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silveradeptGreetings, everyone. Here at the top, some advice on cartooning and comic making, straight from the Disney studios themselves, and quite funny while being useful.
Also, in computer nonsense, The Hard Way is continuing to be a very problematic thing for me, to the point where I'm beginning to worry that even after I get everything settled, everything will still be borked in some non-amusing manner requiring some version of a reinstall or something like it. Considering this whole thing started with worries about a reinstall, we're really hoping it all turns out in the end like it should.
Also, of no interest to anyone but someone who went to that school, some aerial pictures of the progression of the new Michigan Stadium construction (because that institution will fight hard to always be the biggest crowd watching a football game anywhere in America on their game days). Perhaps more generally appealing would be the trees made of plastic plumbing pipe inside a gallery.
Before the news, Robert Novak, most recently famous for his assistance in the outing of Valerie Plame, joins the Dead Pool at 78.
Out in the world today, violence ahead of elections, violence that will be used as more indication that Iran is attempting to destablize Iraq, and a power plant accident that may have claimed 64 more lives on top of the 12 it already killed, although officially, they're still just missing.
Because he hasn't been one hundred percent pro-Israel in everything, President Obama is beginning to be portrayed as pro-Palestinian, which all the dirty word associations that is supposed to cause.
Domestic incidents abound - including the many and varied threats of death from someone driving a truck depicting aborted fetuses in an attempt to get people to choose to carry children to term (and then...?), although this is a matter of conflicting accounts. the General knows whose side he's on, of course.
On much more potentially civil and interesting matters, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will be voting on whether or not homosexuals in committed, monogamous, relationships will be able to serve in the clergy. The Church already permits celibate homosexuals into the clergy, so this would be one step further. If they're considering this, I wonder what their position on married/committed heterosexuals as clergy is.
The parade of advertisers pulling their spots from Glenn Beck continues, with several major players joining the pullout. If this continues, Fox may have no choice but to fire Beck because he costs them too much money. Will this actually happen? We'll see.
Calls from a Pennsylvania Cogresscritter for the government to staff and speed up processing of all their Cash for Clunkers claims, so as to make the wildly successful program get its rebate cash out the door faster.
The Obama Administration continues its nuanced position on homosexual marriage - filing a brief that says the Administration supports the repeal of the federal DOMA by Congress, while continuing to legally defend the law because arguments can be made about its constitutionality and legality. It's not enough for those who would like to see the whole thing pitched out, but that's a matter for the courts or Congress. In a sense, because Mr. Obama is being correct about what he can and can't do, he's being accused of not doing all he can. Perhaps Mr. Obama can lean on a Member of Congress to get a bit introduced.
One of the hackers accused of perpetrating the giant credit card theft was an informant on hacking and identity theft, before going out and stealing the numbers of millions from databases and retailers whose security was not completely up to par.
The big grip thing, though, is still health care. Here's something for the "pro-small-business" Republicans to consider - the United States has one of the smallest small business sectors in countries we'd be compared to. One of the reasons why we don't have much? Health care costs. Our employer-based health care is a disincentive to get people to start their own businesses or work for small businesses, because they often can't offer health care because of the costs. And people don't like not having health care from someone because of the costs. So, perhaps, if we took the burden of ruinous health care costs off people and employers alike, we'd have more small businesses. The public option/single-payer systems look better and better. Unless, of course, you believe that a government could successfully hide a plot to kill old people in a bill when they have enough trouble hiding who's not keeping their johnsons in their pants. On a facet of the big picture, the one where an "enemies list" was being constructed of all the people who opposed the public option, the White House shut down the flag at whitehouse dot gov e-mail address and rumor collection service. Guess they'll have to go to the media fact-checkers like everyone else.
