More for you to digest - 28 October 2010
Oct. 29th, 2010 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptOrder up! Greetings to the diners at this greasy-spoon counter that we call the blog. I'm certain that the fare here is not as nutritious as you can get elsewhere, but I always hope that it at least tastes good when consumed.
For those still undecided about their costuming for the 31 October celebration of identity and candy, a plea from people who are actually of the culture your're about to stereotype - don't do it, please. We'd get cheesed off at someone performing in blackface seriously, so why go forward with the weird stereotypes of First Nations cultures and other racial groups? If you want noble savages, dress as a Na'vi, at least, so that you have plausible deniability or can say you just liked the movie. Or, perhaps, take a swing at being Death? We've got a full work-up on how to do to the cosplay.
Three pieces about literature and writing today, first - a brilliant idea on how to write the science-fiction novel that appeals to everyone...with one tiny little snag, second, the truth about all comic strips and cartoons that last - they are written for adults and happen to strike a chord with children and teenagers, too, and third, on the neecessity of scary books for children.
And finally, items about the thing that's close to my heart - an idea for a library message board - users can log in, drop off a message about what they're doing or can respond to someone else's message and have an unexpected and impromptu social meetup, and solicitaion for some boss ideas about how to make libraries more appealing.
Out in the world today, government graft in Afghanistan means that in funding aid to the government, the United States and others providing aid often end up funding the insurgency, as well. Perhaps that's why Iran chooses that particular pathway - they know it will end up where they want to go, anyway? Perhaps one should follow Mr. Ajami's call to end our support for Afghanistan, because there is no positive outlook for it (even as he apportions equal blame to the Democrats who are showing how much we don't want to see things through, as if resoluteness were still an important part of the success he now believes is mythical).
Having learned how effective it was in the United States in inducing fear and terror in the population, Russia is also unveiling a color-coded warning system for terror alerts of their own.
Domestically, a perfect picture of what the election is going to be like this year, and how voters, when confronted with the truth, will rationalize their already made-up minds instead of reconsidering - zoom in on the Russ Feingold race in Wisconsin, and you'll find voters who assume wrongly that he voted for the stimulus, and will still characterize him as a spender once corrected on that. A stubborn lot, indeed, and one that will look for whatever reason hey can find to avoid having to change their minds. Perhaps this is part of the success of the Tea Party - they give people that justification they need to vote the way they've always wanted to, and to be able to talk about it openly enough to cement that justification.
This just in...if you're a cheerleader victim of sexual assault from a basketball player, you will be expected to cheer for the basketball player that assaulted you by name, or you will be dismissed from the cheerleading squad, and the school will expect you to act every part the ashamed slut victim and keep your profile low so as not to provoke anyone. And an appeals court will say that your position as a cheerleader to support the school trumps your free speech rights to not cheer for someone you know full well is not worthy of it.
Score one more for the civilian police force - a Virginia man was arrested on allegations that he was helping al-Qaeda plot several terrorist attacks in the United States. Another instance of domestic law enforcement working like it should without the need for extraordinary powers. Perhaps we could put some actual pressure on the lawmakers to reduce or rescind those extra powers, since they're not actually necessary and appear to have only really been abused to spy on peaceful groups?
Both sides agree that a homophobic taunt was delievered and the victim was put in a headlock and dragged out of a frat party. Where they differ, though, is in their assumptions of the reasoning - the victim says it was because he admitted to being gay thathe was headlocked, the attacker says that the victim provoked him while he was drunk and he headlocked him in a fit of poor judgment. Pointing out something important, one of the newspaper article commenters says the only reason it exists is because someone was gay - had it been straight people horsing around, it would have been just another frat party. While the commenter takes in the direction of "it's those special rights people again", the double-standard that she points out is important - had it been two straight guys, it would have been blown off as a frat party and nobody would have even thought about whacking both of them on the head for using homophobic language.
Soem good news, though - the teen pregnancy rate in Washington State is lower than it has been for the last thirty years.
In technology, a researcher suggests that they may have found a way to record the dreams of people by recording which image-related neurons light up while they sleep. This is from early-stage research, however, so your dream-catcher device for home use will be a long way off.
