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silveradeptGood day, everyone. We wake up to the sounds of someone suggesting David Bowie inspired the securitization model, and thus may have inspired the current credit crunch. Much more interesting, the Comic Versus Audience flowchart of heavy metal band names. Which makes a scary amount of sense.
Oh, hey, look, some free Alan Moore stuff.
Internationally, there’s got to be a bride price comment I can make in here somewhere... although I actually think the right tack is probably to comment about how the world still values virginity, although as a item with rarity, and thus value, rather than as an item of virtue. Anyway, to pay for her master's coursework in Family and Marriage Studies, a 22 year-old graduate student is auctioning her virginity. Bidding has climbed past 2.5 million GBP. I’d say that covers grad school and a little bit more. She’s serious about it, willing to go through tests to ensure that she is still a virgin, and makes the offer for one night only. It’s an enterprising way of doing things, that’s for sure. We’ll have to see how it affects dowries, right? Well, and we’ll be interested in how she structures things so as to protect herself as much as possible from people with bad intentions and enough money to win the bid. The Divine Mr. M has additional pictures to help us figure out why her virginity is fetching such a high price.
As the economy worsens, protests in places such as China get bolder. When they have nothing to lose, the people will not be hesitant to say what they think. Which could make for a nightmare if enough people revolt. For now, things are stable. And China could do as Iran did and claim to have foiled a plot by the Untied States to topple the government.
As Ethiopian troops depart from Somalia, violence intensifies and The U.S. calls for U.N. troops to go in and keep peace.
In France, a synagogue was firebombed as Gaza-based violence continues to spread beyond Gaza. For some, this is an indication of just how anti-Semitic Europe still is, with or without the spectres of infiltration by radical Muslims bent on taking over the country. At least here, we keep it confined to opinion columns.
The CBC would like some help from Canadians, to find 49 songs that best represent Canada for Barack Obama's first foreign visit after inauguration. The outgoign administrator probably cheesed off a lot of Canadians, though, by staking a claim declaring the United States an Arctic nation, with rights to its resources and the use of its waterways, including the Northwest Passage.
Finally, a World War II mass grave found in Poland, containing Germans.
On the domestic front - Liberal Eagle and the I Drew This crew are stepping away from the politics for now as the current administrator fades away. Their parting cartoon, however, is what everyone who anticipates the new administration is thinking. Closing Guantanamo Bay, even with all the issues, is a good start. Continuing in the centrist or “pulling ends together” vein, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop will give a prayer at the inauguration of President Obama. While it would still seem better for his image to have dropped Rick Warren, it does look more and more like the President-elect will either achieve a beautiful consensus or will pit both sides against each other and make them even more bitter. Depending on how far along the fringe conservatives seize on it, the ties to a socialist organization that the incoming President's selection for global warming has could be used as fodder for revitalizing and keeping the “Obama’s a Communist” meme going, taking an index of economic freedom as the be-all measure of whether a nation is prosperous and concluding that any move they see as socialist is inherently bad. Paul Hsieh at least outlines possible consequences, like government regulation of the nation's waistlines, of implementing policies like universal health care - government pays, government regulates, so people had better not be out of shape, and things shouldn’t cost too much. That it’s wrapped up in nanny-state rhetoric actually hurts it, because it tries to make it part of a bigger problem which may or may not have agreement in all the particulars.
Secretary of State appointee Hillary Clinton took her grilling with preparation and poise, according to the HuffPo.
All in all, a lot of people are watching the incoming President, and hoping that he’s up for the job.
The sad, sad, saga of Joe the Plumber continues, with his being made into a war correspondent, definitely a case of point, laugh at those who think this is effective against liberal bias or that it annoys liberals. What likely annoys them more was the outgoing administrator's final press conference, where he admitted to some rhetorical flaws while defending flaws of execution, like the response to Hurricane Katrina. That, and the whole campaign to make his image look better for history, when he had previously said he didn’t really care about history. There might even be uncomfortable comparisons between him and his father.
Minnesota government officials denied Al Franken's request to have the Senate election certified, citing that all legal troubles must be resolved before they can do so. I think that Senate seat’s going to stay vacant for a while.
