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silveradeptReturned, after delays in flying out, a big luncheon, lots of family time, and delays in flying back. Plus tainted popcorn butter and waking up early because of that this morning. And waking up early tomorrow morning, too. Suffice to say, I’m going to be tired a lot this week.
So, here we go again. Sort of. The gigantic infodump that will follow is made up of stuff over all the time that I was gone. So some of this news may be older. Charlton Heston is dead at 84 years, John Cleese wants to write for Barack Obama, a backless brassiere for fuller-chested women has been developed, and beer may be the next thing in danger because of global warming, hedgehogs used as attack weaponry, and fossilized poo is the earliest evidence of Humes in North America. And those are the highlights. Let’s get down to business.
Internationally, al-Sadr gets a shunning. Unsurprisingly, Petraeus asks for more time (although he says it's not likely that there will be another surge). William Odom, Lieutennant General, says that the only good solution is getting the troops out, and that our continued presence is only delaying the extraordinarily expensive inevitable. Senator Lieberman comments that Iraq has made more political progress than America, a true statement, but not necessarily in the way that th eSenator intended. While things are being discussed, Blackwater is quietly beefing up its aircraft.
In France, the Olympic torch relay has to fight off protesters for a free Tibet at every turn. There may have been some of this naturally occurring on the route, but after the crackdown, Beijing can’t have expected the protesters to just sit on their hands. Also, if I read the article rightly, the officials put the torch out while it was en route. I thought that was a pretty serious no-no. Obviously, it would have to be extinguished for certain reasons, like airplane travel, but those I can overlook as a necessity in an international tour. To do so because of protests seems contrary to the Olympic spirit.
Domestically, a program to phase out traditional bulbs with CFLs meets a counter-bill, thanks to a representative in Minnesota. So they’ll go sorting this one out. Most likely with spirited debates.
A search engine funded with taxpayer dollars has censored the word abortion, refusing to return results when abortion is used as a search term. There are some ways of getting around it, but apparently if the engine wanted to keep its federal government funding, it had to block the word. This makes me absolutely livid. Legitimate research interests need to be able to use that word, regardless of their conclusions. Sure, it might stop people looking to support the idea that abortion should stay legal, but it also stops people who want to conclude that abortion is the worst thing inflicted on society. You cannot assume that everyone searching on a particular topic has the same opinion on it, and that it’s against yours.
Even worse, the Bush administration says that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to military operations within the United States. Which, I would think, violates laws about the military being used as a police force inside the country in the first place. This argument is consistent with he current administration’s idea that the rule of law is only there when they want it to be. It certainly doesn’t make it any less illegal.
A Florida artist was ordered to paint over part of his mural of Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, because he didn’t have the permits to do so, instead being limited to an inoffensive sky motif. Which means he could be required to paint over Dr. King, as well. I wonder how many people actually complained about the presence of the two men.
A raid on a Texas ranch shut down a compound that forced young girls into multiple marriages, with more than 400 children removed from the compound. The authorities were tipped off by one of the children, already married as a minor, called about abuse she was suffering at the hands of her husband and others. In a similar sort of manner, Ken Connor
laments that the country doesn't do more to stem the flow of human trafficking in the country.
Illinois Representative Monique Davis tells an atheist to get out of the legislature, also says that atheism is "dangerous for our children to even know that [it] exists!". This while the atheist is testifying about a proposed $1 million donation to a Baptist church from the governor that was going to come from public funds. The atheist took the diatribe and continued onto his point. I suspect Rep. Davis’s days in the legislature are numbered. Apologizing would be a good first step. Resigning the position might be an even better one. The Rep may have been hoping for a similar reaction like the schools that fire or pressure professors who advance non-creationist views. The crazy isn’t limited to our shores, either - a rector of an Anglican church attacked a judge, saying that as an openly homosexual man, he stood in the path of Jehovah's judgment if he continued to call himself an Anglican and practice a homosexual lifestyle. I really do wonder what Jesus would have to say about this line of thinking. For now, though, we’ll have to marvel at how adults ascribe adult motivations to young children's actions. The kids were having fun, and were dressing in the clothes of the opposite gender. For people who see indoctrination in every corner, this was disturbing, but for most of us, I doubt that anyone was seriously considering this as a serious promotion of transgenderism.
