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silveradeptGreetings, seekers of methods and improvements to the world. Start today's broadcast with Walt Disney's memorandum on how to train animators that could do all the work needed by his studio, and do it consistently.
For somewhere that needs some serious improvements, observe that the Department of Homeland Security has someone with the same name as a 6 year-old in Ohio on their No-Fly List. Oh, and the state of Ohio is considering using social media platforms to announce the execution of criminals.
And as a reminder to us persons in the library profession, there's no sitting on our heels about how good we are, because not everyone is up to speed on the idea that diverse communities are worthwhile in library communities. That said, I'm heartwarmed by the response in the comments by the librarians saying they have space and collection for everyone and throwing up book recommendations for the poster to further their reading. This is the changing face of libraries, and a solid opportunity seized to correct a possible misconception.
The Dead Pool claims Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, at 92 years of age and Edith Shain, the nurse in an iconic picture of a serviceman kissing a nurse in exuberance upon his return from the front, at 91 years.
And finally, what exactly would the argument have to be about for a brawl to break out at a kindergarten graduation?
Out in the world, the nations that depend on the Nile river for their lives are fighting over how to manage their precious resource.
Indian authorities stopped a ship carrying undeclared weapons bound for Pakistan from Liberia. Lest we forget about the other Other Land War in Asia...
At the G20 summit in Toronto, world leaders discussed the best ways of trying to restart the engine of the global economy without stalling it out or damaging it. As with any major gathering of world capitalists, protesters, both peaceful and non-peaceful, descended on the city to try and make their voices heard, drawing derision from commentators who want the police to ruthlessly crack down on anyone who looks like they might be doing something bad, regardless of cost in lives, armor, or PR.
Elsewhere, the European high court ruled that the guarantee of marriage written into the European rights charter does not extend automatically to LGBT couples, but that individual states must decide the question for themselves.
Inside the country, two steps forward, three steps back, it seems. The Gallup poll asking about how Americans feel about same-sex relationships has crossed the 50 per cent approval line for the first time, with the biggest gains in men under 50 years of age, Catholics, and moderates, independents, and Democrats. In analysis, some speculation on the swing and what it does and doesn't mean, and then the bad part, where three people were shot during a pride parade in San Franscisco.
The Guantanamo Bay prison, once slated to be closed swiftly, is now likely to still be around at the beginning of the next Presidential term, according to Seantor Carl Levin, accusing the Obama administration of not fully putting its power behind getting the necessary bits to close it through Congress.
Richard Cheney was admitted to the hospital over the weekend, not feeling well. Considering how many heart attacks that the former Vice President has survived, I understand the caution.
It's a very doomsday-esque scenario, requiring some worst-case things to come to pass, but the possibility of oil vapours igniting into a firestorm if sparked should say something about what kind of safety we should have in place. Remember, there's a lot of stock imagery available for showing your disgust with BP and the political party defending it's practices. Or, if you're of a different persuasion, plenty of columnists to share your anger that the administration is getting the way of the cleanup.
The better way to go would be to follow Kathryn Schulz's article in the Boston Globe about the need to embrace our error-producing capacity so that we can design systems that compensate for our inevitable errors, instead of making being wrong a bad thing. Had we done that with due redundancy on Deepwater Horizon, perhaps this wouldn't have happened in the first place.
I wouldn't recommend, though, following the line of thinking saying domestic drilling is safer, because we can cap our blowouts faster when they happen, or drill, baby, drill, especially when claiming that you both need government regulation and that the person in charge of it is trying to rule by fiat. In both cases, you end up holding the bag when the person asks the questions, "When are you going to make it so we stop blowouts immediately instead of in 16 hours? What kind of safety tech can you develop that will stop the oil from leaking out at all?"
Conference committee bangs out financial reform bill, new and tougher regulations and powers included, highlights are a consumer protection agency housed in the Federal Reserve, requirements that banks separate their commercial banking and investment banking into separately capitalized institutions, and limitations on how much damage a bank can do to itself by gambling.
Predictably, the political entities that helped to author the financial crisis were not in favor of the reform bill and are claiming the bills actually do close to nothing, and the regulators get all the power to decide whether this thing has teeth or not.
After Rolling Stone printed the article that helped get McChyrstal resigned, Lara Logan of CBS News accused Michael Hastings of duplicity and breaking the rules of military interviews. Because he printed what was said and done around him, instead of only the positive bits, doing more actual journalism in his article than Lara Logan has apparently done in a long time. Journalism is supposed to print what is, not what has been massaged to make someone look good or look bad.
Last out, two Census supervisors were fired for falsifying more than 10,000 questionnaires. Ugh.
In the sciences and technologies, Africa is experiencing shifts that will result in the birth of a new ocean. In 10 million years or so, that is.
