Technolotics #20 – Christmas Special Needs

Technolotics - An antique show about technology

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/20_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 20
Watch: Youtube
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Notes

The American Paradox

This years winner of the nobel prize for literature, the playwright Harold Pinter, addressed the Academy on the topic of American Imperialism [Hear / See / Read his lecturehttp://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html]
Since WW2 American has overthrown socialist regiemes, and put into power totalitarian regiemes and military juntas, trainned and supported guerillas responsible for mass rape, torture and the murder of politicial dissidents, and carpet bombed into submission nations it could not control

it has done this in Latin America (e.g.: Chile, El Salvador), South East Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia), the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia) and around the world – whilst preaching a doctrine of freedom, democracy and fear
This is what Pinter describes as ‘a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed’

Harper magazine this week reports [1] – while just under 80% of US describe themselves as Christian [2], only 40% can name more than 4 of the 10 commandments
Many (incorrectly) consider the laizze faire philosophy of Ben Franklin – the lord helps those who help themselves – to be enshrined in Biblical text
The united states is amongst the most “spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth” – yet it gives less foreign aid than any developed nation with the exception of Italy
18% of American children live in poverty
Despite the new testaments direct and explicit condemnation of murder – America has the highest murder rate of any developed country, and is amongst the only nation to execute both the mentally handicapped and children
Is Christianity the problem? Is it hypocracy? Or is it the unquestioning attendence to any creed – in quest for certainty and cognitive assonance
Economic Doctrines like ‘The Washington Consensus’ [3] have been used to distort the historic protestant plantation principles of hard work, self respect, and independence – into laissez faire [4] free market selfism
Such doctrines are lauded, upheld and made invisible by coporate media consensus [5], and an education system where primary and secondary level schools recieve only a small proportion of their funds from central government – meaning public schools in poor states and districts often fail to ensure even basic literacy – acting (like the prison system [6], as an insitution of institutionalisation and social control [7])

Short Stories

XBox 360 Review

Plus+’s – Universal Profiles, ‘Silver’ Live Package included
Minus-‘s – Overheating Power Supply, Worst Launch lineup ever, Game scratch if the unit is moved in vertical orientation

GoogleBlogger: New Gmail Features

RSS feeds right into your inbox [8]
Automatic detection of addresses / tracking numbers – put in handy boxes on the right
Anti Virus
HTML preview of word and pdf attachements

British High Court Bans Torture Evidence

Evidence obtained by torture (anywhere in the world) can no longer be used as evidence in a British Court [9]
Government had argued ‘Special Immigrations Appeals Commission’ [10], set up to deport or exclude individuals for ‘public interest reasons’ needed to hear evidence no matter how obtained in order to identify terrorists

Music Industry to attack tab and lyric sites

Not satisfied with attempting to bankrupt its biggest fans, the music industry have desided to begin suing sites which offer lyrics, tabs and sheet music [11]
The Music publishers association head Lauren Keiser has announced a crackdown, and his intention to “throw in some jail time” if possible
“The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income,” he said. “But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we’re taking a more proactive stance.” – said Kesier, before annoucing new giant nets to stop the escape of musical notes from pianos
Music publishers of course currently offer no legitamate alternatives to online tab and lyric sites

Bush claims no torture

Despite the secret CIA prisons revealed by the Washington Post [12], and the practice of extraordinary rendition [13] to ‘friendly’ client states who practice torture
President Bush claims the US handles prisoners in accordance to international and American law – technically impossible since its treatment of Afghan and other prisoners in Guantanamo Bay violates the Geneva convention
Condolezza Rice has just finished a ‘keeping the troups in line’ European tour – unsubtly stating “European intelligence agencies had helped Washington extract information from suspects”
Whitehouse spokesman Scott McClellan recently stated renditioned prisoners “do not necessarily fit into the traditional military or criminal justice systems that were designed for different needs,”

Digital Rights Ireland Launch

The Irish equivalent of the EFF have launched [14]
Ireland has the most draconian data retention laws in Europe [15]
And its music rights framework is absurd (putting your cd’s on an iPod is illegal
DRI aim to “Protect Civil, Legal and Human Rights in a Digital Age”
Some of their initial activities include – fighting IRMA on suing filesharers [16], and the EU data retention directive [17]

Founder of Veganism Dies

Donald Watson, who founded veganism in 1944 has died aged 95 [18]

Iraqi Fighters using hallucinogenic enhancements?

Evidence has accumulated that resistence fighters in Iraq are utilising a variety of drugs to provide them with the will to fight [19]
including a hallucinogen – BZ ‘Agent Buzz’/ 3-quinuclidinyl benzillate – developed by the US government – which promotes psychotic agression

Media Pimp

Francis

The Webtender [20]
Downloading Porn with Davo [21]
Sex by RSS [22]
Stuff that Sucks [23]

Gareth

Steve Woznick Interview [24] -Much of the crappyist software comes from Apple, Apple won’t release X for commodity hardware,