Akablog
From correspondance between Rob Clough and myself:
> Proposed: a one-pager in which Captain America defeats Osama bin Laden with
> a Hostess Fruit Pie.
>
> Sample dialog: "How can a culture that produces such a delicious confection
> be Evil?"
> "Truly every bite of the flaky crust and fruit filling is filled with praise
> to Allah!"
I can actually SEE the ad. It must be
drawn by Sal Buscema, first of all. It opens with Bin Laden standing
triumphantly in the WTC ruins, with the typical Buscema gritted teeth of
a triumphant villain, hands in clenched fists. Cap realizes that a
direct assault won't work because of the delicate nature of the ruins,
and turns to fruity goodness.
Science Fiction, Politcal Fact
In this article
How Will It Play Out? Slate takes a look at best and worst case scenarios for the War's endgame. What strikes me as interesting is that while they do list "We all die" as a possible outcome, they don't give any plausible chain of events to cause that outcome. Compare this to the Worst Case Scenario we were looking at during the Cold War, (and how plausible a chain of events leading to Global Thermonuclear War appeared.) It seems that our nightmares have gotten smaller, perhaps in proportion with our dreams.
Once, in a discussion of Science Fiction during the early '90s, I noted that post-Apocalypse scenarios were out of favor and had pretty much been replaced by Cyberpunk. A friend noted that the theme of Cyberpunk is that the Apocalypse hjas already happened and no-one noticed.
Steven Hawking has recently said that given the possibility of a superbug that could wipe out the entire human race, we should resume efforts towards space colonization as a way to preserve the species. While in the grander scheme of things, I've never been sure that the preservation of Homo Sapiens was absolutely necessary, I'm rather fond of the monkeys. Besides, growing up, I always thought I'd get to emigrate off-planet during my lifetime.
My early political beliefs were patterned rather more strongly after Star Trek than I'd like to admit. I can still recall vividly at age 16 reading a letter to the editor disparaging the idea of a unified world government. I was shocked. It was the first time I ever discovered that there were people who didn't think it was a natural evolution of the United States and United Nations, wholly desirable, and virtually inevitable. I'm still not against the idea, per se, though I wouldn't want to see it based on the UN as currently constituted.
Spectacular Branding Opportunity
In a number of reports on the Humanitarian Rations being dropped on Afghanistan, one of the components, the "Fruit Pastry" (or in military parlance would that be "Pastry, Fruit"?) has been described as being "like a Pop-Tart." Well, why isn't it a Pop-Tart™? I know that these were pre-prepared and sitting around for a while, but I'm sure the Army is in rapid production of more (hopefully with writing in a language understood by most literate Afghans.) Why don't we get American corporations to donate pre-packaged food in exchange for including their labels on the packets? They could even include coupons good for whenever Afghanistan gets a supermarket. Rice-a-Roni™, Dole™ fruits, Ritz™ crackers. All being exposed to a nearly untapped market. 60 years on, and Hawaiians still think Spam™ isn't disgusting, because they were flooded with the stuff during WWII. I think we've got a win-win-win situation here.
The Power of Negative Thinking by William Saletan I think he gets it. I don't like the wording of his central premise (Negativism is going to be taken the wrong way very quickly) but the ideas and limits he points out make a lot of sense to me.
InstaPundit.Com has his six questions for Bin Laden up:
AT OSAMA BIN LADEN'S REQUEST, CNN HAS ASKED HIM SIX QUESTIONS. You can click on the link and see the ones CNN asked. Here are mine:
1. Are the rumors that you are a Jewish Mossad agent true?
2. Were your agents behind the 1998 stampede that killed hundreds in Mecca?
3. Why do Muslims always die by the thousands in any country where you're holed up?
4. Speaking of "holed up," what's this business with you and Bert?
5. Did you send anthrax to the National Enquirer because they said you have a tiny penis?
6. Do you, in fact, have a tiny penis?
One of the threads of Psywar I think we've been too reluctant to take advantage of is to start looking as belligerent and arrogant as the Ladenites accuse us of being. While continuing to avoid civillian casualties wherever possible, we should stop apologising for them when they do happen. Mea Culpas are for historians and diplomats. Soldiers should fight.
