Quartz City

From Halley’s Comment:

Business books are romance novels for men

Comic author Warren Ellis has a blog and everyone is talking about it (and his cool domain name).

Beginning in 2003 the Winona, Minneapolis City Council will charge city property owners for the rain that falls on their land.

I imagine a tax on oxygen will follow shortly.

Project Censored announced their 2001-2002 most under-reported “censored” stories and to no big surprise the leading story is on broadcasting. The “winners” (if you can describe it that way) are:

1. FCC Moves To Privatize Airwaves
2. New Trade Treaty Seeks to Privatize Global Social Services
3. United States’ Policies in Colombia Support Mass Murder
4. Bush Administration Hampered FBI Investigation into Bin Laden Family Before 9/11
5. U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq’s Water System
6. U.S. Government Pushing Nuclear Revival
7. Corporations Promote HMO Model for School Districts
8. NAFTA Destroys Farming Communities in U.S. and Abroad
9. U.S. Faces National Housing Crisis
10. CIA Double Deals In Macedonia
11. Bush Appoints Former Criminals to Key Government Roles
12. NAFTA’s Chapter 11 Overrides Public Protection Laws of Countries
13. Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford Lied to the American Public about East Timor
14. New Laws Restrict Access to Abortions in US
15. Bush’s Energy Plan Threatens Environment and Public Health
16. CIA Kidnaps Suspects for Overseas Torture and Execution
17. Corporate Media Ignores Key Issues of the Anti-Globalization Protests
18. World’s Coral Reefs Dying
19. American Companies Exploit the Congo
20. Novartis’ Gene Research Endangers Global Plant Life
21. Large U.S Temp Company Undermines Union Jobs and Mistreats Workers
22. Fish Farms Threaten Health of Consumers and Aquatic Habitats
23. Horses Face Lives of Unnecessary Abuse for Drug Company Profits
24. Wal-Mart Takes Union Busting to the State Level
25. Federal Government Bails Out Failing Private Prisons

I stopped reading Cerebus somewhere around the Melmoth-era or so, but whenever someone mentions the comic it’s guaranteed to generate a flash-discussion about:

1. The Meaning Of It All
2. Is Cerebus creator Dave Sim completely out of his tree?

Anyway, the MetaFilter comments make for interesting memory-jogging reading for the Cerebus-occasional.

Since I agree with most of the comments here regarding Sim’s lunacy and which Cerebus books are the best, I just want to ask: Does anyone else ever find themselves using the phrase “suck wet farts out of dead pigeons?”

…

Yes, Sim is a nut and it’s sad. He always was offensive, just not this bad. I guess I can still look back fondly on things like the issue where Cerebus tripped on codeine-laced whiskey with Mick Jagger and hallucinated that his nose was floating off his face (”Stick it back on before the sap freezes!!”) Classic.

Some background info on the sanity question may be necessary.

From Steve Lopez’s column in the LA Times today.

I had a cup of coffee recently with Peter Camejo, the Green Party candidate for governor, and he had a thought.

“Do you know how to get Gray Davis to change his position on an issue?” he asked.

No, how?

“Tell him the check bounced.”

CounterPunch looks at the post-Iraq endgame.

It is safer to assume that the U.S. will remain under threat for a long time. The U.S. will be forced to spend more and more to defend itself, its allies, and its interventions. (Indeed, the voices clamoring for war with Iraq are also clamoring for space-based missile defenses, cruise-missile defenses, ever better bombs and bombers, ever more military aid to allies, and a Marshall Plan for the Middle East.) The U.S. will also be forced to forego many accustomed freedoms and to live in a perpetual state of siege. (Indeed, the same voices are clamoring for tighter controls on everything, from public transport to the Internet.) This is not to say that people won’t prosper in the times ahead. Some people will always prosper. Israel will prosper most of all in our best-case scenario. Its enemies will be laid low. Its borders will remain secure. Its economy will recover with U.S. aid and arms sales to U.S. rivals, like China. It might even find a final solution to its Palestinian problem. Not surprisingly, the voices clamoring for war with Iraq are also the loudest in support for Israel.

But most Americans cannot look forward to more freedom, more safety, or more wealth as long as the Timor Americanus lasts. The U.S. does not have a rich uncle to help pay the bills, and it is ill suited ideologically to deal with ethnic and religious threats. An open society, the U.S. will strain to protect itself without observing obvious distinctions between Us and Them, which comes easily to ethnically and religiously closed societies like Israel. For all that it does in defense of its empire, the U.S. will earn the fear and hatred of the rest of the world.

That’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is too terrible to contemplate.

I was looking around for a source of the Alternative 3 video and actually found an online streaming version. The video is in the execrable Real format, and rebuffers constantly but it’s vaguely watchable.

Alternative 3 was a documentary produced in 1977 by Anglia Television in the UK. Originally reporting on the “brain drain” of UK scientists, the documentary crew eventually discovered a secret joint US/USSR space program that had actually landed men on Mars in 1962 in advance of “alternative 3″ - a plan to evacuate the Elite from Earth and colonize Mars before Earth succumbs to global warming and eventual environmental collapse (which was going to happen much quicker than folks thought). Some “ordinary folk” would be kidnapped, pacified via mind control, and used as slave labor on the new Martian colonies while the rest of us proles are left behind to wallow in our own filth.

Oh yeah, along the way evidence is discovered of extraterrestrial life.

The whole program was a sham of course - sort of a modern version of of Orson Welles’ War Of The Worlds broadcast but with current (for 1977) production values, “official sounding” presenters, and plenty of “documentation”. The documentary was supposed to air on April 1st 1977, but due to scheduling issues it didn’t air until June. A follow-up book tie-in was published and as they say… hilarity ensued.

Of course, quite a few folks took it seriously and still do. Fortean Times and About.com have a good rundown of the whole Alternative 3 mythology.