Back on the tracks - 25-27 September 2010
Sep. 28th, 2010 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptCheers, all, and welcome aboard to the week where your librarians alert you to the wide-ranging conspiracy of usually-conservative groups to hijack your educational institutions and prevent them from presenting viewpoints that differ from the group's narrowly-focused ideology. Yes, it's Banned Books Week again. If you want evidence of this conspiracy, here you go: The Board of Education for Texas adopted a resolution dismissing the use of certain textbooks they claim are giving more space and preferential treatment to Muslims and Islam while disparaging Christianity.
Keep an eye on S.3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, as if it passes, it could give content cabals an easy route in to forcing ISPs to censor certain websites, like YouTube, if they can convince the courts that those websites are committing widescale copyright infringement. Furthermore, the current administration seeks to have backdoors built into all encryption software so that they can intercept and decrypt secure communications. And it will only be a matter of time before an enterprising hacker discovers the mandated exploit and then either publishes it for all to see or uses it for stunning amounts of crime. Secure crypto is important - the minute one person can get in, everyone can get it.
The Pentagon finished its purchase and destruction of a first printing of a Reserve officer's memoir, claiming there were classified secrets in the book.
And then weigh in with your opinion about the increasing practice of outsourcing library operations to private companies rather than leaving them as tax-supported functions of government. I'm not very fond about this idea at all, because the profit motive does all sorts of bad, bad things to public services like libraries. Plus, this also means union-busting, trying to paint library employees, especially professionals, as people who do nothing all day and draw great salaries for it, and pension "reform" - meaning, "Here, have a 401(k) to contribute to on your likely less than private-sector salary. Have fun with that!"
Harlon Ellison will make his last public appearance at MadCon. He's expecting to make it that long, but he knows he's running out his clock.
In the world today, A man who planted child pornography on his boss's computer and then made sure that his boss's name was dragged through the mud, in hope that he would be promoted to his boss's position was sentenced to 12 years in prison. A destructive act that shattered the boss's reputation and still likely has repercussions for his victim.
Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested that Iran might stop enriching uranium if other world powers would provide him with highly enriched fuel for reactor that make medical isotopes. His countrymen crossed into Iraq to attack people they thought were responsible for a terrorist attack. I can't help but wonder whether they might point to the Americans as the justification for donig so.
Having lost a leg to an explosive device, a solider has gone from Iraq to Afghanistan, with his new artificial leg. This is the same Afghanistan with a strong possibility of significant fraud in the most recent election.
Finally, the Office of National Statistics for the United Kingdom took a survey and estimated that the total population of LGBT people in the UK was about 1/3 of the number of profiles on one specific UK gay men and women dating site. Ooops.
Domestically, according to a recent survey, both rich and poor alike feel that the distribution of wealth in this country should be less concentrated in the hands of the very rich. At the same time, most people have no clue how bad the split is, how we got to this point, and why we need to continue to hammer on the problem of income inequality.
A federal judge said that Major Margaret Witt must be reinstated to her position as a flight nurse after the Air Force discharged her mistakenly under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, saying that they did not meet their own standard for discharge regarding unit cohesion and morale.
The stepping down of Lawrence Summers as Treasury Secretary brings out a top ten list of the worst decisions he has made while he was in the office, several of which contributed mightily to the financial collapse that most people are suffering through.
Democratic attack advertising is arriving earlier and focusing on the pasts of several candidates with the Republican nomination. Considering they have a bumper crop of past sins to choose from, some of which the condidates haven't backed off from or have made a central part of their platforms, it seems like this would be an excellent strategy. The one caveat is that the populace may land in "they're both assholes, may as well vote for the new guy and hope s/he does somethings" territory and vote the Republicans in anyway. The Republicans believe they have a winning strategy just by pointing out the Democratic voting record on things like stimulus and health care and that they can harness the anger from the bad economy and use it to drive out those they will call responsible for it.
Finally, the backers of credit unions will be getting some bailing out, as some of them also bought into the subprime mortage bubble.
In science/technology, Driving tired has many of the same effects as driving drunk, as well as many of the same consequences, yet federal recommendations and regulations haven't been keeping pace with the potentially increased dangers.
Despite a heavy campaign to try and get them to eat healthier, most Americans are still not getting enough vegetables in their diet. As mentioned in the article, vegetables, especially fresh, are expensive, and they require preparation time, and you have to know what to do with them to give them good taste. So things are getting "better" in that vegetables are starting to come packaged as to require less prep and get sold cheaper, but until it's just as easy to eat healthy as it is to eat convenience junk, we're probably not going to see the numbers move that much.
Robots are beginning to be able to parse our ungrammatical, erm, interruptions.
