Aug. 27th, 2005

WTF?!

Aug. 27th, 2005 04:28 am
semiotic_pirate: (Hand on Flintlock)
As I wait for normal business hours to begin so I can get into the doctor's office for a strep throat test, I decided to stay up the rest of the night and scan the news for interesting tidbits. I found horror. I am sure that Chen will be supported by a groundswell of international groups and individuals who are outraged by China's actions. Excuse me, to be PC... who are outraged by local (Linyi) Chinese official's actions!

Now if they used education to decrease the population increase, that has been found to work, and voluntarily at that. What did that study a while back find? The better off, and better educated you are, the less likely you will be to have children? (because you are more aware of the population issue I hope.)


Who Controls the Family?
Blind Activist Leads Peasants in Legal Challenge To Abuses of China's Population-Growth Policy

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 27, 2005; A01


LINYI, China -- A crowd of disheveled villagers was waiting when Chen Guangcheng stepped out of the car. More women than men among them, a mix of desperation and hope on their faces, they ushered him along a dirt path and into a nearby house. Then, one after another, they told him about the city's campaign against "unplanned births."

Since March, the farmers said, local authorities had been raiding the homes of families with two children and demanding at least one parent be sterilized. Women pregnant with a third child were forced to have abortions. And if people tried to hide, the officials jailed their relatives and neighbors, beating them and holding them hostage until the fugitives turned themselves in.

Chen, 34, a slender man wearing dark sunglasses, held out a digital voice recorder and listened intently. Blind since birth, he couldn't see the tears of the women forced to terminate pregnancies seven or eight months along, or the blank stares of the men who said they submitted to vasectomies to save family members from torture. But he could hear the pain and anger in their voices and said he was determined to do something about it.

Read more... )
semiotic_pirate: (Cake or Death)
Yep. This op-ed piece has accurately described why I feel discontent with the state of the economy.


Summer of Our Discontent
By PAUL KRUGMAN

For the last few months there has been a running debate about the U.S. economy, more or less like this:

American families: "We're not doing very well."

Washington officials: "You're wrong - you're doing great. Here, look at these statistics!"

The administration and some political commentators seem genuinely puzzled by polls showing that Americans are unhappy about the economy. After all, they point out, numbers like the growth rate of G.D.P. look pretty good. So why aren't people cheering?

Some blame the negative halo effect of the Iraq debacle. Others complain that the news media aren't properly reporting good economic news. But when your numbers tell you that people should be feeling good, but they aren't, that means you're looking at the wrong numbers.

American families don't care about G.D.P. They care about whether jobs are available, how much those jobs pay and how that pay compares with the cost of living. And recent G.D.P. growth has failed to produce exceptional gains in employment, while wages for most workers haven't kept up with inflation.

Read more... )
semiotic_pirate: (tattoo pirate chick)
Okay, I'm not going to actually link to any Arnold the Governator movies... though I will mention one. The 6th day (2000). After discussing the RePet issue a few times here and there as they continue to perfect cloning techniques using cats and dogs - we knew it was inevitable that the talking "lifelike" doll creation was just around the corner. This ain't your average Teddy Ruxpin either. In the 6th Day it was the "Cindy" doll, which was (of course) played by a real little girl and was freakishly amusing. This thing supposedly can... well, read the article for yourself!

Two other reasons I like this article: It mentions MacGyver and the Chatty Cathy doll.


A Doll That Can Recognize Voices, Identify Objects and Show Emotion
By MICHEL MARRIOTT

Judy Shackelford, who has been in the toy industry for more than 40 years, has seen a lot of dolls. But none, she says, like her latest creation, a marvel of digital technologies, including speech-recognition and memory chips, radio frequency tags and scanners, and facial robotics. She and her team have christened it Amazing Amanda.

Read more... )
semiotic_pirate: (Juicy Oranges)
and btw, I want to go check it out post haste after having such a great experience at the Torrid in the mall!

LOOK! They're actually planning on opening up MORE stores for REAL women!! Yay! This also explains that awful/wierd advertisement I saw from GAP at the movies... yesterday. (By the way, The Brother's Grimm, well, I loved it.) It started with someone accidentally pushing some polo shirts off a shelf. All of a sudden everyone in the store goes bonkers, ripping things apart, destroying the furniture, tackling all the dummies - even a passing minivan, inspired by the destruction, drives into the storefront. It ends with a stupid "pardon our mess" tag, with a warning of a super/kewl/fresh/new renovation.... *shrug*

[livejournal.com profile] surelle, you, me, (when it's safe for me to be in public again) trip to Chico's, soon! :)

Gap's New Chain Store Aims at the Fashionably Mature Woman
By ERIC WILSON

WEST NYACK, N.Y. - - For the millions of American women over 35 who face the conundrum each morning of a closet full of clothes but nothing to wear, there is little solace to be found at the vast Palisades Center mall here. With nearly 300 stores and more than half of them aimed at teenage consumers, this temple of consumerism in Rockland County, about 25 miles north of Manhattan, is full of clothes, but for women of a certain age, many find little to buy.

"These stores are for skinny little girls," said Irene Giachetti, of New City, N.Y., as she was tugged at by her teenage son on a back-to-school shopping mission. "It's very difficult to find anything for me."

So it is with considerable interest in the retail industry that Gap Inc., the nation's largest chain of clothing stores, chose the Palisades Center to introduce a new chain yesterday aimed at that unwieldy and indefinable category known as grown-ups. These are customers who are past any longing for shrunken polo shirts and low-slung denim styles ubiquitous at youth-oriented stores like Abercrombie & Fitch, yet consider themselves too hip for conservative stores like Ann Taylor or Talbots, and too frugal to pursue the elitist designs that make up that minuscule slice of apparel known as high fashion.

Read more... )

ARRRR!

Aug. 27th, 2005 02:05 pm
semiotic_pirate: (Default)
How could I, in my pirate goodness, NOT include this article in my blog? Shiver me timbers, I'll be putting this wee bookie on my list to Santa. You hear that Santa?!

August 26, 2005
Avast! Pirates Steal Readers' Hearts
By WILLIAM GRIMES

It was a strange day in Hollywood when someone decided that a costume drama based on an amusement park ride would sell lots of tickets. Stranger still was Johnny Depp's swishy performance in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," which, inexplicably, translated into a cascade of doubloons at the box office. A pile of gold, an ancient curse and lots of swordplay, it seems, can still do the trick, 70 years after Errol Flynn slashed his way through "Captain Blood." Mr. Depp, greatly enriched by his high crimes on the high seas, has agreed to reappear as Jack Sparrow in two "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels.

Read more... )

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