Regular news for today - 27-28 April 2010
Apr. 29th, 2010 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGood morning, chasers of legends. Enjoy the story of a doll that appears to keep growing the hari of a young child. And then take a virtual tour of the Sistene Chapel.
For those chasing examples of good things in the world, the story of the Palestinian girl who invented a seeing stick for the blind, and her selection to travel to San Jose to present it at the finals for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair not onyl tugs the heartstrings but points out that women have brains and how destructive it is to the brainpower of many to be in a zone known for repression or violence. And to the collected works of the society, as one of the stories of unknowns who became heroes points out - “The Librarian of Basra”, specifically.
We’ve also stumbled across a very interesting phenomenon, one that might help explain fanatical devotion to just about any cause - when the person perceived as an expert or miracle-worker talks, the parts of our brain that govern vigilance and skepticism shut off. The test case was for faith healers and devotedly religious folks, but I’m betting there’s some general application to this, and that we’d see similar deactivations in devotedly political folks when their experts talk. Remember, We Are Not Unbiased, so don’t turn your brain off just because we say so.
We are throwing daggers, knives, axes, and anything else with a pointy or sharp end at the Oklahoma legislators that overrode the gubernatorial veto on two abortion bills. The first requires women, including rape and incest victims, to undergo an invasive ultrasound that shows them the various appendages of their fetus, with the doctor required to describe those parts to them, and the second shields doctors from malpractice suits if they lie about the possible developmental disabilities of the fetus. There are still two bills to go - one restricting insurance coverage of abortion procedures, and the other requiring statistics be gathered and posted about abortions in the state. Oklahoma is well on its way to becoming a state consisting solely of men, much like Arizona is on the path of becoming a state consisting entirely of WASPs, if not consisting of noone. (Oh, and the governor who signed the papers please law is now three polling points behind her competitor. Anyone shocked?) To sort of make it a trifecta, A candidate for Alabama governor ran an ad declaring that he would require the driver's license test be administered solely in English, attempting a play for “common sense” and the reduction of traffic collisions against the rather large elephant looming suggesting it is a coded anti-immigration stance, dubbed “political correctness” by the candidate. See more opinions about immigration later on.
Out in the world today, FOX runs a headline suggesting the battle for Kandahar, Afghanistan, could have the most casualties yet - clearly, they feel safer and that they’re not giving ammunition to the anti-war movement. Not that the anti-war movement on Afghanistan has been particularly vocal or large.
Speaking of those areas, an ambiguous statement - terror attacks go down worldwide, but up in places where the United States military is currently actively attacking, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This could provide cover to the people who say, “See? Our actions abroad do make the world safer” or be just as useful to people who say, “See? Wherever the United States military goes, there the terror attacks follow.” It can be both pro-war and anti-war. I’m kind of surprised it’s on Fox for that very reason.
More video from the folks at al-Qaeda showing the Pants on Fire bomber in his training to give the impression, of course, that there are more like him out there willing to take up the cause.
Bolivia has introduced Coca Colla, a cocoa-based fizzy drink, with an obvious nod at Coca-Cola, and possibly causing more headaches fro Washington, who are trying to remove coca products because cocaine uses the coca leaf, and we know how much the War on (Some) Drugs hates cocaine.
Domestically, the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department wants us to pay attention - A survey of the National Association for Business Economics surveyed people who work for private sector companies about whether employment was greater at their companies after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - upon receiving mostly no answers, they declared ARRA to be a failure.
Welcome to sciences and technologies, where we find chimpanzees have rituals when one of their own dies.
Addditionally, mobile weapons systems that fit in shipping containers, gene silencers able to prevent a disease from infecting a human, nanoparticles that may protect bone marrow cells from the effects of radiation poisoning, and the most recent oil slick is now visible from space. Yikes.
Speaking of things going into space, a Japanese company aims to put a humanoid robot on Luna by 2015. This on the heels of NASA's intention to but a humanoid robot generally into space.
And last out of science and tech, a key mathematical concept for the discipline of calculus, the infinite series, appears to be about 250 years older than either of the two people customarily credited with the invention of calculus.
In opinions, Mr. Eaves points out five very common myths traditional media has about social media and journalism, such as people not knowing what’s good when they see it, or that they won’t develop ways of filtering out the flood, and that the average blog should be the standard of comparison, instead of the very best blogs.
