March 31, 2004
Lucky Man
A Chicago City Council committee Monday (3/29/04) voted to approve a $1.2 million settlement with Miguel Castillo, who spent 11 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Former Gov. George Ryan pardoned Castillo, who says a police officer mistranslated for him in his alleged confession. He was in prison when the murder took place.
---It's like winning the lottery.
Bush Jokes About Iraq WMDs
At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show...
One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."
After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: "No, no weapons over there," he said.
And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: "Maybe under here?" story
---In front of 1,500 journalists & guests.
Military Man
"He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life - or take it, because that is his job....
...now we even have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to War when our nation calls us to do so. As you go to bed tonight, remember this shot.. A short lull, a little shade and a picture of loved ones in their helmets."
photo essay via: orwf
Court Rules Against Release of Foster Photos
The unanimous (Supreme Court) decision makes it more difficult to use a public records law to access federal law enforcement records from autopsies and death scenes. Justices said the privacy rights of survivors must be balanced against the public's right to information. story
Prize Art
Using dust collected near Ground Zero, the artist (Xu Bing) used the dust to cover the floor which was punctuated by a Chinese verse: 'As there is nothing from the first, where does the dust collect itself'. story
Xu Bing collected the dust a few streets away from the devastated site in Lower Manhattan following the attack. On the gallery wall a series of photographs will document the process by which the dust was made it into a doll-shaped statuette for transport through customs. The cast was then broken into fragments and ground to powder again in Wales.
---This press release calls it 'an ancient zen verse'.
---It's probably worth $72,000 for the Welsh to be reminded that Taoists have their own version of "dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return" or to have a zen koan publically displayed to help them ponder the ineffable nature of tragedy.
I was thinking of 'zen dust', like sand to a oyster, but google showed me this verse:
This body is the Bodhi-tree,
The soul is like a mirror bright;
Take heed to keep it always clean,
And let not dust collect on it.
and this fragment: "For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects".
One news item stated: "The piece has an unsettling, acrid smell..." another quoted the artist, "If it's bad art you have to explain too much."
Global Security Firms Fill In as Private Armies
15,000 agents patrol violent streets of Iraq.
link via: arms & the man
March 30, 2004
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite
which is yes
continued
---E. E. Cummings
Propaganda?
Exploding the Myth: The Problem of Photographic "Evidence" -- about presumed photographs of the rape of nanking
The Digital Death Rattle of the American Middle Class
A Cautionary Tale
[excerpt]
...as Ann Livermore, head of services at Hewlett-Packard claims, that "now you're going to see the same trends in services that happened in manufacturing," and in doing so, according to General Electric Vice President Dee Miller, "[we will] tap the world's best talent," without having to pay for their education and training, and with wages a fraction of what it costs to train and retain U.S. intellectual labor, the following questions must be asked: What is the future of American intellectual labor? What is the future of the American institutions that train such labor? How will the U.S. absorb the projected and permanent loss of $136 billion dollars per year in wages among its class of "symbolic workers?" Will downwardly mobile middle-class knowledge workers continue to embrace the dogma of neoliberalism, and accept the blame and personal responsibility for their own structural and economic obsolescence, and that of their children?"
article
---Who cares who blames who or what? America's military and it's criminal justice system is the most expensive money can buy.
See also this powerpoint presentation: Thinking of India
---Because the ceo's & managers of the Fortune 500 command the most powerful organizations in history and they and their families are the wealthiest humans to ever walk the earth they must know what's best for humanity or at least what's best for America. It stands to reason.
Interview with Paul Virilio
The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space
...for me, war consists of the organisation of the field of perception. But war is also, as the Japanese call it, 'the art of embellishing death'. And, in this sense, the relationship between war and aesthetics is a matter of very serious concern. Conversely, one could say that religion — in the broadest sense of the word — is 'the art of embellishing life'. Thus, anything that strives to aestheticise death is profoundly tragic. But, nowadays, the tragedy of war is mediated through technology. It is no longer mediated through a human being with moral responsibilities. It is mediated through the destructive power of the atomic bomb, as in Stanley Kubrick's film, Dr Strangelove. interview via: ctheory
---The logistics of our so-called mediated lives are not even blips on the screens of their vision machines. Yet.
