The Brunch Table

In this interesting essay, John Perry Barlow examines the possibility that the U.S. government may be acting like “the Mother of All Rogue States, run by mad thugs in possession of 15,000 nuclear warheads they are willing to use” in order to scare the rest of the world into behaving.

Last night, as Justina and I were riding the T to the Puppet Slam, I overheard someone saying that the guy who did Aeon Flux had a new cartoon on Cartoon Network. When I came home, I looked it up, and sure enough, Reign: The Conqueror has finally hit our shores, and the first DVD comes out next week! Peter Chung got together with some of the people who worked on Metropolis (Rintaro) and Trigun (Masao Murayama and Madhouse) to create the series, which is a re-imagining of the life of Alexander the Great. As this meandering “review” mentions, it does take rather entertaining liberties with the source material.

I just got John Gray’s False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism from the library, and while I haven’t read enough to judge the book as a whole, this sentence from the first chapter just struck me:

The free market created a new type of economy in which prices of all goods, including labour, changed without regard to their effects on society.

Exactly!

I don’t care if you think that they’re naive, ignorant of the realpolitik, whatever–I still find myself in awe when I look at these pictures of people in cities all over the world coming together last weekend to voice the same opinion.

Since Homeland Security’s terror-preparedness site has generously provided us with hilarious Airtoons-like safety graphics, it’s time to go to town. Update: These things are popping up everywhere!

24 feb 2003: this is wrong. I just found out that “Eon” is Korean for “vulgar.” And Peter “Aeon Flux” Chung comes from Korea. So, “Vulgar state of change?” Well, Trevor is the clean and tidy one. Interesting.

“I know that you share the president’s and my commitment to maintaining the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, especially at this critical time…”

Uh-oh.

Republicans will push to approve the Bush administration’s request for a higher debt limit, citing the need to protect the country’s excellent credit rating.

We have a credit rating. WE HAVE A CREDIT RATING? Fuck.

This article claims that:

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards.

In the hopes of countering some of this duct tape hysteria, here are some hard facts on chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks. (via Boing Boing)

This morning, my father sent me an editorial from the New York Times about why China should help us out with this whole Iraq thing. With all due respect to Thomas Friedman’s extensive experience in foreign affairs, I must take exception with some of his points and much of his rhetoric. (more…)

Boston’s Weekly Dig turned me on to a new web animation series that teams up Swedish author August Strindberg with a Pokemon-ish creature named Helium. The episodes so far trade mostly on the dark character + cute character dynamic that propelled Radiskull & Devil Doll to stardom (though Helium displays no evidence of Devil Doll’s mean streak). Fetching pseudo-Victorian production values (particularly in the Absinthe episode) round out the package.

Not exactly shocking news, but it’s nice to see the Times point out that all the hydrogen for those magical hydrogen cars has to come from somewhere–probably pollution-heavy traditional plants.

The Boston Society of Architects and Boston Society of Landscape Architects are conducting a public presentation tomorrow (Feb. 4) entitled Celebrating Boston: Design Visions for the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The presentation will focus on what will become of the urban land freed up by the impending dismantling of the elevated Central Artery, now slated for late 2004. (Here’s an article from the Boston Globe on the topic.) The talk will be held at 6pm at the Boston Public Library, with refreshments beforehand.