Senators Lieberman and Collins justify their subpoena request ergarding Major Hasan, claiming that the information they seek should be able to be provided to Congress and that it won’t hurt the criminal investigation, because they’re not investigationg the shooting, but the chain of events that allowed the shooting to happen.
Mr. Haass says that the problem of Palestine is oen worth solving, but that its importance in stablizing the Middle East is exaggerated and it is not a panacea for the ills of the region. Besides, says he, Iran is more important right now.
Ms. Ali suggests that we not totally laugh off the threats against Trey Parker and Matt Stone for their South Park episode depicting Muhammed, prophet of Islam and supposedly forbidden from having depictions of him made, but that we saturate the airwaves with images so as to force anyone thinking about killing the people who provide images to have to do a whole lot of legwork to get it done.
Mr. Sowell would like to see history presented less as "white bastards enslaved blacks" and more as "people enslaving people are bastards". I’m guessing the end result of this is that we suddenly think affirmative action is stupid and tell anyone who wants to talk about specific ways culture is oppressing them racially that they’re being old-fashioned and playing the “race card”. I like the idea of wider perspective, but the details matter, too, and slavery in America goes through certain philosophical roots that should be explored, too, because those philosophies didn’t go away, necessarily. Instead, they probably just changed targets.
Mr. Soloway spends half a column on a distraction before getting to his point - liberals, especially Barack Obama, are ruining the country with their entitlements, bureaucracy, and government takeovers of our lives. The only good solution is to go with the Tea folks and return to budget austerity and the imagined freedom-loving Constitution that ensures The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) has as free a hand as it likes and the government is powerless to stop corporations. Otherwise, we have either a civil war as the Randian Red States rebel against the Socialist Blue States or we become socialists like Europe, with the inevitable decline and destruction that follows.
There’s really only one thing to say to that: If you think Barack Obama is a real liberal, in the socialist/Marxist sense, get your head out of the sand and take a second look at him. He’s barely a centrist. Shouldn’t you be taking a look at why a major political party continues to oppose the selection of arbiters of justice based on the virtues of their character? Why waste time on trying to sell the electorate that the President and the Democrats are all really dedicated to the destruction of America through radical liberalism, American unexceptionalism, and government control of everyone, having also managed to successfully pull off the ultimate game of three-card monte to sell themselves as centrists? (Because it gets you votes, ratings, and donations to your causes. Yes, I know, I know. Also, paradoxically, the columnist predicts ruin, doom, and destruction for the Democrats, despite having already pointed out that they have successfully disguised their radical agenda to get into office. What’s stopping them from doing it again? Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers?)
Mr. Carrol reads the provisions that would create a bank bailout fund from the banks' own funds as somehow creating a taxpayer-funded bailout fund on his way to a more sensible point that the bailout fund is far too small to be effective. I agree that the $50 billion is not nearly sufficient to handle a large insitution like Citigroup, and the banks and investment houses should be required to put in more money so the taxpayers are not on the hook again. To insinuate that money is going to somehow be provided by the taxpayer, though, is disingenuous. The paragraph quoted says that the cash has to come from somewhere, so clearly there’s going to be less income tax revenue from the institutions contributing their portion to the fund. Mr. Carrol should be asking why credit rating agencies were giving safe ratings to bonds that have since been downgraded to junk status once there waas no more bribe money to keep paying off the rating agencies.
On health care, the WSJ uses the current attempt to allow the federal government to reject unreasonable insurance price increases as the herald of politically rationed care, so as to force insurers to keep their prices down when their costs skyrocket in covering all the new people in new ways the health care reform bill mandates. It’s government control and rationing! Summon the death panels for Grandma! Price controls! Well, the price controls bit might be true, but I’m guessing it’s so that insurance companies can’t spike someone’s rates to make them drop the plan voluntarily. After all, it’s soon going to be illegal for them to drop someone from the plan because they developed something that’s expensive to treat.
All of this could have been avoided, of course, had we decided we were going to go straight to an insurance model that covered everyone in the country, cradle-to-grave, and left the profit motive out of it entirely. That was unlikely to happen, but we could have saved ourselves a lot of grief and fixes had we gone there in the first place.
