So this sounds a little bit like a mock trial by ordeal to me. And people say history doesn't repeat itself!
The critique of Deltano's performance at Dominion High was conducted by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. It included criticism of his decision to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of condoms against HIV by dangling a cinderblock over a male student's genital area.
("Christian Sex-Ed Lesson Criticized"—via)
My favorite part of all this is that some sick self-righteous (I mean, "pious") bastard actually gets paid (from tax dollars) to threaten to crush teenagers' genitalia.
Labels: christianity, education, fud, history, religion, sham
This is a brilliant piece of propagandizing by omission from an AP article, "
Iranian President Derides U.S. Threats" in today's
New York Times:
"The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region," [undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas] Burns said Tuesday in an address to influential think-tank Gulf Research Center, based in the United Arab Emirates.
If you'll notice, the proper name of the
Persian Gulf - with the operative adjective being "Persian" - is shortened here to just "the Gulf." America, my beautiful country on the opposite side of the globe with the Atlantic Ocean on its right side and the Pacific on its left, America telling the Persians that they should not have a say over the Persian Gulf . . . well, it chafes a bit, is all.
Labels: fud, iran, sham
We have an important warning for parents. Today marks the three-month anniversary of the launch of the Nintendo DS Wireless Connection. But Action News has learned this popular gaming system could put kids in harm's way.
Parents buy the system so their children can play video games. But we have made an alarming discovery. Strangers can use this toy to lure unsuspecting children to dangerous places.
(The Nintendo DS System)
I have an important warning for parents, too. ABC 6 "Action News" of Philadelphia is
full of crap.
Labels: fud, media, nintendo
I don't know about the five people who read this page, but I'm tired of:
- . . . this page not being updated. Where's the content? I don't know. Read a book.
- . . . the ugly yellow color. Last time I checked, the "ELEVATED" yellow of the terror alert meant that there is a "significant risk of terrorist attacks." I don't know about you, but if there were, say, a significant risk of my apartment losing its structural integrity, I would freak out. If there were a significant risk that I would have a pop quiz in Latin on Monday, I would study. But there is apparently a significant risk of a terrorist attack happening, and I've been seeing yellow for so long that my response to this threat is, well, jaundiced.
(Postscript - A previous incarnation of this blog used to change background color according to the terror alert level.)
Labels: blogging, fud, terrorism
Bruce Reed is positively gleeful as he points out President Bush's low approval rating.
He's not alone. In fact, the
New York Times has been hammering the point home all month. The trouble with this assessment, of course, is that it's just
plain wrong. Don't get me wrong, I think Gilroy goes a bit nuts in his piece, but he's right that all of these rhetorical losses mean very little in terms of political power.
Ladies, do you really dig UNIX?
I ran into
this shirt on ThinkGeek and it made me wonder: how many of the girls in these action shots actually have a computer running some UNIX or *nix OS? I'm guessing the
Google employee probably does. The
cute girl holding the
O'Reilly book probably does, too. The
girl with the stuffed Tux (the penguin) is also a likely candidate. But I'm skeptical of
some of the more
teenybopper-looking photos. Maybe those girls dig
eunuchs. Touché, double-entendre'd shirt, touché.
Rock alert:
I just received an email saying that
Lifetime will be playing in San Francisco in January! I definitely don't listen to the same music I listened to in 1998, but you can bet I'll be at that show. Tickets go
on sale on the 20th.
Lightning rods are the Devil's work.
There is an interesting
op-ed contribution in the
New York Times today about how some Americans have always valued "faith" over reason.
Seasonal Colors
Now that I'm skinning my page (this refers to an earlier incarnation of this blog) according to the terror alert level, I'm hoping that the Department of Homeland Security plans to change the terror alert level according to the seasons (that is, the
natural seasons, not the
electoral ones - another
link), because this yellow/orange color suits the fall, but winter is fast approaching and I wouldn't want my page to go out of style.
Labels: fud, music, politics, religion, technology, terrorism
Calvin and Hobbes has always been my favorite comic strip and I was very sad to see it go. There is one thing that has always bothered me about it, however: that vapid decal of Calvin urinating on anything from the logo of your redneck rival's pickup truck, Osama bin Laden, or whatever else you don't like. I was thrilled to learn today that the comic's creator, Bill Watterson, never licensed that image and he had always tried to stay away from turning his art into crass merchandising. There's
an article on
Slate that gives a great overview of the strip.
