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 /_/_/  |_|__/|__/_/ |_/http://www.acronymchile.com/yawn.html
                        2003-05-20
            When economic necessity is replaced by the necessity for
            boundless economic development, the satisfaction of primary
            human needs is replaced by an uninterrupted fabrication of
            pseudo-needs which are reduced to the single pseudo-need of
            maintaining the reign of the autonomous economy.
                        -- Guy-Ernest Debord

###!!!!!###### 9/11 ################################(IB)##################
Documents From Congress' Joint Inquiry into 9/11 Includes material the Bush Administration wants to classify and remove from public scrutiny. http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/hearings/ "In May 2003, Newsweek, Knight Ridder, and other media outlets reported that the Bush Administration was working to block the release of the Joint Inquiry's full report. In fact, officials were quoted as saying that they'd like to retroactively classify parts of the material that came out during the open hearings." Links are included to the official Congress URLs and also to memory hole mirrors.
###-----###### MOORCOCK ############################(##)##################
Recently thought to do a search for Michael Moorcock. I've read many of his books, but never looked up much on him on the internet. There is rather a lot there :-) Particularly interesting was this essay: "Starship Stormtroopers" http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/moorcock.html It is a critique of a lot of science-fiction and fantasy writing which Moorcock sees as thinly or un-disguised paternalism and crypto-fascism. It is a good article, and also provides a whistle stop tour of many of the most prominent authors in science fiction. Towards the end MM provides some recommendations of books he has particularly enjoyed, and "Tiger! Tiger!", AKA "The Stars My Destination" comes out quite high on the list. It's a book I have read myself, and one I could recommend. Though written in 1956 it still feels very modern, unlike (IMHO) James Blish's "Cities in Flight" books which are no older. More "straight" fiction recommended by Moorcock and others can be found here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4622335,00.html While his top 10 science fiction books are in another Guardian piece: http://books.guardian.co.uk/top10s/top10/0,6109,530819,00.html some of the books are likely to be familiar: "The Man in the High Castle" and "Tiger! Tiger!", others less so (to me at least), such as "The Exploits of Engelbrecht" by Maurice Richardson. "If you do not know the Surrealist Sporting Club, The Day We Played Mars and the Night of the Great Witch Shoot ... you do not know English literature." There's further (short) exploration of fiction in an essay Moorcock wrote around the time of the release of the Elric novel "The Dreamthief's Daughter". Interesting and readable. http://www.twbookmark.com/authorslounge/articles/2001/march/article11807.html Moorcock appears to do a share of book reviews for the Guardian, most of which can handily be found like so: http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=+site:books.guardian.co.uk+michael+moorcock And has of course also been reviewed. This review of "King of the City" by Iain Sinclair is a fantastic piece of writing, well worth reading just for the joy of it: http://books.guardian.co.uk/lrb/articles/0,6109,401938,00.html "No wonder Moorcock, one of the few novelists with a platinum disc (from his days with Hawkwind), is so uncomfortable in an age of air guitarists: the Blair/ Clinton wild boys of the bathroom mirror. Mime masters. Party saxophonists. Purveyors of the rock and roll wannabe novel, the novel written by the rock star's best chum." His own website is at: http://www.multiverse.org/ Finally, a couple of interviews I have enjoyed: http://www.crescentblues.com/3_6issue/moorcock.shtml "I was playing guitar in a whorehouse at the age of 15 not because I was that good on the guitar or that sexy, but because I got on well with the girls and they liked me... I had probably enjoyed most of life's sweetest pleasures for quite a lot of the time by the age of 22 when I got married and settled down." Also, a rather long one at Corporate MOFO (6 pages): "Michael Moorcock on Politics, Punk, Tolkien, and everything else" http://www.corporatemofo.com/stories/Moorcock1.htm goes a little into politics again: "We [English readers] responded to black blues and white social protest songs because we were desperate to hear the voices of the real Americans, not the horror of populist fascism, which seemed to have been brought home on the boots of returning soldiers." He also describes the ways he has become politically active while in the USA where he now lives. Other topics dealt with too, of course: "Snobs are much happier with the arts than science because you can have an opinion without any information on the arts, but you need to know what you're talking about in the sciences. As a result, a certain section of 'educated' society makes science less respectable a subject" And really finally, I thought this review of MM's "Cornelius Quartet" had a couple of good quotes: "In all honesty, I cannot recommend reading The Cornelius Quartet for pleasure ... it takes a strong will to endure the cynicism and desolation of Jerry Cornelius' world, and that's something that I seem to lack." http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/c/cornelius-quartet.html Notwithstanding that remark, the reviewer admires the work, in particular for its inventiveness and as a historical landmark.
###!!!--###### ANARCHY #############################(##)##################
I came across a scrap of paper on which I had written "Metrophage, Richard Kadrey". No idea where i got the reference from, but Kadrey's novel is available free to download on the internet http://www.richardkadrey.com/metrophage.html AFAIK, anarchism figures in the book, so no better time to plug The Anarchy FAQ, which answers many pertinent questions about Anarchism: http://www.infoshop.org/faq/index.html Kadrey's essay: "SUSTAINABLE CHAOS: The Art of Getting Danger, Beauty and Madness back into Your Life" has a nicely phrased bit of advice: Cultivate decadence. Drink to excess. Eat well. Take Ecstasy with a beautiful stranger. Do not do these things every day. That's a habit, not decadence. He mentions a website http://www.infiltration.org which might be interesting, and also the "Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory". No link for that one, but supposed to be on web (somewhere! A cursory search found lots of pay-sites unsure of Free availability).
