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silveradeptGreetings, all. The world of knowledge will continue to open up, with pressure from groups to have federally funded research projects be posted to the free Internet soon after their publication in journals.
And the mind may open up with repeated applications of the Zen TV experiment, which reminds us of the unreality of television and all the great components that go into making it look natural.
Expect a fear and terror theme to today’s update - starting with the pledging of Somali militia to al-Qaeda.
Internationally, At the United Nations, President Obama continued to call for multilateralism in dealing with problem countries like North Korea and Iran, hoping for unity among many, even as the UN fights its own divisions.
A piece from our past comes back to say hello as we find out the Secret Service found Boris Yetlsin blitzed, outside, in his underclothes, apparently trying to order pizza.
And then, crashing straight into the present, Australian police are investigating whether members of their force ran around a vehicle in the nude on their way to a stag party.
Last out, an Astralian man died of self-imposed starvation, after having sued and won the right to do so.
Domestically, Enforcing the law they have, an Indiana court refused to grant a same-sex couple married in Canada a divorce, citing a lack of authority to do so.
In the “The Law is a club, not a scalpel” department, a bill intended to strip federal funding of ACORN has language broad enough that several defense contractors may also be considered ineligible for federal funds. ACORN dies, so does Lockheed Martin. And that’s assuming it manages to avoid being smacked as a bill of attainder.
The FCC's person in charge of diversity, Mr. Mark Lloyd, is taking heat for comments encouraging white executives to step down and promote minorities into positions of power, appearing to admire Hugo Chavez's revolution in Venezuela, and offering suggestions on how to make liberal talk radio better. The heat stems mostly around the idea that this will make the FCC start using its weight to step on conservative talk radio’s success and enforce a Fairness Doctrine, even without one explicitly in place. Mr. Lloyd denied being a fan of Chavez.
In our “How’s that retracted Right-Wing Terrorists Report doing for ya, DHS?” department, a substitute teacher who also worked for the Census was found hung in Kentucky with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest. Can we finally get over the illusion that fringe objection to the government is some sort of legitimate policy problem and start applying the chair leg of truth?
The FDIC may be borrowing money from banks to help ensure that it can pay out deposit insurance on those banks that fail. This seems rather perverse. Would it not be easier to call in loans and guarantees made to various banks and use those monies to restock the FDIC?
More developments on the early-firing New York terror arrests - the police and FBI warned of possible attacks and targets, believing they may not have gotten all the terrorists.
The Washington Times also throws spin from the headline in indicating the presence of a rally for Muslims at the Capitol on 25 September. The headline? “Attorney to terrorists organizes Muslim rally at Capitol”. Boy, if that wasn’t a haevy suggestion that all the Muslims attending such a rally are also terrorists or terror-sympathizers.
Finally, 500+ amendments. One bill. Let let cage match begin on health care.
In opinions, an opening salvo to truly show the state of the science versus nonscience "controversy" - let the ID people put up their best debaters against a properly armed and vetted college student. If the college student can beat the IDer, then there’s your answer. If the IDer wins, then give them a PhD student, then a professor, then maybe PZ Meyers, and then and only then, Richard Dawkins. The idea could be extrapolated out to other science versus nonscience or pseudoscience problems, or new science versus older science - start with the college students, and then move forward from there.
Mr. Greenwald follows into politics by opining on the chameleon nature of Glenn Beck, and how left-right debate has shifted into those who believe what we have now is sound and good, and those who believe what we have now is rotten to the core and must be excised. Mr. Greenwald notes only the Republicans are interested in tapping this amorphus rage and directing it against the Democrats for their own purposes, trying to get the protesters to do something some of them are principally opposed to - putting the Republicans back in power.
The G-20 summit in Pittsburgh is ready to say hello to protesters. With riot police, barricades, and all sorts of other measures designed to ensure nobody gets anywhere close to the meeting, no logistical supply arrives, and some of the preferred places for protesters to gether on the Web go dark and stay that way. The opinion part, though, is that globalization is in its death throes and those who cling to it desperately are using the last thing they have, force, to prevent the populace from tossing them aside and doing something better.
An opinion on how newsmedia might save themselves - getting into the custom research business. As an example of things that might work, Common Craft, which creates three-minute videos explaining complex concepts in plain language.
And in other opinions, the WSJ on the war on terror, praising President Obama for his continuation of Bush-era illegal wiretaps, the intelligence community for doing their jobs (possibly outside the law), and military gains in Pakistan. At least General Petraeus's comments on Afghanistan all talk about things done squarely within the realm of the law.
