Kate, better known for her Electric Venom blog, is attracting lots of hits today at her more domestically-oriented second blog for her amusing rendition of the only too familiar complaint of the wife who finds she can’t compete with her husband’s favorite
video game that pushes the player to spend more, More, MORE time being better, bigger, badder, more brilliant than they were just a few minutes ago, a few days ago… better than anyone else ever has been. For some, there is something insidiously sexy about outdoing one’s self as well as any other lesser beings… and these games pander precisely to that weak spot. It is a frightening, yet oh-so-modern thing to sacrifice a dream for one’s real future to the reality of something that is not and never will be truly real. I will not have another baby by the time I’m 40 because a computer game eats up those precious hours that real, live ova wait in my body for a man who is not there.
I’ve lost count of the nights I’ve lain upstairs waiting because he said he’d “be right up.” At first I was grateful: I like to read a bit before bed, and this guaranteed me the chance to do it. But over and over that “right up” turned into one, two, three hours. Sometimes he’d wake me up as he climbed into bed and, rolling over, I’d see dawn’s light seeping through our windows, light as weak and watery and ineffective as the tears I’d ceased to shed.
Before you ask: it was never another woman. I’ve always known that. If you could see the way my husband’s face lights up when he looks at me, the way he dotes on me when there’s no computer nearby, the way his voice sinks into a velvet-chocolate register when he speaks my name or talks of me, well, then you’d know as I do that there is no other woman. I am it for him, as he is for me. Forever and ever, amen.
Except for that video game. And, damn, she is a harsh mistress. In reality, I am his and I have no question that he is, and always will be, mine. But these games tread on the thin edges of reality, and in that realm I have no power. I have no identity within that realm, I am without reference, without meaning. There, within his game, there is only him and, the truth be told, there is no us.
Here is the new Republican Committee Ad. A lot of people on the right are complaining that it’s unoriginal, just a take-off on Bill Moyer’s anti-Goldwater “Daisy” ad. Perhaps so, but as I recall Johnson did win.
The embedded player is a bit too small for easy reading. If you have a problem, just catch it at the original GOP web-site here.
U.S. intelligence has detected the departure from a North Korean port of a North Korean ship suspected of carrying military equipment banned under a U.N. sanctions resolution against Pyongyang’s Oct. 9 nuclear test, CBS News reported Thursday.
The United States is tracking the ship, CBS said, noting that it remains uncertain exactly what the ship is carrying and where it is headed.
Should the ship be confirmed to be loaded with nuclear, missile or other related materials, it could be subject to the first maritime inspection under the sanctions resolution adopted unanimously Saturday by the U.N. Security Council. The resolution, which imposes economic and diplomatic sanctions, rules out military options, which are strongly opposed by China and Russia.
More silkworms for Hezbollah? Nuclear bomb equipment for Iran?
On Sunday, October 22nd, 2006, there will be seven “dirty” explosive devices detonated in seven different U.S. cities; Miami, New York City, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland and Cleveland. The death toll will approach 100,000 from the initial blasts and countless other fatalities will later occur as result from radioactive fallout.
The bombs themselves will be delivered via trucks. These trucks will pull up to stadiums hosting NFL games in each respective city. All stadiums to be targeted are open air arenas, excluding Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, the only enclosed stadium to be hit. Due to the open air, the radiological fallout will destroy those not killed in the initial explosion. The explosions will be near simultaneous, with the cities specifically chosen in different time zones to allow for multiple attacks at the same time.
The 22nd of October will mark the final day of Ramadan as it would fall in Mecca. Al-Qaida will automatically be blamed for the attacks. Later, through Al-Jazeera Osama bin Laden will issue a video message claiming responsibility for what he dubs “America’s Hiroshima”.
In the aftermath civil wars will erupt across the world, both in the Middle East and within the United States. Global economies will screech to a halt. General chaos will rule.
AP reported the story, including expressions of skepticism from the authorities.
The warning, posted Oct. 12, was part of an ongoing Internet conversation titled “New Attack on America Be Afraid.” It mentioned NFL stadiums in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland and Cleveland, where games are scheduled to be held this weekend.
The Homeland Security Department alerted authorities and stadium owners in those cities, as well as the NFL, of the Web message but said the threat was being viewed “with strong skepticism.” Officials at the NCAA, which oversees college athletics, said they too had been notified.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said there was no intelligence that indicated such an attack was imminent, and he said the alert was “out of an abundance of caution.”
“The department strongly encourages the public to continue to go about their plans, including attending events that involve large public gatherings such as football games,” Knocke said.
