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silveradeptCheers, fellow travelers along the parade of links. We start today with good news for a change - after protest from the student body and the community, a school district reversed themselves on their decision to ban a work on classical art based on the prevalence of nudity in those works. Hooray for art surviving the challenge. Further reading on a different book banning is Knute Berger nailing on the head why one should teach books like Brave New World, because the world they paint is offensive and to be avoided. If you don't get pictures, satirical or otherwise, of the worlds to be avoided, then you don't know when you've run full-force into them, be they Brave New Worlds or 1984s. And please, stop trying to hide behind other words to describe what you're doing - whether a suspension or otherwise, you're trying to get rid of it from students.
Before we begin, a letter announcing the end of the Second Great War, praising the work done by the fighters, but also recognizing the sacrifices of lives laid down in the conflict.
Last out of the headlines, however, is how the search for a missing unicorn brought some happiness back to the populace.
Out in the world today, Fire exchanged between the North and South Koreas, with the natural response to "Who started it" being both sides pointing at each other. While it's unlikely that they'll actually go to full-bore war with each other, the two Koreas are beginning to feel like an old couple bickering with each other.
A British Columbia court has taken up the issue as to whether the anti-polygamy law of Canada is a violation of the country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms regarding religious expression and practice - the government wishes the ban upheld to prosecute a sect practicing plural marriage. We should keep an eye on this one, in case it spreads and/or jumps a border to the south.
An LGBT advocacy and support organization in Kyrgyzstan needs to raise 15,000 USD to have an office/safe house/shelter, having been repeatedly bounced from their previous places due to complaints, threats of violence, police raids, and other actions to make the safe space feel unsafe. To see what they are doing and a breakdown of their costs, visit a site that helps to break down the costs and see how little it takes from many people to do great good.
In Pakistan, a woman sentenced to die for blasphemy is not guilty and should be granted clemency, according to a top government official in the country.
A person who claimed to be a high-ranking Taliban official, engaging in negotiations with NATO and the Afghan Government is not who he said he was, and there was a lot of money and negotiations wasted on this person.
A story, well worth reading, of finally giving in to one's health instead of continuing a practice that was causing harm. And out of the deal, the writer has found that they are doing a better job of local sustainability and helping lower her environmental footprint, too. There was, of course, a significant amount of feedback, positive and negative, to that decision.
Domestically, if traveling in the new touchy-feely TSA realm (well, new to certain groups, apparently - women and people of color have been alleging they've been subjected to this kind of stuff long before white dudes started to copmlain), recall that regardless of whom you are, or what gender you present as, you still have rights. Even if there are some additional issues that may have to be considered, and you have to keep a watch on for persons who will give you a hard time about gender presentation, remember, too, that many of those agents are uncomfortable about having to do enhanced pat-downs, so unleashing on them is probably not the right idea. Get after the idiots who decided that kind of theater is worth investing in and will actually work, the other idiots who think that it's actually a good thing to have these invasive proceudres done in the name of security, and the really big idiots who think this whole thing is "isolated incidents" blown way out of proportion.
A student with Down Syndrome was forcibly withdrawn from a course close to final examinations on the reason that she was a disruption to her classmates. Her classmates, upon hearing of this, asked precisely what type of psychoactive substances the administration was using and signed a unanimous petition to keep her in the class, a petition, as well as a student Senate vote, that was summarily ignored by the administration. One hopes that the discrimination claim that will follow the administration's volley strikes true and hurts. According to the letter sent home (assuming this document is the item in question), it appears the instructor was tired of having someone disabled in their class and told the administration that they had to get rid of her. Which makes things that much more problematic. I thought one of the good effects of education was supposed to be about broadening your horizons and meeting people you wouldn't otherwise meet and having to interact with them.
Finally, former Vice President Al Gore believes that corn ethanol subsidization was not good policy, and that he was guilty of focusing a little too much on his home state instead of the good of the nation. That last sentence certainly seems to describe much of Congressional action these long decades...
In sciences and technologies, research that suggests conditions such as schizophrenia may have something to do with a retrovirus that is part of human DNA, set off by the response to a differnt infection like toxoplasmois and influenza.
Looking in on the brain, reserachers think they might be able to develop a brain training exercise for addicts to allow them to control their cravings, based no being able to have them control a mouse cursor with two different brain states.
Into opinions, where the stated positions of the Republican Party appear to be willing to sacrifice the country to enrich their party and its backers and to not give the Democrats any sort of political victory. Perhaps now that we're past brass tacks and well into the bickering, we wish for the times when Obama and Palin were more similar, appealing to their audiences with well-placed rhetoric, than where we are now. As things are, <the pollsters find the electorate disillusioned with the President and possibly willing to elect a Republican to the office in 2012. And while much of the Demcoratic base apparently thinks he's going to be a good nominee, there are some who wish that he would remember where his second testicle is, or perhaps replace them with ones made of steel for the next two years. That is, unless he's going to suddenly implement a way-leftist radical agenda using executive regulatory powers to impose penalties for carbon dioxide pllution and to remvoe the secret ballot from unionization. If either of those actually come to pass, color me impressed. And then I will watch the fray.