Mr. Berman tells us the Bush plan on missile defense was the best of the bunch, and says the CBO agrees with him. He then tsks at President Obama for systematically removing the good options in favor of his preferred one, to our potential disaster if Iran develops long-range missiles before we can defend against them.
Mr. Corvitz makes a weak argument that the current administration is reducing security goals in intelligence and counterterrorism by referring to semantics in a document.
Ms. O'Grady returns to the Honduras matter, still convinced that the United States is trying to get Honduras to violate its own Constitution because Mr. Zelaya wished to hold a referendum on whether the law should be changed to allow a President to have more than one term. Ms. O’Grady feels the U.S. is being bullying against the independent and properly-acting judiciary by revoking heir visas and continuing to pressure them, and is happy for said judiciary’s continual refusal to resotre Mr. Zelaya.
On health care, the WSJ believes the President is just trying to not call a tax a tax so he can get his plan through. The tax in question is supposedly the fines and penalties being paid out by persons who do not get insurance under an individual mandate. Because the government is charging it, to the WSJ, it’s a tax. To the President, it’s a fine or penalty. I’m inclined to go with the President on this one, because I doubt anyone would consider their overdue library books a tax, and these are similar situations - follow the contract, get no penalty. Don’t follow the contract, take a penalty. Tax happens on people whether they’re following the contract or not.
Tonight’s worst opinions in the world, however, start with Mr. Hill, who echoes Boss Limbaugh in wondering whether the President is actively trying to make America fail so he can rebuild it in his own image, because of his want to nationalize health care, the stimulus spending, and foreign policy overtures that are intended to hurt America and help the world, according to Mr. Hill. Since he re-raises his question, I re-raise mine. Would the Democratic party put forward a candidate who had even the slightest inclination toward despotism after having suffered through several Republican presidencies where that seemed to be the aim? Would the vetting process mysteriously fail at rooting out any and all heterodox ideas and possible signs of insanity? It would make much more logical sense to use the position to enrich oneself at the cost of the country, and a universal health care proposal wouldn’t normally seem to be the way to go about it. Unless, of course, you believe the President is a corporate shill working he very best to advance the interests of the people who really hold power in this country, but that’s normally a rather liberal (or libertarian) position to be holding, and you don’t strike me as that kind of person, Mr. Hill.
But, because there’s an October month coming on, we have to give our obligatory shout-down to the subset of people who believe all witchraft is demonic, that Harry Potter, anime, manga, and the old classic, Dungeons and Dragons all corrupt young souls and leads them into demonic service, and that Halloween is the holiday given to Satan so that he can tempt those souls to his service. It’s not like there aren’t, say, other holidays Christians celebrate that have pagan origins or anything. (She touches on that, saying their original origins have been properly co-opted into being godly holidays.) One would like to believe the Satanic Panic is over, but Mr. Potter and the like show us that it simply went underground for a bit. And one last thing - her advice to parents on avoiding the witchcraft influence - take the kids out of public school. Homeschool them or send them to Christian schools. Because that will certainly stop them from learning about all these things they need to be protected from. Smother them by reading everything they read and looking for the hidden occult influences, which might be the mention of someone celebrating something other than Christmas (or not celebrating it at all). Foster the environment that will engender underground rebellion and your children hiding things from you so as to have actual privacy and be able to think for themselves about things. Here’s my additional piece of advice, if you want to seriously consider all of this - keep them out of the public library. I can do more damage to your carefully constructed worldview in a few minutes than you can do in years trying to fix it. I can also do this damage without deliberately intending to, just by recommending some books or answering a question or two. Oh, and you’ll also have to live without Internet access. Just saying.
Science and technology tell us we build cities like our brains wire themselves, getting bigger and expanding according to similar lines of structure and support, we're trying to design surveillance systems that reason like our brains, whether in video, as in the article, or as webcrawlers designed to look for abnormal information on the Internet, proteins continue to be promising candidates to deliver cancer-killing radiation to tumor cells, and expected announcements that Luna has quite a bit of water on it.
Last for tonight, proof that sometimes little creatures can eat the lunch of bigger creatures and survive...mostly if the bigger creature decides not to kill them.
And then the opposite, the laws that turn young people who experiment with sexuality or make one bad decision about showing anatomy into sex offenders, where they will be jailed and then restricted from participating in the normal life everyone else has, paraded as pariahs and people thought to have done heinous things instead of normal adolescent fooling around, and then subjected to the worst of our feelings because they have the label permanently attached to them. This is what “thinking of the children” produces, when mixed with the still-misconception that the law is a scalpel. Here are more examples of what will get you named a sex offender, despite not having any pedophilic interests, or by just being of the wrong age to explore your sexuality.