Austin Cline at the General notes the Bush Administration is conducting military operations inside its own country. Would that violate laws about using the military as a police force inside the country, even if it were “limited” to intelligence-gathering activities? The General himself praises UC Berkeley's law school for hiring on John Yoo, the man who drafted the latest "Torture is cool" memo.
Taking a peek at the economy, there are more people signing up for unemployment, because of the crisis, this weak economy makes people pessimistic about the future, which is probably not something the Fed wants to hear, because they want people spending and borrowing. Unabashed Feminism Bureau Chief![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ldragoon also warns us to look behind the curtain when it comes to organic food producers and sellers - tracing the line all the way back up to the root may surprise you. Plus, it may mean that you’re paying a lot for “organic” that isn’t.
Speaking of the Unabashed Feminism Department, the Bureau Chief steps up to the plate with the Home Run Bat and takes some swings at Monica Grenfell, writer for the Daily Mail, because Grenfell takes issue with a size sixteen UK / size twelve or fourteen US seventeen-year-old in a beauty pageant final, choosing to focus solely on her weight rather than stopping for a moment to consider whether or not that size sixteen is a beautiful, curvy person who should be in the contest. Luckily, that void is being filled. Dear Monica Grenfell: STFU says Kate Harding. Committing the same sin but in the opposite direction is Ten Skinny-Ass Ladies Who Used To Be Hot, where the loss of weight has apparently knocked the ladies out of contention of being hot. Thus,troubleinchina has a new mantra for all of us: Real Women Have Bodies. Regardless of their size, so long as someone is healthy at their weight, both physically and mentally, then who are we to say they need to lose or gain?
8-year old boy suspended for marker-sniffing. Because “everyone knows” Sharpies lead to huffers, despite most markers being non-toxic. Used to be a while ago that markers like that were coming out with more pleasant scents so that the stink of the markers wouldn’t be so unbearable. But we can’t be encouraging anything outside the script, or trust that such a thing will be a phase and that the child will grow out of it.
What cannot be tolerated, however, is the beating of a young girl by six others for the purpose of posting it to the Internet. Yeah, trading the sentence of assault for fifteen minutes of fame seems like a really good deal to me. Almost as good as videotaping a sexual assault and then posting it for everyone. Or the continued acts of terror against scientists because they use animals for experimentation.
In the opinion columns, Stephen Baskerville bemoans that divorce is prejudicd against fathers, and that they can have the kids taken away from them and be forced to pay support if the mother wants to get divorced and the father doesn’t, through the magic of “no-fault” divorce. As far as I know, though, most people don’t just up and say they want a divorce without some reasonable cause. Single motherhood is also not any sort of easy task. If divorce is so common that this is a problem or a weapon, then there’s something wrong with marriage.
Going from family problems to family planning, Cybercast News does its very best to imply that Planned Parenthood is doing more abortions at taxpayer expense. The only people quoted are “pro-life” groups, because PP declined to provide an interview for CNS.
Neal Boortz spends 200 words being a libertarian on health care, saying that there is no guaranteed right to it in the Constitution. A true statement, but one that condemns many to ill health and premature death because they have to navigate an expensive and unforgiving system rather than having a cheap and simple system that would cover everyone to a certain point. It’s not a “right”, unless you count it under “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration. But when no insurance company will insure you because of medication, nor your daughter because of her therapy, I think that it’s weird that more “pro-life” movements aren’t out campaigning for some universal coverage, and that so many people think that the current system is better than any other.
In a similar vein, although about race, Star Parker opines that race relations will only stop being talked about when people decide to solve their own problems, rather than asking someone else to do it for them.
Liberal Eagle and Liberal Seagull team up on Bird Brains with Liberal Eagle suggesting that the Republican Party always finds war to be good spending, while domestic spending is almost always bad and deserving of being cut, and Liberal Seagull is worried that Hillary's supporters might swing the election for McCain, because they won’t vote for Obama should he win the election. The opposite effect is also possibly true. So it looks like the longer this goes on, the more likely McCain will pick up some percentage of disgruntled Dems.
greyweirdo says stop trying to make pulp into something more than it is. By putting things on higher pedestals, the expectations start outpacing the reality. Only disappointment can follow. Unless in a very rare occasion, it is that damn good.
