What a weekend - 15 September 2008
Sep. 16th, 2008 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptWhat a weekend. In addition to all your eloquent material, the weekend has some great news and some terrible news.
Internationally and domestically, more banks, including Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Washington Mutual, tumble, teeter, die, go bankrupt, and are bought up by competitors for pittances. Economy’s still growing, though, so we’re still good, apparently. And our real incomes have jumped up over time, so we’re still doing fine. Assuming cost of living increases haven’t eaten us alive, that is, and our house didn’t turn worthless, and other such things.
The Saudi clerics have quite the interesting pairing today - one says it's okay to kill the owners of TV networks that broadcast "immoral" content, another says that anyone doing horoscopes is a "sorceror" and should be killed. If that went through, I’m pretty sure we’d find out how few people would be left in the country. Unfortunately, they’re matched by a football riot in Congo that killed 13 after one of the players was accused of practicing witchcraft. And there’s the footnote that apparently, the great Stonehenege was not intended to be seen by the peons. All of this reflects a worldview that probably isn't the kind most people want to see or be a part of, and the more thy proclaim their worldview, the farther to the right of the spectrum you can guess it is.
The current administration gave approval for U.S. forces to raid into Pakistan after their targets, for which Pakistan counter-orders that any invading U.S. troops are to be killed.
Muslim militants have claimed responsibility for a series of explosions in New Delhi. 18 dead and many wounded so far in a coordinated strike.
The Iraqi police force is training women to combat a tendency to utilize females for carrying and using explosives. Many men scoff at the idea of women on the police force, of course, but they’re also just as unwilling to violate the taboos about seeing the female body, so something had to give somewhere.
If nothing else, Australian politicians are fairly honest - the New South Wales police minister denied that he had said that he was tit-f**king a female MP's mother, but did not deny that he was dancing in his underwear and performing a simulated sex act on the MP. The minister has since tendered his resignation.
The candidate matters have plenty to discuss. Senator McCain is accused of using his political influence to stop the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife's stealing of prescription drugs from her charity organization. A form sent out by the McCain campaigh in Ohio to request absentee ballots has a checbox for the voter to mark their eligibility. No box checked, not eligible, bad application, says the Democratic SoS. Let the disenfranchisement games begin.
This sounds familiar. Have we seen it before... groups selling "Obama waffles" that paint the candidate in a negative and stereotypical light, apparently being sold at a “Values Voter” summit sponsored by the Family Research Council. Did this happen in the last election with Seantor Kerry?
In opinions of the candidates, the professor at Musings & Migraines details a good speech for Senator Obama that would get his point across - the Republicans are not the party of change, they’ve been actively trying to screw you over for the last eight years, and that if you want the hurting to stop, elect the Democrat. Austin Cline concurs, saying that the Republican Party requries having enough scandals involving graft and favorable treatment that the corporations stay happy (until discovered, anyway), but not so many that the small-government wing of the party can't claim that less government is needed to fix the problem. Thomas Friedman finds the Republican focus on oil to be backward and supporting of oil dependency, rather than trying to overcome it. John Farrell notes that the things that made John McCain an appealing candidate are the things he's been abandoning to get back into conservative orthodoxy.
More about our esteemed Governor from Alaska and the sudden resurgence of religious conservatism to Republican politics - A Baptist minister in a town near Governor Palin's Wasilla says we should be afraid of her ascension, should it come to pass, based on the way she treated one of his books, and the general climate of the Palin-folk taking over all the local offices and making them in the praise-Jeezis mold. She's certainly willing to point out her belief in the Godly mission of the troops. Suzanne Fields feels the Governor will get new populations to vote for her (is that “even if the guy who will be President is a lout, so we hope he dies quickly?”), as does Matt Tower, while Cathy Young offers yet another possible reason why feminists hate Sarah Palin's successful life. Pat Buchanan is concerned about the Roe decision, and sees electing the pro-life candidate as a necessity so that he can appoint judges to overturn it. And speaking of the conservative religious crowd, while they heartily endorse Palin, they probably wouldn't support any woman in any position of authority in their church structure, because woman are supposed to be subservient to men. Hey... maybe that’s why they can support Palin - she’s only going to be Vice-President, and thus properly has an old man who knows what’s best for her over her in terms of authority?
Kicking back at the other side, Mona Charen accuses the Obama health care plan of wanting to destroy private insurance, so that we find ourselves in a situation like other single-payer countries have, with long waits and poor services. Charles Krauthammer feels the Obama star is fading, and that he will lose because he couldn't be the celebrity candidate all the way to the end, and Burt Prelutsky pulls off the kid gloves in his mockery of Senator Obama.
In non-candidate opinions, Miek Gallagher drums the beat of 9/11, saying we’ve already forgotten it and its impact. L. Gordon Crovitz thinks intelligence services still need to improve vastly to combat still-unknown and un-executed plots.
