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silveradeptGreetings, fellow travelers along the space-time continuum. Today, get involved in the madness that is the story behind the founding of TVTropes, which explains, actually, why there's so much from the Buffyverse there, among other thigns. Realize, of course, that TVTropes will suck your life away, and thus make sure that you can spend time on the website before going.
Pew Research produces a profile on the Millenials, who are apparently as of this writing, in age 18-29...a very different generation in a lot of ways that their predecessors, including single parenting, both in being parented and in parenting themselves, as well as the big on-line boom that happened while they were growing up.
The Department of History sends forth the Chemist's War, where a Prohibition-fueled United States deliberately required alcohols be poisoned so they could not be turned into drinkable spirits, killing a significant number of people who drank the spirits coming form them anyway.
Finally, The owner of a Minnesota trailer park worked with the residents to convert it into a resident-owned community, where the residents own the land and the houses that sit on that land. Combined with the transfer of the company in Oregon mentioned yesterday, the Slacktivist sees the possiblity of great political gain as well as a better world for the party willing to seize on it and provide the means of conversion for the trailer parks (and possibly easy ways of converting companies to employee-owned). We like these ideas and wish to see them more.
Domestically, the whistleblower site Cryptome was temporarily disabled following a DMCA takedown notice sent by Microsoft regarding a document Cryptome published about Micorosft's policies on sharing with law enforcement. The site has since been restored, with allegations of a "miscommunication" between the lawyers, the web host, and Microsoft itself, but it provides an excellent example of how the DMCA can be abused by corporations and others to stifle things they don't want published that are in the public interest. I can only guess the ACTA treaty will be even worse.
Citibank could be in a world of hurt, depending on whether incompetence or malice is the explanation behind the sudden freezing of bank accounts for Fabulis, a social-networking site for homosexual men, for "objectionable content". More positively, The State of Maryland will recognize homosexual marriages performed in other states, which is sort of Century of Fruitbat-y, but not the complete package.
On the other side of the coin is Lauren Ashley, attempting to claim the spot Carrie Prejean left vacant with her "death to homosexuals" position, using selective interpretation of writings to bolster her claim. She also wants to be recognized as Miss Beverly Hills USA in the Miss California pageant, a move the city itself says, "Hell no!" to, because they don't hold a pageant and she lives in Pasadena, in addition to her homophobic views. The General is undesrtandably upset, because such a view might make it so she can't get a boob job to win it all with, should she become Miss California USA.
The chiefs of the military branches did not commit to the program outlined by the Chairman and the Defense secretary to end the practice of discharging known homosexuals from the armed forces.
Utah, fresh off attempts to criminalize miscarriages, would also now like to have your records without any need for a judge to sign off on them, as the initial part of an investigation into cyber-stalking or cyber-crime. This, after having gained the power to do so in the initial part of a child sex crime, the requests have been slightly more than once a day. Unless Utah is hiding a lot of child sex crime that we don't know about, something's fishing. And it will only get worse. The question to be asked is Shouldn't the Fourth Amendment prevent such laws from coming into effect?
Finally, the chairman of the Federal Reserve indicated he would not change monetary policy in response to bigger debt. I do believe only the Department of the Treasury has the authority to print and coin money, so I'm guessing what the chairman or the article indicate is that he's not going to move interest rates any time soon.
In technology, review service Yelp is sued over a review the company being reviewed claims is false and defamatory. Or perhaps that Yelp is being sued because they're offering services to remove negative reviews... for a price. If it's the first, it's sort of like suing Google because YouTube has something that portrays you in a bad light. User-contributed reviews means users are responsible for them, not the service. If it's clearly false and inaccurate, and demonstrably so, then you might be able to ask the service to remove it, but otherwise, sorry, negative publicity is part of business. If it's the second, then we have to dust off our bad mobster imitations.
Far more frightening are the increasing sophistication of credit card skimming, some even going to the length of replacing a front panel at a gas station to achieve their ends.
Additionally, research into the value of physical contact as another universal language, as well as the possibility that teams that touch more do better and Wired looks in on the future of your ability to pay merchants for goods, software, and other things - it's getting ridiculously easy to have such things these days, and very little of it has to transact with banks or credit card companies, so as to avoid the fees they charge.
