Definitely anticipating the presence of Anime Central this weekend. Have started to compile the lists and get things in order so that when I arrive, I can just set up shop and make things work perfectly for me. It’s going to be good to see JAMS again, and the three days will probably be too short, really, for all of us to get totally caught up (plus, you know, convention...)
Watched the new Transformers over the weekend and was suitably unimpressed by it - nice effects, but no real story or plot, and the characterization could have been done a lot better. Of course,
defense companies are already building tiny spiders and scorpions to help troops navigate dangerous areas and spy on people. In the future, there may have to be a fumigation for all sorts of bug-like creatures.
Let’s get to the news.
The situation in Myanmar/Burma has deteriorated, including delays by the ruling junta, to the point where
the idea of invading Burma to deliver humanitarian aid is being seriously considered.
China's Sichuan province took a 7.8 earthquake on the chin today, with more than 8,700 dead so far. In response to the quake,
China has mobilized their army to assist and is being open about the disaster response that they are undertaking, perhaps in contrast to the closed nature of the Burma disaster.
Domestically, tornadoes swirled through the South over the weekend, killing more than 20. In Picher, Oaklahoma,
the EPA intends to test air quality for high lead levels after a tornado upset several piles of lead-filled waste.
Oliver North has a knock on the “economic stimulus” plan that gives tax refunds to the populace -
for most people, the money is a welcome way of making sure their gas tanks stay full. He then goes on to say, “So all of that money’s going to Middle Wast countries so they can keep funding terrorists to send against us. And the people here at home don’t want to develop or tap any new energy sources to counter the rising prices.” Ending dependence on foreign oil by tapping one’s own resources is a temporary solution at best. If the research could then produce something else to run the vehicles and electricity on that is renewable indefinitely during that time, then the tap is probably justified. But I think it would only be there for the purpose of dropping gas prices temporarily, and then having them spike back up when the reserves ran out.
Speaking of the economic stimulus,
thanks to provisions that are supposed to keep illegal immigrants out, many citizens are also being denied their stimulus checks. Those whose spouses don’t have SSNs, or are abroad, or who are abroad and have married a local. Funny how a lot of plans find that they haven’t thought about the military in their want to make new rules.
The re-purchase of land by First Nations tribes has their neighborhood cities raising eyebrows, wondering if the natives are trying to block development plans or other such things. Maybe it’s because they don’t want to feel quite so cramped. Or the land was theirs, and they’d like to return it to the way it was? Does it make some people feel uneasy that the First Nations can start reclaiming their land with the money spent on gambling? At least some part of me is saying that this kind of revenge is the best kind, and those tribes that can do it, go right ahead. Improve the lives of the people.
More religious nuttery ensues with
children and their mother living with the corpse of a 90 year-old woman, on the advice of an elder who claimed the corpse would reanimate. The religion, however, appears to have been a very small one, and will not likely be succeeding into the future with the discovery of this particular tenet.
With regard to candidates in the United States elections arriving soon, Senator Clinton
praises her ability to build a coalition of white, uneducated voters. That’ right, she said she gets hard working white Americans and white Americans who haven’t finished college. Possibly even more so than the Republican, Senator Clinton is proud to be the candidate of the Angry White Man.
Austin Cline at the eGeneral's wonders just what kind of vote Senator Clinton wants, if she really wants the votes of the consciously and unconsciously racist and the scared, and looks at the bigger picture as to whether the election of Senator Obama would be the excuse many would use to continue being consciously or unconsciously racist while claiming that the country has gone beyond racism.
As for Senator Obama,
vicious rumors continue to abound about him, including the Muslim myth, the elitist myth, and the patriot myth. Because these falsehoods just won’t die, some states may swing in favor of Senator Clinton. Why does Senator Clinton want this kind of mob as her support base, again? They’ll probably just vote for the Republican in the general. And speaking of him,
there are a lot of things younger than John McCain.
Truths of our times, as told to us from a working girl -
Humans crave touch. Men are societally told to suffer in silence, whatever their sufferings. And thus, for this particular courtesan, the cuddles and the conversation and the connection were the majority of her time, not wall-to-wall coitus. The men were embarrassed to receive oral sex, or to have a woman on top and enjoy it. And that’s really sad, to have a society that tells men that they always have to be on top, or they’re unmanly.
