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silveradeptSomething definitely on the awesome leads tonight - a fully-restored mobile cinema that will soon be making the school circuit to show films from the past. Perhaps it will show the advert of one hundred cats making themselves at home in an IKEA store.
Out in the world today, The United States President awarded the highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, to one Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, the first such medal awarded to a serviceperson while still alive since the Vietnam conflict.
A rare moment of honesty from the diplomatic crowd, as a tipsy toaster took things far past where polite company stayed.
A New Zealand scientist resigned after finally admitting to lying on his resume about being able to develop nukes and having raced against the Jamaican bobsleigh team that the movie Cool runnings was based upon. For people actually wanting to do work that involves nuclear particles, Russia intends to build a particle accelerator. Enough of these and we risk opening the portal to Xen, forcing us all to be save by a research scientist who is surprisingly proficient with weapons and can outshoot some of the most crack troops the military offers.
It is not only the United States that is trying to make tough budget decisions that might involve cutting government services to senior citizens - Scotland says elder care will likely fall more on sons and daughters than the government.
An investigation into child abuse by Belgian Catholic priests found that over the course of thirty years, "No Belgian church escaped sex abuse". With such an investigation concluded and the evidence presented, the Pope chose his next course of action - focusing on condemning that police raids that produced the evidence (those raids have been declared illegal by the court system) and make the Catholic Church out to be the victims, instead of talking about the fact that the investigation uncovered serious amound of abuse of parishoners by priests.
To feed the narrative of the Intolerant Islamics, In Indonesia, a Christian minister and a lay person were attacked. The president of the country has directed the police to find those responsible. Which if they really were all Intolerant Islamics, they wouldn't bother with telling the police to go find the assailants. We'll have to find a better one, like a hiker being released on $500,000 USD bail from Iran after being accused of espionage. Well, that's at least closer to the mark, right? Death penalty sentence if convicted, but bail raised and let out? No, that's not it, either.
While managing that perception, one must be careful, lest one's own shortcomings, such as requiring post-Saddam Iraqis to pay back damages done by Saddam Hussein's torturers as a requirement for lifting sanctions become apparent enough that the dots of mass hypocrisy can be connected between the government's steadfast ifnorance of torture committed by its own people and its insistence that they be paid back for all the torture done to them by someone else.
Domestically, if you want a reminder that people are paranoid, especially when children are involved, here's a press release from a California Sheriff's department about the menace of Pedobear. And then, for your reminder that people want to influence children to their way of life more than ever, see how a clown with a strong message of abstinence received federal funds as an abstinence educator. Spoonful of sugar, then hold the mouth open and shove the message down. Kind of like drawing a child chasing a ball on the street in such a way that drivers coming upon it will mistake it for real in an attempt to get them to slow down around a school.
Anyway, despite the fizzle on 11 September of the kooks in Florida, there were plenty of other places and people looking to roast some vellum over the weekend. One would-be book burner found his target thieved by a passing skateboarder before he could light up. But really, what the media story about all of this, from Park 51 through Jones, is how much the media fell down on its own job, and could have pulled off at any point and said "This is nuts, and we shouldn't be giving airtime to these loons", but instead chose to drive the car right through the barricades and into the side of a building. After all, while your attention is being distracted by Park 51, the rebuilding project of the actual Ground Zero continues apace.
