And more stuff - 5 January 2011
Jan. 6th, 2011 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGood day, time travel experts. Recognize that the Tenth Doctor is marrying his daughter, who is in real life the daughter of the Fifth Doctor. And if you don't know Doctor Who, that made zero sense and is not funny at all.
In the world of sport, because Michigan fans require their football team to win twelve games every year, even after a coaching change, football coach Rich Rodriguez has fired after his third year of coaching.
A new version of Huckleberry Finn coming out has replaced the word "nigger" with the world "slave" in an attempt to get it back into classrooms to be taught. The bowdlerizer claims he did it not to make the books raceblind, but to make it so that teachers will be able to teach the book without everything fixating on the racial slurs. Missing from the discussion is how we came to a society where a single word could get taken out of context sufficiently that the book itself is lost, and what kind of schooling we're getting when we're apparently unwilling to face head-on the use of derogatory langauge in our literature. Critical thinking and reading is served better with books that skew toward controversy and obscenity, not away.
Finally, The Dead Pool claims Gerry Rafferty, singer-songwriter, at 63.
Out in the world today, GQ gets to analyze the report of Dubai police documenting a Mossad hit job on one of the citizens of the city. The fact that there is reporting on it indicates how badly things were bungled in terms of blown covers.
Pictures of a military jet protoype surfaced from China in anticipation of a visit from the United States Secretary of Defense to try and lower tensions.
Morocco broke up what it says is an al-Qaeda linked terrorist cell of 27 people and three weapons caches. Which could be counted as positive progress. Israel, on the other hand, is investigating groups opposed to the Israeli Defense Forces as suspected terrorist-tied places, proving that the government heartily believes If You're Not With Us, You're With The Terrorists.
And finally, The Bishop of Rome indicated that he's concerned about the growth of child pornography, soemthing he thinks is being mainstreamed, but that priests abusing children wasn't a big deal until the 1970s, and then it was suddenly a big issue. Not exactly inspiring confidence in his leadership of the Vatican and the Catholic Church, I sez.
Domestically, all hail the new Congress, hooray.
The Chick-Fil-A company, long known as a supporter of conservative Christian causes (read their wrappers, for example), has backed a series of anti-gay marriage conferences in Pennsylvania.
Staying in the theme, a large metal crucifix planted on public land has been declared to be in violation of the First Amendment by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as a religious symbol on public land, instead of a nonreligious war memorial that happens to look like a crucifix.
The group Concerned Women for America, a nominally pro-family group, has indicated that it believes minors caught in sex trafficking be arrested and imprisoned. Yes, they should be arrested because they broke the law, regardless of whether it was coerced or not. Pointing out the problem with such a stance is Slacktivist, who notes with some dismay that most groups that claim they are for The Family as an abstract idea are notoriously against actual families. Which means, they're against you. And against helping and sheltering victims of child sex trafficking.
Last out, Hey, look! An anomaly! Texas is suffering from a severe budget crunch, and in contravention of the media narrative, they're an anti-union, small-government, no-regulations state. Which means their budget crisis gets ignored because it doesn't fit the already-determined story, one where public sector unions are demons who will kill private-sector jobs and steal money from taxpayers to feed their own fat-cat salaires, gold-plated insurance, and far-too-generous pension plans. You know, the bald-faced lie being used to union-bust under the guise of austerity. The reality, not only in Texas and elsewhere, is that the rich plan on putting their money overseas, where they can exploit cheaper labor, cheaper materials, and less environmental regulations so as to achieve more profits.
In technology, making an omelette by breaking as little of the egg as possible.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and Raytheon are developing a mobile node-to-node network in case of Internet failure, or for traffic that will not go over the regular Internet.
An innocuous-looking message disguised as a greeting card from the White House contained malicious code intended to intercept and send sensitive data from law enforcement machines. The attack was targeted and focused sufficiently that it passed through the various defense nets undetected to be delivered to its recipients.
Out of technology, a frame-perfect shot that shows both Luna partially eclipsing the sun and the International Space Station eclipsing the sun. It's a perfect way to compare the scale of how big the small cosmos objects are, and how small the big manmade objects are.
