Thursday, December 02, 2004

Scathing?

Salon and the Advice Goddess recently brought to my attention

"The new Pentagon PaperA scathing top-level report, intended for internal consumption, says that Bush's "war on terrorism" is an unmitigated disaster. Of course, the administration is ignoring it."

which you can read for yourself if you speak politics;

http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-09-Strategic_Communication.pdf

there.

I don't know dear imaginary reader if you would call this scathing, but I certainly would not. However I will admit that thus far I have only managed to muddle through the Executive Summary and it was, well.... hard to read. But within it there are reccomendations to improve what is called "Strategic Communication" which, I think is government speak for not looking like idiots in the public eye. And I think, the report might be saying something about we are assholes who appear to not give a crap what the rest of the world thinks and that we should try to stop being assholes.

But... I'm not real sure. So how Salon managed to figure it out is beyond me. I think this deserves further review, and hopefully someone less clearly in hate with the Bush Administration will read the damn thing and figure out what it actually says. But if no one else does.... I guess I'm in for some light reading.

Abstinence is the only way to get to heaven.

For most of my life I have considered scientists to be very respectable individuals. In fact one of the things I enjoyed the most about college was being surrounded by people who were seeking the truth beyond their personal views and or opinions. Though many people catagorize most institutions of education as being "Liberal" (obviously besides those with a religious bent) I disagree. I think that when conducting scientifically sound studies and reporting those results in an attempt to find out more about the human condition is a "liberal" attribute, I then wonder about those non-liberals out there.

The reason I'm talking about this is during my daily perusal of cnn.com I came across an article about the Abstinence oriented programs supported by the Bush administration in schools. http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/books/12/01/susanna.clarke.ap/index.html

Which was very interesting. I especially found the part at the bottom where they cite the gender biases inherent in such programs. (As a product of one of these programs I found it very interesting, I am especially glad that I went to an all girll highschool so that I had a chance to find out that I too, can have a life and be fulfilled. I think that abstinence oriented educationleaves one ill prepared for the real world. In fact, I think I was ill prepared for the real world, I was just very very lucky.)

ANYway. I then followed the trail of information to Rep. Waxman's website.

http://democrats.reform.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/index.htm

Where I found very interesting information about the Bush's Administration's policies with respect to all things science. And as it turns out there are some scientists in the world who are biased, and are not seeking the truth, but rather seeking to confirm their own point of view. So I will direct you dear reader to this website. So far I have only read the bits on Global Warming and Abstinence. But it's been very enlightening. Though I am sure their is bias inherent in the site, I don't have time to backtrack all of their references. I would love to hear some of it refuted though.

T-Shirt Heck?

So apparently its not just TV that is suffering from what I will call UBER-censorship. (Because everything is cool in German) After reading some of Jeff Jarvis's blog at www.buzzmachine.com I feel enlightend about the reason I am forced to listen to commercials for the Mormon Bible instead of commercials about how god loves everyone. And since he did a better job of reporting on that I'm not going to bother.

I am going to talk about t-shirt hell's article on their attempted add in Rolling Stone, which you can read about here

http://www.tshirthell.com/miscpages/rollingstone.htm

I love T-shirt hell because they are funny so the 0 people reading this blog should not get offended and all up in arms about what they read on that site. The views expressed on that website to not necessarily reflect the views of this blogger.

ANYWAY, I dislike that freedom of speech is being impinged (is that a word, or did I make it up?) on because a few soccer Mom's have NOTHING better to do with their time than take form letters and send them to the FCC or to CBS or to anyone really so that no one in the U.S. will ever have to hear anything ever again that might possibly be the tiniest bit offensive. Well, I think those women should all Suck my COCK! Yes, I know, I don't have one, but if I did, they wouldn't suck it anyway because they have shoved those sticks so far up their butts that the sticks are now protruding from their mouths and would prevent suction of any kind.

Ahh I feel better now. ::has a cigarette:

So Back to how Rolling Stone, a rock magazine, a magazine about rock and roll.... named after a band that was pretty Rockin (so I hear, before my time) has decided that the word Offensive is too Offensive. This is absolutely ridiculous. But unfortunately it seems to be a sign of the times. No one wants to be contraversial, no one wants to push the bounds of anything. How Boring. And by the way, I can't believe they think Desperate Housewives is such a risque show, does no one remember Melrose Place? 90210? Dawson's Creek? Just because its about older women does not mean its suddenly edgy. Women like Sex, get over it.

Okay, I'm going to go back to work now. And since no one reads this it doesn't matter that I have made no point whatsoever.