Airline Watch: New rule

By GottaLaff

I just got this e-mail alert via Yahoo:

WASHINGTON (AP) Some airlines tell passengers new rules require them to stay in seats 1 hour before landing.

That shouldn't be stressful or inconvenient at all. And is there a restroom exception?

Trolls and other objectionable Commenters

By GottaLaff

It's time to re-post this Post-O'-Guidelines, since we seem to be having a new wave of trolls this summer. And good for us! Why good? Here's why:

Original post:

We know here at TPC that we are becoming more successful than ever before. How do we know that? Because we've seen an increasing number of trolls on our site.

This pathetic little band of drive-by and/or returning Commenters must feel awfully threatened, because they obviously feel the need to intrude on a harmonious family such as ours who have no interest in any of the illogical, ill-informed, baiting insults they fling around like ape feces (unless, of course, it's a genuine attempt at real conversation with at least a minimum of substance).

With that, here is a post I've been saving up. I found it at The Motley Moose. Here are some excerpts:

For many people, flaming and hostility are the only reasons to get online.

These are folks who suffer from a chronic case of assholicism.

Trolls.

troll
One who purposely and deliberately (that purpose usually being self-amusement) starts an argument in a manner which attacks others on a forum without in any way listening to the arguments proposed by his or her peers. He will spark of such an argument via the use of ad hominem attacks (i.e. 'you're nothing but a fanboy' is a popular phrase) with no substance or relevance to back them up as well as straw man arguments, which he uses to simply avoid addressing the essence of the issue.

It's much easier to criticise and inflame than it is to be creative and stimulating.

This is as true for the blogosphere as it is for the real world.

Not all trolls are loud, obnoxious and obvious though.

One of my favorites subset of trolls is one that does not fit this specific criteria.

The "polite" troll. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

These are usually the ones railing against opression and all about their right to spew whatever nonsense they are peddling that day.

They usually offer up blisteringly polite, well written 'snake under the rose' posts that are perfectly within the bounds of decency, but create unrest and dissatisfaction with cutting accuracy.

Disruptive people, who keep themselves just at the edge of acceptable behavior.

They can drive away the sane people just as much as the loud and obnoxious obvious trolls.

These are the posters all too often cry innocence and hide behind the very worthy excuse of open discussion, but are frequently just trying to stir up trouble.

Those are usually the ones accusing trusted and long time users of promoting censorship and trollish behavior.

Blogs have to walk a fine line though.

- Heavy handed mods find themselves with a dead community, because people do not want to be dictated to.

- Mods that exercise too little input also find themselves with a cobweb, because trolls come in and run people off. [...]

Kottke says a bit like so :

Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to "own" their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves. More likely, they're discouraged from helping with the community moderation process of keeping their peers in line with social pressure. Or they stop visiting the site altogether. [...]

Gresham's Law

Gresham's law says that any circulating currency consisting of both "good" and "bad" money (both forms required to be accepted at equal value under legal tender law) quickly becomes dominated by the "bad" money. This is because people spending money will hand over the "bad" coins rather than the "good" ones, keeping the "good" ones for themselves.

Gresham's Law of trolls:

Trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it.

Which means that once trolling takes hold, it tends to become the dominant culture.

Except for one thing: That's not going to happen here at TPC. As of January 1, 2009, I decided to make every attempt to delete/monitor troll comments if they are:

• Uncivil
• Pointlessly rambling
  
• Serve no other purpose other than to attempt to provoke a fight
• Redundant (ie: posting the same comment in several threads)
• Argumentative, simply spewing lies, without providing substance/facts
• Excessive in length (that goes for sympathetic Comments, too)
• Random, uncalled-for, irrelevant snottiness without regard to the content of that particular post
  

If I left anything out, please feel free to add to the list.

There are exceptions to all of these, of course. If a comment is longer than usual, but it's from a Commenter who adheres to protocol 99.9% of the time, we tend to be lenient. If a Comment is relatively innocuous, but simply annoying, that's no biggie either.

Freedom of speech is one thing. Spewing gratuitous hostilities in an otherwise congenial setting is another. That's superfluous and destructive.

Setting standards for an environment that nurtures friendly, respectful, and spirited conversation is paramount. Anything that crosses the line will hereby be deleted.

I'm done now.

