Finally back and ready - 19 May 2008
May. 19th, 2008 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGo away for a weekend or so, and all this stuff piles up on your desk. So it’s time for the proverbial machete-stuff as I try to catch up on everything that’s just gone down while I was away at Anime Central. It was a hoot, even for as little as I saw the JAMS crew. The rundown on autographs and stuff to follow as I sort everything out. Suffice to say, it was definitely ROCK! - including the part where I was playing Egyptian Rat Screw with yaoi fanatics on Saturday Night.
Onward to news - this is going to be a big, big summary, so for your friendslist, the cuts are in order after the very most important bits. My professional self cheers that teen literature is up, even while the rest of lit is down.
Starting in the international sphere, For want of funding, some research was not implemented. For lack of research, insects are devouring rice crops everywhere...
To further drive a knife in, there is a significant amount of edible food wasted in the "developed" world, while people go hungry elsewhere. That problem is not new, certainly. With the rising costs of food, however, that waste is felt more keenly across the world.
And then, there are more storms headed Myanmar/Burma's way. Provoking yet more of what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks considered to be evil versus evil decisions, where bad stuff happens no matter what option is taken. As things are, Myanmar has apparently permitted aid to appear, if it is shuttled through Asian allies.
I’m really not pleased that a week after xenophobic violence has erupted in South Africa, we're finally starting to hear about xenophobic violence in South Africa. Maybe my news sources aren’t quite tuned in right.
Pictures of a wedding that was interrupted by the earthquake in China. Luckily, nobody was hurt in the wedding party. That said, more than 7000 schools collapsed during the quake, prompting accusations that the schools were not built solidly at all.
Going domestic, The Bush Administration believes that it can change executive orders and their interpretations without notifying anyone at all, keeping hidden from the public very important things, and hiding behind confidentiality and secrecy in not telling the public what interpretation of law and order the government is operating on at any given time. Thus, an administration could say straight-faced that “we do not torture” because the definition of torture has been changed without the public’s knowledge. Secret laws like this is no way to run a democratic and open state.
Neither is members of a VA hospital telling their doctors not to diagnose PTSD immediately, in an attempt to cut down on costs coming through because of all the vets who have PTSD from Iraq.
Furthermore, after the knowledge that Mr. Bush gave up his golf game as a symbolic gesture of support for Iraq’s War, Keith Olbermann gives solid advice to Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up. There’s very little left that Mr. Bush can do or say that will further drop people’s opinions of him, but for some reason, he finds new ways to prove his ineptness. Like the detention and imprisonment of children on terror charges. Elect an elitist intellectual who’s not afraid to say that he’s got the brains to do stuff for once, okay?
Not only that, but the existence of academic research on the subject of having to conclude someone is an utter bastard is a great, great, thing. Contextual placement? Whatever do you mean?
Liberal Eagle is awaiting the settling of America into being a smaller power, and hopefully, a change of patriotism into one that doesn’t require big macho things and trying to play up enemies into big scary things so they can be knocked over.
Proving the administration redacts for the hell of it, some supposedly sensitive data could be accessed by highlighting it and copying it elsewhere. The data involved had very little to do with national security, although there was some information about just how much telecoms were involved in spying on their customers.
The EFF is investigating whether Windows Vista voluntarily implements broadcast flags that would prevent the recording of over-the-air programming. The test case appears to have been an NBC feed transmitted to a Vista box, where Vista refused to record the item. There is no mandate for Vista to ignore or implement the flags, after FCC rulings were overturned, but it does make people wonder what Microsoft’s position on broadcast flags is. If they do voluntarily follow the flags, well, just another reason not to upgrade to Vista.
bradhicks makes commentary on the disparity between the amount of white and black persons arrested on drug charges. At least one in the comments doesn’t like the methodology at work, thinking that Hispanic should be noticed more and shown in the results.
California's highest court has overturned the state's ban on gay marriage, at least for a while. Opponents are already attempting to put a constitutional amendment referendum on the ballot, a still-reprehensible tactic, considering that constitutional amendments should be for very serious matters that don’t expect to be changed any time soon. The Slacktivist points out that the coutr's logic is fairly undeniable, but that the opposition to the lifting of the ban won't engage on those grounds.pocochina reflects a bit on the victories gained so far, and why while it may seem to be middle-class persons always in court, the benefits to be gained are for everyone. There’s plenty of discussion over at the Unabashed Feminism Department, so have a look and see. For a perspective that blames birth control for the reason why homosexual marriage is advancing as a cause, consult Carol Platt Liebau's column, where the pill is responsible for decoupling sex from marriage, which in turn leads to all sorts of boys and girls without strong male presence, because of no fathers, and other such things. Because it’s always going to be women who want to marry and have a fatherless child. Very rarely do they talk about two men who want to marry and adopt, I note.
