More books talked - 2 June 2009
Jun. 2nd, 2009 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptMore kids talked to today. Did not get smote upon walking into Catholic school. Took it as a good sign. More kids hopefully excited about the prospect of reading over the summer, but my inner cynic says it’s the prizes that pull them in. And then turns around and says, “Hey, if it works..” Anyway, let’s talk news.
Internationally, Kazhakstan reports many of their uranium mines were transferred illegally into private control by a former minister, which is a damn sight different than that headline - “Kashakstan’s uranium ‘stolen’ by former official”.
The Taliban in Afghanistan abducted students, staff, and relatives of a boys school in the country. Abducting children only lowers the already rock-bottom opinion of the Taliban. Now, of course, if the troops could just find enough of the Taliban, they’d be more than happy to crush them. Pakistan's troops should keep going, after their retaking of Swat, according to the WSJ, with some possible spillover benefits if the Pakistani army continues to root out Taliban.
A North Korean general is indicated as a key player in the production and distribution of high-quality $100 US counterfeits, according to the Washington Times - which could give an economic reason to freeze out North Korea in anticipation of some other action.
Domestically, President Obama has declared June to be LGBT pride month, perhaps as the herald of doing some things on the pressing LGBT issues. Keep an eye out to see whether the President shows his pride the LGBT community. And, remarkably, on the issue of gay marriage, even Dick Cheney supports freedom for everyone.
A thousand words' worth about what the anti-choice terrorist movement thinks about Dr. Tiller's murder. And then an article on someone who attacked a military recruitment center - I’d bet if you put the two together in the same room and asked them about their motivations, you’ld hear something similar. Details and names would change, but the reasons would still be the same. Can we get moving on the idea that there are domestic terrorists in the country, born here, and they probably haven’t picked up whatever manifesto all terrorists are supposed to subscribe to? As the last word on the subject tonight, the Slacktivist gives us historical perspective - this has been done before, with groups rushing to denounce the madman who took them at their word...but continuing, though, to say those words as if they were serious. Must be one or the other - either you do believe what you say, or you decide it’s madness and stop saying it. So long as you try for both, there will be more of these antiabortion terrorists.
Guantanamo residents cleared for release are receiving training on laptop computers as part of getting them adjusted to their new lives in America.
In the opinions, Mr. Tapscott thinks letting the government restrict speech in specific circumstances, like lobbying on the stimulus, is the beginning of the slippery slope to government regulation of all speech, due to mission creep on what can be considered acceptable.
A suggestion to President Obama when he visits Egypt - suggest that the Egyptian President get some term limits. It will apparently garner great goodwill for him.
Mr. Curl is attempting to make the recent Presidential trip into an example of taxpayers being charged for private affairs of the President, and that the President should reimburse the government for the full cost of everything - tickets, salaries of the Secret Service people who had to plan and acommpany him, and so forth. Which precedes an article from the WSJ looking into how the lawmakers spend their expenditure monies. Interesting - a president starts talking about things like corporate irresponsibility, and suddenly a lot of people are interested in how the government spends its money. I’m actually pretty okay with this, assuming that it isn’t used as some sort of partisan fodder and both sides of the aisle are investigated thoroughly. Mr. Priest feels that America following in European footsteps by trustbusting successful companies will be at best a backfire in this economy.
The WSJ says that ethanol is more expensive than we think, and points at government studies to support the claim.
The WSJ also takes a sarcastic tone about the non-running of GM the government is busily engaged in.
In quiche competition, Mr. McGurn implies that a college that accepts no federal money because of the Solomon Amendment requiring military recruiters on campus is morally superior to Harvard, which accepts federal money but makes it clear that the military is only being tolerated because of the Amendment. The reason? While the little college can tell the military to go fly a kite, they’re quite accommodating and cordial. Harvard, because they’re not friendly and cordial, of course, is in an inferior position. And the fact that their hands are tied on the matter has nothing to do with it, apparently.
