Big Brother not that Far Away

Be afraid folks, be very afraid of the latest act of congress passed with they acceptance of the Homeland Security office. This was passed on to me by a good friend - I think his words echo my feelings better than I can at the moment, so I'll post his words here:

Here's just one article about the new database that will track consumer purchases and the like. If that's not frightening enough, the person leading the development of this is a convicted felon (I'm completely surprised that FOX News put that in their article).

FOX News - Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases



I did though, have the sudden realization this morning that I'd seen this somewhere else. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the story begins with women losing all their rights by having their purchasing power eliminated. There's a central system that controls all credit card purchases and her account is simply shut down. Although I don't know if this proposed system has the potential to do something like that, it is a sombering thought. I would assume it would. I mean, part of the anti-terrorist agenda is to cut off access to their cash flow. Who's to say, if someone overseeing this database decides they don't like what a particular group is doing, calls them a terrorist group, and sees to it that all financial resources are cut off.

I don't know all of the details yet of the Homeland Security coup pulled off the other day (and from what I have read, our senators and congresspersons don't know very many of the details either), but from what I've gathered so far, its making the PATRIOT Act look like a Sunday in the park with George.

Personally, I'm already planning on sending copies of everything I write to the Pentagon. May as well save them the trouble of investigating on their own. Do you think if enough of us did that, we could take down their servers?

N.

Nick and I talked about cutting out the middle man and just copying in all of our e-mail to the Pentagon at lunch yesterday. If we got everyone doing it - well it does make you wonder if the servers could handle the volume ;)

Abott & Costello Live!

I remember last year one of the visiting professors from India was surprised by all the jabs the faculty were making about the Bush adiministration. He asked "You make fun of your leaders?" to which the chair of my department replied "It's either that or follow them."

If we don't have humor, what do we have? With that, I present this little skit. I don't know the origin of it, but I assume it's going to be making the rounds in e-mail soon if you haven't gotten it already.

( HU'S ON FIRST )

It. Has. Arrived.

I woke up this morning from a nightmare and discovered that world was preferable to this one. The Information Awareness Office is up and running. I just went to the site and realized we're actually living in 1984.

I'm scared - I mean, I'm REALLY scared now . . .

Information Awareness Office

I like the little paramid illuminating the earth - nice touch for theconspiracy theory buffs out there. In the words of a friend of mine "holy FUCK.........that is very very creepy........it's not even funny man....that is a bunch of rosicrucian/crowley/scowley/apocalyptic scary ass shit.now I am going to have some nightmares................."

Yeah. What she said.

The vision statement seem amorphus gibberish to me and the points highlighted to establish, such as "Biometric signatures of humans", "Biologically inspired algorithms for agent control" and "Human network analysis and behavior model building engines" seem more Orwellian than Orwell. I'm hoping that "Other aids for human cognition and human reasoning" is actually meant for Congress.

My thought for the day is that we should impliment a comprehensive literacy program for the congresspersons and senators that voted for this shit. The word out is that most of them did not even thoroughly read what they were signing off on. Christ.