Tag Archives: Blade Runner

Our psychopath Congress

Arts and Literature

Government shutdown, debt crisis reveal how much GOP has in common with other sociopaths… Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris? I believe Philip K. Dick had it right in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Technology had, in that not-so-distant future, created androids that were

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Michael Vick and the problem with forgiveness

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has conditionally reinstated former Atlanta quarterback Michael Vick, who was convicted of running a dogfighting ring in 2007. Vick served 23 months in federal prison, followed by two months of house arrest. Last Thursday the Philadelphia Eagles answered the question as to which team would sign a convicted dog-killer (there were 32 possible answers to the

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ArtSunday: the nonlinearity of influence

“I’m interested in what motivates you, and how you understand the world.” He glanced sideways at her. “Rausch tells me you’ve written about music.” “Sixties garage bands. I started writing about them when I was still in the Curfew.””Were they an inspiration?” She was watching a fourteen-inch display on the Maybach’s dash, the red cursor that was the car proceeding

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Even better than the real thing: mass media and manufactured beauty

Give me one last dance We’ll slide down the surface of things You’re the real thing Yeah the real thing You’re the real thing Even better than the real thing I figured out a long time ago, even before I began encountering grad-level feminist critiques, that our media’s stylized construction and portrayal of female beauty was problematic. It’s bad enough

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My god – it’s full of stars: 2001, Frankenstein and autonomous technology

I used to work with a HAL 9000. Back when I was at US West in the late ’90s we had a voice system into which we would record the day’s company news so that employees without Internet access could dial in and keep up with the latest events. As with any such system there was a dial-in sequence, buttons

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