And this leads us into opinions, where in a rare burst of "up, not down", Mr. Karpel says the country should be spending more on health care, as a percentage of GDP, than it is now. Although it's not totally clear whether he means that ordinary people should be doing most of that spending or not, he's critical of the Democratic health-care plan because it would care more about the money being spent than the quality of life achieved from new and expensive medical treatments. Perhaps Mr. Karpel believes that those new expensive treatments should be part of government health care. Perhaps not. The more prevailing wind on the opposition side seems to be that the Democrats misread the populace's mood and tried to spend more than the public was comfortable with, which is why the health care bill is faltering, because it's more spending, spending that started in the last administration with TARP and bailouts that the public has (rightly) become downright synical about, or that the people really do oppose the plan put forward by the government, unconvinced by a "snake oil salesman" in the form of Barack Obama, and are smart enough to know they don't want a system like Canada or the UK. Plus, the politicians will act in the interests of what they think is right for you, instead of acting like you tell them to, and you should be afraid of this. Well, the republican system is one of those Things You Should Have Learned In School, Had You Been Paying Attention - we elect representatives to do what they think is in our best interest, regardless of whether or not the people hold that same interest. Admittedly, those representatives that flaunt their constituencies are less likely to return to the halls of government, but nominally, we're supposed to be electing the smart people who can do what is right, not what is popular. And all the astroturf, skillful manipulation by the opposition and corporate interests is all designed to make people afraid so they oppose blindly, instead of thinking it through. And that's without the cynical design that says if the government will except veterans from its health care plans, it shouldn't be putting those plans on anyone, acknowledging that the VA system is run quite well, in fact. So it's not that "all government programs are bad", but more "We prefer insurance companies to deny us in our hour of need and raise our premiums arbitrarily to line their own pockets, to stifle small business growth, and to let the uninsured and underinsured die or be ruined by emergency room care than to let our political opponents pass something that would be popular, well-used, and benefit everyone, welfare recipient and CEO alike". Health care reform really should be about making it affordable for everyone, giving coverage to everyone, and making it so that people don't have to let small sicknesses become big problems because they know it will cost more money to correct the small sickness than they can afford, even though they know that if it complicates into something bigger, it will cost a whole lot more, possibly including their life, later on. Why do we saddle employers with the costs of health care, make people afraid to do what they love because they have to have a job with insurances, and then let insurance companies act as for-profit enterprises that can easily see the easiest way to make those profits is to collect premiums and deny payments? It's clearly a broken system. Why stand in the way of trying to make it better?
In opinions not of health care, the WSJ's editors are concerned that Fannie Mae and other guaranteed corporations are a governmental Enron, set to collapse once their guarantees turn into real outlays and expenditures.
T. Boone Pickens, CEO of BP Capital, and Ted Turner say we should shift our energy priorities to natural gas now, so as to wean us off of foreign oil and set us up for modernizing our infrastructure and getting more renewables into the energy market.
Mr. Bernard suggests proposing a conference on human rights with Iran, so as to force Ahmadinejad and Khameini into either accepting reforms that will eventually cause their downfall in exchange for lightened sanctions, or to reject the reforms and further incur the wrath of the democratic protesters.
Leaving the section with a good opinion, the Slacktivist gives us the Reader's Digest version of why a youth ministry aimed at capturing all the popular kids to make their programs popular and adult ministries that prefer to make their missions to convince the rich, popular, and powerful that their greed and way of existence are God-approved are evil, acting in a way fairly contrary to the actions of the person whose religion they claim to follow. He happeend to like all the rejects of society at his table and spoke several times about how the big popular and unhumble people would get flattened and humbled because of their hubris, while the outcasts and the low would be promoted and exalted because of their humility. Plus, as he points out in the end, it means that God's approval is conditional on you continuing to be a popular person or a winner. What happens if that stops?
In technology, pi calculated out to trillions of decimal places, a demonstration that DNA evidence can be fabricated (thus proving that as technology advances, the technology to fool it advances as well), and devising methods that would endow networks with the ability to sense infected computers and block their traffic until they could be cleaned and purged of their infections.
Last for tonight, according to some modeling studies, should there be a zombie outbreak...we're screwed. Enjoy your last remaining moments with photographs of good timimng, as well as the futility of trying to keep your trademark from becoming a common verb or noun. Because people will take your brand, and your users, and then make characters approximating such. Sort of OS-kun, but not quite.
