Leading tonight's frenzy of fun is
lunch notes from the permanent roommate, where not only do you know which lunch is yours, you get some very fun commentary with it.
After that,
The Muppet Throwdown - the only bracket that matters.
Topping that, however, is
the apartment designed with a wall that lets almost all of the space be used for whatever room needs to be used at the moment, thanks to movable walls mounted with things like trays to pull out, books to have, and a fold-down bed. The walls allow for 24 different configurations, based on what is needed. Designed in the very cramped quarters of East Asia, it could find worldwide appeal.
The best of the bunch, however, is
Iggy Pop's two-finger salute as acknowledgement of the induction of the Stooges into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Because Punk does not grow any less punk as it gets older.
Japan also has legends of the fate Jimmy Hoffa was rumored to have met, with humans buried alive in structures, either because of being criminals, or sacrifices, or because they contracted diseases.
Our professional hackles go straight up at
a student accused of stealing and then trying to sell historical documents in the archives of his university. The dealer got suspicious when the documents he requested as a sample were not packaged well and damaged in transit. We know that college is expensive, but raiding and trying to sell the historical documents collection is not the way to go about it.
Out in the world,
the Catholic Church won an exemption today allowing them to deny homosexuals the ability to adopt through their agencies, possibly because the Church threatened to stop doing the work they wree doing if they weren't allowed to discriminate based on their interpretation of the teachings.
United States Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. said that if the United States were to read the constitutional protections afforded to criminals to Osama bin Laden, they would be read to his corpse.
Domestically, I can almost hear the conservative rumblings as
Salon explores how the newly food stamp'd can still maintain some organics and such in their diet. Perhaps because they don't like the assistance, or perhaps because they will conclude that if someone can manage to get organics and soy alternatives, instead of instant noodles and day old bread, the benefit is clearly too much. That said, they can take pride in that there's still some amount of unease about whether to apply, even if more and more are applying and using their food stamps to maintain their food lifestyle. (It's actually often pretty healthy and cooked using fresh ingredients.) As a further goad or measure of "d00d, how do they do that", observe the following infographics:
RDA vs. federal subsidies on the major food groups. Following on from that,
one of the hipsters from the "new people on food stamps" article in Salon responds to the accusations of laziness and worthlessness from the comment squad, pointing out that many of the "hipsters" on food stamps also carry jobs, jobs that are insecure and provide no benefits at all.
So let's talk a bit about "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps".
It's actually harder to shift social classes upward in the United States than it is in most European countries. Inequality is pretty high.
Americans believe highly in the concept of social mobility, however, and that its easy to do. This make mean that we tolerate a lot worse inequality because we think it's easy to overcome.
Now that we have the luxury of investigating fully,
when e-mails from Nidal Malik Hasan's superiors appear that indicate worry and suspicion that he's not cut out to be military material, we can say "Why didn't they stop him then?!" and feel properly like the disaster that happened was preventable. Because humans like to feel like they have control and that if they only do certain things or a certain way, misfortune will not befall them. It requires, however, humans not acting like humans, so it'll never happen.
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a teenager that sent nude pictures of herself to a friend (who then betrayed her trust and sent it on further) cannot be compelled, upon pain of felony charges, to attend a class on gender roles and to write an essay on why it was wrong of her to do so. It did not rule whether or not those teenagers involved in "sexting" could be charged with a felony anyway, so it's still more than possible for a DA to get their pound of flesh, they just have to take all the blood with it.
Have some information about the demographics of married same-sex couples in the United States. It's actually a rather higher percentage of those couples mentioned than I would have thought. I also wonder how many closeted couples there are that wouldn't respond in the affirmative. That said, there is some amount of acceptance in the world when one can openly
parody major comic book pairings by having the characters in the hero's harem start marrying each other instead of him.
The push to pass the health care reform bill begins in earnest, with the CW trying to figure out whether, despite being short some votes now, the House can whip up enough to pass the Senate bill and then the reconciliation measure.
The President picked up some cred today in engaging someone who doesn't agree with him. Representative Bart Stupak and his anti-abortion crusade, on th eother hand, are definitley dimming, with
a letter from a group representing 59,000 nuns sent to the Congresscritters to pass the bill, already. The Representative dismissed the letter and demonstrated the male-centric arrogance he displays around abortions, saying that he doesn't "call up the nuns" and instead prefers "leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee". Thank you, Representative Stupak, for that clear and object lesson on who you consult for women's issues - other men.
This is not supposed to be Afghanistan, Mr. Stupak.
As the unemployment rate continues to hold steady, the administration in charge continues to take more heat for not finding the magic that brings the rate down.
The Department of the Obvious has a great poll for you - people are currently less concerned abotu global warming than in the past. Perhaps the immediateness of possible unemployment, loss of health care, and other such things are interfering with their long-term vision.
Last out,
PETA is (now/still) considered a terrorist organization.
Playing in technology,
China has warned Google to comply with their censorship requirements. Google is, as of this posting, still flying them the bird.