Private Uses of Cyberspace:
Women, Desire, and Fan Culture
...the paradox of public access and private/anonymous identity has made it possible for women who have access to the internet to create permissive and transgressive spaces which have been, in the past, the traditional reserve of men's magazines and men's clubs. The larger question posed by this phenomenon, toward which this paper can only sketch preliminary answers, is to what degree and in what way does the openness and anonymity of cyberspace allow women to appropriate power over their own imaginations and bodies?
article see also: zorro returns
--What happens in cyberspace stays in cyberspace?
March 29, 2004
The Great Flu Scam of 2003
How flu vaccine makers' profits were boosted by exaggerated government claims.
The U.S. media let itself be led down the garden path without checking into the stories they were being told about the extent of the flu. story via: unknown news
---There's hundreds of newspapers & tv stations in this country and during October/November/December of last year ALL of them chose to go along with unnecessarily frightening their readers & viewers into getting useless vaccines? Not one of them found other experts to refute the corporate line? The liberal media bias must end when future advertising revenue is at stake.
New Kind of Dinner Theater Developing
In New York nightclubs, lofts, Off-Broadway theaters and even private residences, performers are cooking meals in front of audiences.
And the audiences are, well, eating it up.
Among recently opened shows are "Chef's Theater," in which Broadway actors sing and famous chefs cook on stage, a percussion show called "Cookin'" with Korean chefs drumming up a storm while preparing a wedding barbecue, and an in-home piece called "Mama's Knishes" that features a young man dressed as a Jewish mother who teaches how to make potato knishes. story
---At my house we've done impromptu interpretations of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'" during dinner parties.
Psychic Prompts Search of Jet in Ft. Myers
---New Age Homeland Security: Blavatsky would understand.
Too Bad to be True
"So how do you attack someone so bad, when the badness itself is so seamless, so monumentally, profoundly all-encompassing?...
Allow me to suggest a few strategies to be employed in every town and hamlet and municipality in America..." article by Alan Bisbort
Jason/Atomgrid notes:
I think I need confirmation that people did honk and give the author the "rock on" shake of their fists while passing his "Beat Bush" bumper-sticker festooned vehicle (powered by recycled macrame). If we bring along our photocopied "Beat Bush" signs will the hippies let us in for half-price at the Love-In?
We exist in an age where every kind of propaganda tool you could ever want can be hand-rolled, or conveniently purchased right out your grocer's freezer, yet people insist on thinking that the gateway to political change in America is a used button machine.
The purpose of propaganda isn't to _convince_ the other guy of your argument, but to make him _doubt_ his own argument. It's different from advertising in that not only do I have to get you to "buy" something (eventually) but also to get you to "un-buy" something. Just like advertising though, repetition really, really helps.
Oh, and he forgot the "get out and vote" bullet point.
Is it just me or does it seem a little nuts that a guy who has a regular column in a newspaper, and can use it to rail on Bush continually between now and Election Day, is driving around with a piece of paper that says "Beat Bush" taped to the back of his car?
What is Iconclass?
....a subject specific international classification system for iconographic research and the documentation of images.
Iconclass is a collection of ready-made definitions of objects, persons, events, situations and abstract ideas that can be the subject of an image. Iconclass organizes iconography into 10 'main divisions', each containing hierarchically ordered definitions.
---Love me, love my hierarchically ordered classification system.
[adam janes]alone with thoughts
Remote Control Smog-Cop
[California] The remote sensing...detection device sits a foot above the pavement and shoots a steady infrared and ultraviolet beam across the lane to a tiny mirror that reflects the beams back to the device. Auto emissions block the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, so the more pollutants in the exhaust, the less light reflected back to the the detection device.
Two cameras snap pictures of the passing car one black and white to read the license plate and another color so technicians can manually read the plate if the first camera fails.
Remote sensing could catch cars that break down between the biennial smog check or those "clean- for-day' drivers who bribed or cheated their way through the smog-check program, said Edward VanMil, who is heading the pilot remote sensing project for the Bureau of Automotive Repair. story
---Shouldn't Mr. VanMil's claims of bribery be investigated? Perhaps bribery of state workers is not a priority for officials like Mr. VanMil, or for the journalist who wrote this story, when there's new revenue reaping gadgets to promote.