Don't shoot students, shoot the messenger . . .
A high school in San Antonio, Texas, was
shut down yesterday due to fears of a terroristic attack. The fear was raised by the postings of some students on
MySpace.com. So far, the reaction (while it might seem overly cautious) makes sense considering previous student attacks and the liability issues a school would undoubtedly have to face. But the school's administrators are now threatening to sue
MySpace, because:
"It just seems to me that if you put up a public web site, and you allow students, teeangers [sic, but fitting, no?], minors to post their thoughts and ideas, and not monitor it in an adult manner, you are asking for trouble," [Pasqual] Gonzales [of the Northside School District] said. "This particular web site has been a pain for all Bexar County schools for a long time now, and it just seems that the owners of MySpace-dot-com should be held accountable."
By this absurd standard, even
my page, by virtue of being a "public web site," has an obligation to moderate the comments made by minors. You hear that, whippersnappers? No terrorist activity in my comments, please! I'll have to consult with Mr. Gonzales to find out whether this principle applies to the adults who might comment here, too. (via
waxy.org)
More stupid policies:
A German IT company has banned grumpiness at work to try to promote a more congenial atmosphere after a female employee was caught wilfully breaking company rules about smiling in the office.
(from The Australian)
Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but what a
German approach to the problem. Personally, I just think somebody must have been suffering
a case of the Mondays.
Labels: best, business, comics, fud
Since I found out about it, I have been duly disgusted by the "
Conservative Punk" website, not because I don't like conservatives, though I tend to reject a lot of what they stand for, and not because I don't like punks, though I can't help but recoil in embarrassment at my own punk rock youth. Rather, the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" conceit is a powerful deterrent, and here is that motif played out as fully as anywhere. I am not a big fan of contradictions, and "conservative punk" sounds more like a bad joke than a real movement. Anyway, there is a funny segment of that site endorsing a
boycott of Chinese goods:
While some websites will encourage you to boycott companies based on the perceived political bend of their CEO (IE Buyblue.org), we at Conservativepunk feel that punishing workers because the suits might have made donations to political causes we might not like is not an intelligent use of the power of our dollar. Instead, we believe that our consumer power can be put to the best use through the boycott of Chinese goods.
So, basically, it's wrong to punish workers because "the suits" might have politics we don't like, but
it's perfectly fine to punish the Chinese because
their "suits" have politics we don't like. Good call. What was it I was saying about contradictions, earlier?
The punks go on to point out several reasons why we should boycott Chinese goods. Some of them are indeed valid, but the very first one is:
China's labor practices encourage outsourcing and drive down American wages. Aren't you tired of manufacturing jobs leaving the US?
In effect, aren't you tired of allowing the Chinese to compete with us fairly? Wouldn't you prefer to tip the scale back in our favor? I guess they take the punk D.I.Y. ethic so seriously that they demand we "do it ourselves."
Heir Apparent apparently errs:
I'm a little mystified by
this report that Prince Charles plans to "explain the virtues of Islam" to President Bush. Apparently, he believes that the US has been too confrontational against Islam (as a religion, I take it). Believe me, I have plenty of objections to the Bush administration, and I have often complained about them here. But I do
not think Bush has misrepresented Islam as a religion, and I can think of many occasions where he has made it a point to stress that our enemy is
not Islam or Muslims. Frankly, I think too often our liberal (and honorable) tendency to try not to offend the sensibilities of others leads us to absurd situations where we are paralyzed to speak the truth. One group I particularly admire for taking a hard line against Islamist terrorism are the
Free Muslims. Perhaps if Prince Charles advocated a line more akin to the Free Muslims (which British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now beginning to do) than an unconditional appeal to multiculturalism and acceptance, then Britain might be a less hospitable place for
radical clerics who want to destroy the open governments that allow them to preach in the first place.
