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silveradeptGreetings, persons for whom computing has become second nature. The Historical Writings Department has a gem for us to start with - old computer manuals that tell the complete truth about copy protection and the hype that computer salespeople attempt to apply, predicting both the war on copy protection and the condition that Kestrel would take her revenge upon.
Be also aware that when bureaucracy entangles sufficiently that a city council can dispute a parking ticket it gave to itself, one should probably figure out a way of clearing out the brush and trimming the foliage.
Finally, here's an actual possibility for the "think of the children" hysteria - kids snack multiple times a day, and junk food make up more than a quarter of their caloric intake. You want to turn your attention toward something that will have actual health benefits? Figure out a way to get kids to snack more healthily, burn off their excesses in calories, or to make food that will hold them between meal times.
In the international sphere, The IAEA Director indicated he could not assure the world that Iran's nuclear activities were entirely peaceful, giving more grist for the Third Land War In Asia coalition to use in their persuasion attempts.
Domestic news begins with an investigation by the Nevada Taxicab Authority as to why old materials that considered homosexuals to be high communicable disease risks is still being distributed, despite newer friendlier language adopted in 2007.
The previous administrator is staying out of the limelight, refusing to criticize the current administrator, in stark contrast to his vice-president’s very vocal stance on the current administration. We believe Mr. Bush is exhibiting wisdom in not talking, because he recognizes that people will make comparisons if he does, and they will not usually be favorable ones. Rather than waste time and energy defending himself, Mr. Bush is waiting for historical perspective and the publication of his book.
A person previously employed by the CIA was arrested for selling Agency equipment to a private electronics manufacturer. The equipment in question seems to have been spectrum analyzers, devices that measure the amount of communication of various electromagnetic wavelengths.
Last out, Teabaggers gear up to oppose health care reform all the way to the vote, which seems to be a headline that should be more like “persons in need of health care queue up to shoot themselves in various body parts”, but that’s my opinion. Truthfully, it’s a mad scramble to see whether Republicans can be teabagger enough to gain their support for elections while shutting down any attempts at health care reform or whether the teabaggers will declare any Republican to be too liberal for their tastes and continue to barrel ahead with primary challenges and other ideologically sound but block-divisive measure. In either case, though, health care reform is held up, obstructed, delayed, defanged, and otherwise slow-walked by the Republican Party while they attempt to snag their most conservative base in time for elections and keep their corporate overlords happy. All that while lots of what should be real GDP is lost.
In technology and sciences, the recent Chile quake appears to have shifted Terra's axis by three inches, which means shorter days by a little over a microsecond in practical terms, and interest in whether similar massive quakes can do more permanent change/damage to Terra's rotation. That would be a completely different form of climate change.
Beyond that, a device that projects options on your skin, allowing you to use your own body as an input for Bluetooth-compatible devices, research indicating people are more dishonest when there is less light shining on them, perhaps because there’s a psychological effect that lets them think they can get away with it, the Pentagon's request for people/companies to build rescue and extraction robots, and a report that the amount of data we have and the increasing magnitudes of data we generate daily. Naturally, large data sets have their own problems, for analysis, for storage, and for actual understanding.
Last out of this section, research indicating that oxygenating alcohols speeds sobering time and lessens hangover symptoms. So when you have to get up in the morning, drink oxygenated booze.
When opinions roll around, they are always varied and wide. For example, Mr. Gary Randall, long-time opponent of homosexuals, today posts his support of Miss Ashley, while also trying to make his kind of Christians into a persecuted minority. So, not only does he believe in the death penalty for homosexuals (and wants homosexuals to believe they should die, too), he also believes anyone who says that shouldn’t be the case is persecuting him and his religion. I don’t know. Maybe people who seriously believe other Humes should die because of who they are should be persecuted. It would be immensely satisfying for the inquisitors, after all. However, the best way to make ridiculous people ridiculous is to let them talk all they like and only intervene when they try to do something about it.