As it turns out, if we motivate ourselves through Bob the Builder instead of the Little Engine That Could, we get better results. Perhaps because putting us in a questioning frame of mind makes us more adaptable to the inevitable things that happen when your battle plan makes contact with the outside world.
And The United States expressed an interest in Australia's attempts to reduce the ability of zombies to do the bidding of their masters, either through throttling or walling off infected machines until they test clean. About bloody time. Plus, will force even the most un-tech savvy to use basic tools to keep themselves safe on-line. I'm a little worried that will be manipulated by the media cabals to bad ends, but if it works as advertised and kills zombie traffic on the Web, I'm betting the bandwidth freed up could let some file-sharing happen. The government may also gain powers to temporarily shut down parts of the Internet to protect them in case of cyberattack. Err, wait, [RECORDSCRATCH]. Maybe not. Instead, perhaps, the bill restricts the ability already in place to kill the Internet and requires any measures taken to be the least disruptive possible.
A United Airlines transatlantic flight experimented with a technique that allowed them to move in their air columns to minimize wind resistance and maximize wind push so as to save fuel over the course of the flight. Experiment apprently successful. No word on whether it added time to the flight.
In opinions, Mr. Bacevich says the military needs a break from perpetual war so that the civilians can re-establish their authority and get the officer corps back into respecting the civilians instead of dismissing them.
The Slacktivist tries his hand at answering the curious question of why the people with more of something believe that more inequality is better, be it possibly education (and thus, the educated should rule) or income (and thus, the rich should be allowed to get richer and the poor, poorer).
The Times steps up to take their swings at Elena Kagan, as her confirmation hearings begin - their arguments are that she has no court experience (fresh face on the court), she flouted the Solomon Amendment by kicking recruiters off Harvard in protest of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (what, nothing here about the devoted patriot requirement to disobey laws you find that go against the moral fiber of the United States?), she hates the First Amendment (by arguing the government's case that pamphlets should be suppressable), the Second Amendment, is in favor of an abortion method they want you to find disasteful, and horror of horrors, believes that foreign law can be useful in arguing how to interpret American law, and thinks judges are supposed to be activists and interpret the law in a way that makes justice instead of in narrower ways that avoid bigger questions. Oh, and she thinks that marriages in one state should be recognized in all the other states, whether it's an LGBT marriage or not.
The Times goes after the Federal Trade Commission for requiring light bulb manufacturers to make CFLs the primary focus of their sales efforts, considering it government overreach to insist that people use a bulb that consumes less power, and snidely indicating that the CFLs are more dangerous, because they contain mercury instead of the more harmless tungsten.
Mr. Bethel lays out his belief that government has to be stopped from spending more, relaying a story of how disastrous it was for the Ohio governor to consider cutting library services to make his budget - not because libraries are vital services, but because libraries are a constituency that exists as freeloaders and will get pissy if their money supply is cut off. Get plugged, bunghole. But he follows the line of thinking that insists that government should tie social assistance to whether or not one is working, cut the spending back significantly from where it is now, restrict low-skill labor immigration, encourage low-income people to get married, and start forcing recipients to repay some of their assistance as loans. Because everyone who takes advantage of social assistance is lazy and not trying at all to get back into the workplace, so you can safely look down your nose at them and ignore the context of their situation.
The WSJ declares Keynesian economics dead once again, having done so several times before in the past year, and declaring that tax cuts, lower spending, and good monetary policy, return to the perception of Reagan, is the way to foster proper economic growth. They enlist the help of Steve Forbes to repeat that mantra on their pages. They also go after the Kerry-Lieberman energy and climate bill, claiming what we really need is to drill more on land and to stop trying to regulate the energy markets based on their pollution output. Echoing the anti-green rhetoric, Mr. Trzupek goes back to the standard arguments on why more green power and cap-and-trade don't work - wind and sun are not reliable, and people still need to drive. So, microwave power from space, where the clouds don't matter, and electric vehicles powered by batteries, yeah? They're not necessarily affordable now, but if you start doing the research and sinking money into making them cheap and affordable, then they will be able to work and we can get a lot of people off fossil fuels. Mr. Trzupek's admonition against a "green panacea", far from being a warning about expecting results too soon, is supposed to be a discouragement from trying at all, and that's no good.
As always, we spiral back down to the base assumption that seems to be prevalent in the Obama critics - the President both doesn't care about anything important to the country and is trying his very damndest to transform the country into his vision. There are exceptions and lucidity, of course, such as when properly identifying that some events are out of the President's control and making mention that the populace likes it when the President looks in control, but they seem rarer as time, oil spills, and land wars in Asia go on.