Mr. Carroll suggests that the New START treaty should be delayed until the new Congress comes in, rather than be passed in a lame-duck session, because the desperation to pass it only proves how weak and ineffective a treaty it will be, and that arguments for its passage aren't actually true. The argument, however, that the New START treaty weakens America without touching Russia is predicated on the idea that the United States actually needs modernized weapons of mass destruction to ensure that they can destroy the world many times over in the name of protecting the world from other people who want to destroy the world many times over. Wouldn't it be a better idea to work toward the disarmament of all weapons designed to destroy the world many times over? No sane actor would engage in such a thing, and having all the sane actor disarming gives less opportunities for the non-sane actors to get their hands on atomic material ready for a weapon, yes? So why not pass New START based on that argument alone?
Mr. Avlon shouts "Dragon!" and hopes not to be crushed by an anvil in bringing up the Park51 project's perfectly legal request for Lower Manhattan redevelopment money from the federal government. As with all of the "controversy" surrounding the Park51 project, he predicates his argument on a "should they" rather than a "can they", before slinking away by saying that the project doesn't have enough capital to qualify for it anyway. So not only does he shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, if caught, he would claim that there was no reason to panic, because there weren't any obvious flames.
Speaking of conspiracies, After 47 years, not everything that's been collected about the Kennedy assassination is publicly known, which continues to fuel the theories about the work - the Atlantic article covers five myths about the current narrative.
Last out of opinions, Mr. Katman claims that the increasing unionization of faculty and university workers is going to prevent conservative voices from being on the faculty, because they will have principled objections to paying a fee to the union that negotiates their contracts. The first argument - In this economy? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! - is soon supplemented by a more thought-out version - If your principles are such that you won't join or pay an agency fee to a union as a consequence of being able to teach, then you necessarily limit yourself to those institutions that have no union or are ideologically opposed to them. Which means you can teach, but it's more likely to be at Liberty University than georgetown. If, instead, your commitment to education (and to making sure you have "conservative voices" in the "liberal university" atmosphere) is more important, suffering the indignity of being part of a union should be a minor inconvenience, and hey, maybe you'll lead the charge to de-certify the union and get everyone back to the way they were. Just be aware of the potential consequences for doing so, that's all.
Last for tonight, a gender form that does its best to be inclusive for as many responses as can be thought of.
Before we begin, a letter announcing the end of the Second Great War, praising the work done by the fighters, but also recognizing the sacrifices of lives laid down in the conflict.
Last out of the headlines, however, is how the search for a missing unicorn brought some happiness back to the populace.
Out in the world today, Fire exchanged between the North and South Koreas, with the natural response to "Who started it" being both sides pointing at each other. While it's unlikely that they'll actually go to full-bore war with each other, the two Koreas are beginning to feel like an old couple bickering with each other.
A British Columbia court has taken up the issue as to whether the anti-polygamy law of Canada is a violation of the country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms regarding religious expression and practice - the government wishes the ban upheld to prosecute a sect practicing plural marriage. We should keep an eye on this one, in case it spreads and/or jumps a border to the south.
An LGBT advocacy and support organization in Kyrgyzstan needs to raise 15,000 USD to have an office/safe house/shelter, having been repeatedly bounced from their previous places due to complaints, threats of violence, police raids, and other actions to make the safe space feel unsafe. To see what they are doing and a breakdown of their costs, visit a site that helps to break down the costs and see how little it takes from many people to do great good.
In Pakistan, a woman sentenced to die for blasphemy is not guilty and should be granted clemency, according to a top government official in the country.
A person who claimed to be a high-ranking Taliban official, engaging in negotiations with NATO and the Afghan Government is not who he said he was, and there was a lot of money and negotiations wasted on this person.
A story, well worth reading, of finally giving in to one's health instead of continuing a practice that was causing harm. And out of the deal, the writer has found that they are doing a better job of local sustainability and helping lower her environmental footprint, too. There was, of course, a significant amount of feedback, positive and negative, to that decision.
Domestically, if traveling in the new touchy-feely TSA realm (well, new to certain groups, apparently - women and people of color have been alleging they've been subjected to this kind of stuff long before white dudes started to copmlain), recall that regardless of whom you are, or what gender you present as, you still have rights. Even if there are some additional issues that may have to be considered, and you have to keep a watch on for persons who will give you a hard time about gender presentation, remember, too, that many of those agents are uncomfortable about having to do enhanced pat-downs, so unleashing on them is probably not the right idea. Get after the idiots who decided that kind of theater is worth investing in and will actually work, the other idiots who think that it's actually a good thing to have these invasive proceudres done in the name of security, and the really big idiots who think this whole thing is "isolated incidents" blown way out of proportion.
