News Rockslide - 7-10 November 2010
Nov. 11th, 2010 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHere's part two of the news that happened while I was elsewhere. Starting off with a letter with a character design for a female mutant that would eventually be known as Shadowcat.
Mr. Docotorow describes his screen time adventures with one of his youngest, demonstrating ways where the screen is not the enemy but a tool to be used. The key component there is that he and his youngster are actively engaged in what they see and talk, tell stories, and otherwise keep it interactive. Most "dangers of screen use" items are when they plop a little one down in front of the screen and then pay no further attention to them (much like others who plop themselves down in front of a screen at the library and pay no further attention to their young ones.)
Finally, libraries are important to everyone, but especially so to those people who need to catch up on their digital literacy skills and those entrepreneurs looking to launch their own businesses.
Out in the world today, this is the cost of globalization. Sure, plenty of cheap plastic stuff, but the pollution costs are incredible. With no legal requirement to protect the environment, there's no incentive or profit in doing so, and to stay competitive, corporations both here and abroad will willingly sacrifice planetary health to do it. Elsewhere, Without laws behind them to require it, businesses currently involved in the Chicago Climate Exchange, a carbon-credit trading exchange, plan on stopping their participation. In its purest, possibly most effective form, carbon credit trading could have been an effective incentive to get people thinking about and improving their entire pollution-reduction systems, but as it likely would have turned out, money probably would have changed hands and no actual pollution reduction would have been forthcoming. Think of what you like about whether CO2 is a pollutant or not, but ideas and applications on how to ensure that human-made introductions to the climate do not render Terra uninhabitable should be getting more attention than they are. [This Paragraph has been Edited, after I was accused of not calling out carbon credit trading as the clear scheme it was in the original paragraph about the Chicago Climate Exchange closing, and then of unfairly comparing Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant with the pollution in the pictorial about China in the comments, because carbon dioxide has no obvious repercussions and is still under debate as to whether human-generated carbon dioxide even has negative repercussions. --Mgt.]
The latest terror scare is being used to push for the idea of giving the United States intelligence agency control over teams to operate in hostile countries with free license to kill and assassinate at the CIA's discretion. Because black-ops teams with assassination green lights have worked so well so far. Furthermore, the CIA intends fully to shoot the messenger on the latest Wikileaks release, vowing to stop any further leaks from getting out. the rationalization is that their business is so secret that the people don't need to know about what they're doing. If Congress were trustable to provide proper oversight, they might get away with that response. Because Congress won't, isn't, and continues not to, whistleblowers and leaks will be essential in throwing sunlight on the dark deeds of the agency.
President Obama gave a favorable indication that he would support India's quest to be added as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a move that will likely strain some of his diplomatic ties with Pakistan (more than the whole "O hai, we're sending unmanned drones into your country to kill your citizens" is, anyway). Elsewhere, a report suggesting that North Korea has been supplying banned nuclear technology to Syria, Iran, and other places will finally head to the Security Council, with China finally withdrawing its objections to the report.
An election called unfair by the United States and fair by China put the peimary military-backed political party back into power in Myanmar.
The Iraqi Christian church that was the site of a bloody hostage-taking and killing held a service on Sunday to commemorate and remember the dead. Those in attendance were worried that the government would not protect them from the next militant or insurgent attack.
Finally, Israel's prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu, pressed for the United States to provide military deterrence to Iran, claiming that other ways of attemtping to contain them have and will be useless.
Domestically, McDonalds unhappy that its signature selling point has been banned from San Francisco, because those Happy Meals are, shock and horror, unhealthy for the children they're being marketed to with the premise of a toy to keep.
The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers has suspended service to wheelchair-using people because they can't be arsed to make their cars accessible. Working aginst them, however, is a law that requires them to be accessible - and has required them to do so for years now. The system that is currently in place requires scheduling of at least a day in advance for accessible cars to arrive. Yep, it's going to be expensive, but part of the point of accessibility is that you should be able to respond within three minutes with a correct car to any person who wants to take it. Suspending the service is throwing a tantrum, and I hope the regulators are inclined to smack extra fines on top for that action.
