Close to on time - 18 May 2009
May. 19th, 2009 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHello to all, enjoy the digest to follow. For extra points, try reading it aloud and see if it sounds different from when you read it in your head.
To all and sundry who think that the library is a luxury or an expendable object, whether in a millage vote or a city budget: the library is the lifeline of much of your populous. Don't screw with it.
(Oh, and have you ever tried to figure out what a group of librarians is called?)
Getting to our international desk: Pakistan denies it is expanding its nuclear arsenal.
Bees! Which is enough to make your hairs stand on end.
To inflame your anger, however, recall that in other parts of the country, people believe children can be possessed by the devil and become witches, requiring beating and even killing to "save" them from the demons possessing them, and that these accusations are on the rise. Most child witches, though, would probably be classified as disabled, difficult, delinquent, maybe even defiant children here, needing some extra work and care, but certainly not witches possessed by Satan and needing to be beaten.
A manacle with an iron ball, intended to lock your child to his study desk until the appropriate amount of time has elapsed. Because studying is enough of a problem, that you have to chain someone to the desk to get them to do it.
Truthout provides a look at modern Afghan history, considering the thirty-plus years of constant war the country has seen. It’s not a pretty picture at all. (thanks,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ldragoon) Regardless of whether you believe official government figures or a human rights group claiming the casualties have been a third of the government total.
On the other end of the scale, a photo montage of those who have more than enough money for their life already there when they started. Many of them don’t intend on living off the family name, though.
On the domestic front - The 13 people of the previous administration who made torture possible, starting with the Vice President and Ending with the President, stopping along in Justice, the CIA, and a lot of other Administration offices. Including Donald H. Rumsfeld, with stories coming out now about how much of an asshole he was during his tenure as SecDef. An interesting piece in this - Mr. Rumsfeld liked to put cover sheets with images and Scriptural quotes that gave a distinctly holy war feel to things on his intelligence updates. (To advance the slides, replace “01” with higher numbers until reaching 11.)
Vice President Biden may have revealed the location of Mr. Cheney's secret undiscolsed location that he was fond of retreating to and has been lampooned in the liberal press and blogosphere. At least, Fox thinks it’s the secret location.
The new NIH stem cell guidelines have been drafted and are now open for public comment. For some, the draft material is far too tepid and timid to be of any real use for advocating and protecting science from religious nuttery and those completely opposed to stem cell research. After reading the guidelines, add you comments to the draft at the NIH website.
The SCOTUS refuses to hear a case brought claiming that federal bans on marijuana trump any medical-marijuana laws states may pass, indicating that the states take precedence on the matter, at least for now. That is a tangle that needs to be teased out, though. Getting busted by feds with a medical marijuana law could result in a hairy situation.
President Obama gave a commencement address at Notre Dame university that presented a pragmatic solution reflecting the President's position - legal, but rare. Considering Notre Dame is a Catholic university, that went over with some of the inhabitants much like a lead balloon.
In case you were wondering, just about every industrialized nation except the United States mandates that workers be given paid sick time. Not only that, they don't lose a large amount of productivity because their workers aren't forced to come in sick and thus prolong their illnesses and infect co-workers. Nothing you didn’t already know, but here’s the numbers to prove it, once again.
Washington State hasn't hit marriage yet, but it appears their domestic partnerships will be everything but the name. Hopefully, this means that someone can then say, “Well, if it’s everything but the name, why not give the name, too?” Mr. Cline points out that the current President has basically abandoned any sort of leadership drive or desire on federal-level equality for homosexuals, whether on marriage or on the still discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell”, a policy that has a brighter line than torture did for the last administration. On the other side of the political divide, RNC Chairman Michael Steele suggested that the gay marriage debate be recast as one that hurts small businesses, because more domestic partnerships means paying more for benefits. Which could be cast as “those damn gay people are costing us money”, or likely the better way as “Why are private businesses paying for health care benefits?” After all, that matter could easily be resolved if the private businesses weren’t the people who offered sick time, vacation time and medical insurances. Then small business owners have most of their costs freed up to pay competitive wages with. Everyone wins, yes?
