A Gay Man As Commerce Secretary?

Towleroad reports:

Equal Rep, which pushed for Mary Beth Maxwell as Secretary of Labor and William White as Secretary of the Navy, is pushing for a gay Secretary of Commerce in Fred Hochberg.

...

Said Equal Rep founder Paul Sousa to the Boston Globe: "It was devastating to learn that gay Americans wouldn't have a seat at the table within Barack Obama's Cabinet administration. They are the only minority group to have never been appointed in the history of the United States. Fred Hochberg is supremely qualified and this opening is the perfect opportunity for our President-elect to show gay Americans they have not been forgotten and he is truly committed to equal representation."

If Hochberg is indeed well qualified for the job, then he should definitely be considered. However, I don't think his sexuality ought to be a factor. The whole point of the gay rights movement to me is eliminating sexual orientation as a basis on which to judge people. It makes very little sense to back someone for a governmental office primarily because of his status as a sexual minority.

Ann Coulter's New Stand Up Routine

Check out the hilarity:


Watch CBS Videos Online
(http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4701138n)

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers this excellent response:

In roughly six minutes, Ann Coulter asserts that Sean Hannity is more likely to be assassinated than Barack Obama, that the country is teeming with "left-wing violence," calls W. the most persecuted and attacked president since Richard Nixon, and calls Tom Delay a victim of oppression. As I said--So. Awesome. My only beef with this interview was that dude should have let her talk more, and disagreed less. Plus no hits on Michelle Obama. Come on man! More thuggism plz!

The Des Moines Register's Future

The Iowa Independent reports:

It’s been a rough few months for the “Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon.”

Since August, Gannett Co. Inc., which owns The Des Moines Register, has eliminated 82 jobs at the paper. Names that had become familiar to Iowans, like Ken Fuson and Brian Duffy, and years of tradition were lost in the shadow of a national recession that exacerbated the woes of a newspaper industry already hurting from years of decline.

Overseeing the cuts locally was Laura Hollingsworth, who became president and publisher of the Register in September 2007. In June 2008, she was named group president of Gannett’s West Group, putting her in charge of 16 markets in the western region of the United States including Des Moines and Iowa City.

In an exclusive interview with the Iowa Independent, Hollingsworth discussed the recent layoffs, the Register’s future and the possibility of more painful choices in 2009.

Continue reading.

Teeth On Demand

Slashdot reports:

"For thousands of years, losing teeth has been a routine part of human aging. Now the Washington Post reports that researchers are close to growing important parts of teeth from stem cells, including creating a living root from scratch, perhaps within one year. According to Pamela Robey of the NIH. 'Dentists say, "Give me a root and I can put a crown on it."' In a few years dentists will treat periodontal disease with regeneration by using stem cells to create hard and soft tissue; they will take out a tooth that is about to fall, and reconnect it firmly to the regenerated tissue. Although nobody is predicting when it will be possible to grow teeth on demand, in adults, to replace missing ones, a common guess is five to ten years. Baby and wisdom teeth are sources of stem cells that could be 'banked' for future health needs, says Robey. 'When you think about it, the teeth children put under their pillows may end up being worth much more than the tooth fairy's going rate. Plus, if you still have your wisdom teeth, it's nice to know you're walking around with your own source of stem cells.'"

Like Our Blog? Check Out Our Twitter Page!

You can get our Twitter updates on the Podium's sidebar, on the dedicated page, in an RSS feed reader, on your cellphone, and even a few other ways if you really want.

Here's a taste:

* Al Franken owns Ann Coulter on who in history they'd be to change things: http://is.gd/eAX3. Via Minnesota Independent: http://is.gd/eCqK. 46 minutes ago
* http://is.gd/eDRQ: "A new study puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at ... triple current U.S. electricity rates!" about an hour ago
* http://is.gd/eDHl: "To boost recruits, US Army relaxes weight rules." Yet the queers are still unwelcome. Rational basis problems anyone? about 2 hours ago
* Sorry, Hannity: I'm no fan of political dynasties, but Caroline Kennedy isn't half as stupid as Sarah Palin. about 2 hours ago
* Yes, Hannity/Coulter, seventh graders should know how to put condoms on. It's a great way to prevent disease and teen pregnancy. about 3 hours ago

Wikipedia provides good basic information about Twitter.

