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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.