In science (SCIENCE!) and technology, I suppose the existence of superinsulators makes sense, considering that we’ve had superconductors for a while now. There’s also the IKEA-outfitted train , a canoe made of disposable chopsticks, yet another attempt at harnessing smell with sight and sound, HP joining the fray of small, student-oriented computers, why SETI is not necessarily going to make any alien contact, the potential twin to our solar syatem, and Disney going 3-D without the need for glasses, along with social networking sites and a company that wants to create portable avatars across various virtual worlds. They’ll have to be careful, though - should they get hit with invisible spam like what Deep Jive Interests had to deal with, it could be interesting to see one’s avatar suddenly start spouting Viagra spam. Interesting in a very bad way. Last out of this section is a rapid prototyping machine that intends to self-replicate. Uhhhh, all fine and dandy, up to the point where there are enough of the machines. Can that self-replicating idea be overwritten with something else, then?
Our Cool things department produces a halo of protection around a laptop, the history of LSD in a Chick-Tract-like form, the knowledge that errors can be made in more than one way, the reason why World Wrestling Entertainment changed their name, the requirements for Verizon's Test Man, a student who built his own tank (guess where!), And, specifically foruncle_pervy, schoolgirls and giant beasts.
Last for tonight, What it feels like. And why characters with three dimensions are superior to those with two.
And that’s it. This would probably be about the time there’s a big belch as the character that has just finished eating all of this realizes just how much food has been had. Most of what’s here is probably empty mental calories, but it’s there, nonetheless. Now, I’m heading off to bed, so that I can sleep off the last effects of tainted popcorn.
So, here we go again. Sort of. The gigantic infodump that will follow is made up of stuff over all the time that I was gone. So some of this news may be older. Charlton Heston is dead at 84 years, John Cleese wants to write for Barack Obama, a backless brassiere for fuller-chested women has been developed, and beer may be the next thing in danger because of global warming, hedgehogs used as attack weaponry, and fossilized poo is the earliest evidence of Humes in North America. And those are the highlights. Let’s get down to business.
Internationally, al-Sadr gets a shunning. Unsurprisingly, Petraeus asks for more time (although he says it's not likely that there will be another surge). William Odom, Lieutennant General, says that the only good solution is getting the troops out, and that our continued presence is only delaying the extraordinarily expensive inevitable. Senator Lieberman comments that Iraq has made more political progress than America, a true statement, but not necessarily in the way that th eSenator intended. While things are being discussed, Blackwater is quietly beefing up its aircraft.
In France, the Olympic torch relay has to fight off protesters for a free Tibet at every turn. There may have been some of this naturally occurring on the route, but after the crackdown, Beijing can’t have expected the protesters to just sit on their hands. Also, if I read the article rightly, the officials put the torch out while it was en route. I thought that was a pretty serious no-no. Obviously, it would have to be extinguished for certain reasons, like airplane travel, but those I can overlook as a necessity in an international tour. To do so because of protests seems contrary to the Olympic spirit.
Domestically, a program to phase out traditional bulbs with CFLs meets a counter-bill, thanks to a representative in Minnesota. So they’ll go sorting this one out. Most likely with spirited debates.
A search engine funded with taxpayer dollars has censored the word abortion, refusing to return results when abortion is used as a search term. There are some ways of getting around it, but apparently if the engine wanted to keep its federal government funding, it had to block the word. This makes me absolutely livid. Legitimate research interests need to be able to use that word, regardless of their conclusions. Sure, it might stop people looking to support the idea that abortion should stay legal, but it also stops people who want to conclude that abortion is the worst thing inflicted on society. You cannot assume that everyone searching on a particular topic has the same opinion on it, and that it’s against yours.
Even worse, the Bush administration says that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to military operations within the United States. Which, I would think, violates laws about the military being used as a police force inside the country in the first place. This argument is consistent with he current administration’s idea that the rule of law is only there when they want it to be. It certainly doesn’t make it any less illegal.
A Florida artist was ordered to paint over part of his mural of Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, because he didn’t have the permits to do so, instead being limited to an inoffensive sky motif. Which means he could be required to paint over Dr. King, as well. I wonder how many people actually complained about the presence of the two men.
A raid on a Texas ranch shut down a compound that forced young girls into multiple marriages, with more than 400 children removed from the compound. The authorities were tipped off by one of the children, already married as a minor, called about abuse she was suffering at the hands of her husband and others. In a similar sort of manner, Ken Connor
laments that the country doesn't do more to stem the flow of human trafficking in the country.
