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Eric Blair lived an interesting life. It should come as a surprise to no one that this life was noted, recorded and dissected into the daily pages of a journal. Now into the blogosphere come daily notations made by the man who would take the nom de plume George Orwell published 70 years to the day after they were first penned. From the Orwell Diaries:
From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries.
This entry got me all hot and bothered about the daily life and philosophy of Blair. This was the man who believed the destruction of language is an essential part of oppression, laid bear in the creation of Newspeak for 1984. And I had reason to be excited; when the Orwell Project first posted, they teased us with one of Orwell’s most famous quotes from 1984: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” Oh man, this is going to be good. Read more »
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Vermont and Washington are all set to be the first states to issue RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Chip) enhanced driver’s licenses. The programs and technology are in place in both states and plans are set to start churning them out in 2008.
The idea behind the RFID license would be to make border crossing easier between our neighbors to the North and South. No longer would you need to carry your passport with you to enter Canada or Mexico, but rather all you would need is your license (like it used to be before 2001). Seems like a nice idea to make life just that much easier.
Read more »
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Google is being sued yet again. They must be pretty used to this feeling by now. It is starting to seem like every other day produces a new lawsuit for Google. A lot of the suits they settle out of court, especially the ones involving product theft and stolen ideas. They figure keeping their name out of the news is probably a good idea if they’re to keep their squeaky clean image.
Well, I am guessing this time around they aren’t going to settle. Dylan Stephen Jayne is suing Google for $5 billion for…wait for it… “Crimes Against Humanity.”
Yes, you read that correctly, he is suing Google for crimes against humanity. He’s claiming that Google aids terrorists and has put his personal safety at risk. How so, you ask? (And I’m glad you did.) Well, let’s allow Dylan to explain for himself:
“I, Dylan Stephen Jayne, plaintiff, has [sic] a social security number that when the social security number is turned upside down in its entirety it is a scrambled code that does spell the name Google®.”
Dylan clearly feels that this scrambled coding in the name Google that is the equivalent of his social security number makes him a prime target for identity theft. And who wouldn’t be worried? The Google name is blasted all over the internet these days with nary a thought of Dylan’s personal security.
I, for one, think Dylan has a very strong case here, full of merit; anyone claiming it is just “mental illness” and that he is a kook is just plain crazy.
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Who remembers the movie Short Circuit? You know, the one about the robot with a shoulder-mounted laser who gets zapped by lightening and becomes a sentient catch-phrase-spewing robot with a shoulder-mounted laser who moves in with Steve Guttenberg and produced a number of (mostly straight-to-video) sequels.
Well, the army was inspired and produced 3 of their own robots, which have recently been deployed in Iraq. The 3 “special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system[s],” affectionately referred to as SWORDS (by those who clearly have trouble with proper acronyms), aren’t armed with lasers, but rather M249 machine guns, capable of firing up to 850 rounds per minute (though these are probably only capable of something closer to 85 rounds a minute).
For now, the SWORDS are patrolling the streets in Iraq and have not yet fired their guns. For those of you worrying about them getting struck by lightening and searching out Steve Guttenberg, the program manager for the SWORDS Project, Michael Zecca, assures us: “the machines now come with kill switches, in case there’s any odd behavior. ‘So now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy.’” I know I feel safer now.
Also, fortunately, the SWORDS are not autonomous sentient units, they are all radio controlled and need someone at the remote controls to fire their weapons (though for a while they did have a tendency to spin out of control when they were out of radio range). To get a glimpse of these modern day Johnny 5’s in action, check out the the video they have of them over on Wired’s Danger Room blog.
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Every now and then I read something that I feel is such a big issue I just need to write about it. This article from the New York Times does NOT fit into this category. Instead I am choosing to write about crazy people and poor journalism.
The article is about a proposed ban of drinking on commuter rail trains that failed due to a high level of public involvement including “petitions signed by what officials estimated were thousands of commuters.” Awesome, great, good for them.
Now I continue to read the article and hit this quote “’People don’t like to have eyes over their shoulders 24/7,’” said John Carnival, 43, an operating engineer from Massapequa Park, on Long Island, who bought two cans of Budweiser, packed in a plastic bag with ice, from a bar cart at Penn Station. He called the proposed ban ‘a little too much Big Brother.’” Can someone explain to me how banning the bar car on commuter rails relates to ‘Big Brother is watching’ paranoia?*
Okay, even cutting Carnival some slack, after all everyone is entitled to their own opinions on things, how does that quote relate to or help out the article?
Anyway, I’ve got to say, my favorite statistics from the article had to be that police issued 287 tickets last year for creating a disturbance due to alcohol, but had 944 cases in which commuters needed medical attention due to extreme drunkenness. And remember, next time you are sipping on your scotch and soda while riding on Metro-North, it’s all thanks to the other commuters who banned together to make sure Big Brother would not be watching you.
*I was considering how I was going to file this when I discovered that not only did I already have a Poor Journalism tag, but also a Big Brother tag. If I didn’t know myself better I’d have to wonder what I have been writing about.