In the opinions, The General points out some very interesting rights that one Stephen Pidgeon believes are under assault, among other things that read as being rather insane. Perhaps he is also worried about persons trying to use bananas as weapons to rob stores with.
The WSJ is certain that Iran will have to be glassed or otherwise stopped from achieving nuclear weapons, or both Israel and the United States will have failed. On a more positive note, Pope Benedict XVI spoke well of needing good relations between Christians and Jews, denouncing the Shoah and doing his office well. Both the article and I wonder whether he will extend the same courtesy and good behavior to Muslims.
Mr. Rosen tells newspaper media that blogs are a publishing format, like newspapers, and that bloggers are doing lots of good journalism.
The WSJ complains about the expanded contributions of the United States to the IMF, considering it not very transparent at all, and Mr. Reynolds complains that Mr. Obama is being careless when he jokingly invokes the IRS, because his words carry weight, and the WSJ laments that the real reforms California needs will not be passed on the special ballot initiatives vote. Assuming, of course, the rich that everyone wants to soak stick around in the states that want their money, which should send a signal that “everyone knows” lower taxes are better for everyone, and no taxes are best! (Although I do wonder how New Hampshire, the shining beacon mentioned, pays for government services with no income or sales tax. I’m betting there are other taxes involved.)
Ms. O'sGrady praises the appearance of a democratic, individual-rights focused movement in Guatemala, which deserves cheers for wanting to stop the rule of dictatorships. Then she equates the dictatorship rule with collectivism right at the end, just so that we know the bad evil people claim to be socialists. If they were socialists, odds are they wouldn’t be in a dictatorship, but that doesn’t matter to the people who want to keep socialism as a dirty word. Better to advocate for justice to be done in repressive regimes than spend time trying to equate an actual lout with a perceived evil.
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown are up in arms about Michael Savage being banned from the UK, and think that the Obama administration plans on mimicing them against all conservatives. If the Obama administration really were intent on such a thing, the uproar they’re expecting us to give over his UK ban will happen. I don’t think much will happen on the UK front, though, because I do believe, stupid as it may be, it is their right to ban him from entering the country, including putting him in unflattering company. This, according to the Browns, is the Thought Police at work, a suppression of free speech and dissent, and the Obama adminstration and the mainstream media should be going to bat for Mr. Savage to get him off the ban list.
The WSJ is smug about how liberals have lost the issue of gun control, based on an amendment introduced into a credit card bill that would let people carry firearms in national parks. One, what the fuck is a gun-control item doing in a credit-card bill? That should be procedurally beaten down, not voted on. Two, how does that say anything about gun control? Most people don’t think they need protection from criminals in national parks.
Mr. Gallagher makes a salient point about blaming an institution for the actions of a rogue (don’t), and finds himself on the other end of the “you didn’t serve, you can’t know what’s going on” department that developed out of the “support our troops, right or wrong” mentality of the previous administration. There is a deeper point about the rogue soldier, though, which I think the clumshy attempts of “you don’t know what goes on there” are tryign to get at - what happens in the military may predispose people toward those violent acts, either creating or exacerbating mental instabilities. And with the sorry state of mental health care for those returning from war, preventable problems might escalate into violent incidents. So what needs to be evaluated and improved are the processes by which people determine whether or not a soldier is mentally fit for duty and the support system that returning soldiers receive to deal with any problems taht may have developed over the course of their service.
Mr. Hill tells us that the President fancies himself a messiah because the people want him to be a singular force that takes away all our pains, and because the people are staggeringly ignorant of what the Constitutional system does in order to prevent messiahs in the Executive from taking over. Which means that ou schools failed us, our elected people are failing us, and if I’m feeling particularly nasty, I’ll blame the previous Administrator’s style of flagrantly disregarding the laws he signs into action as the reason why people think the Executive can do more than it really can. Well, that and certain commentators who think an actual attack line against the President is that he left the writing of the bill up to the legislators...y’know, the people who are tasked with writing the laws.