And on immigration, Mr. La Jeunesse sets the tone with "illegal immigrants are a drain on social programs, which they can get without having to show they're citizens, and this is how much it will cost you". Some of the comment squad takes the opportunity to unload their pet peeves about immigration, indicating a far harsher stance (and why the candidate from Alabama thinks he might have a winning shot with his English-only campaign). Those harsher stances start with The WSJ blaming the federal government for Arizona's Papers, Please law, alleging that if only the feds would do their job in legislating and enforcing, the whole matter could have been avoided, and further alleging that the Democrats want to keep things as they are to use Arizona as an anti-Republican weapon. We’ll see if the WSJ is still advocating for reform when a real bill arrives and it manages to pass the Senate deadlock and make it to the floor to be debated. This is anotehr situation where the Party of NO is doing itself absolutely no favors with their pattern of threatened filibuster to everything, because they hold up a process instead of working toward changing the bill to something they like and then casting their votes for or against the finished product. Taking that position out to the logical conclusion, Ms. Buchanan praises the Arizona law and says it will become the standard from states if the federal government doesn't squash its open-borders special interests and stop its plans to let foreign workers swarm in and steal American jobs, give them amnesty for their illegal entry, and cover it all under the idea of issuing more foreign legal-immigration work visas, despite, apparently, that we already have a very high concentration of legally immigrated workers stealing jobs from Americans. The feds, says she, should construct walls and impediments, crack down on those employing illegal immigrants, and stop letting anyone immigrate into the country until Americans are back on their feet. Well, we’re kind of flattered that she believes that Americans will be willing to take many of the jobs held by foreign-born workers, the ones without health insurnace, that pay below minimum wage for very long hours, and that are designed to maximize profit by minimizing labor costs. She’s counting on desperation to keep the system in place, just with Americans instead of illegal immigrants filling the roles of the bottom rung of society. She might be able to pull it off suring the current recession, but once the economy picks back up...
If you want to see what other proposals are already being thought up, try this - first offense, surrender DNA, be deported, repeated offense, prison labor camp sentence to build infrastructure, and then deportation, most likely with increased sentences for further repeated offenses. Well, I think both sides are agitating for Washington to do something, even if they differ sharply on what is to be done, so as to provide a national policy instead of letting states take measures into their own hands.
And last for today, turning infectious diseases and antibiotics into a CCG, making a serious game. Kind of like what Phylomon is trying to do for biodiversity. (And have eleven unintentionally sexual book titles.)
For those chasing examples of good things in the world, the story of the Palestinian girl who invented a seeing stick for the blind, and her selection to travel to San Jose to present it at the finals for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair not onyl tugs the heartstrings but points out that women have brains and how destructive it is to the brainpower of many to be in a zone known for repression or violence. And to the collected works of the society, as one of the stories of unknowns who became heroes points out - “The Librarian of Basra”, specifically.
We’ve also stumbled across a very interesting phenomenon, one that might help explain fanatical devotion to just about any cause - when the person perceived as an expert or miracle-worker talks, the parts of our brain that govern vigilance and skepticism shut off. The test case was for faith healers and devotedly religious folks, but I’m betting there’s some general application to this, and that we’d see similar deactivations in devotedly political folks when their experts talk. Remember, We Are Not Unbiased, so don’t turn your brain off just because we say so.
We are throwing daggers, knives, axes, and anything else with a pointy or sharp end at the Oklahoma legislators that overrode the gubernatorial veto on two abortion bills. The first requires women, including rape and incest victims, to undergo an invasive ultrasound that shows them the various appendages of their fetus, with the doctor required to describe those parts to them, and the second shields doctors from malpractice suits if they lie about the possible developmental disabilities of the fetus. There are still two bills to go - one restricting insurance coverage of abortion procedures, and the other requiring statistics be gathered and posted about abortions in the state. Oklahoma is well on its way to becoming a state consisting solely of men, much like Arizona is on the path of becoming a state consisting entirely of WASPs, if not consisting of noone. (Oh, and the governor who signed the papers please law is now three polling points behind her competitor. Anyone shocked?) To sort of make it a trifecta, A candidate for Alabama governor ran an ad declaring that he would require the driver's license test be administered solely in English, attempting a play for “common sense” and the reduction of traffic collisions against the rather large elephant looming suggesting it is a coded anti-immigration stance, dubbed “political correctness” by the candidate. See more opinions about immigration later on.
