Lighter volume than usual - 14 July 2010
Jul. 15th, 2010 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGreetings, persons whose minds are under a constant barrage of things. We are more than a bit perturbed at the tendency of facts to reinforce beliefs that are wrong, rather than deconstruct them, because people’s certainty at their rightness, even when they are wrong, means they will twist, distort, or ignore the facts against them to avoid having to do the cognitive work of admitting they’re wrong and changing their minds.
Worldwide materials include the Catholic cardinal who says Argentina's proposed entry into the Century of the Fruitbat is the handiwork of the Adversary.
In Re: Special Comment in the previous post, the lower house of the French legislature passed a measure calling for a ban on clothes that cover the face anywhere that would be considered public space in France. (There are a host of exceptions, such as health masks, motorcycle helmets, and the like) The major likely target of such a bill would be face veils worn by some sects of Muslim women. Justification? “France’s government has sought to insist that assimilation is the only path for immigrants and minorities...” as well as a slightly more sane remark that say, an Islamic face veil is a sign of female repression and submission. We must navigate the waters very carefuly here. Relentlessly requiring assimilation is a recipe for major backlash, so that’s not going to be the sane way to go. More specifically, a face covering as an expression of personal identity should be allowed. I do, like the possible fines for anyone who forces such a covering on someone else - that seems like a good balance and it requires a reasonably high standard be met to prove that someone is being forced, so as to avoid nuisance cases. There’s some work that needs to be done on this legislation to make it palatable.
It is apparently newsworthy that American citizens are traveling to Somalia and other places to join terror networks. With the diversity of opinions that we have, one would think there would have to be someone who wants to join up in the country. If they’re worried about something else, they should mention it.
Staying in Africa - hold on to your hats, kids, Sudan has a referendum coming that the CW says will result in secession of the south from the north. We may have to update our maps again. Then there’s the question of whether such a splitting will help with the terror and attacks going on in that area of the world.
Here in the United States, a familiar song returns to the performance. Critics of the Obama Administration's swift exchange of Russian spies say that the United States should have been slower and tried to obtain more intelligence and information from the convicted spies about the work they were doing in the United States. If the terrorist hadn’t been read his Miranda rights, we would have learned more about other plots! This proves that Russia/Pakistan/al Qaeda is plotting against us, and we gave up a great opportunity to torture the captured people until they told us more. That, or the Democrats were going to be roundly embarrassed at the connections the spies had, and so they wanted them gone before they said anything politically damaging. For all we know, they were turned and are eager to start their new mission spying on the Russians.
Moving on, into more pedesrtrian politics - in their effort to curb defecits and debt, the leaders of both parties in the House of Representatives indicated a willingnes to raise the age of eligibility for Social Security - the Democratic leader also mentioned that defense programs and other aspects of the budget also needed a serious look, which the Republican leader would likely no go along with, as he advocated for unregulated defense spending.
The Washington Times is suspicious of the nominee for OMB chief and the administration's convenient forgetting to disclose his lucrative job at Citigroup before rejoining the government. His bank experience could mean he knows how to spot tricks and stop them, or he’s well versed in the whole bag and intends to use them as needed. He’s also said he will recuse himself from things that affect his previous employer. Time will tell.
Last out, of course, another round of speculation about whether and how the Democrats will hold onto or lose seats in the fall election. If you believe the conventional wisdom, the Justice Department filing suit against the Papers Please law is a big loser for Democrats, because The People apparently believe the law is a good thing, and suing without filling the void with a proposal of their own is bad politics for the Democrats.
In the sciences, studies are starting to return results on the phenomenon of mature women changing their sexual orientation. That can be rather awkward for those in marriages or other committed heterosexual relationships, and it also suggests that inborn genetics are not the complete factor in determining sexual orientation. I wonder whether their study takes a look at menopause and whether these things happen before, during, or after that change. I can see a natural course of “Well, I’m done with the childbearing role, so maybe we’ll turn off those hormones.” which might result in a weaker “MUST HAVE CHILDREN” attraction and let preference actually take precedence.
Exercise may be useful in overcoming childhood traumas, as exercise makes changes in the hippocampus that can recondition the stress response away from depression and anciety.
MIT’s Media Lab produces a way to control a mouse cursor without actually needing a mouse, which seems remarkably impracticalat the moment, but they’re looking to possibly evolve it into a gestures-based system. That would be pretty interesting. Desktop would once again be a desktop. (I still like having a keyboard with key bounce, though.)
