More material arrives, shovel by shovel - 24 October 2008

[silveradept]

As with all things, when driving, be alert, keep your eyes on the road, and look out for obstacles. When designing frights for the Spook Day, please be recalling that realism has unintended consequences.

First, before the rest, a correction to make - the story reported on yesterday about the apparent attack by an Obama supporter to a McCain supporter, based on politics? A fucking fabrication. Thus, we return to the status that Republican supporters are those documented as attacking and intimidating those who support Senator Obama. The original story has been edited to reflect this development.

In the international section - more changeover of Iraq to Iraq forces, which might mean that the Iraqi forces can handle themselves. Supposedly, the deal is done, but there is apparently no contingency plan if the deal should implode.

The Canadian dollar has fallen to new lows in exchange value versus the American dollar. Not a few years ago, both currencies were on relative parity.

Domestically, release the robotic hounds? The possibility of using robots to hunt and subdue humans. Depending on deployment, perhaps lethally.

Reprehensible behavior from the official campaign to enshrine discrimination in California’s constitution - members of the Yes on 8 campaign sent blackmail and extortion letters to businesses that had donated to the No on 8 campaign, promising to out them as supporters if they didn&apos donate to the Yes on 8 campaign. The cited example in the article demanded $10,000, because the businessman donated $10,000 to the No campaign. Arrests should be in order for this.

On other Prop 8 matters, the WSJ understands not why a teacher's union would donate $1 million to the No on 8 campaign, feeling that the money could be better spent on improving education as opposed to left-wing causes. I don’t know if they understand why the Seventh-Day Adventist church opposes proposition 8, or why both Apple and Google have opposed the measure and donated sums to the No crowd, either, since that money could be better spent improving their products.

And if you want to see the view from the trenches, witness theremina‘s first-hand account of being surrounded, poked, called names, and attacked by Yes on 8 supporters, all for having turned her phone on to record the other belligerent behavior going on. In a lot of ways, that is a representative face of the supporters of Proposition 8, even if most of them feel that they would never resort to physical violence against the opposition.

The chief of voter registration in Clark County says ACORN submitted many more bogus or suspect registrations without their suspicion tags than the ones that they did, and CNS constructs it to imply that the statements about ACORN engaging in voter registration fraud are true, and the heroic efforts of the Clark County Chief stopped them. Amanda Carpenter decries the NBC-led partnership of "election protection" because it has no conservatives and has apparently partnered with ACORN, who have already been convicted of voter registration fraud in her mind. The Slacktivist decries the latest ACORN "scandal" as an attempt to turn the FBI into the GOP's hatchet men, as well as trying to investigate and insinuate that something is happening when nothing is. If one wishes to protest the treatment, petition away.

Tinkering with retirement? The possibility of 401(k) losing the federal subsidy and tax breaks, to be put into a different, federally-administered retirement account, under the auspices of the Social Security Administration. It’s speculation at this point, and may very well hinge on the election outcome. If it were to happen, I would find it interesting, because I thought Social Security was supposed to be a method of having retirement income. Perhaps this new plan would add mandated pre-tax savings so that the variances of the stock market don’t hit so hard in bear markets.

Walter E. Williams feels a socialized system of care will be bad, based on his data showing the time between GP seeing to treatment in countries that have socialized medicine. So of course adopting a socailized medicine program here will mean everyone has to wait too long to be treated. What about any other issues, like affordability or effectiveness of treatment?

Regarding candidates, an excellent summary of both the highest hopes and darkest fears of Senator Obama supporters. Joe Klein also presents a respectful disagreement between Senators and General Petraeus that ended amiably, but with Senator Obama saying that if he is elected Commander-in-Chief, he will be commanding, rather than passively accepting whatever is presented to him as a framework for showing how the Senator has grown into a person that looks like he can lead the country and that will be unruffled by weird things coming his way.

Looking at him from the other side, Cal Thomas uses Senator Biden's remarks as his justification why nobody should vote for Senator Obama, because he’s apparently untested and too young and inexperienced, while John McCain would be a solid choice and has lots of experience dealing with international crises. Throwback jerseys for the conservatives, yo.

Alan Reynolds expresses skepticism at the ability of a President Obama to raise revenues and cut spending to pay for his new proposed programs. It would still be awesome to have a mandates budget where expenditures are tied to a percentage of revenues (and adjusted as needed), and the remainder be used to pay down debts and restore funding to areas sorely needing proper reserves.

