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silveradeptCheers to all of us, but especially those of you that have stuck with us for a long time. We appreciate the regular readership, wherever you are. We think you’ll be interested in science that suggests happiness and sadness spread in the same patters as disease does, based on the analysis of various social networks and keywords to indicate both moods.
Also, we eagerly await to see how New Zealand's ban on software patents turns out. Hopefully in the excellent so that we can get to work on banning them here in the U.S. and allow for much more innovation.
Finally, for those who notice the cover content and certain gaze of pulp speculative fiction (and some of the older stuff, too), we present Boobships and Titrockets, the newest male-gaze science fiction magazine.
Out in the world today, Monkey-smuggler tries to get 18 endangered monkeys past customs in a girdle and pouches attached to such. Two died.
Syria's government bans full face-covering veils for students and teachers at university.
Due to a lack of donor commitments and funding, the United Nations humanitarian aid programme has to cut back their work in Iraq, leaving mostly women and children in the lurch, from the looks of the article.
Japanese workers, using metal detectors on Okinawa, uncovered a cache of 900 unexploded bombs from the 1945 invasion of the island by United States forces.
And then Iran authorized retaliatory cargo inspections against any country that chooses to inspect Iranian cargo for possible technology that could be used in nuclear weapons development. We do wonder precisely what that retaliation is supposed to do...
Here in the United States, The Washington Post releases their investigation into the intelligence complex massively built up after the 11 September attacks, naming it Top Secret America, and pointing out that there are more people with Top Secret clearance than live in the District of Columbia, as an example. Combined, then, with the declaration from the Attorney General of the last administration that people who fight and kill without uniforms and a chain of command are war criminals and terrorists, then, well, that leaves us in the conclusion that Mr. Greenwald comes to - we have a significant amount of people doing high-level work for the government that require persistent war and surveillance so as to satisfy shareholder insistence on profitability, and many of those contractors can shoot and kill. We have war criminals and terrorists doing intelligence and combat work for us. No wonder the rest of the world doesn’t feel that great about American military intervention.
Conservative television personality Glenn Beck has revealed he has macular dystrophy, a progressive disease that results in blindness. While there are a lot of inappropriate comments that could be made about revenge or wrath from G-d, considering Beck’s frequent references to morals, moralizing, and what kind of Christianized country the United States should be, what we’re asking for is a slow decline, if one has to happen, and for science to be able to step in and provide Mr. Beck with artificial sight when his own eyes can no longer function. “Bless those that curse you...”
Another possible ouster based on creative editing, this time from the USDA. And much like how the “pimps and whores” tape got ACORN defunded, only to have the wider context show how appropriately the official acted outside of the tape, the whole tape might exonerate the “resigned” official. The apparent victims of the racism have spoken up, saying they considered the ousted person a friend who helped save the farm, lending credibility to the defense instead of the edited attack.
In technological realms, research indicating that infants who may be on the Autism Spectrum make different vocalizations than their peers and that an automated device can be calibrated to tell the difference and flag which children have the risk.
Additionally, a robot with an artificial digestive tract, allowing it to generate energy for several days on end based on sewage-type inputs. It also produces waste products, which it has been trained to deposit in a litter box once every day.
Laser anti-air weapons to strike at unmanned aerial vehicles tested by Raytheon today in a naval exercise.
Into the opinions - Mr. Brownfield joins the trickle-down effect of complaining about the New Black Panther Party case, trying very hard to make it into a case that was easily won but for meddling by Obama political appointees, and then quickly going out into the place where those appointees apparently said that they wouldn’t prosecute black people. Shaky premise into even shakier premise designed to make you either RAGE in support or RAGE in opposition and not take the time to notice where all the holes are, including the big one where the previous administrator did a lot of the downgrading work.
Mr. Boortz swings...and misses about the signs proclaiming stimulus dollars at work, claiming that President Obama, if confronted by the "average" family that needs another $10,000, would tell them they can't have it because he needed it to build the sign. Like he’d do anything that bad for his image. On the substance of your point, though, those are necessary signs. Why? Because infrastructure done right is invisible. You don’t compliment nice smooth roads - you complain about potholes. Every day that you have pure water from the tap is normal - it’s when it contaminates that you notice. Without those signs indicating ARRA support, nobody would connect the dots. Sure, it’s PR, but it’s the kind of PR that you need to tell people what’s happening. Speaking of PR, Mr. Hanson says the Persident's populist mask is slipping with his increasing golf games, making him seem like the elitist he claimed not to be. Well, setting aside the bit where anyone who actually gets elected to President has to be an elite member with money and campaign contributions out his ass, even if he is on the golf course, if the President can get the legislation passed, then he’s more of a populist than the opposition that claims to stand for the little people but won’t help get anything passed to help them.
