Welcome aboard. Let's start with two women in North Carolina, who have been hurt by the recent anti-QUILTBAG ballot initiative. Because of people, progress marches on. Because when the waveform collapses, and the potential becomes actual...it's a lot harder to vote to hurt such wonderful people. Now that it's been legal in several places, look at the shocking consequences. People kissing. And getting married. Shock.

A high school GSA created a character, Allie the Ally, and posted her on the Internet for people to print and photograph. They did. In all sorts of places. View the travels of Allie the Ally at her Tumblr.

Out in the world today, Reporters Without Borders released their 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index - if you think your country is doing well...generally speaking, think again.

a prison guard underwent gender reassignment surgery, then returned to work. This is only news because she's the only guard to have done so.

Africa's chlid and infant mortality rats are falling greatly. There's no one factor that can be pointed to as the reason, but the combination of good policies and better economies are definitely helping things out. Hopefully, these policies will extend to things like HIV infection prevention as much as they do malaria infection protection.

Domestically, while ostensibly considering funding for defense spending, the Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee voted to prohibit same-sex marriage ceremonies on military bases and to allow chaplains to voice how much they hate gay people so long as they say it is for religious reasons.

The birthrate for minorities combined was greater than the birth rate for white people, according to the last Census data. You may cue up the nativist worries, and possibly more in the way of Papers-Please type legislation.

A federal court refused to reduce the $22,500 per song fine assessed to a convicted music downloader, pleasing the corporate overlords and ensuring that common sense does not exist in the courts, to charge someone approximately $22,498 more than the cost of obtaining a legal copy of the music from iTunes would be. Cruel and unusual punishment, I think, would not be a bad argument to make.

Into technology, where humans can now replicate the full range of dolphin sounds. Now comes the phase where we try to teach each other our language.

Thanks to an electrode implanted in her brain, a paralyzed woman can manipulate a robotic arm. Which allows for things like taking a sip of robot-assisted coffee</a>.

In a system that evolves itself into new configurations to meet a changing and adapting environment, the following should not be a surprise - rare genetic variations are a common occurrence in human genomes.

Observe opinions, where the editors of the Wall Street Journal believe that President Obama may have done Mitt Romney a favor by coming out in favor of lesbian and gay marriage. At least, in the sense of "now the social conservatives are on board" - but they're not going to go so far as to say that doing so might get enough to come out for the other side, too. Because they believe that civil rights should be subjected to majority votes as a question for the states, perhaps.

Let's think about that for a minute, though - Straight White Male is the lowest difficulty setting for the real world, (and do read the additional Q and A that follows from the exercise) which means that it's easier for them to accumulate the power that allows for the deciding of political issues, and for their voices and votes to be counted more, and less barriers to be in their way to exercise their power. Which means, if we're talking about things where the "majority" gets to rule on rights for the minority, then who gets to be the majority of that majority? Straight White Males, who have trouble with things that are different, as a historical precedent and rule.

So I've been looking at the polling, and Mitt Romney, who was normally suffering badly during the primary in a theoretical matchup with Barack Obama, has suddenly pulled within the margin of error now that there are no more candidates to choose from. So exactly what happened? The coalescing of the Straight White Male vote on one candidate, rather than fighting each other to put their preferred Straight White Male in charge. Barack Obama did Mitt Romney a favor? Bullshit. Most of the people who give a damn (on the conservative side) about Barack Obama coming out in favor of same-sex marriage were already going to vote against him because he was Secretly Foreign, Secretly Muslim, or whatever other reason they needed to say "He's Not Like Us." Barack Obama did himself a favor with the audience that might actually elect him by doing this. Any slippage in the polling probably reflects more of the Straight White Male vote being galvanized to go vote for their privilege than the liberal audience abandoning him over it.

Mr. Ahlert attempts to reinforce the position of Ms. Riley in the Chronicle of Higher Education, accusing the Chronicle of caving to disgraceful pressure, instead of allowing someone to claim that black studies departments are not doing actual work. In the Chronicle. Of. Higher. Education. And again, misses the point of the criticism - the studies mentioned are trying to see if there's institutional racism present in all sorts of places. Which makes things look silly, right until someone finds a very important correlation and we find out that no, really, it was there. Might not be these three, but it will be someone.

There's a question here that I don't feel qualified to answer, or even explore much, without a suspicion that I'm going to screw it up badly. Here's the assertion: Spporting people who commit violent acts against women makes you complicit in those acts. Because keeping a friendship with a known abuser is saying that you're okay with abuse happening, even if you'd never commit it yourself. Which leaves little-to-no room for the possibility of change, if I understand it correctly, if this is taken out to its logical conclusion. If adopted, this position would basically shun all abusers and refuse to really believe that they can reform themselves into non-abusers. Or, I guess, there's no mechanism by which someone could prove they had changed, because of that stigma. I suppose there's actually a bit of poetry to it, since the stigma of being a victim often follows someone for far longer than it should, and there are always people willing to throw that back at someone or make victimizing comments to try and silence them or keep them "in their place." I guess it has something to do with a basic belief in the goodness of people, if they're willing to sincerely make a change. Which becomes a problem at the point where you're pretending something problematic doesn't exist and that their unwillingness to change isn't also a problem. I'm not sure how to avoid sounding like an apologist nd maintain that there should be some way of reconciliation through severe apology and demonstrated acts of restitution. Something 12-Steps-ish, maybe?

A column suggests that because the social sciences do not result in theories based on randomized experiments that can predict things tha tare yet unknown, we should not accord them much weight in making policy or influencing our decisions. The comments suggest the columnist does not understand the nature of the social sciences and what they are trying to do. At least, some of them do. Others are more than happy to pile on.

Last out, Mr. Sowell endorses whatever violent, brutal, and illegal tactics are needed to defeat the Occupy movement, because he believes them a mob that can't get their way by being in the majority and have thus resorted to violence against shops, graffiti, and other lawless behaviors. He says that politicians are unwilling to enforce the requirements of equal protection under the law when it comes to the Occupy movement. The Fourteenth Amendment is being trampled, says he!

He has to paint the Occupiers as violent thugs, though, because, several amendments earlier, there is this amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." And for people who have actually seen inside the Occupy camps...peaceable assembly asking for the redress of grievances is pretty much what's going on.

Last for tonight, why feminism means better sex - feminism means knowing about anatomy and what works with that anatomy.

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I forayed into Nethack for a little bit. I find, upon reflection, that Nethack (and other Roguelikes) are and are not games. They're games, in the sense that you play a character and interact with things according to certain rules to achieve a goal.

The grand majority of the content of Nethack, however, is not a game. It is a logic puzzle. Each character starts out with some of the squares of that puzzle filled in, depending on their race and class combination, but the rest of the puzzle has to be deduced, experimented, and otherwise determined, often through trying something and seeing if it kills you, or doing something desperately when you're about to die and finding out that it actually worked. And then having to figure out which rules are permanent and which one re-randomize every time you die. (For figuring out the permanent ones, there's Wizard Mode, where you can't die, and you have an infinite amount of wishes. The devs recommend using this. They also recommend reading the manual, because it contains one of the most useful permanent rules in it. RTFM is a rule of Nethack.)

One of the most basic permanent rules of Nethack is one that Gauntlet has made memetic - "Red [Character] Needs Food Badly." Take too many turns without sustenance, and you will die. Thus, your character must eat. This, however, must always be taken in context - the Calvinball rule of Nethack is "The Devs Have Thought of Everything." And therefore, after you die from eating zombie or mummy meat because it is rotten, after you die from eating any corpse of a creature that can turn others to stone, after you die and are turned into a slime because, apparently, it's a swiftly self-replicating organism that overwhelms your very cells and replaces them with its own, you learn that you have to choose what you eat. And then you find out that eating certain things confers beneficial effects, which adds complexity to your diet.

As you might guess, most people give up on Nethack long before they get anywhere in the game because there are so many permanent rules that have to be juggled, long before one gets to working out the random ones. Those who spend a lot of time with Nethack realize, like any any computer simulation, some rules can be bent, others broken, and still others manipulated to the player's benefit.

But let's just stay on food for the moment. You see, The Devs Have Thought of Everything. Which means that if you can die from the lack of something, you can also die from its excess. It is possible to consume so much food that the character chokes and dies. It is at this point that the player learns that there are some creatures and things that are too big to consume.

Lest one think this is simply a cruel game that delights in the multiple deaths of its players (which it is), Nethack does provide hints to the player that they have done well or poorly in their decisions. (With one notable but important exception. Which can screw you horribly if you don't know about it and have an artifact that will lock in the beneficial aspects, if it's beneficial, but will also lock in the detrimental effects, if it's detrimental.) The hints, however, are not always clear. For example, if you have gained the ability to sense the presence of other sentient beings, Nethack will cheerily tell you "You have gained a strange mental acuity." And then leave it up to you to figure out what that means.

When it comes to choking, the hint only suggests that you're doing well in finding and consuming food, and that's it.

And that's one of the reasons why I probably won't ascend - because I've had my fill of games that obliquely hint at what the next course of action is, and that require you to juggle the knowledge of multiple factors just to stay alive, and that make sure each turn brings you closer to death, possibly even by factors that they aren't going to say exist until it has killed you. Nethack certainly exercises INT and WIS, but it abuses HPY and especially SAN. I guess I like my games to be geared toward success and achieving the goal, rather than trying to find as many ways as possible to kill you.

Which probably means that, at least when it comes to games, you can count my fandom as HEA.

This has been a Shadow Idol Entry for Topic 26: Sated and Topic 27: Once Upon A Time

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Let's begin...right at the worst part - a young man who was suffering from bullies, who received a stun gun from his mother to protect himself after attempts to get the school to stop the bullying failed, and who is now being punished for having such a stun gun in his possession, as it is illegal for a minor to have a stun gun. His school intends to punish him, in the same way that they were trying to encourage him to be less flamboyantly gay with his accessories. Here's the problem - focusing on the weapon and who gave it to the man is siding with the tormenters and the administrators who prefer to sweep it all under the rug by victim-blaming. The correct focus should be on why the administrators are not fixing the problem and why these situations develop with the students without being checked or defeated before they become big.

Having already banned gay marriage, North Carolina voters decided it was necessary to also ban the possibility of civil unions in the state. Oh, and strip any other legal recognition of couples outside of marriage, which has the problem of invalidating things like restraining orders. theweaselking offers some very useful context about the last time people mucked with marriage.

Not necessarily in response to this, President Obama went on the record endorsing gay marriage with Robin Roberts of ABC News. (If you parse the staement, though, there's a good chance that the President said that the worthy should aspire to be married, rather than thinking of marriage as an inalienable right.)

For slightly lighter-hearted fare, 100,000 water-activated LEDs floated down a river.

Finally, we mourn the death of Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of well-loved subversive material for children, including Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen.

We also mourn the passing of Donald "Duck" Dunn, bass player and good friend of Steve Cropper, at 70 years of age.

In domestic affairs, Indiana:apos;s six-term moderate Senator, Mr. Lugar, is defeated by a far-right conservative challenger in a Senatorial primary. The very things that made him a Senator that probably worked on getting things done were his undoing against an electorate that is increasingly mono-focused on ideoogical purity above all other things.

Lacking context - a Texas inmate receives 40 percent of the West Virginia Democratic primary vote. Here's the context that's missing: West Virginia is an open primary, meaning that anyone can vote in the Democratic primary, whether they're liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats, Tea Partiers, people who want to spoil the Democratic primary, Republicans, and others. So, really, how many people that will vote for the Democrat in the general election voted for/against Obama? Can we have those numbers?

Elsewhere, TSA agents were arrested for their role in helping drug smugglers move cocaine through Los Angeles Airport, after the courier went to the wrong terminal to try and get their drugs through and ran into a non-corrputed agent.

A relatively-overlooked facet of the Affordable Care Act - it requires hospitals and health care facilities to maintain clean and hygenic facilities, or their Medicare reimbursements will be cut.

In technology, Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads.

