The regular news feed - 25 February 2009
Feb. 26th, 2009 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptA warning up top, namely, as technology advances, social engineering becomes more and more popular as a way of installing malware, so be careful of messages that look like they’re from friends, and be especially careful of messages that want you to divulge information to sites you’ve never been to.
Oh, I’m so falling over laughing with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theweaselking on this. As if Phyllis Schlafly's name would inspire fear in anyone, least of all the people who are supposed to be afraid of her appearance on campus. I get an extra chuckle out of the ND representative's reply to the General's million-sperm crusade, as the Rep. doesn’t notice the satire, nor the part where he’s given special rights to eggs without considering the sacredness of every sperm. It’s a laughable day. Here's some truly auful rap lyrics to laugh over, too. Plus, John Hodgman is more than meh about meh.
Onward to actual news.
Out in the world, rapist taunts mother about daughter's health while out on parole, mother douses rapist in petrol, sets rapist alight. I doubt a jury would convict the mother of anything. Same goes for the lady who fought off the burglars with her saucepan.
Eighteen months is the figure being floated as to the timetable of withdrawal of troops from Iraq... which will leave approximately 30K-50K troops behind, so it’s certainly not a complete withdrawal by any standards. That happens in 2011 according to the agreement negotiated by the previous administrator. Of those still inside, there's still some problems with Iraqi police supposedly on the side of law and order firing on some of the troops.
Here’s a potentially un=noticed consequence of global warming - as the ice melts and new shipping lanes and resources appear, Arctic countries such as Russia are adjusting their strategic plans. Never mind what the whole-planet damage might be, someone else might be taking stuff that we want!
Universities are warning their students that Mexico is not the place to be over Spring Break, mostly because of the intensified violence between drug cartels and police, some of which is spilling over into the United States.
Here at home, an Iowa National Guard exercise on urban warfare was cancelled, officially because the company that was going to take part had a leadership change. Perhaps also contributing were some calls that were worried that the houses being searched as part of the exercise would have their weapons confiscated, despite the official line being volunteers letting their houses be searched. All in all, looks pretty much like a CF.
An actual CF, however, is the attitudes of people toward a converted upscale apartment building designed to get homeless veterans into permanent housing, give them mental health treatment, and then get them work. Namely, the people in the article say, “What are these crazy, homeless, bums doing in our good apartments! Throw them out and get people who don’t remind us that other people aren’t as posh and moneyed as we are! Get rid of those people who remind us daily of the failures of our country to provide for everyone, especially those who served in the military and came out worse for it! They’re all crack addicts, panhandlers, felons, and thugs anyway!” (And that would be before they got to know the likely upstandign gentlemen there).
According to Gallup, the American populace still supports the Afghanistan conflict and keeping troops in there as long as needed, although there is a strong showing for a fixed withdrawal timetable. Although, just to keep you wary of numbers, while the President's approval rating looks good, it's actually pretty average, and built mostly on partisan matters, despite attempts of the President to garner support from his ideological opposition. CNN continues in this theme of how the bipartisan pledge has been sour so far... because he’s been in officce a whole month and the Republicans haven’t jumped on board.
I wasn't hearing things - someone did say "Oh, God" right before Gov. Jindal began his rebuttal speech to the President’s Congressional address. As an aside, you know how it says “From time to time, the President shall...” - at what point did that become “once a year”? I would think the President would want to address the legislative branch more than that, especially if they’re stalling on legislation he feels is important. Anyway, highlights from the Obama speech, and an across-the-spectrum panning of the response.
Heh. After dropping Michael Phelps from their endorsement list over an incident with drug paraphenalia, Kellogg's reputation and brand have been hammered by pot activists and other consumers who see it as an overreaction.
Warnings that the United States will soon lose its edge in innovation, because we’re not doing the research for it at all. If we look at how few American cars are beign driven by the task force on Detroit, it certainly looks like innovation has been given away. Perhaps this is happening because our social networks are further exacerbating our already short attetnion span and mixing it with a need for constant gratification? Well, and all the perils of the screen-based relationship taking over the face-to-face one, too.
Mass. is about to provide a decent stress test for what things would be like were everyone required to carry insurance of some sort in a down economy. Personally, I hope they come through it great.