And then the opinions - Mr. Williams complains that Democrats are contemptuous of the Constitution and its limits on the federal government, while some Republicans may be just ignorant of what it contains. The Democrats believe themselves your betters and able to exercise unlimited power to control you, says he, regardless of what the Constitution says. This is the tension between the idea that government is of the people, by the people, and for the people and the logical idea that the people who are better and smarter than the average person should probably the ones being put into office to make informed and intelligent decisions. Because if you look at the slate of Tea Partiers and Republicans and listen to their own words, you'll find that the contempt for the Constitution and the people of the United States runs just as deeply, if not more so, by the Republican Tea Party than the accusations leveld by Mr. Williams at the Democrats.
Mr. Carroll complains about an increasing amoutn of regulation being applied to private sector businesses, citing the EPA and its regulations as the worst offenders in terms of costs - for things requiring less pollution and more efficiency from vehicles, construction sites, and fuels. The worst is yet to come, he says, because the regulators haven't gotten through all of the health care bill and the financial regulation bill, and those will obviously have additional costs to businesses. He also says the previous administration is just as much to blame for increased regulations everywhere, depite being painted as a deregulator. (Which could be true, actually. Much like how the Obama administration is getting no credit for all their off-economy work, the Bush administration might have been for increased regulation, but not in big visible sectors where he wanted less oversight, like financial derivatives, that stick in people's minds for obvious reasons.)
Ms. Malkin wants you to believe that voter fraud - people casting ballots illegally - is a widespread problem that always favors the Democrats, even as her own examples demonstrate aptly that the system put in place to contain and investigate those kinds of problems is working just fine. There's also the obligatory "New Black Panther Party" dog-whistle and a denial that "election monitors" sent our by conservative groups to challenge voters have a suppressive effect on voters. After all, would you want to vote if you knew that someone there was likely going to challenge you because you're brown or black? And think they might end up getting $500 for doing it? Also, "dozens of voter fraud cases" that are ACORN-connected? Is that before or after they disbanded from a bill of attainder from the Congress? And how do you reconcile that with the repeated facts that prove fraud accusations are a vanishingly small percentage of ballots cast in elections, and that convictions are a small percentage of that already small number?
Mr. Muhlhausen claims that evidence clearly indicates that Head Start is not working on just about every measurable outcome and should thus be scrapped, based on what came out of the Head Start Impact survey of this year that indicated gains made in the Head Start program on school skills, social skills, and good parenting at home have been wiped out by the end of the first year or two of required schooling or had no significant impact at all. (Said survey is available in PDF from the Department of Health and Human Services, so go look at the data and findins for yourself, instead of taking anybody's word for it.) I note, thoguh, that upon leaving Head Start, those families that were in it receive no further assistance - they are at the tender mercies of the education system lottery of property taxes just like the control group. then they're measured after they've had one or two years in the public schooling system to see if their head start has managed to stay in an environment that requires conformity and overworks the teacher with too many students to give individual help to. Since Head Start is supposed to help out in places where people are low-income or otherwise disavantaged, it's no surprise to me that gains garnered from additional help fade when that help is removed. What this study really seems to be showing is that if we want to have long-lasting effects, we need to be willing to have long-lasting programs. Maybe Head Start should be de-funded because it's not achieving its goals. If so, though, we should be willing to put in its place a program that spans a much longer period of time, say K-12, or we should be willing to admit that we should be making our public schools better and more able to educate their students, and working toward achieving that goal instead.
Last out, Mr. Stossel claims the concerns over the presence of bisphenol-A in plastic bottles and other containers is the product of scaremongers and people looking to profit, [ORIGINAL STATEMENT HERE REDACTED FOR UNTRUTH].
At the end of today's work - when choosing a feline, make sure that you think about your household before you adopt. Cats and kittens do better in different environments, and an adult cat may be just right for you when a kitten would be too much work or too much risk.
And as a footnote, citation of a Star Trek Movie in a decision by a Texas Supreme Court writer.