Illinois Representative Monique Davis tells an atheist to get out of the legislature, also says that atheism is "dangerous for our children to even know that [it] exists!". This while the atheist is testifying about a proposed $1 million donation to a Baptist church from the governor that was going to come from public funds. The atheist took the diatribe and continued onto his point. I suspect Rep. Davis’s days in the legislature are numbered. Apologizing would be a good first step. Resigning the position might be an even better one. The Rep may have been hoping for a similar reaction like the schools that fire or pressure professors who advance non-creationist views. The crazy isn’t limited to our shores, either - a rector of an Anglican church attacked a judge, saying that as an openly homosexual man, he stood in the path of Jehovah's judgment if he continued to call himself an Anglican and practice a homosexual lifestyle. I really do wonder what Jesus would have to say about this line of thinking. For now, though, we’ll have to marvel at how adults ascribe adult motivations to young children's actions. The kids were having fun, and were dressing in the clothes of the opposite gender. For people who see indoctrination in every corner, this was disturbing, but for most of us, I doubt that anyone was seriously considering this as a serious promotion of transgenderism.
Austin Cline at the General notes the Bush Administration is conducting military operations inside its own country. Would that violate laws about using the military as a police force inside the country, even if it were “limited” to intelligence-gathering activities? The General himself praises UC Berkeley's law school for hiring on John Yoo, the man who drafted the latest "Torture is cool" memo.
Taking a peek at the economy, there are more people signing up for unemployment, because of the crisis, this weak economy makes people pessimistic about the future, which is probably not something the Fed wants to hear, because they want people spending and borrowing. Unabashed Feminism Bureau Chief
ldragoon also warns us to look behind the curtain when it comes to organic food producers and sellers - tracing the line all the way back up to the root may surprise you. Plus, it may mean that you’re paying a lot for “organic” that isn’t.Speaking of the Unabashed Feminism Department, the Bureau Chief steps up to the plate with the Home Run Bat and takes some swings at Monica Grenfell, writer for the Daily Mail, because Grenfell takes issue with a size sixteen UK / size twelve or fourteen US seventeen-year-old in a beauty pageant final, choosing to focus solely on her weight rather than stopping for a moment to consider whether or not that size sixteen is a beautiful, curvy person who should be in the contest. Luckily, that void is being filled. Dear Monica Grenfell: STFU says Kate Harding. Committing the same sin but in the opposite direction is Ten Skinny-Ass Ladies Who Used To Be Hot, where the loss of weight has apparently knocked the ladies out of contention of being hot. Thus,
troubleinchina has a new mantra for all of us: Real Women Have Bodies. Regardless of their size, so long as someone is healthy at their weight, both physically and mentally, then who are we to say they need to lose or gain?8-year old boy suspended for marker-sniffing. Because “everyone knows” Sharpies lead to huffers, despite most markers being non-toxic. Used to be a while ago that markers like that were coming out with more pleasant scents so that the stink of the markers wouldn’t be so unbearable. But we can’t be encouraging anything outside the script, or trust that such a thing will be a phase and that the child will grow out of it.
What cannot be tolerated, however, is the beating of a young girl by six others for the purpose of posting it to the Internet. Yeah, trading the sentence of assault for fifteen minutes of fame seems like a really good deal to me. Almost as good as videotaping a sexual assault and then posting it for everyone. Or the continued acts of terror against scientists because they use animals for experimentation.
In the opinion columns, Stephen Baskerville bemoans that divorce is prejudicd against fathers, and that they can have the kids taken away from them and be forced to pay support if the mother wants to get divorced and the father doesn’t, through the magic of “no-fault” divorce. As far as I know, though, most people don’t just up and say they want a divorce without some reasonable cause. Single motherhood is also not any sort of easy task. If divorce is so common that this is a problem or a weapon, then there’s something wrong with marriage.
Going from family problems to family planning, Cybercast News does its very best to imply that Planned Parenthood is doing more abortions at taxpayer expense. The only people quoted are “pro-life” groups, because PP declined to provide an interview for CNS.
Neal Boortz spends 200 words being a libertarian on health care, saying that there is no guaranteed right to it in the Constitution. A true statement, but one that condemns many to ill health and premature death because they have to navigate an expensive and unforgiving system rather than having a cheap and simple system that would cover everyone to a certain point. It’s not a “right”, unless you count it under “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration. But when no insurance company will insure you because of medication, nor your daughter because of her therapy, I think that it’s weird that more “pro-life” movements aren’t out campaigning for some universal coverage, and that so many people think that the current system is better than any other.