More seriously, attack vectors for computers in foreign countries are posing as security updates to various common plug-ins and programs. So make sure you're patched before you go...and don't accept any patches until you get back. Unless, of course, you have an Adobe product, where security updates would have cost you money to get, had the public pressure not convinced Adobe to back down and offer patches for free. The company claimed that their product is not a target for attackers, but frankly, all programs are attack vectors if they have vulnerabilities.

And then, to educate you about the dangers of piracy, the government will now make you sit through twenty seconds of unskippable warnings about how bad piracy is. Such things will, naturally, be absent from the rips that someone could find on popular file-sharing sites. Yay, education!

Disney unveils a way of turning just about any surface into a gesture control device. Takes a sensor and a Bluetooth-enabled computer to interpret the gestures, but it's possible to create a smart house with walls as the sensors - or the body. It's possible the devices and sensors could be powered through something like a device that uses viruses to create small amounts of energy.

Last out, Autonomous vehicles from Google are approved to drive on Nevada roads, provided they file the necessary paperwork detailing their where and when, have two people in the vehicle at all times who can take manual control, and carry $1 million USD in a bond in case bad things happen. The cars themselves carry a red license plate marked with the infinity symbol.

Welcome to opinions, where bradhicks suggests in the movie-Avengers verse, it takes very large problems to get Steve Rogers and Tony Stark to get along, because each, politically, sees the other as representing everything that was wrong with the world during their formative years.

Not to be too coarse about it, but the way the financial industry runs the country and the thrall the political parties have to them makes the banks deserving of a strong amount of contempt from everyone.

And then, why the nature of the Internet and its users likely confounds politicians.

Mr. Stephens suggests that the current graduating class has no skills, no knowledge, no individuality, and that they are only going to succeed if they tamp down their egos, lower their expectations, and understand that their employers don't want them because they're not multilingual and hard-science trained, because those sciences will get them into the few remaining jobs in investment banking and global finance.

Ms. Riley wrote a blog post that accused black studies students of not doing actual graduate work for their dissertation, then acts aggrieved when the Chronicle of Higher Educations deletes her post and dismisses her from the guest blogger position. And mostly that grief is "I maintained professional standards in my accusations, and the responses were purile, vitriolic, and juvenile, and yet they all went through." It is not, in fact, addressing the accusations of bigotry and cowardice mentioned. You're too wrapped up in the tone of the argument to address the substance, Ms. Riley, and it does you no favors. Also, admitting that you haven't read the dissertations that you're criticizing? Leaves you with exactly no leg to stand on when the people who wrote those dissertations accuse you of misrepresenting them and the work they're doing.

Last out of opinions, A GlobablMay manifesto attributed to the Occupy Movement.

Last for tonight, we congratulate Shaquille O'Neal, Ed.D, Barry University, 2012 - you know how athletes say a lot about staying in school? Shaq went the length and then some.

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I don't self-promote much.

...says the blogger.

Well, okay, unless it's at work. Or related to work. At that point, I can wax enthusiastically about all the benefits that my work and my profession bring to the table. I can show you lots, tell you plenty, and be absolutely comfortable telling you about the strengths I have, that the system has, that the profession has, so would you please support us when we ask you to put aside a small amount of money to keep us funded?

Ask me professionally, and I can hit most of your questions out of the park. Those that I can't, I can at least put most in play, or just foul off until I get something I can hit. Occasionally I strike out, but it's rare enough that I can usually shake it off and go back to swatting the next pitch out for base hits or better.

Outside of that life, though, I'm not really one for tooting my own horn. I have conventional hobbies, like music, games, and books. Of the things I have renown for, well, most of them don't have physical manifestations. Others, well, there's always someone better, and for the most part, I've met them. When that happens, you tend to lose your frame of reference for things.

I think it goes a bit further back than that, though - lots of people run into the fact that there's someone better than they are, and it doesn't really phase them. For some of them, it inspires them to work harder. Let's spin the dial backward quite a bit, then.

Through elementary school, at the end-of-year assembly, I received the same award for many years in a row - "academic excellence". It's niceto know that people think you're brilliant, but even as a young child, I could see where this was going - typecasting. I tried to head this off at the pass as a fifth grader by specifically requesting that my award for that year not be "acadmic excellence." When the award ceremony came, I received praise for... "academic excellence and..."

I might mention that about this time, there were some new people into the school, and they had a more relaxed attitude toward scholarship. Later on, I would be told, when I was the new kid in school, that I exuded a certain amount of a superiority complex with regard to my fellows. (It culminated, actually, in a bit of a struggle where physics helped me have my attacker put himself into a fire extingusher. Nobody got hurt, thankfully.)

It was at this point that I was introduced to the idea of schadenfreude, although the actual word itself would not enter my lexicon for many years afterward. For it seemed like there were a lot of people who routinely took pleasure in the idea that I was wrong when answering questions. And then the group of gentlemen, ostensibly in a troop that was supposed to foster camraderie among its members, who liked to ask impossible or nonsensical questions, illogical followups, or deliberate misunderstandings, and then proudly proclaim their victory over my intellect. (Usually as I was trying to get to sleep.) All the while, I kept racking up the various class awards for academic excellence.

My summer baseball affairs did not necessarily result in feeling good in something physical - there was always someone better, it seemed, and I certainly didn't seem like a star as a power hitter or a fast baserunner. Or as a fireball-throwing pitcher, later on. I was generally the walking ideal of "a walk is as good as a hit" - I'd swing at the right pitches and let the bad ones go by. And I played a lot in the outfield - from what my parents and coaches told me, it was because I woud pay attention to the game, instead of being the child picking dandelions. (One double-play I was responsible for, they said, was me catching the ball and knowing where to throw it - thus, I was already making the next out while the runner was still marveling that I had caught it. Lucky me, my teammate was also on top of their game at that point.)

We'll skip high school, other than a quick mention of the fact that cynicism is a thing in high school - everyone wants their own outsider status and wants to not have outsider status. Even through university, I kept playing music and video games, and routinely kept meeting people who were routinely better than me at both. It seems like my efforts to avoid typecasting have failed to this point. Even now, people who I would expect to know better think that poking fun at me when I'm not right is a good thing, because "it's so rare" and I should be able to handle it.

There's a logical fallacy (at least, I think that's what it is) called loss aversion (or avoidance) - people, as a rule, will generally prefer safer bets, even if the odds, in the long run, favor the riskier choice - the possibility that one might lose interferes with the rational process of calculating which course of action to take to get the greatest gain. For most people, thesafer course of action is more palatable.

For someone who's feeling like they have one good thing about them, and who has already had demonstrations that people seem to enjoy it when they fail at that one good thing, the only safe place is on top. And not just on top, but on top sufficiently so that nobody can catch them, even if there are some mistakes.

So I don't self-promote much, because it gives the trolls the chance to disparage, and others the chance to ciritque, and maybe, just maybe, I'll find out that, objectively speaking, I'm not all that good. (Actually, I know this. I'm not Scalzi, nor Gaiman, nor Galenorn. I might not even be Fifty Shades of Grey.)

And I wouldn't out my own name on a love meme, unless things were really bad, because there's the possibility that I'd ask for a party and nobody would come. And doesn't it just make sense that really, if I were worth something, someone else would put my name in instead?

Have I mentioned that I tend to play many games on lower difficulty levels, that I don't like mostly luck-based games, and there are times where I feel like it's not worth the 1000 games lost to pick up the one win? The loss avoidance has crystalized into a bit of a personality tick. And that when the feeling of competence at work came crashing down, it really took hold, to the point of feeling paralyzed about doing anything for fear of the repercussions?

Yeah, hi, I'm Silver, and I'm a wreck. Probably mostly of my own making. But now things are returning to normal. Even if I still feel that it was luck and not skill that catalyzed the shift away from Doom. But every day that passes, there's even more that I'm doing at work that shows the skill has always been there. At home...gettng better. I've had other people in the group that I'm playing music with now tell me that things are actually pretty hard - lacking context, I thought the problems I was having were just due to my own lack of skill.

These days, I might even leave the difficulty setting on Normal. Mabye in the future, I'll be confident enough to put my own name in the hat, regardless of whether anyone shows up.

This has been a Shadow Idol entry for Topic 24: In Your Wheelhouse and one of the selections of Topic 25: Closer. This entry is probably also twice as long as it should be to make the same point.

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Entry contents contain mentions of television plots involving domestic violence and attempted suicide. If such things are triggering to you, pass on this entry.

Glee showrunners and/or FOX execs? Your goodwill with me from the Unique episode has vanished. For once in television history, can we have an episode where at the first sign of an abusive relationship, the victim actually picks it up, packs up, and leaves? Especially when this is supposed to be the strong woman, and she's surrounded by other women who care enough to tell the girls that domestic violence is not a laughing matter.

Also, when you had the episode where Karaovsky tried to kill himself, Daniel Radcliffe appears in the next commercial segment to talk about the Trevor Project. A cursory search engine query turns up several organizations that will house battered women or otherwise provide resources, yet not in the commercial segment nor in the episode is there any sort of PSA about who can help battered women get out of their situations. I'm not sure whose decision it was, but in that context, it kind of seems like the execs or the showrunners were doing the same thing the coach characters were accusing the girls of doing - not taking things seriously.

A couple years ago, I wouldn't have even noticed this. Now, it jumped right out at me. I guess there really are some things you can't un-see. (Incidentally, I think this is a good thing in this case.)

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Hello again. The conductor will be by shortly to take your tickets, please find a seat and enjoy the views as they pass by...

The New York Police Department is engaging in sexual assault against Occupy protesters...or, for that matter, anyone who looks like they might be an Occupy protester. This is not rogue officers acting on their own, but part of the systematic campaign to prevent peaceful protest by violent police action. And for the most part, the country yawns at this behavior, despite it being flagrantly illegal, because culturally speaking, we've been told that you do what the police tell you, regardless of whether or not it's legal, and if you don&aps;t, then whatever happens to you is your fault.

Elsewhere, Tens of thousands of people gathered in Oslo to sing a chidlren's song to a man who killed seventy-seven people and decried the multicultural society that he said was opening Europe to takeover by Muslims. The massed voices were replicated across Norway in a sign of solidarity for the culture against the extremist. If he were looking for actual Muslim extremism, he might look to Chechnya, where the president of the country has openly praised honor killings of young women.

Finally, seanan_mcguire offers a thoughtful and wonderful letter to the girls of today - be who you are and who you want to be. Or, as a musical group put it, "Be what you're like. Be like yourself."

Out in the world today, The government of the United Kingdom is considering placing high velocity missiles in London as protection against terrorism during the Olympic Games. The residents of the city say, "Uh, guys? Firing those things would create more destruction than most terror attacks." Not to mention, exactly what sort of terrorism is attacking the Games that requires the response of missiles?

President Obama visited Afghanistan to sign an agreement for how United States forces would assist Afghanistan forces after the combat troops leave the country in 2014. In a speech, the President suggested the goal of defeating al-Qaeda was within reach, a comment made likely because of the death of Osama bin Laden last year.

In national politics, socialist wins in France, Sarkozy ousted, ultra-rightwing Front National takes third place. Also, Greek elections punish ruling parties, spread power sufficiently so as to require coalitions...also, ultra right-wing party does remarkably well in election.

Elsewhere, austerity measures don't work to stimulate the economy, Conservative government in the UK has explaining to do.

Last for tonight, Sweden is experimenting with a gender-neutral pronoun, hen, and seeing whether it helps children avoid gender stereotyping in their play and in their mindsets.

Domestically, a black hockey player scored the series winning goal for the Washington Capitals and some fans of the defeated team took to Twitter with the belief that they had n-word privileges. Perhaps because ice hockey is one of the few remaining sports that are predominantly white-skinned and there are a lot of people there who prefer it to stay that way (and probably support the white-majority reasoning behind the Papers Please Law)? If that's the case, I'm very irritated with hockey fandom, then - if football hooligans can be taught to avoid using racial slurs, surely hockey fanatics can figure it out? After all, they got through the idea of Former Soviet Republic players joining the NHL.

