March 24, 2011
Deconstructing “Friday”
Jon sent me this link, saying “you owe it to yourself to read up on Rebecca Black and her self-published (in the worst sense of what that used to mean) music video, Friday. You need to see the video and absorb the meme to really enjoy this epic piece of work:”
She offers the camera a hostage’s smile, forced, false. Her smoky eyes suggest chaos witnessed: tear gas, rock missiles and gasoline flames. They paint her as a refugee of a teen culture whose capacity for real subversion was bludgeoned away somewhere between the atrocities of Kent State and those of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the start of a creeping zombification that would see youthful dissent packaged and sold alongside Pez and Doritos.
“Look and listen deeply,” she challenges. An onanistic recursion, at once Siren and Cassandra, she heralds a new chapter in the Homeric tradition. With a slight grin, she calls out to us: “I sing of the death of the individual, the dire plight of free will and the awful barricades daily built inside the minds of all who endure what lately passes for American life. And here I shall tell you of what I have done in order to feel alive again.”
***
Ms. Black first appears as her own computer-generated outline: wobbly, marginal, a dislocated erasure. The days of the week flip by accompanied by dull obligations — “essay due” — and tired clichés — “Just another manic Monday…” Her non-being threatens to be consumed by this virtual litany of nothing at all until, at long last — Friday.
[. . .]
Yet here the discerning viewer notes that something is wrong. Because it is a simple matter of fact that in this car all the good seats have already been taken. For Rebecca Black (her name here would seem to evoke Rosa Parks, a mirroring that will only gain in significance) there is no actual choice, only the illusion of choice.
The viewer knows that she’ll take the only seat that’s offered to her, a position so very undesirable as to be known by a derisive — the “Bitch” seat.
She might well have been better off on the school bus, among the have-nots. But Rebecca Black’s world is so advanced in the craft of evisceration that this was never a consideration. John Hughes died while out jogging, these are the progeny of his great materialist teen-villain, James Spader, a name that would come to be synonymous with desperate sex and high-speed collision. And as she gets in the car Ms. Black’s joy is as patently empty as her liberation.
“Partying, Partying,” she sings, in hollow mantra.
“Yeah!” an unseen mass replies, a Pavlovian affirmation.
Even if the government falls, we’ll still be paying through the nose
A round-up of what happens if the government falls includes this nugget of information for anyone who hoped the spending would at least slow down while the politicians are off on the campaign trail:
To fund the daily operations of government without a budget, the Governor-General will typically issue special warrants that allow government departments to take funds from the federal bank account (officially known as the Consolidated Revenue Fund) without having to get Parliament’s approval. The money must be “urgently required for the public good” according to the House of Commons Procedure and Practice manual, and the Treasury has to show that no existing funds have been set aside for the payments. The special warrants run from the date that parliament dissolves until 60 days after an election and the government has to give the next Parliament a list of everything they have spent within 15 days of the new government taking office. The money still needs to be retroactively approved by the new Parliament and included in their upcoming budget.
“Ultimately Parliament has to come back an approve the budget but there are these ways of getting interim finance when parliament has not passed a budget,” said Ned Franks, an expert in parliamentary procedure and professor emeritus at Queen’s University.
Thanks to some abuse of the system while Brian Mulroney was prime minister, the system was amended in 1998 to limit the use of special warrants to only those times when Parliament has dissolved.
China’s “sexy spies” score another intelligence goal
Strategy Page says that the Chinese are “probably the most enthusiastic, and successful, users of this technique these days”:
China is widely known to use sex to obtain secrets from foreigners, inside and outside of China. Four years ago, Japan uncovered a widespread Chinese effort to use sex to steal military technology. Attractive Chinese female intelligence agents in Japan were marrying members of the Japanese armed forces, and then using that access to obtain military secrets. The situation was complicated by the military attempts to keep these “embarrassing incidents” secret. The government was particularly anxious to keep the Americans in the dark about all this, since the Chinese apparently got their hands on Aegis anti-aircraft system technology via their sexy spies.