Also, in computer nonsense, The Hard Way is continuing to be a very problematic thing for me, to the point where I'm beginning to worry that even after I get everything settled, everything will still be borked in some non-amusing manner requiring some version of a reinstall or something like it. Considering this whole thing started with worries about a reinstall, we're really hoping it all turns out in the end like it should.
Also, of no interest to anyone but someone who went to that school, some aerial pictures of the progression of the new Michigan Stadium construction (because that institution will fight hard to always be the biggest crowd watching a football game anywhere in America on their game days). Perhaps more generally appealing would be the trees made of plastic plumbing pipe inside a gallery.
Before the news, Robert Novak, most recently famous for his assistance in the outing of Valerie Plame, joins the Dead Pool at 78.
Out in the world today, violence ahead of elections, violence that will be used as more indication that Iran is attempting to destablize Iraq, and a power plant accident that may have claimed 64 more lives on top of the 12 it already killed, although officially, they're still just missing.
Because he hasn't been one hundred percent pro-Israel in everything, President Obama is beginning to be portrayed as pro-Palestinian, which all the dirty word associations that is supposed to cause.
Domestic incidents abound - including the many and varied threats of death from someone driving a truck depicting aborted fetuses in an attempt to get people to choose to carry children to term (and then...?), although this is a matter of conflicting accounts. the General knows whose side he's on, of course.
On much more potentially civil and interesting matters, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will be voting on whether or not homosexuals in committed, monogamous, relationships will be able to serve in the clergy. The Church already permits celibate homosexuals into the clergy, so this would be one step further. If they're considering this, I wonder what their position on married/committed heterosexuals as clergy is.
The parade of advertisers pulling their spots from Glenn Beck continues, with several major players joining the pullout. If this continues, Fox may have no choice but to fire Beck because he costs them too much money. Will this actually happen? We'll see.
Calls from a Pennsylvania Cogresscritter for the government to staff and speed up processing of all their Cash for Clunkers claims, so as to make the wildly successful program get its rebate cash out the door faster.
The Obama Administration continues its nuanced position on homosexual marriage - filing a brief that says the Administration supports the repeal of the federal DOMA by Congress, while continuing to legally defend the law because arguments can be made about its constitutionality and legality. It's not enough for those who would like to see the whole thing pitched out, but that's a matter for the courts or Congress. In a sense, because Mr. Obama is being correct about what he can and can't do, he's being accused of not doing all he can. Perhaps Mr. Obama can lean on a Member of Congress to get a bit introduced.
One of the hackers accused of perpetrating the giant credit card theft was an informant on hacking and identity theft, before going out and stealing the numbers of millions from databases and retailers whose security was not completely up to par.
The big grip thing, though, is still health care. Here's something for the "pro-small-business" Republicans to consider - the United States has one of the smallest small business sectors in countries we'd be compared to. One of the reasons why we don't have much? Health care costs. Our employer-based health care is a disincentive to get people to start their own businesses or work for small businesses, because they often can't offer health care because of the costs. And people don't like not having health care from someone because of the costs. So, perhaps, if we took the burden of ruinous health care costs off people and employers alike, we'd have more small businesses. The public option/single-payer systems look better and better. Unless, of course, you believe that a government could successfully hide a plot to kill old people in a bill when they have enough trouble hiding who's not keeping their johnsons in their pants. On a facet of the big picture, the one where an "enemies list" was being constructed of all the people who opposed the public option, the White House shut down the flag at whitehouse dot gov e-mail address and rumor collection service. Guess they'll have to go to the media fact-checkers like everyone else.