Working the opinions, Mr. Kunstler suggests that the President stop trying to revive the dead age of consumerism, admit that things really are as bad as we think they are, and get to work on managing the contraction that is already underway, hopefully managing to avoid conflict, civil disruption, a burgeoning fascism, and chaos. Zbigniew Brzezinski thinks the riots, if they come, will be class-based, and so the easy way to avoid such an evil fate is for the rich to willingly kick in cash to a fund that the poor and middle-class can draw from to keep their own lives stable. Redistribution of wealth, in other words, done voluntarily so as to stave off the mobs with Uzis and petrol cans. If that happens, though, expect the military to be out making sure that the lower classes don't get to riot too much.
Sweetness and Light thinks ACORN should lose 501(c)(3) over members promoting the Employee Free Choice Act, implying that lobbying for the bill makes for the “substantial” lobbying effort that would nix the tax-empted status.
The WSj thinks Senator Kerry's proposal to stop banks from using TARP money to sponsor events, conferences, or entertainment is silly, on the decently reasonable position that it’s asking to micromanage money. The bigger point, about how companies that are supposedly in need of significant money to stay afloat are using it to pay for all sorts of things that don’t appear to be making money at all, is left behind. Profitable companies can sponsor events. Unprofitable companies should be figuring out how to reverse that condition. The Illinois Alliance for Growth thinks the economy has a cold, and thus, while you can treat symptoms, the cold has to run its course before anything great will happen. So no real need for giant amounts of spending, sez they. The WSJ is paradoxically worried that Mr. Obama is turning out to be a politician who walks his talk, because his talk is not the talk they think is effective. Bracingly refreshing, I suspect. Mr. Jenkins considers all of these things that the President has spoke on so far to be childish, and that he will need to grow up and see the world as it is, instead of through his ideological lenses. Mr. Blankley aims for black humor regarding how the president's "optimism" is going to spend the country into insolvency, promising fiscal restraint after the giant stimulus bill.
Mr. Schoenfeld casually mentions the long service record of the supposedly new National Intelligence Director in his rush to point out that in the past, he was not completely with the protesters in Tiananmen Square and he has at least some belief in the idea that Israel and American Jews write American foreign policy in the Middle East.
Mr. Williams takes the Attorney General's "cowardice" statement and says, "So?", declaring that our voluntary segregation doesn’t hurt us and our true cowardice lies in capitulation to when minorities demand different ceremonies and housing, things we wouldn’t let whites do because it would be considered racist, and our unwillingness to declare that civil rights and race wars are done, been won, and that black need to take personal responsibility for their own problems (by staying together in families and not fathering children out of wedlock, of course).
Mr. Sowell thinks Sarah Palin, as someone outside the elite intellectuals and country-club Republicans, is the way conservatism needs to go, fielding candidates that are Palin-esque in their outsider-ness.
The WSJ points out that the right path for giving D.C. some House representation is a Constitutional amendment, not a normal piece of legislation. A significantly tougher deal, which makes us wonder why D.C. was exempted from the whole state thing in the first place, and why.
Last out of the opinions, Mr. McBride tells the President to stop making speeches and start doing actual work, instead of leaving his agenda to the Democrats in the Legislature and the special interests of liberalism in favor of making several rounds feel-good, buzzword, and jargon-laced speeches. He also suggests the President start doing whatever it is he needs to do so that he actually knows what he’s talking about, instead of relying on scripted affairs, the Teleprompter, and the media to make him look good over his cluelessness. Yeah. Because the populace will willingly elect someone who doesn’t have a plan or an idea on how to go about things and is totally lost when those plans predictably get run off the rails by the opposition.
In tech, NASA MMORPG in the works, although I don’t quite think this is what they had in mind when reports come through that say NASA needs new direction, trying to design an automated medical checkup machine, so that people who wouldn’t visit the doc can still get a health check (it would have to be cheap - I bet a lot of people don’t visit because an offcie visit is equivalent to a month’s rent, when you have no insurance), a racetrack memory type that could make flash memory as big as and have faster access than current hard disks, Microsoft joins the augmented reality game, a 128-qubit chip undergoing tests, functional motor neurons developed from stem cells, which could mean good things for those who suffer from ALS (and maybe Parkinson’s, as well?), and looking into the ability to transplant a hand from a cadaver to an amputee - the delicate surgery is easier now, but we still have to deal with organ rejection and the like. Or, if we’re feeling adventurous, we'll build an entire tail so the amputee can swim (I remember seeing something on this before, so it’s a repeat thing, but it’s a good repeat.)
