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Remember, this morning, that one should always be careful when engaging in extramarital affairs - because the revenge boomerang can hit hard. In that case, one might find oneself getting acquainted with urinal falls.

Furthermore, recall a Supreme Court decision made thirty-seven years ago is still the biggest legal protection a woman has to stop a fetus from coming to term.

Rejoice that Hawai'i moves further along the scale toward the Century of the Fruitbat, approving civil unions for hetero and homosexuals.

And, professionally, library cuts hurt everyone, just like school cuts hurt everyone.

If you’re wondering what the credit bureaus are saying about you, there's a free site from the government to get you your credit report, once a year.

Finally, a reminder that our pets are our companions, and that losing them can be just as hard as losing a person close to you. To help other companions find their humans you can bid on a signed portrait of Neil Himself and Zoe.

In the international sphere, MSF reports that they still can't get necessary medical supplies on the ground in Haiti, as others continue to be diverted to the Dominican Republic to go on a very long land route into Haiti. Where, apparently, those attempting to set up ham radio equipment are shot at. And where texts, tweets, and mobile communications lead to the rescue and recovery of trapped persons. The Boston Globe has gone in and captured the faces of those there, struggling with basic necssities and trying their best to distribute aid where infrastructure basically isn't.

A follow-up on an earlier story - the company manufacturing equipment with Christian Foundational Writings references on them will send kits out for their removeal and stop including the references on new material made for the military. Yay, sanity.

In an effort to combat the winter and get persons into their hotels, Holiday Inn in the UK has dispatched employees in body-length fleece to help warm the bed for guests.

Last out of the international section, the Untied States Marines have officially ended their role in the Iraq conflict. The timetable for withdrawal may yet be adhered to. And, rather late to the party, bin Laden claims responsibility for the Pants on Fire attacker.

Doemstic news begins with the President proposing a set of new bank regulations aimed at fixing the problems that let banks create the bubbles that burst and plummeted the economy to its current state. Tapping the populist rage, Mr. President? Awesome. Predictably, The WSJ, conservatives, and the banks rallied immediately to the cause of defeating that regulation, claiming it would hurt them too much. Attempting to ward off the firestorm, Goldman Sachs trimmed its bonus pools. A little. Elsewhere, massive apartment complexes built on bubbble economics went bankrupt.

While claiming not to be racists, the creators of a basketball league requiring that a player be a natural born citizen of the U.S. and the player's parents both be of Caucasian descent have certainly fooled us. It’s a league formed mostly in the South part of the country, and only accepts white players to play basketball. I think they’re qualifying for the definition, even if they don’t think they are.

Air America, a network of liberal radio programmes intended to provide balance to the conservative-dominated talk-radio industry, has filed for bankruptcy. The network had troubles from the beginning. I suspect that they were forced out because they couldn’t find someone like ClearChannel who wanted to carry them - lacking the ability to tie into existing networks, there probably weren’t a lot of radio stations that could or would carry them. In talking about the bankruptcy of Air America, Mr. Fund is careful to try and distance himself from those who take the easy road of saying how the bankruptcy proves liberals can't compete in a competitive environment, before yoking himself to the people who believe this demise is another harbinger that liberalism is unpopular in the country and the President must change course, lest he be doomed.

Following in the footsteps of publications like Financial Times, the New York Times will erect a paywall for most of its content, although it will allow users a limited amount of free article viewing per month. I thought paywalls and the like were supposed to be things that would speed the death of the print industry. Why would the NYT do something like that?

In technology, Microsoft was aware of the flaw that was used to attack Google sites, and had planned a February release for such a patch, but the attack sped up their cycle. So they knew about it and were working on a patch for it. Question now is whether it was ready and they were sitting on their hands or they were still going through testing. The reporting of a vulnerability that has been in Windows code for 17 years now without a patch ready is...not encouraging. And, as it turns out, once patched, exploits appear, which has to be headache-inducing at Microsoft.

Google's Nexus One speech-to-text input will censor you if you curse while speaking, although Neil Himself has found a workaround - Add ".com" on the end of it and it will transcribe normally.

More encouraging is The Guardian newspaper's new tool for mining and accessing publicly-available government data sets, searching across several countries. Thus, mashup possibilities, as well as a nice portal for those looking to find something the government has put out into the public.