Into opinions, where the decision to cancel a football game out of concern for the fans driving on large amounts of snow apparently means that the country is entirely a buunch of wusses. Because Yale doesn't print the cartoons that brought violence on their drawers. Because children don't get to play on equipment that will hurt them when they jump off of it or land awkwardly from it, because we don't say "Merry Christmas" to everyone, regardless of their religious belief, and because everyone gets a trophy, regardless of how well they did. Mr. Prager is throwing darts, but erratically - the cartoons might invoke violence, but you can make a case that bravery would be publishing them anyway. The bit about Merry Christmas is simply offensive, not brave, and the part where everyone gets something for participating...well, ask the kids about what they're thinking about, and you'll find that Mr. Prager's concerns that kids aren't being taught to be properly competitive, bloodthirsty, and win-at-all-costs are unfounded. And as for canceling due to snow, if it's dangerous for the fans to get there and get back, especially when some of them will be drinking at the game, it's better, all told, for everyone's various health and insurances that people stay home.
Not-all-that-funny comedian David Limbaugh accuses liberals of not having any fealty to the Constitution, the most perfect document there was, aside from the Bible, and thus it stands to reason that all the liberal attempts to get their agenda enacted are predicated in that contempt, the "living document" interpretation of the Constitution. So the attempt to get rules changed, the individual mandate, and all the regulation that this administration has done, sometimes because the laws didn't get passed, are just liberal attempts to forcefully redistribute wealth and install tyranny. It's because liberals believe that any means to an end is an acceptable one, apparently. Must be nice having a go-to-scapegoat, Mr. Limbaugh. Certainly puts less effort on the brain.
In similar lack-of-brain-exercise, Mr. Hanson goes to California to write a column on how much California has failed. At least he's upfront about it, though, listing all the reasons he thinks California has failed right at the beginning before going into the column that will justify all those reasons. His first scapegoat are illegal immigrants, who are dragging down test scores, not providing money for insfrastructure improvements, and driving all the white folk away. Then federal water management, and finally a little bit about outsourced jobs. But it's definitely the illegals, who turn our civilized nation into a place of barbarism, wild animals running loose, buildings falling down, and trash everywhere. And local law enforcement and the government don't apparently care about these locations to clean them up, get rid of the countertop businesses, root out the "obvious" food stamp and government assistance fraud, and turn them into proper places where white people would want to live. Instead, says he, the government goes after the wealthy white neighborhoods for minor infractions and fines, regulate everything there within an inch of its life, and tax it just as much so they can continue giving out lots of free stuff to illegal immigrants. Did we mention that this problem is solely the fault of illegal immigrants coming into California? Anyway, Mr. Sowell takes that idea and applies it worldwide, commenting that every country has its immigrant ghettoes, and that black people here in America have it just as bad as Hanson's illegal immigrants. According to Sowell, though, any time one of those groups protests their treatment, they get patted on the head and white people say, "Aren't they cute? The monkey thinks it understands our words and is aping them back to us!" so as not to actually fix the problem. Remarkably, Sowell manages to find the right lesson out of Hanson's column, the one he worked so very hard to bury - fix the disparities, and the problems will go away. He doesn't even try all that hard to blame the problem on the fact that there is government assistance for the poor. (It's there, but it's not his major thesis.) What's missing from Sowell's column, however, is the part where he makes proposals for solutions. That will turn his column into sweet material or sour grapes.
So let's provide one possible solution to the problem - Brazil has implemented a program that provides assistance to the poor, based on whether they can meet certain conditions - children in school and receiving medical care, mothers taking classes on nutrition and healthy eating, and the like - and their poverty rate has shot down, with the income of the poorest rising the most. Compared to here in the United States, where almost all of the wealth created was at the top and stayed there.
Let's ask some useful questions, too, like why it is possible to maintain a phenomenally unhealthy lifestyle on the cheap, while good food and healthy things are exceedingly expensive?
Last out for tonight, Antonin Scalia, Worst Person (and Justice) in the World. In discussing the 14th Amendment, Scalia said that it doesn't apply to women, because when it was written, they only were concerned about blacks. Something in my memory tickles me and says that Scalia has always been this misogynistic, but nothing citable jumps to mind immediately.
Last for tonight, three reasons why indrect feedback (boss-of-boss communication or other secondhand information) is not all that effective for performance reviews.
In the world of sport, because Michigan fans require their football team to win twelve games every year, even after a coaching change, football coach Rich Rodriguez has fired after his third year of coaching.