A student with Down Syndrome was forcibly withdrawn from a course close to final examinations on the reason that she was a disruption to her classmates. Her classmates, upon hearing of this, asked precisely what type of psychoactive substances the administration was using and signed a unanimous petition to keep her in the class, a petition, as well as a student Senate vote, that was summarily ignored by the administration. One hopes that the discrimination claim that will follow the administration's volley strikes true and hurts. According to the letter sent home (assuming this document is the item in question), it appears the instructor was tired of having someone disabled in their class and told the administration that they had to get rid of her. Which makes things that much more problematic. I thought one of the good effects of education was supposed to be about broadening your horizons and meeting people you wouldn't otherwise meet and having to interact with them.
Finally, former Vice President Al Gore believes that corn ethanol subsidization was not good policy, and that he was guilty of focusing a little too much on his home state instead of the good of the nation. That last sentence certainly seems to describe much of Congressional action these long decades...
In sciences and technologies, research that suggests conditions such as schizophrenia may have something to do with a retrovirus that is part of human DNA, set off by the response to a differnt infection like toxoplasmois and influenza.
Looking in on the brain, reserachers think they might be able to develop a brain training exercise for addicts to allow them to control their cravings, based no being able to have them control a mouse cursor with two different brain states.
Into opinions, where the stated positions of the Republican Party appear to be willing to sacrifice the country to enrich their party and its backers and to not give the Democrats any sort of political victory. Perhaps now that we're past brass tacks and well into the bickering, we wish for the times when Obama and Palin were more similar, appealing to their audiences with well-placed rhetoric, than where we are now. As things are, <the pollsters find the electorate disillusioned with the President and possibly willing to elect a Republican to the office in 2012. And while much of the Demcoratic base apparently thinks he's going to be a good nominee, there are some who wish that he would remember where his second testicle is, or perhaps replace them with ones made of steel for the next two years. That is, unless he's going to suddenly implement a way-leftist radical agenda using executive regulatory powers to impose penalties for carbon dioxide pllution and to remvoe the secret ballot from unionization. If either of those actually come to pass, color me impressed. And then I will watch the fray.
Mr. Carroll suggests that the New START treaty should be delayed until the new Congress comes in, rather than be passed in a lame-duck session, because the desperation to pass it only proves how weak and ineffective a treaty it will be, and that arguments for its passage aren't actually true. The argument, however, that the New START treaty weakens America without touching Russia is predicated on the idea that the United States actually needs modernized weapons of mass destruction to ensure that they can destroy the world many times over in the name of protecting the world from other people who want to destroy the world many times over. Wouldn't it be a better idea to work toward the disarmament of all weapons designed to destroy the world many times over? No sane actor would engage in such a thing, and having all the sane actor disarming gives less opportunities for the non-sane actors to get their hands on atomic material ready for a weapon, yes? So why not pass New START based on that argument alone?
Mr. Avlon shouts "Dragon!" and hopes not to be crushed by an anvil in bringing up the Park51 project's perfectly legal request for Lower Manhattan redevelopment money from the federal government. As with all of the "controversy" surrounding the Park51 project, he predicates his argument on a "should they" rather than a "can they", before slinking away by saying that the project doesn't have enough capital to qualify for it anyway. So not only does he shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, if caught, he would claim that there was no reason to panic, because there weren't any obvious flames.
Speaking of conspiracies, After 47 years, not everything that's been collected about the Kennedy assassination is publicly known, which continues to fuel the theories about the work - the Atlantic article covers five myths about the current narrative.
Last out of opinions, Mr. Katman claims that the increasing unionization of faculty and university workers is going to prevent conservative voices from being on the faculty, because they will have principled objections to paying a fee to the union that negotiates their contracts. The first argument - In this economy? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! - is soon supplemented by a more thought-out version - If your principles are such that you won't join or pay an agency fee to a union as a consequence of being able to teach, then you necessarily limit yourself to those institutions that have no union or are ideologically opposed to them. Which means you can teach, but it's more likely to be at Liberty University than georgetown. If, instead, your commitment to education (and to making sure you have "conservative voices" in the "liberal university" atmosphere) is more important, suffering the indignity of being part of a union should be a minor inconvenience, and hey, maybe you'll lead the charge to de-certify the union and get everyone back to the way they were. Just be aware of the potential consequences for doing so, that's all.