And this leads us into opinions, where in a rare burst of "up, not down", Mr. Karpel says the country should be spending more on health care, as a percentage of GDP, than it is now. Although it's not totally clear whether he means that ordinary people should be doing most of that spending or not, he's critical of the Democratic health-care plan because it would care more about the money being spent than the quality of life achieved from new and expensive medical treatments. Perhaps Mr. Karpel believes that those new expensive treatments should be part of government health care. Perhaps not. The more prevailing wind on the opposition side seems to be that the Democrats misread the populace's mood and tried to spend more than the public was comfortable with, which is why the health care bill is faltering, because it's more spending, spending that started in the last administration with TARP and bailouts that the public has (rightly) become downright synical about, or that the people really do oppose the plan put forward by the government, unconvinced by a "snake oil salesman" in the form of Barack Obama, and are smart enough to know they don't want a system like Canada or the UK. Plus, the politicians will act in the interests of what they think is right for you, instead of acting like you tell them to, and you should be afraid of this. Well, the republican system is one of those Things You Should Have Learned In School, Had You Been Paying Attention - we elect representatives to do what they think is in our best interest, regardless of whether or not the people hold that same interest. Admittedly, those representatives that flaunt their constituencies are less likely to return to the halls of government, but nominally, we're supposed to be electing the smart people who can do what is right, not what is popular. And all the astroturf, skillful manipulation by the opposition and corporate interests is all designed to make people afraid so they oppose blindly, instead of thinking it through. And that's without the cynical design that says if the government will except veterans from its health care plans, it shouldn't be putting those plans on anyone, acknowledging that the VA system is run quite well, in fact. So it's not that "all government programs are bad", but more "We prefer insurance companies to deny us in our hour of need and raise our premiums arbitrarily to line their own pockets, to stifle small business growth, and to let the uninsured and underinsured die or be ruined by emergency room care than to let our political opponents pass something that would be popular, well-used, and benefit everyone, welfare recipient and CEO alike". Health care reform really should be about making it affordable for everyone, giving coverage to everyone, and making it so that people don't have to let small sicknesses become big problems because they know it will cost more money to correct the small sickness than they can afford, even though they know that if it complicates into something bigger, it will cost a whole lot more, possibly including their life, later on. Why do we saddle employers with the costs of health care, make people afraid to do what they love because they have to have a job with insurances, and then let insurance companies act as for-profit enterprises that can easily see the easiest way to make those profits is to collect premiums and deny payments? It's clearly a broken system. Why stand in the way of trying to make it better?
In opinions not of health care, the WSJ's editors are concerned that Fannie Mae and other guaranteed corporations are a governmental Enron, set to collapse once their guarantees turn into real outlays and expenditures.
T. Boone Pickens, CEO of BP Capital, and Ted Turner say we should shift our energy priorities to natural gas now, so as to wean us off of foreign oil and set us up for modernizing our infrastructure and getting more renewables into the energy market.
Mr. Bernard suggests proposing a conference on human rights with Iran, so as to force Ahmadinejad and Khameini into either accepting reforms that will eventually cause their downfall in exchange for lightened sanctions, or to reject the reforms and further incur the wrath of the democratic protesters.
Leaving the section with a good opinion, the Slacktivist gives us the Reader's Digest version of why a youth ministry aimed at capturing all the popular kids to make their programs popular and adult ministries that prefer to make their missions to convince the rich, popular, and powerful that their greed and way of existence are God-approved are evil, acting in a way fairly contrary to the actions of the person whose religion they claim to follow. He happeend to like all the rejects of society at his table and spoke several times about how the big popular and unhumble people would get flattened and humbled because of their hubris, while the outcasts and the low would be promoted and exalted because of their humility. Plus, as he points out in the end, it means that God's approval is conditional on you continuing to be a popular person or a winner. What happens if that stops?
In technology, pi calculated out to trillions of decimal places, a demonstration that DNA evidence can be fabricated (thus proving that as technology advances, the technology to fool it advances as well), and devising methods that would endow networks with the ability to sense infected computers and block their traffic until they could be cleaned and purged of their infections.
Last for tonight, according to some modeling studies, should there be a zombie outbreak...we're screwed. Enjoy your last remaining moments with photographs of good timimng, as well as the futility of trying to keep your trademark from becoming a common verb or noun. Because people will take your brand, and your users, and then make characters approximating such. Sort of OS-kun, but not quite.