The Marshall Plan worked wonders in Europe, and the rebuilding of Japan was miraculous. But before that happened, those nations had to submit to Unconditional Surrender. al-Quaeda and the rest of the Moslem world should understand that the United States does also have experience at fighting a continual low-level conflict over decades with a technologically inferior, tribally organized, geographically dispersed enemy.
That would be the Native Americans. And we feel just awful about what we did to them. I'm sure we'd feel just awful if the same thing happened in the Islamic world.
Now, I'm not at all suggesting a policy of genocide. I'm just saying that the Taliban, al-Quaeda, and their supporters should be reminded that its not as far outside of our national character as they probably think.
One line TV review - 10/15/01 Angel
Prelude to a Kiss-Off.
An
article that pretty well puts it all together about the Saudis.
Last week, after a (fairly positive) review of Mulholland Drive, All Things Considered played a snippet of "Falling" from the Twin Peaks soundtrack. Nothing can transport me more quickly and completely to the Early 90s. The dreamy sounds take me to a time both fuzzy in affect and razor-sharp. It seemed that Nothing was Forbidden and Everything was True. Reality was elastic, and could bend at the whim of a shaman. And everyone was one.
The Revolution was coming, and no -one would even notice when it hit. If you knew how to use email, you were very cool. .edu addresses were desireable. .com addresses were not. And maybe someday Compserve would stop using those damn 12-digit addresses with the comma in the middle that made mailservers choke. (We were only a year or two past bang-paths.)
Magazines like Boing-Boing and Reality Hackers whispered of Smart Drugs coming down the pike, and behind them, life-extension technologies. Fully immersive computer generated realities were being researched, their purpose being to provide new modes of experience, new ways of viewing the masses of data that tomorrows computers could hold. Not video games.
Twin Peaks lapsed into self-parody. Smart drugs didn't do much for anyone without Alzheimers. VR gave people headaches (and any money for it got sucked into the dot-com vortex.)
The shamans, in the end, could bend reality only so far. Some of them decided to learn to appreciate the world as it is.
One line review: Iron Monkey
Charming Chop-socky. Bonus points for pretending you knew who Yuen wo-Ping was before the Matrix. Double Bonus Points for teasing out a critique of the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong from the storyline.
Instapundit has set up a page for Psywar ideas to use against the Taliban, Al Quaeda, and their supporters. You can find it at
http://psywarupdate.blogspot.com/. I have a few humble ideas up - add your own by mailing them to PsywarUpdate@Yahoo.Com .
Thoughts on The War
Every time I turn on the radio, or the TV, I hold my breath for about three seconds until I determine whether the station is presenting normal programming or a "Special Report." And there's this little twinge of disappointment when its regular programming.
Among the mix of emotions on September 11, along with the anger and the horror and the sadness and the fear, was a rush - a sense of excitement. Part of it was the absolute knowlege that I was living through History (that's with a capital H.) Part of it was, I'm sure, sheer denial that any of this was real.
And part of it was, perhaps, something that I think may be expressed when people say "Everything's different now." Sometimes in that now-cliched statement I hear a wistfulness, a hope, that yes, everything's different now, but that doesn't mean that its
worse.
I think the culture/collective consciousness/national psyche call it what you will, is using, or desperately wants to use, September 11 as an excuse to exorcise some of the characteristics we've come to like least when we look in the mirror. Things like rampant consumerism, isolation from suffering elsewhere in the world, the degree to which frivolity and silliness had become the national religion. The alliances and battle lines in the culture wars have been redrawn, and we've called at least a temporary cease-fire (or perhaps a mere reduction of hostilities).
Amidst the rampant WWII fetishism of the last couple of years, there's been a lot of regret over the lack of a defining, unifying moment to bring people together since then. Well, we've had it now. We have a chance to be a new Greatest Generation. The sacrifices that will be required, and the services that must be performed may be different, and I can't articulate what they might be, but the opportunity is there to stand shoulder to shoulder and perform deeds as admirable as were undertaken in those wonderful, horrible years.
I hope we don't waste it.