Mr. Zuckerman spends significant column space on a hagiography of American innovation as justification for his accusation that government is retarding growth and prosperity through regulations and stances that scare the investment out of businesses. After of course, they held the reins too loosely, forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them, and let the SEC permit ever-greater levels of leverage. All things that the businessmen were clamoring for and that Mr. Zuckerman still believes in - less regulation is better, because that way firms can be ever-more creative in how they pocket profit and screw regular people. Which is it, Mr. Zuckerman? Is it too much regulation or not enough, based on your complaints?
The WSJ joins the growing chorus of conservatives saying that the unemployed are lazy and taking advantage of government largesse to stay out of work, rather than finding a job, tacking on that the continued numbers of unemployed are a perfect indication of how the Presidential stimulus doesn’t work and the petrified businesspeople afraid to hire anyone lest they be swamped in Sudden Government Costs. As has been noted before, previous instances of extension of unemployment benefits passed without a hitch, but suddenly now they have to be offset. And some Republicans believe tax cuts for the wealthy should never have to be offset, even though they can demonstrably be shown to increase the defecit. I’d like for those people to actually get to know the jobless, the five who are competing for one job, the ones who can’t find work anywhere, in their field or out of it, and that have to rely on unemployment insurance so they’re not foreclosed on and made homeless in trying to find work, too. See how hard they work, what kind of sacrifices they make, and then tell us again that they’re being “lazy” and they should just accept any ol’ job that they can find, regardless of whether it makes a sufficient wage for them. They clearly don’t understand the requirements that people have to go through just to keep getting those benefits.
Mr. Williamson spends the majority of his article talking about the greatness of the right to bear arms as a crime deterrent and personal protection measure, then switches gears to how homeschooling is also one of the few great radical things we have left, before finally landing on his point, that both guns and homeschools are important ways of protecting oneself from the government, resisting state control, and taking care of predators in general. It’s not an invitation to anarchy, he insists, but the requirements of living in a free society. We guess that he implicitly assumes that all people who have guns will use them responsibly in defense, instead of aggression or crime, (but even if they do, then the people they attack will be defending themselves with guns, too, and so it all works out in his mind), and those who homeschool will do so with the intent of providing sufficient education for their children so as to make them able to function in society. Well, it’s nice to be optimistic...
Last out of opinions, Mr. Stephens provides his theories on why Israel hasn't glassed Iran yet, while chastising the rest of the world for putting them in the position of having to go it alone without support or cover.
Last for tonight, Ghibli great Hayao Miyazaki is not impressed with the iPad, comparing users to chronic masturbators.
Also, we eagerly await to see how New Zealand's ban on software patents turns out. Hopefully in the excellent so that we can get to work on banning them here in the U.S. and allow for much more innovation.
Finally, for those who notice the cover content and certain gaze of pulp speculative fiction (and some of the older stuff, too), we present Boobships and Titrockets, the newest male-gaze science fiction magazine.
Out in the world today, Monkey-smuggler tries to get 18 endangered monkeys past customs in a girdle and pouches attached to such. Two died.
Syria's government bans full face-covering veils for students and teachers at university.
Due to a lack of donor commitments and funding, the United Nations humanitarian aid programme has to cut back their work in Iraq, leaving mostly women and children in the lurch, from the looks of the article.
Japanese workers, using metal detectors on Okinawa, uncovered a cache of 900 unexploded bombs from the 1945 invasion of the island by United States forces.
And then Iran authorized retaliatory cargo inspections against any country that chooses to inspect Iranian cargo for possible technology that could be used in nuclear weapons development. We do wonder precisely what that retaliation is supposed to do...
Here in the United States, The Washington Post releases their investigation into the intelligence complex massively built up after the 11 September attacks, naming it Top Secret America, and pointing out that there are more people with Top Secret clearance than live in the District of Columbia, as an example. Combined, then, with the declaration from the Attorney General of the last administration that people who fight and kill without uniforms and a chain of command are war criminals and terrorists, then, well, that leaves us in the conclusion that Mr. Greenwald comes to - we have a significant amount of people doing high-level work for the government that require persistent war and surveillance so as to satisfy shareholder insistence on profitability, and many of those contractors can shoot and kill. We have war criminals and terrorists doing intelligence and combat work for us. No wonder the rest of the world doesn’t feel that great about American military intervention.
Conservative television personality Glenn Beck has revealed he has macular dystrophy, a progressive disease that results in blindness. While there are a lot of inappropriate comments that could be made about revenge or wrath from G-d, considering Beck’s frequent references to morals, moralizing, and what kind of Christianized country the United States should be, what we’re asking for is a slow decline, if one has to happen, and for science to be able to step in and provide Mr. Beck with artificial sight when his own eyes can no longer function. “Bless those that curse you...”