On the other end of the spectrum from that is the Phelps clan, who have
Promised to picket Jenna Bush's wedding because her father apparently hasn't done enough enshrining of discrimination into law for their tastes. Nothing satisfies the Phelps clan, I’m sure, except the case where everyone they hate and everyone who has a civil or tolerant opinion toward the people they hate is executed by firing squad. I guess it’s because Dick Cheney didn’t kill his daughter once she said she was a lesbian.
Absolutely inexcusable, from any end of the spectrum, however, is
a 14 year-old boy who gathered two friends to kidnap one of his peers and then raped her. The two accomplices also apparently stopped another girl from witnessing or helping the raped girl. The judge decided that the boy could do without jail time. The account, sounds like it was deliberate and thought out beforehand, considering that there was kidnapping in addition, as well as accomplices. One hopes the judge is right and the boy doesn’t do anything from here on out. If not, he’s probably going to find jail to be a comfortable home.
Humberto Fontova takes issue with a Michael Moore statement, extends Moore’s sentiment to the entirety of the liberal political spectrum, then finds a counter-example to the statement and broadly declares that liberals everywhere want to call all Cuban-Americans cowards. There’s got to be a fallacy somewhere, if not several. Taking Michael Moore as the voice of liberalism is pretty silly.
Dinesh D’Souza does the same, though,
trying to make one atheist with some extreme views on euthanasia and infanticide into what all atheists will eventually believe. Dinesh is shocked that in his scheduled debate on the nature of God, that his opponent won’t get sidetracked into talking about something other than the scheduled debate about God. How strange is that. Even so, D’Souza talks about those views and takes his opponent’s combination of atheism and euthanasia as possibly “where the road to complete secularism actually leads”. Sounds familiar. Atheists and liberals will eat children, indoctrinate homosexuality, persecute Christians, blah, blah, blah. Why do some Christians have no faith that fellow members of God’s creation are lacking in the faculties to behave morally and ethically? Even if they don’t necessarily believe in the creator, would said creator be so selfish as to withhold such a gift because the creature with his breath doesn’t believe in him?
Ken Connor manages to point out why there should be no controversy in schools over the teaching of ID, while
shilling for Expelled and saying that academics are engaged in censoring heterodox opinions. The key line is that Connor says all theories of origin of life, be they ID or not, require some element of belief. Which is true. Evolution is not a theory of origins, so it should be spared having to go against ID. So far, so good. It’s also true that there hasn’t been a hypothesis on the origins of life on the planet that has made it through an experimental phase. So if someone can provide an experiment that will successfully test the hypothesis of intelligent design, then the test and its results will probably make heir way into the annals of science. Until then, intelligent design should content itself to be taught in metaphyiscs.
Even more disconcerting is the way that language is being abused in these arguments. There’s the classic “only a theory”, completely discounting that theory has special meaning in science. There’s also an insistence that “academic freedom” means “we take everything anyone says seriously, without requiring proof to back up the assertion”, which is more the definition of “gullible” than “academic”.
Regarding all of this, I think Doug Giles sums it up best -
Teach the kids/people how to sense BS. It’s a valuable skill.
In technology,
semantic Wikipedia searching has appeared, with plans for it to go to the Web at large. Using linguistic analysis and other items, it looks quite interesting to see what can be extracted from various Wikipedia articles.
If anyone is ever curious as to what the last meal requests of those executed are,
Dead Man Eating chronicles what was had, how the death was done, the case behind it, and where in the statistical standings the executed lies. There is a bit of a delay from execution to reporting, but that’s probably due to some requirements of law that prevent those records from being released immediately.
Last for tonight, always remember that you live in
The Strange Times, and that those who cannot laugh at tge absurdity will soon be consumed by it and destroyed by it. Probably as buttons in the land of Thud. If you’re interesting in picking apart some of the strangeness and watching how things change when lines of code are removed from the world (or just watching Pong go unhinged), look at
The Naked Game. In either case, time to make the dream analysis.
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kittenmint, you got my email, right? :( 
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