Science/Technology

Ecce Mortis: The Infocracy: How They Kill Curious

At the Market Research Information firm I talked “shop” with a Certified Searcher. Searchers searched the Pyramid Database like bees collecting pollen for Executive drives.
Perhaps I too could learn art of the search. Perhaps I too might find some thing. Or some one.
“Time brings data,” said The Searcher, a woman of early, fierce middle-age. “Trajectory of information. Got to keep track of what the citizens are consuming. Immense! I preside over a mere twig on the Tree of Knowledge.  Or rather, Tree of Information.”

Technocracy vs. Humanism (Then and Now)

In his recent book Harvard and the Unabomber, Alston Chase describes how Theodore Kaczynski, a 16-year-old Harvard student in 1958, suffered traumatizing abuse as an unwitting test-subject in a CIA-connected psychology experiment designed to manipulate human behavior under intensive isolation and harsh interrogation (and also ultimately: LSD and torture).  This humiliating, formative experience, Chase argues, shaped Kaczynski’s dislike for the techno-scientific manipulation and control of human beings.  But Chase also maintains that the Harvard Gen Ed.

Ecce Mortis: The Infocracy: The Castle

Visited The Network Castle where important and unimportant personages gathered to shoot the breeze. Visitors paid a fee to The Keepers of The Castle, received access.  Other requirement was a generic image provided by The Keepers (akin to rubber nose and goggles), or send The Keepers an image of your choice.
Submitted The Solitary Novelist. Most icons were movie stars, old and recent; television stars, old and recent; sports stars, old and recent; all species of celebrity, old and recent.

The Largest Source of Unregulated Methyl Mercury Pollution Today

Arctic ice may be melting. The methane levels may be rising, ice shelves breaking off with every news bulletin.
Here is one thing that some of those obscene profits of the greedy climate changing corporations could be seized for through taxation. Remedying the damage done in the rainforests of Peru, South America through the extraction of gold.

Revolt (sic) a la YouTube, Toast Masters, and Really-Really Smart, Educated Ivy League Grads (Not)

Just what are we teaching young people, society at large,  in and out of school? Just what is it to be an American today, awash in consumer madness? The Last One with the Most Toys Wins bumper sticker,  or is it this little chant:  You’ll have to peel this i-thing Apple appendage from my cold dead mind, err, hand?

Do the NSA Revelations Impact Businesses? (Hint: Yes.)

You shouldn’t worry about your government spying on you if you have nothing to hide.
That’s what people would say to me when the NSA leaks started happening, when I first started talking about the dangers that these revelations pose to businesses, both small and large. That’s like saying that if you aren’t a criminal, you shouldn’t mind being treated like a criminal.

Ecce Mortis: Pink Pills and Blue Ones

University Mental Hygiene Clinic. Peace soft prints. Water-colors.  Comfort plants. Celebrity and Fitness magazines. Difficult rising from the waiting-room chair: drunk, drunk. Tired.
The affable Shrink plump, welcoming.
Talk released words to chill, conditioned air.
“And what makes me me in my head?” I blurted. “I’ve seen things that, you know, I want them to be mine.”
“And if they’ll be yours?” asked The Shrink.

Ecce Mortis: Call Me Plantman

Friends  (so-called),
We, the Staff of /dev/null, condemned to /dev/null, have
been watching closely.  And listening.
The technologies available to Alternative Media have allowed
writers, researchers, scholars, activists and other sane
beings to accumulate libraries of data regarding the evil
machinations of Power, its faceless corporate “persons,” and
the craven, murderous government/military/intelligence
agencies that do their bidding.