The third trial of a Minnesota mother on 24 songs illegally downloaded also results in a guilty verdict and a $1.5 million USD fine, or $62,500 USD per song penalty. Despite being able to obtain the tracks in DRM'd form for .99 per track, the media cabals continue to believe that punishing someone with fines of more money than they could ever hope to pay is a smart move, isntead of showing what kind of callous dicks they are and how much they don't care about anything more than money and monopolistic control. Might be worth rethinking the idea of copyright, considering we now have distribution and payment systems in place that would benefit creative workers far better than the current copyright system that enriches media cabals and leaves creative workers dry.
On the weight of a poppy seed bagel showing up in a drug test, a hospital separated a family and their newborn infant and had the child held in protective custody for five days. No, the mother was not informed of the drug test, nor of its results, nro of the decision until the child was taken away from her. No, no follow-up or anything to aascertain whether or not she was a drug user or had had a bagel. Just, nothing. There are obvious ways that women are impacted and there are subtle ways in which women are stripped of their power. The ACLU will likely have a field day with this, if only to ensure that proper disclosure happens first.
An image that hopefully sparks thousands of words - a gentleman on the streets of Chicago begs the President for alms.
The President and the Secretary of Defense reiterated their calls for Congress to repeal the law that prohibits openly gay and lesbian people from serving in the armed forces, although they do want to wait until after the study is released on 1 December, giving the lame-duck Congress sufficient time to pass a pproper repeal before the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is sworn in. If the new Congress takes hold before a legislative repeal happens, then the scenario that plenty of people were worried about comes to pass, and QUILTBAG advocates have yet more material for the claim that Barack Obama is not actually serious about the matter.
In technology, a disturbing trend - all the Congressional candidates in support of net neutrality were defeated in their election bids.
And in science, research indicating the active ingredient of cannabis may be an effective agent against the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer's disease. As more uses for it are discovered, the case for legalization of marijuana as a regulated drug continues to grow.
a pair of conjoined twins sharing a brain link offers significant interest in whether they can see out each other's eyes and possibly share intimate thoughts with each other.
In opinions, Heritage continues to tout their plans - this time against the still-misnamed "Obama tax hikes", claiming the Bush tax cuts must be extended in perpetuity, the inheritance tax and alternative minimum taxes abolished, any taxes having to deal with the health care bill be repealed, and the corporate tax rate lowered. So, really, we have to make sure that our corporations and rich people pay as little tax as possible, in hopes that they will then bestow their newfound largesse on us by hiring us, instead of pumping it into the next CEO/executive bonus package. And remember, that only applies to those corporations and rich people that don't manage to hide all their money in tax shelters and book-keeping. And when people complain about the deficit, they'll no doubt continue to scream that only spending cuts will save us, instead of increased revenues, because increased revenues means BIG GOVERNMENT controlling you. If they want to go that route, one could make a strong suggestion to halve the defense budget - for a savings of nearly $500 billion by itself, and then, with the reduced amount available, devote more of it to the proper places like veterans care, where a recent high-profile fraud case suggested that the auditing is not up to snuff in the guardianship program, instead of to buying the latest advanced death ray from a government contractor that's overcharging you. But that would go against the idea that the military must have everything it wants, regardless of the cost.
Truthfully, though, we suspect that the new Republican house will be too busy doing what they can to not govern and pass any affirmative legislation while campaigning for 2012 if they go by what they've stated they'll do to talk substantively about any of those issues. They certainly have more than a few publication urging them to make the business of their government undoing any sort of government done by the last Congress.