"Horrific" Child Sex Abuse Alleged
[Pierce County, WA] A foster father accused of posting hundreds of sexually explicit photographs of himself and his young charges on the Internet was arrested yesterday and held on multiple counts of child rape, molestation and dealing in child pornography...
The investigation..began..with a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The center alerted authorities to a man in New Westminster, England, who had been arrested for viewing pornographic photos posted to a news group with a Pierce County address. Soon after, a child pornography watchdog group based in Ireland, Combating Pedophile Information Networks, offered investigators a second tip about explicit photos coming from Pierce County.
The area long ago was a haven for iconoclastic loners and anarchists, and in years past it attracted visits from Emma Goldman and other leading social dissidents.
"We do background checks and we do letters of recommendation," said Kathy Spears, spokeswoman for the [Social and Health Services] department found no indication of questionable behavior in its screening process... story
---Did Emma Goldman recommend the couple?
March 27, 2004
Sandra Bermudez
self portraits & pillow series / artist's statement / press blurb/ web site
---Read the blurb.
Susan Weil: Ear's Eye for James Joyce
23 graphic works inspiralled by James Joyce.
---"Love me, love my umbrella."
Buzz Aldrin: Returning to the Moon Is Not Enough
"Mars should be a growing commitment to permanence or we shouldn't even bother sending humans," he said. story
Jason/Atomgrid propounds: "I've really learned to hate "here comes space travel" stories over the years. This one is missing the standard-issue concept-drawing [View image] of a "Japanese space hotel."
To be perfectly blunt, I expected someone to win the X-Prize by now, so the only fundamental change with getting business and entrepreneurs involved in space "travel" is that it's now a _variety_ of groups endlessly dragging their asses at the lowest possible cost. Their inability to toss up a human payload is only exceeded by their ability to toss up snappy web pages."
--See also SpaceFuture.com
I once read that it costs $16,000-a-pound to shoot anything into orbit. I don't know if life-support is incuded as part of that expense.
Hijacker Weaponry (Sacramento, CA)
"My dad alerted me to an amazing cache of hijacker weaponry being sold at our neighborhood Goodwill store... " photos/caption ---Is it safe yet?
March 26, 2004
Gaza 'Martyr' Artists Brace for Boom in Business
"I wish I was drawing a nice flower or children playing. But my work reflects reality and the reality is that there is going to be more fighting soon. That is the way it will always be here," said Fayez al-Hassen, who has drawn hundreds of posters while moonlighting from his job as a school teacher.
Red Iceberg
“We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all us,” Danish artist Marco Evaristti said Thursday. “This is my iceberg; it belongs to me.”
---I think purple would be less menacing; I'm getting a whale-killing vibe from the red...not particularly decorative. Do they have snow-cones in Greenland or Denmark?
Open the Government.org
Americans for Less Secrecy, More Democracy
I'm not sure how this photo of surveillance cameras illustrates a web-site promoting 'less secrecy' but after pasting it here, I'm struck by the contradiction between the ubiquitiousness of recording devices and the understanding that many of us have that necessary information is being kept secret.
One would think we'ld be too busy rewinding tape or down-loading files to sense anything is missing.
Gateway Adds Fingerprint Sensor to Notebook
The biometrically equipped notebook is aimed at security-conscious government agencies and corporations, as well as schools that want to authenticate identities for test taking and distance learning. press release
---The 'thumb's up' gesture is on it's way to becoming orwellian. No more 'right stuff', 'top gun' associations when fingerprint sensors are the next thing in corporate security.
What Do You See?
Terror as an actor of the democratic process?
The picture is of a passenger train bombed by NATO forces in the Yugoslav campaign. Svetolik Kostadinovic, head of Yugoslav Railways, said that day: "I wish people in the countries which sent us these missiles would suffer the same thing".
Terrorist were, during the French revolution, the victims of terror and not the actors of it. They were the ones slaughtered by the Comité de salut public. Terror was then regarded as a police measure reinforcing the republic.
