Can you believe this new recruitment slogan: Join the Navy: accelerate your life TM? It looks good on video with a rapid progression of tracking shots of incredibly busy warfare technicians. Sign up and before you know it you’ll be dropped into the thick of the action. Maybe your grave as well. Accelerate your lifespan TM.
I remember a ProFiles Magazine story published twenty years ago called Mouse Trap, about a fictional computer program developed to differentiate individual users based on their keystrokes, by identifying the pattern to the rhythm of their typing.
It should be no surprise that your typing signature can be as unique as your handwriting. Since that fictional story, researchers have of course patented exactly such a program. I describe this technology to illustrate that computers are recording more about us than we think we are revealing. Our own computers.
Computers with Windows Operating Systems are notorious for running stealth programs without the specific consent of the user. Microsoft still denies conducting behind-the-scenes activities even when they are observed and documented by computer users. However the internet has made every operating system vulnerable to computer surveillance.
Let’s be clear. Identifying who we are online is the least of the surveillance goals. We are already identified by our unique computer M.A.C. address, our connection IP, our cookies, and our own internet use patterns. It’s not who we are, it’s what we are doing.
By now we all know that our internet search activities are logged and studied. After the accidental release of some Google search records, it became clear that an accumulated history of search queries can be enough to determine a user’s identity. Perhaps this has made us all more careful about what we type online.
I’m going to guess that the sense we are being watched online has made us a little more apprehensive each time we hit the enter key. Let me say that such apprehension is misplaced. We are being observed BEFORE we hit the enter key.
The celebrated cross-platform language called Java, which adds functionality to our browsers and is indeed now required by many webpages, is giving uninvited observers a peek at what we type before we decide to submit it. You can see this in action a couple places.
A first example would be IM. Instant message interfaces record when you start typing, to alert your correspondent that a message is on its way. If you decide to backspace over what you typed, to the beginning for example, your correspondent will be updated that the forecasted message will not be forthcoming. Your IM buddy can confirm that your messages are not delivered until and unless you hit enter. But your computer knows what you’ve typed all along, and the IM interface knows it too. Even if you opted to rewrite your message, the IM interface has recorded every iteration, before you decided you wanted anyone to see it.
Another example would be search engines. I’d like to direct you to Answers.com where the Java enabled suggestion box descends as you type your query. When you first try to revise your search, Answers.com offers suggestions for related searches. You may think that the page returned to you by your browser came bundled with that list of alternative suggestions. But try typing a new query from scratch. You’ll see that you’ve got the full resource of all possible queries coming forward to help out. HTTP didn’t send those to you. Those arrive based on what you are typing in real time. Answers.com is watching what you are asking before you decide what you’d like to be observed asking.
There’s an option on the Answers.com drop down box to “hide suggestions.” At least that is truth in advertizing. Your option isn’t to turn off the suggestions box, only to hide it. Hiding the Java helper will mean it won’t assist you with suggestions. It will still be transmitting your keystrokes.
Ask.com is another search site which openly hopes to entice users with its search tools. These are the same kind of “tools” which record what you are thinking of doing before you’ve done it.
The option to “hide” Java tools should give you a clue about what the other search engines are already doing. With Google and Yahoo, for example, the Java tools are hidden. Unless you have Java completely disabled on your browser, any website can elect to monitor what you are typing.
Hmm. Another bad sign.
I saw CNN running a promo for its election season coverage, a teaser purporting to remind us to stick with CNN when the election is upon us.
At face value, is that not odd? Wouldn’t we be judging our news source based on its reporting of today’s news, instead of its relative foresight of tomorrow’s excitements? Also, are we not already CNN watchers if we are seeing the ads? This is not like advertizing one TV show to viewers of another. It’s like promoting the second half of the Superbowl during the first half. Pointless, I’d say, unless we have something to spin with the promotion.
CNN’s election 2006 hook? The CNN tagline was “Election 2006: How close will it be?”
How close will it be?
Has anyone said it will be close? At present the GOP is getting a trouncing. All the Republican yahoos have egg on their faces and the public wants to run the bums out. It’s happening all over, if not so widely celebrated on mainstream news.
Nevertheless, someone thinks the election in November will be close. Who? My guess it’s Diebold.