For those still undecided about their costuming for the 31 October celebration of identity and candy, a plea from people who are actually of the culture your're about to stereotype - don't do it, please. We'd get cheesed off at someone performing in blackface seriously, so why go forward with the weird stereotypes of First Nations cultures and other racial groups? If you want noble savages, dress as a Na'vi, at least, so that you have plausible deniability or can say you just liked the movie. Or, perhaps, take a swing at being Death? We've got a full work-up on how to do to the cosplay.
Three pieces about literature and writing today, first - a brilliant idea on how to write the science-fiction novel that appeals to everyone...with one tiny little snag, second, the truth about all comic strips and cartoons that last - they are written for adults and happen to strike a chord with children and teenagers, too, and third, on the neecessity of scary books for children.
And finally, items about the thing that's close to my heart - an idea for a library message board - users can log in, drop off a message about what they're doing or can respond to someone else's message and have an unexpected and impromptu social meetup, and solicitaion for some boss ideas about how to make libraries more appealing.
Out in the world today, government graft in Afghanistan means that in funding aid to the government, the United States and others providing aid often end up funding the insurgency, as well. Perhaps that's why Iran chooses that particular pathway - they know it will end up where they want to go, anyway? Perhaps one should follow Mr. Ajami's call to end our support for Afghanistan, because there is no positive outlook for it (even as he apportions equal blame to the Democrats who are showing how much we don't want to see things through, as if resoluteness were still an important part of the success he now believes is mythical).
Having learned how effective it was in the United States in inducing fear and terror in the population, Russia is also unveiling a color-coded warning system for terror alerts of their own.
Domestically, a perfect picture of what the election is going to be like this year, and how voters, when confronted with the truth, will rationalize their already made-up minds instead of reconsidering - zoom in on the Russ Feingold race in Wisconsin, and you'll find voters who assume wrongly that he voted for the stimulus, and will still characterize him as a spender once corrected on that. A stubborn lot, indeed, and one that will look for whatever reason hey can find to avoid having to change their minds. Perhaps this is part of the success of the Tea Party - they give people that justification they need to vote the way they've always wanted to, and to be able to talk about it openly enough to cement that justification.
This just in...if you're a cheerleader victim of sexual assault from a basketball player, you will be expected to cheer for the basketball player that assaulted you by name, or you will be dismissed from the cheerleading squad, and the school will expect you to act every part the ashamed slut victim and keep your profile low so as not to provoke anyone. And an appeals court will say that your position as a cheerleader to support the school trumps your free speech rights to not cheer for someone you know full well is not worthy of it.
Score one more for the civilian police force - a Virginia man was arrested on allegations that he was helping al-Qaeda plot several terrorist attacks in the United States. Another instance of domestic law enforcement working like it should without the need for extraordinary powers. Perhaps we could put some actual pressure on the lawmakers to reduce or rescind those extra powers, since they're not actually necessary and appear to have only really been abused to spy on peaceful groups?
Both sides agree that a homophobic taunt was delievered and the victim was put in a headlock and dragged out of a frat party. Where they differ, though, is in their assumptions of the reasoning - the victim says it was because he admitted to being gay thathe was headlocked, the attacker says that the victim provoked him while he was drunk and he headlocked him in a fit of poor judgment. Pointing out something important, one of the newspaper article commenters says the only reason it exists is because someone was gay - had it been straight people horsing around, it would have been just another frat party. While the commenter takes in the direction of "it's those special rights people again", the double-standard that she points out is important - had it been two straight guys, it would have been blown off as a frat party and nobody would have even thought about whacking both of them on the head for using homophobic language.
Soem good news, though - the teen pregnancy rate in Washington State is lower than it has been for the last thirty years.
In technology, a researcher suggests that they may have found a way to record the dreams of people by recording which image-related neurons light up while they sleep. This is from early-stage research, however, so your dream-catcher device for home use will be a long way off.
And then the opinions - Mr. Williams complains that Democrats are contemptuous of the Constitution and its limits on the federal government, while some Republicans may be just ignorant of what it contains. The Democrats believe themselves your betters and able to exercise unlimited power to control you, says he, regardless of what the Constitution says. This is the tension between the idea that government is of the people, by the people, and for the people and the logical idea that the people who are better and smarter than the average person should probably the ones being put into office to make informed and intelligent decisions. Because if you look at the slate of Tea Partiers and Republicans and listen to their own words, you'll find that the contempt for the Constitution and the people of the United States runs just as deeply, if not more so, by the Republican Tea Party than the accusations leveld by Mr. Williams at the Democrats.
