“Mourn the dead later. Right now, the best thing we can do is get this ship into the fight.”—William Adama
Yesterday seemed to be a very down day. People dying and all that. You may have heard it blasted ad absurdum on the news. Or what makes for news networks in this FUBARed country.
Well, I hate to break it to a lot of ya, but there are people who die every day and do not have the luxury of having their lives looked back upon on some Gods-forskaen 24 hour news network.
What disgusts me more than anything else is how the sensationalist media harps on Michael Jackson, yet ignores the larger issues this world faces: nuclear weapons proliferation, life-changing bills being passed by Congress, various crises over seas, and a government that seems more out of control than it was under the George W. Bush Dick Cheney administration. And while the rest of us go out and stimulate the economy by buying Michael Jackson’s CDs or mp3s from iTunes, we should mourn the dead later and pay attention to what’s happening in the world.
And I know why this is… because we let it happen. We need to hold the media accountable for their actions. Support independent media that actually cares to report the news that affects us. The death of a pop star is worth reporting on an entertainment channel, and worth a brief mention on the news, but not the incessant attention that it is given.
So change the channel. Boycott advertisers. Do what you feel is right.
But most of all, pay attention, take care, and control.
Bill Maher made an excellent point on last Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, namely that Obama isn’t the socialist that the right has endeavored to make him out to be, and that the Democratic Party has turned to the center-right. This would leave the Republican party somewhere in the sanitarium, which is where most of them belong. For a party that advocates the reduction of government in our lives, the Republicfraks have done their very best to enlarge the scope of government over their eight years in power. The consequences of this enlargement and entrenchment into our lives have yet to fully manifest themselves, but the day of reckoning when we realize what this has done to our civil liberties and constitutional rights is not so far off in the future, sadly.
And while I tend not to get political about such things, both parties are responsible for sowing what we are now reaping in terms of economic and social failures that are occurring in this country. And this has not happened since 9/11, but has been happening for the past three decades. If not more.
Oh, and I know that Obama is neither Jesus Christ or, better yet, FDR. I knew this when I “voted” for him. Regardless, Obama is, sadly, better than John McCain and the inept airline stewardess who has a great view of Russia, whose only reason for being thrown on the McCain ticket was to recruit “scorned” Hillary Clinton supporters. (And had she never opened her mouth, the Republicans may have succeeded in winning the White House.) Honestly, had McCain chosen Mitt Romney as his VP, then I would have voted for that ticket.
Why? The USA needs to be run more like a business, particularly with runaway spending and the fact that we are borrowing money from a Communist country. Romney was able to govern one of the most “liberal” states of this union and bring that spending under control. I may not care for some of the social policies or views of that (sadly) non-existent ticket, but… you cannot have everything, and you have to prioritize.
And, going back to the video above, I don’t agree with everything Maher says… but his program honestly allows for some of the most honest dialogue out there, better than anything CNN, MSNBC or Faux News can spew out via their own “programs” whether they be the idiotic Hannity, O’Reilly, Olberman, et al.
Ok, I’m now sick. Frak politics. Sorry that you had to read this.
My free copy of the Caprica soundtrack from Fandomania arrived today. I am listening to it as I write this, and what I can tell you is that the music is stellar. It is a minimalistic, somber score with emotional depth, like the Caprica pilot itself. The music conveys the emotional, rotting decadence of the technological and hedonistic Caprican people with the tragedy experienced by Joseph Adama and Daniel Graystone, as well as the creation of the first “Cybernetic Life Form Node” (Cylon).
Bear McCreary and the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra were able to create something quite wonderful here. While the music is not action packed the likes of BSG’s “Wander My Friends,” “Storming New Caprica,” “Battle of the Asteroid,” or “Prelude to War,” Caprica is able to do what a good soundtrack should: compliment the story that is being told and tie the story into the pre-existing universe of the re-imagined BSG. In this, McCreary is successful; the track entitled “Cybernetic Life Form Node” ties in very well with Richard Gibbs’s “Inbound” score from the Miniseries and other leitmotifs from this universe’s “future.” After listening to it, it automatically “clicked” in my head that thisunique story was in the same universe.
This is NOT the appearance of the Big Brother you should worry about.
Big Brother (or Big Sister, or even Big Sibling if we want to get P.C. about it) is a damning concept that has permeated our culture since the introduction of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Before the Internet numerous SF fans, conspiracy theorists, the counter-culture and cyberpunkoids have toyed with Big Brother as being the control mechanism of a totalitarian government or a large corporation.
That was the 20th century.
Here in the 21st century, we are faced with a more damning fact: anyone can assume the mantle of Big Brother in our lives. Living in the age of connectedness that we share today, thanks to cellular telephones and the Internet, we find ourselves gobsmacked by the possibility that we were too narrow-minded in the concept of an all-seeing, all-knowing force in our lives. I am not referring to a deity or deities here, however technology has made damned sure that they are capable of achieving feats of that stature.
If you mix the de-centralized nature of the Internet with entrepreneurial spirit, capitalism and someone with a few basic facts on you, someone—your neighbor, a mentally deranged person you’ve pissed off online, your ex, your boss(es), family, friends, nerdlingers—can find out most anything they want on you. Googling people you know is only the first step. There are now sites out there that can dig deeper than you had likely thought impossible. Lifehacker has a list of sites whose sole aim is to allow people to find out anything on anyone, regardless on how careful you believe you have been in guarding your personal information, even if you use those privacy controls in your social networking sites, such as Facebook.
Short of reading your mind and extracting genetic samplings from your body, these systems will pull up anything that been electronically entered: posts on old bulletin boards, newspaper clippings that have been digitized, public records (divorce filings, speeding tickets, etc.)Â and information from social networking sites. I am astonished that these public systems have yet to link into medical records, internal files kept on you by your employer, and the Social Security Administration, but that’s only a matter of time. Such systems already exist and are used by the government, and the private sector has access to these things as well, which makes you pause.
It’s scary, but inevitable and damning. The technology we employ in our daily lives has outpaced our hearts, our ethics, and any anachronistic concepts we have of privacy. You can’t stop information on you from getting out there, but there are ways to control the types and what information can be pulled up by these systems.
My friend Amy has a few suggestions on this front, and there are numerous resources available online to help control what information can be indexed on you. The aforementioned Lifehacker is a good stepping stone, as is the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
You can be scared, but don’t let it paralyze you. Take this as a lesson in paying attention and being proactive in your privacy and connected life.
TwitRSS
