Mid-month matters - 15 April 2008
Apr. 16th, 2008 12:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptToday was a good day. Unlocked the majority of stages and all the characters on our Smash Brothers Brawl game, so that part’s complete. A few event runs and we’ll have it tournament-ready. Of course, the problem is that our Wifi still isn’t working with the Wii, so there’s more configuration issues than just the one I mentioned in the first place. Unless the wireless doesn’t actually reach all the way there, which is silly, because the connection test succeeded. But trying to do anything with said connection failed.
Random questions: What do mannequins do at two in the morning? And are twenty-four year-old horses the oldest pair of horse twins in the world? What about the eight thousand year-old trees? Are they the oldest of their kind? And if Jimmy Carter and the Ayatollah of Iran each apologized for their actions in the Iranian embassy hostage situation, could peace between the United States and Iran be achieved? Or at least started?
In international matters, the Wall Street Journal's opinion columns beat the drums of war in Iran's direction, Larry Kudlow throws numbers to try and convince the populace that the Iraq war has been cheap, comparatively, and that it's liberals who are the big spenders (to which we note what a well-known author said about lies, damn lies, and statistics)
Adam Smith might spin a tad in his grave at the following article. While it would provide a rather convenient spot to blame things on, it probably also doesn’t actually get at the root cause for our economic woes. Anyway, a study coming out of the University of Cambridge suggests that the stock market is driven by hormones, specifically testosterone and cortisol, the aggression and stress hormones, respectively.
Said markets, however, are not doing well. More people may hit severe food insecurity in the world this year, even with good crop harvests, because food prices have gone up lots, foreclosures in the United States have gone way up, and the price of crude oil futures are still climbing further into record-breaking territories.
Delta airlines and Northwest airlines have approved a merger that would combine the two companies. The carriers are starting to drop like flies, aren’t they? Those high oil prices make jet fuel really expensive. And a downturn in the economy means people aren’t really willing to spend lots of money on plane travel.
New potential blog for parents and those interested - Free Range Kids, where the leash is let out long or off entirely, and things seem to be okay. As a sample article, Why I let my 9-year old ride the subway alone. He made it home safely, despite all the stories of children being abducted, abused, or killed when alone. Terror strikes hardest when the kids are involved. But, hopefully, this can help us get back to a world where we accept some level of risk and hope that our kids grow up with the value of independence.
The science columns offer up a way of rebooting the brain to normal after kicking a drug habit. Peter Watts takes a paper that pointed out the presence of brain patterns involved in the final decision between choices existing almost ten seconds before the self perceived a decision being made as his proof that the idea of free will has been blown to hell and back, and that the conscious agent we call ego is deluding himself that he makes any sort of decisions at all. But, in all of that, there may be some new knowledge on how type 2 diabetes works and what can be done surgically to defeat it.
Running out the junk science warnings, and I wish there were a link to the study itself to confirm suspicions, a study purports that oral sex, marijuana, and certain forms of cancer of the head and neck that are positive for HPV are potentially related. It’s a really weird finding, and I want to know how and why someone was looking at something like that.
In technology, a security expert is hacking zombie and botnet software, exploiting its own vulnerabilities and letting him take control of the control boxes. It’s using the tactics of the opponent against them. It’s probably still illegal, but I doubt that many victims of this counterstrike are going to complain about it.
Last for tonight, always remember that Big Brother is watching. So be sure to properly label your blogs so that the government doesn’t have to actually read your content to know you’re a subversive. Of course, if public demonstration is more your fancy, perhaps the account of a swordsman who stopped a significant part of Seattle for a while will be inspiring for ways to disrupt without getting killed or maimed. Although, there will be a lot of police presence and non-lethal weaponry.
Ah, yes, and know this. I share Liberal Eagle's frustration that while the sitting administrator basically admitted that he and several members of his cabinet and administration discussed and made decisions to authorize the use of clearly illegal torture, our fourth estate is busy talking about the drink preferences of a Presidential candidate. And much worse, trying to turn it into some reason why the candidate shouldn’t be elected to the office. I’d rather they be concerned with existential angst or the continued machinations of political parties to prevent people from voting than matters that have no bearing on whether a candidate is suited to the Presidential office.
Random questions: What do mannequins do at two in the morning? And are twenty-four year-old horses the oldest pair of horse twins in the world? What about the eight thousand year-old trees? Are they the oldest of their kind? And if Jimmy Carter and the Ayatollah of Iran each apologized for their actions in the Iranian embassy hostage situation, could peace between the United States and Iran be achieved? Or at least started?