A North Carolina pastor advocated for hitting children if they showed signs of being gay, then non-apologized for the remarks by claiming Intent Is Magic and that if the congregation he was talking to knew it was a joke, then nobody should take him so seriously. Elsewhere, the bill that would prevent Tennessee teachers from talking about being gay or lesbian has died, but the education committee will be sending letters out to instruct schools to behave as if it had passed. This against the backdrop of Bryan Fischer appropriating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his argument that discrimination against QUILTBAG people is okay, because people choose to be QUILTBAG. Even more progressive denominations like the United Methodist Church didn't remove a part of their discipline processes that condemned gay and lesbian acts. The votes failed 54-46.

Agribusiness giant Monsato had research indicating its organisms and products might be contributing to colony collapse disorder...so Monsato bought the research firm that produced the data and the reports. We'll see in the future if that means that the normally-critical are suddenly completely on the party line with Monsato.

Come May 14, the United States military will allow women to be closer to the front lines of battle, serving in smaller units thatn brigades.

On politics, Ron Paul supporters are quietly engineering the election of Republican delegates loyal to him, even in states where Mitt Romney was the declared winner of the caucusing votes. It's a microcosm of how one plays for the electoral college - theoretically, a similar coup might be possible in states that don't legally bind their college voters to whomever won the popualr vote.

One World Trade Center, the building that will replace the office space from the 11 September attacks, reclaimed the honor of being the tallest building in New York City.

Into technology, where the UnitedStates government intends on making a loophole in all privacy laws that allows the government to get your data if they believe you're attached to a security threat. Even for something like an e-mail attachment getting a virus during its routing to the destination. And the companies have no obligation to redact sensitive data, nor is the government barred from using whatever it finds for other purposes.

Come July, the federal government will shut down a DNS hacking scheme that netted the perpetrators millions of dollars...and that may leave several people without Internet access until they can get their DNS servers properly reconfigured.

Finally, A cloud computing software spent approximately $5000 USD/hr at peak capacity, pulling together 50,000 cores on Amazon's cloud rental service to do what would be 12 years of computing work in 3 hours. Meaning that if you can get someone else to build you the hardware for it, just about anyone can use supercomputing power if they've got about 100K to do it with.

Welcome to opinions, where one finds a fatal flaw in the Occupy movement - WASPs that are unwilling to accomodate the struggles of the not-them. Not that this is just a flaw of the Occupy movement - the strain runs in a general way in a lot of white liberal endeavours - and a lot of those endeavours are still a bit resistant to the idea that they're going about it the wrong way. Might have something to do with nto really talking about different perspectives and getting caught in the idea that there's onl one story about people. To combat that idea, it's actually best to talk to kids about race and such things, rather than pretend they don't exist or react negatively to them.

Elsewhere, one of the many reasons why Hollywood gets it wrong when it comes to weapon fighting - and another reason to like Seven Samurai, as the fights in that movie do not commit these kinds of fouls.

The question of what gender (or point on the gender spectrum) to identify with when someone is very fluid between "masculine" and "feminine" in presentation and mindset. While I'm inclined to go with "tell the labels to go frak themselves", for someone that wishes to have an identity, that's not really a viable option.

An explanation for the gender wage gap as simply women not working as many hours as men because they have children and prefer to not work if they have the chance. Except, I usually hear that as "accounting for such things, even so, women make less money than men for doing the same job."

Have a look at library services - including the idea of story times for those who don't make it into the library for story time in the branch. Whether you can go or you can't, remember that your public library is important for all sorts of great reasons.

Last out of opinions, the Governator says that the current Republican Party is too ideologically constrained to be effective, and that it needs to go back to being the party of Eisenhower, of Reagan, and of Nixon. Building infrastructure, working on health care, trying to improve the lives of the people. Bit of a foreign concept to our current Republicans.

Last out for tonight, what claims to be a flowchart of theology of the Church of Latter Day Saints, through pre-life, current life, and after-life. I don't know if everything explained there is considered current theology or not, so I'm not putting stock in it as a completely accurate thing. If it's reasonably close, though, then I wonder whether L. Ron Hubbard cribbed a little bit when he was creating Dianetics and Scientology.

And to build instead of tearing down, a suggestion that atheists need celebration and rememberance days, songs and chants, and other parts that would help gain a greater presence in the mind of others by becoming, erm, "organized" atheism.

Oh, and one tiny postscript - A 9 year old that created a working arcade out of cardboard and toys, including tickets and a redemption counter.

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Up top, ephemere is hosting the latest incarnation of the love meme, where you can go and leave comments on the good things about your fellow users or start new threads for people who have not yet been nominated. dingsi provides an index, so you can jump straight to your preferred people, or know that they're not in there yet.

Also, CBS showrunners? Would you please put whomever is in charge of writing your secondary characters in the lead? I find that I am watching your shows specifically for your non-main characters - Kono for Hawai'i Five-O, Abby for NCIS, Hettie for NCIS:LA, and so forth. Maybe it's because many of the main male characters are sexist or exist to make jokes about homoerotic relationships

Speaking of, I suppose it's a point in their favor, though, that the female characters are the best shots in their shows - it's Kono with the sniper rifle, Kenzi for the LA (although we suspect that Hettie would only miss if she wanted to).

Finally, a point for the showrunners of Glee for choosing not to make Kurt into the paragon of virtue and tolerance and instead making him someone who's maybe a little bit transphobic or not fully behind someone else's another non-societally-standard person. It makes him more human.

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Neither of which involves me directly.

The first. ilyena_slyph is helping someone, killing_rose, escape a situation that is exceedingly corrosive to their well-being and mental health. However, she needs what funds can be spared to make this a reality.

For the full story, and the link to the donations page, this entry will give you all you need.

And then, the second. whatawaytoburn, who is awesome in so many ways, is providing a place for people to say what they feel they're alone in, or to provide support and camaraderie to those who feel they're alone.

Such things as these, they are not much, but perhaps they will be enough to the right people. They're an example, I think, of the power of things like water - the weak force that eventually turns out to accomplish the task it set out to do.

I can only hope that they are not too weak to be effective.

(Prompt 23: The Weak Force, and yes, Silv's behind.)

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100 Things About Libraries and Librarians. (You May know these, you may be surprised by them.) It's part a Skippy's List, part a Things You Should Have Learned (Had You Been Paying Attention) and a lot of Odds and Ends.

1. Librarians have graduate degrees. Most of that graduate degree is in skills that make our interactions as seamless as possible.



2. Not everyone who works in a library is a librarian. We train our non-librarians well enough, though, that for the most part, you won't notice.



3. Libraries are not dull and stodgy places. There will always be choice phrases uttered within hearing distance, such as "I don’t want any of those books. They’re too historical." There will also be people who don't get that, and will shush the librarian, then ask them to speak quieter while they read a newspaper, and then tell them it’s "not the point" when you point out there is a designated "quiet zone" in the place. Or will tell someone not to talk to the librarian so they can sit and read the paper quietly outside of the quiet area.



4. A game system is an incredible draw for the teen, tween, and "college-age" demographic. And it makes other people pointedly ask whether that's "appropriate" in a library. I assure you, it is.



5. Ask us! Most people know what they want, but they don’t know how to find it. And they’re too afraid to disturb us, despite it being a large part of what we get paid to do. Even if we're not the subject experts, we're really good at finding stuff or using the resources that other people, including the subject experts, have provided. This looks remarkably like magic when all you have are a few fragments of what the book is and we return with the exact thing you wanted.



6. That said, herding children is easier than getting more information out of someone attempting to deny interest in the subject that they are asking a reference question about. Which reminds me - ask us! We're nonjudgmental by policy for inquiries. There are some things we won't do (like legal or medical advice), but we won't deny you information, regardless of what we may personally feel about the request. (If that's not your experience, we need to train the staffers more. Please let us know.) We do enjoy working with most people, and we're happy to help them find what they need. Watching someone's face light up when they find out someone has written something about that is rewarding.



7. Reading is reading is reading is reading is reading. Thou shalt not impugn reading with vile abominations such as requiring someone to stay within a prescribed range of reading level, nor shall thou decry some form of reading as not acceptable nor desirable. The gods of books, magazines, websites, and libraries visit vengeance upon all who do so. Usually in the form of intransigence from the child you are trying to manipulate.



8. Library people have their geeking-out spots, too.



9. Of all the foods available at a nice lunch during a meeting, the chocolate will be the most popular by far.



10. Librarians have a professional +5 to spot checks, +10 if the items in question are organized by a logical system.



11. It is sometimes confusing to one's co-workers that a person who can get up in front of three hundred librarians and do improv with a troupe is nervous about performing stories in front of fifteen children.



12. Working in a library means that one only gets farther behind on “books I shoud read”.



13. Working in a library develops your ability to sense other people. This can be put to interesting uses, like stopping before an intersection of shelves to let a child go zipping past before proceeding.



14. No matter how bright, large, flashing, neon, or other manner of attracting attention to itself the sign is, I will still be asked many times where someone can find X section. Or, more generally, nobody reads the signs in a library. Funny, isn't it?



15. The Cataloging System Is Precise. Zero results generally means that the input is incorrect and the system is taking you at your word.



16. The Cataloging System Is Error-Prone. Likely due to the nature of outsourcing cataloging data to other services that do so (or due to the variances of persons at those services), one cannot be assured that the various books in a series will be cataloged in a uniform manner, nor can we assure that they will all be found in the same general area from one branch to another. (This is particualrly apparent in book series in paperback.)



17. We have learned a lot about taking care of technology, and of the limitations of our own systems. We can translate this into something comprehensible for you, the end user.



18. However, do not mistake our situational expertise with complete expertise. (For that, you have to find the person who is the tech expert.) There's a reason that tech supports with "Is it turned on? Is everything plugged in? Did you install the software?" - it solves 95% of problems.



19. Also, we're always one step behind the current. Usually as a matter of policy.



20. Getting children to do what you would like them to do is akin to herding felines. This task is far easier when Mamma Cat is around. Additionally, there are few things more cool, professionally, that listening to a parent do awesome parenting and encouragement. I hope that all parents can be like that.



21. Children are vicious to each other. They will also forge temporary alliances against the adults if it is in their interest to do so. It is still a toss-up whether young children or teenage children are more vicious and incisive to their peers. That said, nothing enourages better behavior than being in the line of sight or the range of hearing of a librarian.



22. Teenagers, if treated like normal people instead of pariahs, will behave like normal people. If you are intimidated by them, their tobacco usage, and their occasional use of coarse language, don't hide behind your child as the reason you complain to me. Own up that you're afraid of them, you think they're behaving degenerately, and you want me to make them go away. That said, lot of ill-behaved vandals, if you live up to the stereotype, you're not going to garner any sympathy from us... or the police when we sic them on you for your vandalism.



23. For most people, there is no limit on Internet time that will work for them. No matter how many different options we offer for getting all of your important work done. And heaven help us if the terminals are down - it makes all the good-natured people turn remarkably surly, and quickly.



24. The collection is wide and varied. For example, Goth Craft and Olivia in Latin likely both exist. We also have Why Sh*t Happens: The science of a really bad day, and the revised edition of The Physics of Superheroes.
    
    That said, the gods of libraries will smite researchers who believe that non-reference materials on their papers will appear when they have to complete said paper by tomorrow and they haven't started.



25. There is such a thing as collaborative coloring sheet work.



26. After a while, one gets enough of a feel for the library such that one can go from person to person, dropping off a querant in the proper zone for their answer and picking up another that needs to go elsewhere. When I do this, I feel like I'm playing some sort of train game. Now that I think about it, I think it would make a pretty awesome train-style game.



27. I have learned more about fashion in my years working here than I have at any other point in my life. F'rex: there's no such thing as too-short shorts. Just paste on sufficient black spandex as to meet modesty requirements around the frayed and white short-shorts, and you're good to go.
    
    Also, camo is a popular pattern here. Being that we're close to military bases, this makes sense. This extends to child-sized replicas of military fatigues. Thankfully, camo also comes in pink.
    
    
28. The fashion style of wearing pants that permit obvious view of boxer shorts or other underclothes is not limited to men. I will give credit that the people I observed this trend on choose flannel boxer shorts to show off, rather than, say, a g-string or other, more revealing attire. The reverse of this style has the same difficulty as the original - wearing one's athletic shorts so low as to permit the full view of one's jeans underneath tends to defeat the purpose of the athletic shorts in the first place.