The WSJ believes that it's found poster-states on why increases in taxes don't balance budgets by themsleves, John fund comments on someone who wants to build lots of solar power stations without the environmental impact studies that precede building stuff as a way of quickly reducing oil dependence. Forserious, though, if we were going to forego the regs, most people would be building coal and oil plants and refineries, not solar.
Debra J. Saunders revisits one of the conundrums of the American society - old enough to vote, to sign up to get killed in a foreign land, to smoke, but not old enough to drink. Might be time to reverse Reagan’s machinations and bring the drinking age back down to 18. Or, at the very least, if we must have it so that high school seniors aren’t permitted to legally drink and/or buy, 19. Another set of opinions about the young, on the Freakonomics Blog, several people weigh in about what sex was like 30 years ago, will be like in 30 years, and what the ideal view of sex should be. Very interesting to see.
Last out of the opinions department, The children is not learning their history and civics... possibly because they’re not being tested on them for NCLB, and possibly because civic literacy is not any sort of priority for any political party looking to get elected or any elected candidate looking to do stuff he shouldn’t be able to.
In science and technology, a photograph of what could be a planet orbiting a Sol-like star. Unconfirmed whether it actualy is a planet in orbit - and it’ll be a while before we can confirm or deny. Tack onto that an unidentified object appearing in Hubble's view, something that wasn’t there before, and that they’re not completely sure what it is, either.
And then, spammer's conviction overturned, with ruling that the law used to convict is overbroad - the conviction based on using a false name was considered stifling of free and anonymous speech. So I guess we’ll have to try again and make sure that commercial unsolicited e-mail is outlawed or something.
Additionally, hackers infiltrating the LHC's computer systems, draft proposals to track every Internet communication back to its source, in a uniquely-identifiable manner, which would basically kill any form of anonymity on the ‘Net, unless one were willingly or able to use someone else’s IP to do the transmitting with. Like, say, if one had botnets. 3M's pocket projector, moving from texting to video snippets to keep in touch, broadcasting from the cell phone, a musing as to why anyone would put a biodefense lab in the middle of a populated area with potentially volitaile weather, and proposals for gigabit WiFi, yo.
Ah, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. For here, at the end, we can say, that today, September 15, 2008 George Takei and Brad Altman are married, and that probably makes them both the Happiest Men in the world today. That’s the light part. If you want to not read the shadow, stop here. The shadow to that is a Denver policeman who declined to take a report of the incident or arrest the attacker when a homosexual was assaulted in the city and subdued his attacker. That it can’t necessarily be prosecuted as a hate crime doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be prosecuted.
And very last - origami burgers.
Internationally and domestically, more banks, including Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Washington Mutual, tumble, teeter, die, go bankrupt, and are bought up by competitors for pittances. Economy’s still growing, though, so we’re still good, apparently. And our real incomes have jumped up over time, so we’re still doing fine. Assuming cost of living increases haven’t eaten us alive, that is, and our house didn’t turn worthless, and other such things.
The Saudi clerics have quite the interesting pairing today - one says it's okay to kill the owners of TV networks that broadcast "immoral" content, another says that anyone doing horoscopes is a "sorceror" and should be killed. If that went through, I’m pretty sure we’d find out how few people would be left in the country. Unfortunately, they’re matched by a football riot in Congo that killed 13 after one of the players was accused of practicing witchcraft. And there’s the footnote that apparently, the great Stonehenege was not intended to be seen by the peons. All of this reflects a worldview that probably isn't the kind most people want to see or be a part of, and the more thy proclaim their worldview, the farther to the right of the spectrum you can guess it is.
The current administration gave approval for U.S. forces to raid into Pakistan after their targets, for which Pakistan counter-orders that any invading U.S. troops are to be killed.
Muslim militants have claimed responsibility for a series of explosions in New Delhi. 18 dead and many wounded so far in a coordinated strike.
The Iraqi police force is training women to combat a tendency to utilize females for carrying and using explosives. Many men scoff at the idea of women on the police force, of course, but they’re also just as unwilling to violate the taboos about seeing the female body, so something had to give somewhere.
If nothing else, Australian politicians are fairly honest - the New South Wales police minister denied that he had said that he was tit-f**king a female MP's mother, but did not deny that he was dancing in his underwear and performing a simulated sex act on the MP. The minister has since tendered his resignation.
The candidate matters have plenty to discuss. Senator McCain is accused of using his political influence to stop the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife's stealing of prescription drugs from her charity organization. A form sent out by the McCain campaigh in Ohio to request absentee ballots has a checbox for the voter to mark their eligibility. No box checked, not eligible, bad application, says the Democratic SoS. Let the disenfranchisement games begin.
This sounds familiar. Have we seen it before... groups selling "Obama waffles" that paint the candidate in a negative and stereotypical light, apparently being sold at a “Values Voter” summit sponsored by the Family Research Council. Did this happen in the last election with Seantor Kerry?
