Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2010-06-24 12:23 am
silveradept) wrote2010-06-24 12:23 am
Long time delayed - 20-23 June 2010
Good morning, fans of fiction, fan fiction, and fictional fans! Today, we begin with an image of Leonard Nimoy on the set of his most famous role, accompanied by his son.
It’s going to be a bit long today. Find a beverage before you begin. Honestly.
A shout out to Governor Sanford in our particular way - Get plugged, bunghole. Libraries are essential to modern life. You should be ashamed of trying to cut their funding.
And speaking of a need for someone to get their heads out of their backsides, the appeals court that just ruled Congress can pull works back into copyright if they've gone ot the public domain needs a refresher course on copyright law - like patents, it’s a limited monopoly idea - everything created is supposed ot end up in the public domain once its made money for the creator.
A couple of quick sport notes before continuing - the United States and England both won 1-0 to advance from their group into the knockout rounds of the FIFA World Cup 2010 tournament, the United States waiting until the 90th minute to head in one that counted (having had one disallowed for being in an offside position - again.), and a match at Wimbledon went, in the last set, to 59 games for each player before being suspended on account of darkness, spanning more than eight hours worth of play without a winner achieving the two game lead required to end the match.
Out in the world today, Afghanistan surprises all with a succesful revolt against Taliban warlords in one of its provinces. Obviously, the United States would like to see much more of this happening as they continue their work.
Defeating the purpose entirely of education to open minds, Israel's education minister has said the department will do something about the "Palestinomania" in high school faculty in the country. Much like having the first graders shoot riot control weapons under the watchful eye of the military. The minister will find a good friend in Mr. Steele, who declares that we've got Israel all wrong and we want to demonize it at any opportunity. In doing so, apparently, we expose our decades-long lack of moral standing in the world, a nation so afraid of seeming imperialist, racist, xenophobic, or white supremacist that we don’t use our powers to the fullest to kick over nations, secure our borders, and educate our children the White way. Because of that, we see Israel, who does have that strength, as all those things we fear becoming.
Inside the country, a lesson for Republicans: If you want to stop being treated like a fringe group with ties to even more dangerous fringe groups, you might want to stop acting like a fringe group. Example: The Texas Republican Party's stance on marriage and the family, including insisting that the federal government prevent federal courts from ever hearing cases about sodomy, that any official who issues a same-sex marriage license be immediately jailed under a felony, and the transphobic and homophobic definition of marriage as between “a natural man and a natural woman”, from which they say anyone not legally defined as married should not be entitled to any spousal benefits. I wonder what the national Republican party thinks of this platform - would someone kindly ask Chairman Steele whether he supports this? And see whether they can also get the opinion of the AFA head who thinks that people die because we value animal life over human life, instead of being in the wrong place at the time a tranquilized bear woke up from his drug-induced nap.
To their credit, the RNC has at least figured out that trying to be funny and snarky is a good way to get voters.
And to rub a little salt in to the paranoia of people who feel they have to fight the acceptance of LGBT people everywhere... - you're losing. Even 7 year-olds dream for a time when LGBT people can be married. Potentially worrisome for LGBT and their allies, the current nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, was very much for making religious activities exempted from various requirements, but was at least cognizant enough to realize passing those kinds of laws would make it easier for religious organizations to discriminate against LGBT people. And thus, much like an agitator sneaking off after having incited the crowd, let’s go onward...
Kentucky Senate hopeful Rand Paul says it's time for the unemployed to suck it up and take any job they can instead of holding out on unemployment benefits for a job similar to the one they lost.
The statistical analyists and political wonks at FiveThirtyEight still can't really make heads or tails of he South Carolina Democratic Senate Primary, but they do know that statisically speaking, things went sideways a lot. And there’s a possibility that the voting machines used may have contributed to the weird results, being known for both security problems and operational problems, making cock-up or conspiracy a possibility with no paper trail to track down.