###!!!--###### VOTING ##############################(/.)##################
Slashdot blurb: "The NYT is raising the alarm on electronic voting. After citing expert opinion on the need for a paper trail, they then quote election officials and vendors who dismiss that opinion as the ignorant work of dreamers. The reporter titles his article..." http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/05/15/1231241.shtml?tid=126&tid=103&tid=99 http://verify.stanford.edu/evote.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/technology/circuits/15vote.html
###!!!--###### EYES ################################(IB)##################
"Watching America with Pride, not Prejudice.", This is the Orwellian motto of the New Jersey-based Community Anti-Terrorism Training Institute, or CAT Eyes... Said Licata (co-founder): "I envision 100 million Americans looking for indicators of terrorism and promptly reporting it to a central database where it would get analyzed." http://www.libertythink.com/2003_05_16_archives.html#200303688
###!!!!-###### HUNTER ##############################(BB)##################
Review of Hunter S. Thompson's new book http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,6121,957383,00.html Last year, well before the Iraq war, Thompson wrote: "We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world - a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. George W Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world." And on writing vs drugs: He is not coy about his choice of poisons, but asked specifically about it in a piece here ("Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why") he makes a nice reply: "I haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as a sitting at a desk writing, trying to imagine a story no matter how bizarre it is, as much as going out and getting into the weirdness of reality and doing a little time on the Proud Highway."
###!!!!-###### JESSICA #############################(##)##################
Interesting article contrasting different accounts of the Jessica Lynch story. It appears her doctor tried to have her returned to US forces the day before her rescue, but her ambulance was fired upon by US checkpoint and had to retreat. All Iraqi resistance had left before special forces entered the hospital: http://commondreams.org/headlines03/0515-07.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm There are challenges to the story, for example at http://www.instapundit.com/ Which links to the following: http://www.right-thinking.com/comments.php?id=P1438_0_1_0_C http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2003_05.html#003798 http://laughingwolf.net/archives/000073.html http://laughingwolf.net/archives/000079.html http://laughingwolf.net/archives/000082.html#more including criticism of general "BBC left-wing bias"... http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=564472003
###!!!!!###### CHARMAINE ###########################(RW)##################
Very low profile for this story in the mainstream media, but from reading this article I think it deserves to be heard. Major Charmaine Means of the US Army has been relieved of duty after she refused to follow orders to close down the television station in Mosul, Iraq. She deserves a lot of credit for exercising her conscience in this way: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0513-08.htm
###!!!!-###### RACHEL ##############################(##)##################
Carrie Corrie reflects on the legacy of her late daughter, Rachel, and the cause for which she died. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15914
###!!!--###### MEDIA ###############################(BB)##################
Lawrence Lessig on the perils of centralised media, and why the internet is no panacea: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_05.shtml#001180
###!!---###### CONNECT #############################(BB)##################
Wireless access point in a lightbulb taking advantage of powerline ethernet. What next... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/352
###!!---###### WATER ###############################(RW)##################
European commission seems to be leaning towards water privatisation in developing world (all to do with GATS etc.,) http://www.publici.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=518&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0 Interesting article, and two links to follow up: the Corporate Europe Observatory http://www.corporateeurope.org the Polaris Institute, a Canadian non-profit advocacy group http://www.polarisinstitute.org/gats/main.html
###!!!!-###### AUTOPSY #############################(??)##################
This is fantastic. Describes process of autopsy. Bizarre illustrations. Must see. http://www.pathguy.com/autopsy.htm
###-----###### SLEEP ###############################(/.)##################
What is Russian sleep: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=64283&cid=5962350 I suppose it is this: http://www.oinc.net/knownspace/enc/display.php?299
###!!!--###### IR ##################################(BB)##################
See IR with your eyes. Not night vision, but interesting... http://amasci.com/amateur/irgoggl.html Seems that by using filters that block everything but the infra-red end of the spectrum you can see this light on sunny days. The author has some interesting applications... "Now I need to find some IR-absorbing spray paint and magic markers. I want some kind of paint which looks totally water-clear to human eyes, but looks totally black at 720nM infrared. Why? Because then I can put IR graffiti all over things, and nobody can see it unless they're equipped with IR goggles. I'll draw "crop circles" on city streets that IR cameras can see!"
###!!!--###### CODE ################################(##)##################
In wake of IBM/SCO lawsuit, Don Marti makes the point that software companies will be very careful in the future to contrive so that they cannot possibly be accused of ripping off somebody else's ideas. If you have been exposed to proprietary code, then when looking for a job you just might be too much of a risk for them: "It's summer break from college. If you're in Computer Science, and you're going back to a school that has Shared Source or other NDA-based access to source code, you'd better get hired by the one company whose code it is. Otherwise, be prepared to look for a job at Borders or Noah's Bagels." http://www.ssc.com/pipermail/atc/2003-May/000039.html
###-----###### FIN #################################(##)##################
Archived: http://www.acronymchile.com/yawn_archive/2003-05-20yawn.html
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