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silveradeptGood morning, people of great things. How's the weather where you are? We're all fluffy winter wonderland where I am. So, let's start with Harry Truman's explanation as to why there were so many creaks and groans in his workplace - ghosts of old office-holders.
Some advice, from the librarian to the library user - know what you want, treat our stuff with respect, don't be an ass if we can't get it for you, leave the kids alone, and not every situation requires the use of your real name.
Also, have a look at this book and use it both to satisfy the curious Web enthusiast and the Internet-phobe who is certain everywhere is trying to steal their money. Speaking of the Web, maybe the Internet is training us to do good things - to follow our interests - as opposed to what society thinks we should be doing - to do well in a bunch of varied things. In fact, pairing technology, data, and what we already know in places like the humanities might open up many new avenues of interesting study, and that we can all use to do well and have interesting lives, instead of slogging through things we have no interest in and will likely not use.
For those with daughters or little women in their lives, these posters for girls are a good reminder of what they can do with their own lives. Is there a corresponding series for boys, too? And further on this point, The difference between Buffy Summers and Sookie Stackhouse, and why we need more Buffy-type stories to counterbalance all the Sookie-type ones we have.
Finally, before our departments, after vociferous complaining from the no penis, no power coalition, a publisher reverted many of their gender-inclusive terms in their NIV translation back to the male-dominated language ones. If you want to get on their case, or get on other cases about privilege and the like, making sure you know your type of activism, and also following a few meta rules can make your activism have punch.
Out in the world today, the Guardian of Trinidad and Tobago indicates they still can be convinced to do the Satanic Panic, after reporting on an alleged demon attack in a school.
In Afghanistan, less than one in ten men in the most war-torn provinces of the country are aware of the event that the United States claims was the reason they went there in the first place.
Russian president Medvedev suggested a shared missile shield for Europe, with NATO responsible for one part and Moscow another.
The United States continues to press for diplomatic talks with the DPRK in hopes of heading their advancing nuclear weapons program off at the pass.
Folksy-sounding names hide megacorporation subsidiaries who aren't really being local, organic, or helpful to their locales. Many of them duck taxes by sending things off to other countries, and then apply pressure to those countries to keep their tax-haven policies, lest they send the business and the revenue elsewhere.
There's something here that rings true in a very Buddhist way - an illiterate man has formed a microsociety on a few basic principles after having experienced the world outside and its pain, suffering, and continual divisions of people into Us and Them.
Last out, an information graphic about the population of the world and the disproportionate impact certain countries and groups have on it.
Domestically, an attempt to rein in the power of the police state by educating the citizens about how to assert their Constitutional rights. It will be easier, of course, for some people to be able to do that than others, and if the idea is to try and rein in those who abuse their powers, most people will also have to have the courage to face down implied and actual threats and assert their rights. And they'll have plenty of practice, if not only on police officers, but on TSA agents, as the TSA doesn't plan on backing down from their one-step-behind methods any time soon.
The following person, Mr. Huckabee, may want to be a Presidential candidate in 2012. He is not qualified if he seriously believes that the legislature and the executive should have the power to ignore any judiciary decision they don't agree with or like. Another candidate that has proven her lack of qualifications (although she could get some by 2012, to be fair) may end up being a viable candidate because she will have the backing of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, regardless of what her actual qualifications are. It's one thread in the increasing reality that the billionaires and their agents are becoming the only people with real power in the country, whether they choose to exercise that power overtly or not.
Secretary of State Clinton defended the conviction of Ahmed Gailani against critics while exposing her underlying belief that civilian tribunals are not appropriate for all possible terror suspects, in a nice bid to have her cake and eat it as well. The result of the trial continues to have conservative papers and writers claiming that the trial and its conviction were unnecessary or a sham and that military detention and trial is superior to trying anyone accused of terrorism in civilian court. That claim is somewhat undermined, however, when in the same column they claim that it was obvious he was already guilty and should have just been summarily tried, sentenced, and detained for everything he was charged with. If that "obviousness" was based on evidence obtained through the use of illegal techniques, though, then there's no "obviousness" to it.
Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal joined the Jingoists in saying that America should stop apologizing for Keeping Us Safe and Free from The Terrorists Who Hate America, and that other explanations of poverty and ignorance making for terror recruiting are nonsense. He also calls for the use of profiling and for the discarding of such things as the Miranda warning in the cases of terrorists. We suspect, with that attitude, he's okay with torture and summary execution of a suspected terrorist, whether at home or abroad.
Welcome to technology, where the next arms race between closed source and hackers appears to be over the Kinect controller - hackers have the early lead, having already written drivers to control the device and are now putting together software to take advantage of the gesture-recognizing abilities of the camera. Speaking of Kinect, having a camera that can recognize people and things opens up new privacy concerns, especially when corporations are hungry to capture more and more of your data and governments are looking for better ways to monitor you wherever you go.
Elsewhere, some concepts for clothing the technologically-inclined might want to wear or shoulder.
Into opinions, where a classic phrase - Wall Street is not good for anything - is rediscovered, thanks to the way its machinations continue to cause significant trouble to normal people.
The methods are competitive, but the end results are always clear - in the Conspiratainment Complex we suffer in, the competition is for your allegiance (and for you to convert your friends, not too unlike a Ponzi scheme, actually...), and they're not shy about making money off of you or in cross-promoting each other to make the conspiracies seem more real.
A pair of perspectives on the nature of Biblical inerrancy - Mr. Mohler starts by arguing that BioLogos, an organization that wants evangelical Christians to accept some form of evolution as reality so as to avoid having the whole thing written off by people who trust at least in science, are making arguments are in favor of abandoning Biblical inerrancy, and in doing so, they are wrong. Because of that position, the Slacktivist accuses him of peddling defective maps - admitting that the Bible has been disproven by science, and then asserting that Real True Christians must believe in the Bible as true over the disproving evidence. It's not a new argument, necessarily - there are plenty of schools of Christianity that insist one of the tenets of belief is that every word of the accepted codex was inspired and divinely written and cannot contain error. The extra wrap comes in the assertion that Mohler admits that the Bible is wrong - most inerrancy advocates are strenuously maintaining the correctness of their beliefs in the face of contrary science evidence. It is one thing to say science is wrong, it is quite another to say science is right, but one must disregard it in favor of the wrong thing.
Mr. Arquilla recommends the dispersion of the counter-terrorism military force into small ready-reaction nodes, able to handle any developing incident before it gets too far, based on the successes of small groups of terrorists acting simultaneously in Mumbai. One notes that it also would allow them to lock somewhere down for martial law or military coup faster, and that we can only hope the military chooses not to engage in such a thing.
Mr. Dowd writes a stirring column about the horrors of war and the events that give those veterans the decorations they have rightly earned. (And then tries to to make it sound like a justified sacrifice for Keeping Us All Free after the 11 September attacks in his last sentence, but you can safely scrub that away without losing the importance of the column.) The experience of war and battle is sometimes so much that those who go through it deliberately try to block it out and refuse to talk about it, even as the award they received for it is displayed proudly. One would hope, knowing that, that our country will do better to take care of its veterans and help them through the memories and the flashbacks, to honor them and to help them cope with the horrors of war.
Mr. Malanga is unhappy with the Build America Bonds, because they allow, in his opinion, states and municipalities that have already borrowed too much on their own to keep borrowing more with federal subsidies helping to pay the cost of the interest. His examples are of places using the bonds to cover other holes in their budgets, and he makes the obligatory "money to government bad, money to private sector good" argument to make sure his base is on board.
Finally, Mr. Moore and Mr. Vedder talk about the elephant and the donkey in the room - raising revenues for government to pay debt often results in politicians spending the revenue raised, instead of using it to service debt.And Republicans and Democrats alike will happy join in the spending binge, just fighting over who gets to spend it on what. After all, if one party thinks the rich need additional tax breaks while they claim to be about the debt, and the other party is loath to cut spending at a time when the the American people need it, who exactly is going to create a majority sufficient to pass spending cuts in both houses and get the President to sign off on it?
Last for tonight, Alex's Guide, containing many of the great truisms that don't show up in a standard philosophy text or comedy routine. And some commandments for social networking when you're a writer.
