they probably did the same thing about moving pictures, and then radio programmes before that, and they’re still doing it to literature today, so maybe it’s not one of the originals, but yet another medium in a proud tradition of having people proclaim its evilness, predict dire consequences, and then watch as nothing happens and society moves on as usual.
Anyway, going to bed. Performance time tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 02:14 pm (UTC)'doesn't show up as the single quote, and that"doesn't show up as the double quote, but as the escape code out in longhand. If I tried to put in those items as they are, the link wouldn't do what I wanted it to, thanks to the way that HTML parsers interpret those two marks. I've seen it happen in Internet Explorer 6. In the Firefox 2 branch, it works just fine.no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 08:43 pm (UTC)