29. Child-sized purses and purfume bottles with actual perfumes also exist. By the way...



30. *cough* Strong scents in the library have a way of getting to you. *cough* Please be considerate of others. *cough, cough*



31. In the library, one can use the word "ratiocination" in proper context without straining or being called for a loquaciousness foul.



32. Comic books are a great way for fathers and sons to bond over reading.



33. We're very dogged about getting answers, even if you have since abandoned the question.



34. Cell phone ringtones are diverse. And I think, in today's world, we're attuned to hearing them. Which is why so many people can get irritated at someone's tune playing. There's also the part where the tones have to be audible, which often means "loud enough to be heard over conversation" that could be irritating, too.



35. I think all library staff could use paid recess and paid nap time.



36. People will use the strangest things for bookmarks. Considering it was a Playboy item, though, that may have been all it was really good for. Oh, and there's also the Wall of Lost Bookmarks at my branch. Ask me about pictures at some point.



37. The Bridge Rule: Anywhere on the Internet where there is an attempt to make a bridge between people, be it financially, socially, romantically, or otherwise, there is at least one troll underneath the bridge.



38. The Other Bridge Rule: A proper opening bid should have more than 12 high-card points and either a five-card major or three-card minor suit. Quick tricks may help an 11 or 12 high-card point hand be enough to open with.



39. Schedules for construction do not move earlier, only later.



40. Architects who do not listen to the concerns of the staff members about their designs should have their contracts terminated with prejudice before any construction begins.



41. Management that does not listen to the concerns of the staff members about the architects' designs should be required to listen to every complaint generated by that design when it is completed.



42. Life, the Universe, and Everything.



43. Our patrons are of all types of people. We serve all types of people. Thus, as a professional, I will not go whomping on the person who insists that America is a Christian nation, that we've been on a downslide since the adoption of separation of Church and State, on Masonic conspiracies, that we're trying to displace God from the country and bring back everything that the Greeks were doing, including professional sport, homosexuality, and watching football over going to church. The really interesting part was the skillful weaving of that which is fact and that which is opinion. As a professional, I will continue with my work as I listen to what is being said. This part of the discipline that we have. (I reserve the right to be quietly amused by the matter, however, and to pass alongthe description of said person if I feel they are going to be disruptive to others.)
    
    I have the requisite professionalism to take someone seriously when they ask about information on a One World Government or a North American Union, cite Ron Paul as the person who is talking about it, but nobody is paying attention to, and to advise them that they will likely find a dearth of scholarly information on the matter, while still finding them a book about the currently-applying Constitution so they can study it, because they are trying to inform themselves about the shadowy cabal, whomever they are, planning on writing a new one for the OWG/NAU. I am That. Damn. Good. I still reserve the right to go, "Huh. Met a Ron Paul supporter today."
    
    It also means that I will not be caught by surprise when the religiously observant woman comes in and checks out bodice-rippers.



44. Wearing the badge means that occasionally, someone will shout at you to "do something" about someone else. The fun happens when the other person is behaving within the policy rules.



45. If we can't do excellent service to kids and teens, we're basically screwing ourselves when it comes to continuing funding and being relevant to the future.



46. Librarians do have a sense of humor. Sometimes its obvious, sometimes not. F'rex: Our library has a knack for acronyms. ELVIS used to do the calling, but he has left the building. His replacement? HAL.
    
    HAL apparently elides some of his pronunciations, such that patrons can mistake him for saying "This is Hell calling." You can imagine the hilarity that ensues from taking that idea out to its logical conclusion. "Pay your fines or FACE THE WRATH OF SATAN!"



47. There is nowhere that is safe from someone wanting you to covert to their religion. I do believe that one was my first offical, while-at-work one. And from a Catholic, no less.



48. Our copier coin box has a SEP field around it.



49. People are willing to leave their cell phones charging on a ledge they cannot see that is halfway across the library from the computer they are sitting at, believing it will be safe.


50. People will ask you to watch their equipment, thinking you will keep it safe for them while they go elsewhere.


51. Actually, people will ask you to watch their children, thinking you will keep them safe while they go elsewhere.



52. While we are authoritative, we are not the authority. Please stop trying to recruit us into agreeing with your view of the world.



53. The library has policies and procedures. Don't get really pissy when your attemtps to just sit down and go are pre-empted by someone going through the correct procedure to reserve a computer. And don't go looking for a scapegoat in teenagers "playing games" on the computer while your Big Serious Bizness goes undone. This Rule applies in all places and policies at all times.



54. Children who go mute and cling to their parent's legs when the parents are around are perfectly able to talk and interact when the parents aren't. Sometimes, in that intervening space, we find out what the kid really wants.



55. There is no telling what someone will be offended by in a book. I say this because every time I hear a complaint about a book, I get another confirmation of the wisdom of "access for all, without restrictions, without censorship, and without really giving a damn what people think about the idea of access for all."



56. It is not okay for very young men to go running about the library with their pants off. The potential biological hazards are more than enough justification for this.



57. Speaking of, if your child might produce a biohazard, such as vomit - please stay home.



58. For the Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake, if you are sick, really sick, please stay home. I really don't want to have to listen to you sniffle and cough and sneeze while you sit at one of the tables near me. It makes me fear that I'm going to get sick. And a sick librarian is not what you want. Sick librarians are cranky.



59. Your responsibilities regarding the conduct of your children/siblings/grandchildren/charges are not abdicated upon your sitting down to an Internet terminal, or your sitting them down to an Internet terminal. If things get out of hand, you are permitted and encouraged to pause your session, remove yourself to enforce parenting discipline, and then return to your station. If you must do this multiple times, that is acceptable. Since we are not a licensed day-care facility, we do not have the training, nor the resources, nor are we paid enough by any stretch of the imagination to baby-sit or entertain your children outside the course of our normal programming. As such, we will refer all unruly children back to you and expect you to do something about it to our satisfaction. You are responsible for the content that your children see. There will be things there you think are inappropriate. It is up to you to filter or have those discussions with your child about appropriate material. We don't do that, nor do we have any inkling of an intent to do so. At least, those of us who intend on keeping our jobs don't.



60. Honking your horn outside your destination as a way of telling someone that you are here is in poor taste. If it were done outside a private residence, you've only offended a couple people. Outside the library, you've probably offended a lot more people. Continuing to honk your horn afterward because the person you were seeking did not immediately appear at the door is in poorer taste. I assure you, we heard you the first time.



61. We are not an answering machine service, nor do we have to keep track of anyone. If you are that concerned about the whereabouts of your child, tether him or her with a cell phone or other sort of leash, please. Furthermore, if you are going to give your child a telephone to carry about with them, you really should make sure that it works and can call you.



62. On that point, only school libraries act in loco parentis. So, if you want your child not to check certain materials out, or not to attend programs, or to only make it so they can watch Barney forever and ever until the end of time, you'll have to accompany your child to the library every single time.



63. Once is a warning. Twice is a command. Don't make me say it a third time.



64. Sometimes, you will have to wait for materials. Other times, we have to request it from another library. This does take time.



65. Thank you for not annotating the book directly with pen or other nonremovable methods and materials. However, please remember to remove your annotations after you are finished with the book and are returning it to us.



66. "If you feel unsure about which of several books to choose, I suggest the following. Open the book and read a paragraph at random, out loud. The sound of it—the sounds the words make as they slide and bump into each other—should feel cadenced or harmonic or percussive or marvelously arrhythmic. The idea of swaying your hips as you read should not seem entirely far-fetched. If this fails to occur, put the book back on the shelf and continue your search. If salespeople or other customers stare at you, pay them no mind. It’s their problem, not yours." - Michael Cunningham, Better Homes and Gardens August 2009.
    
    Spend no more time nor pages with a book than absolutely necessary. If you're not hooked, discard the book and try another.



67. I don't read minds. Stare as much as you like, but I'm not going to know what you want until you say something. (Even when I can make a really accurate guess by your context.)



68. By butting in to ask your question that you seem very frustrated with, when you say "I don't mean to be rude", it is already too late.



69. Do not wait until the last two minutes of your computer session to get help with your problem. (Unless, of course, the problem appears in the last two minutes of your session. That's unavoidable.) This makes the librarians very cranky.



70. Teachers - it is ill-advised to make assignments so specific or exacting such that when someone comes to me for help, I can provide them with perhaps one resource, and even then, the person is unsure you will take it.



71. I would really appreciate you taking me up on the offer of not wearing shoes and wearing pajamas (that you can wear in public) in story time. For both you, children, and you, adults. I do not say these things merely as self-justification for my own costuming choices.



72. When the fire alarm sounds, it is procedure to evacuate the building. Yes, even if there's no actual fire. Yes, even if you overheard the explanation for things going off. Your computer time is not that important. Get. Out.



73. It is not funny, amusing, or cool to remove the labels indicating where the library and the parking garage exit is from the elevator.



74. The parking garage is not an indoor skate park, no matter how much it looks like one, and no matter how much you desperately wish for somewhere indoors to practice your ollies, flips, and tricks.



75. The parking garage is also not a parkour course. No matter how much you wish it were one.



76. We cannot control what the city does. A shared-use building does not give us a direct pipeline to local government. If it did, trust me - we'd be in there more than you would be.



77. Male caregivers in the library are fairly common now - this is a good thing. Male caregivers in story time? We could use more of that.



78. Most library workers have a preferred caffeine source.



79. The State Auditor's Office does surprise inspections.



80. There are some people who are so smug in their superiority that they will walk out of your library with a dismissive quip if you can't tell them off the top of your head whether you have a book on topic X. Believe it or not, we sometimes need to take a few seconds to make sure that we give you accurate information on where something might be, or whether we have it. That few seconds often involves a computer search.



81. There are way too many things happening to me when the people best equipped to handle them are out of the building. Thankfully, that does not mean that I can't handle them.



82. Users will mistake a trash compactor for a book drop.



83. Some of our users are unaware of what it looks like when you complain about the content of a book that's about people complaining about the content of books.



84. There's a gap of library users from about 18 to "has a kid". I suspect it's because we don't have many things or programs for that age and interest.



85. Libraries are reconfiguring themselves to try and meet those needs (and a lot of other needs, like teaching people how to apply for jobs on-line when the last time they had to apply for jobs, typewriters were the dominant technology.)



86. Libraries are one of the few places left where you don't have to buy something to be there. Plus, did I mention most of us know where to go for social services and community help organizations?



87. We love e-readers.



88. However, we hate publishers who treat libraries as pariahs, pirates, and do things like jack up their prices unnecessarily or refuse to sell us works so that we can lend them out to others.



89. We're also not all that fond of DRM, either.



90. Libraries, like many government functions, have bureaucracy. This squishes most good ideas from the trenches.



91. Like any other workplace, we have office politics and drama. I wish we didn't.



92. We have the non-emergency number for the police on our speed dial. Think about that for a moment.



93. Ye shall not ask the library worker out on a date while they are working at the library. No matter how smitten you are with them, nor how pretty the library worker is.



94. At no point is it going to be socially acceptable for your children to run about into the fountain jets naked. It will, however, make for an amusing or horrifying story for the staff people involved to tell when someone asks us about what life in the library is like.



95. It is possible to describe being flashed/mooned in a euphemistic manner. ("His pants did not get up with him.")



96. Stealing from the library is lame. Not only do you inconvenience everyone else around you, and make whatever pitiful pittance you get by reselling the stuff elsewhere, but you're making it harder for us to be seen as responsible stewards of tax dollars. The ones that you pay for library services, moron.



97. Recessions suck. That said, if you think that you're doing yourselves a favor by voting down levies and millages and bonds because you don't want to pay the taxes on them, think again. Or at least don't complain when you find out that the schools are suffering because their capital has been curtailed by uncomfortable and evil cuts in the budget, or that the library suddenly isn't as open or as material-filled as it was before.