For more on Twitter and social media in general check out the FASTforward blog.

Thoughts On The Bush-Obama Transition

(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/16900)

Topics covered:

The proper tone for Obama’s inauguration... Obama’s mastery of the vague statement... Will Obama by necessity continue the Bush foreign policy?... Recently returned, Eve reports on post-war Georgia... Is Rob insufficiently pro-freedom?... Who’s more like Henry V, Bush or Obama?...

What to do with Gitmo?

Via NPR:

During his campaign for the White House, President-elect Barack Obama was unequivocal about closing the remote U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just days after he won the presidential election, a transition team made up of analysts, lawyers and military officials began tackling the Guantanamo issue.

They started sifting through the files of the roughly 250 men still held there, looking at the intelligence on — and the evidence against — the prisoners, trying to come up with new ideas to solve the Guantanamo conundrum.

...

Those issues center on what to do with the terror suspects if the Guantanamo prison camp is shuttered. Bellinger's office was instrumental in bringing about the release or repatriation of about 500 of the Guantanamo prisoners. About another 60 are cleared to go, but there are problems finding countries willing to take them.

While there is no easy answer, a fair trial seems the most logical choice. Otherwise send them home to be processed.

Smokie Treats Of Another Kind

The Boston Globe reports:

Massachusetts officially decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana yesterday, but many police departments across the state were essentially ignoring the voter-passed law, saying they would not even bother to ticket people they see smoking marijuana.

"We're just basically not enforcing it right now," said Mark R. Laverdure, chief of police in Clinton, a Central Massachusetts town of about 8,000 residents, who said the law was so poorly written that it cannot be enforced. "You'll probably have a lot of officers that, unless there's a caller complaining about it, won't even bother with it. They probably handled a lot of it informally before and probably more so now."

Andrew J. Sluckis Jr., chief of police in Auburn, said his 39 officers would not be issuing $100 citations for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, as required under the ballot initiative known as Question 2.

"If the Legislature enacts some changes, we'll be happy to do it in the future, but as it stands now we're not going to be issuing civil citations," he said. If an officer spots someone smoking marijuana, he said, "We will confiscate it and the person will be sent on their way."

I'm completely at a loss as to why this is a problem. In fact, I have an idea for making things easier for the poor, confused police: Don't even bother confiscating the marijuana. Just leave people the hell alone and go do something useful like trying to track down murders and rapists. Sheesh.

Smokie Treats

Poor smokers just can't catch a break. 

They are slowly killing themselves one carcinogen laced stick at a time. They are terribly addicted to a habit, which has often been described as more difficult than heroine to break. They are social outcasts, have been removed from bars and restaurants, and even though they brave the cold to observe the newly enforced laws, they still catch dirty looks from passers-by. Now it seems all those fortunate beings, who have never had to struggle with nicotine addiction and look down their noses at the filthy smokers with their filthy habits, were right. Smokers really are filthy.

The New York Times reported a new smoking danger: third -hand smoke, a term concocted by doctors at MassGeneral Hospital for children. These doctors have announced that the lovely aroma left on smokers after they return from a smoke break is harmful. We have all experienced this at one time or another, but it seems especially evident since the smoking ban went into effect. The delicious scent of hydrogen cyanide, butane, toluene, arsenic, lead, carbon monoxide, and apparently polonium-210 (yes, it's as radioactive as it sounds) are decidedly dangerous. 

Even if smokers take all the proper precautions of smoking outside or with fans or outside with fans, they are still returning with a wealth of deadly agents on their hair and clothing. Infants and children are particularly susceptible to these clingy carcinogens, but they pose a health risk to anyone exposed to them. 

