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Overnight News Digest - Penultimate Edition
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John Kyl to retire. Gabby Giffords for Senate '12!!
Ok, this is a short diary (more like a footnote), but if she's well enough, which is not certain, wouldn't she be a wonderful choice?
Think of it: Nate Silver describes how the Dems are vaguely within strikng distance in AZ, though it's a hard state for any Dem to win, much harder than neighboring NV or CO, but who else could even come close? Plus, Congresswoman Giffords has the respect of people in AZ
If she's well enough... Go Gabby go!
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Bad Movies
In the past, I've written pieces that asked what were the worst political gaffes & mistakes. Usually, at the heart of every political mistake is someone or a group of someones that got their heads together & came up with a policy proposal, campaign move, statement of reaction, or other "cunning plan" that wasn't thought all the way through, and it fails to live up in execution to how well it read on paper.
Most bad movies are concocted in a similar manner, except instead of a group of political aides sitting around a table trying to fashion a poll tested message, it's a group of film executives sitting around a table trying to fashion a film around screen-test results.
But there are many ways to jump on the Fail Boat, and screw up horrendously. There are many different levels of bad, with some films that are just plain bad, some that are Godawfully bad, and still others that are so bad they become an enjoyable experience.
So a simple question for the evening: Which bad film experiences stand out, and why?
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Open Letter To Maynard
So I was thumbing through Netflix a few weeks back and I stumbled across "Blood Into Wine". At first I was impressed. An artist who has managed not to squander his life and talents, throwing himself down a flight of Dionysian stairs repeatedly over and over again. Mr. Keenan has chosen to make wine, which I think is noble. Earthen hands often make for a clean conscience.
Boy was I wrong. The wine thing made me first believe that he was more substantative, possibly transcendant. Not so, I'm afraid. I took a deeper look into his poetry. He's nothing but a tantrum throwing adolescent revelling in his towering self image. I've decided to write an open letter I think will effectively tear down his house of cards.
Maybe it will lead to personal growth somewhere for someone. If not, oh well... I've said my peace and it will apply to multiple situations and individuals.
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Marine Life Series: Ruby on NOVA
It's been a long time, way too long a time, since I've posted an MLS diary. But PBS ran an episode on animal intelligence, and they asked me and Ruby the octopus to star in it. So, I thought I'd share.
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I've got one word for you. Aquaculture.
I've got one word for you. One word.
Aquaculture.
Exactly how do I mean?
I'm not talking about the marine type of aquaculture with floating cages that breed diseases for wild inhabitants. Rather, the land based fish farms that can help to meet the demand for fish, and the need for healthy food, while relieving pressure on wild fish populations.
Aquaculture.
Aquaculture is the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a re-circulating system. Growing Power uses Tilapia and Yellow Perch to fertilize a variety of crops and herbs using aquaponics. Currently, we have three Tilapia systems and six Yellow Perch aquaponics systems in our greenhouses at our urban farm in Milwaukee.
Aquaponics is the method of growing crops and fish together in a re-circulating system. In the Growing Power aquaponics model crops grow vertically on raised beds.
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Yes, We've Learned To Move The Moon Now
We know it's scary, but it's just part of our natural evolution. We've become different from you. And now, we have learned to move the moon.
Yes, it's scary how its orbit is changing. We know you are afraid. But we still love you. Not to worry.
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Governance Is God's Work
Nature has a review article out on progress with the human genome. I was stunned to read this passage
Our knowledge of the contents of the human genome in 2000 was surprisingly limited. The estimated count of protein-coding genes fluctuated wildly. Protein-coding information was thought to far outweigh regulatory information, with the latter consisting largely of a few promoters and enhancers per gene. The role of non-coding RNAs was largely confined to a few classical cellular processes. And, the transposable elements were largely regarded as genomic parasites.
A decade later, we know that all of these statements are false.
Just as the scientific discovery that the sun is the center of the solar system rocked political though of its day, here we have, written into our own DNA, a refutation of current governance dogma. Or to put it another way Republicans are wrong and God says so.
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Cleaning up the garbage
One of the stories that most struck me is the story of young, educated, Egyptian men cleaning up the garbage in Tahrir Square. Thomas Friedman describes the scene as follows in today's New York Times:
more after the flip
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Elections matter: Tea Party Governor's Assault on Workers
Absolutely unbelievable. In Wisconsin, our newly elected Tea Party governor is about to announce an unprecedented attack on public employees. No, it's not a vague "sometime in the future" kind of thing. The legislature is supposed to vote on it next week.
Lots of people seem to think that elections don't have consequences. That both parties are "the same". That the corruption that permeates our system (thank you Citizens United!) affects both parties equally.
Well, it doesn't. And the hundreds of thousands of union members in Wisconsin, at least, are about to learn that lesson the hard way.
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Edwards Evening News Round-Up: Possible Prison Prelude Edition
NOTICE 1: If you don't care about why I'm writing this, just skip to the jump
NOTICE 2: I tend like to use colorful language. If that bothers you, go away :)
NOTICE 3: Occasionally, when I get in these moods, my writing style has been called either, "very casual and talkive" and/or "a bit deranged sounding". Frankly, I find it appropriate given the nature of politics, especially in America today.
NOTICE 4: Having said that, I will not be proof reading this and refuse to be held responsible for any typos and grammatical errors! So HA!