98. There's a lot of pressure from the economic standpoint to run libraries more like businesses. In fact, there's already a company that has taken over public library branches with that intent in mind. No less a luminary than Nancy Pearl thinks this is a bad idea. (She said she doesn't like "customer" because it implies the business relationship, and businesses are about the bottom line, which is not the business that the library is in. @ WLA 2012)



99. Every reader their book, every book its reader. Ranganathan was spot-on.



100. If you haven't realized it by now, my job is never boring. There are only occasional lulls that fill the gaps between interesting stuff.

</ul>

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Morning, everyone. In conjunction to the post about things that we need, a post for people to request people or make some new friends.

For the first time in thirty-five years, the Pulitzer committee chose not to award a prize for American fiction, as none of the nominees could muster a majority.

A pitcher for the Chicago White Sox retired twenty-seven batters in order without allowing one to reach base by hit or base on balls. A Perfect Game! Applause, applause.

And then, its opposite. More than 226,000 petitions to repeal the emergency manager law arrived in Lansing, and enough were certified to put the matter up for a citizen recall. That was, until a group that shares its headquarters with one of the members of the Board of State Canvassers filed an objection to the petition, claiming the font size was too small to be legal. No substantive objection to the issue, but the font size was too small. So, when it came time for the Board of State Canvassers to vote on the issue...they deadlocked, 2-2, when three votes were needed to certify the petition. And furthermore, one of the members of the Board of State Canvassers is at the same address as the font size challenge, and did not recuse himself, which allowed for the deadlock and prevented the petition from being certified. After this happened, the crowd shouted "Shame!" at the Board of State Canvassers for the result, for they understood what had happened.

Before that, we note, Flint's emergency manager was in a big hurry to pass new orders before the possibility of his power being suspended.

Finally, the Dead Pool Broadcaster's Association signs a contract with Dick Clark at 82 years of age.

Out in the world today, the European Parliament agreed to screen all their passengers through the United States Department of Homeland Security, even for flights that do not go anywhere near the United States, if that carrier has service to the United States.

Net migration between the United States and Mexico is functionally zero, which pretty well throws wrenches in all of the people screaming about illegal immigrants coming over the border in waves to steal jobs from United States workers.

Domestically, the latest cheap alcohol for teens to drink is distilled hand sanitizer. Which has much the same brilliance as huffing or drinking other cleaners - sure, you might get drunk, but the other things that you can do to yourself...

Republicans in the House of Representatives believed the best way to gain popularity with students by not raising rates was to hurt themselves with women by cutting a women's health program.

A Senate report soon to come out will add another nail to the coffin of "Torture Doesn't Work.". Even though here are plenty in the Republican candidate's house that would love to revisit those times and techniques.

While "Stand Your Ground" laws will shield a man who chased a teenager and then shot him, all on the suspicion of Walking While Black, they do not apparently apply to a woman defending herself from an abusive husband. Inside the state of Florida, a Neo-Nazi group claimed they were ready to "protect" the white citizens of Florida in the case of race riots in the Trayvon Martin case. They called themselves a "White Civil Rights Organization". In response, we say, in the words of Elwood Blues, I hate (Illinois) Florida Nazis.

Thankfully, it's just a fringe group that believes this, right? It's not like the proponents of the "Papers Please" law in Arizona crafted their law because they wanted to make sure that whites stayed the majority of voters in the country or anything, right?

...we're screwed, aren't we?

Citigroup shareholders rejected theexecutive compensation plan in a non-binding vote. Normally, there's no bother, but it appears that even the proxy corporation urged a rejection because they didn't see the value for the compensation.

The Air Force will no longer be stating that chapel attendance is the way to morality to its officer candidates. Which is better than just expanding the list of Approved Minority Religions that the majority tolerates. We have a military that can handle having people of different faith or no faith. I believe it.

A couple of judges said that regulation is fundamentally unconstitutional in an opinion...and did so withotu citing the document they claim those regulations are against.

Last out, a firsthand account of the process of legislative committee. Sausage-making is insufficiently gory to describe the process. And when it comes to national politics, the Republican Party had no intention of working in a bipartisan manner. (Not that this wasn't obvious from the beginning, but...)

In technology, someone is attempting to raise one million dollars to build out an ISP whose sole goal is protecting the privacy of the data and its users, to the point of encrypting it so well that even the ISP itself couldn't read it.

Elsewhere, a way of using technology to defeat mandated lying imposed by politicians upon doctors who provide abortions - donating music players and noise-canceling headphones so that at the right time, a woman could "accidentally" drown out the script. Why do they need such a thing? Read what it takes to get an abortion in Texas and similar states, and decide for yourself.

Into opinions, where we start with a list, mostly negative, of many famous authors regarding fan-fiction of their work, and the arguments for and against in the comments. Or, actually, how about arguments that involve the interactive nature of audience and the technology that allows for fanauthors and canon authors to interact, and fanauthors and other fanauthors to interact and trade stories.

The motto on the national currency is in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, exactly like two words added to the Pledge of Allegiance that rendered it also in violation of that same clause. Therefore, to bring the currency back into compliance, the offending motto must be stricken.

What kind of complete cluster fuckup does it take for a movie that's about bullying of teenagers to be rated R so that the teens can't see it in most theaters? Oh, right, there's a lot of f-bombs. Because teens talk like that. Which probably means that it's going to be more effective at reaching teens than other ways. But they can't see it, because they say the word "fuck" in it.

The narrative about social programmes is changing, ever so slightly, away from "lazy, shiftless people who don't deserve help" to "people who did everything right and are still unemployed". This terrifies politicians beholden to the conservative movement, because it means their accusations and arguments are no longer the default, and that the system they helped to engineer so that a very few get very wealthy is having its flaws shown. The more someone who can't find a job is closer to John Q. Public, the more weight the idea of social programmes comes to prominence.

That it took a near-collapse and another huge depression and a jobless recovery that only reinforces the idea that the people at the top are doing quite well and don't care about the people at the bottom to get people and the mainstream media to decide that maybe that previous narrative was wrong is more than a bit sad. But maybe this time, it can stick around a bit more after the return of prosperity.

Why is it that the Catholic bishopric, which is supposedly pro-life, is more than willing to let women die for the sake of pregnancies that will not come to term? And, furthermore, why did the Inquisition put a male bishop to oversee a prominent group of women Catholics, accusing them of "radical feminist" ideas and incompatibility with the church's teachings on sexuality?

And speaking of self-righteous, sanctimonious people, maybe the seven deadly sins are due for an overhaul to fit our more modern times.

If that's not your prefered place and time, then examine the bingo card for sexism, misogyny, and other social problems in video game and on-line game communities - here's a hint: they're many of the same problems in other male-dominated circles and fandoms that involve men marginalizing women, dismissing the opinion that there might be problems, and otherwise dissing the thing they claim to love because they can't be arsed to think about how to make it better and less FAIL-y.

Last out, sincere apologies with no baggage attached - the hardest and most important thing to do when there's a screw-up.

Last for tonight, what being the only stable person in a group of needy and unstable people generally ends in - the only stable person saying "No, you're not dragging me into this - I have to protect myself".

Additionally, the power that books have - they allow someone to survive in a world that is fundamentally unstable.

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The new bandwagon is the 100 Things Challenge, where one commits at least 10 entries about 100 things all on a similar theme. Doesn't have to be a countdown-y type thing or anything like that.

I have a possible topic (100 things about libraries and librarians you may not have known), but I'm not sure I can hit 100 on that easily or quickly.

So I thought I'd ask. You're the viewing audience, you see my writing style and what seems to be passionate for me. What would you like to see me write 100 entries about?

(And something like 100 questions from the audience is totally a great topic to suggest. That one might be easier to do than the libraries one.)

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Greetings. Shall we start with the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, entering a burning building to rescue the inhabitants within, a rescue that is compeltely successful?

Second, crowgirl113 offers up a forum to state one's needs, or to help someone else with their needs.

Moving from hero to hero, an alternative framing of the Triple role, based on the main characters of a Cashore trilogy - Katsa, Fire, Bitterblue, Warrior, Healer, Queen.

And speaking of the feminine...by the way, that may have been your last piece of good news for the entry... why, again, aren't there riots in the streets about the way that Republicans are attempting to revert any and all progress made to make it so that women could approach equal footing with men. Is it perhaps because some people believe the premise that the liberal attitude toward sex and sexuality has been more damaging to women, by allowing men to father children and abandon them, while failing to acknowledge (or glossing right over) the fact staring them in the face that lower-income women have less access to things like birth control and contraception and that less educated people have a harder time finding jobs that can actually pay enough to have and raise a family? Well, when they try to make that argument to the younger generation, they fail. Marriage as societal cure-all doesn't fly as a convincing argument, not without good evidence to back it up, and even then, there are a lot of young people who think there are other reasons.

Ah, and Arizona now counts the beginning of a pregnancy as the last day of a menstrual period before getting pregnant. Which means that Arizona now might consider you to have been pregnant for quite some time before there was even conception. Arizona also insists that people geting abortions because the baby won't survive due to unfortunate defects get counseling, that a medication abortion be performed by a doctor who has medical privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the spot where the abortion will be happening, rather than, say, at home, and that an ultrasound is required a day before the abortion...and minors need parental permissions. Both of those wree already in place, just getting reaffirmed.

Out in the world today - North Korea launched their rocket...which failed near the end of the first stage and broke apart, scattering its pieces into the ocean. Which has columnists suggesting that this will make the North Koreans less likely to come to talks about anything because of the loss of faace.

Domestically, Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign, making Willard "Mitt" Romney the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party for 2012. Which is probably the best result for Republicans that they can get, in terms of candidates, as Mr. Romney has always been the one closest to President Obama in the opinion polls. With the addition of dark-money groups going for him, Mr. Romney can mount a strong campaign. Assuming, that is, he doesn't end up fracturing the party and having some of the Republican supporters sitting out this session.

George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin and claimed it was self-defense, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The arrest of Mr. Zimmerman has conservatives clamoring that Mr. Zimmerman is the victim of racism from the black Attorney General at the direction of the black President who both listen to a discredited black radical, Reverend Sharpton. The case will hopefully be enlightening as to how far the protections involved in laws about "standing your ground" go, and what kind of evidence one would need to successfully argue that the danger was a threat that required the use of deadly force.

UC Davis commissioned an independent investigation into the Occupy attack by police, involving very strong pepper spray and lots of police abuse, and the report is in. [PDF at link]. The report is significantly worse than the media coverage set it out to be - lots of people claiming they made it clear things weren't supposed to go that way, but they did anyway. The police ignored their own procedures, used equipment that was illegal for them to own and use for the situation, and also were not deliberately clear about how they wanted things to go down...plus an officer that claims the orders they received were illegal or un-do-able, and decided to just go forward with their own judgment anyway, instead of refusing the order and demanding a better one. Ugh.

Last out, a case study on how some churches pervert the message in the Christian Foundational Writings to build authoritarian structures from which a member cannot leave, cannot be restored to grace but on the whims of the church's leader, and that will dog the member if they choose to leave the church rather than be forced through the whimsical discipline process.

In technology, iris scanners, passport control systems, and other biometric identity-tracking devices are making it harder for spies to do their work, because you start flagging systems when the names don't match and the biometrics do.

In opinions, Messrs. Gaines and Rivers take a poll indicating most people don't want high taxes on gambling winnings, like lotteries, as an indicator that most people don't want taxes on high incomes at all. In doing so, they ignore what appears to be the logical conclusion - most people think that getting rich by luck is something to keep most of, perhaps because we can imagine that happening to us. Being rich by design, by profession, or by business usually engenders the feeling that those people can afford to pay a little more in taxes, because they consistently are making more instead of having a one-time payment. There's probably an experiment one could run to confirm this thought process.

Messers. Foster and Dubay consider the resurrection of the discussion about the "Buffet Rule" to be a distraction from the real issues of how much the President&apos policies don't work, won't work, and haven't worked. Ms. Miller echoes this issue, claiming that increased tax rates won't help, and that the rich already pay sooo much of taxes... but Mr. Thornton is the clearest about this idea - he calls all the related talk class warfare that doesn't have anything to do with fidxing the economy. The other prong of the attack is Mr. Henninger's defense of Paul Ryan's budget as something that's feasible and superior to the President's alternative.

