The last week has been interesting where issues of marriage equality are concerned. Between Rick Perry getting clowned on YouTube, the outing of one of the ad’s authors, with Newt’s own sister siding against him, with Newt upping the ante and supporting a Constitutional Amendment to ban marriage equality, and now Mitt Romney making a grievous error in judgement in thinking a vet would be supportive of his brand of bigotry.
For a moment, let’s set aside the hypocrisy in Rick Perry’s recent YouTube blunder that was a fair insult to the gay community in an attempt to curry favor with the Religious Right on the issue of prayer in school, with using background music lifted from Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. Or Perry’s adoption of the fashionable jacket worn by Heath Ledger’s character in Brokeback Mountain while we’re at it.
Let’s instead take a look at the outing by GOProud of one of the authors of the ad, Tony Fabrizio.
Rick Santorum has fired yet another salvo into the Presidential race with his insistence that “science should get out of politics.”
By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
A few months ago Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin made the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
Mr. Ryan’s speech focused heavily on the national debt, which he declared as a one of his “greatest concerns as a parent.” The representative used the example of his three children to emphasize the grave importance of the issue, which was the main theme of his speech.
Mr. Ryan’s call to reduce the national debt, while necessary and useful, was also somewhat lacking in specifics – because many of the specific actions required to reduce the debt either are unpopular, or go against the priorities of the Republican Party.
More below.
I was going to do a post at the Suicidal Cactus Hour in a somewhat belated review of Dragon Age 2–a game that I think has gotten a bad rap over the last few months. Not a perfect game to be sure, but with Skyrim out, and watching folks delve into it, there is rumblings of how terrible DA2 was, and in comparison the two games are apples and mangos.
That WAS until the Daily Show fired up on Hulu. And the mind numbing disingenuousness began to roll in.
Since – as has been recently noted – Moose are ruminants, here are some thoughts I have been having on addressing cybersecurity in industrial control systems.
The articles that end up instantiated as Moose markings are by nature and fact often completely off the political reservation. This topic does have significant political implications, though, as the stability of these systems both at home and abroad pose tactical and strategic challenges to social structures and political balance. To that point it is in fact very much a matter of interest for all members of our shared social experience.
The following is a set of slides describing a program that has been developing over this year.
The premise of the program is that there are hundreds of thousands of facilities in the United States alone where cyber systems control physical processes, and where the intentional subversion of these cyber systems could cause human and social harm, and that there is a need to secure these systems in a timely and effective fashion.
This particular set of slides is made for the Water sector, where more than 18,000 US water systems remain largely unaddressed from a cybersecurity perspective.
I will be interested to see how much sense this makes to all of you. There are parts of it that I believe may cause some interesting debate, but I will let you decide which those might be. ;~)
“ICS” = Industrial Control Systems”
I know, it’s been awhile, but I wanted to return with something maybe a bit of a personal nature.
I just got back from the doctor’s office. Nothing major, just a routine sort of blood test. Routine enough that I tend to not think about them too much. I mention it, because something not terrible happened. The phlebotomist stuck me, got my blood drawn in record time, and without much in the way of pain. For those of us who get stuck on a regular basis, that is an appreciable thing. (Diabetics, you know what I’m talking about)
I thanked the gal, on a good stick, and she was kind of surprised. Which got me to thinking.
It’s not often you’ll see someone advocate the destruction of their profitable business, but yeah I did it, and now the fuse lit with the passage of our healthcare law has hit the explosive.
You know it seemed a lot of the disappointment in the law surrounded the idea that the Insurance companies were making out like a fat rat. Some of us (ME ME ME ME) who actually knew what was about to happen tried to state no they weren’t, but because like most things the President does this was subtle this was at the heart of the matter but not loudly just effectively people lost their minds.
Asians are one of the most ignored constituencies in American politics. When most politicians think about the Asian vote, they don’t.
Yet the Asian-American population is increasing, both in absolute terms and relative ones. By 2050, the Census estimates that Asians will compose 7.8% of the American population. Although their voting rates will still fall far short of this, the population is becoming more influential. Predicting their future voting path therefore has some utility.
In previous posts, this blogger has argued that the Latino vote will likely trend Republican, as Latinos follow the path of previous immigrants and become more assimilated.
Will the same happen for Asian-Americans?
More below.