This narrative failure did a lot of damage, and made plenty of stories for people to speak of a chasm between the American people over the issue, even people who would normally be united. The media narrative basically brought about the possibility of opinions on the wisdom of persisting in building on your legal ground if it sacrifices the peace that you have with the surrounding community and country. Had there not been the outrage over Park 51, this opnion would probably not have been penned. Had the media decided that the ginned-up controversy about "Muslim Conquerors building a Mosque on Ground Zero" was factually wrong and the cry of fringe people trying to generate political ill will and ignored it in favor of real news, this probably wouldn't have happened. We'd still have the narrative that says Barack Obama is an appeaser of terrorists and that his apologies feed the myth that America hates Muslims, but the writers of those opinions could at least sound reasonably credible instead of having the entire blowback of the Park 51 controversy burn the eyebrows and the pants right off of them in the perceptual world. (In reality, of course, Barack Obama does not appease terrorists and only Americans who are rightly classed as Fringey McFringerson hate Islam and think even its liberals and moderates are trying to take over the world so they can suddenly flip to fundamentalism once they've deceived us.) Or, at the very least, we'd be staying on the narrative of "Fundamentalist Muslims will find any excuse they can to protest and kill people", which is a subset of the more general truth that any fundamentalist will find an excuse to keep their flames going even if presented with the most inoffensive world. We'd be in more familiar territory, wrangling over whether liberals and academics of our time are sociopaths who Hate America and rush to portray any attack on the country as justified by the actions America has taken in the past and whether or not children are being indoctrinated to Hate America, Hate Judiasm and Christianity, and Love Islam in utter indifference to the actual history of Islam, and the cultural insistence by academia that America and Judeo-Christianity is inferior to everything else. So, in some ways, nothing would have changed, but things would probably have not gotten worse nor given power to the Fringe and taken them seriously instead of letting them air their voices out as they wanted to and giving them the respect proportionate to their sanity that they deserve.
In the end, though, on that day, there was a lot more than just one tragedy, and more than a few good things, depending on what year it is. And everyone's story is different.
A throwaway remark that the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department is looking quite interested in - the high prevalence of engineering backgrounds among fundamentalist terrorists.
Speaking of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, the upcoming release of the official poverty rate in the United States is sure to become political fodder for both parties, whether to be used as a "stimulus didn't work" attack or a "obstructionists stopped us from helping people out of poverty" attack. Both of those may be shooting at air, though - the one that might hit the clay pigeon is "corporations continue to screw the poor and line the pockets of their executives and shareholders, as they are charted to do, while politicians bicker about smoke and mirrors".
Last out, An AP look at some statements made by the President and their truth value, all of them on statements the President has made that aren't turning out so well. Politifact's Promise tracking shows a bit deeper picture, I think.
In technology, the United States Federal Communications Commission is considering releaing the spectrum frequencies in between broadcast channels, antennas for solar cells that might improve their efficiency by concentrating the energy along certain paths, and would massively shrink the space needed to achieve enough solar power to power the building, and merging brain control with artifical intelligence to make a wheelchair that's easier to move.
Additionally, perhaps a peek at how much the judicial system is stacked against people, as a website was sued and then ordered to pay money in damages for not showing up in class...but the named website was not the site that had the content, and apparently, nobody bothered to check and make sure of that. Really? The content wasn't entered into evidence or anything like that, where it would be possible to spot that a mistake had been made? What gives?
Also, an analysis that says the United States is more likely to suffer country-wide devastation by EMP through a magnetic storm or other cosmic phenomenon than by the usage of nuclear devices, as the countries that can do it have no interest in launching and the technical requirements for a non-state actor to pull it off are probably beyond their abilities. Localized strikes might be more probable, so some consideration should be given to hardening infrastructure, but if one is looking spend money practically, it is probably best spent elsewhere.
Opinions time. To begin, Mr. Friedman lays the blam of bad schooling and bad economy at the feet of the values of the generation currently in charge, saying their "me first" mentality that wants it all, thinks "sacrifice" is a dirty word, is all about the instant gratification, and that is more concerned with the emotional welfare of students than whether they actually should be expected to learn something sent our best minds to Wall Street, let video games take the place of reading, and turned politics from Serious Business into a finger-pointing game that isn't actually addressing the necessary questions, like how much tax increase we'll need along with our spending cuts, and where. I wonder if he would also be up in arms about how the use of technology is apparently stopping our brains from developing useful skills about problem solving, and making it so that we don't remember how to do things away from the tech, as well.
Mr. Brooks and Mr. Ryan plant a stark choice between Freedom and Nanny Statism as the 2010 election, before pointing out all the reasons why that choice is rather muddy, because people prefer the government programs that they like and benefit from and want to cut the ones that The Other benefits from, and that in aggregate, those individual likes add up to the crushing dislike of how it turns out in the big picture. They also want to intertwine the question of "Bigger Government with More Services" with "Bigger Taxes" so as to take advantage of the visceral reaction Americans have to being taxed more and to play up the idea of an intrusive government that regulates your very existence.