Last for tonight, a gender form that does its best to be inclusive for as many responses as can be thought of.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 07:17 pm (UTC)First generation is what is says on the tin. Without that first generation tech being ramped up, where the heck does he think the investment and research for second-generation would have come from? *snorts, rolls eyes some more*
Wet processing yielded to dry processing is yielding to cellulostic (if we can keep hold of research funding), but none of the above would have happened without that support.
Now, I'm all in favor of stopping paying the oil companies to blend ethanol (yeah, those much-maligned subsidies? they don't come to us. They go to the oil companies, specifically the blenders) and just enforce the EPA use guidelines...
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 07:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, stopping the subsidies that pay the oil companies is a pretty good way to save some change.
But enforcement? When you already have people howling that the EPA is secretly going to tax you to death because of their wide pollution guidelines so that Obama can take over more of you life? Madness. *thbbbbpth*
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 08:06 pm (UTC)We've been improving yields every year, even with the terrible protein levels coming out of the horrible weather. And it's not like we haven't gotten better and better at carbon-dioxide capture (and ours is food-grade and sold to bottling companies) and it's not like our DDGs (Dried Distillers Grains) aren't a damn good feed that gives better weight gain per pound than straight grain or straight silage either one, and it's not as though we're not researching what else we can produce off the corn or --
oh, sorry. I'm apparently wearing my rant pants today and they took over.
Yup. The only reason we're moving forward so quick, with so many improvements, is that we have had a lot of support, and the government has really helped to create a market for us. Part of that is making the oil companies cooperate with us -- and so far it's been easier to bribe them (yes, that is how I look at it, opinions differ) than it's been to push the legislation... I wish that weren't true.
...oh, don't start me on those idiots, huh? *SIGH* And I don't mean enforcement on people, I mean enforcement on industry -- not that you can make people see that.
Also don't start me on our electric grid. Please, I'm begging.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 08:34 pm (UTC)...and yeah, enforcement on industry usually takes disasters before it actually happens. I'm surprised that the electric grid failures we've had didn't drive people to overhaul the damn thing and make it work properly, safely, and with appropriate redundancies. And maybe with some actual renewable sources involved, too.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 08:43 pm (UTC)Hm, unfamiliar acronym (GM croppers?) alert?
OH, I call such BS on "foul up engines". I know several people who run 50/50 ethanol/gasoline blends and have no engine problems and better fuel economy. I've run a 15% blend in my baby for a decade and she had never had an engine problem except standard maintenance. And ethanol does amazing things to clean out carburetors -- sure, you have to change the fuel filter after the first tank of fuel, but after that? You've never seen filters so clean as the ones after a tank of E10 gets the crud out. So I don't know what they're smoking, but it doesn't match my reality.
Heh. You're not wrong. But... the grid isn't the whole of the problem. Sources are the problem, and we don't have enough -- but with the grid the way it is we can't add sources effectively without massive investment. Also, every local power company has an investment and a say, and some are pro-renewable and some are totally anti.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 09:00 pm (UTC)As far as I know, my car's been running up to E10 normally, at least if the stickers on the pumps are to be believed. So clearly it's not causing major foul-ups.
Well, if massive investment is your thing, then I think that matter gets yoinked out of the hands of the local power monopolies and planted firmly into the hands of the federal government to add sources and do infrastructure overhaul whether those local monopolies like it or not. In the end, they'll all like it more, but they won't have a choice on whether they're along for the ride.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 10:01 pm (UTC)*nods* Yup. E10 has become pretty much a national standard. Which is good, but not near what it should be. Which is why I'm quite happy about the recent EPA declaration that they've approved E15 for most use -- why they're dragging their feet on late-models, I don't know, but it'll turn out.
...careful, there, man. "Monopoly" is a dangerous word to throw around about public- and investor-owned and controlled utilities and/or the jointly-owned transmission operators. Privately held and traded power companies are actually a minority, even though they do have a large amount of control. On a personal note: As someone who was a voting member of a rural electric cooperative from 18 to 22 (and who went to every single yearly meeting from the time I was in diapers), that really got me hot under the collar. My power company is a democratic organization, thank you.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 10:10 pm (UTC)Getting their organization trod on is not a great thing, but this might be one of those occasions where people have to get dragged, kicking and screaming, into The Future if they're not willing to dive in with both feet.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 05:03 pm (UTC)Aaaah, you meant that they're basically natural monopolies, okay, gotcha. *nods* That, I'll give you. But what's the alternative, with the cost of transmission lines and plants? Nobody's going to build a second set of high-wire lines (or water pipes) if there's already one there -- okay, someone might, but it would be a... choice probably doomed to failure.
Heh. Utility companies do tend to be conservative (as in risk-averse, not politically), I'll admit. They're typically pretty unwilling to take chances with upsetting their customer base... which is currently a problem, given how badly the grid must change.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 05:08 pm (UTC)