Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2008-10-30 11:36 pm
silveradept) wrote2008-10-30 11:36 pm
Getting close to the point of total awesome - 30 October 2008
Let’s begin. Candy recall! Canadian Sherwood brand Pirate's Gold,, and White Rabbit Creamy Candy or Koala's March Creme filled Cookies, for suspicion of melamine.
Philadelphia wins rain-delayed baseball championship, which elicited cheers and jeers when Governor Palin mentioned it while in the western part of the state today.
International news of a more standard measure - more accusations that Iran is deliberately sending in people to disrupt the current secure state. I’m sure that if there had been more support for the Iraq invasion... and more enlistment, instead of the way that things ended up being with scandal and insurgency and having to, say, stop and rebuild before moving on, that we’d already be in Iran, trying to bring it back up from having been knocked over. Iran would have been a more convincing narrative - after all, the nuclear stuff is actually there. But things are better in Baghdad than they were before, which is a testament to the ability to rebuild things that have been knocked over. And, really, it might be Pakistan that we're eyeing next, not Iran. And Syria's not too happy about how we treated them a few days ago.
Of course, all of this doesn’t take into account that we're planning on sending lots more troops to Afghanistan. Perhaps, instead, we should take a cue from a letter from someone serving in Afghanistan, and focus on what seems to be working well - building, protecting, revitalizing, showing the better way, providing help rather than showing the tank barrel.
DPRK leader Kim Jong-il is apparently having a setback in his stroke recovery, according to new PRK intelligence.
Domestic matters: Library raided with 60+ heavily armed people... to arrest three custodians of the public library. And it’s not like they were trying for any resistance, either - they let the police in. Apparently, they were undocumented. 60 police for 3 undocumented workers. Overkill much?
Actually, I’ve got a better example. And that the Pentagon Chief basically threatened the American public to build them better nuclear weapons, or they would start re-testing the old ones.
The New Yorker has a fascinating piece about the differences between how evangelicals and non-evangelicals approach sex and teenage pregnancy. Strikingly, the groups more permissive and unsurprised by teenage sex (and more likely to know that sex is pleasurable and to use protection) tend to be a bit more surprised by pregnancy (perhaps assuming that protection is used and that the teenagers know the benefits of it), and those who are shocked by teenage sex are okay with pregnancy, but only if the child is carried to term. Of course, those who believe strongly in abstinence are less likely to use protection, because of the shouting how protection is ineffective against diseases and pregnancy. The divorce rate? Highest in places that are highly populated by moral-values voters, because marriage is the “fix” for teenage pregnancy, because they may be marrying someone they don’t want to stick with for five months, much less five or fifty years, and are marrying while still in a risk-taking phase. And, all that stuff about gay marriage and abortion? Isn’t helping anyone stay abstinent or married. Neither, in fact, is implying that the Democratic candidate wouldn't take action if a baby carriage were in the middle of train tracks as a way of saying he’s a baby-killer. For the Slacktivist, though, the metaphor breaks down in a lot of ways, rendering it rather less potent.
In a different religious measure, praying to the golden calf to deliver one from an economic slowdown.
Extended hours at Florida polls - perhaps in a want to make sure there aren’t any spectres of 2000? Of course, it could be True Belief in the idea that everyone who wants to vote should be able to. Unlike John Stossel, commenting that the uninformed, clueless, and politically ignorant should not go out and vote, and should find something else to do on Election Day. With not a word about how we should be educating people about civics and politics in addition to registering them. Or does Stossel believe the American education system is sufficient to get people there from here? It’s not too hard to find data. Much of it isn’t true or is 95% bullshit. Maybe, instead of just saying they should go home, Stossel should be out on Election Day doing a mini “This is how Democracy works, how to cast your ballot properly, and here’s a capsule summary of the major candidates’ positions” workshop for whomever wants it and feels clueless. Then we might avoid embarassment where more than 5% of people who already voted in Florida and Ohio not knowing who they voted for. Although, I don’t know if that’s genuine cluelessness or being tongue-in-cheek about the possibility of having one’s vote stolen.