Speaking of deserving of ridicule, Mr. Pruden suggests that the President is the loser of the health care summit, because he keeps championing what the people don't want, and because it made him look every inch the pretentious professor in the face of Republican common-sense plans. I believe Mr. Pruden was watching the Bizarro-World broadcast, because I certainly didn’t see any concrete proposals put forward. Lots of “start over” and “go step by step”, sure, but no actual plans or methods or roadmaps or anything else as to how such a thing would be accomplished in a way that Republicans would support. If the President took their advice, and then turned to them and said “Okay, now what?”, he’d probably get a middle finger and a laugh. “We never had a plan, we just wanted you to abandon yours.” As for the people’s opposition, that’s usually a matter of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, with polling numbers showing opposite reactions, based on how the question is presented, how it’s explained, and whether dog-whistle trigger words are used. (For example, Mr. Fund's statistics say the populace wants to start over and to tell Congress to go away, but the way he talks about those statistics leaves miles of interpretation and provides almost no context to the numbers.)
Ms. Parker opines that green jobs are a socialist plot, by way of talking about Van Jones, the Center for American Progress (with digression about their funding being through bankers selling ARMs, so they’re really no better than anyone else), and the apparent lack of results from alternative energy research despite all the funding. It must be a socialist plot to grow government and get people dependent on the government, because Everyone Knows that if The Market (All Praise To Its Name) were to invest a similar sort of money in alternative fuels, they would have produced solar-powered jetpacks by now. At least, that’s my guess, because Ms. Parker never really gets to a point, including the one about how green jobs are really socialism in disguise.
That said, and demonstrating the variability of opinion in the “conservative” segment (the Don’t Tar Us With One Brush warning) of the populace, The Washington Times says Energy Secretary Chu should stick to what he knows best - clean, affordable, and plentiful energy sources for Americans - and not voice any opinion on climate change at all. Mind you, they say this because Secretary Chu is of the opinion that climate change is a real problem, and the Times is ideologically opposed to climate change, waving about as many “scandal!” opportunities as they can as their proof that clmiate change is a discredited theory and the facts say that Humes have nothing to do with climate change. (Or that it’s not as bad as we think - there seems to be a duality of opinion there.) We note, perhaps with a bit of something, heeding Bender’s caution about using “irony” in the wrong context, that if Mr. Chu does what the Times says he should do, and succeeds, odds are good he will have contributed significantly to solving the problem of climate change, accomplishing both his goal and the one the Times wants him to focus on.
On the tail end of the opinion train, Mr. Paulson calls for Congress and the President to get out of the way and stop interfering with American lives, because Congress always interferes to make things worse, by funding institutions that should have failed, by extending unemployment benefits instead of telling the people out of work to get off their lazy asses and get a job (no matter how long they’ve been trying to get one, thank you very much), and creating new taxes and spending entitlements when Everyone Knows real stimulus is always in tax cuts (and tax cuts for the rich, mostly). Thus, Mr. Paulson says President Obama needs to trust the people of the country to bring the economy back. I parse that as: Trust that corporations will, in their self-interest, keep the economy going by making sure the people have enough to live on and buy their products with and not a penny more. The alternative, an economy where people can live without fear that their insurance will drop them arbitrarily because they have become unprofitable, that people can do the work they are passionate about and not worry about whether it will pay enough for the bills and for food, and where government regulates business to ensure products, including financial instruments, are not sold to them on wild promises that have no basis in reality, would be, well, unprofitable, and thus must be opposed as “socialism” whenever people get an inkling they might like that world.
Finally, Mr. reagan throws his lot in with the tea partiers, declaring the current tax system to be corrupted, indecipherable, and used by government to dictate the behaviors of the people for their own ends as well as to curry favors with their wealthy backers. Thus, he proposes a tax revolution, one that would rip out the current tax code and replace it with something simpler and more elegant. This does have an appeal, assuming, of course, that it’s a proper replacement that makes those who have less pay less and those who have more pay more and pay on all the ways that they make their more, whether through investments in stocks, real estate, or by being a profitable business chartered in (or with an arm in) the United States.