A new version of Huckleberry Finn coming out has replaced the word "nigger" with the world "slave" in an attempt to get it back into classrooms to be taught. The bowdlerizer claims he did it not to make the books raceblind, but to make it so that teachers will be able to teach the book without everything fixating on the racial slurs. Missing from the discussion is how we came to a society where a single word could get taken out of context sufficiently that the book itself is lost, and what kind of schooling we're getting when we're apparently unwilling to face head-on the use of derogatory langauge in our literature. Critical thinking and reading is served better with books that skew toward controversy and obscenity, not away.
Finally, The Dead Pool claims Gerry Rafferty, singer-songwriter, at 63.
Out in the world today, GQ gets to analyze the report of Dubai police documenting a Mossad hit job on one of the citizens of the city. The fact that there is reporting on it indicates how badly things were bungled in terms of blown covers.
Pictures of a military jet protoype surfaced from China in anticipation of a visit from the United States Secretary of Defense to try and lower tensions.
Morocco broke up what it says is an al-Qaeda linked terrorist cell of 27 people and three weapons caches. Which could be counted as positive progress. Israel, on the other hand, is investigating groups opposed to the Israeli Defense Forces as suspected terrorist-tied places, proving that the government heartily believes If You're Not With Us, You're With The Terrorists.
And finally, The Bishop of Rome indicated that he's concerned about the growth of child pornography, soemthing he thinks is being mainstreamed, but that priests abusing children wasn't a big deal until the 1970s, and then it was suddenly a big issue. Not exactly inspiring confidence in his leadership of the Vatican and the Catholic Church, I sez.
Domestically, all hail the new Congress, hooray.
The Chick-Fil-A company, long known as a supporter of conservative Christian causes (read their wrappers, for example), has backed a series of anti-gay marriage conferences in Pennsylvania.
Staying in the theme, a large metal crucifix planted on public land has been declared to be in violation of the First Amendment by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as a religious symbol on public land, instead of a nonreligious war memorial that happens to look like a crucifix.
The group Concerned Women for America, a nominally pro-family group, has indicated that it believes minors caught in sex trafficking be arrested and imprisoned. Yes, they should be arrested because they broke the law, regardless of whether it was coerced or not. Pointing out the problem with such a stance is Slacktivist, who notes with some dismay that most groups that claim they are for The Family as an abstract idea are notoriously against actual families. Which means, they're against you. And against helping and sheltering victims of child sex trafficking.
Last out, Hey, look! An anomaly! Texas is suffering from a severe budget crunch, and in contravention of the media narrative, they're an anti-union, small-government, no-regulations state. Which means their budget crisis gets ignored because it doesn't fit the already-determined story, one where public sector unions are demons who will kill private-sector jobs and steal money from taxpayers to feed their own fat-cat salaires, gold-plated insurance, and far-too-generous pension plans. You know, the bald-faced lie being used to union-bust under the guise of austerity. The reality, not only in Texas and elsewhere, is that the rich plan on putting their money overseas, where they can exploit cheaper labor, cheaper materials, and less environmental regulations so as to achieve more profits.
In technology, making an omelette by breaking as little of the egg as possible.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and Raytheon are developing a mobile node-to-node network in case of Internet failure, or for traffic that will not go over the regular Internet.
An innocuous-looking message disguised as a greeting card from the White House contained malicious code intended to intercept and send sensitive data from law enforcement machines. The attack was targeted and focused sufficiently that it passed through the various defense nets undetected to be delivered to its recipients.
Out of technology, a frame-perfect shot that shows both Luna partially eclipsing the sun and the International Space Station eclipsing the sun. It's a perfect way to compare the scale of how big the small cosmos objects are, and how small the big manmade objects are.
Into opinions, where the decision to cancel a football game out of concern for the fans driving on large amounts of snow apparently means that the country is entirely a buunch of wusses. Because Yale doesn't print the cartoons that brought violence on their drawers. Because children don't get to play on equipment that will hurt them when they jump off of it or land awkwardly from it, because we don't say "Merry Christmas" to everyone, regardless of their religious belief, and because everyone gets a trophy, regardless of how well they did. Mr. Prager is throwing darts, but erratically - the cartoons might invoke violence, but you can make a case that bravery would be publishing them anyway. The bit about Merry Christmas is simply offensive, not brave, and the part where everyone gets something for participating...well, ask the kids about what they're thinking about, and you'll find that Mr. Prager's concerns that kids aren't being taught to be properly competitive, bloodthirsty, and win-at-all-costs are unfounded. And as for canceling due to snow, if it's dangerous for the fans to get there and get back, especially when some of them will be drinking at the game, it's better, all told, for everyone's various health and insurances that people stay home.