[image & text via underfire forum; text edited]
March 25, 2004
story
The corpse of Nhu Tri, a buddhist monk sitting in a lotus position in Tieu Pagoda in Bac Ninh, northen Vietnam. (AFP)
---Died on the job. On the whiter side of the globe photographs of exhumed citizens almost never appear in the better newspapers. Where on the map of the world is the line between archaeology and desecration?
More Schools Implement Virtual Dissection
At least eight states have policies allowing students to opt out of dissection, according to the Humane Society of the United States. They include Florida, California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Maine. story
---Where will America get it's future taxidermists?
John Doe Online
(San Francisco) Artist sketches of unidentified dead put on the Internet.
story / search unidentified persons via: atomgrid
March 24, 2004
Give Up Your Name & Give Up Your Rights
"...a name is no longer a simple identifier: It is the key to a vast, cross-referenced system of public and private databases, which lay bare the most intimate features of an individual's life. If any person can be coerced by the state to hand over this key to the police, then the protections of the 4th and 5th Amendments have been rendered illusory." article via politech
---Im my town the police are busy chasing shop-lifters & gang-bangers while enjoying the training & extra-income from Homeland Security grants. If that federal money dries up & for some unimaginable reason fewer gang-banger cars (and drug-confiscated property?) wind-up on the auction block, maybe they'll start scutinizing people like me to see how much small-change they can shake out of our pockets. Until that time giving police my ID is not a concern although I imagine in other towns cops are not so contented.
image via sfpd
Universities Selected for MURI Grants
DoD's Multidisciplinary Research Initiative (MURI) program, a $146 million, five-year effort targeting topics of "exceptional opportunity" for DoD technologies and applications. "MURI topics have very aggressive technical goals for objectives that cannot be accomplished with existing technologies... press release
---Among the 31 grants:
Space- Time Processing for Tactical Mobile Ad- Hoc Networks; (Smart Mobs on the Battlefield)
Giga-Hertz Electromagnetic Wave Science and Devices for Advanced Battlefield Communications; (Beyond AM-FM)
Micro Hovering Aerial Vehicles with an Invertebrate Vision Inspired Navigation System; (Squid Vision)
Human Signature for Personnel Detection; (Separating us from them via Athena?)
Proteomic Development of Molecular Vital Signs: Mapping a Mitochondrial Injury Severity Score to Triage and Guide Resuscitation of Hemorrhagic Shock (See also on SI the Leukemia item below)
Relationship Between Physicochemical Characteristics and Toxicological Properties of Nanomaterials (Nanopollution Study)
Nanophotonics and Plasmon Optics for Optical Networks,
Sources and Sensors, Plasmon Enabled Nanophotonic Circuits (Plasmon? Some kind of Jamaican material?)
A Multimodality Ultramicrospectroscope (MUMS): Nanoscale Optical Imaging with Integrated Spectroscopies for Chemical and Biomolecular Identification (MUMS sees every little thing.)
Device Development for Remote, Nondestructive Testing and Measurement of Power Systems (Did you leave the grow-lamps On?)
City Eyes Sonar for Underwater Searches
...side-scan sonar... is on the approved list of items that can be purchased with homeland security grants, perhaps because it may find bombs on the bottoms of boats. story
---I'm waiting for ground penetrating radar to get affordable so I can document the Mason's tunnels & priest holes around town. (I'm pretty sure there's a tunnel between the police department & the lodge across the street.)
Gene Scan Predicts Response to Leukemia Treatment
Researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the University La Sapienza in Rome used microarray technology to take "snapshots" of gene activity...item
Actors to Help Doctors Mind Their Manners
PROFESSIONAL actors from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama are being hired to play schizophrenic patients to train student GPs.
University seeks to expand course designed to reduce rising numbers of complaints and litigation cases brought by patients... story
---Some of my best friends are actors, no matter what the restraining orders might say. Seriously. Not enough actors are working outside the fourth wall. Imagine the insights they could bring to everyday existence: "I'm not a mall-shopper, clerk, fireman, cook...I'm only 'playing' one for the good people here, who care about you their 'audience'." (Geez, I miss community college theater.)