And the mind may open up with repeated applications of the Zen TV experiment, which reminds us of the unreality of television and all the great components that go into making it look natural.
Expect a fear and terror theme to today’s update - starting with the pledging of Somali militia to al-Qaeda.
Internationally, At the United Nations, President Obama continued to call for multilateralism in dealing with problem countries like North Korea and Iran, hoping for unity among many, even as the UN fights its own divisions.
A piece from our past comes back to say hello as we find out the Secret Service found Boris Yetlsin blitzed, outside, in his underclothes, apparently trying to order pizza.
And then, crashing straight into the present, Australian police are investigating whether members of their force ran around a vehicle in the nude on their way to a stag party.
Last out, an Astralian man died of self-imposed starvation, after having sued and won the right to do so.
Domestically, Enforcing the law they have, an Indiana court refused to grant a same-sex couple married in Canada a divorce, citing a lack of authority to do so.
In the “The Law is a club, not a scalpel” department, a bill intended to strip federal funding of ACORN has language broad enough that several defense contractors may also be considered ineligible for federal funds. ACORN dies, so does Lockheed Martin. And that’s assuming it manages to avoid being smacked as a bill of attainder.
The FCC's person in charge of diversity, Mr. Mark Lloyd, is taking heat for comments encouraging white executives to step down and promote minorities into positions of power, appearing to admire Hugo Chavez's revolution in Venezuela, and offering suggestions on how to make liberal talk radio better. The heat stems mostly around the idea that this will make the FCC start using its weight to step on conservative talk radio’s success and enforce a Fairness Doctrine, even without one explicitly in place. Mr. Lloyd denied being a fan of Chavez.
In our “How’s that retracted Right-Wing Terrorists Report doing for ya, DHS?” department, a substitute teacher who also worked for the Census was found hung in Kentucky with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest. Can we finally get over the illusion that fringe objection to the government is some sort of legitimate policy problem and start applying the chair leg of truth?
The FDIC may be borrowing money from banks to help ensure that it can pay out deposit insurance on those banks that fail. This seems rather perverse. Would it not be easier to call in loans and guarantees made to various banks and use those monies to restock the FDIC?
More developments on the early-firing New York terror arrests - the police and FBI warned of possible attacks and targets, believing they may not have gotten all the terrorists.
The Washington Times also throws spin from the headline in indicating the presence of a rally for Muslims at the Capitol on 25 September. The headline? “Attorney to terrorists organizes Muslim rally at Capitol”. Boy, if that wasn’t a haevy suggestion that all the Muslims attending such a rally are also terrorists or terror-sympathizers.
Finally, 500+ amendments. One bill. Let let cage match begin on health care.
In opinions, an opening salvo to truly show the state of the science versus nonscience "controversy" - let the ID people put up their best debaters against a properly armed and vetted college student. If the college student can beat the IDer, then there’s your answer. If the IDer wins, then give them a PhD student, then a professor, then maybe PZ Meyers, and then and only then, Richard Dawkins. The idea could be extrapolated out to other science versus nonscience or pseudoscience problems, or new science versus older science - start with the college students, and then move forward from there.
Mr. Greenwald follows into politics by opining on the chameleon nature of Glenn Beck, and how left-right debate has shifted into those who believe what we have now is sound and good, and those who believe what we have now is rotten to the core and must be excised. Mr. Greenwald notes only the Republicans are interested in tapping this amorphus rage and directing it against the Democrats for their own purposes, trying to get the protesters to do something some of them are principally opposed to - putting the Republicans back in power.
The G-20 summit in Pittsburgh is ready to say hello to protesters. With riot police, barricades, and all sorts of other measures designed to ensure nobody gets anywhere close to the meeting, no logistical supply arrives, and some of the preferred places for protesters to gether on the Web go dark and stay that way. The opinion part, though, is that globalization is in its death throes and those who cling to it desperately are using the last thing they have, force, to prevent the populace from tossing them aside and doing something better.
An opinion on how newsmedia might save themselves - getting into the custom research business. As an example of things that might work, Common Craft, which creates three-minute videos explaining complex concepts in plain language.
And in other opinions, the WSJ on the war on terror, praising President Obama for his continuation of Bush-era illegal wiretaps, the intelligence community for doing their jobs (possibly outside the law), and military gains in Pakistan. At least General Petraeus's comments on Afghanistan all talk about things done squarely within the realm of the law.
Mr. Berman tells us the Bush plan on missile defense was the best of the bunch, and says the CBO agrees with him. He then tsks at President Obama for systematically removing the good options in favor of his preferred one, to our potential disaster if Iran develops long-range missiles before we can defend against them.