In a similar vein, although about race, Star Parker opines that race relations will only stop being talked about when people decide to solve their own problems, rather than asking someone else to do it for them.
Liberal Eagle and Liberal Seagull team up on Bird Brains with Liberal Eagle suggesting that the Republican Party always finds war to be good spending, while domestic spending is almost always bad and deserving of being cut, and Liberal Seagull is worried that Hillary's supporters might swing the election for McCain, because they won’t vote for Obama should he win the election. The opposite effect is also possibly true. So it looks like the longer this goes on, the more likely McCain will pick up some percentage of disgruntled Dems.
greyweirdo says stop trying to make pulp into something more than it is. By putting things on higher pedestals, the expectations start outpacing the reality. Only disappointment can follow. Unless in a very rare occasion, it is that damn good.In science (SCIENCE!) and technology, I suppose the existence of superinsulators makes sense, considering that we’ve had superconductors for a while now. There’s also the IKEA-outfitted train , a canoe made of disposable chopsticks, yet another attempt at harnessing smell with sight and sound, HP joining the fray of small, student-oriented computers, why SETI is not necessarily going to make any alien contact, the potential twin to our solar syatem, and Disney going 3-D without the need for glasses, along with social networking sites and a company that wants to create portable avatars across various virtual worlds. They’ll have to be careful, though - should they get hit with invisible spam like what Deep Jive Interests had to deal with, it could be interesting to see one’s avatar suddenly start spouting Viagra spam. Interesting in a very bad way. Last out of this section is a rapid prototyping machine that intends to self-replicate. Uhhhh, all fine and dandy, up to the point where there are enough of the machines. Can that self-replicating idea be overwritten with something else, then?
Our Cool things department produces a halo of protection around a laptop, the history of LSD in a Chick-Tract-like form, the knowledge that errors can be made in more than one way, the reason why World Wrestling Entertainment changed their name, the requirements for Verizon's Test Man, a student who built his own tank (guess where!), And, specifically for
uncle_pervy, schoolgirls and giant beasts. Last for tonight, What it feels like. And why characters with three dimensions are superior to those with two.
And that’s it. This would probably be about the time there’s a big belch as the character that has just finished eating all of this realizes just how much food has been had. Most of what’s here is probably empty mental calories, but it’s there, nonetheless. Now, I’m heading off to bed, so that I can sleep off the last effects of tainted popcorn.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 02:01 pm (UTC)I think the whole idea of that article is ridiculous, and brings up an important point in the whole overweight issue that people don't seem to touch on for girls - genetics. Now I'm not going to go out on a limb and claim that every overweight girl under the age of 17 is that way because of genetics, but it's quite possible. Also, take her age. She's 17. She probably doesn't have any control over what types of meals she eats at home - if her parents want to eat something that's high in fat, well, she has to eat it too (at least, in most households).
It's quite possible to be overweigh and healthy. There are plenty of people to prove that.
i just think it's ridiculous to be attacking a young girl over her weight, when in all likliness, she'll start to loose some of it as she gets older. It's called being a teenage girl and having hormonal imbalances, too. See, at the age of 17, a girl is still getting used to the hormones her body is pumping out, and a lot of girls that age do wind up putting on some weight. It's part of that whole puberty thing? you know, that thing that nearly every single person goes thorough at some point between the ages of 10 and 18?
Not to mention the damage it could do to her self-esteem to read articles like this one. Your peers are bad enough usually, you don't need an adult writing an article to hurl insults at you.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 02:52 pm (UTC)See, if it were well-written, rather than focusing on the poor girl's weight, it'd do a quick workup of her cholesterol levels, CRP levels, and other biochemical markers of being unhealthily "overweight". It's fine to be overweight if the general health markers are OK. And judging quickly by the photo, I'd say her waist to hip ratio is probably OK. So she's probably good to go. Rather than "this girl is overweight and will die", say "this girl has the following markers that increase her risk factors for XYZ diseases but lacks the following markers that many OTHER overweight women have, so remember, while it can be beautiful to be overweight, go visit your GP to really know if it's just a few extra curves or if shedding those pounds is critical."
Seriously. I think she'd be a fantastic role model if she championed things like regular exercise, regular checkups, stuff like that. On the other hand, if she's beautiful on the outside but inside those arteries is lipid sludge ... I'd side with the article and say that she isn't a good role model, just an excuse for having poor nutrition. It really boils down to whether she is /healthily/ overweight and the correct answer is "you can't tell by appearances."