Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2008-08-29 01:36 pm
silveradept) wrote2008-08-29 01:36 pm
A quick shot before the weekend consumes us - 29 August 2008
Leading off, apparently a partial draft copy of Stephanie Meyer's newest Twilight book got leaked to the net... so to counter the rampant trading of such, Meyer's offering it from her website. She says, “don’t read this, it’s messy and incomplete”, but she discounts the inclinations and obsessions that her book has caused by doing so. Rabid fans will read whatever they can get their hands on, messy draft or no.
Let’s go international with the true plot behind the Georgian conflict - Russia intends to annex the breakaway regions? Naturally, this means Georgia and Russia will be severing their diplomatic ties.
Iran claims another 1,000 centrifuges.
Domestically, we have the prepared text of Senator Obama's acceptance speech, and a quick congratulatory ad from Senator McCain to Senator Obama about his acceptance.
The conventions are continuing to shape up into situations that Cory Doctorow predicts in Little Brother. A first-hand account of the "Little Gitmo" in Denver, complete with false charges, no-way-out options, and what looks to be psychological and physical stressing of the protesters, several of the officers not having identification, and the use of pepper spray on the peaceful group. If this is the DNC, of the party nominally trying to protect our rights, one can only wonder what the RNC will look like.
Of course, some of us have a chuckle when it comes to the RNC - that asking for floods, that then resulted in a burst on the Fox News booth..., well, the impending tropical storm that might become a hurricane could delay the RNC for a while. All of this happening is of course no indication that there are gods, and certainly not that either the entitiy represented by the Tetragrammaton or other deities of this existence have a sense of humor. But if you want to think of it like the gods getting their revenge on someone who wanted to use them for petty purposes, go right ahead.
For Senator McCain himself, the NYT, among others, reports that Senator McCain chooses Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his vice-presidential candidate, shoring up some of his issues with the anti-choice crowd, possibly trying to lure over disgruntled Hillary votes, and potentially trying to put one over on the American populace, by presenting a female VP pick who's pretty anti-female, and hoping voters will be swayed by gender over policy. Wasn’t some part of the whole Hillary campaign discussion on this kind of factor? And who’s the Democratic nominee, again?
Additionally, private contractors hold more than 25 percent of intelligence jobs for the United States government, which means there are lots of places along the way where that intelligence could disappear or leak. I can understand hiring in someone because of special talents, but 25 percent seems an awfully high amount to have.
Tensions between union and non-union workers led to a giant immigration raid. Apparently, the company’s alleged practice of hiring illegal aliens meant the union employees were discouraged from working overtime, while the undocumented workers were working up to another 40 hours overtime each.
In opinions, Victor Davis Hanson sounds the death knell for NATO, Michael Medved thinks it's a contradiction to say America is both a land of opportunity and a place where opportunities are denied at every turn, requiring assistance to make things right, and Walid Phares wants Europe to define the ideology that has infiltrated Muslim theology and root it out
On the candidates, George Will, following the trend, waxes about the difference between Senator Obama's speeches and his practicalities and Janet M. LaRue thinks it appropriate to contrast Senator Obama, the multimillionaire, with his half-brother George, living in Kenya, and wonder why the rich Obama hasn't brought the poorer one into the fold with him,
In scitech - an energy-efficient car that's also a transformer, saving the world from asteroid impact through the use of plastic wrap, so that part of it becomes reflective, and thus might be moved by solar radiation, the hacker who broke into Defense Department computers looking for UFO data has lost his extradition appeal, the possibility that a Bayer pesticide may have started the honeybee colony collapse problem, a freaking-tiny personal computer, fats, not eggs, as the primary reasons for increased cholesterol, building houses through three-dimensional printing, a map of more than thirty potential solar plants in the country that produce more than one megawatt of power, and a highly successful experiment that left an Internet-capable computer in the wall of a building, in an Indian slum, and observed how children can teach and learn how to use it, without knowing any of the terminology - and how they can use it in ways those who supposedly know stuff about it never imagined.
That’s it for today. Don’t burn the place down while I’m gone, okay?
Let’s go international with the true plot behind the Georgian conflict - Russia intends to annex the breakaway regions? Naturally, this means Georgia and Russia will be severing their diplomatic ties.
Iran claims another 1,000 centrifuges.
Domestically, we have the prepared text of Senator Obama's acceptance speech, and a quick congratulatory ad from Senator McCain to Senator Obama about his acceptance.
The conventions are continuing to shape up into situations that Cory Doctorow predicts in Little Brother. A first-hand account of the "Little Gitmo" in Denver, complete with false charges, no-way-out options, and what looks to be psychological and physical stressing of the protesters, several of the officers not having identification, and the use of pepper spray on the peaceful group. If this is the DNC, of the party nominally trying to protect our rights, one can only wonder what the RNC will look like.
Of course, some of us have a chuckle when it comes to the RNC - that asking for floods, that then resulted in a burst on the Fox News booth..., well, the impending tropical storm that might become a hurricane could delay the RNC for a while. All of this happening is of course no indication that there are gods, and certainly not that either the entitiy represented by the Tetragrammaton or other deities of this existence have a sense of humor. But if you want to think of it like the gods getting their revenge on someone who wanted to use them for petty purposes, go right ahead.
For Senator McCain himself, the NYT, among others, reports that Senator McCain chooses Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his vice-presidential candidate, shoring up some of his issues with the anti-choice crowd, possibly trying to lure over disgruntled Hillary votes, and potentially trying to put one over on the American populace, by presenting a female VP pick who's pretty anti-female, and hoping voters will be swayed by gender over policy. Wasn’t some part of the whole Hillary campaign discussion on this kind of factor? And who’s the Democratic nominee, again?
Additionally, private contractors hold more than 25 percent of intelligence jobs for the United States government, which means there are lots of places along the way where that intelligence could disappear or leak. I can understand hiring in someone because of special talents, but 25 percent seems an awfully high amount to have.
Tensions between union and non-union workers led to a giant immigration raid. Apparently, the company’s alleged practice of hiring illegal aliens meant the union employees were discouraged from working overtime, while the undocumented workers were working up to another 40 hours overtime each.
In opinions, Victor Davis Hanson sounds the death knell for NATO, Michael Medved thinks it's a contradiction to say America is both a land of opportunity and a place where opportunities are denied at every turn, requiring assistance to make things right, and Walid Phares wants Europe to define the ideology that has infiltrated Muslim theology and root it out
On the candidates, George Will, following the trend, waxes about the difference between Senator Obama's speeches and his practicalities and Janet M. LaRue thinks it appropriate to contrast Senator Obama, the multimillionaire, with his half-brother George, living in Kenya, and wonder why the rich Obama hasn't brought the poorer one into the fold with him,
In scitech - an energy-efficient car that's also a transformer, saving the world from asteroid impact through the use of plastic wrap, so that part of it becomes reflective, and thus might be moved by solar radiation, the hacker who broke into Defense Department computers looking for UFO data has lost his extradition appeal, the possibility that a Bayer pesticide may have started the honeybee colony collapse problem, a freaking-tiny personal computer, fats, not eggs, as the primary reasons for increased cholesterol, building houses through three-dimensional printing, a map of more than thirty potential solar plants in the country that produce more than one megawatt of power, and a highly successful experiment that left an Internet-capable computer in the wall of a building, in an Indian slum, and observed how children can teach and learn how to use it, without knowing any of the terminology - and how they can use it in ways those who supposedly know stuff about it never imagined.
That’s it for today. Don’t burn the place down while I’m gone, okay?