In the opinions, Fred Barnes says we have to give credit to the outgoing administrator for what he did right, including stopping the consensus on global warming, presidential imperialness, warrantless wiretapping, supporting Israel, No Child Left Behind... okay, he’s a nutter. Moving on, Dick Morris believes that by respecting the law on wiretaps and on torture, President Obama will weaken our ability to fight terror to the point that another deadly attack will occur. Hrm. Zero for two on sanity. William McGurn suggests that President Obama could learn a thing or two from Richard Cheney - to support and find out what works and why, no matter how unpopular it is, which is actually pretty sound, notwithstanding the person it comes from.
The WSJ talks about taking on the Clintons as part of your team, considering Bill can globe-trot and raise cash from figures the WSJ considers dubious. Much better. The WSJ also compains about the Democratic willingness to keep the estate tax, whcih will punish people who can’t afford tax lawyers to hide all their stuff. The smartest advice I’ve seen so far today is IBM's chair saying that we need to invest serious dollars in our information and power infrastructures, so that we can prepare ourselves for the 21st century.
Shannon Kelley has a brush with the impermanence of all things, thanks to a raging wildfire that could have wiped out all their possessions. It didn’t, but it’s definitely that point where you take stock and decide whether anything really is too precious to lose.
Last out of opinions, Jonathan Zimmerman on the effectiveness of opinion columns - they don’t usually work in the short term, but over time, or on rare occasions, sometimes one sticks.
In technology, after going through another world clock statistics device and a group looking for volunteers to simulate life on Mars, find a rickshaw pulled by robot, animals hunted by humans are becoming smaller, because we hunt the biggest things we can find - thus the small ones survive and breed, making smaller better. We’re accelerating the evolutionary process (sort of - our interference is probably just establishing a new “normal’ for their evolution). Anyway, there’s also a doctor interested in studying ignorance, the first recorded three-dimensional picture of a virus, guide robots, inexpensive machines to help the blind see, developing nanoscale robot surgery assistants, and teaching science in small, experimental settings instead of large lecture halls.
Last for tonight, a 1:1 model of a spaceship, sadly not functional, but very pretty. And Krampus, the dark side of Santa.
Oh, hey, look, some free Alan Moore stuff.
Internationally, there’s got to be a bride price comment I can make in here somewhere... although I actually think the right tack is probably to comment about how the world still values virginity, although as a item with rarity, and thus value, rather than as an item of virtue. Anyway, to pay for her master's coursework in Family and Marriage Studies, a 22 year-old graduate student is auctioning her virginity. Bidding has climbed past 2.5 million GBP. I’d say that covers grad school and a little bit more. She’s serious about it, willing to go through tests to ensure that she is still a virgin, and makes the offer for one night only. It’s an enterprising way of doing things, that’s for sure. We’ll have to see how it affects dowries, right? Well, and we’ll be interested in how she structures things so as to protect herself as much as possible from people with bad intentions and enough money to win the bid. The Divine Mr. M has additional pictures to help us figure out why her virginity is fetching such a high price.
As the economy worsens, protests in places such as China get bolder. When they have nothing to lose, the people will not be hesitant to say what they think. Which could make for a nightmare if enough people revolt. For now, things are stable. And China could do as Iran did and claim to have foiled a plot by the Untied States to topple the government.
As Ethiopian troops depart from Somalia, violence intensifies and The U.S. calls for U.N. troops to go in and keep peace.
In France, a synagogue was firebombed as Gaza-based violence continues to spread beyond Gaza. For some, this is an indication of just how anti-Semitic Europe still is, with or without the spectres of infiltration by radical Muslims bent on taking over the country. At least here, we keep it confined to opinion columns.
The CBC would like some help from Canadians, to find 49 songs that best represent Canada for Barack Obama's first foreign visit after inauguration. The outgoign administrator probably cheesed off a lot of Canadians, though, by staking a claim declaring the United States an Arctic nation, with rights to its resources and the use of its waterways, including the Northwest Passage.
Finally, a World War II mass grave found in Poland, containing Germans.