Introduction: samfish? What The Hell Are You Doing..?
In these final, waning days of what we know as DailyKos (because from what I understand, this site isn't going to be around after this weekend), I've decided to have some fun in a diary every night until the anticlimactic finale arrives and crushes us all.
...or something.
And what better way to start this...um... series (?) of diaries off than by getting in some gloating?
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Palantir cuts ties with BOA after Anonymous' exposure
I just caught a tweet from AnonymousIRC and the firm Palantir Technologies has cut their ties with BofA and HB Gary.
phpislife Abhy Awasthi Retweeted by AnonymousIRC
FLAWLESS VICTORY! =D RT @AnonymousIRC: @PalantirTech cuts all ties with @HBGaryPR and apologizes in public: Firm targeting WikiLeaks cuts ties with HBGary - apologizes to Glenn Greenwald
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Breathe. If You Can, You Ain't Dead Yet.
Do one thing for me, good kossacks. Breathe. Just close your eyes, let the world go away for a moment, and breathe. Deep, long, wonderful breaths. If you made it through that exercise, it means you ain't dead yet.
I still can. Not well. But I manage.
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Vote on what to call the Egyptian Revolution
What do we call the Egyptian Revolution? I asked that question a couple of times lately, then asked the DKOS community: come up with a good name or tell me what the protestors themselves use. The suggestions and notifications have come in. In general, we've had at least four broad categories of responses. For the poll, I've marked each possible respone with the following code to distinguish the apparently local names from the external media names, the facetious and so on.
- Serious discussions of the protestors' and local media's take on the issue. "The Revolution of Anger" and so on. These names are given the best place atop the list.
- What appear to be external media names. Note that I included the Al Jazeera name "Lotus Revolution", as it appears to be international media generated, not local protestor terminology. No intention to deprecate the name, which would be the one I'd vote for it I could vote.
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Egypt Repubs taking power! omg!
I have not been following the minute to minute details of the Egyptian uprising, but I am thinking about it a lot, both in global political terms and domestic political terms.
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Persona Management, Twitter-bombing, and the Weaponization of Social Media
Happy Rockefeller points out the leaked HB Gary email that describes 'persona management', a black glove digital technique that creates "not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona. For this purpose we custom developed either virtual machines or thumb drives for each persona. This allowed the human actor to open a virtual machine or thumb drive with an associated persona and have all the appropriate email accounts, associations, web pages, social media accounts, etc. pre-established and configured with visual cues to remind the actor which persona he/she is using so as not to accidentally cross-contaminate personas during use."
Creating digital herds of social media sheep administered to graze or stampede through low-maintenance, centrally-administered triggers is shady to be sure. What's more, it could work. In fact, it is no doubt already working all over the Internets. This post, for all you know, is typed by a digital sockpuppet algorithmically translating and outputting these words into an apocalypse of global languages and dialects. Bots crawling for interchangeable grammar patterns, vocabularies with algorithms for placing regional slang variations into common sentence structures. One author typing one post on one laptop. Click 'Publish'. Hundreds (thousands?) of pieces of content are blasted at intervals carefully designed to mimic an sudden, organic, "netroots" global discussion via tweets, GMails, blogs, and Facebook Pokes...all automated in a cleverly randomized lockstep.
And it gets worse. Wait 'til you get a grip on Twitter bombing (pdf.).
Can Twitter-bombing be stopped? Sure. Twitter could shut down the Twitter bombers. Google could deemphasize incoming traffic from Twitter bombed links.
But add Truth and what is a Twitter bomb? News? History? Art? Antoine Dobson ?
Content bombing up the Google indices due to sudden influxes of traffic from Twitter isn't necessarily a Twitter-bomb. It could just be an assassination , a bong rip , or hamster on a piano...eating popcorn...on a piano...
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Sick of the Irony
I sit here sick as a dog, stuck in a web of irony. As a school teacher of middle school youth, I arrive at school at 5 AM and leave at 5 PM. About once a year, this schedule takes its toll on my body and I end up sick for a day or two. This year, some student-provided cold has walloped my body and left me dizzy enough to crawl around the house. I am attempting to recuperate by resting while watching movies. As an English teacher, I pray my sickness does not result in horrific writing… please forgive me if it does. Additional ironies flow from there…ironically below the fold.
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What Most People Don't Understand About the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill
I have been attending the rallies, watching the coverage, reading the blogs and comments and come to the conclusion that most people don't know the true horror of this bill. I have come to set the record straight particularly when I saw a Front Page Diary here on Daily Kos that, again, talks about this bill only affecting state workers.
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On, Wisconsin--but be careful
I am so proud of the protesters in Wisconsin right now. I went to UW-Madison as a grad student and was a member of the Teaching Assistant's Association: I'm now a member of some other unions (California Faculty Association, NEA, etc.) But as I watch, I'm worried about something specific: fake "union violence."
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Snorz 10217
I would have called this My So Called Life but somebody with better writers beat me to it. So I figure I should name the musings of an aging white guy after the effect I most expect them to cause.
Apparently I've been hanging around this place for almost 6 years and haven't posted a diary, maybe I ought to contribute something. So this is my effort, hope it helps.
If you haven't nodded off yet, let's make the jump.
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More Pages to Explore .....