Last for tonight, an exercise program based on traversing the entire length of distance traveled by the Fellowship of the Ring. And a teen takes Seventeen magazine to heart and follows their advice for some time.
For somewhere that needs some serious improvements, observe that the Department of Homeland Security has someone with the same name as a 6 year-old in Ohio on their No-Fly List. Oh, and the state of Ohio is considering using social media platforms to announce the execution of criminals.
And as a reminder to us persons in the library profession, there's no sitting on our heels about how good we are, because not everyone is up to speed on the idea that diverse communities are worthwhile in library communities. That said, I'm heartwarmed by the response in the comments by the librarians saying they have space and collection for everyone and throwing up book recommendations for the poster to further their reading. This is the changing face of libraries, and a solid opportunity seized to correct a possible misconception.
The Dead Pool claims Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, at 92 years of age and Edith Shain, the nurse in an iconic picture of a serviceman kissing a nurse in exuberance upon his return from the front, at 91 years.
And finally, what exactly would the argument have to be about for a brawl to break out at a kindergarten graduation?
Out in the world, the nations that depend on the Nile river for their lives are fighting over how to manage their precious resource.
Indian authorities stopped a ship carrying undeclared weapons bound for Pakistan from Liberia. Lest we forget about the other Other Land War in Asia...
At the G20 summit in Toronto, world leaders discussed the best ways of trying to restart the engine of the global economy without stalling it out or damaging it. As with any major gathering of world capitalists, protesters, both peaceful and non-peaceful, descended on the city to try and make their voices heard, drawing derision from commentators who want the police to ruthlessly crack down on anyone who looks like they might be doing something bad, regardless of cost in lives, armor, or PR.
Elsewhere, the European high court ruled that the guarantee of marriage written into the European rights charter does not extend automatically to LGBT couples, but that individual states must decide the question for themselves.
Inside the country, two steps forward, three steps back, it seems. The Gallup poll asking about how Americans feel about same-sex relationships has crossed the 50 per cent approval line for the first time, with the biggest gains in men under 50 years of age, Catholics, and moderates, independents, and Democrats. In analysis, some speculation on the swing and what it does and doesn't mean, and then the bad part, where three people were shot during a pride parade in San Franscisco.
The Guantanamo Bay prison, once slated to be closed swiftly, is now likely to still be around at the beginning of the next Presidential term, according to Seantor Carl Levin, accusing the Obama administration of not fully putting its power behind getting the necessary bits to close it through Congress.
Richard Cheney was admitted to the hospital over the weekend, not feeling well. Considering how many heart attacks that the former Vice President has survived, I understand the caution.
It's a very doomsday-esque scenario, requiring some worst-case things to come to pass, but the possibility of oil vapours igniting into a firestorm if sparked should say something about what kind of safety we should have in place. Remember, there's a lot of stock imagery available for showing your disgust with BP and the political party defending it's practices. Or, if you're of a different persuasion, plenty of columnists to share your anger that the administration is getting the way of the cleanup.
The better way to go would be to follow Kathryn Schulz's article in the Boston Globe about the need to embrace our error-producing capacity so that we can design systems that compensate for our inevitable errors, instead of making being wrong a bad thing. Had we done that with due redundancy on Deepwater Horizon, perhaps this wouldn't have happened in the first place.
I wouldn't recommend, though, following the line of thinking saying domestic drilling is safer, because we can cap our blowouts faster when they happen, or drill, baby, drill, especially when claiming that you both need government regulation and that the person in charge of it is trying to rule by fiat. In both cases, you end up holding the bag when the person asks the questions, "When are you going to make it so we stop blowouts immediately instead of in 16 hours? What kind of safety tech can you develop that will stop the oil from leaking out at all?"
Conference committee bangs out financial reform bill, new and tougher regulations and powers included, highlights are a consumer protection agency housed in the Federal Reserve, requirements that banks separate their commercial banking and investment banking into separately capitalized institutions, and limitations on how much damage a bank can do to itself by gambling.
Predictably, the political entities that helped to author the financial crisis were not in favor of the reform bill and are claiming the bills actually do close to nothing, and the regulators get all the power to decide whether this thing has teeth or not.
After Rolling Stone printed the article that helped get McChyrstal resigned, Lara Logan of CBS News accused Michael Hastings of duplicity and breaking the rules of military interviews. Because he printed what was said and done around him, instead of only the positive bits, doing more actual journalism in his article than Lara Logan has apparently done in a long time. Journalism is supposed to print what is, not what has been massaged to make someone look good or look bad.
Last out, two Census supervisors were fired for falsifying more than 10,000 questionnaires. Ugh.
In the sciences and technologies, Africa is experiencing shifts that will result in the birth of a new ocean. In 10 million years or so, that is.
