Collective Memory and the Rule of Awful People

One could hope that in the age of the Internet, our national memory would be a little bit better than in times past - that past errors and successes would be handily recorded and remain available to the masses for their consumption, and that the people involved in those decisions would be justly rewarded or shunned for their performances.

(nicked from BoingBoing)
From The New York Times, November 5, 1999:CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.
---
The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.
---
'The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

Guess which ideology is still calling the shots. Brilliant.
(nicked from BoingBoing)

Fish in a Barrel

Rush Limbaugh at the Wingnut Convention:

"We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independent. We believe that the preamble of the Constitution contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, freedom. And the pursuit of happiness," he said, pausing several times for enthusiastic applause.

Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Pitfalls of Publishing

On the Passions of Competition

For those of you who don't know, I live in Patriot's country, which means that not a day goes by that I don't get to hear about the awesomeness of Tom Brady. This has spawned a new emotional response I have chosen to dub:

Fantrarianism (fān-trâr'ē-ən-ĭz'əm)
n. The condition of becoming an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc. in opposition of the majority, because the majority is rooting for an asshole team.

[Origin: Americanism/Me Fandom + Contrarianism]

Which is not to say that I wouldn't root for Big Blue, anyway. But it does make it all the sweeter to say go Giants. It's nice having a horse in this race for a change.

Define Politics

Rudy Giuliani Rooting for Red Sox

"I'm an American League fan, and I go with the American League team, maybe with the exception of the Mets," he said. "Maybe that would be the one time I wouldn't because I'm loyal to New York."

HillTV, Spawn of UUTV, is Dead

I just got a call from the inimitable Mr. Proctor with some sad news. Apparently, the Syracuse University Chancellor has dissolved the student group HillTV, formerly my own dear UUTV, over a matter of offensive content on one of their shows. The Post Standard has an article from the 19th on problems with the show "Over the Hill."

The show's description on the station's Web site invites people to "watch, get informed and get offended," and it seems to have hit its mark when it comes to being offensive, making light of issues such as eating disorders, date rape and lynching.

"We've had an unusually high number of problems regarding content sensitivity with their shows," said Rich Levy, HillTV's general manager and an SU junior. "I have seen some of the most recent episodes . . . I found a lot of their content to be highly offensive. A lot of it was just wholly inappropriate."

Levy took over the general manager position about three weeks ago.

I feel Rich's pain - we had to deal with a series of ill-conceived and problematic shows when I was General Manager. Hey, college is the time of your life when you get to fuck around. In our case, however, we were seen by maybe 12 people on cable access and the clunky, unreliable campus feed, so we were generally safe from scrutiny. Not so much now, it seems. From the Daily Orange:

Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor disbanded the student-run television station HillTV on Thursday.

Cantor spoke to former HillTV General Manager Rich Levy, the department heads and the former sports director at 4:30 p.m. to tell them of her decision to disable the station. Cantor also told the HillTV representatives of the administration's decision to create a new student-run television network on campus.

The HillTV Web site, HillTV.com, was removed Thursday evening.

Cantor did not allow the former HillTV members to speak in defense of the station.

This is the letter that has been floating around among alumni:

Dear HillTV/UUTV Alumni,

Many of you may already be aware of the recent activity at SU involving HillTV. As of tonight, Chancellor Nancy Cantor has shut us down. All production has ceased and HillTV as a recognized student organization NO LONGER EXISTS.

One of the entertainment programs, “Over the Hill” produced racially and sexually offensive content in a series of their programming. The Executive Staff members were in the process of reviewing their content and status of their show. No episode of "Over the Hill" has been approved by the Executive Staff since issues regarding the show's content were first brought to light this semester. We cancelled the show and were in the process of reworking our content sensitivity standards to make sure future programming did not have this kind of effect.

The members of HillTV, and in particular the Executive Staff, have sat through a series of town-hall meetings as well as internal meetings over the past few days. We wanted to solve the problem and move on, to continue working as a student-run organization.
However, we were not given the opportunity to work through this issue, even after the show was cancelled.

The future of our station, as well as the past, is gone.