The FBI also expressed doubt about the threat.
“While the credibility of the threat is questionable, we have passed the information on because it has been carried in some open source reporting,” said FBI spokesman Richard Kolko. He said the FBI was discussing the threat with the NFL as “part of our routine discussions this week.”
The nation’s alert level remains at yellow, signaling an elevated risk of an attack. The threat level for airline flights is at orange, a higher level, where it has been since a foiled plot to bomb U.S.-bound commercial jets was revealed on Aug. 10.
This one does not seem terribly credible, but a little heightened security would not be a bad idea.
Federal authorities said Friday they have charged a 20-year-old Wisconsin grocery store clerk with making a hoax threat that said seven football stadiums across the nation would be targeted by terrorists with radiological”dirty bombs”this weekend.
Jake J. Brahm, of Wauwatosa, Wis., surrendered to the U.S. Marshal’s Service in Milwaukee on Friday morning. He was charged in a sealed criminal complaint filed Thursday in Newark, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said…
Brahm was scheduled to make a court appearance later Friday in Milwaukee.
He was first taken into custody by police in Wauwatosa on Wednesday, based on information authorities received that Brahm was the source of the Internet threat to bomb football stadiums, federal authorities said.
FBI agents interviewed him that night, and the FBI said Thursday it had determined the threats were a hoax.
The Royal Australian Navy suffered one of its worse losses in WWII on 19 November 1941, when the light cruiser HMAS Sydney II with all 645 men on board went down in action against the German auxiliary cruiser/raider Kormoran off the west coast of Australia. The Komoran was also sunk in the same action.
In August of 2005, the Australian Government approved a $1.3 million grant to fund a search for the sunken cruiser.
Reuters reports the latest strange plot twist in the search.
Australian defense officials said a navy team had this month exhumed the remains of an unknown sailor buried in an unmarked grave on Christmas Island, remains long thought to be those of a Sydney crewman.
Islanders have said the unmarked grave contained the remains of a man dressed in a blue boilersuit which washed up in a navy liferaft in February 1942.
A complete skeleton of what appeared to be a relatively young Caucasian male has been recovered along with other items and been sent for analysis.
“The most interesting find to date has been what appears to be a bullet wound in the skull and a small caliber round that is currently undergoing detailed analysis,” team leader Captain Jim Parsons said in a statement.
“This round appears to be from a low-velocity weapon, possibly a handgun,” he said.
When Google made the deal to purchase YouTube last week for $1.6 billion, one of the key components in the latter’s value must have been the ongoing lonelygirl15 video series. The lonelygirl15 videos, which began appearing last June, are probably YouTube’s most notable hit, producing a total of more than 15 million viewings.
The videos are purportedly the videoblog diary of Bree, a home-schooled 16 year old girl, residing apparently somewhere in the suburbs of Southern California. The series eventually included supplementary video commentaries from Bree’s boyfriend Daniel (Danielbeast), and has reached, as of October 17th, a total of 53 individual episodes.
The earliest videos simply featured the very pretty, very young Bree interacting with her stuffed animals, performing music parodies, or simply mugging for the camera. But, before very long, a plot line gradually began to emerge. It became evident that Bree’s family was unusually religious, which accounted for her home schooling, and Bree was involved in peculiar studies and preparations for some upcoming ceremony.
The questionable character of the family’s religion grew increasingly evident, as Bree’s activities and secrecy began to strain her relationship with Daniel, and as viewers began to recognize the picture of Aleister Crowley on her bedroom wall.
As early as mid-July, a number of YouTube viewers began to notice the professional execution of the lonelygirl15 videos, and the emergence of a story arc. Rumors began to fly in fan circles that lonelygirl15 was really a brilliantly conceived and executed promotional teaser for an upcoming television program, film, or game.
Increasing interest led to detective work by lonelygirl fans exposing a variety of commercial clues, including a registered trademark.
On September 12th, a number of sources announced that the identity of the actress playing Bree had been discovered to be Jessica Lee Rose.
The following day, the exposure of the lonelygirl15 videos as fiction made the national news. Example: AP
We had often seen links for the lonegirl videos on YouTube ourselves, but had just been too busy to watch one until very recently. We picked a good time to tune in. Bree has just completed the Ceremony, Daniel is investigating, and Halloween is right around the corner.
It is also convenient to arrive late at this particular party, because the proliferation of fandom has produced helpful viewer guides, numbering the episodes, so that one can watch them in order. LGpedia even provides episodes transcripts, in case one has trouble making out a line of dialogue.