Members of Congress ahve been taking trips funded by The Family, the secretive religious organization that runs the C Street house where Members of Congress can rent at well-below market rates.
Finally, more reasons to hate BP and the oil and gas industry - they were drilling past their permit and doing it while cost cutting on safety measures, in addition to all the other stuff, like how oil and dispersant-soaked rain is falling on the fields and the people of the Gulf and further inland and a robot bump now means the cap has to be removed and inspected before it can be replaced. (Although, in this case, taking the time for safety inspections is actually a good thing, so maybe the hate can be moderated on that one.)
Must mention that the supposed Fourth Estate has been mostly falling down on the job when talking about this and other things journalists would be interested in. There will always be flashes of good somewhere, and there are probably some journalists left looking for the truth, complaining whenever they get blocked, and routinely calling out liars and misinformers as the PR and bullshit artists they are, but they seem very much in the minority.
In technology, an inventor successfully constructed a machine that could read a dead optical audio format, resulting in hearing the words of Thomas Edison, what may be the oldest sports cast on record, and a very early version of the NBC chimes. Ingenuity and engineering to recreate a dead machine. Perhaps this can serve as a lesson to our descendants about making sure our old formats can still be read in the far future. Knowing them, though, they’ll be more interested in how to determine whether a relationship will work by copmaring the blood types of the people involved.
Scientists are attempting to simulate the sound of a Higgs boson so that if they hear it in LHC experiments, they know what they've generated.
Here’s some interesting science - whale dung is high in iron. Iron stimulates the growth of phytoplankton, who trap carbon. Which means - we need lots of whale poop to keep the carbon cycle regulated, something I suspect activists aboard the Bob Barker know well.
And furthermore, read up on anosognosics, persons who are completely unaware that some part of their body has been paralyzed.
There is a pain ray protoype in Afghanistan, but everyone denies that it's been used.. Riiiight. I don’t think they’d airlift prototypes out there if they didn’t intend on testing them.
Finally, The Internet's fate, decided in a back room between government and industry. The People are not welcome, of course, to this discussion, nor the one where it looks like the Obama Administration thinks spying on your Internet communication in the name of fighting terrorism is a-okay. And it looks lots like the fight over who controls the post-scarcity world is not going well for The People, either.
Welcome to opinions, where we have sane cases that the United States has become a fascist police state, because the government acts to protect itself, has the judiciary rule in its favor, and has no real means of allowing the citizenry redress or a check on government. Or, if you’re more conservative, because the government has asked a private corporation to put money into an escrow fund and they did so. You can talk about all the implied threats you want, and there’s fruitful discussion there, but I don’t believe there was ever an actual order to seize the assets. If I’m wrong, let me know.
In their continued quest to prove The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) is Inherently Superior to everything, Messrs. Beck and Napolitano say that private military (err, "security") corporations could probably do a better job in Afghanistan than the United States Army. Becaue PMCs have such a stellar record as it is in how they’ve handled the places they have gone to, and we have no clear or recent examples of what can happen if we let corporations go unchecked.
Plus, we think they’d like to continue being spokespeople for various investment vehicles and scams without having to disclose their affiliations or for anyone to know those scams are just that.
On the second plank of their aims, a Senate candidate, Ms. Norton, attacked the President for not going to war against Islam. Because that’s exactly what we want to do - tell all the fanatics and wingnuts that they’re right, we are after them and we intend to crush them all under our bootheels. That has to be propped up with claims that the current administration is doing nothing about illegal immigration, because there are still illegals coming into the country and there's no great wall to keep them out.
And finally, lest we forget, we have to believe that Barack Obama is deliberately bankrupting the country so he can secure permanent majorities of Democratic voters and transform the United States into a Marxist/socialist country where everyone is dependent on government and thus won't vote to rein it in ever. When he’s not completely incompetent and mediocre at the business of governing in a time that demands The Decider, that is. The cognitive dissonance doesn’t seem to bother them, though - they'll still pen opinions about how much the federal government needs to intrude in the name of border security, national security, or waging war on Islam while declaring the people need to defy the government and vote them out for their intrusion in other areas.