And finally, imaging technology has progressed to the point where we can see the insides of pythons and watch them digest rats,
Opinions open with a severe accusation - the Obama Administration, for all its bravado about wanting to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, has been using the issue as a political football and sabotaging efforts to get it repealed so they can use the Republican Party as a punching bag on the matter, a game the Republicans are all too willing to go along with as they need to desperately prove to their social conservative base that they're doing the great work of Jesus through discrimination. Perhaps that's why approval ratings continue to slide downward. Mr. Gardiner thinks that President Obama is campaigning to be Secretary General of the U.N., and thus his lack of interest in being president is hurting his approval ratings. Or perhaps it's that the Democrats have no freaking spine when it comes to passing legislation that the people truly wnat, which means depending on how many and how spiteful everyone's feeling, nobody gets their tax cuts passed.
Mitchell Bard says that Saudi Arabia, despite supposedly being an ally, is really working against American interests, so further arms sales and buying oil from them is counterproductive to many of our major interests.
Mr. Hill accuses the President of naivete and their solutions to problems causing more problems, first with the candidate's promised windfall tax for oil companies and then the health care bill as President, claiming the government-mandated solutions will cost more, since they claimed costs would be cut, because the companies, when presented with the demand to play nice, instead of being forced to compeete freely, will gouge their customers to make up for potential losses. This is, of course, the government's fault.
Ms. Strassel says it's no longer in vogue to bash businesses, and that the American people are yearning for business to provide them with some growth, so now they've come around to blaming the government for their private-sector induced woes. I don't know if that's the actual people talking, or whether astroturf groups and rich bankrollers that want to look grassroots have had great success in convincing the average person that corporate interests are their best interests.
Mr. George did not find Stephen Colbert's Congressional testimony compelling as a humor piece - and he missed the point of the routine entirely, not picking up on the satire intended to raise awareness of how few rights migrant workers have.
Getting into reasoned arguments and sanity, Ms. Noonan takes quite some time to get to her point, but suggests that the demographic that will be responsible for changing the makeup of the Congress will be mothers and those who look forward a generation or two, concerned about their children being saddled with too much debt.
Last out of opinions tonight, Mr. Chapman says that all the inflamed rhetoric about how Muslims hate America and how America hates Muslims are both overblown and nowhere near the reality of how Muslims and Americans get along. He's right. He's missing the part where poltiicians and other personalities have decided they want this narrative to continue and to exploit it for money and political capital, but the column is correct.
Last for tonight, though, some quotes from the Dalai Lama on happiness, an Elmo that kicked the ass of the person who attacked him, and the basic form for a Guardian scientific article.
Keep an eye on S.3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, as if it passes, it could give content cabals an easy route in to forcing ISPs to censor certain websites, like YouTube, if they can convince the courts that those websites are committing widescale copyright infringement. Furthermore, the current administration seeks to have backdoors built into all encryption software so that they can intercept and decrypt secure communications. And it will only be a matter of time before an enterprising hacker discovers the mandated exploit and then either publishes it for all to see or uses it for stunning amounts of crime. Secure crypto is important - the minute one person can get in, everyone can get it.
The Pentagon finished its purchase and destruction of a first printing of a Reserve officer's memoir, claiming there were classified secrets in the book.
And then weigh in with your opinion about the increasing practice of outsourcing library operations to private companies rather than leaving them as tax-supported functions of government. I'm not very fond about this idea at all, because the profit motive does all sorts of bad, bad things to public services like libraries. Plus, this also means union-busting, trying to paint library employees, especially professionals, as people who do nothing all day and draw great salaries for it, and pension "reform" - meaning, "Here, have a 401(k) to contribute to on your likely less than private-sector salary. Have fun with that!"
Harlon Ellison will make his last public appearance at MadCon. He's expecting to make it that long, but he knows he's running out his clock.
In the world today, A man who planted child pornography on his boss's computer and then made sure that his boss's name was dragged through the mud, in hope that he would be promoted to his boss's position was sentenced to 12 years in prison. A destructive act that shattered the boss's reputation and still likely has repercussions for his victim.
Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested that Iran might stop enriching uranium if other world powers would provide him with highly enriched fuel for reactor that make medical isotopes. His countrymen crossed into Iraq to attack people they thought were responsible for a terrorist attack. I can't help but wonder whether they might point to the Americans as the justification for donig so.
Having lost a leg to an explosive device, a solider has gone from Iraq to Afghanistan, with his new artificial leg. This is the same Afghanistan with a strong possibility of significant fraud in the most recent election.
Finally, the Office of National Statistics for the United Kingdom took a survey and estimated that the total population of LGBT people in the UK was about 1/3 of the number of profiles on one specific UK gay men and women dating site. Ooops.