Ms. Saunders opines that Nancy Pelosi backed herslef into a corner on torture, is a hypocrite because she didn't denounce or stop it then, despite having full knowledge of what was going on, and is looking increasingly desperate to get out without damning herself. Well, lay it all out, then. Only the truth, and all of it, will tell us what actually went on. Mr. Benson offers a mocking defense of Ms. Pelosi, claiming she sees conspiracies where there are none.
In competition for flaky flaming pastry, Mr. Will sings the praises of The Market, indicatig that if left alone, it will punish the greedy...by using ticket scalping as his example, a commidity with a predefined worthlessness. Which works in his limited environment - the greedy do get punished by not being able to sell their tickets. Thing is, there’s an entire market of goods out there that don’t have predetermined expiry dates. The greedy there may get punished by nobody buying their objects, sure, but it takes a lot longer, and it assumes that the greedy aren’t all working-together-without-working-together to ensure that everyone profits handsomely. And there are the people with commodities that everyone needs, who won’t get priced out by The Market because everyone needs some of what they have - so long as there’s ample supply, they won’t sell, but when supply starts to run out, then the greedy do get rewarded because people have to buy from them. But greed is clearly regulated by The Market, Mr. Will. I see that now. Take a bronzed pastry and move on.
Mr. Stokes embarrasses himself defending Governor Palin by attacking the people in the media who dismissed the book deal the Governor signed to "collaborate" on an autobiography, because he is certain that underneath the portrayal as a ditz, a pageant queen, and hockey mom is an formidable Republican contender, who resonates with the (ever-shrinking) base and who will take politics by storm and possibly be the nexy President. Just you wait, says Mr. Stokes, Governor Palin is the real deal. Which would be a fair assessment if the Governor’s actions and appearances supported that assertion, something that I have yet to see. Silver effort, though.
Winning top dishonors tonight, however is Bill'O, who defends Dick Cheney and his one-man torture apologetics show, as well as crowing that the drive to put those responsible for the torture on trial is drying up. Because, as Bill’O tells us, all of this torture anger and anti-Cheneyness is just liberals acting out a revenge fantasy for the last eight years, further frustrated that the person elected to order the prosecutions has said he has no intention of doing so and isn’t really leaving open that much for options for others to pick up where he’s failing. Bill’O says that Dick Cheney is right, that Mr. Obama is making the country less safe, and that torture was justified. For that alone, he deserves derision and scorn. One golden-brown flaming-hot pastry, coming your way, sir.
In the sciences, the current species of homo may have butchered and eaten their predecessors, the discovery of a regular laser pulse from the cosmos, which could be ET, or could be a phenomenon (doot do, dee doo doo), looking for oxygen-breathing aliens, making lithium batteries even more powerful, color e-ink, another step toward artificial soft tissues, Fujitsu takes the supercomputer processor crown, attempting to develop lifelike and intelligent avatars to stand in for people, perhaps to play hookey at an unimportant meeting while doing real work elsewhere, Hubble repairs completed, even with glitches in the repair crew equipment, and Scribd, attempting to do to e-books what iTunes did to music, with chapters available and book authors keeping about 80 percent of their prices.
Last for tonight, this is why the liberal arts still work, or why having an English degree and taking philosohpy can help you be an excellent accountant. Plus, I'm betting liberal arts comes in handy when spotting plagarism.
Okay, one more thing as a postscript - propaganda from the RIAA and probably one other group purporting to be about how the court system works, by using an eminent domain suit in The City of Arbor involving the undervaluation of homes, which, when re-valued, stops the building of a library (why a library? Why not, say, Wal-Mart, which is what it seems to be these days...) and then a case of someone being prosecuted for file sharing and receiving a suspended sentence, instead of being offered an expensive buyout and then possibly having the case be thrown out because the cabal couldn’t prove the person was actually the person. For more interesting material, consult comics of interest to transhumanists or those curious about transhumanism.