Out in the world today, FOX runs a headline suggesting the battle for Kandahar, Afghanistan, could have the most casualties yet - clearly, they feel safer and that they’re not giving ammunition to the anti-war movement. Not that the anti-war movement on Afghanistan has been particularly vocal or large.
Speaking of those areas, an ambiguous statement - terror attacks go down worldwide, but up in places where the United States military is currently actively attacking, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This could provide cover to the people who say, “See? Our actions abroad do make the world safer” or be just as useful to people who say, “See? Wherever the United States military goes, there the terror attacks follow.” It can be both pro-war and anti-war. I’m kind of surprised it’s on Fox for that very reason.
More video from the folks at al-Qaeda showing the Pants on Fire bomber in his training to give the impression, of course, that there are more like him out there willing to take up the cause.
Bolivia has introduced Coca Colla, a cocoa-based fizzy drink, with an obvious nod at Coca-Cola, and possibly causing more headaches fro Washington, who are trying to remove coca products because cocaine uses the coca leaf, and we know how much the War on (Some) Drugs hates cocaine.
Domestically, the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department wants us to pay attention - A survey of the National Association for Business Economics surveyed people who work for private sector companies about whether employment was greater at their companies after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - upon receiving mostly no answers, they declared ARRA to be a failure.
Welcome to sciences and technologies, where we find chimpanzees have rituals when one of their own dies.
Addditionally, mobile weapons systems that fit in shipping containers, gene silencers able to prevent a disease from infecting a human, nanoparticles that may protect bone marrow cells from the effects of radiation poisoning, and the most recent oil slick is now visible from space. Yikes.
Speaking of things going into space, a Japanese company aims to put a humanoid robot on Luna by 2015. This on the heels of NASA's intention to but a humanoid robot generally into space.
And last out of science and tech, a key mathematical concept for the discipline of calculus, the infinite series, appears to be about 250 years older than either of the two people customarily credited with the invention of calculus.
In opinions, Mr. Eaves points out five very common myths traditional media has about social media and journalism, such as people not knowing what’s good when they see it, or that they won’t develop ways of filtering out the flood, and that the average blog should be the standard of comparison, instead of the very best blogs.
Senators Lieberman and Collins justify their subpoena request ergarding Major Hasan, claiming that the information they seek should be able to be provided to Congress and that it won’t hurt the criminal investigation, because they’re not investigationg the shooting, but the chain of events that allowed the shooting to happen.
Mr. Haass says that the problem of Palestine is oen worth solving, but that its importance in stablizing the Middle East is exaggerated and it is not a panacea for the ills of the region. Besides, says he, Iran is more important right now.
Ms. Ali suggests that we not totally laugh off the threats against Trey Parker and Matt Stone for their South Park episode depicting Muhammed, prophet of Islam and supposedly forbidden from having depictions of him made, but that we saturate the airwaves with images so as to force anyone thinking about killing the people who provide images to have to do a whole lot of legwork to get it done.
Mr. Sowell would like to see history presented less as "white bastards enslaved blacks" and more as "people enslaving people are bastards". I’m guessing the end result of this is that we suddenly think affirmative action is stupid and tell anyone who wants to talk about specific ways culture is oppressing them racially that they’re being old-fashioned and playing the “race card”. I like the idea of wider perspective, but the details matter, too, and slavery in America goes through certain philosophical roots that should be explored, too, because those philosophies didn’t go away, necessarily. Instead, they probably just changed targets.
Mr. Soloway spends half a column on a distraction before getting to his point - liberals, especially Barack Obama, are ruining the country with their entitlements, bureaucracy, and government takeovers of our lives. The only good solution is to go with the Tea folks and return to budget austerity and the imagined freedom-loving Constitution that ensures The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) has as free a hand as it likes and the government is powerless to stop corporations. Otherwise, we have either a civil war as the Randian Red States rebel against the Socialist Blue States or we become socialists like Europe, with the inevitable decline and destruction that follows.
There’s really only one thing to say to that: If you think Barack Obama is a real liberal, in the socialist/Marxist sense, get your head out of the sand and take a second look at him. He’s barely a centrist. Shouldn’t you be taking a look at why a major political party continues to oppose the selection of arbiters of justice based on the virtues of their character? Why waste time on trying to sell the electorate that the President and the Democrats are all really dedicated to the destruction of America through radical liberalism, American unexceptionalism, and government control of everyone, having also managed to successfully pull off the ultimate game of three-card monte to sell themselves as centrists? (Because it gets you votes, ratings, and donations to your causes. Yes, I know, I know. Also, paradoxically, the columnist predicts ruin, doom, and destruction for the Democrats, despite having already pointed out that they have successfully disguised their radical agenda to get into office. What’s stopping them from doing it again? Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers?)