Actually, speaking of that idea, The WSJ returns to something we haven't heard much about - the health care bill passed early this year - and taunts Democrats for not touting it more in their campaigns. The bill that started watered down and was then further gutted, with the delayed provisions and the "death panels!" nonsense? The one that will not really be up for debate on repeal until at least 2013, after another Presidential election, unless Republicans manage to take control of two thirds of both Houses of Congress? Why would a Democrat want to run on an issue that would allow for all of that to come back and hurt them, with no real benefit available to them? After all, they're going to get it in full force from their opponents who will detail all the things that they see going horribly wrong with the program if it continues, including cuts to Medicare that will result in lost coverage. Wait, I thought they were in favor of cutting Medicare and entitlement spending, as much as was bearable, so as to stop the deficits. Now they want entitlement spending and deficits because they don't want to be seen as imperling seniors? Well, that's politics. Maybe, instead, they should stick to the rationed care, price controls, and blaming insurance companies for engaging in basic economics attacks - they seem to not have to deal with awkward contradictions in those. Well, excepting for that last one, where insurers raise premiums in large amounts because of mandates so that they can keep making profits to please their shareholders.
Speaking of running misdirection, I think the following column commits a logical fallacy somewhere. I don't know what the name of it is, or whether it's just something that sets minority people's teeth on edge every time the form of he argument is used, but it's basically, "Why are you complaining about how bad you have it here, minority X (gays in this column), when Over There (in Iran), people of minoirty X are routinely killed and beaten for existing?" There's always somewhere else where it's worse, so be glad you're in a progressive place. And furthermore, if you really want to be a True Advocate for your minoirty, you should be complaining about the treatment they get Over There all the time until its fixed before you complain about your treatment here. If you're silent about things Over There, you must agree with it, and so you're a hypocrite to complain here.
The fact that someone else is suffering more does not excuse the suffering that happens here. And really, if you fix the problem here in the Enlightened World, then that only frees up more resources to go fight that fight Over There. So instead of trying to blame your opponents and make them look bad for not supposedly fighting the good fight, why not just go and fight the good fight yourself? You obviously know what it is, so go for it. And if you are fighting the good fight, you'll probably find yourself with backup soon enough. If, instead, you're just saying "Shut up, because you have it wonderfully here, now go fix that other problem. I'm going to sit here and be smug in my moral superiority" without then going forth and trying to do something about this problem you've identified, or worse, you're going to actively impede the progress of people who are fighting in this country on their fights, then you're not being very helpful at all.
And then there's the really awful misdirection - Headline says: Pelosi to Canadians: I'm Ready To Run your Economy, too. Actual content? A dinne about Alberta's oil sands, and the desire to have them be run in the most environmentally friendly manner possible. Sensationalist headline, and then some.
So, what's a President to do with all these attacks and a prevailing narrative that says he's going to be swamped? Get on offense, but not just against one's political opponents, but their corporate backers, the true elitists, the people behind the political scene pulling strings and creating astroturf groups. If Obama wants to be seen as a populist fighting for the little guy, and in so doing draw out voters to keep his party in power, he's going to have to actually quack like a duck, instead of sounding like a hunter with a duck call.
New rule, according to the Culture and Media Institute: If you make one mistake in writing an article about someone, the entire article is completely false. Well, that and two people who are close to Sarah Palin saying they didn't actually part on bad terms. So the story about Sarah Palin as a vindictive person with an interesting family life who like to seize any opportunity she can must also be fals because two people, of the many she's potentially cheesed off, said they were still friendly. And that one error about which baby was being used as a prop for Sarah Palin during the concession speech.
Last for tonight, a reminder that some people can be quite stubborn about matters of settled science -- like heliocentrism. And when someone asks you to make your cars safer, you probably want to take their advice, lest the car's lack of safety material result in the first and only posthumous F1 championship.
Out in the world today, The United States President awarded the highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, to one Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, the first such medal awarded to a serviceperson while still alive since the Vietnam conflict.