To all and sundry who think that the library is a luxury or an expendable object, whether in a millage vote or a city budget: the library is the lifeline of much of your populous. Don't screw with it.
(Oh, and have you ever tried to figure out what a group of librarians is called?)
Getting to our international desk: Pakistan denies it is expanding its nuclear arsenal.
Bees! Which is enough to make your hairs stand on end.
To inflame your anger, however, recall that in other parts of the country, people believe children can be possessed by the devil and become witches, requiring beating and even killing to "save" them from the demons possessing them, and that these accusations are on the rise. Most child witches, though, would probably be classified as disabled, difficult, delinquent, maybe even defiant children here, needing some extra work and care, but certainly not witches possessed by Satan and needing to be beaten.
A manacle with an iron ball, intended to lock your child to his study desk until the appropriate amount of time has elapsed. Because studying is enough of a problem, that you have to chain someone to the desk to get them to do it.
Truthout provides a look at modern Afghan history, considering the thirty-plus years of constant war the country has seen. It’s not a pretty picture at all. (thanks,
ldragoon) Regardless of whether you believe official government figures or a human rights group claiming the casualties have been a third of the government total.On the other end of the scale, a photo montage of those who have more than enough money for their life already there when they started. Many of them don’t intend on living off the family name, though.
On the domestic front - The 13 people of the previous administration who made torture possible, starting with the Vice President and Ending with the President, stopping along in Justice, the CIA, and a lot of other Administration offices. Including Donald H. Rumsfeld, with stories coming out now about how much of an asshole he was during his tenure as SecDef. An interesting piece in this - Mr. Rumsfeld liked to put cover sheets with images and Scriptural quotes that gave a distinctly holy war feel to things on his intelligence updates. (To advance the slides, replace “01” with higher numbers until reaching 11.)
Vice President Biden may have revealed the location of Mr. Cheney's secret undiscolsed location that he was fond of retreating to and has been lampooned in the liberal press and blogosphere. At least, Fox thinks it’s the secret location.
The new NIH stem cell guidelines have been drafted and are now open for public comment. For some, the draft material is far too tepid and timid to be of any real use for advocating and protecting science from religious nuttery and those completely opposed to stem cell research. After reading the guidelines, add you comments to the draft at the NIH website.
The SCOTUS refuses to hear a case brought claiming that federal bans on marijuana trump any medical-marijuana laws states may pass, indicating that the states take precedence on the matter, at least for now. That is a tangle that needs to be teased out, though. Getting busted by feds with a medical marijuana law could result in a hairy situation.
President Obama gave a commencement address at Notre Dame university that presented a pragmatic solution reflecting the President's position - legal, but rare. Considering Notre Dame is a Catholic university, that went over with some of the inhabitants much like a lead balloon.
In case you were wondering, just about every industrialized nation except the United States mandates that workers be given paid sick time. Not only that, they don't lose a large amount of productivity because their workers aren't forced to come in sick and thus prolong their illnesses and infect co-workers. Nothing you didn’t already know, but here’s the numbers to prove it, once again.
Washington State hasn't hit marriage yet, but it appears their domestic partnerships will be everything but the name. Hopefully, this means that someone can then say, “Well, if it’s everything but the name, why not give the name, too?” Mr. Cline points out that the current President has basically abandoned any sort of leadership drive or desire on federal-level equality for homosexuals, whether on marriage or on the still discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell”, a policy that has a brighter line than torture did for the last administration. On the other side of the political divide, RNC Chairman Michael Steele suggested that the gay marriage debate be recast as one that hurts small businesses, because more domestic partnerships means paying more for benefits. Which could be cast as “those damn gay people are costing us money”, or likely the better way as “Why are private businesses paying for health care benefits?” After all, that matter could easily be resolved if the private businesses weren’t the people who offered sick time, vacation time and medical insurances. Then small business owners have most of their costs freed up to pay competitive wages with. Everyone wins, yes?