In the candidates, Senator Obama's infomercial reached some 33.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen research. Fox, of course, believes that Senator Obama's infomercial on Wednesday was only possibly effective, with some saying it worked, and others unconvinced that it got undecideds in the Obama column. In other matters, Bishop of Rome still a Catholic. The quotes , however, in the article are pretty classic. Witness: “He needed to make himself look totally white,” he said, adding Obama should have acknowledged that even though his skin is slightly darker, he’s still a regular human being....It’s going to come down to whether the average Joe or Jane accepts Barack Obama as an African-American or a human being,“ And Fox and others in the RNC still claim that their supporters have no racist or xenophobic attitudes at all. Not then, not when darkening the skin color of an opponent in a state race, nor in still believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and using that as a pejorative, nor in repeating the word "socialist" around Senator Obama and other Democrats, also as a pejorative, even going so far to ask as if the country envisioned by the founding documents exists anymore (and all the while claiming the media outlet is basically fellating Senator Obama at every turn, although not in such language), playing up Senator Obama's "Arabic" roots as a way to try and tie him to radicals in the Middle East that want to see him elected so they can cause chaos, and interviewing former FBI agents to make the point that they wouldn't have let the Senator have a security clearance, so he’s obviously untrustworthy, a racist, and a domestic terrorist-by-association, with the possible implication that said President Obama wouldn’t have the full trust and cooperation of agencies providing intelligence to him.
The Economist endorses Senator Obama for President of the United States, citing the need to take a chance on the Senator, who they feel has the best chance of restoring confidence to Americans. Maybe they looked at the NYT's graphic that says $10,000 invested solely during Democratic administrations would have become $300,671.
Thomas Sowell has bought into the idea that raising taxes means less jobs and a slower economy and less to retire on, as capital gains taxes eat stockholders profits from their shares. Lowering taxes might induce more people to pay less money, and if the numbers can work out that that will actually increase revenue, then that’s not necessarily a bad idea. But that won’t necessarily translate into more jobs - more likely, it might translate into more CEO bonuses. And that’s the part where if higher taxes came calling, I’m pretty sure there could be some trimmings made across the corporate world. Make a CEO justify to the stockholders and the workers that they deserve multimillions and much more in stock options - and do it to the group of workers that may very well be laid off if those higher taxes cause companies to cut loose some staff. If they can do that, and manage the company well, then they probably have earned their pay, but if they can’t do both, then perhaps the CEO can do with less, the people can do with more, and the government can have a year or four where it can have a surplus, thanks to increased revenues and slashed spending? (Of course, according to Walter E. Williams, this is what he calls "wacknomics", the idea that greed drives a lot of profit-seeking behavior, and that the greedy should suffer from wealth redistribution) And maybe the government can do what millions of people are rushing to do now - save and pay down its debts? (Might even kick some of the economy into gear as the snowball starts to roll on having more money freed up because financing isn’t so deadly. It works for us - when I pay my loans off, I end up being able to devote that money from the next paycheck to other things instead of paying off my loan.)
Perhaps the best positive vote for the Senator is that he, or his campaign, took the time out to respond to letters sent by second graders as part of a curriculum exercise around the story "Flat Stanley". And these were not form letter responses, but responses that sounded as if the Senator had written them and taken the Flat Stanley character around with him (he may have written them. I don’t know.) The point made, especially in the comments, is that even if it is a campaign staffer ghostwriting him, there is someone there in the campaign who makes it a priority to respond to writers and make it sound personal and like Senator Obama read and considered the letter and wrote a reply, and that if elected, he will continue listening to the people and giving them responses that are tailored to them.
Senator McCain and Governor Palin are going for broke on the pro-life situation,
Non-candidate opinions include demonizing the American populace as helping radicals, because the post-apocalyptic game Fallout 3 has images of a Washington, D.C. after a nuclear strike, and we, as the American populace, don’t immediately rush to censor such images nor denounce the obviously growing radical threat that takes sustenance from such things. Because we’ve forgotten what it means to be American, and what that entails, including the strenuous fight against ideologies that are hostile to us, in our relativism, willingness to engage diplomatic options, attempts to understand the root causes, and giving the populace the benefit of the doubt on whether they will be able to outgrow any atavisms, perceived or real, instead of denouncing them as categorically bad and exercising an option reserved for those who are beyond the pale.
Kathleen Parker compliments and praises the work Mrs. Bush has done for women around the world, and laments that she wasn’t louder and more media-covered about it. I don’t know if I can comment all that much about her, because of that lack of media coverage. Could the Unabashed Feminism Department provide some information, and comment on whether the application of the ”feminist“ label to her person is warranted?
In tech, Rockband creator Harmonix secures Beatles license. So we could very well be seeing Rockband: Beatles in the same vein of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Also, more from the opened UFO files, attempting to kill each other, a Burmese python and an alligator came to an agreement - the alligator would get eaten, but the python would explode, ultrasound pulses used to modulate neural circuits, although we’re not at, like zombified mind control here, and robot faces that are getting a lot better at mimicking human expressions.
On the weird pages, The Cat Who Drank Too Much, noting that cat macros have been here longer than we think, a Van De Graff levitation wand, and a movie panned by the critics has enthusiastic followers on BitTorrent, with the pirates providing publicity even when the official reviewers found it not to their liking.