Mr. Klein continues the cherry-picking of commentary on the United States' human rights record, and accuses President Obama of having the same view of America as the hypocrites he quotes. I still want to know what the other countries that aren't the ones conservatives want to highlight as having speck-plank problems were saying. What did they say about the reports? I'm also finding the insistence that only Presidents who believe that America is super-perfect-in-a-totally-Mary-Sue-way are qualified and properly patriotic to serve as President rather repugnant. It's the same sort of attitude that insists that anyone who wants to raise the level of discourse off of "can have a beer with him" is part of an evil elitist cabal that must be rejected, because they're educated and they think they know better, and it leads to accusations that the President's pride is in his ego, instead of in the country, where it belongs. Education is apparently a thing that must be erased from our politics, so that we have proper Jingoists elected. And, if you believe the writings of persons like Mr. Sowell, education is to be erased in the judiciary as well, so that "activist judges", like the Iowa Supreme Court judges voted from their positions in the election won't rule against the majority on anything. That he hides behind "their logic and rulings aren't in the Constitution" still runs into the problem where the judiciary is empowered by the Constitution to be the arbiter of the laws and interpret them, with the eye deliberately toward appointing judges who cannot be recealled so they can make decisions against the majority's wishes based on that interpretation, where the majority's wishes are in conflict with the law.
Furthermore, anyone who believes in anything other than the Inherent Superiority of the relatively unregulated nation and state is someone to be regarded with suspicion, because they don't believe in what "everyone knows" and are secretly working to destroy that Inherently Superior private sector. (Although, when that person has excepts of a speech that do fall in line, they are to be praised for the parts that are orthodox, while dismissing any part that doesn't fit.)
Last for tonight, situations where the conspiracy theory turned out to have found a real conspiracy.
Mr. Docotorow describes his screen time adventures with one of his youngest, demonstrating ways where the screen is not the enemy but a tool to be used. The key component there is that he and his youngster are actively engaged in what they see and talk, tell stories, and otherwise keep it interactive. Most "dangers of screen use" items are when they plop a little one down in front of the screen and then pay no further attention to them (much like others who plop themselves down in front of a screen at the library and pay no further attention to their young ones.)
Finally, libraries are important to everyone, but especially so to those people who need to catch up on their digital literacy skills and those entrepreneurs looking to launch their own businesses.
Out in the world today, this is the cost of globalization. Sure, plenty of cheap plastic stuff, but the pollution costs are incredible. With no legal requirement to protect the environment, there's no incentive or profit in doing so, and to stay competitive, corporations both here and abroad will willingly sacrifice planetary health to do it. Elsewhere, Without laws behind them to require it, businesses currently involved in the Chicago Climate Exchange, a carbon-credit trading exchange, plan on stopping their participation. In its purest, possibly most effective form, carbon credit trading could have been an effective incentive to get people thinking about and improving their entire pollution-reduction systems, but as it likely would have turned out, money probably would have changed hands and no actual pollution reduction would have been forthcoming. Think of what you like about whether CO2 is a pollutant or not, but ideas and applications on how to ensure that human-made introductions to the climate do not render Terra uninhabitable should be getting more attention than they are. [This Paragraph has been Edited, after I was accused of not calling out carbon credit trading as the clear scheme it was in the original paragraph about the Chicago Climate Exchange closing, and then of unfairly comparing Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant with the pollution in the pictorial about China in the comments, because carbon dioxide has no obvious repercussions and is still under debate as to whether human-generated carbon dioxide even has negative repercussions. --Mgt.]
The latest terror scare is being used to push for the idea of giving the United States intelligence agency control over teams to operate in hostile countries with free license to kill and assassinate at the CIA's discretion. Because black-ops teams with assassination green lights have worked so well so far. Furthermore, the CIA intends fully to shoot the messenger on the latest Wikileaks release, vowing to stop any further leaks from getting out. the rationalization is that their business is so secret that the people don't need to know about what they're doing. If Congress were trustable to provide proper oversight, they might get away with that response. Because Congress won't, isn't, and continues not to, whistleblowers and leaks will be essential in throwing sunlight on the dark deeds of the agency.
President Obama gave a favorable indication that he would support India's quest to be added as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a move that will likely strain some of his diplomatic ties with Pakistan (more than the whole "O hai, we're sending unmanned drones into your country to kill your citizens" is, anyway). Elsewhere, a report suggesting that North Korea has been supplying banned nuclear technology to Syria, Iran, and other places will finally head to the Security Council, with China finally withdrawing its objections to the report.
An election called unfair by the United States and fair by China put the peimary military-backed political party back into power in Myanmar.