In the opinions, The General points out some very interesting rights that one Stephen Pidgeon believes are under assault, among other things that read as being rather insane. Perhaps he is also worried about persons trying to use bananas as weapons to rob stores with.
The WSJ is certain that Iran will have to be glassed or otherwise stopped from achieving nuclear weapons, or both Israel and the United States will have failed. On a more positive note, Pope Benedict XVI spoke well of needing good relations between Christians and Jews, denouncing the Shoah and doing his office well. Both the article and I wonder whether he will extend the same courtesy and good behavior to Muslims.
Mr. Rosen tells newspaper media that blogs are a publishing format, like newspapers, and that bloggers are doing lots of good journalism.
The WSJ complains about the expanded contributions of the United States to the IMF, considering it not very transparent at all, and Mr. Reynolds complains that Mr. Obama is being careless when he jokingly invokes the IRS, because his words carry weight, and the WSJ laments that the real reforms California needs will not be passed on the special ballot initiatives vote. Assuming, of course, the rich that everyone wants to soak stick around in the states that want their money, which should send a signal that “everyone knows” lower taxes are better for everyone, and no taxes are best! (Although I do wonder how New Hampshire, the shining beacon mentioned, pays for government services with no income or sales tax. I’m betting there are other taxes involved.)
Ms. O'sGrady praises the appearance of a democratic, individual-rights focused movement in Guatemala, which deserves cheers for wanting to stop the rule of dictatorships. Then she equates the dictatorship rule with collectivism right at the end, just so that we know the bad evil people claim to be socialists. If they were socialists, odds are they wouldn’t be in a dictatorship, but that doesn’t matter to the people who want to keep socialism as a dirty word. Better to advocate for justice to be done in repressive regimes than spend time trying to equate an actual lout with a perceived evil.
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown are up in arms about Michael Savage being banned from the UK, and think that the Obama administration plans on mimicing them against all conservatives. If the Obama administration really were intent on such a thing, the uproar they’re expecting us to give over his UK ban will happen. I don’t think much will happen on the UK front, though, because I do believe, stupid as it may be, it is their right to ban him from entering the country, including putting him in unflattering company. This, according to the Browns, is the Thought Police at work, a suppression of free speech and dissent, and the Obama adminstration and the mainstream media should be going to bat for Mr. Savage to get him off the ban list.
The WSJ is smug about how liberals have lost the issue of gun control, based on an amendment introduced into a credit card bill that would let people carry firearms in national parks. One, what the fuck is a gun-control item doing in a credit-card bill? That should be procedurally beaten down, not voted on. Two, how does that say anything about gun control? Most people don’t think they need protection from criminals in national parks.
Mr. Gallagher makes a salient point about blaming an institution for the actions of a rogue (don’t), and finds himself on the other end of the “you didn’t serve, you can’t know what’s going on” department that developed out of the “support our troops, right or wrong” mentality of the previous administration. There is a deeper point about the rogue soldier, though, which I think the clumshy attempts of “you don’t know what goes on there” are tryign to get at - what happens in the military may predispose people toward those violent acts, either creating or exacerbating mental instabilities. And with the sorry state of mental health care for those returning from war, preventable problems might escalate into violent incidents. So what needs to be evaluated and improved are the processes by which people determine whether or not a soldier is mentally fit for duty and the support system that returning soldiers receive to deal with any problems taht may have developed over the course of their service.
Mr. Hill tells us that the President fancies himself a messiah because the people want him to be a singular force that takes away all our pains, and because the people are staggeringly ignorant of what the Constitutional system does in order to prevent messiahs in the Executive from taking over. Which means that ou schools failed us, our elected people are failing us, and if I’m feeling particularly nasty, I’ll blame the previous Administrator’s style of flagrantly disregarding the laws he signs into action as the reason why people think the Executive can do more than it really can. Well, that and certain commentators who think an actual attack line against the President is that he left the writing of the bill up to the legislators...y’know, the people who are tasked with writing the laws.
