![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptSalutations, denizens of the Internets! Know this: The American FCC wants ISPs to record what websites you visit and keep those logs for two years time. It is, of course, to prosecute the people who peddle kiddie pr0n, but could easily be subverted by the use of media cabals to accuse you of pirating their stuff just because you visited a website. Anonymizers really start looking very good by this point.
For those of you with children, you may be heartened or dismayed to know a proposal suggests tantrums from children be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, potentially classifying them as disorders instead of normal childhood, among other changes, some good, like putting Asperger's Syndrome on the autism spectrum, and some rotten, like the tantrum change above.
The Ugandan kill-the-gays bill, according to this reading, means that if you know two people who are gay and don't tell the police, you will die if they're both found out, arrested, and you're tied to them. It's a rotten horrible bill on so many counts, and it should have someone go back in a Chronosphere and erase the bill just after it appears somewhere.
Last out, a reminder from the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department that just because you see numbers and figures doesn't make them completely true. While the context here is unemployment numbers, the lesson should be applied everywhere. After all, those same numbers can also show that poor people have been disproprtionately slammed in terms of jobs lost, while the rich are gliding above, helping to make unemployment numbers look better than they really are.
On the international stage, a possible view into how the holders of United States government debt could use that debt as political leverage - China may be threatening to sell U.S. debt in retaliation for the United States selling arms to Taiwan.
Elsewhere, missile defense placements hold up missile reduction treaty between U.S. and Russia. Well, we were kind of hoping for cooperation, but hopefully negotiations will be able to irritate everyone equally.
Finally, Iran bans GMail, rest of world says "Suckers". More overtly, Mr. Binley says worldwide oil sanctions are needed to the revolution can succeed in changing out the government, assuming that the opposition is interested in creating a Western-style democracy, a point I am still not convinced is true.
Domestically, Uh, Newt? Richard Reed was a UK citizen and was Mirandized, not an American citizen. Sort of ruins the point you were trying to make about how only American citizens have and should be Mirandized (if you have to, instead of shooting them dead where they stand because they look like a terrorist). Worse, flubbing the correction to the correction only makes you look worse. This may be part of a bigger plot to attack law enforcement because it polls well for the opposition. If that is the way things are going, it's going to be a backfire, because the populace actually doesn't respond to fear-based tactics all that well. At least, those of us down in Real America, instead of in the political classes.
A new study indicates there are 1 million less illegal immigrants in the country in January 2009 than there were in 2007. One can give credit to enforcement issues of the last administration and/or the economy's suckage as reasons for the drop in immigration - how much to what depends entirely on your political view.
Sarah Palin, past the point of crib notes on her hand, has a problem with what's on her wrist, too - wearing the very wrong color for someone who is still alive and serving his country admirably.
More examples of filibusters creating gridlock - a nominee to the Natinoal Labor Relations Board was blocked by filibuster after being branded as too friendly to unions by Republicans. Speaking of the 41-seat majority, the Senator from Utah, after the vote to break filibuster was taken at 52 for appointment, 33 against, declares his hope that the President will not "thwart the will of the Senate" by exercising his ability to appoint while the Senate is in recess. The 33 against are the will of the Senate? Really, Senator?
Technology headlines with Google's request for information on places where they can set up gigabit boradband fiber connections as an experiment, to then see what developers and users do with the superpowered bandwidth. On the other end of the scale, an Indian company is developing cellular base stations that require as little as 50 watts of solar power to operate, which could be deployed in Africa or other infrastructure-poor areas to build a robust mobile network. Any chance they can mod those to include wi-fi and build a blanket of low-power wi-fi repeaters across those kinds of areas (or to deploy in disaster zones?)
MIT is developing better routers that can more efficiently bundle and ship network traffic, using technology to bundle and create hybrid packets.
Today's opinions begin with a warning for those seeking graduate education in humanities with the idea of becoming teachers - don't. Of course, that brings out accusations that the writer is trying to discourage the field so only the select few he approves of get in - thus, another column defending his ideas and pointing out that it's policy decisions that are crushing them, not him. He points out that his column is about job prospects, not the love of the work that many of those students have. After some time in the quiet, he revisits the subject without changing any advice, because he still sees the graduate school system as a trap, drawing in people who dream of professorships but will be confronted by the ugly reality of being adjunct faculty and struggling to make any ends meet.