Mr. Stephens uses an entire article about how proliferation is often done with help from others to go for a point about how the United States should be modernizing its own nuclear arsenal, and how wrong the Obama Administration is to refuse to do this. It’s a shaggy dog story, really. Mr. Stuttaford goes back to older comments about how liberal Obama is and how well he sold people that they would benefit from his election, which of course means there’s an angry, grinning mob staring at the wealthy, the losers in this last election, even though some of them voted for Obama. We just haven’t produced the new aristocracy to kill them and take their place.
At the pinnacle today, Mr. Ingrassia has pegged why GM folded - the management coddled the union instead of antagonizing them, and signing on to generous labor contracts that made them buckle instead of their competitors. He also feels the new GM is going to make the same mistakes of the old ones, because they aren’t going to change enough.
And before we get to the tech section, a justification for the Iraq War that says, mixed as the opinions are from other perspectives, for the people of Iraq, the war was just and they are doing better now than they were before.
In technology, here come the robot farm assistants, an AI unit that can compose unique and pleasant music continuously, thus freeing persons waiting from the Top 100 and freeing others from the need to pay copyright fees on said Top 100, building a database of hundreds of millions of images to test new image search tools with, designing phones that provide appropriate feedback when the user cannot divert their eyes to the screen, and Project Natal, an XBox peripheral that claims to do full motion-capture as control, along with facial recognition and natural language processing, so that you can wave your hands and navigate or play, the camera sees you and signs you in, and it will follow your conversation and playing.
Also, common medicines given to people to help them sleep may cause cognitive impairment in older adults, rethinking some of the H1N1 models, because their projections and the current count of the infected are very different, a prediction that May 2013 will be a sunspot peak, so expect some radio interference, and looking at pictures of penguin poop from space, so as to try and map where emperor penguin colonies are.
Last for tonight, more of the art that you don’t see when the book is open - the Boston Public Library's collcetion of fore-edge art, brilliant bookcases to put those books on, the calling cards of some old Chicago crews, buildings swallowed up by the relentless desert, and religious buildings, abandoned by people and reclaimed by nature.
Internationally, Kazhakstan reports many of their uranium mines were transferred illegally into private control by a former minister, which is a damn sight different than that headline - “Kashakstan’s uranium ‘stolen’ by former official”.
The Taliban in Afghanistan abducted students, staff, and relatives of a boys school in the country. Abducting children only lowers the already rock-bottom opinion of the Taliban. Now, of course, if the troops could just find enough of the Taliban, they’d be more than happy to crush them. Pakistan's troops should keep going, after their retaking of Swat, according to the WSJ, with some possible spillover benefits if the Pakistani army continues to root out Taliban.
A North Korean general is indicated as a key player in the production and distribution of high-quality $100 US counterfeits, according to the Washington Times - which could give an economic reason to freeze out North Korea in anticipation of some other action.
Domestically, President Obama has declared June to be LGBT pride month, perhaps as the herald of doing some things on the pressing LGBT issues. Keep an eye out to see whether the President shows his pride the LGBT community. And, remarkably, on the issue of gay marriage, even Dick Cheney supports freedom for everyone.
A thousand words' worth about what the anti-choice terrorist movement thinks about Dr. Tiller's murder. And then an article on someone who attacked a military recruitment center - I’d bet if you put the two together in the same room and asked them about their motivations, you’ld hear something similar. Details and names would change, but the reasons would still be the same. Can we get moving on the idea that there are domestic terrorists in the country, born here, and they probably haven’t picked up whatever manifesto all terrorists are supposed to subscribe to? As the last word on the subject tonight, the Slacktivist gives us historical perspective - this has been done before, with groups rushing to denounce the madman who took them at their word...but continuing, though, to say those words as if they were serious. Must be one or the other - either you do believe what you say, or you decide it’s madness and stop saying it. So long as you try for both, there will be more of these antiabortion terrorists.