Sort of related to terrorism, I guess:
My friend Brandon asked to see the code for the terror alert function, so I thought others might be interested as well. Here it is:
function getTerrorAlert() 'Version 1.1
'*********************************************************************
'Do not modify the variables unless you know what you're doing. *
'(1) intTimeout is fair game, change it to whatever timeout length *
'you like, but don't exceed Server.ScriptTimeout. *
'(2) strErrorResponse is self-explanatory. *
' *
'Version 1.0: Got the alert *
'Version 1.1: Includes a timeout value. *
'Future versions aren't planned unless something is wrong with this. *
' *
'Afshin Darian - http://eighties-night.com/ *
' *
'AS USUAL, THIS IS UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. CHECK MY SITE *
'FOR THE LINK TO THE MOST CURRENT VERSION OF THE LICENSE. *
'*********************************************************************
dim intTimeout : intTimeout = 10 'in seconds
dim strErrorResponse : strErrorResponse = "couldn't contact dhs"
'*********************************************************************
dim strTemp, xml, xmlhttp, timeStart, timeCurrent, LOADED, strURL
strTemp = ""
LOADED = 4 'This is the readyState value when xmlhttp has loaded
strURL = "http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition"
set xmlhttp = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
set xml = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xml.async = false
call xmlhttp.open("GET", strURL, false)
call xmlhttp.send()
timeStart = now
do
timeCurrent = now
intTimeTaken = cint(datediff("s", timeStart, timeCurrent))
if (intTimeTaken > intTimeout) then
strTemp = strErrorResponse
call xmlhttp.abort()
exit do
end if
loop while xmlhttp.readyState <> LOADED
if (xmlhttp.readyState = LOADED) then
call xml.loadxml(xmlhttp.responsetext)
strTemp = xml.selectsinglenode("/THREAT_ADVISORY").getAttribute("CONDITION")
end if
set xmlhttp = nothing
set xml = nothing
getTerrorAlert = strTemp
end function
Labels: coding, conservatism, fud, islam, music, politics, religion, terrorism
Afshin Molavi, who is a fellow at the New American Foundation, contributes an op-ed piece in today's
New York Times, called "
Our Allies in Iran." He makes the case for easing some of our relations with Iran, in order to encourage the democratic-minded middle-class of Iranians, without ceding anything to the hardline regime. I think he's right, but I don't imagine anybody in the Bush administration would be convinced by his argument.
Speaking of the New America Foundation . . .
While I was reading about the New America Foundation, I ran into
this blog entry, by Nathan Newman, which complains about a statement made by the New America Foundation that points out the basic flaw in employer-based healthcare. Newman makes an analogy that should strike you as flawed even if you don't catch the immediate problem:
When Wal-Mart's trucks break down, no one expects the government to pay to repair them. Wal-Mart pays to fix them and the costs are included in the price of the goods they sell.
Yet moderate Democrats apparently think that when workers get sick, companies don't have the responsibility to "repair" their workers.
The problem, of course, is this:
Wal-Mart owns its trucks, but Wal-Mart does not own its employees. So while it is perfectly natural that Wal-Mart should expect nobody to care for its possessions, it simply does not follow that Wal-Mart has to pay for its workers' healthcare.
And while I'm pretending to be a right-winger . . .
(note: this has since been disabled)
In the spirit of civic awareness, I have decided that my page should serve as more than just a waste of time. So, I have changed my theme to indicate the Department of Homeland Security's Terror Advisory level at the time you load the page. If the DHS's website is unavailable, the theme will default to the "baby blue" theme I had before. However, if the DHS site is down, you should probably be more concerned about what happened to the DHS than what color my page will render. Of course, the problem could be on my end, so you might want to (perhaps) check a more reputable news source. In case you need to brush up on what the colors mean, here is the Terror Advisory
reference, or you can just look at the "terror_alert" sidebar on this page. If you want to do something similar, here is the XML file from the DHS site. It is sparse:
www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryConditionLabels: conservatism, fud, iran, politics, terrorism
Ernie was right about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Maybe I do give people the benefit of doubt too frequently. Now a whole bunch of sets on the Suicide Girls site have been censored. Instead, this is what you see:
But [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor [Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin] Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
(Washington Post - "Recruits Sought for Porn Squad")
Every time I hear about groups like the "Family" "Research" Council (yes, "family" and "research" each get the bunny-ear treatment), I think back to the old adage about the enemies of my enemies and the friends of my enemies. And it looks like my enemies consider Alberto Gonzales a friend.
Labels: conservatism, fud, media, sham
