Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Linkstorm: Said and Sadness

The following post is rated:
 
Patrick Stewart says he now supports assisted suicide. Is there anything else that can get people to crowd around a water cooler and talk about something old like it's new again, it's celebrities and their opinions. The type of assisted suicide that Patrick Stewart talks about here sounds reasonable and it is kind of mind-boggling that it's a topic of some debate or import.

Also, he's seventy? Damn. And how scary is that Alzheimer's/Irumodic Syndrome thing? Well, not that scary. I guess that wealthy people do tend to live long enough to have neurological and cardiological issues that older people have. Given that he has both, it was a fifty-fifty shot that he'd have a disease similar to that of one of his characters (of which he has had quite a few. Again, a function of being older).

But it seems like an interesting coincidence on the surface, right?

There's a lot of talk about A Game of Thrones being dude-centric because of its genre. io9 says that's not true in the slightest. If we're going to fault a series for being "for men," we should at least fault it for the (apparently, various) right reasons. Also, technically well done.

Illegal immigrant college students speak out about their rights. No. Just no and get over yourselves.

A report from Britain says that we should be careful about the lowered threshold of violence that autonomous military systems present. Yes. We will do that. Now if you excuse me, I need to get back to the business of the economical projection of power overseas without public outcry. This is the kind of truly relevant report policy makers enthusiastically nod their heads about and voice approval for while changing nothing.

Mr. President, you know I like you, but this spending cut thing is a "get on board or get left behind" train. I like all of the programs that are being cut. I don't want them to go away, but we can't just keep spending more than we make. It's been a political mantra for years and everyone I know has cared about this issue, yet this is the first time I'm seeing my government do something about it. Why not counter with spending cuts that affect the people who are calling for these things or some taxes to meet these guys halfway(or however the math plays out)?

This is an opportunity. One that the--ugh--tea party of all people are exploiting. Take their thunder and make some change. This is your thing.

Somali pirates are taking ransom money then keeping hostages. New idea: quit paying these guys and kill them.

With bullets (or lasers).

io9 breaks down 28 movies coming this summer. My responses:
No.
Yes
NO
No
Hmm
Nah
Insufficient Data
Meh
Maybe
LOL, no
We'll see
N.O.
No
Not Yet
Hell yeah!
Want to, but no
Yes, actually
NPH vs CGI?!
Totally want to, but won't
LOLNO
No. No. No.
Zzzz
Eh.
Farrel + Chekov + Tennant = ...maybe
Riiiiight
...
Malcom McTicketbought!
Uninterested Viewer $5 Richer

No High Scores postulates that DRM encourages piracy. Duh. Howevercomma if you are tempted to buy Witcher 2, maybe the fact that its publisher had the cojones to sell it without DRM might put you over the top?

Rumor has it Nintendo might be working on a next-generation Wii or an HD Wii. Laughter abounds on the issue.

But seriously, if they are, then screw those guys.

So hard.

Speaking of people on my bad side, Hamas is trying to deal with violent extremists in their territory. It's like, I could just switch "Hamas" in that article with "Israel" and switch "militants" out with "Hamas," and no one would be able to tell the difference, save for how angry people would be at Israel.

I laughed throughout most of this thing, honestly. I do feel bad when a child dies, but I don't feel quite as bad as when a few hundred children die in, say Japan. So if you're really angry at me, instead of maybe impotently railing about it on the internet, throw a few bucks Japan's way. Nothing you say will ever make me a better person than I am now, but donating to help out Japan (or the Red Cross in general) might just make you think you're a better person than you are now.

School Shooting. More tragic for what it means than for who actually died. Worse for people who think that a free government can protect its citizens from all harm. It can't. What the lawsuit happy families of the dead want is a totalitarian state where, in the end, the police will kill students and no, you can't sue them.

Speaking of which, how the hell about Syria? Whenever I last mentioned them, I thought they were one of those "not gonna happen" places on this Mid-East reform/democracy/liberation wave. I was wrong. So effing wrong. They were breaking up protests back in February and just weren't on the radar. Damn. The deaths are regrettable, but the movement isn't. Good luck Syrians.

In Massachusetts, a mother withheld lifesaving medication from her kid. The title makes it seem pretty bad, but she was actually a single mom with multiple kids. The child in question had pretty bad autism and was on the road to recovery from the lymphoma, so she stopped giving him painful in-home treatments. I don't really know what to say to that. What she did was terrible, but I couldn't imagine taking all of that on and having to inflict pain on my own kid on a regular basis and have anything resembling human empathy left at the end. That this woman could afford the medication is astounding, but what more could have been done to help her? Maybe it's all the Batman I read, but I'd like to think there was another way.

A veterans advocate (and veteran) kills himself. It does hit close to home and parts of me want to condemn and condone this, but how could I?
How could anyone?
It just sucks.

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