The WSJ prefers to keep their feet on the idea that lower capital gains tax rates translate to more actual revenue, because people who invest prefer to have instruments that have lower tax rates on their profits and dividends. That, at least, is a logical argument. I think it exposes the underlying problem that making money is often oriented toward making the most and hoarding it, rather than making lots of it and being able to turn it back into more investment or social good. The WSJ also exposes the weakness of raising tax rates - if sufficient loopholes are left in the tax code, then enterprising accountants will ensure that the effective tax rate stays as low as possible through the exploitation of those loopholes. They then go on to argue that the rates shouldn't be raised because the loopholes will make it moot, rather than arguing that if the government really wanted more revenues, they should work on closing out the loopholes and rates that make it possible for the rich to shift their wealth in such a way as to pay as little tax as possible. So, instead, we'll have Mr. Benen do that, saying that enacting the Buffet Rule would be closing a loophole, and that the specifics put forward by the President are far better than relying on magic maths as presented by Mr. Ryan's budget.

And Heritage says states should not be able to collect sales taxes from on-line retailers that have no presence in their state. They paint state governments as greedily seeking new sources of revenue from everyone, but it might be a stronger argument for them to say that the people who have the least to spend in income are the ones that would be hardest hit by having to pay sales taxes on everything. Of course, in doing so, they would be admitting that poor people do, in fact, pay lots of taxes, which would be incovnenient in other arguments they want to make.

It all folds into the narrative that says our current situation is all Obama's fault, nothing he does has been effective at fixing his own problems, and that he only wants to make things worse by charging ahead with his agenda and blaming everyone around him for the reasons why it isn't working.

Elsewhere, the prefix cis- does not carry value judgement with it. Those who complain about being called cis will now be referred to as grues. Seriously - if you're going to complain about being linguistically marked, then maybe you should think about how you go about linguistically marking everyone else, and all te assumptions you make that come with doing so?

Last for tonight, a bit of an oddity. The one candidate who hasn't said that s/he was inspired by G-d to run for President...is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. Perhaps bona fides on ultra-right-wing social conservatism isn't actually helpful to getting you elected?

Ah, and one other thing - a Florida representative accused the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus of being members of the Communist Party, and now wants to raise campaign funds on that issue. The Communist Party of the USA, when asked for comment, flatly denied the CPC were affiliated with them. (For good reason. Progressive by this Congress's standards is nowehere near the most basic tenets of Communism.)

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Grab Bag entry today - vignettes and other small things that don't get their own entry.

I ended up spending half a day inhaling floor sealant chemicals today - the joys of a shared building...and the forehead-banging situation where the chemicals were probably applied and then it was assumed they would cure and dry overnight. It was pretty bad - took a walk outside to clear my head here and there. Eventually, the branch closed for a bit to deal with that. Tonight, they're applying another coat, and they tell us that things should be cleared off by the start of business tomorrow. In a building where everything has run behind schedule.

The longer I have to be a responsible adult in the responsible adult world, the less I feel like I'm actually able to hack it. It's no longer Impostor Syndrome, becuase I'm not worried that someone's going to discover that I'm not actually competent and have been faking it all this time. I'm increasingly convinced that I'm not fully competent at this. I feel more like a flawed item among the company of the flawless - the ducks on the pond problem instead. Now, for most people, this would probably be the opening that allows them to stop putting so much pressure on themselves and come to a comfortable agreement with themselves. For me, it's more like "No, now I'll never be able to achieve my goooals!" Some of that might be just that I don't feel stable enough in the necessities. Other parts of it might be the classic struggle between wanting to leave a significant mark on history or to be the best at something and the knowledge that such things are unlikely in the local and infinitesimal in the cosmic.

I know I've mentioned it before, but I...envy? admire? people who can put their creative output out there fearlessly. (Says the guy with the blog.) Some of the Idol prompts have probably helped get some new things out into the blog, but it's not like I have spontaneous outpourings of creativity unbidden - they're prompted by events in the news, or someone else's topic ideas. So it always feels like I'm piggybacking on someone else's idea. Yeah, the geniuses need the aggregators and such, but sometimes you want to be the one making the ideas rather than the one collecting them and expanding them.

D'you want to know the easiest way to make someone happy at a library? Read. The signs are posted. The manuals exist - sometimes even in the branch you're at. While all library workers appear to have infinite patience in dealing with the public, like all retail and customer service people, the truth is, we'd be much happier if you took care of reading things and trying to find them on your own first when it comes to the simple tasks, like "where are your bathrooms", "do you have tax forms", and "Do I need a library card to check things out?"

Related to that, I have a sneaking suspicion that most people do not know how to file an informative bug report. Which means that when we turn staff loose to test something we'll be turning out to the public, I wonder what the quality of our commentary will be when someone discovers an unexpected result, a bug, or doesn't understand how one of the features works. I almost feel like I should create a short tutorial about "How to file a bug report" and have it available for launch time. And then wonder whether anyone would actually read it.

Ah, and one question to the audience before we wrap it up. If you had to point someone to a web resource that would teach them HTML5, assuming they had never been exposed to the language or any programming or document model concepts beforehand, which one would you show them? I'm building one from scratch at this point as a lecture series because I can find tutorials to teach HTML4.X / XHTML 1.X from the ground up, and then tutorials that will teach HTML5, assuming that you've already done the previous tutorials about HTML4, even though the HTML5 standard, as it's shaping up, will take many of the concepts and kludges you learned in HTML4 and give you one elegant tag to use to fix those problems, plus let you do all sorts of other cool things, too.

Finally, I finished Mira Grant / seanan_mcguire's Deadline (Yeah, I know I'm late, with Blackout coming out in a month), and I have received no compensation in any way, shape, form, method, or other manner for the following statement: There are not enough oaths, expletives, blasphemies, interjections, invocations, and bangs to describe what happens in this book and the twists that it takes. Since Blackout's coming in a month, you'll soon be able to snag the entire Newsflesh trilogy from your local library and read it start-to-finish. It's worth the ride through After The End Times, and we might finally figure out the real secret to the reasons why we haven't been able to beat back the zombie virus yet. And just how far and how deep the conspiracy to keep it that way goes. Once there's a record in the library catalog, that's totally going on hold.

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Have you ever had a fruity drink? (And by that, I don't mean a euphemism for anything - a drink, alcoholic or non, that has actual fruit in it.) For some reason, those serving drinks, at least in a restaurant or other establishment, seem to believe that straws are a good thing to have with such drinks. Despite most straws being smaller than the fruit in the drink. (The one exception? Bubble Tea straws are designed to suck up the tapioca bubbles. It's sensible.) Which makes the straw good for creating suction to pull up the fruit with. And possibly to shoot at people, if you want. (Family tradition dictates that straw wrappers are the things that get shot, but these days, they're not all that prevalent. Ah, and that one does not cross Grandma when she pulls the waiter aside and says she's paying for it...even if Mom has done the same thing beforehand.)

Well, okay, there's one other reason for a straw, but truthfully, it could be served by having a swizzle stick accompany the drink instead. Something tells me, though, that swizzle sticks are not provided in bulk by restaurant supply stores and bulk suppliers. Even if they would be an awesome way of marketing your particular establishment to others by letting people take home their excellent swizzle sticks.

If this were a normal entry, I'd then transition from the personal and small to the bigger, less-granular point through the use of something possibly related - from fruit and straws to donkeys and elephants (and Greens and Tea, Constitution and others). Puns, hopefully clever material, and all sorts of things that get us from one topic to another. It's going from one variation on the theme to another.

Instead, however, we're going to stop on playing cards. Because just about everyone in my family plays cards in one way or another. We usually started with learning cribbage, since it doesn't need that many people, it doesn't require having a handful of cards, and the rules are both simple and complex enough to be learned and then analyzed for best results. (Kind of like Fluxx.)

Then there's hearts, colloquially "nasty cards" in the family, for good reason - we don't worry about the two of clubs, and occasionally we say "no, no points on the first trick" if we're feeling nice. And we end up passing cards to the right first, because it's a conservative household. Or so they joke. Except it isn't. (If you've played Bang!, that's a pretty good representation of "nasty cards")

After that, it's double-deck pinochle, with a slightly weirder-than-usual bidding system, I think, but one that does require keeping a handful of cards and bidding one's hand either acurately or pre-emptively, depending. (This is Dominion - with a few expansions.)

But there's only one, maybe two, of the people who play cards in the family that have gone on to doing the big game - where you not only have to bid, but describe your hand in detail to your partner, and then, assuming you've arrived at the right contract, play the hand out against the opposition. The one that does, does so regularly and has apparently acumulated some amount of ranking according to the federation. He and Dad tried to teach me the basics of the bidding when I was younger. I don't think I got much out of it, plus the counting of everything was just the beginning, and I was having trouble with just that. Plus, at the time, I didn't really see the appeal of the game. Kind of weird, isn't it, with all the other card games that the family plays with relish?

I still look in on the Goren columns occasionally, trying to see if there's any more magic to it than there was before. It's not there, but it does let me at least converse with those who do play the game and say it's excellent.

This is a Shadow Idol entry, for the partner prompts of "The Straw that Stirs The Drink / Bridge". It makes for a rather disjointed entry, but no challenge is too tough, is it?

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Greetings. The Supreme Court of the United States said that if the police arrest you, they can strip-search you repeatedly. Even if you're never charged with a crime. Elsewhere, the government of Scotland is unwilling to let a man who wishes to go about naked leave the prison where he is held...or, for that matter, allow him to mingle with the regular prison population.

Elsewhere, Michigan's Democrats had to get an order from a judge to get the Republican Party to follow the state constitution and call for votes when sufficient members request it. That's how far the Governor and his party have gone toward suspending the normal operation of democracy in Michigan. Not just taking over towns and suspending their democratically-elected local government, but ignoring the opposition party in the legislature when they want to.

No, wait. It's worse than that. The majority party in Michigan is not only ignoring the clearly-voiced requests of the minority, they're claiming two-thirds mandates in three seconds without a roll-call vote and then claiming that mandate official journal of the legislature so they can make their laws take immediate effect, rather than having to wait for the Constitutionally-mandated enacting time, 90 days after the end of a Legislature session. Some of the legislature that may have been improperly claimed? The "emergency manager" law that's allowing the Republicans to dissolve democracy, a move to block the graduate student instructors' union from adding more members, and the destruction of domestic partner benefits for public employees. Oh, and trying to make it harder for ballot initiatives to repeal laws passed by the legislature. If a court finds the Republicans to have been doing this illegally and unconstitutionally, how much of this session gets unspun and undone? And furthermore, how much damage has to be undone that's already been effected?

Elsewhere in the world today, North Korea's plans to launch a satellite into orbit using a three-stage rocket has the international community on edge about missile activities coming form inside the country.

A day after the United States offered a $10 million USD reward for information leading to his capture, the leader of Laskhar-e-Taiba appeared at a press conference to deliver his schedule so that the United States could talk to him whenever they wanted to. In Pakistan, where we already have a very love-hate relationship with the government and security services there.

A teenager in China sold his kidney to get some iProducts. Now five people are being charged in the sale and trafficking of organs over the matter. And the kid? Suffering from renal failure, where having another kidney would have been useful.

Domestically, Through better diagnostic tools or more incidences, autism diagnoses in the United States have gone up 78 percent in the last ten years. That's approximately 1 in 88 children in the United States.

Despite what you may hear from the talking heads, when someone says the Romney-Ryan-Republican budget is Social Darwinism, they're telling the absolute truth, and you can look at the proposal itself to see that truth.

The panopticon says that George Zimmerman, the person not prosecuted for the shooting of Trayvon Martin, was not injured at all when he arrives at the police station, which makes him and the police report btoh liars.