Last for tonight, The NYT does not recognize the Flying Spaghetti Monster when seen.
Philadelphia wins rain-delayed baseball championship, which elicited cheers and jeers when Governor Palin mentioned it while in the western part of the state today.
International news of a more standard measure - more accusations that Iran is deliberately sending in people to disrupt the current secure state. I’m sure that if there had been more support for the Iraq invasion... and more enlistment, instead of the way that things ended up being with scandal and insurgency and having to, say, stop and rebuild before moving on, that we’d already be in Iran, trying to bring it back up from having been knocked over. Iran would have been a more convincing narrative - after all, the nuclear stuff is actually there. But things are better in Baghdad than they were before, which is a testament to the ability to rebuild things that have been knocked over. And, really, it might be Pakistan that we're eyeing next, not Iran. And Syria's not too happy about how we treated them a few days ago.
Of course, all of this doesn’t take into account that we're planning on sending lots more troops to Afghanistan. Perhaps, instead, we should take a cue from a letter from someone serving in Afghanistan, and focus on what seems to be working well - building, protecting, revitalizing, showing the better way, providing help rather than showing the tank barrel.
DPRK leader Kim Jong-il is apparently having a setback in his stroke recovery, according to new PRK intelligence.
Domestic matters: Library raided with 60+ heavily armed people... to arrest three custodians of the public library. And it’s not like they were trying for any resistance, either - they let the police in. Apparently, they were undocumented. 60 police for 3 undocumented workers. Overkill much?
Actually, I’ve got a better example. And that the Pentagon Chief basically threatened the American public to build them better nuclear weapons, or they would start re-testing the old ones.
The New Yorker has a fascinating piece about the differences between how evangelicals and non-evangelicals approach sex and teenage pregnancy. Strikingly, the groups more permissive and unsurprised by teenage sex (and more likely to know that sex is pleasurable and to use protection) tend to be a bit more surprised by pregnancy (perhaps assuming that protection is used and that the teenagers know the benefits of it), and those who are shocked by teenage sex are okay with pregnancy, but only if the child is carried to term. Of course, those who believe strongly in abstinence are less likely to use protection, because of the shouting how protection is ineffective against diseases and pregnancy. The divorce rate? Highest in places that are highly populated by moral-values voters, because marriage is the “fix” for teenage pregnancy, because they may be marrying someone they don’t want to stick with for five months, much less five or fifty years, and are marrying while still in a risk-taking phase. And, all that stuff about gay marriage and abortion? Isn’t helping anyone stay abstinent or married. Neither, in fact, is implying that the Democratic candidate wouldn't take action if a baby carriage were in the middle of train tracks as a way of saying he’s a baby-killer. For the Slacktivist, though, the metaphor breaks down in a lot of ways, rendering it rather less potent.
In a different religious measure, praying to the golden calf to deliver one from an economic slowdown.
Extended hours at Florida polls - perhaps in a want to make sure there aren’t any spectres of 2000? Of course, it could be True Belief in the idea that everyone who wants to vote should be able to. Unlike John Stossel, commenting that the uninformed, clueless, and politically ignorant should not go out and vote, and should find something else to do on Election Day. With not a word about how we should be educating people about civics and politics in addition to registering them. Or does Stossel believe the American education system is sufficient to get people there from here? It’s not too hard to find data. Much of it isn’t true or is 95% bullshit. Maybe, instead of just saying they should go home, Stossel should be out on Election Day doing a mini “This is how Democracy works, how to cast your ballot properly, and here’s a capsule summary of the major candidates’ positions” workshop for whomever wants it and feels clueless. Then we might avoid embarassment where more than 5% of people who already voted in Florida and Ohio not knowing who they voted for. Although, I don’t know if that’s genuine cluelessness or being tongue-in-cheek about the possibility of having one’s vote stolen.
In the candidates, Senator Obama's infomercial reached some 33.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen research. Fox, of course, believes that Senator Obama's infomercial on Wednesday was only possibly effective, with some saying it worked, and others unconvinced that it got undecideds in the Obama column. In other matters, Bishop of Rome still a Catholic. The quotes , however, in the article are pretty classic. Witness: “He needed to make himself look totally white,” he said, adding Obama should have acknowledged that even though his skin is slightly darker, he’s still a regular human being....It’s going to come down to whether the average Joe or Jane accepts Barack Obama as an African-American or a human being,“ And Fox and others in the RNC still claim that their supporters have no racist or xenophobic attitudes at all. Not then, not when darkening the skin color of an opponent in a state race, nor in still believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and using that as a pejorative, nor in repeating the word "socialist" around Senator Obama and other Democrats, also as a pejorative, even going so far to ask as if the country envisioned by the founding documents exists anymore (and all the while claiming the media outlet is basically fellating Senator Obama at every turn, although not in such language), playing up Senator Obama's "Arabic" roots as a way to try and tie him to radicals in the Middle East that want to see him elected so they can cause chaos, and interviewing former FBI agents to make the point that they wouldn't have let the Senator have a security clearance, so he’s obviously untrustworthy, a racist, and a domestic terrorist-by-association, with the possible implication that said President Obama wouldn’t have the full trust and cooperation of agencies providing intelligence to him.