Last for tonight, your genes may help determine your optimism level.
Oh, I’m so falling over laughing with
theweaselking on this. As if Phyllis Schlafly's name would inspire fear in anyone, least of all the people who are supposed to be afraid of her appearance on campus. I get an extra chuckle out of the ND representative's reply to the General's million-sperm crusade, as the Rep. doesn’t notice the satire, nor the part where he’s given special rights to eggs without considering the sacredness of every sperm. It’s a laughable day. Here's some truly auful rap lyrics to laugh over, too. Plus, John Hodgman is more than meh about meh. Onward to actual news.
Out in the world, rapist taunts mother about daughter's health while out on parole, mother douses rapist in petrol, sets rapist alight. I doubt a jury would convict the mother of anything. Same goes for the lady who fought off the burglars with her saucepan.
Eighteen months is the figure being floated as to the timetable of withdrawal of troops from Iraq... which will leave approximately 30K-50K troops behind, so it’s certainly not a complete withdrawal by any standards. That happens in 2011 according to the agreement negotiated by the previous administrator. Of those still inside, there's still some problems with Iraqi police supposedly on the side of law and order firing on some of the troops.
Here’s a potentially un=noticed consequence of global warming - as the ice melts and new shipping lanes and resources appear, Arctic countries such as Russia are adjusting their strategic plans. Never mind what the whole-planet damage might be, someone else might be taking stuff that we want!
Universities are warning their students that Mexico is not the place to be over Spring Break, mostly because of the intensified violence between drug cartels and police, some of which is spilling over into the United States.
Here at home, an Iowa National Guard exercise on urban warfare was cancelled, officially because the company that was going to take part had a leadership change. Perhaps also contributing were some calls that were worried that the houses being searched as part of the exercise would have their weapons confiscated, despite the official line being volunteers letting their houses be searched. All in all, looks pretty much like a CF.
An actual CF, however, is the attitudes of people toward a converted upscale apartment building designed to get homeless veterans into permanent housing, give them mental health treatment, and then get them work. Namely, the people in the article say, “What are these crazy, homeless, bums doing in our good apartments! Throw them out and get people who don’t remind us that other people aren’t as posh and moneyed as we are! Get rid of those people who remind us daily of the failures of our country to provide for everyone, especially those who served in the military and came out worse for it! They’re all crack addicts, panhandlers, felons, and thugs anyway!” (And that would be before they got to know the likely upstandign gentlemen there).
According to Gallup, the American populace still supports the Afghanistan conflict and keeping troops in there as long as needed, although there is a strong showing for a fixed withdrawal timetable. Although, just to keep you wary of numbers, while the President's approval rating looks good, it's actually pretty average, and built mostly on partisan matters, despite attempts of the President to garner support from his ideological opposition. CNN continues in this theme of how the bipartisan pledge has been sour so far... because he’s been in officce a whole month and the Republicans haven’t jumped on board.
I wasn't hearing things - someone did say "Oh, God" right before Gov. Jindal began his rebuttal speech to the President’s Congressional address. As an aside, you know how it says “From time to time, the President shall...” - at what point did that become “once a year”? I would think the President would want to address the legislative branch more than that, especially if they’re stalling on legislation he feels is important. Anyway, highlights from the Obama speech, and an across-the-spectrum panning of the response.
Heh. After dropping Michael Phelps from their endorsement list over an incident with drug paraphenalia, Kellogg's reputation and brand have been hammered by pot activists and other consumers who see it as an overreaction.
Warnings that the United States will soon lose its edge in innovation, because we’re not doing the research for it at all. If we look at how few American cars are beign driven by the task force on Detroit, it certainly looks like innovation has been given away. Perhaps this is happening because our social networks are further exacerbating our already short attetnion span and mixing it with a need for constant gratification? Well, and all the perils of the screen-based relationship taking over the face-to-face one, too.
Mass. is about to provide a decent stress test for what things would be like were everyone required to carry insurance of some sort in a down economy. Personally, I hope they come through it great.