The Iraqi Christian church that was the site of a bloody hostage-taking and killing held a service on Sunday to commemorate and remember the dead. Those in attendance were worried that the government would not protect them from the next militant or insurgent attack.
Finally, Israel's prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu, pressed for the United States to provide military deterrence to Iran, claiming that other ways of attemtping to contain them have and will be useless.
Domestically, McDonalds unhappy that its signature selling point has been banned from San Francisco, because those Happy Meals are, shock and horror, unhealthy for the children they're being marketed to with the premise of a toy to keep.
The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers has suspended service to wheelchair-using people because they can't be arsed to make their cars accessible. Working aginst them, however, is a law that requires them to be accessible - and has required them to do so for years now. The system that is currently in place requires scheduling of at least a day in advance for accessible cars to arrive. Yep, it's going to be expensive, but part of the point of accessibility is that you should be able to respond within three minutes with a correct car to any person who wants to take it. Suspending the service is throwing a tantrum, and I hope the regulators are inclined to smack extra fines on top for that action.
The third trial of a Minnesota mother on 24 songs illegally downloaded also results in a guilty verdict and a $1.5 million USD fine, or $62,500 USD per song penalty. Despite being able to obtain the tracks in DRM'd form for .99 per track, the media cabals continue to believe that punishing someone with fines of more money than they could ever hope to pay is a smart move, isntead of showing what kind of callous dicks they are and how much they don't care about anything more than money and monopolistic control. Might be worth rethinking the idea of copyright, considering we now have distribution and payment systems in place that would benefit creative workers far better than the current copyright system that enriches media cabals and leaves creative workers dry.
On the weight of a poppy seed bagel showing up in a drug test, a hospital separated a family and their newborn infant and had the child held in protective custody for five days. No, the mother was not informed of the drug test, nor of its results, nro of the decision until the child was taken away from her. No, no follow-up or anything to aascertain whether or not she was a drug user or had had a bagel. Just, nothing. There are obvious ways that women are impacted and there are subtle ways in which women are stripped of their power. The ACLU will likely have a field day with this, if only to ensure that proper disclosure happens first.
An image that hopefully sparks thousands of words - a gentleman on the streets of Chicago begs the President for alms.
The President and the Secretary of Defense reiterated their calls for Congress to repeal the law that prohibits openly gay and lesbian people from serving in the armed forces, although they do want to wait until after the study is released on 1 December, giving the lame-duck Congress sufficient time to pass a pproper repeal before the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is sworn in. If the new Congress takes hold before a legislative repeal happens, then the scenario that plenty of people were worried about comes to pass, and QUILTBAG advocates have yet more material for the claim that Barack Obama is not actually serious about the matter.
In technology, a disturbing trend - all the Congressional candidates in support of net neutrality were defeated in their election bids.
And in science, research indicating the active ingredient of cannabis may be an effective agent against the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer's disease. As more uses for it are discovered, the case for legalization of marijuana as a regulated drug continues to grow.
a pair of conjoined twins sharing a brain link offers significant interest in whether they can see out each other's eyes and possibly share intimate thoughts with each other.
In opinions, Heritage continues to tout their plans - this time against the still-misnamed "Obama tax hikes", claiming the Bush tax cuts must be extended in perpetuity, the inheritance tax and alternative minimum taxes abolished, any taxes having to deal with the health care bill be repealed, and the corporate tax rate lowered. So, really, we have to make sure that our corporations and rich people pay as little tax as possible, in hopes that they will then bestow their newfound largesse on us by hiring us, instead of pumping it into the next CEO/executive bonus package. And remember, that only applies to those corporations and rich people that don't manage to hide all their money in tax shelters and book-keeping. And when people complain about the deficit, they'll no doubt continue to scream that only spending cuts will save us, instead of increased revenues, because increased revenues means BIG GOVERNMENT controlling you. If they want to go that route, one could make a strong suggestion to halve the defense budget - for a savings of nearly $500 billion by itself, and then, with the reduced amount available, devote more of it to the proper places like veterans care, where a recent high-profile fraud case suggested that the auditing is not up to snuff in the guardianship program, instead of to buying the latest advanced death ray from a government contractor that's overcharging you. But that would go against the idea that the military must have everything it wants, regardless of the cost.