Be also aware that when bureaucracy entangles sufficiently that a city council can dispute a parking ticket it gave to itself, one should probably figure out a way of clearing out the brush and trimming the foliage.
Finally, here's an actual possibility for the "think of the children" hysteria - kids snack multiple times a day, and junk food make up more than a quarter of their caloric intake. You want to turn your attention toward something that will have actual health benefits? Figure out a way to get kids to snack more healthily, burn off their excesses in calories, or to make food that will hold them between meal times.
In the international sphere, The IAEA Director indicated he could not assure the world that Iran's nuclear activities were entirely peaceful, giving more grist for the Third Land War In Asia coalition to use in their persuasion attempts.
Domestic news begins with an investigation by the Nevada Taxicab Authority as to why old materials that considered homosexuals to be high communicable disease risks is still being distributed, despite newer friendlier language adopted in 2007.
The previous administrator is staying out of the limelight, refusing to criticize the current administrator, in stark contrast to his vice-president’s very vocal stance on the current administration. We believe Mr. Bush is exhibiting wisdom in not talking, because he recognizes that people will make comparisons if he does, and they will not usually be favorable ones. Rather than waste time and energy defending himself, Mr. Bush is waiting for historical perspective and the publication of his book.
A person previously employed by the CIA was arrested for selling Agency equipment to a private electronics manufacturer. The equipment in question seems to have been spectrum analyzers, devices that measure the amount of communication of various electromagnetic wavelengths.
Last out, Teabaggers gear up to oppose health care reform all the way to the vote, which seems to be a headline that should be more like “persons in need of health care queue up to shoot themselves in various body parts”, but that’s my opinion. Truthfully, it’s a mad scramble to see whether Republicans can be teabagger enough to gain their support for elections while shutting down any attempts at health care reform or whether the teabaggers will declare any Republican to be too liberal for their tastes and continue to barrel ahead with primary challenges and other ideologically sound but block-divisive measure. In either case, though, health care reform is held up, obstructed, delayed, defanged, and otherwise slow-walked by the Republican Party while they attempt to snag their most conservative base in time for elections and keep their corporate overlords happy. All that while lots of what should be real GDP is lost.
In technology and sciences, the recent Chile quake appears to have shifted Terra's axis by three inches, which means shorter days by a little over a microsecond in practical terms, and interest in whether similar massive quakes can do more permanent change/damage to Terra's rotation. That would be a completely different form of climate change.
Beyond that, a device that projects options on your skin, allowing you to use your own body as an input for Bluetooth-compatible devices, research indicating people are more dishonest when there is less light shining on them, perhaps because there’s a psychological effect that lets them think they can get away with it, the Pentagon's request for people/companies to build rescue and extraction robots, and a report that the amount of data we have and the increasing magnitudes of data we generate daily. Naturally, large data sets have their own problems, for analysis, for storage, and for actual understanding.
Last out of this section, research indicating that oxygenating alcohols speeds sobering time and lessens hangover symptoms. So when you have to get up in the morning, drink oxygenated booze.
When opinions roll around, they are always varied and wide. For example, Mr. Gary Randall, long-time opponent of homosexuals, today posts his support of Miss Ashley, while also trying to make his kind of Christians into a persecuted minority. So, not only does he believe in the death penalty for homosexuals (and wants homosexuals to believe they should die, too), he also believes anyone who says that shouldn’t be the case is persecuting him and his religion. I don’t know. Maybe people who seriously believe other Humes should die because of who they are should be persecuted. It would be immensely satisfying for the inquisitors, after all. However, the best way to make ridiculous people ridiculous is to let them talk all they like and only intervene when they try to do something about it.