Georgia's Senate passed a bill that outlawed abortions after 20 weeks, no exceptions, on the premise that fetuses feel pain. However, when a state representative found his daughter had a pregnancy that would result in a dead fetus and a harmed mother, he put in for an exemption for medically futile pregnancies. Despite seeing the reasons to include exemptions, the Georgia House passed the bill solely with the "futile pregnancy" exemption - no rape or incest. And for his trouble, the state representative and others will face challengers from the right of their conservative positions because they were insufficiently orthodox in allowing the one exemption.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker quietly signs a bill that makes it harder for those suffering wage discrimination to get their hearing in court, undoing some of the work done by the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Law done federally. When asked about why they did such things, on of the prominent Republican pushers of the bill argued "money is more important to men" as a reason for the repeal. When pressed on his data, he said "I know it's true, because Ann Coulter said so" and apparently, her word is gospel.

And in South Carolina, a teacher has been suspended for reading books, including Ender's Game, to students, after a parent complained the books had "pornographic" and other material. Having read Ender's Game, there are not enough Whiskeys, Tangoes, and Foxtrots to explain this accusation. Plus, aren't teachers supposed to be teaching students about the world outside? Doesn't that mean they need some latitude?

Oh, one more. A teacher's aide in Michigan was fired for refusing to hand over their personal Facebook password to school administrators after a personal post on personal time rubbed those administrators the wrong way. I know that when you're on the clock, you're Speaking For The Company, but policing someone's personal and private lives is a severe invasion of their privacy.

I believe that the NSA and other agencies are forbidden from engaging in domestic spying activities without proper court orders. So they outsource the work to private companies with ties to supposedly-allied governments to do the spying for them. All very nicely able to avoid any requirements for court orders and to have plausible deniability about the activities of such contractors, of course. And with the FBI being trained that they could break or bend the law in their work, and you have a government that, for most intents and practices, doesn't really care about the laws, unless they can use them to their advantage. Or to deny the existence of any partnerships that might be in place between them and major tech companies.

Republican candidate Rick Santorum believes the UC system does not teach American History, to the point of offering no courses in it at all. Republican candidate Rick Santorum is a pants-on-fire liar. That said, what he said was not stupid or off-the-cuff, but a severely encoded dog-whistle to the conservative movement.

And then, Mitt Romney can lie repeatedly in front of journalists, and the journalists don't report on the lying with any force. They report on what was said, instead. Much like how reporters and talking heads tut-tut about the Social Darwinism comment, without actually taking a look into whether or not the comment is objectively true.

Into opinions, where thirteen reasons appear on why decisions and Courts and elections all count for something, and how important things are going to be depending on where the justices fall. (And whether or not one could then accuse the Court of "judicial activism" in the conservative direction for once.

Messrs. Gramm and McMillin make an excellent case for removing tax loopholes and raising tax rates in their argument that the economy would improve more if we lowered tax rates, by pointing out the benefits of globalization, the shifting of capital from one place to another to take advantage of lower taxes, and the proliferation of business income being reported as personal income instead. In short, they say, "Well, if we didn't keep making it easier to cheat the system, then we'd probably have a fairer tax burden." They also indicate their belief that the U.S. has the most progressive income tax structure based solely on how much of GDP comes from rich people in taxes - which is true, most likely - but that's a measure of what's collected in actual, not in potential. I suspect in potential, the U.S. is not as progressive as it could be.

If you hear someone complaining that the Trayvon Martin attention is really about ginning up racial tensions to vote politically, check carefully to see whether the person writing genuinely cares about racial issues in this country.

Yeah, that's everything. Kind of depressing. Actually, very depressing. But there have been a lot of new kitty stories around the f-list, so that's happy-making.

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Up top, internal documents from a leading anti-gay group indicate they wanted to create divisions between QUILTBAG people, African-Americans, and Latinos, playing up the hetero-marriage-supporters in those groups so as to get groups that are all minorities to fight each other. Kind of like the geek heirarchy image that goes around.

An app available combined Foursquare location data with Facebook profiles and made it possible for someone to see where all the women (or men) around them were, and any would-be player or stalker could have access to quite a bit of personal data, based on the privacy settings of those Facebook accounts and Foursquare check-ins.

Oh, and it's not limited to just people who have public profiles on Facebook, either. If you're the kind of person that likes to publish the personal data of abortion doctors, you may find yourself on the receiving end of peaceful phone calls that have quite a bit of your personal data as well. And a lot of those calls, much like lots of protestors at abortion clinics...

MasterCard is notifying its customers that its database may have been hacked through a compromised payment processor. No, wait, that could be Visa and MasterCard card numbers that were affected...oh, and it happened two months ago. And only now are we getting to hear about this happening.

Finally, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments over the course of last week regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare", if you like. NPR provides Monday's transcript, Tuesday's arguments, and the arguments made on the morning of Wednesday and Wednesday afternoon's arguments before the court. One may pay attention to the presence of "the broccoli argument", where the insurance market mandate is likened to a mandate requiring the purchase of greens, and other such items of interest.

Out in the world today, the nation of Israel severed its ties with the United Nations Human Rights Council over inquiries by the HRC into settlement building by Israel in Palestinian territories. This may not be all that, erm, surprising, if the perspective of the government is the same as a colonel in the Israeli army declaring that all the prohibitions to Jews are voided when those Jews are fighting in wars, including the rape of women. When inquired, the spokesperson angrily denied that this was the position of the army itself.

The Department of Homeland Security believes themselves the sole protectorate of North America, declaring that they will refuse boarding to persons traveling to Canada or Mexico, even if their flight route does not go across United States territory.

Domestically, [Religious Expression of praise here]! A North Carolina county recorder is bringing lawsuits against the large mortgage banks for engaging in fraud, because of the lack of paperwork involved in the house-as-casino-chip betting, flipping, and eventual bubble bursting.

The National Security Agency is building a data center in Utah, where they intend on not just funneling a lot of data into one spot, but then crunching it with some serious computing power to see if they can't break some encryption and other things to pick up even more data...oh, and that's doemstically and internationally. Plus, they can retain all of that data up to 5 years, even with no obvious connection to terror possibilities.

New York State passes a requirement that all persons convicted of a crime have their DNA taken and stored in a database. Where it is unlikely to ever be expunged and it is even less likely that it will only be used for good purposes.

Want to know who the corporations are that are writing the laws that your legislators are rubber-stamping? Have a list of who makes up ALEC.

Ah, and there's an argument that says the latest machinations to force women into being probed, sonogramed, and otherwise told their decisions to terminate pregnancies are wrong are reminiscent of the manner in which slavers worked to ensure they had good supplies and good "stock" of slaves coming from the women they owned.

Finally, speculation on whether Texas could go it alone as an independent nation, as they tried before. Some things missing, much like infrastructure and sustainability, that make it very important to succeeding as a nation.

Into technology, where Red Hat Linux will surpass $1 billion in annual sales, proving that it is possible to turn open source OS into a profitable subscription-based business.

Filmmaker James Cameron descended to the bottom of the Marianas trench, the deepest point on the Earth, and came back with some samples, and a desire to go back and get more.

Finally, A foldable sensor on paper could test for HIV-1 and malaria infections, for the approximate cost of less than ten cents per sensor. The sensor's cost would make it ideal for areas that need low-cost, low-electricity, low-technology tests to track, identify, and hopefully control such infections.

Into opinions, where we have a bit of a boggle at the idea that being a "bleeding heart" is an insult, especially after said troglodyte spent so much time calling out textbook examples for various bingo cards.

Elsewhere, several Catholic schools part of an organization of private and parochial schools have threatened to leave over the organization's continual denial of Muslim schools, unwillingness to accomodate Shabbat, and sending out defensive surveys about their own actions.

And last for tonight, that word, graphically? It does not mean what someone wants it to mean - in any sense. And there's a big helping of "shame on you for baring your breasts for a non-sexually-pleasing-to-me" in the person trying to shame the breastfeeder.

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Many of us, when we talk about the past, want to say "I would never have supported the Nazis, or the racists in the South", or any of those groups for with we see the error of their ways in clear hindsight. The truth of the matter is that many of the people in the past that we condemn with our clear eyes were much more complicated than our narratives tell us. So, let's have a bit of an example. Everyone, put your heads down on your desks and close your eyes. I'll read a few statements. Tell me whether you agree with them by raising your hand.

The United States War in Iraq has been a failure.

The United States War in Afghanistan has been a failure.

Marriage between white and brown people should be outlawed.

(At this point, if there has been someone not following the directions of eyes closed and heads down, their name is invoked instead of a generic.)

Remember to keep your eyes closed. I'll do my best to make sure this is followed, but there's no guarantees that someone isn't looking and I just haven't caught them yet.

Let's continue. Remember, raise your hand if you agree with the statement

Every person deserves the right to marry the partner or partners of their choosing, regardless of their sexes.

Each person deserves to be recognized by the gender they choose, regardless of what their outward presentation looks like.

God intends for women to get married, serve their husbands, and have children to mother.

(By now, I am fairly certain that I would have a smattering of different responses, some who put their hands up, some who left them all down.)

Mm. Fair enough. Put your hands down, open your eyes, and raise your heads.

I can conclude, with reasonable certainty, that some of you would not have been fighting against the racism of the south, would not have been attempting to smuggle Jews out of Germany and other Nazi-controlled territory, and are not the civil rights pioneers that you believe yourselves to be, at this point in your lives.

How so? Because not everyone raised their hands on the civil rights issues questions after the first one (that's a control question, by the way), and not everyone kept their hands down on the women's issues questions.

This is not a reflection of your character, though. The way the questions and responses were phrased, nobody was forced to admit they were against a civil rights issue.

I reminded you a few questions ago that there was the possibility that your classmates were watching you secretly. For some of you, I'll bet you wanted to raise your hand, but if that jerk two seats down was watching you at that particular moment, you know that you wouldn't hear the end of it. And then, of course, there was always the question of whether raising you hand when the teacher was watching, or not raising your hand when the teacher was watching, was worth it. Maybe I would change your grades once I knew you didn't agree with me. That wouldn't happen. If it did, I would be fired, and rightly so.

You might have believed in the statement, but the peer pressure was too much for you to risk it. Peer pressure was there, too - if you were caught hiding Jews, you could be sent to concentration camps or killed. If you were white and seen as a sympathizer to black people, you could be fired from your job, ostracized from your social circle, and shunned from white society. If you were black and someone thought you were being an "uppity n-word", they could get friends to beat you or kill you, and the law wouldn't necessarily prosecute try all that hard to find out who did it. Does this sound familiar?

Standing up for someone else is always a risk. Sometimes it seems like the risk is too great. Some of you will work within the strictures of your social circle to spread tolerance and acceptance. Some of you will speak out against injustice, and be a visible and public presence for the causes you support. Some of you will be on the other side of that issue, with the counter-protesters and the people who believe that it's a "special rights" issue, because God-through-your-pastor said so, because your parents said so, because it's what you believe. If that's what you believe, though, you can advocate for yourselves without creating an environment of fear and hostility and without resorting to violence.

If you can only get your point across by hurting the people saying you're wrong, you've lost the argument. And as you do violence unto others, they stare at you, each asking you a question. It's the same question they ask of all the people who stand by and watch, either because they're paralyzed by peer pressure or because they secretly agree. "Et tu?" "Et tu?" "Et tu?"

When you resort to violence, it's only a matter of time before people look back at you and proudly declare that they wouldn't follow the path that you followed...while ignoring the parallels between their own issues and the issues of the past.

"La plus ca change, la plus le meme chose." Or, as Santayana said, "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Will you be repeating the past today?
-----------

This has been a Shadow Idol post, prompt 19: "Et tu, Brutus?"

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Welcome aboard. Enjoy the knowledge that Paypal is revising their policies so as to allow for the sale of legal meterial they may personally object to. At least, for one publisher. Hopefully for all publishers.

If you simplify a gigantically complex issue like Uganda, and in the process, remove all the African voices in your single-minded zeal to create a single villain, can you make a successful and lucrative campaign? In the case of Kony 2012, you bet! But there's also some questions about who those backers are, and about how things went viral, and how the message is getting across. Let's have a nice example - in trying to show how stupid living one's life by the letters of the Chrisitan Foundational Writings, American Atheists chose to use the imagery of slavery to drive the point across. The word "backfire" doesn't even begin to describe how well the message was received.