The Serval Project looks to free people from mobile phone towers and generate a phone that can still operate even in disaster zones where tower infrastructure has been disrupted, using mesh networks of Wifi-enabled phones and transmitting on other unlicensed spectrum frequencies. The device has had a successful field test this month.
And finally, a quick primer to what a Futurist is and does - think the Clock of the Long Now more than NostraDogbert.
To opinions we go, where the columnists take their own opinion as Gospel and hope you do, too.
Mr. Nugent aims to say that Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are not substantively different in policy and that he is heartened by the sounds coming from the very far right as the kind of change we should want to have, one that destroys entitlements and forcibly shrinks the size of the government down to a libertarian dream.
The Washington Times editorial board tells the NAACP and other minoirty advancement groups: We've closed the racial divide. We elected a black President. Shut up and stop trying to demean our patriotic Tea Party with your accusations of racism, you bunch of racists and racist-supporters. They also bring up the New Black Panther Party incident dismissed by the previous administration, demand that the current administration re-open the case, and point tot he remarks of one of those people as the true racism going on, claiming that they don’t see that kind of racist message coming out of the Tea Party. (Please reference Rush Limbaugh and the still-available pools of pictures with racist messages at Tea Party gatherings. Or wait until the new sequence of town halls and summer protests - odds are good you won’t have to look too hard to find racist messages.)
Oh, hey, and speaking of the New Black Panther charges dropped by the previous administration, Ms. Malkin wants to know why nothing has been done about them, and attributes it to a blindness by the administration, a belief that black people can’t be racist, despite the obviously racist statements of the prominent New Black Pantehr Party person involved. Reference, please, yesterday’s post where the person being cited is unable to provide evidence for his claims, and that all this matter was done with before Obama came to office. Well, except the summary judgment in the civil case the Obama administration brought and won against him that is. The fact that they weren’t locked up, the key thrown away, and a proper media circus given to them for their views and the action they took is apparently the problem for Ms. Malkin. *sigh* Based on the article at the top of our post, the facts wouldn’t make a dent in her armor.
And finally, speaking of armor that won’t be dented, Mr. Solway charts what he sees as the abrupt fall of the pedestal-enshrined Obama, the man who looked like a savior and turned out to be an idiot, making mistake after mistake, showing his stupidity, diminsihing the Inherent American Superiority, narcissistic, and totally incompetent at defeating The Bloodthirsty Religion whose adherents are all Terrorists. And he moves too slowly, not jumping to immediate courses of action every time some sort of decision point appears. Because of this, those media outlets that lavished praise upon him and built him up into The One will eventually have to admit they were suckers fooled by a slick confidence man in an empty suit, although not in such plain language, that the presidency of Barack Obama was a disaster and everyone should vote Republican forever in pennance. (Okay, we made the last bit up.) By the Politifact scoring that I check up on, Barack Obama has more hits than misses on promises, and that’s with a Congressional opposition that’s willing to use every rule that they have at their disposal to slow or stop the process before it even gets to his desk. He is nto the liberal savior that progressives projected on to him, and he is not the Marxist demon conservatives have tried to paint him as, no matter how many times he rather conclusively proves he’s no socialist. If there’s a byline or a headline to be written, it’s about how the president managed to get stuff done in spite of all these people heaping their dreams and nightmares on him and his opposition swearing very early on that they would do nothing to help him at all.
There’s a nice light summary of newsiness for you. Enjoy.
Worldwide materials include the Catholic cardinal who says Argentina's proposed entry into the Century of the Fruitbat is the handiwork of the Adversary.
In Re: Special Comment in the previous post, the lower house of the French legislature passed a measure calling for a ban on clothes that cover the face anywhere that would be considered public space in France. (There are a host of exceptions, such as health masks, motorcycle helmets, and the like) The major likely target of such a bill would be face veils worn by some sects of Muslim women. Justification? “France’s government has sought to insist that assimilation is the only path for immigrants and minorities...” as well as a slightly more sane remark that say, an Islamic face veil is a sign of female repression and submission. We must navigate the waters very carefuly here. Relentlessly requiring assimilation is a recipe for major backlash, so that’s not going to be the sane way to go. More specifically, a face covering as an expression of personal identity should be allowed. I do, like the possible fines for anyone who forces such a covering on someone else - that seems like a good balance and it requires a reasonably high standard be met to prove that someone is being forced, so as to avoid nuisance cases. There’s some work that needs to be done on this legislation to make it palatable.
