The Null Device

2001/10/5

This is kinda cute: The Matwix, a Looney Tunes Flash cartoon inspired by the eponymous cyberpunk kickflick. The very Atari 2600-esque loader game is pretty cool too. (via 1.0)

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Crazy is discharging yourself from the mental hospital, and then stealing a bus to go home -- and stopping to pick up passengers.

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Various pundits and experts are contemplating novel stragegies against terrorism, from reducing anti-American resentment in the third world to memetic warfare:

The goal of U.S. policy, he said, should be to "re-engineer the perceptions of our enemies." Suicide bombers have to be convinced "they get nothing for dying for Allah," and the people who support terrorists -- leaders or commoners -- have to be persuaded such violence is an insult to Islam and counterproductive. So Baxter proposed a Manhattan Project of "perception engineering," which would explore and develop a variety of means: psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns designed by advertising executives ("these guys were selling Chevrolets when they were crap with the 'heartbeat of America'"); nanomachines that can invade the circulatory system and effect the brain and thought patterns of the target; cultural products that can engender warm feelings toward the United States.

Nanomachines that make you love America? Loyalty plagues and love bombing? Or as Kennedy said, "we have control of the mind". (via Rebecca's Pocket)

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Dating services aren't the only businesses in New York for whom business is booming; gymnasia are doing a roaring trade as well, as people seek to get fit to survive possible attacks or other emergencies. (via Portal of Evil)

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Obituary: Gregory/Gloria Hemingway, the cross-dressing youngest son of Ernest Hemingway died in a Florida prison cell, after being arrested for indecent exposure. He was 69.

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Cyber-liberties activists in the UK aren't taking the impending introduction of copy-restricted CDs lying down; they're planning mass protests outside record shops. A sterling idea.

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Death of irony (an ongoing series): A piece about taboos on WTC-related jokes, and even saying anything negative about the Leader of the Free World, George W. Bush. Apparently, Doonesbury has been neutered, and the Chaser deeply regrets publishing an issue of WTC-related jokes (after which it went almost silent for two weeks or so).

Let's hope the New Earnestness doesn't last; though a New Norman Rockwell Era of Christian boy bands on MTV and single-minded Organization Kid faith in authority and The System may be just what is needed to sow the seeds of countercultures which are something more meaningful than ad-agency lifestyle campaigns. (As a wise Goddess once said, imposition of order leads to escalation of disorder.) Though, as I was thinking recently, if hipster irony in the days before 11/9/2001 had degenerated to Fred Durst, D12 and self-jamming Nike ads, then good riddance to it. Perhaps a cultural firestorm to burn away all the deadwood is just what is needed.

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