Domestically, according to a recent survey, both rich and poor alike feel that the distribution of wealth in this country should be less concentrated in the hands of the very rich. At the same time, most people have no clue how bad the split is, how we got to this point, and why we need to continue to hammer on the problem of income inequality.
A federal judge said that Major Margaret Witt must be reinstated to her position as a flight nurse after the Air Force discharged her mistakenly under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, saying that they did not meet their own standard for discharge regarding unit cohesion and morale.
The stepping down of Lawrence Summers as Treasury Secretary brings out a top ten list of the worst decisions he has made while he was in the office, several of which contributed mightily to the financial collapse that most people are suffering through.
Democratic attack advertising is arriving earlier and focusing on the pasts of several candidates with the Republican nomination. Considering they have a bumper crop of past sins to choose from, some of which the condidates haven't backed off from or have made a central part of their platforms, it seems like this would be an excellent strategy. The one caveat is that the populace may land in "they're both assholes, may as well vote for the new guy and hope s/he does somethings" territory and vote the Republicans in anyway. The Republicans believe they have a winning strategy just by pointing out the Democratic voting record on things like stimulus and health care and that they can harness the anger from the bad economy and use it to drive out those they will call responsible for it.
Finally, the backers of credit unions will be getting some bailing out, as some of them also bought into the subprime mortage bubble.
In science/technology, Driving tired has many of the same effects as driving drunk, as well as many of the same consequences, yet federal recommendations and regulations haven't been keeping pace with the potentially increased dangers.
Despite a heavy campaign to try and get them to eat healthier, most Americans are still not getting enough vegetables in their diet. As mentioned in the article, vegetables, especially fresh, are expensive, and they require preparation time, and you have to know what to do with them to give them good taste. So things are getting "better" in that vegetables are starting to come packaged as to require less prep and get sold cheaper, but until it's just as easy to eat healthy as it is to eat convenience junk, we're probably not going to see the numbers move that much.
Robots are beginning to be able to parse our ungrammatical, erm, interruptions.
And finally, imaging technology has progressed to the point where we can see the insides of pythons and watch them digest rats,
Opinions open with a severe accusation - the Obama Administration, for all its bravado about wanting to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, has been using the issue as a political football and sabotaging efforts to get it repealed so they can use the Republican Party as a punching bag on the matter, a game the Republicans are all too willing to go along with as they need to desperately prove to their social conservative base that they're doing the great work of Jesus through discrimination. Perhaps that's why approval ratings continue to slide downward. Mr. Gardiner thinks that President Obama is campaigning to be Secretary General of the U.N., and thus his lack of interest in being president is hurting his approval ratings. Or perhaps it's that the Democrats have no freaking spine when it comes to passing legislation that the people truly wnat, which means depending on how many and how spiteful everyone's feeling, nobody gets their tax cuts passed.
Mitchell Bard says that Saudi Arabia, despite supposedly being an ally, is really working against American interests, so further arms sales and buying oil from them is counterproductive to many of our major interests.
Mr. Hill accuses the President of naivete and their solutions to problems causing more problems, first with the candidate's promised windfall tax for oil companies and then the health care bill as President, claiming the government-mandated solutions will cost more, since they claimed costs would be cut, because the companies, when presented with the demand to play nice, instead of being forced to compeete freely, will gouge their customers to make up for potential losses. This is, of course, the government's fault.
Ms. Strassel says it's no longer in vogue to bash businesses, and that the American people are yearning for business to provide them with some growth, so now they've come around to blaming the government for their private-sector induced woes. I don't know if that's the actual people talking, or whether astroturf groups and rich bankrollers that want to look grassroots have had great success in convincing the average person that corporate interests are their best interests.
Mr. George did not find Stephen Colbert's Congressional testimony compelling as a humor piece - and he missed the point of the routine entirely, not picking up on the satire intended to raise awareness of how few rights migrant workers have.
Getting into reasoned arguments and sanity, Ms. Noonan takes quite some time to get to her point, but suggests that the demographic that will be responsible for changing the makeup of the Congress will be mothers and those who look forward a generation or two, concerned about their children being saddled with too much debt.
Last out of opinions tonight, Mr. Chapman says that all the inflamed rhetoric about how Muslims hate America and how America hates Muslims are both overblown and nowhere near the reality of how Muslims and Americans get along. He's right. He's missing the part where poltiicians and other personalities have decided they want this narrative to continue and to exploit it for money and political capital, but the column is correct.
Last for tonight, though, some quotes from the Dalai Lama on happiness, an Elmo that kicked the ass of the person who attacked him, and the basic form for a Guardian scientific article.
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