Pew research builds on a previous study that analyzed the amount of coverage on both candidates (McCain's negativity begat negativity) and concludes that most of the voting populace surveyed believes in media bias to the point that they fell the media is pulling for Senator Obama to win. Some part of that may be evidenced through the yoinking of an Ohio plumber into the national media spotlight and the scrutiny of this average Joe that followed. For others, it’s that the mainstream media apparently "drinks the Kool-Aid" that the Obama/Ayers association does not mean that Senator Obama is planning on anarchically destroying the government or moving the country to become a Socialist or Communist Republic.

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann see the current election cycle as a push-pull between economic populism on the Democratic side and social populism on the Republican side. I don’t particularly like the characterization of social populism as a conservative response born from religion and resistance to change, that has a fair share of economic conservatism (stop taking what’s my hard-earned stuff and giving to those always-unemployed, useless poor bums) in it. I think that as a whole, the social populism might be more liberal than we expect - it’s just that for one reason or another, that liberalism or tolerance is suppressed or constrained because of the environment or the presence of a loud-mouthed nut, on either side of the fence.

Too little, too late - McCain interview shows his disagreements with the current administrator, of which the spokesperson says the administrator does not take criticisms personally. I suspect the “McSame” idea has firmly entrenched itself in many voters’ minds, and, really, the party association is a bit of an albatross, even if Senator McCain is supposed to be different. Matt Towry agrees, and suggests that the Republican Party let itself be consumed into ash, to try and find their phoenix rebirth later with new views and candidates.

Last out of the matter, Nathan Tabor's column urges all the religious to take on their Biblically-ordained duties to elect good government and to provide the social justice, safety net, and assistance that churches have historically done as part of their missions. In other words, shake off the dependence on government and help people (hopefully not get people off their dependence on government to get them addicted to church).

In technology, helping debunk UFOs, 1953-style, the need to report failure in science as much as success, because it is on other people’s failures that those successes are often built, stealing virtual goods has real-life consequences, circuits made from brain cells, and a fluorescent cat.

Your dosage tonight has been expertly measured to provide useful things to you. It is up to you to figure out what they are.

Comments

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

*pours silveradept a glass of sake*

Dude...we've EARNED it this week. @_@

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Please save some sake for next week too.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

You know, I almost think reporting failure is more important in science. In a conceptual way, seeing as what we're looking for is answers.

But there is too much of a popular myth that science is infallible and whatever is said today must be right. Popular understanding of the scientific method is so bad that instead of seeing that we're closer to the truth when we replace one finding with another, some people see it as "Ahhh, the eggheads DIDN'T know what they were talking about!" and reject all findings as a result.

If people saw a little more of the process, they maybe wouldn't get the wrong impression about science.

Yes, this went on a tangent from what the point of that story was, but it's still a valid point.

[silveradept]

And we're not yet at election climax, either. It could get worse. And then, depending on who wins or "wins", the tension might not resolve. Isn't that scary?

[silveradept]

Definitely. And that was the context of the original post I saw it in, too. Science is realizing that a lot of the time, failure is to be expected, and being okay with it. Thus, the "mad" scientists of the stereotype may have the greatest understanding of the method.

circuits made from brain cells

[redrab.livejournal.com]

This reminded me of an article I saw in the NYT five years ago. You may have seen it or you might find it interesting now:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E4DB153BF932A15752C1A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

*drinks straight from bottle*

[silveradept]

Easy, now. We're going to need biting wit and sarcasm in the days to come.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Ah, I missed that bit, I was skimming. I know, it's bad, but there is SO much to read and only so many hours in the day.

Re: circuits made from brain cells

[silveradept]

Ooooooh, the fuuuuuuture, predicted in a few ways several years before. Excellent.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

This is old news. Ever since there was the public clinical trial registry, there have been concerns over the number of "failed" clinical trials that show up but don't get wider attention. The solution is NOT to publish them (as the author of the article seems to think) because no one wants to publish data like this and it'll just publish in a crappy journal no one reads anyway. This is the same as the "statistical significance bump" where there's a huge spike in data that's just barely significant and a dip in data that is just barely not. The solution is to have impartial professionals evaluate clinical trials and as new drugs come out publish a report summarizing ALL the data, failed and successful.

[silveradept]

Understandable. The article didn't have a whole lot on it, so the extra context was from thewayne, whom I swiped it from, I believe.

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

I do have an idea for a new comic! :)

[silveradept]

That would be a workable solution. Would also probably get everything in a good context, too, so that all the failures can figure out what went wrong or different, or whether to keep pursuing for some alternate method.