The Awl

Be Careful, That Hummingbird's Bow Tie Is Really A Camera

Dave Bry — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:00:20 +0000

When I think of a future filled with little robot hummingbirds flying around videotaping everything for the Defense Department, it makes me want to build myself a life-size robot ostrich mecha suit programmed to bury its head in the sand.

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Pink Floyd's Roger Waters Is So Totally Antisemitic!

Dave Bry — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:30:13 +0000

Here's part of the stage show that's gotten former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters in trouble with the Anti-Defamation League. "Of course Waters has every right to express his political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through his music and stagecraft," said ADL head Abe Foxman in a statement. "However, the images he has chosen, when put together in the same sequence, cross a line into anti-Semitism." (To wit: "An animated scene has projected images of planes dropping bombs in the shape of Jewish stars of David, followed by dollar signs.") Foxman, of course, just has tons of credibility after his anti-Park 51 stance. But maybe he's got a point! What Foxman failed to mention is that the lyrics to the song "Goodbye Blue Sky" are deeply offensive as well, if you really listen to what he's saying.

Here's a transcription:

Did Jew, did Jew see the frightened ones?
Did Jew, did Jew hear the falling bombs?
Did Jew ever wonder why we had to ruin the shtetl,
When the promise of a brave new world,
Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?

Did Jew, did Jew see the whitefish come?
Did Jew, did Jew schmeer the bagel, son?
The flames are all long gone,
But the pain lingers on.
Goodbye, blue sky.
Good buy, Jewish guy.
Good buy.
Good buy.

I mean, what is he really trying to say there?

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Imagine A Day When Your Medical History Could Be In One Secure Place, Easily Accessed By Your Doctors, Who Could Collaborate More Effectively And Embarrass You In Front Of An Auditorium Full Of Strangers

Dave Bry — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:00:34 +0000

It took me a few times watching this G.E. commercial to realize that they were saying that an easily accessible database for sharing patients' medical history was a good thing. It's confusing.

The patient is clearly uncomfortable, sitting there in his underwear, before an audience of authority figures he didn't originally know was there. It's sort of a nightmare, right? A common one. All these people are watching me. They have all this information about me! My smoking habit, the glandular disorder, the time I thought that heat rash was skin cancer. What about IBS? Or venereal disease? Or that time I got that thing stuck in that uncomfortable place?

And now everybody's talking about it! Doesn't this ad tap into the very insecurities that makes people reluctant to share important information with their doctors in the first place? Not to mention what the tea-partiers will think, now that the death-panel bill has passed. I mean, I think that this kind of technology is good. But I worry that this ad sends the opposite message. It's like a paranoid drug fantasy come to life. Give me my pants back. I have to get out of here.

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Worrying About 1984 Is So 1995

Dave Bry — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:10:57 +0000

Fifteen years ago, when we were all more vigilant citizens, raging against the machine with Goodie Mob and Rage Against the Machine, ranting about the fact that there are so many surveillance cameras in New York City that anytime you can see the Empire State Building, you can also be sure that you are being filmed, an op-ed in the Times arguing for the governmental institution of a universal DNA databank would have seemed terrifyingly Orwellian.

As a practical matter, universal DNA collection is fairly easy: it could be done alongside blood tests on newborns, or through painless cheek swabs as a prerequisite to obtaining a driver's license or Social Security card. Once a biological sample was obtained, its use must be limited to generating a DNA profile only, and afterward the sample would be destroyed. Access to the DNA database would remain limited to law enforcement officers investigating serious crimes.

Oh, yes, I'm fully confident that access to the database would remain limited to law enforcement officers investigating serious crimes. But really, fuck it. Today, when such an article runs alongside a piece wherein Ross Douthat argues-very eloquently, as he does-that the Bush administration's lying us into a war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives was actually not as evil as Hollywood movies make it out to be, and when stories in the Business section of the same paper inform you how best to broadcast your current location via satellite triangulation and other ways to share the vast amount of personal information we're all so intent on putting onto the Internet, protest seems very, well, 20th Century. That ship has sailed. DNA samples? Sure, why not? And, yeah, I'll take one of those bar-code tattoos on the back of my neck, too-and embed a homing-device microchip in my temple while you're at it.

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How Come No One Is Acting Like The Recession Is Over?

Alex Balk — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:15:47 +0000

During a casual conversation with a small group of acquaintances this weekend I heard someone express the opinion that we were somewhere near the middle of a double-dip recession and that there was going to be a "white riot" when the second dip hit. This was more than a little troubling, since it certainly was not the first time I've come across that sentiment. I generally try to remind myself that due to the massive volume of political opinion I read, it's very easy to get caught up in whatever disaster scenarios people are trying to promote for political advantage, but I feel like this kind of fear-with its implicit helplessness and apathy-is becoming far more common. Maybe it's because people forgot what an actual recession is like, or didn't live through one in the first place. Maybe it's because there are no jobs and there seems to be little appetite to increase stimulus or regulation. Maybe it's because we live in an age where paranoia rules the day.

Paul Krugman has an excellent op-ed in the Times today that takes a look at that paranoia from the right side of the spectrum. Contending that "the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit," he observes that

The Obama administration's job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing – but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state's fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

Is he right? Who knows? It's hard not to feel pessimistic about things these days (look at California). I'm just going to hope that someone in a garage somewhere right now is inventing a new Internet or something so we can bubble things up again. That would be nice.

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Despite All His Rage, Billy Corgan Still Just Doesn't Make A Lick Of Sense

Dave Bry — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:04:27 +0000

Pitchfork points to a doozy of a post Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan put up on his paranoid spiritualist website, Everything From Here To There. He is coming out as one among those who The Awl's Tom Scocca eloquently refers to as "degenerate idiots who deserve to get polio and live out their days in iron lungs while Child Protective Services takes away their children to be properly raised." Corgan writes: "I for one will not be taking the vaccine. I do not trust those who make the vaccines, or the apperatus behind it all to push it on us thru fear. This is not judgment; it is a personal decision based on research, intuition, conversations with my doctor and my 'family'. If the virus comes to take me Home, that is between me and the Lord."

Apparently, many New Yorkers aren't going for the vaccine either. Though probably not because they've read Corgan's thoughts on the subject.

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Richard Johnson Sad About Internet

Choire Sicha — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:54:51 +0000

Long-time Page Six editor Richard Johnson says in a new interview that he is sad that you youngs hate newspapers: "The younger people just never developed the habit. They have other habits: using computers and using cell phones. A lot of people grow up now never touching a newspaper. They're read the content, but they're getting it from these parasitical news aggregation sites." Of course we know that this is just another attack on Michael Wolff's website Newser!* *Idea only valid inside Michael Wolff's crazy brain.

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