Oh, and one last thing - an interview with Berkeley Breathed about the longevity of Bloom County and all the other things that went into it.
Some advice, from the librarian to the library user - know what you want, treat our stuff with respect, don't be an ass if we can't get it for you, leave the kids alone, and not every situation requires the use of your real name.
Also, have a look at this book and use it both to satisfy the curious Web enthusiast and the Internet-phobe who is certain everywhere is trying to steal their money. Speaking of the Web, maybe the Internet is training us to do good things - to follow our interests - as opposed to what society thinks we should be doing - to do well in a bunch of varied things. In fact, pairing technology, data, and what we already know in places like the humanities might open up many new avenues of interesting study, and that we can all use to do well and have interesting lives, instead of slogging through things we have no interest in and will likely not use.
For those with daughters or little women in their lives, these posters for girls are a good reminder of what they can do with their own lives. Is there a corresponding series for boys, too? And further on this point, The difference between Buffy Summers and Sookie Stackhouse, and why we need more Buffy-type stories to counterbalance all the Sookie-type ones we have.
Finally, before our departments, after vociferous complaining from the no penis, no power coalition, a publisher reverted many of their gender-inclusive terms in their NIV translation back to the male-dominated language ones. If you want to get on their case, or get on other cases about privilege and the like, making sure you know your type of activism, and also following a few meta rules can make your activism have punch.
Out in the world today, the Guardian of Trinidad and Tobago indicates they still can be convinced to do the Satanic Panic, after reporting on an alleged demon attack in a school.
In Afghanistan, less than one in ten men in the most war-torn provinces of the country are aware of the event that the United States claims was the reason they went there in the first place.
Russian president Medvedev suggested a shared missile shield for Europe, with NATO responsible for one part and Moscow another.
The United States continues to press for diplomatic talks with the DPRK in hopes of heading their advancing nuclear weapons program off at the pass.
Folksy-sounding names hide megacorporation subsidiaries who aren't really being local, organic, or helpful to their locales. Many of them duck taxes by sending things off to other countries, and then apply pressure to those countries to keep their tax-haven policies, lest they send the business and the revenue elsewhere.
There's something here that rings true in a very Buddhist way - an illiterate man has formed a microsociety on a few basic principles after having experienced the world outside and its pain, suffering, and continual divisions of people into Us and Them.
Last out, an information graphic about the population of the world and the disproportionate impact certain countries and groups have on it.
Domestically, an attempt to rein in the power of the police state by educating the citizens about how to assert their Constitutional rights. It will be easier, of course, for some people to be able to do that than others, and if the idea is to try and rein in those who abuse their powers, most people will also have to have the courage to face down implied and actual threats and assert their rights. And they'll have plenty of practice, if not only on police officers, but on TSA agents, as the TSA doesn't plan on backing down from their one-step-behind methods any time soon.
The following person, Mr. Huckabee, may want to be a Presidential candidate in 2012. He is not qualified if he seriously believes that the legislature and the executive should have the power to ignore any judiciary decision they don't agree with or like. Another candidate that has proven her lack of qualifications (although she could get some by 2012, to be fair) may end up being a viable candidate because she will have the backing of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, regardless of what her actual qualifications are. It's one thread in the increasing reality that the billionaires and their agents are becoming the only people with real power in the country, whether they choose to exercise that power overtly or not.
Secretary of State Clinton defended the conviction of Ahmed Gailani against critics while exposing her underlying belief that civilian tribunals are not appropriate for all possible terror suspects, in a nice bid to have her cake and eat it as well. The result of the trial continues to have conservative papers and writers claiming that the trial and its conviction were unnecessary or a sham and that military detention and trial is superior to trying anyone accused of terrorism in civilian court. That claim is somewhat undermined, however, when in the same column they claim that it was obvious he was already guilty and should have just been summarily tried, sentenced, and detained for everything he was charged with. If that "obviousness" was based on evidence obtained through the use of illegal techniques, though, then there's no "obviousness" to it.
Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal joined the Jingoists in saying that America should stop apologizing for Keeping Us Safe and Free from The Terrorists Who Hate America, and that other explanations of poverty and ignorance making for terror recruiting are nonsense. He also calls for the use of profiling and for the discarding of such things as the Miranda warning in the cases of terrorists. We suspect, with that attitude, he's okay with torture and summary execution of a suspected terrorist, whether at home or abroad.
Welcome to technology, where the next arms race between closed source and hackers appears to be over the Kinect controller - hackers have the early lead, having already written drivers to control the device and are now putting together software to take advantage of the gesture-recognizing abilities of the camera. Speaking of Kinect, having a camera that can recognize people and things opens up new privacy concerns, especially when corporations are hungry to capture more and more of your data and governments are looking for better ways to monitor you wherever you go.
Elsewhere, some concepts for clothing the technologically-inclined might want to wear or shoulder.
Into opinions, where a classic phrase - Wall Street is not good for anything - is rediscovered, thanks to the way its machinations continue to cause significant trouble to normal people.
The methods are competitive, but the end results are always clear - in the Conspiratainment Complex we suffer in, the competition is for your allegiance (and for you to convert your friends, not too unlike a Ponzi scheme, actually...), and they're not shy about making money off of you or in cross-promoting each other to make the conspiracies seem more real.
A pair of perspectives on the nature of Biblical inerrancy - Mr. Mohler starts by arguing that BioLogos, an organization that wants evangelical Christians to accept some form of evolution as reality so as to avoid having the whole thing written off by people who trust at least in science, are making arguments are in favor of abandoning Biblical inerrancy, and in doing so, they are wrong. Because of that position, the Slacktivist accuses him of peddling defective maps - admitting that the Bible has been disproven by science, and then asserting that Real True Christians must believe in the Bible as true over the disproving evidence. It's not a new argument, necessarily - there are plenty of schools of Christianity that insist one of the tenets of belief is that every word of the accepted codex was inspired and divinely written and cannot contain error. The extra wrap comes in the assertion that Mohler admits that the Bible is wrong - most inerrancy advocates are strenuously maintaining the correctness of their beliefs in the face of contrary science evidence. It is one thing to say science is wrong, it is quite another to say science is right, but one must disregard it in favor of the wrong thing.
Mr. Arquilla recommends the dispersion of the counter-terrorism military force into small ready-reaction nodes, able to handle any developing incident before it gets too far, based on the successes of small groups of terrorists acting simultaneously in Mumbai. One notes that it also would allow them to lock somewhere down for martial law or military coup faster, and that we can only hope the military chooses not to engage in such a thing.
Mr. Dowd writes a stirring column about the horrors of war and the events that give those veterans the decorations they have rightly earned. (And then tries to to make it sound like a justified sacrifice for Keeping Us All Free after the 11 September attacks in his last sentence, but you can safely scrub that away without losing the importance of the column.) The experience of war and battle is sometimes so much that those who go through it deliberately try to block it out and refuse to talk about it, even as the award they received for it is displayed proudly. One would hope, knowing that, that our country will do better to take care of its veterans and help them through the memories and the flashbacks, to honor them and to help them cope with the horrors of war.
Mr. Malanga is unhappy with the Build America Bonds, because they allow, in his opinion, states and municipalities that have already borrowed too much on their own to keep borrowing more with federal subsidies helping to pay the cost of the interest. His examples are of places using the bonds to cover other holes in their budgets, and he makes the obligatory "money to government bad, money to private sector good" argument to make sure his base is on board.
Finally, Mr. Moore and Mr. Vedder talk about the elephant and the donkey in the room - raising revenues for government to pay debt often results in politicians spending the revenue raised, instead of using it to service debt.And Republicans and Democrats alike will happy join in the spending binge, just fighting over who gets to spend it on what. After all, if one party thinks the rich need additional tax breaks while they claim to be about the debt, and the other party is loath to cut spending at a time when the the American people need it, who exactly is going to create a majority sufficient to pass spending cuts in both houses and get the President to sign off on it?
Last for tonight, Alex's Guide, containing many of the great truisms that don't show up in a standard philosophy text or comedy routine. And some commandments for social networking when you're a writer.
Oh, and one last thing - an interview with Berkeley Breathed about the longevity of Bloom County and all the other things that went into it.