Mr. Carroll complains about an increasing amoutn of regulation being applied to private sector businesses, citing the EPA and its regulations as the worst offenders in terms of costs - for things requiring less pollution and more efficiency from vehicles, construction sites, and fuels. The worst is yet to come, he says, because the regulators haven't gotten through all of the health care bill and the financial regulation bill, and those will obviously have additional costs to businesses. He also says the previous administration is just as much to blame for increased regulations everywhere, depite being painted as a deregulator. (Which could be true, actually. Much like how the Obama administration is getting no credit for all their off-economy work, the Bush administration might have been for increased regulation, but not in big visible sectors where he wanted less oversight, like financial derivatives, that stick in people's minds for obvious reasons.)
Ms. Malkin wants you to believe that voter fraud - people casting ballots illegally - is a widespread problem that always favors the Democrats, even as her own examples demonstrate aptly that the system put in place to contain and investigate those kinds of problems is working just fine. There's also the obligatory "New Black Panther Party" dog-whistle and a denial that "election monitors" sent our by conservative groups to challenge voters have a suppressive effect on voters. After all, would you want to vote if you knew that someone there was likely going to challenge you because you're brown or black? And think they might end up getting $500 for doing it? Also, "dozens of voter fraud cases" that are ACORN-connected? Is that before or after they disbanded from a bill of attainder from the Congress? And how do you reconcile that with the repeated facts that prove fraud accusations are a vanishingly small percentage of ballots cast in elections, and that convictions are a small percentage of that already small number?
Mr. Muhlhausen claims that evidence clearly indicates that Head Start is not working on just about every measurable outcome and should thus be scrapped, based on what came out of the Head Start Impact survey of this year that indicated gains made in the Head Start program on school skills, social skills, and good parenting at home have been wiped out by the end of the first year or two of required schooling or had no significant impact at all. (Said survey is available in PDF from the Department of Health and Human Services, so go look at the data and findins for yourself, instead of taking anybody's word for it.) I note, thoguh, that upon leaving Head Start, those families that were in it receive no further assistance - they are at the tender mercies of the education system lottery of property taxes just like the control group. then they're measured after they've had one or two years in the public schooling system to see if their head start has managed to stay in an environment that requires conformity and overworks the teacher with too many students to give individual help to. Since Head Start is supposed to help out in places where people are low-income or otherwise disavantaged, it's no surprise to me that gains garnered from additional help fade when that help is removed. What this study really seems to be showing is that if we want to have long-lasting effects, we need to be willing to have long-lasting programs. Maybe Head Start should be de-funded because it's not achieving its goals. If so, though, we should be willing to put in its place a program that spans a much longer period of time, say K-12, or we should be willing to admit that we should be making our public schools better and more able to educate their students, and working toward achieving that goal instead.
Last out, Mr. Stossel claims the concerns over the presence of bisphenol-A in plastic bottles and other containers is the product of scaremongers and people looking to profit, [ORIGINAL STATEMENT HERE REDACTED FOR UNTRUTH].
At the end of today's work - when choosing a feline, make sure that you think about your household before you adopt. Cats and kittens do better in different environments, and an adult cat may be just right for you when a kitten would be too much work or too much risk.
And as a footnote, citation of a Star Trek Movie in a decision by a Texas Supreme Court writer.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 08:58 pm (UTC)This sounds like an excellent idea, especially if you're a library hermit like me. It would me impromptu study groups! And impromptu meetings of people who are researching similar topics and can commiserate on the difficulties of research! If facilitates a gathering of people to form BOOK FORTS! :D
no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 09:16 pm (UTC)Also, likely some policing needed on the board just so that we don't have people cruising for intimate encounters in the stacks or something like that.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 07:29 pm (UTC)Politicians, being contemptuous of the Constitution, on both sides of the isle? How utterly shocking.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 07:35 pm (UTC)