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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 #################################(##)##################
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