Along with that, A federal judge has ruled that wearing symbols to express support for homosexual relationships is permitted in schools, over the objection of the school that wearing symbols such as rainbows would immediately trigger a picture of homosexual men engaged in sexual activity. Asgreyweirdo has pointed out many times, this stems from a fixation on the sex part of homosexual. It’s not like we see heterosexuals everywhere and keep having images of them having sex pop into our heads.
As the matter may be, perhaps a solution to the screaming of pro-lifers about the sanctity of marriage might arrive from Iran: The muta marriage, a marriage contract that specifically states its duration and ensures any children from the marriage are taken care of by the father with the same rights as other children. There. Sex within marriage, children taken care of. Sounds like the marriage contingent should be pushing hard for these. We’ll lower the divorce rate, too, as muta marriages simply expire. And that way, nobody has to stay married to a man that straps his beer in and leaves his child free in the back seat of a vehicle.
Following on an earlier story, several thousand students and a few faculty members at Washington University turned their backs on Phyllis Schlafly as she was introduced to receive her honorary degree. The students were not amused at the choice of honorary, and we’re certainly not blaming them for turning away from someone who says that once a woman is married, she can’t be raped by her husband. I hope the students who turned their backs find their dream jobs out of college, and the faculty who turned theirs find enough good teaching and research to achieve tenure.
In a truly scary moment, a 911 operator said that he "didn’t give a shit" about a woman who had called because her boyfriend had attempted to stab her with a knife. The operator who said that has been dismissed.
With regard to candidates for November, as Senator Clinton's prospects sink, many wonder what might have been. Win or lose, there’s a good chance that the Dems will be able to field females for the office with regularity in their candidacies. Hopefully, the next time, the Dems choose someone who is in tune with where the country needs to go. Truthfully, though, I won't miss the misogyny against Senator Clinton either. I wish that Senator Clinton’s gender and Senator Obama’s race didn’t have any weight at all in the discussions, but that’s not possible here in America. Musings and Migraines at least takes issue with the idea that Senator Obama is promising everything to everyone, and waiting for that to develop into a trainwreck. You know, actual issues. Is it bad that I’d be willing to give Senator Obama a chance and hope that he picks the right persona over the almost-certain probability that the Republican candidate and Senator Clinton will pick the one I feel is wrong?
We also find that Lieutenant Worf endorses Senator Obama. Which helps his National Security position, I’m sure, against the sitting administrator's partisan hackery. More seriously, Mike Huckabee wants to be John McCain's vice-president, which is a bit of a nightmare scenario that’s been discussed before. Huckabee would seal up a lot of the religious right and make it possible for them to continue their unfettered access started with Mr. Bush.
Too little, too late, John Hagee regrets his anti-Catholic remarks, withotu necessarily apologizing for them, while another megachurch pastor gets caught trying to have sex with underage people. Celibacy is a hard road to choose, sure, but whatever it is that attracts potential pedophiles to the cloth needs to be stamped out. And could we please stop with spreading a message that says birth control pills cause abortions? Once you can prove that an unfertilized egg is actually life, then we’ll talk. And then we’ll talk about how you plan to imprison or fine every woman who has an ovulation without impregnation for murder.
Jackie Gingrich Cushman praises Learn and Earn, a program that provides monetary incentive and small group tutoring sessions for students to improve with. It certainly had to help, in that underperforming students could afford to spend the extra time learning the material, with a drive to do well. With the more immediate kind of award, the performance improvement was noticeable.
Jason Mattera accuses DePaul University of extorting money from a conservative group by requiring them to have security on hand when a member of the Minutemen group comes to campus, after word got around that there would be protests at the event. I wonder what the policy is on security presence and costs. It sounds very cut-and-dried, which makes me all the more suspicious about it.
In technology, a very bad idea, an idea sure to impress the ladies (and perhaps have an Elton John song playing), an idea that will probably not impress any ladies, an idea supposedly for the ladies, an idea that might keep men from their ladies, new transistor materials, a police officer and a bartender tasering each other simultaneously, utilizing technology in ways previously not thought of, and technology coming back to bite someone in the ass, although not necessarily in a legal manner. What someone does in their private life should be just that, even if there is some posting of pictures to MySpace.
At the very last for this, after all of that, Ghandi's ten fundamentals for changing the world. Simple advice, simple implementation... just needs lots of people to do it. Of course, there’s always the Discordian Masquerade, if world-changing the Ghandi way doesn’t seem to appeal. Just be sure to keep it in your pants at the appropriate points in time.
So, I’ll be going to bed soon. Have a look at some of the funniest alarm clocks while you consider what time to get up in the morning. And try to avoid a bad date, a worse date, a really bad date, and a date with no self-esteem. Instead, follow some tips on getting good sleep.