Elsewhere, Mr. McGurn rewrites the recent Oval Office address so as to address the conservative pet peeve that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still exist, despite allegedly being supremely responsible for the housing crash.
Mr. Laskin suggests that tying BP and the Republicans together is a strategy likely to backfire on the Democrats, because of how much the administration has to work with BP to get the disaster cleaned up and how much the Demcorats are tied to oil and gas as well. I think an opening salvo on this is Mr. Pruden's warning for government to stay away from the people driling the relief wells, because they're the only competent people in the whole disaster.
Ms. Marshall wants you to oppose national standards for education, because it sucks away parental control and will only result in dumbed-down national standards. Mmm. Because we can control the State Board of Education through something other than elections? There are reasons to oppose national standards - the insistence on standardized testing as a measure of progress and the reimplemention of a program that created a self-fulfilling suicide pact would be good places to start. But for thsoe people who think they actually have local control of education standards, that’s already flown the coop.
And last out of opinions, one that wants you to believe something that it doesn’t say - The rich got richer under the Bush administration, and the share of total taxes paid by the rich increased under the Bush Administration. The missing piece? Taxes went down under the Bush Administration, which would, yes, push the percentages higher. What the opinion wants you to do, though, is get mad at the 47 percent of households that pay no income tax or get refunds, especially those freeloaders on the Earned Income Tax Credit, instead of demanding that the people who have lots and get more should be willing to part with much mroe of their income to help their fellows and to, y’know, maybe cut the defecit some?
Last for tonight, some levity - some choclates that came together to form a phallus. Of course, the person who found it was Not Amused and believes the workers at the plant did it deliberately and should be punished. Perhaps, instead, we’ll turn her attention to the colored bacon and see what happens there.
Did we mention, by the way, that Oregon approved medical marijuana use? Maybe that’s why some of the stories seem trippy.
It’s going to be a bit long today. Find a beverage before you begin. Honestly.
A shout out to Governor Sanford in our particular way - Get plugged, bunghole. Libraries are essential to modern life. You should be ashamed of trying to cut their funding.
And speaking of a need for someone to get their heads out of their backsides, the appeals court that just ruled Congress can pull works back into copyright if they've gone ot the public domain needs a refresher course on copyright law - like patents, it’s a limited monopoly idea - everything created is supposed ot end up in the public domain once its made money for the creator.
A couple of quick sport notes before continuing - the United States and England both won 1-0 to advance from their group into the knockout rounds of the FIFA World Cup 2010 tournament, the United States waiting until the 90th minute to head in one that counted (having had one disallowed for being in an offside position - again.), and a match at Wimbledon went, in the last set, to 59 games for each player before being suspended on account of darkness, spanning more than eight hours worth of play without a winner achieving the two game lead required to end the match.
Out in the world today, Afghanistan surprises all with a succesful revolt against Taliban warlords in one of its provinces. Obviously, the United States would like to see much more of this happening as they continue their work.
Defeating the purpose entirely of education to open minds, Israel's education minister has said the department will do something about the "Palestinomania" in high school faculty in the country. Much like having the first graders shoot riot control weapons under the watchful eye of the military. The minister will find a good friend in Mr. Steele, who declares that we've got Israel all wrong and we want to demonize it at any opportunity. In doing so, apparently, we expose our decades-long lack of moral standing in the world, a nation so afraid of seeming imperialist, racist, xenophobic, or white supremacist that we don’t use our powers to the fullest to kick over nations, secure our borders, and educate our children the White way. Because of that, we see Israel, who does have that strength, as all those things we fear becoming.
