silveradept | Getting in early for the weekend

Getting this all done before the weekend strikes. Feeling a bit poorly because I whacked my knee and shin on my recently-acquired bed frame yesterday night, but it should be fine with some time, rest, and a little exercise. Made it to the Great Maze last night, so there shouldn't be too much farther to go... assuming, of course, that the Great Maze doesn't take freaking forever. Anyway, onward to the news.

For the Tolkien fans, Guillermo del Toro has signed on to direct two Hobbit movies. Seeing what he did with Blade, I'm wondering if Samwise and Frodo are going to suddenly become Sting-toting badasses. Seeing that he also did Labyrinth of th Faun, it could be pretty dark and gritty.

Because everyone needs a laugh to start today's entry with, Jack Thompson has sent a letter, through his lawyer, to the mother of Take-Two's chairman, with the regular wild accusations that her son is marketing murder trainers to young children, and such. If that didn't do it, then perhaps a logo gaffe in the United Knigdom's Office of Government Commerce will.

On a more serious note, oil prices are set to double by 2012, according to a Canadian study, which can only make the gas crunch worse on all of the products that we buy. So I wonder what the profits will be on oil companies this year. Victor Davis Hanson asks the country to do more to generate power domestically and reduce importation needs, including re-evaluating the need to tap domestic stocks of oil so that other countries don't get lots of American dollars continue to pollute their own countries lots.

In Iraq, the Untied States is selling some of its best anti-IED technology to the Iraqi government, despire fears and almost certainties that the technology will end up in teh hands of those who plant the IEDs, rather than those who try to get rid of them. Makes me wonder whether there's new technology coming down the pipe soon that will be better.

In domestic news, the United States Senate passed a bill that would ban discrimination on jobs or health insurance coverage based on genetic predispositions. Pre-existing conditions are still grounds for denial of health coverage, of course, so the health care situation is definitely not resolved by any means, but this is a nice first step.

Three New York detectives accused of firing 50 bullets unprovoked into a vehicle, killing one and seriously injuring two others, have been acquitted of all charges. The judge did not find the prosecution's case proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. A group called The People's Justice is not happy about the verdict, but according to the NYTimes article, there were no incidents of major unrest over the verdict.

The General Accounting Office has found youth "boot camps" to utilize deceptive advertising practice when selling themselves to parents. Add on to this that those camps are only loosely regulated by the government, and the stories of abuse, such as a dog trained to bite people in the genitals, or residents being hooded and having nooses placed around their necks, will appear. Those stories have been found credible in a lot of cases, unfortunately. So new legislation is being introduced that would tighten regulation and require staff at the facilities to recognize child abuse/neglect and be able to report it. I still don't quite understand why a parent would subject their child to that kind of program. Most of the time, the stories I hear are of normal children who have overzealous, brooks-no-disagreement anywhere parents hat think a child having a differing opinion is an act of flagrant rebellion.

Echostar Communications, the parent corporation of DISH Network is suing News Corp., claiming that News Corp. hired a hacker to break into the DISH Network service, then steal and disseminate codes that would permit pirating of DISH Network content.

In the opinion columns,

bradhicks tells us about how his family demonstrates the principle that conformists and those who unquestioningly obey authority are often rewarded, while those who object to authority when it crosses their own morals are marginalized. At least, that's the understanding I got out of it - both of them uncompromisingly insane, by his own definition, but the insanely obedient one is rising in rank and prestige, while the insanely questioning one suffers a common fate of many philosophers - penury.

Inspector Lohman reminds us of our history - that the founders of the country had little use for actual rule by the people, and as a consequence of this, the elections where the rich compete against the rich as two facets of the same part are the norm, not the exception, despite what all the propaganda says. Bernard Weiner talks about the elephant in the room: The current administration has more than enough evidence against it to warrant an impeachment, so why aren't the Democrats actually doing anything about it? David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey think the war or terror and its justifications are not criminal in trying to defend the belief that the lawyers who advised the administration on its current positions should not be prosecuted. Defensible conclusion, but not for those reasons. A stronger argument would be to say that the lawyers were giving their professional legal opinion in the course of their work, and they should not be prosecuted for what the administration then did with those opinions. Going from legal justification to military justification, the Wall Street Journal praises the promotion of Petraeus, thinking that the commanders in their new places will make it harder for a new President to order withdrawal, and that the higher-ups in the various commands are now all focused on staying in Iraq chasing "victory". Which, according to Chalmers Johnston, is a sign it's time to flee the country, before we make it plain to everyone that our model is not Washington, 1776, but Berlin, 1933.

Maybe I'm missing something, but there's got to be some reason that this particular image has all the elements it does together. Substitute for genitalia, check. Object of distraction so that male viewer is conquered, check. Sex sells things, sure, but I guess I'm missing why a woman in lingerie is supposed to help sell the gun. It's probably the same principle that thinks bikini-clad women sell cars. Moving from pictures designed to be commercial to art against encroaching corporate and governmental power, Dr. D modifies billboards to make the message different. A sampling of work, H.M.P. London, has been captured by a Flickr user.

Want to pay cash, in person, to a person, for your bills? That'll be $2, please. Or $5. Or $15. Or whatever fee the company/bank decides to charge you for the "service" of permitting you to use that payment option. Naturally, Consumerist is cheesed about the fees to pay.

In our science department, Stanford university researchers suggest that humanity may have come close to extinction approximately 70,000 years ago, according to analysis made of human DNA. The near-extinction may have come about because of drought in several areas, according to the study. Additionally, species diversity is good for humans, both for the selfish reason that extinct species cannot be mined for things that will help humans, and for the more altruistic reason that species loss disrupts the cycle of the world and existence becomes that much harder when niches are unfulfilled.

Technology nods and smiles at a 100 kilogram elephant-looking robot that is designed to clean men's urinals. Built in Japan, the robot is apparently useful and water-saving while at work, and designed for large areas like highway rest stops and train stations.

Last on the docket, Mad Monarchs, which chronicles the lives of some of the more daft rulers of the world's empires. We may want to add on to that Koopa, King of the Turtles and Goombas and Peach, Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom to that list, but in this darker take, it's really Mario's fault that they're like this.

Okay, one more laugh and cool thing before we go - an entire run of Al Jaffee's fold-ins for MAD magazine, all done digital-like so that there's always a perfect fold and no worries about creases. As for th cool thing, TypeRacer gives you quotes from various movies and pits you in a race against your compatriots to see who types the fastest with accurately.