Guantanamo residents cleared for release are receiving training on laptop computers as part of getting them adjusted to their new lives in America.
In the opinions, Mr. Tapscott thinks letting the government restrict speech in specific circumstances, like lobbying on the stimulus, is the beginning of the slippery slope to government regulation of all speech, due to mission creep on what can be considered acceptable.
A suggestion to President Obama when he visits Egypt - suggest that the Egyptian President get some term limits. It will apparently garner great goodwill for him.
Mr. Curl is attempting to make the recent Presidential trip into an example of taxpayers being charged for private affairs of the President, and that the President should reimburse the government for the full cost of everything - tickets, salaries of the Secret Service people who had to plan and acommpany him, and so forth. Which precedes an article from the WSJ looking into how the lawmakers spend their expenditure monies. Interesting - a president starts talking about things like corporate irresponsibility, and suddenly a lot of people are interested in how the government spends its money. I’m actually pretty okay with this, assuming that it isn’t used as some sort of partisan fodder and both sides of the aisle are investigated thoroughly. Mr. Priest feels that America following in European footsteps by trustbusting successful companies will be at best a backfire in this economy.
The WSJ says that ethanol is more expensive than we think, and points at government studies to support the claim.
The WSJ also takes a sarcastic tone about the non-running of GM the government is busily engaged in.
In quiche competition, Mr. McGurn implies that a college that accepts no federal money because of the Solomon Amendment requiring military recruiters on campus is morally superior to Harvard, which accepts federal money but makes it clear that the military is only being tolerated because of the Amendment. The reason? While the little college can tell the military to go fly a kite, they’re quite accommodating and cordial. Harvard, because they’re not friendly and cordial, of course, is in an inferior position. And the fact that their hands are tied on the matter has nothing to do with it, apparently.
Mr. Stephens uses an entire article about how proliferation is often done with help from others to go for a point about how the United States should be modernizing its own nuclear arsenal, and how wrong the Obama Administration is to refuse to do this. It’s a shaggy dog story, really. Mr. Stuttaford goes back to older comments about how liberal Obama is and how well he sold people that they would benefit from his election, which of course means there’s an angry, grinning mob staring at the wealthy, the losers in this last election, even though some of them voted for Obama. We just haven’t produced the new aristocracy to kill them and take their place.
At the pinnacle today, Mr. Ingrassia has pegged why GM folded - the management coddled the union instead of antagonizing them, and signing on to generous labor contracts that made them buckle instead of their competitors. He also feels the new GM is going to make the same mistakes of the old ones, because they aren’t going to change enough.
And before we get to the tech section, a justification for the Iraq War that says, mixed as the opinions are from other perspectives, for the people of Iraq, the war was just and they are doing better now than they were before.
In technology, here come the robot farm assistants, an AI unit that can compose unique and pleasant music continuously, thus freeing persons waiting from the Top 100 and freeing others from the need to pay copyright fees on said Top 100, building a database of hundreds of millions of images to test new image search tools with, designing phones that provide appropriate feedback when the user cannot divert their eyes to the screen, and Project Natal, an XBox peripheral that claims to do full motion-capture as control, along with facial recognition and natural language processing, so that you can wave your hands and navigate or play, the camera sees you and signs you in, and it will follow your conversation and playing.
Also, common medicines given to people to help them sleep may cause cognitive impairment in older adults, rethinking some of the H1N1 models, because their projections and the current count of the infected are very different, a prediction that May 2013 will be a sunspot peak, so expect some radio interference, and looking at pictures of penguin poop from space, so as to try and map where emperor penguin colonies are.
Last for tonight, more of the art that you don’t see when the book is open - the Boston Public Library's collcetion of fore-edge art, brilliant bookcases to put those books on, the calling cards of some old Chicago crews, buildings swallowed up by the relentless desert, and religious buildings, abandoned by people and reclaimed by nature.