March 23, 2004
Background Checks in a Box
---ChoicePoint's software: "background screening as a consumer product" press release.
---With this software can I find-out how many ex-cons are working in local government?
beautifully odd pictures of citrus fruits
ChoicePoint Inc.: Watching People on Behalf of Uncle Sam
It's illegal for a government agency to collect most of the data ChoicePoint maintains on private citizens....article
March 22, 2004
Homosexual Apocalypse
County Rescinds Vote to Ban Gay Residents
On which Jason @ atomgrid muses:
"This is the reason God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah," said Jean Sinclair, 75, who was chatting with friends in a drugstore. "Every nation that's started this Babylon, Middle Persia, Rome they all fell into this sinful way."
Neighborhood crank, Jean Sinclair, is incorrect as at no point in the story of Lot does it mention the specific sin(s) of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, only that they were sinful.
Jean's reference to "Middle Persia" means she's talking about the Book of Daniel. Old Testament Persians were pretty okay with God thanks to their anti-Babylonian stance and pro-Semitic immigration policies. God even anoints Cyrus in Isaiah 45 for being a righteous dude.
At this point we can lump in her fall of Rome reference.
Anyway, before we delve into the Book of Daniel it's a good time to ask if you plan on doing anything with the rest of your life. Went to the bathroom? Got your foil hat on? Okay... here we go...
King Nebuchadnezzar (a Babylonian) has a dream (Daniel 2:31-35), which, lucky for us, God sticks around and interprets through the miracle of ventriloquy. (Daniel 2:36-45). In the dream the king sees an "image" (a statue) made out of various materials (gold, silver, brass, clay, etc.) with a golden head, that sort of dries up, falls apart and blows away and is replaced with a mountain. God points out that the golden head represents Babylon, that the other various parts represent other kingdoms that fall in a particular order, and the mountain is God's Kingdom on Earth. At that point God walks out of the room to catch a bus and never NAMES the other kingdoms. Lucky for us and for any theological discussion, if you reach (into the spine of a Bible you'll find a pair of 20/20-hindsight goggles (put them on now):
The Babylonians are conquered by the Persians (who cart off the Babylonian Head of Gold) who are conquered by the Greeks who are conquered by the Romans who are conquered by the Feet of Clay-ians and then presto... instant apocalypse (followed by instant God's Kingdom on Earth [just add God]). It's sort of analogous to a weapon of mass destruction. If all the pieces are put together in the proper sequence: Boom. The problem is you only know what one piece is (Babylon) and the rest is built on supposition. For example, what about the Parthians? If the Romans defeated the Greeks who defeated the Persians then why are the Romans fighting the Persians (Parthians) as late as the 3rd-century AD?
Anyway, getting back to Jean's idea of homosexual apocalypse... Daniel 2:43's "feet of clay" portion: "They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave one to another." And _they_ are? Is it an allegory about gay sex (what about lesbianism?) and gay marriage? What about not sleeping with space-aliens? Or space-aliens will knock us up but won't pay child support? Pre-marital sex with no marriage? The fallout of a high-divorce rate? Group onanism? Single parenthood? Genetic-engineering? Steel-reinforced concrete is the path to Hell? Ever wonder where racists got the wacky idea that inter-racial marriage is a sign of the Apocalypse? That's the passage. But to Jean homosexuality is a sign of the fall of the Fourth Kingdom.
As Freud is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible we can't really dilly-dally around with why Jean assumes "seed of man" automatically means "sperm" as opposed to "children." (Which doesn't make things any less vague.) Oh, and the word "sin" isn't anywhere to be found. And we completely overlooked the exculpatory language: "rule over all the earth." Seems a couple of the kingdoms have to have total global domination before being consumed/overthrown/undermined by the next kingdom. Details, details.
Ultimately, Prophetic/Apocryphal visions mean whatever you want them to mean. Some people are going to use their interpretations for a little gay-bashing. Others to justify their belief in aliens: http://www.x-filechristians.com
You can learn more about the Book of Daniel at your local cult."
---Never let the word of God stop you from getting a good hate on.