Ms. Saunders opines that Nancy Pelosi backed herslef into a corner on torture, is a hypocrite because she didn't denounce or stop it then, despite having full knowledge of what was going on, and is looking increasingly desperate to get out without damning herself. Well, lay it all out, then. Only the truth, and all of it, will tell us what actually went on. Mr. Benson offers a mocking defense of Ms. Pelosi, claiming she sees conspiracies where there are none.
In competition for flaky flaming pastry, Mr. Will sings the praises of The Market, indicatig that if left alone, it will punish the greedy...by using ticket scalping as his example, a commidity with a predefined worthlessness. Which works in his limited environment - the greedy do get punished by not being able to sell their tickets. Thing is, there’s an entire market of goods out there that don’t have predetermined expiry dates. The greedy there may get punished by nobody buying their objects, sure, but it takes a lot longer, and it assumes that the greedy aren’t all working-together-without-working-together to ensure that everyone profits handsomely. And there are the people with commodities that everyone needs, who won’t get priced out by The Market because everyone needs some of what they have - so long as there’s ample supply, they won’t sell, but when supply starts to run out, then the greedy do get rewarded because people have to buy from them. But greed is clearly regulated by The Market, Mr. Will. I see that now. Take a bronzed pastry and move on.
Mr. Stokes embarrasses himself defending Governor Palin by attacking the people in the media who dismissed the book deal the Governor signed to "collaborate" on an autobiography, because he is certain that underneath the portrayal as a ditz, a pageant queen, and hockey mom is an formidable Republican contender, who resonates with the (ever-shrinking) base and who will take politics by storm and possibly be the nexy President. Just you wait, says Mr. Stokes, Governor Palin is the real deal. Which would be a fair assessment if the Governor’s actions and appearances supported that assertion, something that I have yet to see. Silver effort, though.
Winning top dishonors tonight, however is Bill'O, who defends Dick Cheney and his one-man torture apologetics show, as well as crowing that the drive to put those responsible for the torture on trial is drying up. Because, as Bill’O tells us, all of this torture anger and anti-Cheneyness is just liberals acting out a revenge fantasy for the last eight years, further frustrated that the person elected to order the prosecutions has said he has no intention of doing so and isn’t really leaving open that much for options for others to pick up where he’s failing. Bill’O says that Dick Cheney is right, that Mr. Obama is making the country less safe, and that torture was justified. For that alone, he deserves derision and scorn. One golden-brown flaming-hot pastry, coming your way, sir.
In the sciences, the current species of homo may have butchered and eaten their predecessors, the discovery of a regular laser pulse from the cosmos, which could be ET, or could be a phenomenon (doot do, dee doo doo), looking for oxygen-breathing aliens, making lithium batteries even more powerful, color e-ink, another step toward artificial soft tissues, Fujitsu takes the supercomputer processor crown, attempting to develop lifelike and intelligent avatars to stand in for people, perhaps to play hookey at an unimportant meeting while doing real work elsewhere, Hubble repairs completed, even with glitches in the repair crew equipment, and Scribd, attempting to do to e-books what iTunes did to music, with chapters available and book authors keeping about 80 percent of their prices.
Last for tonight, this is why the liberal arts still work, or why having an English degree and taking philosohpy can help you be an excellent accountant. Plus, I'm betting liberal arts comes in handy when spotting plagarism.
Okay, one more thing as a postscript - propaganda from the RIAA and probably one other group purporting to be about how the court system works, by using an eminent domain suit in The City of Arbor involving the undervaluation of homes, which, when re-valued, stops the building of a library (why a library? Why not, say, Wal-Mart, which is what it seems to be these days...) and then a case of someone being prosecuted for file sharing and receiving a suspended sentence, instead of being offered an expensive buyout and then possibly having the case be thrown out because the cabal couldn’t prove the person was actually the person. For more interesting material, consult comics of interest to transhumanists or those curious about transhumanism.