As it turns out, if we motivate ourselves through Bob the Builder instead of the Little Engine That Could, we get better results. Perhaps because putting us in a questioning frame of mind makes us more adaptable to the inevitable things that happen when your battle plan makes contact with the outside world.
And The United States expressed an interest in Australia's attempts to reduce the ability of zombies to do the bidding of their masters, either through throttling or walling off infected machines until they test clean. About bloody time. Plus, will force even the most un-tech savvy to use basic tools to keep themselves safe on-line. I'm a little worried that will be manipulated by the media cabals to bad ends, but if it works as advertised and kills zombie traffic on the Web, I'm betting the bandwidth freed up could let some file-sharing happen. The government may also gain powers to temporarily shut down parts of the Internet to protect them in case of cyberattack. Err, wait, [RECORDSCRATCH]. Maybe not. Instead, perhaps, the bill restricts the ability already in place to kill the Internet and requires any measures taken to be the least disruptive possible.
A United Airlines transatlantic flight experimented with a technique that allowed them to move in their air columns to minimize wind resistance and maximize wind push so as to save fuel over the course of the flight. Experiment apprently successful. No word on whether it added time to the flight.
In opinions, Mr. Bacevich says the military needs a break from perpetual war so that the civilians can re-establish their authority and get the officer corps back into respecting the civilians instead of dismissing them.
The Slacktivist tries his hand at answering the curious question of why the people with more of something believe that more inequality is better, be it possibly education (and thus, the educated should rule) or income (and thus, the rich should be allowed to get richer and the poor, poorer).
The Times steps up to take their swings at Elena Kagan, as her confirmation hearings begin - their arguments are that she has no court experience (fresh face on the court), she flouted the Solomon Amendment by kicking recruiters off Harvard in protest of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (what, nothing here about the devoted patriot requirement to disobey laws you find that go against the moral fiber of the United States?), she hates the First Amendment (by arguing the government's case that pamphlets should be suppressable), the Second Amendment, is in favor of an abortion method they want you to find disasteful, and horror of horrors, believes that foreign law can be useful in arguing how to interpret American law, and thinks judges are supposed to be activists and interpret the law in a way that makes justice instead of in narrower ways that avoid bigger questions. Oh, and she thinks that marriages in one state should be recognized in all the other states, whether it's an LGBT marriage or not.
The Times goes after the Federal Trade Commission for requiring light bulb manufacturers to make CFLs the primary focus of their sales efforts, considering it government overreach to insist that people use a bulb that consumes less power, and snidely indicating that the CFLs are more dangerous, because they contain mercury instead of the more harmless tungsten.
Mr. Bethel lays out his belief that government has to be stopped from spending more, relaying a story of how disastrous it was for the Ohio governor to consider cutting library services to make his budget - not because libraries are vital services, but because libraries are a constituency that exists as freeloaders and will get pissy if their money supply is cut off. Get plugged, bunghole. But he follows the line of thinking that insists that government should tie social assistance to whether or not one is working, cut the spending back significantly from where it is now, restrict low-skill labor immigration, encourage low-income people to get married, and start forcing recipients to repay some of their assistance as loans. Because everyone who takes advantage of social assistance is lazy and not trying at all to get back into the workplace, so you can safely look down your nose at them and ignore the context of their situation.
The WSJ declares Keynesian economics dead once again, having done so several times before in the past year, and declaring that tax cuts, lower spending, and good monetary policy, return to the perception of Reagan, is the way to foster proper economic growth. They enlist the help of Steve Forbes to repeat that mantra on their pages. They also go after the Kerry-Lieberman energy and climate bill, claiming what we really need is to drill more on land and to stop trying to regulate the energy markets based on their pollution output. Echoing the anti-green rhetoric, Mr. Trzupek goes back to the standard arguments on why more green power and cap-and-trade don't work - wind and sun are not reliable, and people still need to drive. So, microwave power from space, where the clouds don't matter, and electric vehicles powered by batteries, yeah? They're not necessarily affordable now, but if you start doing the research and sinking money into making them cheap and affordable, then they will be able to work and we can get a lot of people off fossil fuels. Mr. Trzupek's admonition against a "green panacea", far from being a warning about expecting results too soon, is supposed to be a discouragement from trying at all, and that's no good.
As always, we spiral back down to the base assumption that seems to be prevalent in the Obama critics - the President both doesn't care about anything important to the country and is trying his very damndest to transform the country into his vision. There are exceptions and lucidity, of course, such as when properly identifying that some events are out of the President's control and making mention that the populace likes it when the President looks in control, but they seem rarer as time, oil spills, and land wars in Asia go on.
Last for tonight, an exercise program based on traversing the entire length of distance traveled by the Fellowship of the Ring. And a teen takes Seventeen magazine to heart and follows their advice for some time.