Further resolutions anyone?

Science Saturday

(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/16873)

Topics covered:

George’s beef with (some) science bloggers (cont’d)... Can science journalism survive in the digital age?... The death of privacy and the end of war... Will our mental hardware soon get an upgrade?... Is it time to abandon scientific materialism?... Human nature persists in face of iPods and other gadgetry...

Mind Fuck Of The Day

From the Technium:

"What will change everything?"

A new kind of mind.

It is hard to imagine anything that would "change everything" as much as a cheap, powerful, ubiquitous artificial intelligence—the kind of synthetic mind that learns and improves itself. A very small amount of real intelligence embedded into an existing process would boost its effectiveness to another level. We could apply mindfulness wherever we now apply electricity. The ensuing change would be hundreds of times more disruptive to our lives than even the transforming power of electrification. We'd use artificial intelligence the same way we've exploited previous powers—by wasting it on seemingly silly things. Of course we'd plan to apply AI to tough research problems like curing cancer, or solving intractable math problems, but the real disruption will come from inserting wily mindfulness into vending machines, our shoes, books, tax returns, automobiles, email, and pulse meters.

This additional intelligence need not be super-human, or even human-like at all. In fact, the greatest benefit of an artificial intelligence would come from a mind that thought differently than humans, since we already have plenty of those around. The game-changer is neither how smart this AI is, nor its variety, but how ubiquitous it is. Alan Kay quips in that humans perspective is worth 80 IQ points. For an artificial intelligence, ubiquity is worth 80 IQ points. A distributed AI, embedded everywhere that electricity goes, becomes ai—a low-level background intelligence that permeates the technium, and trough this saturation morphs it.

Continue reading.

The Straw That Will Break Print's Back

TechCrunch reports:

We’ve got this from three independent sources close to Apple: expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ‘09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production.

Apple has been experimenting internally with large form tablet devices for years, one source says, but there was concern that users wouldn’t like the device. The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer. Apple says more than 300 million applications have been downloaded since the App Store launched in July 2008. Combine the App Store, iTunes and a browser and you have one heck of a device.

And here we go...

Oh Fox News...

Pay attention to the ticker which is posting text messages from viewers:




Via Shakesville

All that wasted time...

John Ridley put together his own year-end list at the HuffPost; an enumeration of the top "nontroversies" of 2008, to be exact. It's funny to think about all the things OpEd columnists wasted keystrokes bitching about. Seriously, do OpEd columnists even have friends?

Muslim family removed from plane

CNN reports:

A Muslim family removed from an airliner Thursday after passengers became concerned about their conversation say AirTran officials refused to rebook them, even after FBI investigators cleared them of wrongdoing.

Atif Irfan said federal authorities removed eight members of his extended family and a friend after passengers heard them discussing the safest place to sit and misconstrued the nature of the conversation.

Irfan, a U.S. citizen and tax attorney, said he was "impressed with the professionalism" of the FBI agents who questioned him, but said he felt mistreated when the airline refused to book the family for a later flight.

Looks like another case of "flying while brown" striking again. My wife and I have had similar conversations about where the safest place in the plane to sit is and we were never approached by the FBI. Moreover, my wife is rather uncomfortable flying, especially when there is a lot of turbulence, and has even muttered statements about the plane going down or crashing. Again, we were not detained. At least the FBI tried to get AirTran to rebook them after clearing the family; AirTran's refusal to rebook them is a bit absurd.

Over the last few years our Indian students on the mock trial team have been subjected to more "random searches" than any of our Caucasian students when we fly to tournaments. Sometimes I want to change my name to something Middle Eastern just to see if I will be treated differently by TSA. "He looks white but his name is 'strange-looking' and hard to pronounce. I'm confused on what to do..."

A word of wisdom to Islamophobes. It's unlikely there will be any "safe" place on the plane if terrorists intend to destroy it.