kuniform

Is google truly attempting to cover the world in WiFi as this article suggests? If so, it would make a mashup of google maps, google earth, and ad sense amazing. Hmmm, where’s the nearest pizza place to me… right now?

The future sounds fun, but pretty complex.

More rumblings from the United Nations about issues that concern us all, like poverty, the environment, AIDS. Of course, we gut the whole thing as best we can to ensure no holds barred for our great nation’s hungry corporate sponsors.

We, the SUV-driving, cellphone talking population of America won’t pay attention to these issues until a catastrophe occurs right here on our own shores. Oh, right. New Orleans. Oh, right. 9/11. Vonnegut wrote in the end of “Slaughterhouse Five” (something I’ll butcher in paraphrase here) “5 billion people; I suppose they’ll all want dignity.” Bush is proving that to be a kind of “not if we can help it” proposition for the US, hmm?

The Users of Disaster, an article posted for the October issue of Harper’s Magazine examines how the authorities use times of natural disaster to foster increases in power. Simply chilling.

Following from Ed Tufte’s “Powerpoint is evil” diatribes, this WashPost article states NASA agrees PPT lead to the Columbia disaster, potentially. Powerpoint isn’t to be solely blamed for the end of literacy, but it helps.

This empire has jumped the shark. For the archeologists, alien or otherwise, who manage to restart the grid and/or reconstruct these electronic files into meaningful content, here is how humans at the start of the 21st century began the inevitable decline of the human species and made the planet uninhabitable.

We listened to a human like George W. Bush, one of the most conniving and mendacious amongst us. Who, if his true nature were known, would be considered a traitor not only to his fellow citizens, but to fellow humans. He provides cover for acts that alter the very balance of our planet’s ecosystem, but stages comforting morality plays like this to calm his fellows.

Next empire up to bat, the Chinese. Will they do better? No, it’s human nature. So long as we believe the hierarchy is right, and I believe we’re hard-wired to do so. When does John Galt flee and where does the smartest man on the cinder run to?