A rare moment of honesty from the diplomatic crowd, as a tipsy toaster took things far past where polite company stayed.
A New Zealand scientist resigned after finally admitting to lying on his resume about being able to develop nukes and having raced against the Jamaican bobsleigh team that the movie Cool runnings was based upon. For people actually wanting to do work that involves nuclear particles, Russia intends to build a particle accelerator. Enough of these and we risk opening the portal to Xen, forcing us all to be save by a research scientist who is surprisingly proficient with weapons and can outshoot some of the most crack troops the military offers.
It is not only the United States that is trying to make tough budget decisions that might involve cutting government services to senior citizens - Scotland says elder care will likely fall more on sons and daughters than the government.
An investigation into child abuse by Belgian Catholic priests found that over the course of thirty years, "No Belgian church escaped sex abuse". With such an investigation concluded and the evidence presented, the Pope chose his next course of action - focusing on condemning that police raids that produced the evidence (those raids have been declared illegal by the court system) and make the Catholic Church out to be the victims, instead of talking about the fact that the investigation uncovered serious amound of abuse of parishoners by priests.
To feed the narrative of the Intolerant Islamics, In Indonesia, a Christian minister and a lay person were attacked. The president of the country has directed the police to find those responsible. Which if they really were all Intolerant Islamics, they wouldn't bother with telling the police to go find the assailants. We'll have to find a better one, like a hiker being released on $500,000 USD bail from Iran after being accused of espionage. Well, that's at least closer to the mark, right? Death penalty sentence if convicted, but bail raised and let out? No, that's not it, either.
While managing that perception, one must be careful, lest one's own shortcomings, such as requiring post-Saddam Iraqis to pay back damages done by Saddam Hussein's torturers as a requirement for lifting sanctions become apparent enough that the dots of mass hypocrisy can be connected between the government's steadfast ifnorance of torture committed by its own people and its insistence that they be paid back for all the torture done to them by someone else.
Domestically, if you want a reminder that people are paranoid, especially when children are involved, here's a press release from a California Sheriff's department about the menace of Pedobear. And then, for your reminder that people want to influence children to their way of life more than ever, see how a clown with a strong message of abstinence received federal funds as an abstinence educator. Spoonful of sugar, then hold the mouth open and shove the message down. Kind of like drawing a child chasing a ball on the street in such a way that drivers coming upon it will mistake it for real in an attempt to get them to slow down around a school.
Anyway, despite the fizzle on 11 September of the kooks in Florida, there were plenty of other places and people looking to roast some vellum over the weekend. One would-be book burner found his target thieved by a passing skateboarder before he could light up. But really, what the media story about all of this, from Park 51 through Jones, is how much the media fell down on its own job, and could have pulled off at any point and said "This is nuts, and we shouldn't be giving airtime to these loons", but instead chose to drive the car right through the barricades and into the side of a building. After all, while your attention is being distracted by Park 51, the rebuilding project of the actual Ground Zero continues apace.
This narrative failure did a lot of damage, and made plenty of stories for people to speak of a chasm between the American people over the issue, even people who would normally be united. The media narrative basically brought about the possibility of opinions on the wisdom of persisting in building on your legal ground if it sacrifices the peace that you have with the surrounding community and country. Had there not been the outrage over Park 51, this opnion would probably not have been penned. Had the media decided that the ginned-up controversy about "Muslim Conquerors building a Mosque on Ground Zero" was factually wrong and the cry of fringe people trying to generate political ill will and ignored it in favor of real news, this probably wouldn't have happened. We'd still have the narrative that says Barack Obama is an appeaser of terrorists and that his apologies feed the myth that America hates Muslims, but the writers of those opinions could at least sound reasonably credible instead of having the entire blowback of the Park 51 controversy burn the eyebrows and the pants right off of them in the perceptual world. (In reality, of course, Barack Obama does not appease terrorists and only Americans who are rightly classed as Fringey McFringerson hate Islam and think even its liberals and moderates are trying to take over the world so they can suddenly flip to fundamentalism once they've deceived us.) Or, at the very least, we'd be staying on the narrative of "Fundamentalist Muslims will find any excuse they can to protest and kill people", which is a subset of the more general truth that any fundamentalist will find an excuse to keep their flames going even if presented with the most inoffensive world. We'd be in more familiar territory, wrangling over whether liberals and academics of our time are sociopaths who Hate America and rush to portray any attack on the country as justified by the actions America has taken in the past and whether or not children are being indoctrinated to Hate America, Hate Judiasm and Christianity, and Love Islam in utter indifference to the actual history of Islam, and the cultural insistence by academia that America and Judeo-Christianity is inferior to everything else. So, in some ways, nothing would have changed, but things would probably have not gotten worse nor given power to the Fringe and taken them seriously instead of letting them air their voices out as they wanted to and giving them the respect proportionate to their sanity that they deserve.