The Orange Television Network and its general manager Andy Robinson now control the “Watson Studios” facility. We plan on working with OTN on an interim basis, but are planning to appeal the decision to permanently shut down HillTV.

Right now, we are asking for your encouragement, thoughts and guidance. It is important to us, as past and present members of HillTV to support the student organization we loved so much.

Katie Frey

There is media and administration contact info, too. I'll email that privately to anyone who would like to comment to the powers that be on this issue.

I'm going to reserve final judgement until I learn a little more about what exactly went down, but just from the above it seems that the faculty decided to take visible decisive action to cover for a potentially embarassing problem, so they punish the entire station for the sins of a few.

I don't know what the content of "Over the Hill" was, but let's assume it was bad. Like National Socialist Movement bad.

Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor Shut down the student run television station Thursday night. A packed house in Syracuse's Hendericks Chapel applauded the decision.

Yeah, that bad. So you've got a patently offensive and terrible show that people are complaining about. So the HillTV execs cancel it and start working on ways to prevent the National Socialists (that's Nazis, btw) from sneaking onto the schedule again. Now, AFTER the show has been cancelled, the SU faculty disbands the TV station entirely, apparently because the organization was far too flawed or corrupted to be trusted with making more shows.

But wait a minute. Then the chancellor asks the staff of the now defunct station to join the committee to form a new station? Uhhhhh... does anyone else see a logical conflict here? This sounds like classic CYA from the University.

I'm going to have to think about the best way to respond to this - letters, phonecalls, etc. Either way, the alums really need to go to bat on this one.


Update 10/23:
The wingers are out in force on this one. Apparently this, along with the banning of the BSA from campus earlier this year, is playing into the hands of the "poor oppressed conservative" crowd. Supporters of the HillTV staff will need to carefully avoid being forced into defending "Over the Hill" on the basis of freedom of speech. That's not the issue. The staff agreed with the public and (I'll say this as many times as I can) CANCELLED THE SHOW. The chancellor then arbitrarily disbanded the station without a review process. I'm pretty sure that's against the bylaws governing student organizations, but we all know that as far as student rights are concerned, those kinds of rules aren't worth the binders they're stacked in.

If David Horowitz gets involved, we're fucked.

ARRRRR!

Avast, mateys.

'Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Also Gespieltes Zarathustra

My God, it's full of franchises

So E3 is upon us. The armies of marketers rally to the corporate banners and scream their fearsome warcries. Wi-fi! Teraflops! Sequels! Market shares! By now you've probably seen images of the big three, including Sony's weird PS-a-rang. There is truly some impressive hardware in the making here, including a PS3 that can output to dual screen HDTVs. Who the hell has two HDTVs? I don't know, but I'm sure they can afford all three next gen consoles without having to look at the charge account.

But what's really amazing about all the new information coming down the pike is how much I don't give two shits. One shit, yes, I obviously give that, since I'm bothering to write on the topic. But two? No. I haven't had enough fiber.

Seriously, I can't get excited about gaming hardware anymore. Everyone has a technological fanboy apex, I think. My friend Nick's crested with the Super Nintendo. Mine lasted heartily into the PS2 era. Some people crapped out on the C64 or the 2600. And then there are Mac people, who are clearly iSane.

The point is, it's very hard for me to get worked up about specs, performance, or even actual graphics. We have evolved gaming entertainment to the point where graphics just don't really matter. If you want to express an artistic element, you don't have to parse thousands of concepts down into a few lines of code anymore. Ninjas can appear fully-formed from the mists of nightmares and interact directly with a man's jugular vein in sparkling crimson 3D. At some point an increased level of texture detail on the blood stain just doesn't add anything to the experience. Hell, Tenchu has some of the worst polygon clipping around, and it's still just a fun game to play.

So what do they have ready for the intial releases? More plumbers, more Madden's, and God help us, more Tekken. Tekken 6? At least Capcom had the decency to add words to each sequel (Super Final Street Fighter 2 EX Alpha Smurf Ultra Turbo, anyone?). Not everyone can make a Katamari Damacy, but why is anyone excited about all the same warmed-over crap? How many times can you make the same damn game? Oh, this time I can shoot the aliens with RED lasers? Awesome.