Have to get up early and talk to kids about Summer Reading. Here’s hoping that I don’t flub things up too badly, having missed the meeting where all of this was probably discussed, because I was going to ACEN.
Onward to news - this is going to be a big, big summary, so for your friendslist, the cuts are in order after the very most important bits. My professional self cheers that teen literature is up, even while the rest of lit is down.
Starting in the international sphere, For want of funding, some research was not implemented. For lack of research, insects are devouring rice crops everywhere...
To further drive a knife in, there is a significant amount of edible food wasted in the "developed" world, while people go hungry elsewhere. That problem is not new, certainly. With the rising costs of food, however, that waste is felt more keenly across the world.
And then, there are more storms headed Myanmar/Burma's way. Provoking yet more of what
bradhicks considered to be evil versus evil decisions, where bad stuff happens no matter what option is taken. As things are, Myanmar has apparently permitted aid to appear, if it is shuttled through Asian allies. I’m really not pleased that a week after xenophobic violence has erupted in South Africa, we're finally starting to hear about xenophobic violence in South Africa. Maybe my news sources aren’t quite tuned in right.
Pictures of a wedding that was interrupted by the earthquake in China. Luckily, nobody was hurt in the wedding party. That said, more than 7000 schools collapsed during the quake, prompting accusations that the schools were not built solidly at all.
Going domestic, The Bush Administration believes that it can change executive orders and their interpretations without notifying anyone at all, keeping hidden from the public very important things, and hiding behind confidentiality and secrecy in not telling the public what interpretation of law and order the government is operating on at any given time. Thus, an administration could say straight-faced that “we do not torture” because the definition of torture has been changed without the public’s knowledge. Secret laws like this is no way to run a democratic and open state.
Neither is members of a VA hospital telling their doctors not to diagnose PTSD immediately, in an attempt to cut down on costs coming through because of all the vets who have PTSD from Iraq.
Furthermore, after the knowledge that Mr. Bush gave up his golf game as a symbolic gesture of support for Iraq’s War, Keith Olbermann gives solid advice to Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up. There’s very little left that Mr. Bush can do or say that will further drop people’s opinions of him, but for some reason, he finds new ways to prove his ineptness. Like the detention and imprisonment of children on terror charges. Elect an elitist intellectual who’s not afraid to say that he’s got the brains to do stuff for once, okay?
Not only that, but the existence of academic research on the subject of having to conclude someone is an utter bastard is a great, great, thing. Contextual placement? Whatever do you mean?
Liberal Eagle is awaiting the settling of America into being a smaller power, and hopefully, a change of patriotism into one that doesn’t require big macho things and trying to play up enemies into big scary things so they can be knocked over.
Proving the administration redacts for the hell of it, some supposedly sensitive data could be accessed by highlighting it and copying it elsewhere. The data involved had very little to do with national security, although there was some information about just how much telecoms were involved in spying on their customers.
The EFF is investigating whether Windows Vista voluntarily implements broadcast flags that would prevent the recording of over-the-air programming. The test case appears to have been an NBC feed transmitted to a Vista box, where Vista refused to record the item. There is no mandate for Vista to ignore or implement the flags, after FCC rulings were overturned, but it does make people wonder what Microsoft’s position on broadcast flags is. If they do voluntarily follow the flags, well, just another reason not to upgrade to Vista.
bradhicks makes commentary on the disparity between the amount of white and black persons arrested on drug charges. At least one in the comments doesn’t like the methodology at work, thinking that Hispanic should be noticed more and shown in the results. California's highest court has overturned the state's ban on gay marriage, at least for a while. Opponents are already attempting to put a constitutional amendment referendum on the ballot, a still-reprehensible tactic, considering that constitutional amendments should be for very serious matters that don’t expect to be changed any time soon. The Slacktivist points out that the coutr's logic is fairly undeniable, but that the opposition to the lifting of the ban won't engage on those grounds.
pocochina reflects a bit on the victories gained so far, and why while it may seem to be middle-class persons always in court, the benefits to be gained are for everyone. There’s plenty of discussion over at the Unabashed Feminism Department, so have a look and see. For a perspective that blames birth control for the reason why homosexual marriage is advancing as a cause, consult Carol Platt Liebau's column, where the pill is responsible for decoupling sex from marriage, which in turn leads to all sorts of boys and girls without strong male presence, because of no fathers, and other such things. Because it’s always going to be women who want to marry and have a fatherless child. Very rarely do they talk about two men who want to marry and adopt, I note. Along with that, A federal judge has ruled that wearing symbols to express support for homosexual relationships is permitted in schools, over the objection of the school that wearing symbols such as rainbows would immediately trigger a picture of homosexual men engaged in sexual activity. As
greyweirdo has pointed out many times, this stems from a fixation on the sex part of homosexual. It’s not like we see heterosexuals everywhere and keep having images of them having sex pop into our heads.As the matter may be, perhaps a solution to the screaming of pro-lifers about the sanctity of marriage might arrive from Iran: The muta marriage, a marriage contract that specifically states its duration and ensures any children from the marriage are taken care of by the father with the same rights as other children. There. Sex within marriage, children taken care of. Sounds like the marriage contingent should be pushing hard for these. We’ll lower the divorce rate, too, as muta marriages simply expire. And that way, nobody has to stay married to a man that straps his beer in and leaves his child free in the back seat of a vehicle.