In the political realms, Mr. Luskin thinks the rhetoric change toward anti-corporate populism since the election of Scott Brown has been harmful to Wall Street, because it signals a return to those times when businesses were afraid the administration was going to pummel them with new taxes and regulations. Thus, the stock market slowed down, and as everyone knows, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the measure of our economy, so when it drops, the economy does, too. Mr. Luskin also hopes for significant amounts of gridlock on business issues, because gridlock means higher stocks. Perversely, this makes sense - an environment where government can't do anything is an environment where corporations can flourish doing dirty deeds expensively.
An unsigned from the WSJ's editorial crew proclaims the revenge of Dick Cheney, because this administration and the American populace really do want terrorists waterboarded and denied their rights. Well, that, and the Congress refuses to fund the closing of Guantanamo because they don't want to be seen as "letting terrorists into the United States", regardless of the proof availale that supermax prisons can hold terror suspects. Once again, the political point-scoring potential triumphs any sort of real progress. *sigh*
Mr. Fund opines both on the futility of Sarah Palin's attempts to stay at the forefront of the Tea Party and the futility of most politicians to be able to capture the Tea Party, because their winds shift fairly frequently, requiring candidates to follow them closely to avoid being swamped.
Last out of opinions, Mr. Sowell says life is not fair and people should stop whining about fairness, because, after all, even nature discriminates in terms of fitness and intelligence. As he states, when someone says "fair", it is a very good idea to ask what they mean. Mr. Sowell believes fair is an arbitrary thing used by liberals to enforce socialism and force the naturally-achieving to be dumbed down or stolen from (by taxation) until they are at the level of their peers. That it's not fair to the world that Americans are born in the bestest country ever, but too bad for them. They'll just have to be happy being in what country they are, unless they get lucky enough to come to America. For most of those liberals, though, fair means that every person should have some base level to work from and those that can afford to lift their peers up to that level should do so, whether they feel everyone should have the same opportunities and minimum starting point or not.
Last for tonight, a little bit of LOLscience, and businesses should always make sure they know who's at the Twitter switch, lest the company get it full measure for the actions of one employee (who was suspended, quickly, for his remarks.)
Finally, several myths about persons who are bi/pansexual, mostly having to do with people stuck in binaries and people who think someone who says they are attracted to more than one gender are just sluts.
For those of you with children, you may be heartened or dismayed to know a proposal suggests tantrums from children be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, potentially classifying them as disorders instead of normal childhood, among other changes, some good, like putting Asperger's Syndrome on the autism spectrum, and some rotten, like the tantrum change above.
The Ugandan kill-the-gays bill, according to this reading, means that if you know two people who are gay and don't tell the police, you will die if they're both found out, arrested, and you're tied to them. It's a rotten horrible bill on so many counts, and it should have someone go back in a Chronosphere and erase the bill just after it appears somewhere.
Last out, a reminder from the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department that just because you see numbers and figures doesn't make them completely true. While the context here is unemployment numbers, the lesson should be applied everywhere. After all, those same numbers can also show that poor people have been disproprtionately slammed in terms of jobs lost, while the rich are gliding above, helping to make unemployment numbers look better than they really are.
On the international stage, a possible view into how the holders of United States government debt could use that debt as political leverage - China may be threatening to sell U.S. debt in retaliation for the United States selling arms to Taiwan.
Elsewhere, missile defense placements hold up missile reduction treaty between U.S. and Russia. Well, we were kind of hoping for cooperation, but hopefully negotiations will be able to irritate everyone equally.
Finally, Iran bans GMail, rest of world says "Suckers". More overtly, Mr. Binley says worldwide oil sanctions are needed to the revolution can succeed in changing out the government, assuming that the opposition is interested in creating a Western-style democracy, a point I am still not convinced is true.
Domestically, Uh, Newt? Richard Reed was a UK citizen and was Mirandized, not an American citizen. Sort of ruins the point you were trying to make about how only American citizens have and should be Mirandized (if you have to, instead of shooting them dead where they stand because they look like a terrorist). Worse, flubbing the correction to the correction only makes you look worse. This may be part of a bigger plot to attack law enforcement because it polls well for the opposition. If that is the way things are going, it's going to be a backfire, because the populace actually doesn't respond to fear-based tactics all that well. At least, those of us down in Real America, instead of in the political classes.
A new study indicates there are 1 million less illegal immigrants in the country in January 2009 than there were in 2007. One can give credit to enforcement issues of the last administration and/or the economy's suckage as reasons for the drop in immigration - how much to what depends entirely on your political view.
Sarah Palin, past the point of crib notes on her hand, has a problem with what's on her wrist, too - wearing the very wrong color for someone who is still alive and serving his country admirably.