They are also making more Final Fantasies and Metal Gear games. Because kids don't read enough today, and we if we keep feeding them poorly-translated and awkwardly-written stuff like this, they may stop altogether.

Perhaps I am just becoming grouchy and old, with my red checkered bath robe and baseball bat, sitting on my front lawn yelling at the neighborhood kids as they run by with their PSPs. But I still play far more games than is healthy for my daily schedule. I bust up criminals in CoH. I tear around San Andreas in my stolen Infernus. You've seen me wax weird about the Sims. I keep an eye out for peripherals and accessories to improve my laptop, which is a monster gaming station. But I just don't think I'm going to plunk down anything this year on a console. Feh.

Anata no ke ha subarashii!

This is all over the net by now, but in case you haven't seen it:

Do you need hero style?

Do you lament your lack of an androgenous body, huge head, or tiny mouth and nose?

Are you prepared to know the amazingly COOOOOL fashion secrets of such famous figures as Kabuki Quantum Fighter?

Then look no further than MANGA HEAD.

And may the shougyou no kami have mercy on your soul.

A Reading

From the Book of Snark

I said I was going to stop posting on politics, but I never said anything about religion. I guess I'm skirting the edge with this one.

The always entertaining Jerry Falwell:

Throughout the book of Judges, God calls the Israelites to go to war against the Midianites and Philistines. Why? Because these nations were trying to conquer Israel, and God's people were called to defend themselves.

President Bush declared war in Iraq to defend innocent people. This is a worthy pursuit. In fact, Proverbs 21:15 tells us: "It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity."

One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even at the cost of human lives. If we do not stop the spread of evil, many innocent lives will be lost and the kingdom of God suffers.

Poor interpretations of scripture are more common than low-interest loans, and anyone selling you either is worthy of some skepticism. Insert the Reverend Falwell into the mix and skepticism becomes just the down payment on a whole portfolio of sarcastic derision.

Jerry here is engaging in the ancient sport of reconciling the "hey, don't kill people" elements of the Bible with the "hey, go kill those people, they suck" elements. The rest of the article explains itself rather well and does not hinge on this one passage. That's good, because it seems like grammatically he got it wrong. The way he presents it, he seems to argue that it is the role of the "just" to pass judgement on the "workers of iniquity." The just shall take joy in this justice, and the iniquitous shall have destruction. That's not how I read it.

"Destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity." Shall be what? Shall be joy. Destruction shall be joy to the workers of iniquity just as justice shall be joy to the just. It's not a call to arms, it's an observation of human nature, perhaps made over some really good lox and bagels down at the corner deli, don't they make it just exactly right there, it's to die for. That crazy Solomon, what a character - always has his eyes open, he does.

A lot of people don't seem to realize that parts of the Bible are extremely funny. Here you have literally thousands of years of human history, recorded and edited by dozens of different authors across many distinct regions and cultures. It has been translated, transcribed and transposed by hundreds of scribes and set into every political and social context imaginable. I'm pretty sure at least one of those revered bookworms told a fart joke at some point. The 20th century didn't invent irony, we just developed a faster delivery system for it.

Proverbs is one of the best, because the entries are so compact, and Solomon himself is quite a cut-up. Some of my favorites:

21:2 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts.

21:9 It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.
Go on, tell me that image isn't funny.

21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.
For a guy with 300 concubines, seems like Sol slept on the couch a lot.

21:22 A wise man scaleth the city of the almighty, and casteth down the strength of the confidence thereof.

21:23 Whoso keepeth his mouth and tongue keepeth his soul from troubles.
Or in the words of Mark Twain, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

And that's all from Chapter 21. Solomon goes on to discuss proper table etiquette in Chapter 23 and dating techniques in 31. His secret? Go dutch. Seriously, verse 14.

You don't vote for kings

A self-perpetuating autocracy

Recently I've become intensely interested in the Burger King pantheon of advertising. It's new, it's hip, it's odd and frequently disturbing. Amazingly, it makes me more likely to actually eat at Burger King, unlike McDonald's ads, which fill me with the desire to shove iron spikes into my tongue in an effort to prevent me from eating anything ever again.