Calendar for 597 US Dead
The 597 military dead in Iraq and their families are comforted by knowing that in the same year:
25,000 foreigners were killed and wounded by the US military and secret agents.
500 generals and admirals, 2500 colonels and captains, 10,000 field officers, 50,000 senior enlisted, and 500,000 lower ranks, moved up the ladder to no-risk retirement, thanking their lucky stars and deft ass-kissing obedience of their generous national security "civilian" overseers.
100% increase in military, intelligence, homeland security and law enforcement business and career opportunities. More [Scroll down for calendar.]
Android World
---Photographs often make sculptures, paintings, furniture and other objects appear lifelike, having the opposite effect on living things. Androids are photogenic.
First Transgenic Butterfly Created Using Jellyfish Genes
press release via: pr bop
---Fluorescence is the reason. 'Evo-devo': i.e. how new functions evolve, is the study.
'Demagoguing'
"...if the Bush Pentagon is quietly supporting stem-cell research in Sweden while loudly condemning it at home, that's demagoguing to part of its political base of fundamentalist Christians. But look at it this way: Some public-policy issues are so clearly understood to be good (or bad) for America that even extreme partisans agree on them, except that the voting masses might not understand the issues that well, and thus partisan differences remain.
I believe stem-cell research is something so obviously good for the society that public-policymakers, having actually studied the issue and examined evidence, are in agreement, but some of the masses still view the issue based only on millennia-old doctrine laid down long before any mortal ever conceived of a "stem cell." So no wonder the Bush administration might not be fighting this issue so hard behind the scenes.
And take a look at Sen. Kerry on prescription-drug pricing. He knows perfectly well that there's only a limited amount that can be done with drug prices (i.e., if you cut prices much, you'll inevitably get less research; you can't force innovation, either by beating pharmaceutical executives with a chain or shipping them off to Siberia, which was the failed policy of the USSR). But a large percentage of his base want serious price-relief; hence, Kerry will "stand up for you against the drug companies," whatever the hill that means. He's mainly telling seniors that he feels their pain as he enables the status quo; Bush is mainly telling fundamentalist Christians that he feels their pain as he enables the status quo.
(Of course, maybe Bush and Rumsfeld didn't know about the Pentagon contract and are having a hissy fit right now.) (Naah!.) (But even if they do have a hissy fit, don't rule out that even the hissy fit is for show.)" via: Chuck Shepard [new of the weird]
March 21, 2004
"So You Want to go to the Military Right?
BP; 10 years old; chubby-cheeked and happy-go-lucky; New York, New York.
AP. So P., you want to go to the military right?
BP. Yeah!
o Why?
o Because I get to use guns, use a knife and stuff; grenades, fight for
wars… Oooo, and a bazooka man! (gesture of shooting a bazooka and falling
backwards); going in tanks…
o Why is that so exciting?
o Why is it exciting (smile)… that’s a hard question… ‘cause you get to
control the guns, the tanks, grenades and stuff… bazooooka!!!! Man I wish I
could use a bazooka!
o So P. what to you think you’d be doing with all that bazooka and grenades
and stuff?
o What’d you say?
o I said, what do you think you’d be doing with all that stuff.
o Killing all the bad people, who want to start a big, big, big war…
o Okay, now, who are all these bad people?
o Umm… Russian? Russian people? Russian?
o Russian?
o Yeah… Rush… Russian whatever… ‘cause I got this game called Full Metal…
Full metal whatever… oh Jacket… I can’t remember… ‘cause I got this game
called Full Metal Jacket something something something…
o Full Metal something?
o Yeah, I forget the name…
o And what else?
o And what?
o Well what?
o You kill lots of Russian people.
o You kill Russians in the game?
o Yeah, they want to start a big war…
o They want to start a big war?
o The captain of the Russian people wants to take over the world.
o Do… do you believe that?
o Yeah!
o What do you believe?
o What… what did you say… what do I believe?... There’s many things I
believe…
o Okay, let’s be more specific. Do you think that the Russian people want to
take over the world?
o Yeah… but no more…
o What do you mean no more?
o I think that all the Russian bad people died. And the captain. Is that
true? ‘cause at the beginning of the game, they got this story that this was
real.