Speaking of deserving of ridicule, Mr. Pruden suggests that the President is the loser of the health care summit, because he keeps championing what the people don't want, and because it made him look every inch the pretentious professor in the face of Republican common-sense plans. I believe Mr. Pruden was watching the Bizarro-World broadcast, because I certainly didn’t see any concrete proposals put forward. Lots of “start over” and “go step by step”, sure, but no actual plans or methods or roadmaps or anything else as to how such a thing would be accomplished in a way that Republicans would support. If the President took their advice, and then turned to them and said “Okay, now what?”, he’d probably get a middle finger and a laugh. “We never had a plan, we just wanted you to abandon yours.” As for the people’s opposition, that’s usually a matter of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, with polling numbers showing opposite reactions, based on how the question is presented, how it’s explained, and whether dog-whistle trigger words are used. (For example, Mr. Fund's statistics say the populace wants to start over and to tell Congress to go away, but the way he talks about those statistics leaves miles of interpretation and provides almost no context to the numbers.)
Ms. Parker opines that green jobs are a socialist plot, by way of talking about Van Jones, the Center for American Progress (with digression about their funding being through bankers selling ARMs, so they’re really no better than anyone else), and the apparent lack of results from alternative energy research despite all the funding. It must be a socialist plot to grow government and get people dependent on the government, because Everyone Knows that if The Market (All Praise To Its Name) were to invest a similar sort of money in alternative fuels, they would have produced solar-powered jetpacks by now. At least, that’s my guess, because Ms. Parker never really gets to a point, including the one about how green jobs are really socialism in disguise.
That said, and demonstrating the variability of opinion in the “conservative” segment (the Don’t Tar Us With One Brush warning) of the populace, The Washington Times says Energy Secretary Chu should stick to what he knows best - clean, affordable, and plentiful energy sources for Americans - and not voice any opinion on climate change at all. Mind you, they say this because Secretary Chu is of the opinion that climate change is a real problem, and the Times is ideologically opposed to climate change, waving about as many “scandal!” opportunities as they can as their proof that clmiate change is a discredited theory and the facts say that Humes have nothing to do with climate change. (Or that it’s not as bad as we think - there seems to be a duality of opinion there.) We note, perhaps with a bit of something, heeding Bender’s caution about using “irony” in the wrong context, that if Mr. Chu does what the Times says he should do, and succeeds, odds are good he will have contributed significantly to solving the problem of climate change, accomplishing both his goal and the one the Times wants him to focus on.
On the tail end of the opinion train, Mr. Paulson calls for Congress and the President to get out of the way and stop interfering with American lives, because Congress always interferes to make things worse, by funding institutions that should have failed, by extending unemployment benefits instead of telling the people out of work to get off their lazy asses and get a job (no matter how long they’ve been trying to get one, thank you very much), and creating new taxes and spending entitlements when Everyone Knows real stimulus is always in tax cuts (and tax cuts for the rich, mostly). Thus, Mr. Paulson says President Obama needs to trust the people of the country to bring the economy back. I parse that as: Trust that corporations will, in their self-interest, keep the economy going by making sure the people have enough to live on and buy their products with and not a penny more. The alternative, an economy where people can live without fear that their insurance will drop them arbitrarily because they have become unprofitable, that people can do the work they are passionate about and not worry about whether it will pay enough for the bills and for food, and where government regulates business to ensure products, including financial instruments, are not sold to them on wild promises that have no basis in reality, would be, well, unprofitable, and thus must be opposed as “socialism” whenever people get an inkling they might like that world.
Finally, Mr. reagan throws his lot in with the tea partiers, declaring the current tax system to be corrupted, indecipherable, and used by government to dictate the behaviors of the people for their own ends as well as to curry favors with their wealthy backers. Thus, he proposes a tax revolution, one that would rip out the current tax code and replace it with something simpler and more elegant. This does have an appeal, assuming, of course, that it’s a proper replacement that makes those who have less pay less and those who have more pay more and pay on all the ways that they make their more, whether through investments in stocks, real estate, or by being a profitable business chartered in (or with an arm in) the United States.