I’m guessing that Diebold would like to pave the way for an election result they can live with. To do this they first have to create an anticipation that the election will be close. Too close to call in fact. Then it won’t be such a surprise when the winners are… Republicans! By a nose!
When our media anchors began to report that the Mexican election was going to be very close, the fix was in. How chilling it was to hear. Until then everybody’s favorite Obrador had been leading throngs of supporters through the streets of Mexico City, leading a peaceful revolution against the entrenched pro-US corruption government. Mexico was following the populist flow of the Latin American justice and equality movement.
Then apparently the election was looking to be close. What, were there suddenly just as many entrenched corrupt bureaucrat voters as there were oppressed masses? Where would that voter parity come from, if not electronic ghost votes?
And now the Mexican election is being decided by their supreme court. Sound familiar?
I’ve always been irked by the Starbucks invented term “Barista.” It’s the equivalent of Walmart calling their workers “associates.” It means nothing except to delude the workers that they are something more than slave-wage, unskilled workers.
Barista might imply that someone who serves coffee has a cultural legacy, shielding the subject from their more relevant historic socio-economic legacy: low man on the totem pole.
Recently I’ve been hearing a locally owned coffee joint using some of this psycho-syntax to its own advantage. “Handcrafted coffees.” They’re made by hand, obviously. But unlike a parking ticket, or a shaken welcome mat, a “handcrafted” coffee inplies the work of a craftsman.
While it’s certainly a nice sentiment, wouldn’t we all like to be thought craftsmen of our own realm? It doesn’t matter that it’s a delution of what it means to be a craftsman. Rather, it’s a lie. Shit by any other name would smell as sweet.
What’s the point to the U.S. camouflage scheme on armored vehicles in Iraq? If opposing forces do not have an air force, nor any mechanized cavalry, nor any artillery, nor any optical sighting devices to speak of, what exactly is the benefit of military camouflage?
No really, how does camouflage conceal you from IEDs or suicide bombers? And in an urban, peopled environment, against what backdrop can you even hope to blend in? Truth in advertizing might suggest that a best camo scheme should reflect the real battlefield, filled with the real casualties.
CAMP CASEY COLORADO SPRINGS
Waiting in line at the Post Office the other day I overheard a local advertisement on the radio encouraging the usual holiday splurge “because you’ve been good this year!”
I thought to myself, who among Americans can say they’ve been good this year?
We’ve all of us, by our acquiescence, permitted the prosecution of an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation. We’ve overseen the slaughter of thousands, we’ve accepted large levels of collateral damage, we’ve sanctioned and justified the use of torture, in our name.
Outside of war, we’ve continued to abide the exploitation of child labor, prison labor, slave labor and poverty. We participated in the destruction of the natural world, in sexual exploitation and genocide. We’ve watched the suffering of fellow human beings, and permitted further suffering outside the view of our cameras.
Do we take responsibility for these offenses or not? Let’s at least concede this is not the year to say that we’ve been good.
To my friends who’ve spoken out, we may or may not have done our best, but let’s keep at it. Merry Christmas!
To those who didn’t feel the urge, or thought there was nothing that could be done: may the spirit of Christmas, of peace and goodwill inspire you.
For holiday cheer, I offer these amusements:
– Kurt Vonnegut’s dissection of our current leadership
– The War-on-Christmas canard scuttled [warning: profanity]
– The NEOCONS in pictures and song [one profanity, repeated]
– My Best-of-2005 collection.
Cheers,
Eric
Did you know that the first shopping day after Thanksgiving was known as “Black Friday?” Neither did I!
Apparently “Black Friday” is so named because it’s the first day of the year that retailers can recoup enough from their sales to put their balance sheets into the black. As opposed to “in the red” which is bookkeeping jargon for running at a loss, which is what retailers do for the rest of the year, apparently.
Boy did this sound like malarkey.
Certainly the term Black Friday sounded familiar, I thought it referred to the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. It turns out that there have been many other Black Fridays through history. But none of them refer to this retailer/accountant/insider lingo. The only early reference to a retail Black Friday had to do with the deluge which the day after Thanksgiving wrought upon the average retail clerk.
This new economic twist looks more like somebody’s Psych Op to revive retail sales.