Another possible ouster based on creative editing, this time from the USDA. And much like how the “pimps and whores” tape got ACORN defunded, only to have the wider context show how appropriately the official acted outside of the tape, the whole tape might exonerate the “resigned” official. The apparent victims of the racism have spoken up, saying they considered the ousted person a friend who helped save the farm, lending credibility to the defense instead of the edited attack.
In technological realms, research indicating that infants who may be on the Autism Spectrum make different vocalizations than their peers and that an automated device can be calibrated to tell the difference and flag which children have the risk.
Additionally, a robot with an artificial digestive tract, allowing it to generate energy for several days on end based on sewage-type inputs. It also produces waste products, which it has been trained to deposit in a litter box once every day.
Laser anti-air weapons to strike at unmanned aerial vehicles tested by Raytheon today in a naval exercise.
Into the opinions - Mr. Brownfield joins the trickle-down effect of complaining about the New Black Panther Party case, trying very hard to make it into a case that was easily won but for meddling by Obama political appointees, and then quickly going out into the place where those appointees apparently said that they wouldn’t prosecute black people. Shaky premise into even shakier premise designed to make you either RAGE in support or RAGE in opposition and not take the time to notice where all the holes are, including the big one where the previous administrator did a lot of the downgrading work.
Mr. Boortz swings...and misses about the signs proclaiming stimulus dollars at work, claiming that President Obama, if confronted by the "average" family that needs another $10,000, would tell them they can't have it because he needed it to build the sign. Like he’d do anything that bad for his image. On the substance of your point, though, those are necessary signs. Why? Because infrastructure done right is invisible. You don’t compliment nice smooth roads - you complain about potholes. Every day that you have pure water from the tap is normal - it’s when it contaminates that you notice. Without those signs indicating ARRA support, nobody would connect the dots. Sure, it’s PR, but it’s the kind of PR that you need to tell people what’s happening. Speaking of PR, Mr. Hanson says the Persident's populist mask is slipping with his increasing golf games, making him seem like the elitist he claimed not to be. Well, setting aside the bit where anyone who actually gets elected to President has to be an elite member with money and campaign contributions out his ass, even if he is on the golf course, if the President can get the legislation passed, then he’s more of a populist than the opposition that claims to stand for the little people but won’t help get anything passed to help them.
Mr. Zuckerman spends significant column space on a hagiography of American innovation as justification for his accusation that government is retarding growth and prosperity through regulations and stances that scare the investment out of businesses. After of course, they held the reins too loosely, forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them, and let the SEC permit ever-greater levels of leverage. All things that the businessmen were clamoring for and that Mr. Zuckerman still believes in - less regulation is better, because that way firms can be ever-more creative in how they pocket profit and screw regular people. Which is it, Mr. Zuckerman? Is it too much regulation or not enough, based on your complaints?
The WSJ joins the growing chorus of conservatives saying that the unemployed are lazy and taking advantage of government largesse to stay out of work, rather than finding a job, tacking on that the continued numbers of unemployed are a perfect indication of how the Presidential stimulus doesn’t work and the petrified businesspeople afraid to hire anyone lest they be swamped in Sudden Government Costs. As has been noted before, previous instances of extension of unemployment benefits passed without a hitch, but suddenly now they have to be offset. And some Republicans believe tax cuts for the wealthy should never have to be offset, even though they can demonstrably be shown to increase the defecit. I’d like for those people to actually get to know the jobless, the five who are competing for one job, the ones who can’t find work anywhere, in their field or out of it, and that have to rely on unemployment insurance so they’re not foreclosed on and made homeless in trying to find work, too. See how hard they work, what kind of sacrifices they make, and then tell us again that they’re being “lazy” and they should just accept any ol’ job that they can find, regardless of whether it makes a sufficient wage for them. They clearly don’t understand the requirements that people have to go through just to keep getting those benefits.
Mr. Williamson spends the majority of his article talking about the greatness of the right to bear arms as a crime deterrent and personal protection measure, then switches gears to how homeschooling is also one of the few great radical things we have left, before finally landing on his point, that both guns and homeschools are important ways of protecting oneself from the government, resisting state control, and taking care of predators in general. It’s not an invitation to anarchy, he insists, but the requirements of living in a free society. We guess that he implicitly assumes that all people who have guns will use them responsibly in defense, instead of aggression or crime, (but even if they do, then the people they attack will be defending themselves with guns, too, and so it all works out in his mind), and those who homeschool will do so with the intent of providing sufficient education for their children so as to make them able to function in society. Well, it’s nice to be optimistic...
Last out of opinions, Mr. Stephens provides his theories on why Israel hasn't glassed Iran yet, while chastising the rest of the world for putting them in the position of having to go it alone without support or cover.
Last for tonight, Ghibli great Hayao Miyazaki is not impressed with the iPad, comparing users to chronic masturbators.