Inside the country, a lesson for Republicans: If you want to stop being treated like a fringe group with ties to even more dangerous fringe groups, you might want to stop acting like a fringe group. Example: The Texas Republican Party's stance on marriage and the family, including insisting that the federal government prevent federal courts from ever hearing cases about sodomy, that any official who issues a same-sex marriage license be immediately jailed under a felony, and the transphobic and homophobic definition of marriage as between “a natural man and a natural woman”, from which they say anyone not legally defined as married should not be entitled to any spousal benefits. I wonder what the national Republican party thinks of this platform - would someone kindly ask Chairman Steele whether he supports this? And see whether they can also get the opinion of the AFA head who thinks that people die because we value animal life over human life, instead of being in the wrong place at the time a tranquilized bear woke up from his drug-induced nap.
To their credit, the RNC has at least figured out that trying to be funny and snarky is a good way to get voters.
And to rub a little salt in to the paranoia of people who feel they have to fight the acceptance of LGBT people everywhere... - you're losing. Even 7 year-olds dream for a time when LGBT people can be married. Potentially worrisome for LGBT and their allies, the current nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, was very much for making religious activities exempted from various requirements, but was at least cognizant enough to realize passing those kinds of laws would make it easier for religious organizations to discriminate against LGBT people. And thus, much like an agitator sneaking off after having incited the crowd, let’s go onward...
Kentucky Senate hopeful Rand Paul says it's time for the unemployed to suck it up and take any job they can instead of holding out on unemployment benefits for a job similar to the one they lost.
The statistical analyists and political wonks at FiveThirtyEight still can't really make heads or tails of he South Carolina Democratic Senate Primary, but they do know that statisically speaking, things went sideways a lot. And there’s a possibility that the voting machines used may have contributed to the weird results, being known for both security problems and operational problems, making cock-up or conspiracy a possibility with no paper trail to track down.
Members of Congress ahve been taking trips funded by The Family, the secretive religious organization that runs the C Street house where Members of Congress can rent at well-below market rates.
Finally, more reasons to hate BP and the oil and gas industry - they were drilling past their permit and doing it while cost cutting on safety measures, in addition to all the other stuff, like how oil and dispersant-soaked rain is falling on the fields and the people of the Gulf and further inland and a robot bump now means the cap has to be removed and inspected before it can be replaced. (Although, in this case, taking the time for safety inspections is actually a good thing, so maybe the hate can be moderated on that one.)
Must mention that the supposed Fourth Estate has been mostly falling down on the job when talking about this and other things journalists would be interested in. There will always be flashes of good somewhere, and there are probably some journalists left looking for the truth, complaining whenever they get blocked, and routinely calling out liars and misinformers as the PR and bullshit artists they are, but they seem very much in the minority.
In technology, an inventor successfully constructed a machine that could read a dead optical audio format, resulting in hearing the words of Thomas Edison, what may be the oldest sports cast on record, and a very early version of the NBC chimes. Ingenuity and engineering to recreate a dead machine. Perhaps this can serve as a lesson to our descendants about making sure our old formats can still be read in the far future. Knowing them, though, they’ll be more interested in how to determine whether a relationship will work by copmaring the blood types of the people involved.
Scientists are attempting to simulate the sound of a Higgs boson so that if they hear it in LHC experiments, they know what they've generated.
Here’s some interesting science - whale dung is high in iron. Iron stimulates the growth of phytoplankton, who trap carbon. Which means - we need lots of whale poop to keep the carbon cycle regulated, something I suspect activists aboard the Bob Barker know well.
And furthermore, read up on anosognosics, persons who are completely unaware that some part of their body has been paralyzed.
There is a pain ray protoype in Afghanistan, but everyone denies that it's been used.. Riiiight. I don’t think they’d airlift prototypes out there if they didn’t intend on testing them.
