Wellington Grey‘s full poster (excerpted above) reads “Warning! In case of terrorist attack: KEEP YOUR WITS! Do NOT discard brain.”
I also particularly enjoyed his comic about The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil.
From an actual email and posting on a Christian website:
IF YOU KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, PLEASE PRAY TODAY AND CONTINUALLY THAT ALL SUCH CURSES BE BROKEN AND SATAN’S PLAN FOR AMERICA BE DEFEATED, IN JESUS’ NAME. PRAY AND COVER MCCAIN AND PALIN WITH THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, IT IS TIME YOU LEARN!!!
h/t: Andrew Sullivan
I found this post in the comments section of an ABC News Political Radar posting about Joe Biden speaking in Seattle. It’s instructive to me to read what some Americans “think” is going on in the world:
IRAQ is won, NATO is in Afghanistan (not just the US), no terrorism on US soil since 9/11, Financial crisis caused by Democrats and Socialist policy now fixed by bipartisan effort, my business has gone from $5M in 2002 to $92M in 2008, 401K invested in government bonds so no loss at all. From my perspective, Obama can only make a mess of things.
My favorite part is “no terrorism on US soil since 9/11.” The fact that the Republicans presided over the worst terrorist attack against the US in modern times is a benefit to them? Nice.
Phillip Toledano’s installation America: The Gift Shop is definitely worth an on-line browse. Chilling and funny at the same time. (Pictured above is the Abu Ghraib Coffee Table.)
But a man with a gun is told only that which people assume will not provoke him to pull the trigger. Since all authority and government are based on force, the master class, with its burden of omniscience, faces the servile class, with its burden of nescience, precisely as a highwayman faces his victim. Communication is possible only between equals. The master class never abstracts enough information from the servile class to know what is actually going on in the world where the actual productivity of society occurs. Furthermore, the logogram of any authoritarian society remains fairly inflexible as time passes, but everything else in the universe constantly changes. The result can only be progressive disorientation among the rulers. The end is debacle.
The schizophrenia of authoritarianism exists both in the individual and in the whole society.
I call this the Snafu Principle.
From Never Whistle While You’re Pissing, by Hagbard Celine.
(Celine is a fictional (?) character in the Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Bob Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Celine’s treatise appears in the second book of the trilogy, The Golden Apple.)
Joeseph Nye has a scary warning in yesterday’s Financial Times, about why bin Laden might want to help the GOP candidates this October and November:
On October 29 2004, four days before the last election, Al Jazeera aired an 18 minute video tape in which Osama bin Laden addressed the American people and threatened further retaliation and a desire to bankrupt the US. In the first poll after that tape was released, President George W. Bush opened up a six point lead over Senator John Kerry. The deputy director of the CIA commented that “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favour today for the president”.
Since the election turned on 120,000 votes in Ohio, it is plausible Mr bin Laden was able to affect the election. From the al-Qaeda leader’s point of view, Mr Bush’s policies were more useful for his efforts to recruit supporters than Mr Kerry’s might have been. Mr bin Laden is involved in a civil war within Islam. He wants the US to pursue policies that create the appearance of a clash of civilisations. Anything that polarises the mainstream of Muslim opinion helps his recruiting. As the deputy director for analysis at the CIA commented at the time: “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.”
From that point of view, Barack Obama must be unsettling for Mr bin Laden. An African-American with a father born in Kenya and a childhood spent partly in Indonesia presents a very different face to the world. A recent BBC poll of 22 countries found that if the world could vote, Mr Obama would win in a landslide. The pro-Obama margin varied from 82 percentage points in Kenya to 9 points in India.
1. Values voter
2. Heartland
3. Mainstream voter
4. Hard-working Americans
5. Lunch pail voters
6. Soccer moms
7. Walmart Moms
8. Nascar Dads
9. Blue collar
10. Regular Americans
Yes, those are just the first ten of 69 Ways to Say “White” (Without Saying “White”), courtesy of the fine folks whose blog helpfully explains, We Are Respectable Negroes.
From the always-inspiring publication Defense Systems:
Homeland Security Strategies, of New Rochelle, N.Y., will offer facial-recognition technology for its Icarus Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Platform. Originally designed to detect roadside bombs and landmines, Icarus can now perform tasks such as aerial observation and countermeasures against improvised explosive devices, buried-object detection, facial recognition, and laser targeting of hostile personnel.
Totally awesome! And definitely a great marketing strategy to name your flying machine after the mythical figure whose hubris led him to flaunt his limits and self-destruct! Genius!!
More detail, from the manufacturer’s sales page:
The Icarus Microdrone is able to hover over an area under surveillance with near silent lift propulsion. This enables the remotely operated aerial vehicle to function in urban environments without alerting those under surveillance to its presence.
Keep an eye on the sky!
…and, snarkily delightful!
On foreign policy, McCain continued to insist that he “knows how to get Osama bin Laden.” (McCain foreign policy statements, like fortune cookies, usually benefit from the addition of “in bed”, by the way.) This plan appears to consist of figuring out where Osama bin Laden lives and sending people there to capture or kill him, which seems more like the treatment than the screenplay, if you know what I mean.
That’s our man (?) Ioz. Who Is Ioz?