In the end, though, on that day, there was a lot more than just one tragedy, and more than a few good things, depending on what year it is. And everyone's story is different.
A throwaway remark that the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department is looking quite interested in - the high prevalence of engineering backgrounds among fundamentalist terrorists.
Speaking of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, the upcoming release of the official poverty rate in the United States is sure to become political fodder for both parties, whether to be used as a "stimulus didn't work" attack or a "obstructionists stopped us from helping people out of poverty" attack. Both of those may be shooting at air, though - the one that might hit the clay pigeon is "corporations continue to screw the poor and line the pockets of their executives and shareholders, as they are charted to do, while politicians bicker about smoke and mirrors".
Last out, An AP look at some statements made by the President and their truth value, all of them on statements the President has made that aren't turning out so well. Politifact's Promise tracking shows a bit deeper picture, I think.
In technology, the United States Federal Communications Commission is considering releaing the spectrum frequencies in between broadcast channels, antennas for solar cells that might improve their efficiency by concentrating the energy along certain paths, and would massively shrink the space needed to achieve enough solar power to power the building, and merging brain control with artifical intelligence to make a wheelchair that's easier to move.
Additionally, perhaps a peek at how much the judicial system is stacked against people, as a website was sued and then ordered to pay money in damages for not showing up in class...but the named website was not the site that had the content, and apparently, nobody bothered to check and make sure of that. Really? The content wasn't entered into evidence or anything like that, where it would be possible to spot that a mistake had been made? What gives?
Also, an analysis that says the United States is more likely to suffer country-wide devastation by EMP through a magnetic storm or other cosmic phenomenon than by the usage of nuclear devices, as the countries that can do it have no interest in launching and the technical requirements for a non-state actor to pull it off are probably beyond their abilities. Localized strikes might be more probable, so some consideration should be given to hardening infrastructure, but if one is looking spend money practically, it is probably best spent elsewhere.
Opinions time. To begin, Mr. Friedman lays the blam of bad schooling and bad economy at the feet of the values of the generation currently in charge, saying their "me first" mentality that wants it all, thinks "sacrifice" is a dirty word, is all about the instant gratification, and that is more concerned with the emotional welfare of students than whether they actually should be expected to learn something sent our best minds to Wall Street, let video games take the place of reading, and turned politics from Serious Business into a finger-pointing game that isn't actually addressing the necessary questions, like how much tax increase we'll need along with our spending cuts, and where. I wonder if he would also be up in arms about how the use of technology is apparently stopping our brains from developing useful skills about problem solving, and making it so that we don't remember how to do things away from the tech, as well.
Mr. Brooks and Mr. Ryan plant a stark choice between Freedom and Nanny Statism as the 2010 election, before pointing out all the reasons why that choice is rather muddy, because people prefer the government programs that they like and benefit from and want to cut the ones that The Other benefits from, and that in aggregate, those individual likes add up to the crushing dislike of how it turns out in the big picture. They also want to intertwine the question of "Bigger Government with More Services" with "Bigger Taxes" so as to take advantage of the visceral reaction Americans have to being taxed more and to play up the idea of an intrusive government that regulates your very existence.