Actually, most of the Chinese agents don’t have to marry Japanese troops. Just putting out usually does the trick. In Japan, the military doesn’t get much respect, and many of the bases are in backwaters. So the troops are pretty lonely. It’s not unusual for Chinese women to be in the country, as many come, legally or illegally, looking for jobs. The set-up is perfect for using the old “honey pot” (sexual entrapment) routine to extract military secrets.
The military geeks are the most sought after, as these guys have access to the most valuable military secrets. Geeks tend to be least experienced with women, and most vulnerable to a clever, and shapely, Chinese spy. Military commanders are not sure if they have the problem under control, but now that the situation is out in the open, there will be more efforts to tighten up security. As the Japanese expected, the Americans were not amused. And the Chinese honey pot scandal was apparently one reason for refusing to sell F-22s to Japan. To make matters worse, part of the Japanese cover-up involved prosecuting the Chinese spies on immigration, not espionage, charges.
Stone the CROWS: US Army’s next step to robotic combat
It may not herald a new droid army, but it’s a welcome development for front-line troops:
The Protec RWS is the key component of the U.S. Army CROWS (common remotely operated weapon stations). This idea of a remote control turret has been around for nearly half a century, but years of tinkering, and better technology, have finally made the remote control gun turret finally work effectively, dependably and affordably. This has made the RWS practical for widespread combat use. While some troops miss the greater feeling of situational awareness (especially being able to hear and smell the surroundings) you got as an old-school turret gunner, most soldiers and marines have adapted and accepted the new system. What it lacks in the smelling and hearing department, it makes up in terms of night vision and zoom. And it’s a lot safer.
CROWS is a real life saver, not to mention anxiety reducer, for troops who drive through bandit country a lot, and man the turret gun. You’re a target up there, and too often, the bad guys get you. Not with CROWS. The gunner is inside the vehicle, checking out the surroundings (with night vision, zoom and telephoto capabilities). CROWS also has a laser rangefinder built in, as well as a stabilizer mechanism to allow more accurate fire while the vehicle is moving. The CROWS systems (RWS, weapon and installation) cost about $260,000 each, and can mount a variety of weapons (M2 .50 caliber machine-gun, MK19 40-mm automatic grenade launcher, M240B 7.62mm machine-gun and M249 5.56mm squad automatic weapon). CROWS comes in several different configurations, based on weapon mounted and armor installed (light, at 74 kg/163 pounds, standard, at 136 kg/298 pounds and CROWS II, at 172 kg/379 pounds.) The heaviest version is usually used in MRAP (armored trucks) and has a better user interface, a thermal imager and sniper detection system.
By the end of 2006, there were about a thousand CROWS in service. There are now nearly 8,000. Many of the enemy fighters have seen Western or Japanese films featuring killer robots, and often think that’s what they are facing. The fear factor is real, and it helps. The accuracy of the fire, and uncanny speed with which the CROWS gun moves deliberately, is due to something few officers expected. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating computer systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls. This was important, because viewing the world around the vehicle via a vidcam is not as enlightening (although a lot safer) than having your head and chest exposed to the elements (and any firepower the enemy sends your way). But experienced video gamers are skilled at whipping that screen view around, and picking up any signs of danger.
Online security: compromised HTTPS certificates
Iranian hackers (or someone trying to cast blame on Iran) managed to get a number of HTTPS certificates issued under false colours:
On March 15th, an HTTPS/TLS Certificate Authority (CA) was tricked into issuing fraudulent certificates that posed a dire risk to Internet security. Based on currently available information, the incident got close to — but was not quite — an Internet-wide security meltdown. As this post will explain, these events show why we urgently need to start reinforcing the system that is currently used to authenticate and identify secure websites and email systems.
[. . .]
Comodo also said that the attack came primarily from Iranian IP addresses, and that one of the fraudulent login.yahoo.com certs was briefly deployed on a webserver in Iran.
