Jim Hines decides he's tired of the Abyss staring back and is just going to poke that sucker in the eye. Okay, well, he's going to try to write his next novel in a month, which he knows will fail, but at the end of the month he'll be in a much different place than where he is now. Good luck, Jim. I'm really interested in this experiment.
"No one should come to work and endure extreme temperatures, inhale dust and chemical residue, and lift thousands of boxes weighing up to 250lbs with no support. Workers never know how long the work day will be- sometimes its two hours, sometimes its 16 hours. Injuries are common, as is discrimination against women and illegal retaliation against workers who speak up for better treatment." Notice the lack of discussion about "pay" and "benefits." This, this right here, is why workers unionize. Here's more about the WalMart distribution warehouse workers' strike. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
"You don't wait three nights outside for a chance to see a doctor a few days later because taxes are too high or because Israel's prime minister is feeling neglected or because government-run health care won't give you your choice of doctors or whatever. You sleep in that line because you don't have anywhere else to go, except here, in one of of the biggest cities. In America. Right now." (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Have a program in a script language you wish you could set up as stand alone app? Well, there's an app for that. The Platypus will take your shell scripts, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Expect, Tcl, or AppleScript and make it into an actual app. For the MacOS only, though. I'm sure there's something for Lynix and Windows. (Pointed to by Dan)
One news anchor responds to a bully who sent her a letter regarding her weight. This goes into that category of things that women deal with that men don't. It also falls into a similar category that I belong to. In case you didn't know it I'm also obese (as defined by BMI). And lately it's been worse as I struggle to lose that weight. I'm still above 300, although I was near 280 at the lowest point in the past two years. All the weight I lost was distributed evenly over my body, but all the weight gained went straight to my abdomen. In class we've had discussions about weight, how fat absorbs x-rays, how the nation is getting heavier and we've had to upgrade the lift capacity of the machines, and even general comments about "healthy" weights. Each time I could see the instructors eyes drift to me, them realizing I noticed them, and then their obvious attempts to not look in my direction. As the news anchor says, do you think I don't know I'm overweight? (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
Look, real voter registration fraud… You all know how this ends, don't you? Although I'll say that dispite the obvious illegality of switching people's party affiliation in the same way phone companies used to slam customers, I'm not entirely completely upset. Although I wish this had been done before 2010. Because the people responsible for redistricting (in CA, do they have a non-partisan board?) would then used those registrations to apportion the political balance of a district. So they might think they'd get a reliably red district only to have it vote blue. Surprise change of Congress. I'm just being silly, because it is ethically, morally, and legally wrong to muck up the voter registration process. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Why are companies bringing jobs back to America? Well, they've broken many of the unions, China is a few years out from forming unions, the costs of transportation didn't stay low, and it really wasn't all that cost effective in the first place. Although that article spins all that to be "Patriotism, and good business sense." Never mind the millions companies blew setting up those factories and supply chains in China, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, and all the others in the first place. (Grokked from Jeff Beeler)
Conor Friedersdorf on why he's not voting for Obama. And, yeah, I've thought about those things. If you think I'm an Obama banner waver, it really does disappoint me regarding those three points he makes. I can make excuses, point to necessities, run the general line of war never being easy or pretty, but I am pretty upset that Obama has not rolled back those unitary Presidency powers, dismantled the domestic spying network, returned us to a more Constitutional form of government (strange how the conservatives never make these points when challenged on why Obama is going against the Constitution), and generally press the reset button on Bush Administration policies more often. The one big but here is that as President, Obama now belongs to a very exclusive club of US Presidents. Presidents often have some of their preconceptions altered once they take the Presidential Oath. I also expect Romney would have the some thing. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Jaun Cole with ten things Romney gets wrong about US Middle East policy. Much of which falls to history and context. Lots and lots of detail in there, much of which are the history of "crimes" of the US in the area. As some one who has been running for President for the past 6 years, you'd think Romney would have a better grasp on the subject. Instead he's decided to go for the feel good messages to the hawkish side of the GOP. If you think we have a debt problem now, just imagine if Romney's foreign policy stances were put into place. We would continue the New American Century's plan, although without the profits from Iraqi oil. And if you don't understand just why the Arabs hate us, you should read this. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Alligator Quotient: Alligators on speed. Just saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment