Alien Invasion Films 2011: Block, Schlock, and Earthlings In Peril
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 14, 2011 by admin in Popular Media
The teen heroes of the last year’s best alien invasion film “Attack The Block” will probably save the Earth, but they’ll have to ask mom first. And thanks to the massive marketing budgets of “Battle: Los Angeles” and “Skyline”, their working-class heroism has gone largely unacknowledged.
I have a suggestion for the makers of alien invasion schlockbusters Battle: Los Angeles
Occupy Libya
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 9, 2011 by admin in Politics
We are 99 percent sure this will happen. Put on your tin foil hat for a moment, and you will be too.
A few days after September 11, 2001, I was sitting talking with my nephew about the recent attacks on the US. Saddam Hussein was already getting lippy, and we joked that the Bush administration would use the Trade Center attacks as a pretext for invading Iraq, which seemed fairly preposterous at the time. We had a little cynical laugh that day, but a little over a year later, we weren’t laughing so much. Since then, I’ve found my tinfoil hat to be quite a stylish addition to my wardrobe. I put it back on recently when the alleged Iranian assassination plot made the news. I was having coffee with a friend, and before hearing any analysis about how looney it all sounded, we pondered what THIS could be the pretext for. Aside from that prepositional ending just now. One of the few figures that said it WASN’T looney was John Bolton, devoted Bush policy wonk and a key figure with the New American Century gang, the think tank that designed the bizarre and aggressive foreign policy implemented under Bush. I didn’t think much more of the fishy assassination plot until a few other things happened, inspiring me to do some superficial research. So make your own little tinfoil hat – it’s easy – and follow me for a moment down Conspiracy Lane. In six months, look back at this and maybe laugh, or maybe go “yeesh, that’s creepy”, but in either case I’ll bet you didn’t know about one of Libya’s greatest resources, which we’ll get to below. But first, a little refresher on recent events. Right around the time this kooky assassination plot was fed to the media, Libya was being torn apart by rebellion, and this of course was a handy way to get rid of another troublesome despot and his Prince-inspired wardrobe. So NATO pops in and does a bunch of the heavy lifting (or dropping, in this case), Gaddafi is hunted down like a dog, and conveniently killed before he can be brought to any kind of real international justice. This all is conveniently great PR too, it makes it look like America is supporting the “Arab Spring”, even though it’s already almost winter here. Almost at the same time, Obama announces the troop drawdown in Iraq, and while people are still jibber-jabbering about THAT, suddenly the IAEA releases the toughest report on Iran to date regarding their nuclear intentions, and Israel and Obama simultaneously start using the familiar “all options on the table” euphemism, which of course means Israel might strike Iran. So what does Libya have to do with Iraq, Iran, Israel, and the US? Well, the typical line of thinking of a paranoid conspiracist is that we’re going to “take Libya’s oil”. But that’s dumb, we’ll get the oil we need no matter what. It’s not like we suck oil out of Iraq and ship it to the US, we get it from a global cartel, and we’ll continue to get as much as we need until we have to fight China for it or something. Besides. Libya has something much more valuable in the middle east. Water. LOTS of water. In fact, more fresh water than the Caspian Sea, according to this source, and Gaddafi already did most of the work of making it accessible. We just have to stoke things up enough in the region by withdrawing from Iraq – which the media is already suggesting will encourage an Iran/Iraq Shiite uprising – let Israel get all testy and do some airstrikes, put some more Al Quaeda flags on government buildings in Libya, and VOILA! We have a full-blown occupation of Libya, a fantastically located place for US bases, with ALL THE WATER we need to whet our little war whistles. But wait, there’s a special bonus! It’s an election year coming up! How often do we elect a new president in the middle of a war that started the same year? To the best of my knowledge, never. Welcome to Occupy Libya. We are the 99 percent sure of this.
Your Robot Sucks Less
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 3, 2011 by admin in Technology
But the human race is probably not prepared to surrender to its Robot Overlords just YET.
 The Kondo KHR-3HV pleads to get its bike back after having it taken away for violating curfew. |
It has been more than a year since we last pointed out why your robot sucks, so we thought it was time for an update, as there have been a few interesting new developments. First though, we want to point out that we haven’t ALWAYS been so down on the state of robots; in spite of the fact that he walked like he just crapped his pants and looked like a dwarf in an astronaut suit, we never criticized Honda’s Asimo much. He was the first really sophisticated bipedal robot, and as an old Laurie Anderson song pointed out, walking – although it seems relatively simple for MOST humans – is an incredibly elaborate process of falling and not falling. But let’s face it, your robot still sucks, it just sucks less. I blame my cynicism on guys like Ray Kurzweil, who has been promising some kind of exponential growth in bio-robotic convergence for over a decade (something I’ve complained about before), or Ridley Scott, who made lifelike robots seem so plausible by the year 2019 in the movie Blade Runner
Occupy 101 – We Got 99 Problems But The Rich Ain’t One
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 30, 2011 by admin in Politics
Some facts about the origin of OWS that even occupiers seem unaware of, and some thoughts about what and what not to wear, and what and what not to say.
 We have a strict policy of not criticizing Anonymous around here, so if you’re with Anonymous, wear what you like. But for the rest of you, this is not recommended attire. It’s licensed property, so every mask you buy puts money in media conglomerate Time Warner’s pockets. |
As the Occupy Wall Street movement enters its sixth week, I find it remarkable that the most basic facts about it remain a mystery to many. And perhaps more remarkable that so many who complain daily about the issues that the Occupy movement seeks to address sit on the sidelines, still bellyaching. I personally have been bellyaching about the banksters since 2008. After writing a few dozen articles about bailouts, corporate capture of government , and pork-bellied politicians and having even my best friends shrug nonchalantly, I sort of gave up. But my interest in social justice was revived in early September of this year, when I first read of plans for protesters to assemble in NYC. I wasn’t surprised when the media ignored them the first week, but before the end of the second week, I told like-minded friends that if they made it past the second weekend, I might have to go join them. When 700 protestors were arrested on October 1, I knew it was “on”, and also knew there was no way I’d get to New York within the next several weeks. So that day, I set up simple site at OccupyAnnArbor.org, and started looking locally for other people who were interested. Don’t believe everything you read about social networking enabling civil protest. It may work in some situations, but in many areas, the multitude of conflicting Facebook and Meetup.com postings actually caused as much confusion as solidarity. And in my opinion, Facebook discussions tend to do more damage than good – intellectual liberals engage in wheel-spinning debate that makes them feel like they’re actually DOING something, things get factionalized, and as I’ve felt compelled to point out – clicking “Like” won’t change the world. So, in spite of the fact that this hardly qualifies as a revolution yet, Alexis de Tocqueville’s statement that “In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end” is relevant all the same. We’re mostly going to stick to history and a little opinion here. As this clip about the 1946 Oakland strikes makes clear, things can change on an epic scale in a single day when people who just want a decent living for a day’s work are deprived of that simple luxury. Read the rest of this entry »
Things Are Gettin’ Greener On The Server Farm
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 26, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Did you know that two Google searches generate as much CO2 as boiling water on your stovetop? Big tech companies are finally taking bigger steps toward addressing their data center’s environmental impact, which often rivals that of entire cities.
A couple of years ago, we talked about your Facebook Footprint, pointing out that two Google searches produce the same amount of CO2 as boiling water on your stovetop, and that Facebook has a carbon footprint equal to half of New York City. So have things changed much? You’d like to think that the brightest minds at innovative companies like Google would have a solid forward vision as they build the massive data centers that power the things that you do every day on the web, but do they? Well, it’s hard to tell. In spite of the fact that large tech companies like Google and Facebook don’t think YOU deserve much privacy, they treat information about their data centers like state secrets. None of the major tech firms in a Greenpeace roundup fared especially well, primarily because of a lack of transparency on the part of the companies in question. But it appears big tech firms are finally making SOME kind of effort. AMD and HP are partnering to explore the potential of solar-only distributed data centers. After considerable pressure, Facebook installed solar panels at their Oregon operation earlier this year, and suggesting maybe there’s some kind of financial sense to the idea (although this is a common argument against green energy) even Standard & Poors is getting in on the action. And Apple – in spite of being such an innovative company when it comes to devices and the revenue streams attached to them, is one of the late joiners in the game. For more comprehensive roundups if you’re interested, check out this special report from DataCenterKnowledge.com or this one from EcoFriend .