Bill Maher New Rules 5/22/09

O.C.O. is the new War on Terrorism

By GottaLaff

Per Rachel Maddow just now:

No more "War on Terror(ism)". There is a brand new term. It is now called, per the official announcement from the Obama administration:

Overseas contingency operation

Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?

Note: I just noticed this never got posted, and remained as a "draft". I could have sworn I put this up last night; hence, the "just now" after Rachel's name.

Country of Origin Food Labeling Mandate To Be Implemented

By GottaLaff

Every time I see the name "Vilsack", I automatically think of Jon Stewart and his Aflac duck spoof:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is bowing to calls from farm state lawmakers and livestock producers to enforce a food-labeling mandate that they say the Bush administration allowed meatpackers to circumvent.

Vilsack is preparing to dictate new guidance for implementing the farm law’s country-of-origin labeling provisions, according to farm groups that spoke with him Tuesday.

The secretary told the groups he would write a letter to industry requesting that companies not tag U.S. products with mixed-origin labels. Under rules the Bush administration issued in January, meatpackers could choose to label meat from animals born, raised and slaughtered in the U.S. as “mixed origin” if they were simultaneously packing products using meat from imported animals. [...]

The Bush administration rules issued in mid-January covered muscle cuts and ground beef, lamb, chicken, goat and pork, along with a variety of other commodities. Those regulations take effect in March.

Farm law supporters in Congress complained those rules would give meatpackers wiggle room to group U.S. products with mixed-origin products and mark both with “multiple country” labels.

“These loopholes essentially allow processors to label every product — including exclusively U.S. products and entirely foreign products — under the multiple country category,” Sen. Byron L. Dorgan , D-N.D., and six other Senate Democrats told Vilsack in a Feb. 3 letter. “If we are just creating a system to label all products as multiple country origin, there is no value in [country of origin labeling] and no benefit to the consumer.”

Since the Bush administration rule is discretionary — meatpackers have the option of choosing to label their products as mixed origin — new rulemaking will not be required if Vilsack’s guidance is followed.

Vilsack told the producer groups, which included R-CALF USA, the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation, that if businesses do not comply with congressional intent, he will be forced to rewrite the rules, dragging out an already delayed process.

Aflac/Vilsack!

Undoing BushCo: Intel edition

By GottaLaff

The past three days have been, how you say, orgasmic:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More, more!

Dennis Blair, President Obama's nominee to become the Director of National Intelligence, took a swipe at the Bush administration's methods of gathering intelligence. [...]

Blair, a retired Navy admiral who headed the Pacific Command, pledged a new approach to counterterrorism requiring the intelligence community to carry out missions "in a manner consistent with our nation's values, consistent with our Constitution and consistent with the rule of law," he said in a statement at his confirmation hearing Thursday.

He made a point to stress that he would not support any surveillance activities that "circumvent established processes for their lawful authorization."

"I believe in the importance of review and regulation of the use of those surveillance authorities," he added.

Blair also stressed that there must be clear standards for humane treatment of detainees that should apply to all government agencies.

Blair, who will likely be confirmed, also invited independent monitoring of the agencies he will lead to prevent abuses and protect civil liberties.

Yes. Yes. Yes!

The ugly Bush stain: Convert forests to housing subdivisions edition

By GottaLaff

This nauseating abomination aka BushCo's New Rule, makes the Healthy Forests Initiative seem environmentally friendly:

In yet another potential last minute rule change, “the Bush administration appears poised to push through a change in U.S. Forest Service agreements that would make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions.” Though President-elect Obama has opposed the move, Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, has signaled that he intends to finalize the plan before Obama’s inauguration. [...]

Rey is pushing a technical change that it will have “large implications“:

The shift is technical but with large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads passing through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

But as Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company’s 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West.

Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county governments to provide services, and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns.

[...] The GAO concluded that 900 miles of logging roads could be paved in Montana and that amending the long-held easements “could have a nationwide impact.”

Much more here.

It's heartwarming to witness BushCo's love and loyalty to this majestic land of ours.

Remember this?

“History,” Bush replied, when asked by Woodward how he would be judged over time. “We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

For once, after all these heartburn-inducing, penetrating stains he's leaving, Bush may be right.

Trolls and other objectionable Commenters

By GottaLaff

We know here at TPC that we are becoming more successful than ever before. How do we know that? Because we've seen an increasing number of trolls on our site.