Actually, speaking of that idea, The WSJ returns to something we haven't heard much about - the health care bill passed early this year - and taunts Democrats for not touting it more in their campaigns. The bill that started watered down and was then further gutted, with the delayed provisions and the "death panels!" nonsense? The one that will not really be up for debate on repeal until at least 2013, after another Presidential election, unless Republicans manage to take control of two thirds of both Houses of Congress? Why would a Democrat want to run on an issue that would allow for all of that to come back and hurt them, with no real benefit available to them? After all, they're going to get it in full force from their opponents who will detail all the things that they see going horribly wrong with the program if it continues, including cuts to Medicare that will result in lost coverage. Wait, I thought they were in favor of cutting Medicare and entitlement spending, as much as was bearable, so as to stop the deficits. Now they want entitlement spending and deficits because they don't want to be seen as imperling seniors? Well, that's politics. Maybe, instead, they should stick to the rationed care, price controls, and blaming insurance companies for engaging in basic economics attacks - they seem to not have to deal with awkward contradictions in those. Well, excepting for that last one, where insurers raise premiums in large amounts because of mandates so that they can keep making profits to please their shareholders.
Speaking of running misdirection, I think the following column commits a logical fallacy somewhere. I don't know what the name of it is, or whether it's just something that sets minority people's teeth on edge every time the form of he argument is used, but it's basically, "Why are you complaining about how bad you have it here, minority X (gays in this column), when Over There (in Iran), people of minoirty X are routinely killed and beaten for existing?" There's always somewhere else where it's worse, so be glad you're in a progressive place. And furthermore, if you really want to be a True Advocate for your minoirty, you should be complaining about the treatment they get Over There all the time until its fixed before you complain about your treatment here. If you're silent about things Over There, you must agree with it, and so you're a hypocrite to complain here.
The fact that someone else is suffering more does not excuse the suffering that happens here. And really, if you fix the problem here in the Enlightened World, then that only frees up more resources to go fight that fight Over There. So instead of trying to blame your opponents and make them look bad for not supposedly fighting the good fight, why not just go and fight the good fight yourself? You obviously know what it is, so go for it. And if you are fighting the good fight, you'll probably find yourself with backup soon enough. If, instead, you're just saying "Shut up, because you have it wonderfully here, now go fix that other problem. I'm going to sit here and be smug in my moral superiority" without then going forth and trying to do something about this problem you've identified, or worse, you're going to actively impede the progress of people who are fighting in this country on their fights, then you're not being very helpful at all.
And then there's the really awful misdirection - Headline says: Pelosi to Canadians: I'm Ready To Run your Economy, too. Actual content? A dinne about Alberta's oil sands, and the desire to have them be run in the most environmentally friendly manner possible. Sensationalist headline, and then some.
So, what's a President to do with all these attacks and a prevailing narrative that says he's going to be swamped? Get on offense, but not just against one's political opponents, but their corporate backers, the true elitists, the people behind the political scene pulling strings and creating astroturf groups. If Obama wants to be seen as a populist fighting for the little guy, and in so doing draw out voters to keep his party in power, he's going to have to actually quack like a duck, instead of sounding like a hunter with a duck call.
New rule, according to the Culture and Media Institute: If you make one mistake in writing an article about someone, the entire article is completely false. Well, that and two people who are close to Sarah Palin saying they didn't actually part on bad terms. So the story about Sarah Palin as a vindictive person with an interesting family life who like to seize any opportunity she can must also be fals because two people, of the many she's potentially cheesed off, said they were still friendly. And that one error about which baby was being used as a prop for Sarah Palin during the concession speech.
Last for tonight, a reminder that some people can be quite stubborn about matters of settled science -- like heliocentrism. And when someone asks you to make your cars safer, you probably want to take their advice, lest the car's lack of safety material result in the first and only posthumous F1 championship.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 07:06 am (UTC)You're right about the Jenga nature of reporting, but the speed at which they went to "it's all false" makes me think they're knee-jerking rather than making any sort of serious argument about the credibility of the piece. You've done a better job just by mentioning the tendency to sensationalize by VF.
I'm still encouraged to post. I'm actually very happy to have people who point out where things fall short, or flat, or I perform the classic rake gag on.