In opinions of the candidates, the professor at Musings & Migraines details a good speech for Senator Obama that would get his point across - the Republicans are not the party of change, they’ve been actively trying to screw you over for the last eight years, and that if you want the hurting to stop, elect the Democrat. Austin Cline concurs, saying that the Republican Party requries having enough scandals involving graft and favorable treatment that the corporations stay happy (until discovered, anyway), but not so many that the small-government wing of the party can't claim that less government is needed to fix the problem. Thomas Friedman finds the Republican focus on oil to be backward and supporting of oil dependency, rather than trying to overcome it. John Farrell notes that the things that made John McCain an appealing candidate are the things he's been abandoning to get back into conservative orthodoxy.
More about our esteemed Governor from Alaska and the sudden resurgence of religious conservatism to Republican politics - A Baptist minister in a town near Governor Palin's Wasilla says we should be afraid of her ascension, should it come to pass, based on the way she treated one of his books, and the general climate of the Palin-folk taking over all the local offices and making them in the praise-Jeezis mold. She's certainly willing to point out her belief in the Godly mission of the troops. Suzanne Fields feels the Governor will get new populations to vote for her (is that “even if the guy who will be President is a lout, so we hope he dies quickly?”), as does Matt Tower, while Cathy Young offers yet another possible reason why feminists hate Sarah Palin's successful life. Pat Buchanan is concerned about the Roe decision, and sees electing the pro-life candidate as a necessity so that he can appoint judges to overturn it. And speaking of the conservative religious crowd, while they heartily endorse Palin, they probably wouldn't support any woman in any position of authority in their church structure, because woman are supposed to be subservient to men. Hey... maybe that’s why they can support Palin - she’s only going to be Vice-President, and thus properly has an old man who knows what’s best for her over her in terms of authority?
Kicking back at the other side, Mona Charen accuses the Obama health care plan of wanting to destroy private insurance, so that we find ourselves in a situation like other single-payer countries have, with long waits and poor services. Charles Krauthammer feels the Obama star is fading, and that he will lose because he couldn't be the celebrity candidate all the way to the end, and Burt Prelutsky pulls off the kid gloves in his mockery of Senator Obama.
In non-candidate opinions, Miek Gallagher drums the beat of 9/11, saying we’ve already forgotten it and its impact. L. Gordon Crovitz thinks intelligence services still need to improve vastly to combat still-unknown and un-executed plots.
The WSJ believes that it's found poster-states on why increases in taxes don't balance budgets by themsleves, John fund comments on someone who wants to build lots of solar power stations without the environmental impact studies that precede building stuff as a way of quickly reducing oil dependence. Forserious, though, if we were going to forego the regs, most people would be building coal and oil plants and refineries, not solar.
Debra J. Saunders revisits one of the conundrums of the American society - old enough to vote, to sign up to get killed in a foreign land, to smoke, but not old enough to drink. Might be time to reverse Reagan’s machinations and bring the drinking age back down to 18. Or, at the very least, if we must have it so that high school seniors aren’t permitted to legally drink and/or buy, 19. Another set of opinions about the young, on the Freakonomics Blog, several people weigh in about what sex was like 30 years ago, will be like in 30 years, and what the ideal view of sex should be. Very interesting to see.
Last out of the opinions department, The children is not learning their history and civics... possibly because they’re not being tested on them for NCLB, and possibly because civic literacy is not any sort of priority for any political party looking to get elected or any elected candidate looking to do stuff he shouldn’t be able to.
In science and technology, a photograph of what could be a planet orbiting a Sol-like star. Unconfirmed whether it actualy is a planet in orbit - and it’ll be a while before we can confirm or deny. Tack onto that an unidentified object appearing in Hubble's view, something that wasn’t there before, and that they’re not completely sure what it is, either.
And then, spammer's conviction overturned, with ruling that the law used to convict is overbroad - the conviction based on using a false name was considered stifling of free and anonymous speech. So I guess we’ll have to try again and make sure that commercial unsolicited e-mail is outlawed or something.
Additionally, hackers infiltrating the LHC's computer systems, draft proposals to track every Internet communication back to its source, in a uniquely-identifiable manner, which would basically kill any form of anonymity on the ‘Net, unless one were willingly or able to use someone else’s IP to do the transmitting with. Like, say, if one had botnets. 3M's pocket projector, moving from texting to video snippets to keep in touch, broadcasting from the cell phone, a musing as to why anyone would put a biodefense lab in the middle of a populated area with potentially volitaile weather, and proposals for gigabit WiFi, yo.
Ah, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. For here, at the end, we can say, that today, September 15, 2008 George Takei and Brad Altman are married, and that probably makes them both the Happiest Men in the world today. That’s the light part. If you want to not read the shadow, stop here. The shadow to that is a Denver policeman who declined to take a report of the incident or arrest the attacker when a homosexual was assaulted in the city and subdued his attacker. That it can’t necessarily be prosecuted as a hate crime doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be prosecuted.
And very last - origami burgers.
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Date: 2008-09-16 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 07:27 pm (UTC)