This pathetic little band of 4 a.m. drive-by Commenters must feel awfully threatened, because they obviously feel the need to intrude on a harmonious family such as ours who have no interest in any of the illogical, ill-informed, baiting insults they fling around like ape feces (unless, of course, it's a genuine attempt at real conversation with at least a minimum of substance).

With that, here is a post I've been saving up. I found it at The Motley Moose. Here are some excerpts:

For many people, flaming and hostility are the only reasons to get online.

These are folks who suffer from a chronic case of assholicism.

Trolls.

troll
One who purposely and deliberately (that purpose usually being self-amusement) starts an argument in a manner which attacks others on a forum without in any way listening to the arguments proposed by his or her peers. He will spark of such an argument via the use of ad hominem attacks (i.e. 'you're nothing but a fanboy' is a popular phrase) with no substance or relevance to back them up as well as straw man arguments, which he uses to simply avoid addressing the essence of the issue.

It's much easier to criticise and inflame than it is to be creative and stimulating.

This is as true for the blogosphere as it is for the real world.

Not all trolls are loud, obnoxious and obvious though.

One of my favorites subset of trolls is one that does not fit this specific criteria.

The "polite" troll. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

These are usually the ones railing against opression and all about their right to spew whatever nonsense they are peddling that day.

They usually offer up blisteringly polite, well written 'snake under the rose' posts that are perfectly within the bounds of decency, but create unrest and dissatisfaction with cutting accuracy.

Disruptive people, who keep themselves just at the edge of acceptable behavior.

They can drive away the sane people just as much as the loud and obnoxious obvious trolls.

These are the posters all too often cry innocence and hide behind the very worthy excuse of open discussion, but are frequently just trying to stir up trouble.

Those are usually the ones accusing trusted and long time users of promoting censorship and trollish behavior.

Blogs have to walk a fine line though.

- Heavy handed mods find themselves with a dead community, because people do not want to be dictated to.

- Mods that exercise too little input also find themselves with a cobweb, because trolls come in and run people off. [...]

Kottke says a bit like so :

Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to "own" their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves. More likely, they're discouraged from helping with the community moderation process of keeping their peers in line with social pressure. Or they stop visiting the site altogether. [...]

Gresham's Law

Gresham's law says that any circulating currency consisting of both "good" and "bad" money (both forms required to be accepted at equal value under legal tender law) quickly becomes dominated by the "bad" money. This is because people spending money will hand over the "bad" coins rather than the "good" ones, keeping the "good" ones for themselves.

Gresham's Law of trolls:

Trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it.

Which means that once trolling takes hold, it tends to become the dominant culture.

Except for one thing: That's not going to happen here at TPC. As of January 1, 2009, I decided to make every attempt to delete troll comments if they are:

• Uncivil
• Pointlessly rambling
  
• Serve no other purpose other than to attempt to provoke a fight
• Redundant (ie: posting the same comment in several threads)
• Argumentative, simply spewing lies, without providing substance/facts
• Excessive in length (that goes for sympathetic Comments, too)
• Random, uncalled-for, irrelevant snottiness without regard to the content of that particular post
  

If I left anything out, please feel free to add to the list.

There are exceptions to all of these, of course. If a comment is longer than usual, but it's from a Commenter who adheres to protocol 99.9% of the time, we tend to be lenient. If a Comment is relatively innocuous, but simply annoying, that's no biggie either.

Freedom of speech is one thing. Spewing gratuitous hostilities in an otherwise congenial setting is another. That's superfluous and destructive.

Setting standards for an environment that nurtures friendly, respectful, and spirited conversation is paramount. Anything that crosses the line will hereby be deleted.

I'm done now.

The ugly Bush stain: Hazardous waste edition

By GottaLaff

Hey kids! Time for your daily dose of sewage! Here's the latest from our Excrement in Chief:

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a new regulation yesterday exempting an estimated 118,500 tons of hazardous waste annually from strict federal incineration controls, and it separately exempted factory farms from a requirement to report hazardous air pollution to the federal government.

Gee, this isn't stressful at all. Deeeeep breath. ::cough! hack! wheeze!:: Never mind.

