Month: October 2001

idiot gallery @ interpol

this interpol query shows some 96 idiots who are currently wanted by interpol for terrorism. not a whole lot you would think, considering that there must be 1000s of terrorist around the world. note how they are all male and ugly. there may be something to the theory that terrorists are promised virgins in the afterworld as they won’t get laid in this world.. what a bunch of losers.

Against censorship overreach

fundamentalist groups that want to curb freedom of speech are having a field day. do not give 1 cm. instead, consider the following quote from a hollywood producer:

What’s even more ominous is that CNN is currently running a poll on their website: “Would you accept more government involvement in your life if it meant more security against terrorism?” That’s really an are-you-still-beating-your-wife kind of pseudo-question, since whether you answer YES or NO doesn’t matter – it stinks either way. It is, in its own way, a kind of terrorist question. (Everybody stop now and go look up “terrorism” in the dictionary. Don’t accept what media tools say; just go look it up for yourself. We’ll wait.) What it doesn’t address is the bald reality that “security from terrorism” is impossible, due to the nature of terrorist acts. “Security from terrorism” is practically an oxymoron. Security is a comforting illusion, not an absolute. But if you answer NO to the CNN question, the perception is that one “supports terrorism.” The Spanish Inquisition couldn’t have twisted language any better.

another great quote:

Look, there are people in the USA today in 2001 who still want HUCKLEBERRY FINN out of libraries. Addressing the lunatic, repressive fringe only gives them legitimacy. If you don’t like a film, don’t give it 2 hours of your life. Period. Then shut up.

Email at 30

email was invented by a mr. tomlinson, without him giving much thought to the matter, at the time.

digitalmuse had this to say, and i found it fitting:

hmmm, e-mail is older than I am (26yrs). and I measure myself through the things I’ve seen. I remember Ronald Reagan as a very young child. I recall my parent’s last throes of back-to-the-land/cold-war self-sufficiency. I was astounded as the first Space Shuttle launch took us around the earth and flew us back home on wings. I was glued to the TVs when the Challenger exploded. I was there when faxes were pasted hourly on the walls of Boston’s chinatown as Tiananmen square unfolded.

I lost friends in an act of terrorism that the world had never seen before, or even believed possible outside of cheap paperback fiction.

I have done all these things at a distance, I have made friends and effected change on continents that I may never visit.

I have dipped my toes in the greater waters of mankind.

All this in less than 30 years.

How will my children look back when they are my age?

Will they remember a world before the arrival of the metaverse that allows them to interact around the world, regardless of language, race, time, or class?

Will they look back with sepia-toned memories of the good-old days before corporate structures replaced government?

Might they think of us with scorn, as those who poisoned the earth and water that they inherited?

Or will they think of us as the generation that first tasted this fruit of true communication, and were alternately torn and brought together by it.

pioneers in a digital age where the hot metal was still fluid and a malleable medium, filling gaps and voids in the mold of society.

what will someone say about us in 30 years.

what do we want to leave as our legacy for our children,

food for thought.