And in nature, remember that nature has evolved things that can and do kill humans, even when we think we have them trained. So in working with big dangerous animals, remember that they are big dangerous animals.
Also, file the following away in your "the world can be saved by steam" folder - a Florida woman claims her excess fat saved her when she was shot, and thus, much like "my uncle was saved by being ejected from the car for not wearing his seatbelt, so I'm not going to, either", the woman has considered staying bulky in case a second improbably event happens.
Leading the opinions tonight is Mr. Fund, who suggests that Mr. Beck is actually doing good things for the GOP in his criticisms that they are behaving more like Democrats and committing many of the same mistakes, even if sounds like he's encouraging a Tea Party rebellion. Because, when it comes down to things, Mr. Fund is confident the two-party system will reassert itself and the Republicans will be able to count on the tea vote to help them in their quest.
And with that as your appetizer, the WSJ's editorial board says the President' plan is the first step to a "planned medical economy" where costs are controlled by the government and choice is completely stifled as a result, with insurance companies fleeing some states for others. They also accuse the President of combining the worst parts of the House and Senate bills (subsidization for the poor and taxation for the rich), and conclude that he has no intent of playing bipartisan ball (because he hasn't become a Republican) and of telling Congresscritters to pervert rules like reconciliation to get it passed, never mind the repeated use of reconciliation by the previous administration to get things like tax cuts passed, or the fact that the reconciliation rules have been the primary vehicle for health care bills for the last decade and more.
Worse than that, though, is Ms. Parker, who starts out with a great column about the difficulties of black Americans in terms of unemployment and income disparity, and then throws it off a cliff by making it all about marriage and adhering to Republican and Christian values, specifically denigrating the political solutions (or attempts thereof) of the last forty-plus years as leading to helpless blacks coddled by a welfare state. The alternative from Ms. Parker sounds like destroying the safety net, telling young women to get married and to avoid sex lest they be shunned from society and left to die with their child.
Last for tonight, as a palate cleanser, Mr. Toyoda, of Toyota Motors, apologizes for the problems with his cars and highlights the new safety measures he will be putting into place in the company.
Last out for tonight, urban legends of phantom trains and other weirdnesses in Meiji-era Japan and pictures of Sakurajima volcano which would make for great backgrounds on the computer.
Oh, and the original 150 Pokemon done in the style of more traditional Japanese artwork.
Pew Research produces a profile on the Millenials, who are apparently as of this writing, in age 18-29...a very different generation in a lot of ways that their predecessors, including single parenting, both in being parented and in parenting themselves, as well as the big on-line boom that happened while they were growing up.
The Department of History sends forth the Chemist's War, where a Prohibition-fueled United States deliberately required alcohols be poisoned so they could not be turned into drinkable spirits, killing a significant number of people who drank the spirits coming form them anyway.
Finally, The owner of a Minnesota trailer park worked with the residents to convert it into a resident-owned community, where the residents own the land and the houses that sit on that land. Combined with the transfer of the company in Oregon mentioned yesterday, the Slacktivist sees the possiblity of great political gain as well as a better world for the party willing to seize on it and provide the means of conversion for the trailer parks (and possibly easy ways of converting companies to employee-owned). We like these ideas and wish to see them more.
Domestically, the whistleblower site Cryptome was temporarily disabled following a DMCA takedown notice sent by Microsoft regarding a document Cryptome published about Micorosft's policies on sharing with law enforcement. The site has since been restored, with allegations of a "miscommunication" between the lawyers, the web host, and Microsoft itself, but it provides an excellent example of how the DMCA can be abused by corporations and others to stifle things they don't want published that are in the public interest. I can only guess the ACTA treaty will be even worse.
Citibank could be in a world of hurt, depending on whether incompetence or malice is the explanation behind the sudden freezing of bank accounts for Fabulis, a social-networking site for homosexual men, for "objectionable content". More positively, The State of Maryland will recognize homosexual marriages performed in other states, which is sort of Century of Fruitbat-y, but not the complete package.
On the other side of the coin is Lauren Ashley, attempting to claim the spot Carrie Prejean left vacant with her "death to homosexuals" position, using selective interpretation of writings to bolster her claim. She also wants to be recognized as Miss Beverly Hills USA in the Miss California pageant, a move the city itself says, "Hell no!" to, because they don't hold a pageant and she lives in Pasadena, in addition to her homophobic views. The General is undesrtandably upset, because such a view might make it so she can't get a boob job to win it all with, should she become Miss California USA.