They are definitely amusing, and Jessica Lee Rose, the actress playing Bree, is extremely cute. The 53 episodes range in length from just over a minute to over 4 minutes. My guess is that the whole series runs just a little over two hours, though they will take somewhat longer to watch due to navigation time.
The New Scientist blissfully imagines a world in which humanity has become extinct.
Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet’s land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we’re leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet.
“Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth – all 6.5 billion of us and counting – could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let’s not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses). Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust.
“The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better,” says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California…
Pretty quickly – 24, maybe 48 hours – you’d start to see blackouts because of the lack of fuel added to power stations,” says Gordon Masterton, president of the UK’s Institution of Civil Engineers in London. Renewable sources such as wind turbines and solar will keep a few automatic lights burning, but lack of maintenance of the distribution grid will scuttle these in weeks or months. The loss of electricity will also quickly silence water pumps, sewage treatment plants and all the other machinery of modern society.
The same lack of maintenance will spell an early demise for buildings, roads, bridges and other structures. Though modern buildings are typically engineered to last 60 years, bridges 120 years and dams 250, these lifespans assume someone will keep them clean, fix minor leaks and correct problems with foundations. Without people to do these seemingly minor chores, things go downhill quickly…
With no one to make repairs, every storm, flood and frosty night gnaws away at abandoned buildings, and within a few decades roofs will begin to fall in and buildings collapse. This has already begun to happen in Pripyat. Wood-framed houses and other smaller structures, which are built to laxer standards, will be the first to go. Next down may be the glassy, soaring structures that tend to win acclaim these days. “The elegant suspension bridges, the lightweight forms, these are the kinds of structures that would be more vulnerable,” says Masterton. “There’s less reserve of strength built into the design, unlike solid masonry buildings and those using arches and vaults.”
But even though buildings will crumble, their ruins – especially those made of stone or concrete – are likely to last thousands of years. “We still have records of civilisations that are 3000 years old,” notes Masterton. “For many thousands of years there would still be some signs of the civilisations that we created. It’s going to take a long time for a concrete road to disappear. It might be severely crumbling in many places, but it’ll take a long time to become invisible.”..
All things considered, it will only take a few tens of thousands of years at most before almost every trace of our present dominance has vanished completely. Alien visitors coming to Earth 100,000 years hence will find no obvious signs that an advanced civilisation ever lived here.
Yet if the aliens had good enough scientific tools they could still find a few hints of our presence. For a start, the fossil record would show a mass extinction centred on the present day, including the sudden disappearance of large mammals across North America at the end of the last ice age. A little digging might also turn up intriguing signs of a long-lost intelligent civilisation, such as dense concentrations of skeletons of a large bipedal ape, clearly deliberately buried, some with gold teeth or grave goods such as jewellery.
And if the visitors chanced across one of today’s landfills, they might still find fragments of glass and plastic – and maybe even paper – to bear witness to our presence. “I would virtually guarantee that there would be some,” says William Rathje, an archaeologist at Stanford University in California who has excavated many landfills. “The preservation of things is really pretty amazing. We think of artefacts as being so impermanent, but in certain cases things are going to last a long time.”
Ocean sediment cores will show a brief period during which massive amounts of heavy metals such as mercury were deposited, a relic of our fleeting industrial society. The same sediment band will also show a concentration of radioactive isotopes left by reactor meltdowns after our disappearance. The atmosphere will bear traces of a few gases that don’t occur in nature, especially perfluorocarbons such as CF4, which have a half-life of tens of thousands of years. Finally a brief, century-long pulse of radio waves will forever radiate out across the galaxy and beyond, proof – for anything that cares and is able to listen – that we once had something to say and a way to say it.
But these will be flimsy souvenirs, almost pathetic reminders of a civilisation that once thought itself the pinnacle of achievement. Within a few million years, erosion and possibly another ice age or two will have obliterated most of even these faint traces. If another intelligent species ever evolves on the Earth – and that is by no means certain, given how long life flourished before we came along – it may well have no inkling that we were ever here save for a few peculiar fossils and ossified relics. The humbling – and perversely comforting – reality is that the Earth will forget us remarkably quickly.
Personally, I prefer to imagine a world without idiots like these people.
James Bertakis was boating on the Intercoastal Waterway yesterday, near his home in Lighthouse Point, Florida, when a 5 foot (1.5 meter) wide, 30 lb. (13.6 kg.) spotted eagle rayAetobatus narinari jumped into the 16 foot (5 meter) boat.