Mr. Carrol reads the provisions that would create a bank bailout fund from the banks' own funds as somehow creating a taxpayer-funded bailout fund on his way to a more sensible point that the bailout fund is far too small to be effective. I agree that the $50 billion is not nearly sufficient to handle a large insitution like Citigroup, and the banks and investment houses should be required to put in more money so the taxpayers are not on the hook again. To insinuate that money is going to somehow be provided by the taxpayer, though, is disingenuous. The paragraph quoted says that the cash has to come from somewhere, so clearly there’s going to be less income tax revenue from the institutions contributing their portion to the fund. Mr. Carrol should be asking why credit rating agencies were giving safe ratings to bonds that have since been downgraded to junk status once there waas no more bribe money to keep paying off the rating agencies.
On health care, the WSJ uses the current attempt to allow the federal government to reject unreasonable insurance price increases as the herald of politically rationed care, so as to force insurers to keep their prices down when their costs skyrocket in covering all the new people in new ways the health care reform bill mandates. It’s government control and rationing! Summon the death panels for Grandma! Price controls! Well, the price controls bit might be true, but I’m guessing it’s so that insurance companies can’t spike someone’s rates to make them drop the plan voluntarily. After all, it’s soon going to be illegal for them to drop someone from the plan because they developed something that’s expensive to treat.
All of this could have been avoided, of course, had we decided we were going to go straight to an insurance model that covered everyone in the country, cradle-to-grave, and left the profit motive out of it entirely. That was unlikely to happen, but we could have saved ourselves a lot of grief and fixes had we gone there in the first place.
And on immigration, Mr. La Jeunesse sets the tone with "illegal immigrants are a drain on social programs, which they can get without having to show they're citizens, and this is how much it will cost you". Some of the comment squad takes the opportunity to unload their pet peeves about immigration, indicating a far harsher stance (and why the candidate from Alabama thinks he might have a winning shot with his English-only campaign). Those harsher stances start with The WSJ blaming the federal government for Arizona's Papers, Please law, alleging that if only the feds would do their job in legislating and enforcing, the whole matter could have been avoided, and further alleging that the Democrats want to keep things as they are to use Arizona as an anti-Republican weapon. We’ll see if the WSJ is still advocating for reform when a real bill arrives and it manages to pass the Senate deadlock and make it to the floor to be debated. This is anotehr situation where the Party of NO is doing itself absolutely no favors with their pattern of threatened filibuster to everything, because they hold up a process instead of working toward changing the bill to something they like and then casting their votes for or against the finished product. Taking that position out to the logical conclusion, Ms. Buchanan praises the Arizona law and says it will become the standard from states if the federal government doesn't squash its open-borders special interests and stop its plans to let foreign workers swarm in and steal American jobs, give them amnesty for their illegal entry, and cover it all under the idea of issuing more foreign legal-immigration work visas, despite, apparently, that we already have a very high concentration of legally immigrated workers stealing jobs from Americans. The feds, says she, should construct walls and impediments, crack down on those employing illegal immigrants, and stop letting anyone immigrate into the country until Americans are back on their feet. Well, we’re kind of flattered that she believes that Americans will be willing to take many of the jobs held by foreign-born workers, the ones without health insurnace, that pay below minimum wage for very long hours, and that are designed to maximize profit by minimizing labor costs. She’s counting on desperation to keep the system in place, just with Americans instead of illegal immigrants filling the roles of the bottom rung of society. She might be able to pull it off suring the current recession, but once the economy picks back up...
If you want to see what other proposals are already being thought up, try this - first offense, surrender DNA, be deported, repeated offense, prison labor camp sentence to build infrastructure, and then deportation, most likely with increased sentences for further repeated offenses. Well, I think both sides are agitating for Washington to do something, even if they differ sharply on what is to be done, so as to provide a national policy instead of letting states take measures into their own hands.
And last for today, turning infectious diseases and antibiotics into a CCG, making a serious game. Kind of like what Phylomon is trying to do for biodiversity. (And have eleven unintentionally sexual book titles.)