This bit of Madison Avenue myth-making sure seems to cover the bases. First, if you’re a retailer you shouldn’t worry about having run at a loss (in the red) all year, apparently that’s normal. And if you’re a consumer, it looks like it’s your duty to bring that retailer’s figures up (and into the black!) Never mind that you’ll probably be putting his profit onto your credit card (into the red). For you we can call it red friday.
Paul Bunyan
I’m reminded of good ol’ Paul Bunyan, that American legend who heroically did more than his share to chop away our nation’s wooded overgrowths. Not a very PC hero to be sure, it never occurred to me to doubt his credentials.
One day I was looking through an older children’s book about American folk heroes. There was Johnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Pecos Bill, everyone was there except our giant friend Paul. Sure he was fictional, but he’s a historic legend, why was he not in the lineup? The book was dated 1920.
It turns out that Paul Bunyan was the creation of a magazine columnist hired in the 30s to create a positive PR figure for the timber industry. This was an industry still smarting from Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation programs.
If the Jolly Green Giant could sell you frozen foods over fresh, tales about a monumental lumberjack and Babe his blue ox could do more. A fictional reverence for a giant of folklore could sell America on admiration for westward expansion, manifest destiny and the obvious imperative of clearing our continent of its trees.
Have you seen the 60-second TV spot by Chemistri called “Party Crashers?” A vulgar Cadillac STS drives into a ballroom where other performance sedans are dancing a well choreographed eighteenth century Gavotte. They’re opening their doors to each other in gracefull salutes when the Caddie interrupts, and barges to center. The music changes to Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” and the other cars are forced out of the way.
Reprinted from Subvertize.com
Katrina Relief- What should you do?
Hoist the Federal Governement up on its own petard!
Do not aid and abet the carpetbagger land grab!
Do not aid and abet the displacement and scattering of the Louisiana poor.
The poor are the ones who’ll have to stay and stand up for their rights to their land.
Recovery funds should go to them, not to the reconstruction companies, developers and gaming resorts. I’m sorry but that’s not going to happen if you are helping to ship them out of Louisiana and Mississippi to put them up here.
Immediately after the Katrina disaster, “philanthropists” from Colorado Springs hired buses to go down to the relief shelters. The “philanthropists” plastered the stricken areas with fliers advertizing COME TO SCENIC COLORADO SPRINGS, etc.
The “philanthropists” set up agencies here to allocate the refugees to hotels and then apartments and houses. They helped connect refugees with cars, appliances, furniture and clothing. Those “philanthropists” were also quite visionary, because they foresaw that FEMA would pay for it all!
So what did those “philanthropists” accomplish after all? That FEMA money would flow into Colorado Springs coffers! Apartments and homes that had been empty are now occupied! Colorado Springs goods and services are now getting Federal dollars. And who were those “philanthropists?” Wealthy, well-known, developers! And apartment complex owners! And local business leaders!
Many of the refugees have since returned to the south to be with their families and friends. But it looks like the “philanthropists” foresaw that too, because it didn’t matter, the rents on those now empty apartments are already paid! FEMA paid for a year’s rent on each of them.
That’s taxpayer money, going to those wealthy “philanthropists.” All the less money than can go to help the Katrina victims rebuild their homes and their lives.
What should you do for the Katrina victims? Wish them Godspeed, call your congressman to urge that more support be offered to Katrina’s real victims, then call the U.S. Attorney General and urge him to prosecute the “philanthropists” for profiteering and fraud.
That’s what you can do.
UPDATE
We’ve seen this before in the South. It was called THE RECONSTRUCTION. And the northern opportunists who plagued the Reconstruction? They were called CARPETBAGGERS.
McDonalds has giant kid-transmogrifiers, in big glass FUNPLACES where all the too-skinny kids can see them from the car.
Rival fast food companies have learned that really it only takes greasy high calorie fast-food to induce weight gain in their young customers.
Who knew that today’s children have a genetic predisposition to obesity and diabetes?
Helping kids discover their inner fat selves is not Ronald’s only motive. Manufacturing big children not only increases corporate profits, but bulks up the market share for ALL the greasy purveyors of crap. What percentage of the shelves in your local supermarket is left over for real food?
Come Biggie-Size your Kid!