o They got this story, this story that this was real?
o Yeah… yeah, is it?
o But you said that with all the bazookas and stuff, you were gonna kill
Russian people and then you said all the bad Russian people are dead!
o Yeah, ‘cause before they were… is it true?
o Hold on hold on! I’m asking the questions here. I repeat, before, you said
that with all the bazookas and grenades and stuff, you were gonna kill
Russians but then you said they’re all dead! How does that make any sense?
o How do you mean? Say it again!
o You’re gonna kill Russian people, but they’re already dead!
o After I kill them! After other people kill them! That’s what’s gonna
happen when I go to the military, it’s gonna be another war. You know what
people say what’s gonna happen with world war three?
o No.
o Hm… what was I gonna say… O yeah, that when world war three happens, god’s
gonna come down from the earth.
o When world war three happens, god’s gonna come down from the earth?
o Yeah, from the earth, from heaven, whatever… and I believe that too…
o P., let me ask you this, you watch a lot of TV?
o Yeah…
o You play a lot of video games?
o Yeah… but once in a blue moon though…’cause my mom don’t let me play that
much… but when she goes to work, I play (giggles). She goes in the morning,
then I play…
o You know what representation means?
o No.
o Remember we talked about it once…
o Represent… rperem…re…
o Representation… remember when we were talking about how when you’re
reading a book and there’s the name of the character, that’s not the real
real person, but something that points to it, that represents it…
o O yeah like there’s no picture…
o Well even the picture, like the words, remember, is that the person, can
you touch them, can they make sounds, no right?
o Yeah yeah…
o It’s not the real thing it’s a… representation…
o Like mind movie (makes noise of machine guns)…
o Kind of… Now, I have some friends, they want to know, where the
representation of war comes from.
o Comes from…that’s hard… from people…
o These ideas you have about war…
o Yeah…
o Where do you think they come from?
o From games, magazines…
o You sure about that?
o Yeah.
o ‘Cause you say it like you’re really sure…
o Yeah…
o So tell me what…
o Like Time, like National Geographic…
o National Geographic?
o Yeah I read that!
o Okay and you said what games…
o Like, watchamacallit, like Spy Hunter, like Time Splinter…
o Not TV?
o What do you…
o Not TV?
o ‘cause I…
o Let me ask you like a final question, or a couple of final questions… You
think you’d like war?
o No. That’s why I’m fighting for the war. So it can be over.
o I got a couple of final questions, wait.
o You’re gonna put that, like, in your little computer?
o Do you like the image of war that you have?
o Um, no…
o Come on!
o No.
o You act like you enjoy it!
o It’s cool, when I play the games, it’s like me being in the game…
o So you like to play…
o Play games, watch TV, be a military.
o What’s your big dream?
o I wanna be a policeman.
o So guns forever huh?
o Yeah!! (Smiles)
The State of the News Media 2004
---For example: Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them. Overview: 8 Major Trends
News of the Weird
Community organizations and University of Illinois student
groups came together for the 2nd annual Sex Out Loud Health
Awareness Fair in Champaign-Urbana, which included this (from
the Daily Illini, via ObscureStore.com): "'There are a lot of phallic
symbols in society, and we wanted to put a vaginal one out there,'
[organizer Trisha] Pruis said about the giant vagina structure that
students could pay a dollar to stick their head in and have their
picture taken." Daily Illini
The county commissioners in Dayton, Tenn., voted 8-0 to seek state help with a serious local priority: how discourage gays and lesbians from living there. "We need to keep them out of here," said Commissioner J.C. Fugate. Seriously. (But then, two days later, they overruled themselves. They looked none too happy about having to do that, but word apparently got around town that most of Western Civilization was laughing at them.) The county, by the way, was the site of the 1925 Scopes anti-evolution-teaching trial.
March 20, 2004
Police Chief: UK Terror Attack Inevitable
A terrorist attack on Britain is inevitable, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens said today.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone told a City Hall press conference that it would be "miraculous" if the capital was not attacked. story
---How or when London's Police Commissioner and Mayor came by this insight or why they chose this particular time to remind their constitutents of this certainty, I don'