Last out of science and tech - bacteria in the dirt may help you lift your mood, so having a good roll around in the dirt, with or without kids, may be helpful.

The opinions leads with five more reasons why Pat Robertson is a dangerous man and should be repudiated by Christians everywhere.

On the more sane track, Paul Krugman for chairman of the Federal Reserve. And Mr. Zuckerman credits the brains of the American populace, who don't believe that stock figures going up means anything about economic recovery, especially not with so many unemployed still. He believes they’re holding back their money because they see new taxes on the horizon - and his solution for jobs is to invest serious capital in infrastructure, which does generate lots of jobs. So, again, why haven’t we brought back the WPA to rebuild the country and put all those unemployed people to work building?

Ms. Noonan believes Mr. Brown's election is a signal that traditional Democrats and Republicans are about to get thrashed at the polls, and that Mr. Brown’s ticket to success is not becoming like the traditional entities, but managing to retain his air of independence and apparent connection with the voters. In other words, to be a Senator elected by the people rather than bought by the corporations. Good luck with that. Ms. Strassel suggests Mr. Romney scrap the plan he put in place in Massachusettes and move on so he can become a better Presidential candidate in 2012, because his plan is what the Obama plan is right now, and we see how well that’s worked out for them.

The WSJ praises the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to flood the airwaves with money and messages of their own, slipping in several digs about how only liberals want to ban free speech from corporations and that unions will benefit from the new rules, too. Mr. Greenwald provides perhaps the best explanation of why this ruling was making open that which already was, and the benefits it provides, while indicating his continued ambivalence about other parts of the ruling.

And elsewhere, Mr. James Q. Wilson says New York should not have to shoulder the costs of prosecuting the self-appointed plotter of the 11 September attacks, believing that because the federal government wants to prosecute him in a civilian court, they should pay for all the costs related to it. It’s a backhanded way of saying “Military commissions and then the death squad for him!” For the more striaghtforward manner, The WSJ's editors think the recent admission of mistakes by the FBI's director constitues good reasons why terror suspects should not be treated to civilian courts, because civilian courts prevent authorities from extracting all the intelligence they can out of them before charging them and putting them on trial.

Ms. Erbe would like to start a discussion on whether America should prohibit Muslim women from wearing face-or-body covering garments, based partially on what she sees as an incompatibility between the values behind such dress and Western values of freedom.

Mr. Hanson believes Mr. Obama sees himself as a philosopher-king, passing ideas the populace hates but is good for them, and that this thinking is unwise and foolish. Except, Mr. Hanson, in a representative form of government, we really should be putting into office people who will do unpopular things because they are good for us. Things like civil rights and health care reforms will be opposed by lots of people, some because they have deep-seated ideas about what the government should and shouldn’t do, and others because they’vebeen bought off or frightened into saying what the opposition wants them to. We need level-headed, unflappable persons who will do the right thing, not corrupted persons more interested in re-election or in their own coffers than in the welfare of the people. In short, we need someone like the philosopher-king and an army of enlightened legislators behind him. Then, perhaps, we can get some work done on fixing what’s broken.

Ms. Torregrosa opines on why Fox is No. 1 in the ratings - because it appeals with controversies designed for the right-wing that believes itself to be center-right, locked in a battle between pinheads and patriots, the voice of Middle America, and the majority of the people, while MSNBC is liberal elites on both coasts with unpopular ideas, and so can’t compare. So far, so good - and then she blows it by saying that liberals should have been paying more attention to Fox and the Tea Partiers and appeasing them instead of mocking them for what they are, and that maybe the defeat in Massachusettes will make them more friendly to the Tea Party Fringe. Without that last sentence, it would be an excellent article on why Fox appeals so much.

Last out before Worsts, The Slacktivist lays the smack down on the Tea Party Protester, telling him to stop agitating against the think that will help him and his paycheck the most and get in favor of real health care reform.

And playing tonight’s Worst Persons Derby, one part of the bronze to Silvio Berlusconi, attempting to implement legislation saying all content to be uploaded to places like YouTube in Italy will first have to be screened for violence and pornography. Good luck with that, and I hope you pay whatever authority you set up to do this good money, because they’re going to have hell on their hands. Assuming they all don’t decide to anonymize and get around you by using IP addresses not from Italy.

