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Free panorama stitching application for the iphone being released.
Oct. 2nd, 2008
oh, yeah, the supreme court thing:
Oct. 2nd, 2008 10:17 amPersonally, I've disagreed with a couple of supreme court decisions. I'm disappointed with the court's reasoning in Reno v. ACLU, because that just means the same issue will come up again in more and different disguises.
However, the real prize of all of this have been Joe Biden's answers -- for those who don't know, Biden's also getting asked the same questions as Palin. After listening to Palin fumble, wouldn't you rather have a VP who gave this as an answer?
For the relevance of interstate commerce to deciding whether something is a federal issue or not, see here. For Violence Against Women act, see here.
However, the real prize of all of this have been Joe Biden's answers -- for those who don't know, Biden's also getting asked the same questions as Palin. After listening to Palin fumble, wouldn't you rather have a VP who gave this as an answer?
COURIC: (to Biden): What are the Supreme Court decisions you disagree with?
BIDEN: You know, I’m the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women act. And I said that every woman in America if they are beaten and abused by a man should be able to take that person to court. Meaning you should be able to go to federal court and sue in federal court the man who abused you if you can prove that abuse. But they said no that a woman, there’s no federal jurisdiction and I held, they acknowledged, I held about 1,000 hours of hearings proving that there’s an effect in interstate commerce. Women who are abused and beaten and beaten are women who are not able to be in the work force. And the Supreme Court said there is an impact on commerce but this is federalizing a private crime and we’re not going to allow it. I think the Supreme Court was wrong about that decision.
For the relevance of interstate commerce to deciding whether something is a federal issue or not, see here. For Violence Against Women act, see here.
From BBC News:
More at the article, and as I've noted before, just wait until the Bretton Woods system starts shifting away from the US and countries switch from the petrodollar to the petroeuro. See the wikipedia article on reserve currencies for details on how that will change things.
Unrelated to this, I went to the babyland show last night and it was fantabulous. Babyland is a crunchy industrial band with grinders and steel drums and all the other sorts of paraphernalia you'd expect, but they do a really great live show. Holy crap that was fun, great stage presence, costumes, and generally fun. Especially amusing was emulating the usual smoke machine with cans and cans of glade air freshener. Definitely another see-again band.
The opening band was about average for their sort of electropop industrial -- I call that sort of band VNV needs a lozenge -- but it had a cover of KLF's What Time is Love that was really fabulous.
The show was pretty good, it was especially good to be at a show where people had cultural signifiers that didn't annoy the crap out of me.
The financial crisis is likely to diminish the status of the United States as the world's only superpower. On the practical level, the US is already stretched militarily, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now stretched financially.
On the philosophical level, it will be harder for it to argue in favour of its free market ideas, if its own markets have collapsed.
Pivotal moment?
Some see this as a pivotal moment.
The political philosopher John Gray, who recently retired as a professor at the London School of Economics, wrote in the London paper The Observer: "Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably.
More at the article, and as I've noted before, just wait until the Bretton Woods system starts shifting away from the US and countries switch from the petrodollar to the petroeuro. See the wikipedia article on reserve currencies for details on how that will change things.
Unrelated to this, I went to the babyland show last night and it was fantabulous. Babyland is a crunchy industrial band with grinders and steel drums and all the other sorts of paraphernalia you'd expect, but they do a really great live show. Holy crap that was fun, great stage presence, costumes, and generally fun. Especially amusing was emulating the usual smoke machine with cans and cans of glade air freshener. Definitely another see-again band.
The opening band was about average for their sort of electropop industrial -- I call that sort of band VNV needs a lozenge -- but it had a cover of KLF's What Time is Love that was really fabulous.
The show was pretty good, it was especially good to be at a show where people had cultural signifiers that didn't annoy the crap out of me.