It is apparently newsworthy that American citizens are traveling to Somalia and other places to join terror networks. With the diversity of opinions that we have, one would think there would have to be someone who wants to join up in the country. If they’re worried about something else, they should mention it.
Staying in Africa - hold on to your hats, kids, Sudan has a referendum coming that the CW says will result in secession of the south from the north. We may have to update our maps again. Then there’s the question of whether such a splitting will help with the terror and attacks going on in that area of the world.
Here in the United States, a familiar song returns to the performance. Critics of the Obama Administration's swift exchange of Russian spies say that the United States should have been slower and tried to obtain more intelligence and information from the convicted spies about the work they were doing in the United States. If the terrorist hadn’t been read his Miranda rights, we would have learned more about other plots! This proves that Russia/Pakistan/al Qaeda is plotting against us, and we gave up a great opportunity to torture the captured people until they told us more. That, or the Democrats were going to be roundly embarrassed at the connections the spies had, and so they wanted them gone before they said anything politically damaging. For all we know, they were turned and are eager to start their new mission spying on the Russians.
Moving on, into more pedesrtrian politics - in their effort to curb defecits and debt, the leaders of both parties in the House of Representatives indicated a willingnes to raise the age of eligibility for Social Security - the Democratic leader also mentioned that defense programs and other aspects of the budget also needed a serious look, which the Republican leader would likely no go along with, as he advocated for unregulated defense spending.
The Washington Times is suspicious of the nominee for OMB chief and the administration's convenient forgetting to disclose his lucrative job at Citigroup before rejoining the government. His bank experience could mean he knows how to spot tricks and stop them, or he’s well versed in the whole bag and intends to use them as needed. He’s also said he will recuse himself from things that affect his previous employer. Time will tell.
Last out, of course, another round of speculation about whether and how the Democrats will hold onto or lose seats in the fall election. If you believe the conventional wisdom, the Justice Department filing suit against the Papers Please law is a big loser for Democrats, because The People apparently believe the law is a good thing, and suing without filling the void with a proposal of their own is bad politics for the Democrats.
In the sciences, studies are starting to return results on the phenomenon of mature women changing their sexual orientation. That can be rather awkward for those in marriages or other committed heterosexual relationships, and it also suggests that inborn genetics are not the complete factor in determining sexual orientation. I wonder whether their study takes a look at menopause and whether these things happen before, during, or after that change. I can see a natural course of “Well, I’m done with the childbearing role, so maybe we’ll turn off those hormones.” which might result in a weaker “MUST HAVE CHILDREN” attraction and let preference actually take precedence.
Exercise may be useful in overcoming childhood traumas, as exercise makes changes in the hippocampus that can recondition the stress response away from depression and anciety.
MIT’s Media Lab produces a way to control a mouse cursor without actually needing a mouse, which seems remarkably impracticalat the moment, but they’re looking to possibly evolve it into a gestures-based system. That would be pretty interesting. Desktop would once again be a desktop. (I still like having a keyboard with key bounce, though.)
The Serval Project looks to free people from mobile phone towers and generate a phone that can still operate even in disaster zones where tower infrastructure has been disrupted, using mesh networks of Wifi-enabled phones and transmitting on other unlicensed spectrum frequencies. The device has had a successful field test this month.
And finally, a quick primer to what a Futurist is and does - think the Clock of the Long Now more than NostraDogbert.
To opinions we go, where the columnists take their own opinion as Gospel and hope you do, too.
Mr. Nugent aims to say that Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are not substantively different in policy and that he is heartened by the sounds coming from the very far right as the kind of change we should want to have, one that destroys entitlements and forcibly shrinks the size of the government down to a libertarian dream.
The Washington Times editorial board tells the NAACP and other minoirty advancement groups: We've closed the racial divide. We elected a black President. Shut up and stop trying to demean our patriotic Tea Party with your accusations of racism, you bunch of racists and racist-supporters. They also bring up the New Black Panther Party incident dismissed by the previous administration, demand that the current administration re-open the case, and point tot he remarks of one of those people as the true racism going on, claiming that they don’t see that kind of racist message coming out of the Tea Party. (Please reference Rush Limbaugh and the still-available pools of pictures with racist messages at Tea Party gatherings. Or wait until the new sequence of town halls and summer protests - odds are good you won’t have to look too hard to find racist messages.)
Oh, hey, and speaking of the New Black Panther charges dropped by the previous administration, Ms. Malkin wants to know why nothing has been done about them, and attributes it to a blindness by the administration, a belief that black people can’t be racist, despite the obviously racist statements of the prominent New Black Pantehr Party person involved. Reference, please, yesterday’s post where the person being cited is unable to provide evidence for his claims, and that all this matter was done with before Obama came to office. Well, except the summary judgment in the civil case the Obama administration brought and won against him that is. The fact that they weren’t locked up, the key thrown away, and a proper media circus given to them for their views and the action they took is apparently the problem for Ms. Malkin. *sigh* Based on the article at the top of our post, the facts wouldn’t make a dent in her armor.
And finally, speaking of armor that won’t be dented, Mr. Solway charts what he sees as the abrupt fall of the pedestal-enshrined Obama, the man who looked like a savior and turned out to be an idiot, making mistake after mistake, showing his stupidity, diminsihing the Inherent American Superiority, narcissistic, and totally incompetent at defeating The Bloodthirsty Religion whose adherents are all Terrorists. And he moves too slowly, not jumping to immediate courses of action every time some sort of decision point appears. Because of this, those media outlets that lavished praise upon him and built him up into The One will eventually have to admit they were suckers fooled by a slick confidence man in an empty suit, although not in such plain language, that the presidency of Barack Obama was a disaster and everyone should vote Republican forever in pennance. (Okay, we made the last bit up.) By the Politifact scoring that I check up on, Barack Obama has more hits than misses on promises, and that’s with a Congressional opposition that’s willing to use every rule that they have at their disposal to slow or stop the process before it even gets to his desk. He is nto the liberal savior that progressives projected on to him, and he is not the Marxist demon conservatives have tried to paint him as, no matter how many times he rather conclusively proves he’s no socialist. If there’s a byline or a headline to be written, it’s about how the president managed to get stuff done in spite of all these people heaping their dreams and nightmares on him and his opposition swearing very early on that they would do nothing to help him at all.
There’s a nice light summary of newsiness for you. Enjoy.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-15 09:18 am (UTC)This is absolutely not to say that the oppression of women - whatever the justification used - is acceptable or desirable. I have no patience for religion being used as an excuse for any form of oppression. But what one is doing here, in the Fighting Oppression line of argument as generally deployed, is further punishing women for something that one is actually saying in one's own argument they are not responsible for. I'm pretty sure there are ways to help women who do feel trapped and oppressed by things like this and they have a lot more to do with systems of support than with legislating what they can and can't wear.
And by the way, to use a slightly different example - although in Sweden many people say that they dislike Islam as a religion because of its attitude towards women (unlike Christianity, which of course has a history of deeply healthy attitudes towards women), current studies indicate that it's Muslim women who are subject to the most harassment from non-Muslim people. So yeah, it's totally about Standing Up For The Women, not about people looking for reasons to justify bigotry and fear-mongering...
ETA: Also, oh my god, sexuality is fluid! Stop the press! *headscratch* Like it's news that people who've been in hereosexual marriages can later identify as purely gay or lesbian? (And is men's sexuality really less fluid? Not being a man I am possibly not qualified to comment! But I am suspicious, anyway.)
The article seems to particularly mention women in their 30s, so I don't think we're talking about some kind of menopausal shift here. I also think that the Biological Imperative To Reproduce thing is problematic, especially as it seems to very often come with the implication that it's only women who feel any such need. Which I have to admit doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, given that men are also required to be some kind of part of the reproductive process. I also don't think I know any women whose need to have children is so strong that it overrides their free will and ability to choose, which is another unfortunate implication of that line of argument if you run with it... so, you know, that makes me kind of uncomfortable. Not everything about women has to come back to babies, basically.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-15 03:24 pm (UTC)On sexuality, well, I think men are in a more socially unacceptable position for sexual fluidity, but I think there are at least a few cases where a marriage was broken up or added a male partner to the mix later on in life.
As for Reproduction Imperatives, it seemed like a good place to start, even for both sexes, but the study doesn't talk about men, so it's easy to forget about them and their role. People, being the wonderfully complex beings they are, are not reducable to their biology, at least based on our current understanding of it, and I'm sorry if it sounded like I was discounting choice and free will. I was trying to suggest that biological changes associated with growing older might be an influencing factor in this. Societal changes, such as the pressure being off a married woman to get married, might also open up the avenue for her to be able to accept the fluidity of her identity, instead of being told to repress it and find herself a man. It was an incomplete thought, borne out by not having access to the actual study and its data. Sorry if it came out dipped in Eau d'Privilege.