Sharing the bronze honors with the Italian Prime Minister are the morons that challenged, and then the greater morons that removed, DICTIONARIES from schools because they contained a definition of "oral sex". This was clearly inappropriate for THE CHILDRENS, and soon, as the parent prophetically mentioned, the encyclopedias will also be going because of their in-depth discussion of the nature and function of the sexual organs. *headpiano!* It appears we will have to resort to the use of ballpoint pens to explain various sexual differences. That said, if we remember this for Banned Books Week... *grin*

Adding one on top of that, one half the silver to Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez suggested the earthquake in Haiti was the result of the United States testing a seismic weapon. If that really were the case, why test it on Haiti? Why not test it somewhere where a successful test would do some damage to the opposition? Not that Mr. Chavez will escape scrutiny of another sort - he might be sitting on some very large oil reserves, which might make him the target of many a predatory company...or government.

Sharing that honor with Mr. Chavez is Mr. Baehr, who spins together the movie Avatar and the disaster in Haiti and uses it as a screed against pantheism, because apparently James Cameron is a pantheist for wanting people to appreciate their connection to the world. Not to mention, pantheists become radical environmentalists, who become socialists, and decry capitalism, that which makes us all rich, and would have helped with the Haiti disaster because capitalism brings huge building and earth-moving machines. Oh, and pantheism and environmental connectedness apparently means hunting for food with bow and arrow and giving up all of one’s modern conveniences, too. Distortion, stretching, strawmen, and forgetting Joel and Mike’s mantra, too. All in the service of trying to make a quick religious buck, as it were. Bleargh.

The top of the dungheap, however, goes to eugenics advocate Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer of South Carolina, for advocating that poor people should not be fed by the state because feeding poor people encourages them to breed and make more poor people for the state to feed. He compared them to stray animals, and declared poor people can’t control their sexual urges and many women on the dole are simply staying home, doing nothing, and then gaming the system by having more children. His further comments included: those receiving government aid should be subjected to drug tests and (if with children in school) required to attend PTA meetings and teacher conferences upon pain of losing their benefits, and free and reduced lunch schools hurt children because the schools with the highest free and reduced school lunches have the lowest test scores. When pressed on his beliefs, he did not retract them. I appreciate his interest that parents be there for their child’s studies. It would be nice if both parents were not working minimum-wage jobs just to make ends meet, and thus had time to attend after-school conferences without the penalty of lost wages or being fired for taking some part of a day to go to conferences. It would be nice if all families could afford school lunch at full price because they were making enough to do so, and didn’t have to rely on subsidization to ensure that their children received enough nutrition at school that they could think about their studies, instead of their bellies. It would be nice if our schools were funded sufficiently that education could truly be education, with enough instructors to maintain optimal class sizes, where arbitrary standardized tests did not determine whether a school would be funded fully or have its funding cut and be told to make students succeed on even less. It would be fantastic if our society were set up in such a way that everyone could be assured of the basic needs of life and then pursue their passion without worrying some self-righteous bastard would look down on them and then try to take away what scraps they have because he felt they were lazy welfare queens interested in scamming the system. It would be beautiful if our education was comprehensive enough to talk about oral sex, the dangers of unprotected intercourse, and all the methods that reduce the risk of those dangers, instead of the one proven not to work but that religious figures thunder is the only way. I’d love it if our society were relaxed enough about sexuality to be willing to provide contraceptives to those who need them, information for those thinking about experimentation, and emphasised the proper use of contraception, information, and respect for someone else’s sexual expression, whether in orientation, fetishization, or number of preferred partners, as a part of normal sexuality. I want those things. For right now, though, I want Andre Bauer to set aside his rich trappings and truly live the life of the poor for however long it takes him to truly understand the situation and work toward fixing the problems, instead of calling for the starvation of the poor of his own state.

Last for tonight, an item claiming to be the Church Handbook of Instructions for the Latter-Day Saints, supposedly adopted 1998, scanned and put on the web 1999. I’m guessing this is intended to be the showing of Forbidden Lore, but I also wonder whether the item in question has been superceded by a later publication or version.

There’s also an audio collection of lectures given by many famous poets at Naropa University.

And the residence created from a hole in the ground. A perfect place for a literary piece like I, Cthulhu. Or somewhere to hide your manga that teaches General Relativity, using girls to do so. Or maybe it’s where you display your collection of the complete set of Crayola colors from its inception to modernity or your collection of Lego scenes that reflect famous photographs.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
Silver Adept

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