On the domestic front - Liberal Eagle and the I Drew This crew are stepping away from the politics for now as the current administrator fades away. Their parting cartoon, however, is what everyone who anticipates the new administration is thinking. Closing Guantanamo Bay, even with all the issues, is a good start. Continuing in the centrist or “pulling ends together” vein, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop will give a prayer at the inauguration of President Obama. While it would still seem better for his image to have dropped Rick Warren, it does look more and more like the President-elect will either achieve a beautiful consensus or will pit both sides against each other and make them even more bitter. Depending on how far along the fringe conservatives seize on it, the ties to a socialist organization that the incoming President's selection for global warming has could be used as fodder for revitalizing and keeping the “Obama’s a Communist” meme going, taking an index of economic freedom as the be-all measure of whether a nation is prosperous and concluding that any move they see as socialist is inherently bad. Paul Hsieh at least outlines possible consequences, like government regulation of the nation's waistlines, of implementing policies like universal health care - government pays, government regulates, so people had better not be out of shape, and things shouldn’t cost too much. That it’s wrapped up in nanny-state rhetoric actually hurts it, because it tries to make it part of a bigger problem which may or may not have agreement in all the particulars.
Secretary of State appointee Hillary Clinton took her grilling with preparation and poise, according to the HuffPo.
All in all, a lot of people are watching the incoming President, and hoping that he’s up for the job.
The sad, sad, saga of Joe the Plumber continues, with his being made into a war correspondent, definitely a case of point, laugh at those who think this is effective against liberal bias or that it annoys liberals. What likely annoys them more was the outgoing administrator's final press conference, where he admitted to some rhetorical flaws while defending flaws of execution, like the response to Hurricane Katrina. That, and the whole campaign to make his image look better for history, when he had previously said he didn’t really care about history. There might even be uncomfortable comparisons between him and his father.
Minnesota government officials denied Al Franken's request to have the Senate election certified, citing that all legal troubles must be resolved before they can do so. I think that Senate seat’s going to stay vacant for a while.
In the opinions, Fred Barnes says we have to give credit to the outgoing administrator for what he did right, including stopping the consensus on global warming, presidential imperialness, warrantless wiretapping, supporting Israel, No Child Left Behind... okay, he’s a nutter. Moving on, Dick Morris believes that by respecting the law on wiretaps and on torture, President Obama will weaken our ability to fight terror to the point that another deadly attack will occur. Hrm. Zero for two on sanity. William McGurn suggests that President Obama could learn a thing or two from Richard Cheney - to support and find out what works and why, no matter how unpopular it is, which is actually pretty sound, notwithstanding the person it comes from.
The WSJ talks about taking on the Clintons as part of your team, considering Bill can globe-trot and raise cash from figures the WSJ considers dubious. Much better. The WSJ also compains about the Democratic willingness to keep the estate tax, whcih will punish people who can’t afford tax lawyers to hide all their stuff. The smartest advice I’ve seen so far today is IBM's chair saying that we need to invest serious dollars in our information and power infrastructures, so that we can prepare ourselves for the 21st century.
Shannon Kelley has a brush with the impermanence of all things, thanks to a raging wildfire that could have wiped out all their possessions. It didn’t, but it’s definitely that point where you take stock and decide whether anything really is too precious to lose.
Last out of opinions, Jonathan Zimmerman on the effectiveness of opinion columns - they don’t usually work in the short term, but over time, or on rare occasions, sometimes one sticks.
In technology, after going through another world clock statistics device and a group looking for volunteers to simulate life on Mars, find a rickshaw pulled by robot, animals hunted by humans are becoming smaller, because we hunt the biggest things we can find - thus the small ones survive and breed, making smaller better. We’re accelerating the evolutionary process (sort of - our interference is probably just establishing a new “normal’ for their evolution). Anyway, there’s also a doctor interested in studying ignorance, the first recorded three-dimensional picture of a virus, guide robots, inexpensive machines to help the blind see, developing nanoscale robot surgery assistants, and teaching science in small, experimental settings instead of large lecture halls.
Last for tonight, a 1:1 model of a spaceship, sadly not functional, but very pretty. And Krampus, the dark side of Santa.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 12:56 pm (UTC)... Y'know, if I had a shred of respect for that fucker left, that would have destroyed it. As it is, it simply confirms my utter loathing for him.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 06:10 pm (UTC)