What Would Dick Think? (WWDT)Reality is becoming more like a Philip Dick novel all the time.(Untitled)- May 27, 2005 Criminal "Read it before it becomes illegal!"http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/27.html#a737 (Untitled)- May 27, 2005 Nusak What is it, you ask Surely you know... Nuzak is like Muzak. It runs in the background. It's a New York Times headline on the way out of the house. It's CNN at the airport. It's Fox News at home whileJoe is really doing something else. The purpose of Nuzak is to be mildly interesting and possibly entertaining without telling Joe anything that would disturb him personally. Real news has immediacy. It is "actionable intelligence," the last thing Joe is interested in. The average person...http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/27.html#a736 (Untitled)- May 27, 2005 Sex or sight A question straight out of a Dickian novel... The FDA is looking into a possible link between Viagra and blindness, although the set of reported cases of blindness seems very small.http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/27.html#a735 (Untitled)- May 26, 2005 The World Leader in Carbon Sequestration In response to a NY Times editorial that highlighted the President's "passive approach" to global warming, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman decided to set the record straight: To the Editor: Re "Climate Signals" (editorial, May 19), about President Bush and global climate change: Under the president's direction, our government has taken a global leadership role in developing technologies to reduce emissions. America has the largest carbon...http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/26.html#a734 (Untitled)- May 25, 2005 Hello, Mr. Anderton! If you saw the movie Minority Report, you may recall the individualized advertising that Tom Cruise's character encountered at the shopping mall. Well, thanks to RFID technology, retailers are experimenting with such advertising in Seattle: Some cafes and retail stores in Seattle this week will begin individually marketing products and services to bypassers in Seattle using RFID (radio frequency identification) technology. The first target group is visually and...http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/24.html#a733 (Untitled)- May 23, 2005 A portrait of the people While reading Paul Krugman's column today, I was reminded of John Adams's thoughts on the role of a representative assembly ( from Thoughts on Government): It should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or, in other words, equal interests among the people should have equal...http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/23.html#a732 (Untitled)- May 21, 2005 A Day in the Afterlife of PKD I'm surprised I only just saw this recently, but the BBC broadcast an excellent hour-long special on PKD in 1994 entitled "A Day in the Afterlife of PKD." It includes interviews with his wives, friends, biographers, other science fiction writers, and Terry Gilliam, as well as a cameo by Elvis Costello. Philip K Dick Fans (your source for everything PKD) has a link to the video in Real format. I recommend it enthusiastically.http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/21.html#a731 (Untitled)- May 21, 2005 Space advertising A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies ... A chance to begin again in a golden land filled with opportunity and adventure ... ABCNews reports that the FAA is attempting to modify its regulations to ensure its ability to enforce its ban on space advertising. The worry: "Objects placed in orbit, if large enough, could be seen by people around the world for long periods of time," the FAA said in a regulatory filing. Currently, the FAA lacks the authority to enforce..http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/21.html#a730 (Untitled)- May 20, 2005 Pulitzer, McKinley, and Bush Several commentators have drawn parallels between Dubya and the Iraq War, on the one hand, and McKinley and the Spanish-American War, on the other. In doing some research on Joseph Pulitzer, I came across an interesting piece he wrote for The North American Review entitled "Has Congress Abdicated" (Vol. 169, Dec. 1899, pp. 885-893). In it he argues that Congress, by abdicating its war declaration powers to the President, severely damaged the constitutional...http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/20.html#a729 (Untitled)- May 19, 2005 Virtual petting Wired reports that researchers at the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore have developed the "Touchy Internet" -- a system for touching and petting other animals via internet link (i.e. "remote haptic interaction"). Here's how it works for a chicken: You walk into your office, where a hollow, chicken-shaped doll sits on a mechanical positioning table close to your computer. The doll whirs to life as soon as you switch on the system, duplicating the...http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/05/18.html#a728 |