It allows companies that create hazardous chemical wastes in industrial processes to burn them as fuel in their own incinerators, instead of paying highly regulated incineration firms to destroy them.

Well now, that's forward-thinking. I hope Jenna and Not-Jenna's future kids appreciate the gifts from Grandpa George.

But Ben Dunham, associate legislative counsel for the nonprofit advocacy group Earthjustice, said that "everything about this rulemaking was flawed," including "the logic that says, 'If you can burn it, it's not a hazardous waste.' " He said it would allow firms with poor environmental records "to simply throw their hazardous waste in the company boiler" and burn it without strict monitoring, sometimes in populated areas.

Mmmm, there's nothing like the smell of smoldering toxic waste in the morning.

The ugly Bush stain, eradicated: Coal and power plant edition

By GottaLaff

Got a stain? Shout it out!

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday abandoned its push to revise two air pollution rules in ways that environmentalists had long opposed, abruptly dropping measures that the Bush administration had spent years preparing.

One proposal would have made it easier to build a coal-fired power plant, refinery or factory near a national park.

The other would have altered the rules that govern when power plants must install antipollution devices. Environmentalists said it would have resulted in fewer such cleanups.

EPA officials had been trying to complete both before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in Jan. 20. But an agency spokesman said Wednesday they were giving up, surprising critics and supporters.

Shout!

The ugly Bush stain: Comprehensive list edition

By GottaLaff

I've been posting about the malodorous BushCo's intentional, last-minute ambush, using an onslaught of New Rules as their most recent, desperate weapon against their own "homeland" (let's lose that word forever, please). The residual effects will leave a stubborn stain on this country, but hopefully, not an indelible one. However, some of the stench emanating from this bunch of thugs may be harder to eradicate than we think.

Here's a partial list, via Huffington Post:

• EPA would not regulate a contaminant in drinking water (Kool-Aid from our government to us)
• Mining permits near Grand Canyon and other national parks (blasts from the past)
• Gut the Endangered Species Act (the hell with biodiversity or consideration for creation's creatures. Shoot 'em.)
• Power plants could be exempted from installing pollution controls, allowing an added 70 million tons to be released into our air (what's a little cough among friends and who needs to see anyway?)
• EPA narrows the definition of solid waste (now there is a regulation to savor)
• Less reporting on animal pollution proposed
• Rules for dumping mine debris erased
• EPA lowers air quality standards for lead
• Fisheries rule calls for less public input (the czars had a way with public input, too.)
• Loaded guns possible in National Parks( not if the Park rangers have anything to say about it)
• Public lands may be leased for the development of oil shale (public, not to be confused with proprietary)
• Interior Department rules could limit public environmental comments (so much for the First Amendment)
• EPA lets factory farms decide if they need a permit to discharge animal waste into waterways (or large concentrations of dung dumped into our rivers and streams) [...]

It is hard to imagine the state of mind in our officials that produces this kind of malice. [...]

There are remedies. One, of course, is the will of the new administration to override this treachery and destructiveness. The other is the Congressional Review Act. Items published in the Federal Register before Nov 21st take effect 60 days from that date.
House and Senate leadership has already stipulated that they will use the Review Act in a similar way that a Bush administration action used it to undo a Clinton regulation in 2001. Reversal probably cannot take place without scrupulous effort, but we should all encourage the new administration and Congress to do everything they can to defeat these ruinous regulations. [...]

To write midnight regulations that sabotage human health is to see Charles Dickens scribing away by candlelight, as one of his most rapacious and vile villains rises from the candle flame and defiles humanity and its landscape.

Sanitizing sewage of this magnitude won't be easy. Thank you, BushCo, for relieving yourselves publicly all over a country that has tried to maintain some sense of cleanliness, beauty, and pride, despite your relentless maneuvers. You've done your level best to vulgarize it.

We will now unite to collectively scrub America clean until it sparkles again.

H/t: Chris

The ugly Bush stain: Coal mining edition

By GottaLaff

The U.S. needs some effective detox:

Coal Mining Debris Rule Is Approved:
The White House on Tuesday approved a final rule that will make it easier for coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. The rule is one of the most contentious of all the regulations emerging from the White House in President [sic] Bush’s last weeks in office.

The reek is nauseating. Let's hope the Obama administration can eradicate most of the malodorous, hideous Bush stain on what was once a beautiful, healthy country.