When Bertakis attempted to throw the ray back into the water, it lashed out with its tail and planted a venemous barb in his chest, puncturing his lung. Surgeons successfully removed the barb, but a fragment is believed to have migrated to the victim’s heart.
After five hours of heart surgery and a three-hour operation in the afternoon to remove his spleen, Bertakis improved to critical but stable condition at Broward General Medical Center’s intensive-care unit, said Dr. Eugene Costantini. “His heart is functioning well, his lungs are functioning well,” Costantini said. “God willing, he’ll survive this.”..
Costantini said doctors repaired puncture wounds in Bertakis’ heart after the barb entered the left side, pierced the septum separating the two chambers of the heart and then bore through the right side. Doctors saw the barb sticking out of his heart when they began surgery, he said, and pulled it through. They will now monitor Bertakis’ heart, lungs and kidneys.
Doctors removed Bertakis’ spleen as a precaution after tests showed possible internal bleeding, Costantini said Thursday night. He added that in addition to sedatives, Bertakis was also on antibiotics to fight possible infection from marine bacteria. Bertakis was unconscious throughout Thursday, the doctor said…
Costantini said that in 20 years, he has never pulled a stingray barb from a man’s heart.
The New York Sun reports that an Al Qaeda communications manual, intended to foil NSA Echelon surveillance, titled the Myth of Delusion, was released via password-protected Islamic web-sites earlier this summer.
The document’s author, one Mohammed al-Hakaymah, clearly subscribes to Hillary Clinton’s theory of an influential “Great Right-Wing Conspiracy.”
Bill Roggio seems to have been the first to break the story, and he made the text available via .pdf.
The BBC reports on the speculations of Oliver Curry, a research associate at the London School of Economics who is pursuing the somewhat-anachronistic career path of applying Dawinism to human moral, social, and political behavior. Hello! it’s been done. Ever hear of Herbert Spencer? Or William Graham Sumner?
He has certainly read H.G. Wells.
Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years’ time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.
Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.
The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said – before a decline due to dependence on technology.
People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.
Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.
Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.
However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology.
Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.
Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.
Physically, they would start to appear more juvenile. Chins would recede, as a result of having to chew less on processed food.
There could also be health problems caused by reliance on medicine, resulting in weak immune systems. Preventing deaths would also help to preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer.
Further into the future, sexual selection – being choosy about one’s partner – was likely to create more and more genetic inequality, said Dr Curry.
The logical outcome would be two sub-species, “gracile” and “robust” humans similar to the Eloi and Morlocks foretold by HG Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine.
Daniel Pipes says the West must learn to win the media war.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen once determined the outcome of warfare, but no longer. Today, television producers, columnists, preachers, and politicians have the pivotal role in deciding how well the West fights. This shift has deep implications..
With loyalties now in play, wars are decided more on the Op-Ed pages and less on the battlefield. Good arguments, eloquent rhetoric, subtle spin doctoring, and strong poll numbers count more than taking a hill or crossing a river. Solidarity, morale, loyalty, and understanding are the new steel, rubber, oil, and ammunition. Opinion leaders are the new flag and general officers. Therefore, as I wrote in August, Western governments “need to see public relations as part of their strategy.”
Even in a case like the Iranian regime’s acquisition of atomic weaponry, Western public opinion is the key, not its arsenal. If united, Europeans and Americans are likely to dissuade Iranians from going ahead with nuclear weapons. If disunited, Iranians will be emboldened to plunge ahead.
What Carl von Clausewitz called war’s “center of gravity” has shifted to the hearts and minds of citizens from force of arms. Do Iranians accept the consequences of nuclear weapons? Do Iraqis welcome coalition troops as liberators? Do Palestinian Arabs willingly sacrifice their lives in suicide bombings? Do Europeans and Canadians want a credible military force? Do Americans see Islamism as presenting a lethal danger?
Non-Western strategists recognize the primacy of politics and focus on it. A string of triumphs — Algeria in 1962, Vietnam in 1975, and Afghanistan in 1989 — all relied on eroding political will. Al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, codified this idea in a letter in July 2005, observing that more than half of the Islamists’ battle “is taking place in the battlefield of the media.”
Personally, I think that a WWI or WWII style crackdown would put an instant stop to fashionable journalistic treason. Throw one Seymour Hersh in the can, and watch the rest of the cowardly community of scribblers run for cover. But Pipes is obviously correct, an effective Ministry of Information is worth more than an armored corps in today’s world.