I think my fascination finally crested the point of "actually looking shit up" with the Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch commercials, featuring Hootie sans Blowfish. You've seen it.

Let Her Fry

You can see it again in its long form by clicking on the picture, or you can read all about it at the ad agency's website. Have you ever looked really closely at this thing? It's hypnotic, like a deep fried train wreck covered in cheese. It's also deeply sexual in a "Dynasty opening credits" kinda way. "Nice caboose?" "Breasts that grow on trees?" Milk Maidens slopping ranch dressing on each other, while cowboys relax by gently growing, precisely-placed giant fries? I work in advertising and I took a women's studies class, dammit, I know what's going on here!

Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami are the people behind the entire campaign. They originated the new look of the King (derived from a 1970s BK toy found on eBay), the whole subservient Chicken bit (featured in the Hootie ad if you look closely), and just about every BK spot for the past year. You can read all about their edgy counter-culture approach in Slate. They don't seem to have a very long pedigree advertising-wise, which probably plays a big role in their style. Ad agencies are notoriously stuffy.

The money quote of the article, in reference to the new Double Croissanwich, is this:

"Our research showed there was space for a larger, more indulgent build," says Paul Macaluso, Burger King product manager for breakfasts.

First of all, how cool would it be to be "product manager for breakfasts?" For the whole worldwide Burger King operation, no less? Paul Macaluso can walk into any BK in the universe and DEMAND extra eggs and deep fried bacon, and they'd have to give it to him. Why? Because he's the Product Manager for Breakfasts, bitch. Oh yeah.

Now, that quote is from October. Apparently a double size Croissanwich did not satisfy the howling hungry maw of the American breakfaster, however. So in the year 2005, the King called upon his subjects to construct a new sandwich. A sandwich of epic proportions - a breakfast confection for the ages - a gustatory megalith to dwarf the feeble sandwiches of men. A work of meat, egg, dairy and grain which, when complete, would blot out the sun itself. It's name would be simple, free of embellishment, and merely state plainly the physical properties of the great work: The Enormous Egg Omelette Sandwich.

Size Comparison

The point of the "EEOS" is to generate in you the sort of indulgent wanton desire that drives you to put chocolate milk on your Cocoa Puffs. (You should do that sometime, by the way.) You wouldn't want to eat this every morning if you value your aorta, but you want to TRY this thing. Just once. Just to tempt the cholesterol reaper. I like the fact that the healthy-living backlash - the anger over being contstantly told that Americans are fat goobery slabs of dough - has actually generated an expanded market for an expanded sandwich. It gives me new hope for capitalism that the Invisble Hand of the Market is apparently signalling for a second serving of pie.

The Prophet

Let me tell you about our many fine products, Neo

Sony patents 'real life Matrix'

IMAGINE movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.

“This was a prophetic invention. It was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction technology takes us”

Wrapping up "Creepy Brain Tech Week" with this gem from New Scientist. This patent is just a little CYA from Sony so that, in the event that direct-to-brian virtual reality technology emerges within the next 20 years, they are ON that mofo. Seriously, this is just a convenient mix of corporate PR and R&D wanking, but I'm sure that at least a handful of very forward-looking executives somewhere are drooling over the licensing potential of cerebral beaming entertainment.

Even should this "prophetic" technology become available and even ubiquitous within my lifetime, I'm not sure I'd ever be comfortable with using it. Given their horrible customer service track record, I'm not sure I'd like to give Sony the opportunity to poke around in my brain with the ultrasonic equivalent of a big stick. What if they broke it? I'd have to send it back to them at my cost and wait for a replacement or a refurbish from the factory, and that takes six months, assuming the ship doesn't get held up in San Diego. Then there's the warranty card and the third party maintenance fees... I just wouldn't be up to dealing with that, especially after damaging my motor cortex with a bad copy of "Bikini Gun Bunny Adventure III."

We can rebuild him

Bionic eye will let the blind see

It comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual's eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear.

Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into impulses that the brain can interpret.

What interests me about this piece is not necessarily the bionic aspect but, again, the software. So we now know how to (roughly) interpret neurological data in the motor cortex to create motion, and we know (we think) how to transmit data to the visual cortex to produce images.

This is still at the raw meat-packing stages of the technology - physically jamming electrons into the occipital lobe a few dozen at a time to produce blurry pseudo-sight. Taken to it's logical future conclusion, though (full-resolution data transmission), can someone equipped with this implant ever truly trust the images he sees? Is there another way of stimulating the chip's electrodes in such a device that bypasses the camera in the eye? I'm getting a Gibson/Stephenson/Watts vibe here that makes me want to dig out and dust off Neon City again.

Care for some antifutureshock meds with your coffee? Warren Ellis knows what he's talking about.

Gearslaving

I get a quiet thrill of being tapped into the universal unconscious spirit of human progress whenever something happens that I have previously written about, however tangentally.

...BrainGate consists of nearly 100 hair-thin electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement.

Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which analyses the brain signals.

The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a computer with thought.

About six years ago my friend Mike and I set about writing our own updated Cyberpunk SF world. At some point, flush with creative energy, we actually held delusions of publication, but those dissipated when confronted with the realities of design, print costs, work, school, and life. Still, we each produced a huge amount of copy and raw ideas that are still creatively useful.

One of those ideas was the ViOp implant, a brain-machine interface (a staple of all Cyberpunk fiction) that could translate raw cerebral electrical impulses into coherent computer code. We dedicated a lot of time to developing how exactly the machine would "learn" to interpret human thought and what sort of applications this would have in real life. The concept of "cyberspace" was too 80s, so we took two distinct routes of development, the ethereal and the pragmatic.

On the the ethereal side, we posited that the ViOp, while being able to interpret simple commands like moving a cursor on a screen, would also have a low signal to noise ratio. Background thinking - the subconscious - would be hard to filter out. Other human brains, however, when connected via the ViOp, could read that noise as projected thought. That led to the creation of a pseudo-spiritual post-humanist online universe with all sorts of weird social and political implications.

On the pragmatic side, we thought about brain-controlled cars. Imagine putting your hand on the gear shift and being able to steer on thought alone. Imagine having total awareness of your vehicle from the grip of the tires to the efficiency of the fuel injection piped into your head, and being able to respond with the ease of propelling a foot forward or taking a deep breath. Imagine blowing the doors off a cop car as you careen down a futuristic city street in a dark distopian underworld. That's Gearslaving.

Awesome.

Confusing Headlines

Barcode That Baby, Maybe Says Embryology Body

Mammal Ate Termites Before Anyone Else Did

The unsung role of Kung Fu in the Kyrgyz revolution

Australia Has Baby Boom After Gov't Push

Bad Dog

No no no no no no no no no no no no.

They cancelled Teen Titans to bring us this?

My problem is not so much with the concept as with the secondary characters. Watch the preview and see if you can figure out which one is stabbing me in the brain. Go ahead, I'll wait.

...

Done? Ok, here's the thing. I have no problem with a Kryptonian dog coming to Earth and befriending a human household sans Clark. I'll even grant the need for a sidekick cat somewhere in close enough proximity to provide comic relief.

But Ace? ACE the BATDOG?! Bruce Wayne felt the need to dress his ROTTWEILLER in a BATSUIT to hide his IDENTITY and look more INTIMIDATING? ARGH!

Big Bang Created in Lab

The newest big scary thing at the RHIC. Up next on the development table: portable apocalypse in a jar. Collect the whole set.

Black Hole Created in Lab

Maybe. Pretty soon, everyone will want one. But act now, they're going fast. Seriously.

Wait, how DO these things happen?

The VP of a company that has made a business out of stripping you of your privacy without your knowledge has been appointed to a Homeland Security panel on privacy.

Apparently this guy will "bring his courage and conviction to the board," and "fight the good fight, and ... surprise us with creative, fresh and unconventional thinking..."

*retching noise*

How these things happen

If there's one thing that historians absolutely love, it's eerie coincidences.