Following on an earlier story, several thousand students and a few faculty members at Washington University turned their backs on Phyllis Schlafly as she was introduced to receive her honorary degree. The students were not amused at the choice of honorary, and we’re certainly not blaming them for turning away from someone who says that once a woman is married, she can’t be raped by her husband. I hope the students who turned their backs find their dream jobs out of college, and the faculty who turned theirs find enough good teaching and research to achieve tenure.
In a truly scary moment, a 911 operator said that he "didn’t give a shit" about a woman who had called because her boyfriend had attempted to stab her with a knife. The operator who said that has been dismissed.
With regard to candidates for November, as Senator Clinton's prospects sink, many wonder what might have been. Win or lose, there’s a good chance that the Dems will be able to field females for the office with regularity in their candidacies. Hopefully, the next time, the Dems choose someone who is in tune with where the country needs to go. Truthfully, though, I won't miss the misogyny against Senator Clinton either. I wish that Senator Clinton’s gender and Senator Obama’s race didn’t have any weight at all in the discussions, but that’s not possible here in America. Musings and Migraines at least takes issue with the idea that Senator Obama is promising everything to everyone, and waiting for that to develop into a trainwreck. You know, actual issues. Is it bad that I’d be willing to give Senator Obama a chance and hope that he picks the right persona over the almost-certain probability that the Republican candidate and Senator Clinton will pick the one I feel is wrong?
We also find that Lieutenant Worf endorses Senator Obama. Which helps his National Security position, I’m sure, against the sitting administrator's partisan hackery. More seriously, Mike Huckabee wants to be John McCain's vice-president, which is a bit of a nightmare scenario that’s been discussed before. Huckabee would seal up a lot of the religious right and make it possible for them to continue their unfettered access started with Mr. Bush.
Too little, too late, John Hagee regrets his anti-Catholic remarks, withotu necessarily apologizing for them, while another megachurch pastor gets caught trying to have sex with underage people. Celibacy is a hard road to choose, sure, but whatever it is that attracts potential pedophiles to the cloth needs to be stamped out. And could we please stop with spreading a message that says birth control pills cause abortions? Once you can prove that an unfertilized egg is actually life, then we’ll talk. And then we’ll talk about how you plan to imprison or fine every woman who has an ovulation without impregnation for murder.
Jackie Gingrich Cushman praises Learn and Earn, a program that provides monetary incentive and small group tutoring sessions for students to improve with. It certainly had to help, in that underperforming students could afford to spend the extra time learning the material, with a drive to do well. With the more immediate kind of award, the performance improvement was noticeable.
Jason Mattera accuses DePaul University of extorting money from a conservative group by requiring them to have security on hand when a member of the Minutemen group comes to campus, after word got around that there would be protests at the event. I wonder what the policy is on security presence and costs. It sounds very cut-and-dried, which makes me all the more suspicious about it.
In technology, a very bad idea, an idea sure to impress the ladies (and perhaps have an Elton John song playing), an idea that will probably not impress any ladies, an idea supposedly for the ladies, an idea that might keep men from their ladies, new transistor materials, a police officer and a bartender tasering each other simultaneously, utilizing technology in ways previously not thought of, and technology coming back to bite someone in the ass, although not necessarily in a legal manner. What someone does in their private life should be just that, even if there is some posting of pictures to MySpace.
At the very last for this, after all of that, Ghandi's ten fundamentals for changing the world. Simple advice, simple implementation... just needs lots of people to do it. Of course, there’s always the Discordian Masquerade, if world-changing the Ghandi way doesn’t seem to appeal. Just be sure to keep it in your pants at the appropriate points in time.
So, I’ll be going to bed soon. Have a look at some of the funniest alarm clocks while you consider what time to get up in the morning. And try to avoid a bad date, a worse date, a really bad date, and a date with no self-esteem. Instead, follow some tips on getting good sleep.
Have to get up early and talk to kids about Summer Reading. Here’s hoping that I don’t flub things up too badly, having missed the meeting where all of this was probably discussed, because I was going to ACEN.