The Economist endorses Senator Obama for President of the United States, citing the need to take a chance on the Senator, who they feel has the best chance of restoring confidence to Americans. Maybe they looked at the NYT's graphic that says $10,000 invested solely during Democratic administrations would have become $300,671.
Thomas Sowell has bought into the idea that raising taxes means less jobs and a slower economy and less to retire on, as capital gains taxes eat stockholders profits from their shares. Lowering taxes might induce more people to pay less money, and if the numbers can work out that that will actually increase revenue, then that’s not necessarily a bad idea. But that won’t necessarily translate into more jobs - more likely, it might translate into more CEO bonuses. And that’s the part where if higher taxes came calling, I’m pretty sure there could be some trimmings made across the corporate world. Make a CEO justify to the stockholders and the workers that they deserve multimillions and much more in stock options - and do it to the group of workers that may very well be laid off if those higher taxes cause companies to cut loose some staff. If they can do that, and manage the company well, then they probably have earned their pay, but if they can’t do both, then perhaps the CEO can do with less, the people can do with more, and the government can have a year or four where it can have a surplus, thanks to increased revenues and slashed spending? (Of course, according to Walter E. Williams, this is what he calls "wacknomics", the idea that greed drives a lot of profit-seeking behavior, and that the greedy should suffer from wealth redistribution) And maybe the government can do what millions of people are rushing to do now - save and pay down its debts? (Might even kick some of the economy into gear as the snowball starts to roll on having more money freed up because financing isn’t so deadly. It works for us - when I pay my loans off, I end up being able to devote that money from the next paycheck to other things instead of paying off my loan.)
Perhaps the best positive vote for the Senator is that he, or his campaign, took the time out to respond to letters sent by second graders as part of a curriculum exercise around the story "Flat Stanley". And these were not form letter responses, but responses that sounded as if the Senator had written them and taken the Flat Stanley character around with him (he may have written them. I don’t know.) The point made, especially in the comments, is that even if it is a campaign staffer ghostwriting him, there is someone there in the campaign who makes it a priority to respond to writers and make it sound personal and like Senator Obama read and considered the letter and wrote a reply, and that if elected, he will continue listening to the people and giving them responses that are tailored to them.
Senator McCain and Governor Palin are going for broke on the pro-life situation,
Non-candidate opinions include demonizing the American populace as helping radicals, because the post-apocalyptic game Fallout 3 has images of a Washington, D.C. after a nuclear strike, and we, as the American populace, don’t immediately rush to censor such images nor denounce the obviously growing radical threat that takes sustenance from such things. Because we’ve forgotten what it means to be American, and what that entails, including the strenuous fight against ideologies that are hostile to us, in our relativism, willingness to engage diplomatic options, attempts to understand the root causes, and giving the populace the benefit of the doubt on whether they will be able to outgrow any atavisms, perceived or real, instead of denouncing them as categorically bad and exercising an option reserved for those who are beyond the pale.
Kathleen Parker compliments and praises the work Mrs. Bush has done for women around the world, and laments that she wasn’t louder and more media-covered about it. I don’t know if I can comment all that much about her, because of that lack of media coverage. Could the Unabashed Feminism Department provide some information, and comment on whether the application of the ”feminist“ label to her person is warranted?
In tech, Rockband creator Harmonix secures Beatles license. So we could very well be seeing Rockband: Beatles in the same vein of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Also, more from the opened UFO files, attempting to kill each other, a Burmese python and an alligator came to an agreement - the alligator would get eaten, but the python would explode, ultrasound pulses used to modulate neural circuits, although we’re not at, like zombified mind control here, and robot faces that are getting a lot better at mimicking human expressions.
On the weird pages, The Cat Who Drank Too Much, noting that cat macros have been here longer than we think, a Van De Graff levitation wand, and a movie panned by the critics has enthusiastic followers on BitTorrent, with the pirates providing publicity even when the official reviewers found it not to their liking.
Last for tonight, The NYT does not recognize the Flying Spaghetti Monster when seen.
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Thomas Sowell link leads to the Torrent story.
"Flat Stanley". Link leads to the bad candy story.
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Or, if not started, has expanded as an avatar to include such things.