Mr. Corvitz makes a weak argument that the current administration is reducing security goals in intelligence and counterterrorism by referring to semantics in a document.
Ms. O'Grady returns to the Honduras matter, still convinced that the United States is trying to get Honduras to violate its own Constitution because Mr. Zelaya wished to hold a referendum on whether the law should be changed to allow a President to have more than one term. Ms. O’Grady feels the U.S. is being bullying against the independent and properly-acting judiciary by revoking heir visas and continuing to pressure them, and is happy for said judiciary’s continual refusal to resotre Mr. Zelaya.
On health care, the WSJ believes the President is just trying to not call a tax a tax so he can get his plan through. The tax in question is supposedly the fines and penalties being paid out by persons who do not get insurance under an individual mandate. Because the government is charging it, to the WSJ, it’s a tax. To the President, it’s a fine or penalty. I’m inclined to go with the President on this one, because I doubt anyone would consider their overdue library books a tax, and these are similar situations - follow the contract, get no penalty. Don’t follow the contract, take a penalty. Tax happens on people whether they’re following the contract or not.
Tonight’s worst opinions in the world, however, start with Mr. Hill, who echoes Boss Limbaugh in wondering whether the President is actively trying to make America fail so he can rebuild it in his own image, because of his want to nationalize health care, the stimulus spending, and foreign policy overtures that are intended to hurt America and help the world, according to Mr. Hill. Since he re-raises his question, I re-raise mine. Would the Democratic party put forward a candidate who had even the slightest inclination toward despotism after having suffered through several Republican presidencies where that seemed to be the aim? Would the vetting process mysteriously fail at rooting out any and all heterodox ideas and possible signs of insanity? It would make much more logical sense to use the position to enrich oneself at the cost of the country, and a universal health care proposal wouldn’t normally seem to be the way to go about it. Unless, of course, you believe the President is a corporate shill working he very best to advance the interests of the people who really hold power in this country, but that’s normally a rather liberal (or libertarian) position to be holding, and you don’t strike me as that kind of person, Mr. Hill.
But, because there’s an October month coming on, we have to give our obligatory shout-down to the subset of people who believe all witchraft is demonic, that Harry Potter, anime, manga, and the old classic, Dungeons and Dragons all corrupt young souls and leads them into demonic service, and that Halloween is the holiday given to Satan so that he can tempt those souls to his service. It’s not like there aren’t, say, other holidays Christians celebrate that have pagan origins or anything. (She touches on that, saying their original origins have been properly co-opted into being godly holidays.) One would like to believe the Satanic Panic is over, but Mr. Potter and the like show us that it simply went underground for a bit. And one last thing - her advice to parents on avoiding the witchcraft influence - take the kids out of public school. Homeschool them or send them to Christian schools. Because that will certainly stop them from learning about all these things they need to be protected from. Smother them by reading everything they read and looking for the hidden occult influences, which might be the mention of someone celebrating something other than Christmas (or not celebrating it at all). Foster the environment that will engender underground rebellion and your children hiding things from you so as to have actual privacy and be able to think for themselves about things. Here’s my additional piece of advice, if you want to seriously consider all of this - keep them out of the public library. I can do more damage to your carefully constructed worldview in a few minutes than you can do in years trying to fix it. I can also do this damage without deliberately intending to, just by recommending some books or answering a question or two. Oh, and you’ll also have to live without Internet access. Just saying.
Science and technology tell us we build cities like our brains wire themselves, getting bigger and expanding according to similar lines of structure and support, we're trying to design surveillance systems that reason like our brains, whether in video, as in the article, or as webcrawlers designed to look for abnormal information on the Internet, proteins continue to be promising candidates to deliver cancer-killing radiation to tumor cells, and expected announcements that Luna has quite a bit of water on it.
Last for tonight, proof that sometimes little creatures can eat the lunch of bigger creatures and survive...mostly if the bigger creature decides not to kill them.
And then the opposite, the laws that turn young people who experiment with sexuality or make one bad decision about showing anatomy into sex offenders, where they will be jailed and then restricted from participating in the normal life everyone else has, paraded as pariahs and people thought to have done heinous things instead of normal adolescent fooling around, and then subjected to the worst of our feelings because they have the label permanently attached to them. This is what “thinking of the children” produces, when mixed with the still-misconception that the law is a scalpel. Here are more examples of what will get you named a sex offender, despite not having any pedophilic interests, or by just being of the wrong age to explore your sexuality.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 08:09 am (UTC)http://apo.org.au/research/hamlets-blackberry-why-paper-eternal
via: http://www.notechmagazine.com/2009/09/why-paper-is-eternal.html
no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 05:54 pm (UTC)