Not-all-that-funny comedian David Limbaugh accuses liberals of not having any fealty to the Constitution, the most perfect document there was, aside from the Bible, and thus it stands to reason that all the liberal attempts to get their agenda enacted are predicated in that contempt, the "living document" interpretation of the Constitution. So the attempt to get rules changed, the individual mandate, and all the regulation that this administration has done, sometimes because the laws didn't get passed, are just liberal attempts to forcefully redistribute wealth and install tyranny. It's because liberals believe that any means to an end is an acceptable one, apparently. Must be nice having a go-to-scapegoat, Mr. Limbaugh. Certainly puts less effort on the brain.
In similar lack-of-brain-exercise, Mr. Hanson goes to California to write a column on how much California has failed. At least he's upfront about it, though, listing all the reasons he thinks California has failed right at the beginning before going into the column that will justify all those reasons. His first scapegoat are illegal immigrants, who are dragging down test scores, not providing money for insfrastructure improvements, and driving all the white folk away. Then federal water management, and finally a little bit about outsourced jobs. But it's definitely the illegals, who turn our civilized nation into a place of barbarism, wild animals running loose, buildings falling down, and trash everywhere. And local law enforcement and the government don't apparently care about these locations to clean them up, get rid of the countertop businesses, root out the "obvious" food stamp and government assistance fraud, and turn them into proper places where white people would want to live. Instead, says he, the government goes after the wealthy white neighborhoods for minor infractions and fines, regulate everything there within an inch of its life, and tax it just as much so they can continue giving out lots of free stuff to illegal immigrants. Did we mention that this problem is solely the fault of illegal immigrants coming into California? Anyway, Mr. Sowell takes that idea and applies it worldwide, commenting that every country has its immigrant ghettoes, and that black people here in America have it just as bad as Hanson's illegal immigrants. According to Sowell, though, any time one of those groups protests their treatment, they get patted on the head and white people say, "Aren't they cute? The monkey thinks it understands our words and is aping them back to us!" so as not to actually fix the problem. Remarkably, Sowell manages to find the right lesson out of Hanson's column, the one he worked so very hard to bury - fix the disparities, and the problems will go away. He doesn't even try all that hard to blame the problem on the fact that there is government assistance for the poor. (It's there, but it's not his major thesis.) What's missing from Sowell's column, however, is the part where he makes proposals for solutions. That will turn his column into sweet material or sour grapes.
So let's provide one possible solution to the problem - Brazil has implemented a program that provides assistance to the poor, based on whether they can meet certain conditions - children in school and receiving medical care, mothers taking classes on nutrition and healthy eating, and the like - and their poverty rate has shot down, with the income of the poorest rising the most. Compared to here in the United States, where almost all of the wealth created was at the top and stayed there.
Let's ask some useful questions, too, like why it is possible to maintain a phenomenally unhealthy lifestyle on the cheap, while good food and healthy things are exceedingly expensive?
Last out for tonight, Antonin Scalia, Worst Person (and Justice) in the World. In discussing the 14th Amendment, Scalia said that it doesn't apply to women, because when it was written, they only were concerned about blacks. Something in my memory tickles me and says that Scalia has always been this misogynistic, but nothing citable jumps to mind immediately.
Last for tonight, three reasons why indrect feedback (boss-of-boss communication or other secondhand information) is not all that effective for performance reviews.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-08 12:04 am (UTC)And seriously, it is incredibly fucking depressing that high quality food is so expensive. We end up paying more for food because it's organic or humanely raised (my mammal- and bird-eating headmates won't eat factory-farmed stuff), and it shouldn't be that way. You end up with situations in which low-income people are heavier than wealthier people because of the quality of food eaten. If all you can get is snacks from convenience stores, especially in large cities, you're just consuming heaps of empty calories. Just...eurk.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-08 01:19 am (UTC)As for that situation, if you point out those discrepancies to people, and especially when it comes to people on food stamps or government assistance, they will shoot back that "Those people are choosing to buy unhealthy stuff. They could choose the healthy stuff and make it and keep it, but they're buying convenience and unhealthy food because they want to, not because they have to." And no amount of "takes time they don't have, forces them into choosing between eating for half the week or the whole week" seems to budge that idea that poor people choose to eat unhealthy.