Finally, the proper response to a disingenuous or attacking "Why?" is "Shut The Fuck Up". (Genuine whys can be answered, but not by the person who has just had their personal space invaded.) Trust the women, they know - creepy guys do not get to bed women. And, men and women, you should be able to discuss whether or not the sex is good without faking orgasms. Seriously.

Ah, speaking of women's issues, Tennessee's Republican legislators believes it a good idea to publically make available every abortion done in the state, with enough personally identifying information so that anyone can harrass the women and doctors doing the procedures.

An Arizona bishop has ordered the Catholic hospitals in his bishopric to let women die rather than give them an abortion. Not in such explicit terms, but he did order than none of his hospitals do abortions, and the one that was done (to save a mother's life) should be acknowledged as a mistake that will not happen again.

And Texas just deliberately forewent enough funding for 130,000 women to get basic health care so that they could prevent Planned Parenthood from getting any money to do those services at all.

Domestically, police suspect that detergent may be stolen and used as currency in the drug war. It is not aparently conceivable that it might be that the people who are stealing it can't afford it. Or might be doing what, say, the copper thieves are doing.

A young man is dead, having been followed by someone who believed him dangerous, who then produced his gun during an altercation and shot. The shooter claims he shot in self defense and fear of his life. Unfortunately, the law doesn't help all that much. The NAACP has requested federal involvement in the case, feeling a lack of confidence in the police department to do a thorough investigation.

One rule about taxes could raise an additional $47 billion USD for the government, mostly from the coffers of those who can afford to pay a bit more. Too bad there's an opposition that is clearly against making their masters pay anything more to the government.

The TSA is offering people a way to skip the normal security screenings and go back to the way things were before naked picture-taking - for an application fee of $100 that includes a background check.

In politics, an advisor to the still-frontrunning Republican party candidate speaks the truth - all the positions articulated in the primary are forgotten when it comes to the general election, mostly because for some candidates, that one included, the positions articulated in the primary are only there to get enough of the base to vote for them.

In technologies, the possibility that after 12 July, ISPs will willingly deputize themselves as agents of the media cabals in an attempt to curb file-sharing across the networks. If that is the case, then it may be worth investing in the Little Brother solution - encrypting and anonymizing the traffic you use with your tracker. Lifehacker offers one solution - The Pirate Bay offers another, and so forth.

NASA has unveiled a road map, should one find oneself off of Terra, of how to get about the Milky Way.

According to new research, driving while distracted is a matter of degrees, and that everyone has a slightly different tolerance when it comes to how much is too much. Which means that it's not necessarily the holding the phone that's the problem sometimes, but the conversation.

The future has developed the technology to create palimpsests using lasers. The question then is, can our historians of the future use their technologies to separate out the layers of a single sheet of paper so that they can figure out what it has been used for over time?

In opinions, Out Magazine interviews Gillian Anderson about her upcoming role at 43 of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, and gets a few interesting details about her earlier life in Republican Michigan and how much she freaked the squares by being herself. Elsewhere, speculation about the Big Bang Theory's cast, but no mention of whether Sheldon might be, say, ace.

Speaking of media and messages, captioning images from Harry Potter movies with messages of feminism. Some of which seem more effective in the contexts of their movies, like this one, that has several of the male adult figures with the caption "Masculinity is multi-faceted". Some, not so much, especially when particular authors are referenced. But they also link to such things as an unabashed love letter to Ginevra Weasley, a woman who played with the boys, did what they did, and held her own and opinions on the feminist qualities and natures of the Harry Potter series. Or the Hermione Granger series, if you choose to see it that way. (We, personally, see Neville Longbottm as the true child of prophecy, who has been hidden successfully by all the furor over Harry Potter until his proper time.)

Ms. Robinson likens the current political situation to a relationship with an abusive husband/father figure, where we must be willing to resist the bullying and band together to go forward.

Last for tonight, an image blog that engages in the practice of telling us that new technologies still require thought before they are plastered everywhere.

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Did I mention that I read half of a YA novel a little while ago? And in doing so, I received absolutely no compensation from the author, publisher, or anyone involved in the writing, editing, or distribution of the book? It's called "Scored", and it's a really nice story in the dystopian tradition where something has taken over the world in the wake of an economic crash. n this case, it's a scientific system of "scoring" teenagers through the use of ubiquitous cameras, peer reporting, teacher reporting, and a black box algorithm that crunches all that data into a single numeric score that determines your destiny once it's finalized at the end of high school. There are also the "unscored", usually treated as delinquents or second-class humans for not participating in the system. In any case, the story itself involves a tenured teacher forcing perspective on his students, and one of his honor students discovering the dark secrets of the system that the "unscored" already knew and has propagandized after her score drops due to association with someone who followed her heart. Much of the book then pits her with her unscored male rival trying to figure out how to get back to the point where she can go to college, or how to get her to college even with such an awful score. It reaches the Obligatory Climactic YA kiss between Two Rivals who discover they really have a Thing for each other - nice backdrop painting, with sparks flying from a shattered camera and what looks to be a community riot building in the schools...and then there's a one-page postscript that says "Hey, look, you've achieved your goal, even with your score drop. We loved your essay. Enjoy college, thanks to our grant."

And now you know why I think of it as half a book. All that climax...and then, one page of resolution. There's so much stuff going on out there that demands resolution in addition to the bit of whether the honor student can go to college. I kind of wish the editor had mentioned this to the author - "You have half a story that we'd love to publish. Once you finish it."

That said, it's a wonderful half of a book. (ETA: more description of plot.)

These days, I'm a regular over at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings these days, where I still get a little weirded out that I'm blog-commenting next to published authors (one whose book I read at university and loved. That's Kit Whitfield's Benighted, by the way, and no, no compensation for that plug, either.) I think this is the closest I get to the idea of "fan-X squee" when people look at it. I've also picked up another Dreamwidther, after much poking and prodding for her to get her excellent work on a blog as well. So while amarie24 is a bit new to the blog scene, she's quality on content.

Still kind of "erg" about the whole life thing. I would have written a Shadow Idol entry on "bringing a knife to a gun fight", but it was mostly about how much I don't really like being a Responsible Adult, because I feel woefully unprepared for it, for emergencies, and for the fiscal security that I've been desperately trying to achieve and can't get. (I repeat myself. I know I mentioned this before.) I'm stable, in terms of mental state, but right now, it seems like I'm stuck in the position of "hey, why doesn't anyone notice the things that I am doing that make me awesome? I neeeeeeed my compliments and comments and people giving me praise!" Because, after all, university was the last time when someone told me what the answers were - after this point, they only tell you when you're wrong or close to right.

Hi. Welcome to my brain, peer inside a bit and see all the melancholy. But if you asked me, I'd tell you I was fine. We always say that we're fine, even when we aren't. Social convention says that unless you're physically unable to make the effort and/or give a damn, you always say you're fine when someone asks.

Anyway, lest we ramble on, here's the last part to think about.

"The Nine of Pentacles - Solidarity and self reliance. You are a creature that works well alone, or needs do. You need to be self-assured and confident without the help of anyone else. You are a solitary thing, choosing your own ways and paths over others."

"I am the Cat That Walks Alone..."

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Here's something to start with: When Rush Limbaugh attacks women about birth control and slut-shames them, he's deliberately trying to stop women from talking about the problem of women and trying to make it only about one woman. Because if it's about women, then the privilege of white men gets challenged, and any sort of challenge to that privilege makes white men very, very, afraid that the world is going to end.

They also have the same problems as conservative groups that want to boycott Archie comics because Riverdale has gay people...and gay people getting married! (In response, the gay marriage comic SOLD OUT.) They're not getting anywhere, though, because the creator of Archie comics has said that Riverdale is an idealize America where hate, prejudice, and narrow-minded people aren't.

Elsewhere, Attorney General Holder re-iterated his legal belief that the President can order the death of anyone, anywhere, citizen of the United States or not, under the justification of the Concept War. That's Barack Obama's Attorney General, not a Republican AG, just in case anyone wondered.

Oh, and did we mention that someone found and then recorded a manner by which one could defeat the naked body scanners and carry metal objects into the secure area of an airport...and then the TSA told any reporters interested that they shouldn't be covering such a weakness.

Out in the world today, remembering the past where the residents of an insane asylum built a physical wall, for no pay, because the society believed they couldn't do it and didn't care about them to check.

Additionally, A United States soldier has killed 16 civilians in Kandahar province in Afghanistan and wounded five others in an attack. According to the article, the soldier suffered a breakdown before the attack. The nature of war puts people in situations where some of them will not be able to handle the costs. As rho points out, this should give governments pause when they make their decisions about going to war, and should give the people pause when their governments tell them that they're the good guys.

Richard Cheney canceled a planned appearance in Canada, citing personal reasons. Of course, it could be that Canada has rumbled repeatedly that Richard Cheney should be tried as a war criminal for the actions of the administration that he was a part of.

Global corporations, even with evidence of their wrongdoing staring prosecutors in the face, seem very likely to skate on any actual prosecution. Your local small-time drug dealer, on the other hand, if caught, or if there is enough evidence to suggest they are involved, will most likely be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Last out, the story of how HIV-1 became the epidemic it was...the spread is mostly due to the fevered, rapacious pace of European colonialism.

Domestically, Pat Robertson, evangelist, says marijuana should be legalized and regulated like beverage alcohol. He says the War on Drugs is a failure, at least for marijuana.

A wonderful long form piece about the two men who would make legal history in Lawrence v. Texas in the New Yorker, including the end of both men and the lack of burial due to not being able to raise the funds. We remember the case, but the people, not so much.

A deadly fire in an Ohio nursing home started because a drug lab based in one of the resident rooms attempted to make methamphetamine. One person is dead.

Last out, an autocorrected text message sent a school into a lockdown after it corrected a "gunna" into "gunman".

In technology, The United States declares that if a domain ends in the TLD .com, it can be seized by United States authorities. Hopefully, that means a proliferation of domains away from .com, so as not to have to deal with United States laws at all. Of course, that may not stop the United States from doing it anyway.

a developer says it was dropping Android support because of the difficulty of making their game work on multiple hardware bits. It's the MacOS/Windows divide, just on the mobile platform now. (And speaking of, Gates was right, predicting what would happen before such a divide happened.)

And speaking of Android, the NSA and German governments have unveiled a version of the Android OS that will be significantly more secure and suited for their work. Of course, technology security only goes so far - if you can still socially-engineer the people, including the guards and security staff, it's still possible to get what you want.

Login processes for social networks can currently be abused to display to an outside site whether or not someone is logged into that social network site. There are probably a lot of bad ways that something like that can be used or abused...

Japanese scientists unveil a weapon that befuddles speakers by playing their own speech back to them, just slightly delayed.

Last for tonight, a congratulatory letter from Dr. Bunsen Honeydew to the Mars rover teams at NASA, expressing his envy and assurances that he will get them the next time.

Into opinions, where we have Helen Keller's experience of the Empire State Building, which we compare with the experience of Ayn Rand regarding love.

On the panics of the past, a letter from a famous German about the hysterias of the United States and a letter from a famous citizen of the UK on the hysterias of Germany.

A Lutheran pastor quotes, and then ignores, the Christian Foundational Writings in his zeal to insist that President Obama cannot be a Christian when he mandates that women and the poor be taken care of by those who have more, because that mandate involves contraceptive coverage. Also, a bit about how women shouldn't be in control of their bodies.

In case you were wondering, Fox News deliberately changes headlines to suit their own spin. It's intended to make Democrats and liberals look as bad as possible, even though the underlying story is the same. Have more evidence of Fox News headline rewrites.

Last out, Mr. Huxley converses with Mr. Orwell about the similarities and differences between their dystopias.

Last for tonight, the discovery that women who have just finished ovulation are the best at detecting snakes. For what that's worth.

(Aigh! I have beome the person that only posts what other people have posted. Well, okay, there's a story I'm turning over that merges together Christian writing and Buddhist writing, all in the service of making a point about allies and experiences. I think. The last Shadow Idol entry I had was basically me saying how much grown-up life sucks and I feel very unprepared for it.)

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