The chiefs of the military branches did not commit to the program outlined by the Chairman and the Defense secretary to end the practice of discharging known homosexuals from the armed forces.
Utah, fresh off attempts to criminalize miscarriages, would also now like to have your records without any need for a judge to sign off on them, as the initial part of an investigation into cyber-stalking or cyber-crime. This, after having gained the power to do so in the initial part of a child sex crime, the requests have been slightly more than once a day. Unless Utah is hiding a lot of child sex crime that we don't know about, something's fishing. And it will only get worse. The question to be asked is Shouldn't the Fourth Amendment prevent such laws from coming into effect?
Finally, the chairman of the Federal Reserve indicated he would not change monetary policy in response to bigger debt. I do believe only the Department of the Treasury has the authority to print and coin money, so I'm guessing what the chairman or the article indicate is that he's not going to move interest rates any time soon.
In technology, review service Yelp is sued over a review the company being reviewed claims is false and defamatory. Or perhaps that Yelp is being sued because they're offering services to remove negative reviews... for a price. If it's the first, it's sort of like suing Google because YouTube has something that portrays you in a bad light. User-contributed reviews means users are responsible for them, not the service. If it's clearly false and inaccurate, and demonstrably so, then you might be able to ask the service to remove it, but otherwise, sorry, negative publicity is part of business. If it's the second, then we have to dust off our bad mobster imitations.
Far more frightening are the increasing sophistication of credit card skimming, some even going to the length of replacing a front panel at a gas station to achieve their ends.
Additionally, research into the value of physical contact as another universal language, as well as the possibility that teams that touch more do better and Wired looks in on the future of your ability to pay merchants for goods, software, and other things - it's getting ridiculously easy to have such things these days, and very little of it has to transact with banks or credit card companies, so as to avoid the fees they charge.
And in nature, remember that nature has evolved things that can and do kill humans, even when we think we have them trained. So in working with big dangerous animals, remember that they are big dangerous animals.
Also, file the following away in your "the world can be saved by steam" folder - a Florida woman claims her excess fat saved her when she was shot, and thus, much like "my uncle was saved by being ejected from the car for not wearing his seatbelt, so I'm not going to, either", the woman has considered staying bulky in case a second improbably event happens.
Leading the opinions tonight is Mr. Fund, who suggests that Mr. Beck is actually doing good things for the GOP in his criticisms that they are behaving more like Democrats and committing many of the same mistakes, even if sounds like he's encouraging a Tea Party rebellion. Because, when it comes down to things, Mr. Fund is confident the two-party system will reassert itself and the Republicans will be able to count on the tea vote to help them in their quest.
And with that as your appetizer, the WSJ's editorial board says the President' plan is the first step to a "planned medical economy" where costs are controlled by the government and choice is completely stifled as a result, with insurance companies fleeing some states for others. They also accuse the President of combining the worst parts of the House and Senate bills (subsidization for the poor and taxation for the rich), and conclude that he has no intent of playing bipartisan ball (because he hasn't become a Republican) and of telling Congresscritters to pervert rules like reconciliation to get it passed, never mind the repeated use of reconciliation by the previous administration to get things like tax cuts passed, or the fact that the reconciliation rules have been the primary vehicle for health care bills for the last decade and more.
Worse than that, though, is Ms. Parker, who starts out with a great column about the difficulties of black Americans in terms of unemployment and income disparity, and then throws it off a cliff by making it all about marriage and adhering to Republican and Christian values, specifically denigrating the political solutions (or attempts thereof) of the last forty-plus years as leading to helpless blacks coddled by a welfare state. The alternative from Ms. Parker sounds like destroying the safety net, telling young women to get married and to avoid sex lest they be shunned from society and left to die with their child.
Last for tonight, as a palate cleanser, Mr. Toyoda, of Toyota Motors, apologizes for the problems with his cars and highlights the new safety measures he will be putting into place in the company.
Last out for tonight, urban legends of phantom trains and other weirdnesses in Meiji-era Japan and pictures of Sakurajima volcano which would make for great backgrounds on the computer.
Oh, and the original 150 Pokemon done in the style of more traditional Japanese artwork.
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Date: 2010-02-26 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 12:01 am (UTC)