The thieves are getting better and better, having managed to replace card transaction terminals in a store with those that allowed for the skimming of data, and nobody was the wiser for quite a while. Elsewhere,
a hacker accessed the system installed by some dealers into cars that permit them to brick the cars or honk their horns as reminders or punishment for nonpayment. First of all, why are such things being installed in cars in the first place? The more remote tech there is, the more likely it is someone will use that remote tech in a very bad way. Well, there's also the part where
Myspace decided it wanted to sell off the user data everyone has contributed to it in bulk, although we doubt anything personal-personal was included. The question now is whether the others will join in, or the backlash against MySpace will preclude the others from doing so.
Government agencies have been disobeying the directives of their President, continuing to hide and make exemptions to Freedom of Information Act requests, for significantly more events than his predecessor. Thus is government - one person says one thing, someone else does another, and the first person might get blamed for the second person's actions.
Finally,
mammalian regeneration possible? Gene p21 seems to be the one that controls regrowth - its absence might be the reason why some mammal species can regrow and some cannot</a>.
In the opinions,
Dr. Kengor on Gorbachev, how what he did brought about the end of the USSR, if unintentionally, and why conservatives and liberals alike have flawed narratives of the events. On the other side of the Cold War,
Mr. Devine offers a realistic treatment of Ronald Reagan and his policies on peace.
Mr. Kang undermines his and Don Imus's attempts to brand Tom Hanks as anti-American by admitting that he has a point. That point is supposed to be subordinate to purer, higher interests, and the quote the select has interpretations that I think Occam likes better, so I don't think it's quite up to the level of sound argument.
And back once again to domestic health care, where
Mr. Darling says that the Democrats are bending the rules and President Obama is a hardcore liberal because he's willing to use any tactc he can to get something passed. So... he lied to the country with false promises of weapons of mass destruction so he and the contractors behind his vice-president could invade a country in the Middle East? Because if he hasn't gotten to that point at least, I'd say he's not willing to use every tactic. Oh, wait, they're doctrinaire liberals because they keep "ignoring" the polls and the elections and everything else. Uh, no. There's been lots of attempts at coperation and "listening", probably more than there should have been.
Mr. Pruden does a little better, suggesting that Congressional Democrats are fleeing the President and health care because they're certain they'll take a beating in the election if they stand by him. Mind you, he does so by referring to Speaker Pelosi as a "dominatrix" of the House and that the plan is a "government takeover" of health care. The first conjures images that would be most interesting to see, the second is a lie.
Mr. Barone can't find enough votes for the House to pass anything, by his mathematics. The result of such things?
An exhortation to Pass the Damn Bill. Even if, as Mr. Fund point outs,
this means the precarious position of passing a bill that everyone hates and trusting that the amendments and reconciliations will go through instead of stall out. On that point,
The Times, unsigned, says the bill can be beat if it stays delayed long enough for yet more fake grassroots mobs to make their presence felt against culnerable Congresscritters, to appeal to the Congress's self-preservation instinct and try to make it stronger than their desire to do something, anything, that would help move things along.
Our education opinions start with
Mr. Merola almost throwing up a shaggy dog story about religion in school, only to settle down into the argument that education is discriminating aganist only Christians when it comes to religious expressions, and that this is "one-sided censorship" that shouldn't be tolerated. The example he cites is of a teacher required to remove phrases such as "One Nation Under God" as possible Establishment Clause violations, while keeping in place philosophers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, and the Dalai Lama. That all of them are religious has no real bearing on the point, so long as their sayings weren't advocating for their religion. There were also a string of prayer flags, where his argument actually holds some water, so he's not totally off base, to be fair. Where he finally gets to (and could have spent a lot less words getting there) is that the idea of "sepration of Church and State" has been hijacked from its original meaning, using techniques employed by COMMUNISTS! to reinterpret freedom of religious expression as a violation of the Establishment clause. (Now you see why I class it an almost-shaggy dog story. It does have a point, it just takes forever to get there.)
Running down the worst people in the world,
The 11th Circuit Court of the United States gets a nod for having potentially said it is legal for the government to grab your e-mail from your ISP as soon as that e-mail has been delivered. What part of the Fourth Amendment did this Court not understand?
Going one up from there, though, are
Senators McCain and Lieberman, presenting a bill to Congress that would allow the military to arrest anyone as a suspected terrorist, hold them indefinitely, and deny them their Miranda rights for the purpose of their detention. Blame to spread a-plenty, though, as
the President is proving to be a little less than wonderful about greater oversight of intelligence agencies, too.
And getting out of opinions,
Mr. Kotkin says the United States will do great in the years to come because we're going to have a rising birthrate, as opposed to everyone else, and that rising birthrate makes us just that more awesome.
Last for tonight,
pictures of icebergs carved by nature, as opposed to
staged pictures of wildlife for various magazines, and
an unholy fusion of Egg McMuffin and McDouble burger, the Mc10:35, only available at said time because the transition between breakfast and lunch is at the right moment that one could get the last of the breakfast sandwiches and the first of the burger.
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