I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Monday, July 11, 2011

Linkee-poo has too much to do to be reading the internets

One of the things I loved about The West Wing (you know, besides its intelligent writing and expecting the audience to get it) is that the characters were often shown reading (books, reports, etc). In that vein, Awesome people reading tumblr. (Grokked from John)

Seanan McGuire guests over on Jim Hines' blog about writers with day jobs. "Balancing work and life is hard in our modern world. Balancing work-that-pays-bills, work-that-soul-demands, and life can seem borderline impossible sometimes." Amen, sister. Sing it out.

There's been a lot of pixels spilled over the new TSA "ZOMG! Terrorists might implant bombs in their bodies", hysteria. This isn't new. I think I joked about this last summer when the whole, "Gropes R Us" and "backscatter" technology came in. Also, I believe it was used in one of the Dune novels, and I'm thinking sometime before then as well (although my brain is too fuzzy at the moment to pull it out). The best I've seen so far is Jay Lake's commentary on it. As someone who also once traveled with a few ounces of subcutaneous metal in them, me no likey the new ergs. (Also, as I commented elsewhere, the TSA, like the IRS, is doing the job they're directed to do, the paranoia culture is one of my critiques of how the previous administration handled 9-11).

Göbekli Tepe and the dawn of religion. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

2 comments:

Eric said...

Gahddammit, Steve! Didn't you see The Dark Knight?! The Joker used surgically-implanted explosives to blow up the Gotham Police holding cells so he could get access to Lau before he could testify against Gotham's organized crime kingpins! The Joker, Steve, the motherfucking Joker. The biggest psychopathic sonuvabitch in the entire DC Comics rogues gallery, and yes, I'm counting Doomsday and Darkseid. Doomsday and Darkseid, they have, what'cha'm'call'ems, modus operandis, they have plans and shit. The Joker? That dude just does it for the LULZ. Who knows where he'll strike next, or what he'll do? All we know is the green-haired freak will think it's funny and laugh at us. He's probably laughing at us right now, Steve.

I wholeheartedly support the TSA's efforts to thwart villainous schemes like The Joker's. We need to be safe. You know who wins if we let our guard down?

Supervillains, Steve. We turn a blind eye to this, the supervillains win.

Steve Buchheit said...

Eric, I was going for early references. But yeah, the Joker too.

And, strangely enough, I think we all now know where the idea came from. Someone's NetFlix account finally came through.

Of course, IMHO (from a purely technical standpoint), surgically implanted? When you can just shove it up someone's ass? Sometimes is an economic choice, you know. And if a guy can hold a shiv up there, and mules can carry a few pounds of cocaine up there, a little SimTex is much more pliable.