Working the opinions, Mr. Kunstler suggests that the President stop trying to revive the dead age of consumerism, admit that things really are as bad as we think they are, and get to work on managing the contraction that is already underway, hopefully managing to avoid conflict, civil disruption, a burgeoning fascism, and chaos. Zbigniew Brzezinski thinks the riots, if they come, will be class-based, and so the easy way to avoid such an evil fate is for the rich to willingly kick in cash to a fund that the poor and middle-class can draw from to keep their own lives stable. Redistribution of wealth, in other words, done voluntarily so as to stave off the mobs with Uzis and petrol cans. If that happens, though, expect the military to be out making sure that the lower classes don't get to riot too much.
Sweetness and Light thinks ACORN should lose 501(c)(3) over members promoting the Employee Free Choice Act, implying that lobbying for the bill makes for the “substantial” lobbying effort that would nix the tax-empted status.
The WSj thinks Senator Kerry's proposal to stop banks from using TARP money to sponsor events, conferences, or entertainment is silly, on the decently reasonable position that it’s asking to micromanage money. The bigger point, about how companies that are supposedly in need of significant money to stay afloat are using it to pay for all sorts of things that don’t appear to be making money at all, is left behind. Profitable companies can sponsor events. Unprofitable companies should be figuring out how to reverse that condition. The Illinois Alliance for Growth thinks the economy has a cold, and thus, while you can treat symptoms, the cold has to run its course before anything great will happen. So no real need for giant amounts of spending, sez they. The WSJ is paradoxically worried that Mr. Obama is turning out to be a politician who walks his talk, because his talk is not the talk they think is effective. Bracingly refreshing, I suspect. Mr. Jenkins considers all of these things that the President has spoke on so far to be childish, and that he will need to grow up and see the world as it is, instead of through his ideological lenses. Mr. Blankley aims for black humor regarding how the president's "optimism" is going to spend the country into insolvency, promising fiscal restraint after the giant stimulus bill.
Mr. Schoenfeld casually mentions the long service record of the supposedly new National Intelligence Director in his rush to point out that in the past, he was not completely with the protesters in Tiananmen Square and he has at least some belief in the idea that Israel and American Jews write American foreign policy in the Middle East.
Mr. Williams takes the Attorney General's "cowardice" statement and says, "So?", declaring that our voluntary segregation doesn’t hurt us and our true cowardice lies in capitulation to when minorities demand different ceremonies and housing, things we wouldn’t let whites do because it would be considered racist, and our unwillingness to declare that civil rights and race wars are done, been won, and that black need to take personal responsibility for their own problems (by staying together in families and not fathering children out of wedlock, of course).
Mr. Sowell thinks Sarah Palin, as someone outside the elite intellectuals and country-club Republicans, is the way conservatism needs to go, fielding candidates that are Palin-esque in their outsider-ness.
The WSJ points out that the right path for giving D.C. some House representation is a Constitutional amendment, not a normal piece of legislation. A significantly tougher deal, which makes us wonder why D.C. was exempted from the whole state thing in the first place, and why.
Last out of the opinions, Mr. McBride tells the President to stop making speeches and start doing actual work, instead of leaving his agenda to the Democrats in the Legislature and the special interests of liberalism in favor of making several rounds feel-good, buzzword, and jargon-laced speeches. He also suggests the President start doing whatever it is he needs to do so that he actually knows what he’s talking about, instead of relying on scripted affairs, the Teleprompter, and the media to make him look good over his cluelessness. Yeah. Because the populace will willingly elect someone who doesn’t have a plan or an idea on how to go about things and is totally lost when those plans predictably get run off the rails by the opposition.
In tech, NASA MMORPG in the works, although I don’t quite think this is what they had in mind when reports come through that say NASA needs new direction, trying to design an automated medical checkup machine, so that people who wouldn’t visit the doc can still get a health check (it would have to be cheap - I bet a lot of people don’t visit because an offcie visit is equivalent to a month’s rent, when you have no insurance), a racetrack memory type that could make flash memory as big as and have faster access than current hard disks, Microsoft joins the augmented reality game, a 128-qubit chip undergoing tests, functional motor neurons developed from stem cells, which could mean good things for those who suffer from ALS (and maybe Parkinson’s, as well?), and looking into the ability to transplant a hand from a cadaver to an amputee - the delicate surgery is easier now, but we still have to deal with organ rejection and the like. Or, if we’re feeling adventurous, we'll build an entire tail so the amputee can swim (I remember seeing something on this before, so it’s a repeat thing, but it’s a good repeat.)
Last for tonight, your genes may help determine your optimism level.