Finally, The Internet's fate, decided in a back room between government and industry. The People are not welcome, of course, to this discussion, nor the one where it looks like the Obama Administration thinks spying on your Internet communication in the name of fighting terrorism is a-okay. And it looks lots like the fight over who controls the post-scarcity world is not going well for The People, either.
Welcome to opinions, where we have sane cases that the United States has become a fascist police state, because the government acts to protect itself, has the judiciary rule in its favor, and has no real means of allowing the citizenry redress or a check on government. Or, if you’re more conservative, because the government has asked a private corporation to put money into an escrow fund and they did so. You can talk about all the implied threats you want, and there’s fruitful discussion there, but I don’t believe there was ever an actual order to seize the assets. If I’m wrong, let me know.
In their continued quest to prove The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) is Inherently Superior to everything, Messrs. Beck and Napolitano say that private military (err, "security") corporations could probably do a better job in Afghanistan than the United States Army. Becaue PMCs have such a stellar record as it is in how they’ve handled the places they have gone to, and we have no clear or recent examples of what can happen if we let corporations go unchecked.
Plus, we think they’d like to continue being spokespeople for various investment vehicles and scams without having to disclose their affiliations or for anyone to know those scams are just that.
On the second plank of their aims, a Senate candidate, Ms. Norton, attacked the President for not going to war against Islam. Because that’s exactly what we want to do - tell all the fanatics and wingnuts that they’re right, we are after them and we intend to crush them all under our bootheels. That has to be propped up with claims that the current administration is doing nothing about illegal immigration, because there are still illegals coming into the country and there's no great wall to keep them out.
And finally, lest we forget, we have to believe that Barack Obama is deliberately bankrupting the country so he can secure permanent majorities of Democratic voters and transform the United States into a Marxist/socialist country where everyone is dependent on government and thus won't vote to rein it in ever. When he’s not completely incompetent and mediocre at the business of governing in a time that demands The Decider, that is. The cognitive dissonance doesn’t seem to bother them, though - they'll still pen opinions about how much the federal government needs to intrude in the name of border security, national security, or waging war on Islam while declaring the people need to defy the government and vote them out for their intrusion in other areas.
Elsewhere, Mr. McGurn rewrites the recent Oval Office address so as to address the conservative pet peeve that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still exist, despite allegedly being supremely responsible for the housing crash.
Mr. Laskin suggests that tying BP and the Republicans together is a strategy likely to backfire on the Democrats, because of how much the administration has to work with BP to get the disaster cleaned up and how much the Demcorats are tied to oil and gas as well. I think an opening salvo on this is Mr. Pruden's warning for government to stay away from the people driling the relief wells, because they're the only competent people in the whole disaster.
Ms. Marshall wants you to oppose national standards for education, because it sucks away parental control and will only result in dumbed-down national standards. Mmm. Because we can control the State Board of Education through something other than elections? There are reasons to oppose national standards - the insistence on standardized testing as a measure of progress and the reimplemention of a program that created a self-fulfilling suicide pact would be good places to start. But for thsoe people who think they actually have local control of education standards, that’s already flown the coop.
And last out of opinions, one that wants you to believe something that it doesn’t say - The rich got richer under the Bush administration, and the share of total taxes paid by the rich increased under the Bush Administration. The missing piece? Taxes went down under the Bush Administration, which would, yes, push the percentages higher. What the opinion wants you to do, though, is get mad at the 47 percent of households that pay no income tax or get refunds, especially those freeloaders on the Earned Income Tax Credit, instead of demanding that the people who have lots and get more should be willing to part with much mroe of their income to help their fellows and to, y’know, maybe cut the defecit some?
Last for tonight, some levity - some choclates that came together to form a phallus. Of course, the person who found it was Not Amused and believes the workers at the plant did it deliberately and should be punished. Perhaps, instead, we’ll turn her attention to the colored bacon and see what happens there.
Did we mention, by the way, that Oregon approved medical marijuana use? Maybe that’s why some of the stories seem trippy.
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