In international matters, the Wall Street Journal's opinion columns beat the drums of war in Iran's direction, Larry Kudlow throws numbers to try and convince the populace that the Iraq war has been cheap, comparatively, and that it's liberals who are the big spenders (to which we note what a well-known author said about lies, damn lies, and statistics)
Adam Smith might spin a tad in his grave at the following article. While it would provide a rather convenient spot to blame things on, it probably also doesn’t actually get at the root cause for our economic woes. Anyway, a study coming out of the University of Cambridge suggests that the stock market is driven by hormones, specifically testosterone and cortisol, the aggression and stress hormones, respectively.
Said markets, however, are not doing well. More people may hit severe food insecurity in the world this year, even with good crop harvests, because food prices have gone up lots, foreclosures in the United States have gone way up, and the price of crude oil futures are still climbing further into record-breaking territories.
Delta airlines and Northwest airlines have approved a merger that would combine the two companies. The carriers are starting to drop like flies, aren’t they? Those high oil prices make jet fuel really expensive. And a downturn in the economy means people aren’t really willing to spend lots of money on plane travel.
New potential blog for parents and those interested - Free Range Kids, where the leash is let out long or off entirely, and things seem to be okay. As a sample article, Why I let my 9-year old ride the subway alone. He made it home safely, despite all the stories of children being abducted, abused, or killed when alone. Terror strikes hardest when the kids are involved. But, hopefully, this can help us get back to a world where we accept some level of risk and hope that our kids grow up with the value of independence.
The science columns offer up a way of rebooting the brain to normal after kicking a drug habit. Peter Watts takes a paper that pointed out the presence of brain patterns involved in the final decision between choices existing almost ten seconds before the self perceived a decision being made as his proof that the idea of free will has been blown to hell and back, and that the conscious agent we call ego is deluding himself that he makes any sort of decisions at all. But, in all of that, there may be some new knowledge on how type 2 diabetes works and what can be done surgically to defeat it.
Running out the junk science warnings, and I wish there were a link to the study itself to confirm suspicions, a study purports that oral sex, marijuana, and certain forms of cancer of the head and neck that are positive for HPV are potentially related. It’s a really weird finding, and I want to know how and why someone was looking at something like that.
In technology, a security expert is hacking zombie and botnet software, exploiting its own vulnerabilities and letting him take control of the control boxes. It’s using the tactics of the opponent against them. It’s probably still illegal, but I doubt that many victims of this counterstrike are going to complain about it.
Last for tonight, always remember that Big Brother is watching. So be sure to properly label your blogs so that the government doesn’t have to actually read your content to know you’re a subversive. Of course, if public demonstration is more your fancy, perhaps the account of a swordsman who stopped a significant part of Seattle for a while will be inspiring for ways to disrupt without getting killed or maimed. Although, there will be a lot of police presence and non-lethal weaponry.
Ah, yes, and know this. I share Liberal Eagle's frustration that while the sitting administrator basically admitted that he and several members of his cabinet and administration discussed and made decisions to authorize the use of clearly illegal torture, our fourth estate is busy talking about the drink preferences of a Presidential candidate. And much worse, trying to turn it into some reason why the candidate shouldn’t be elected to the office. I’d rather they be concerned with existential angst or the continued machinations of political parties to prevent people from voting than matters that have no bearing on whether a candidate is suited to the Presidential office.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 09:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 03:40 pm (UTC)Still, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the Iranian side of the apology in the fantasy. I can understand the argument about 'sacred' being the wrong term to use regarding an embassy, but being able to feel assured that your diplomats aren't going to be harmed is an important basis of international diplomacy.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 04:33 pm (UTC)(Of course, the media rephrases and reinterprets as needed.)
Also, that stock market = hormones article is a HUGE stretch from the original. The original was an illustration USING traders that levels of certain hormones affect risk-taking behavior in a nice quantifiable setting. At best it can be said that your ability to manage your own portfolio on a given day is hormone dependent. The collective behavior of the stock market can NOT be generalized from this even if it applied to everyone as part of the way the study was constructed was to normalize each individual's hormone levels.
It's like saying that the number of words you type in a given LJ post is correlated with how much risk you're willing to take when driving to work. Ergo, the number of road accidents in a given year is entirely caused by LJ posting.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 08:49 pm (UTC)I'm glad that I have an audience for this and that they find at least some of the material worth commenting on.