More examples of filibusters creating gridlock - a nominee to the Natinoal Labor Relations Board was blocked by filibuster after being branded as too friendly to unions by Republicans. Speaking of the 41-seat majority, the Senator from Utah, after the vote to break filibuster was taken at 52 for appointment, 33 against, declares his hope that the President will not "thwart the will of the Senate" by exercising his ability to appoint while the Senate is in recess. The 33 against are the will of the Senate? Really, Senator?
Technology headlines with Google's request for information on places where they can set up gigabit boradband fiber connections as an experiment, to then see what developers and users do with the superpowered bandwidth. On the other end of the scale, an Indian company is developing cellular base stations that require as little as 50 watts of solar power to operate, which could be deployed in Africa or other infrastructure-poor areas to build a robust mobile network. Any chance they can mod those to include wi-fi and build a blanket of low-power wi-fi repeaters across those kinds of areas (or to deploy in disaster zones?)
MIT is developing better routers that can more efficiently bundle and ship network traffic, using technology to bundle and create hybrid packets.
Today's opinions begin with a warning for those seeking graduate education in humanities with the idea of becoming teachers - don't. Of course, that brings out accusations that the writer is trying to discourage the field so only the select few he approves of get in - thus, another column defending his ideas and pointing out that it's policy decisions that are crushing them, not him. He points out that his column is about job prospects, not the love of the work that many of those students have. After some time in the quiet, he revisits the subject without changing any advice, because he still sees the graduate school system as a trap, drawing in people who dream of professorships but will be confronted by the ugly reality of being adjunct faculty and struggling to make any ends meet.
In the political realms, Mr. Luskin thinks the rhetoric change toward anti-corporate populism since the election of Scott Brown has been harmful to Wall Street, because it signals a return to those times when businesses were afraid the administration was going to pummel them with new taxes and regulations. Thus, the stock market slowed down, and as everyone knows, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the measure of our economy, so when it drops, the economy does, too. Mr. Luskin also hopes for significant amounts of gridlock on business issues, because gridlock means higher stocks. Perversely, this makes sense - an environment where government can't do anything is an environment where corporations can flourish doing dirty deeds expensively.
An unsigned from the WSJ's editorial crew proclaims the revenge of Dick Cheney, because this administration and the American populace really do want terrorists waterboarded and denied their rights. Well, that, and the Congress refuses to fund the closing of Guantanamo because they don't want to be seen as "letting terrorists into the United States", regardless of the proof availale that supermax prisons can hold terror suspects. Once again, the political point-scoring potential triumphs any sort of real progress. *sigh*
Mr. Fund opines both on the futility of Sarah Palin's attempts to stay at the forefront of the Tea Party and the futility of most politicians to be able to capture the Tea Party, because their winds shift fairly frequently, requiring candidates to follow them closely to avoid being swamped.
Last out of opinions, Mr. Sowell says life is not fair and people should stop whining about fairness, because, after all, even nature discriminates in terms of fitness and intelligence. As he states, when someone says "fair", it is a very good idea to ask what they mean. Mr. Sowell believes fair is an arbitrary thing used by liberals to enforce socialism and force the naturally-achieving to be dumbed down or stolen from (by taxation) until they are at the level of their peers. That it's not fair to the world that Americans are born in the bestest country ever, but too bad for them. They'll just have to be happy being in what country they are, unless they get lucky enough to come to America. For most of those liberals, though, fair means that every person should have some base level to work from and those that can afford to lift their peers up to that level should do so, whether they feel everyone should have the same opportunities and minimum starting point or not.
Last for tonight, a little bit of LOLscience, and businesses should always make sure they know who's at the Twitter switch, lest the company get it full measure for the actions of one employee (who was suspended, quickly, for his remarks.)
Finally, several myths about persons who are bi/pansexual, mostly having to do with people stuck in binaries and people who think someone who says they are attracted to more than one gender are just sluts.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-02-11 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 01:56 am (UTC)And the bit about the tantrums being classified as a disorder?? I'd like to see how they're going to qualify/quantify that. characterised by "severe, recurrent outbursts of temper" several times a week, that are "grossly out of proportion to the situation or provocation and that interfere significantly with functioning". I mean, severe as compared to what??? Out of proportion as compared to what? Seems subjective. Though perhaps this could be the ticket for those kids who seem to escape diagnoses (for whatever reason) but still really need help and services.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 07:10 pm (UTC)Well, a lot of the diagnoses are subjective. ADD, for example. Yes, it might be a catch-all for those that are going to get help, but are otherwise atypical undiagnosed. Or it's another excuse to get a diagnosis so even younger children can be put on drugs.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-13 01:23 am (UTC)