Truthfully, though, we suspect that the new Republican house will be too busy doing what they can to not govern and pass any affirmative legislation while campaigning for 2012 if they go by what they've stated they'll do to talk substantively about any of those issues. They certainly have more than a few publication urging them to make the business of their government undoing any sort of government done by the last Congress.
Mr. Klein continues the cherry-picking of commentary on the United States' human rights record, and accuses President Obama of having the same view of America as the hypocrites he quotes. I still want to know what the other countries that aren't the ones conservatives want to highlight as having speck-plank problems were saying. What did they say about the reports? I'm also finding the insistence that only Presidents who believe that America is super-perfect-in-a-totally-Mary-Sue-way are qualified and properly patriotic to serve as President rather repugnant. It's the same sort of attitude that insists that anyone who wants to raise the level of discourse off of "can have a beer with him" is part of an evil elitist cabal that must be rejected, because they're educated and they think they know better, and it leads to accusations that the President's pride is in his ego, instead of in the country, where it belongs. Education is apparently a thing that must be erased from our politics, so that we have proper Jingoists elected. And, if you believe the writings of persons like Mr. Sowell, education is to be erased in the judiciary as well, so that "activist judges", like the Iowa Supreme Court judges voted from their positions in the election won't rule against the majority on anything. That he hides behind "their logic and rulings aren't in the Constitution" still runs into the problem where the judiciary is empowered by the Constitution to be the arbiter of the laws and interpret them, with the eye deliberately toward appointing judges who cannot be recealled so they can make decisions against the majority's wishes based on that interpretation, where the majority's wishes are in conflict with the law.
Furthermore, anyone who believes in anything other than the Inherent Superiority of the relatively unregulated nation and state is someone to be regarded with suspicion, because they don't believe in what "everyone knows" and are secretly working to destroy that Inherently Superior private sector. (Although, when that person has excepts of a speech that do fall in line, they are to be praised for the parts that are orthodox, while dismissing any part that doesn't fit.)
Last for tonight, situations where the conspiracy theory turned out to have found a real conspiracy.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 11:59 pm (UTC)Even without the context of CCX, point still stands, with those pictures of Chinese pollution and the still-prevalent trend of outsourcing manufacturing to places without stringent pollution law. If need be, I'll move it to better context.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 12:49 am (UTC)By the way, referencing plastic-manufacturing pollution in China in response to carbon dioxide... the two are completely different. Classic air quality standards and anti-pollution regulations, and carbon credit trading schemes are entirely separate things; that quip is even more uncalled for than the first crack you made.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 07:30 am (UTC)And now that you've shown me the train of the logic, I can see where it does look like a scheme to fund environmental groups at the cost of corporations, using the government and/or Exchanges as the intermediaries. From what I understood, though, the credits were intended to be auctioned and then traded around as companies that were more efficient could sell their excess pollution credit to less-efficient companies, making it more of an incentive to get more pollution-efficient. There was also an idea floated around that a certain amount of credit would expire off the market every so often, making less to go around and continuing to force companies to get more pollution-efficient. That's the theoretical, though, not the practical, so we'd have to find some way of actually doing it that way to see whether it would really work.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 05:31 pm (UTC)Oh, and referring to carbon dioxide as "pollution"...
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 07:17 pm (UTC)While much of the populace is out on whether CO2 is a pollutant, the EPA and several NGOs classify it as such at the moment (Although I admit I don't know how many of them rely on the IPCC-East Anglia research data to do so), so it's not wrong to do so.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 11:20 pm (UTC)And, yes, it IS the carbon credits idea. The people who are doing that with the system are the ones who came up with the idea in the first place and are lobbying for its creation. And, what for? A minimal amount of expected reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide actually put into the air, much less any sort of expectation in the way of reducing the amount of expected global warming, which hasn't reached expectations in any of the past decade that projections have put it at, as it is.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 11:58 pm (UTC)