In probably the boldest and most shameless assault against the consuming public since—the last, a German marketing firm has announced its ability and plans to deliver, for a willing sponsor, advertisements to a captive audience through cranial conduction.
The company proposes that clients' messages be distributed on public transport, shaken into the passenger's skull when inadvertently or purposefully leaning against the windows of a bus or a subway or any chosen surface. It's a lot worse than regular commercial breaks spammy pop-unders while navigating websites, and if anything people who take mass-transit ought to be rewarded for not contributing to congestion, not submitted to focus-groups involuntarily. I am sure these beamed messages could be tailored to particular passengers and it is scary hoone's head.
w quickly this might escalate. Chatty, shuddering coffee mugs or singing beer and wine glasses? Such skeletal transmissions are not new but relatively novel things, but perhaps the means to speak with disembodied voices should not be first surrendered to marketers and demographers, who would always like to get into
Sunday 7 July 2013
if these walls could talk or windows to the soul
Saturday 6 July 2013
siss-boom-bah or vital spark
The alchemist with the ability to make a spectacle was regarded by his audience, it seems, in the early Renaissance, not as an entertainer or magician but rather as an educator who was able to make laboratory-style demonstrations of astral phenomena—lightening, comets—the moon, the stars and the sun, rather than mastering some strange new wonder of chemistry. Conjuring up the power of Nature through through carefully prepared potions became at that time also a literal understanding for the figurative, but not so inaccurate, investigation into the animating principle of life, believing that reawakening a fire from basically organic sources was evidence for the the vital spark, not the body electric (as I am sure electricity was looked at philosophically, theologically before being put to mundane use), but rather one that coursed and burnt with the stuff of skyrockets and sparklers.
Friday 5 July 2013
tween
verily a new hope
Some clever wordsmiths have re-adapted the quintessential Space Opera as if it were penned by the Bard himself. This is fun and something you can try at home and leagues better than adding zombies or vampires to the classics and declaring it original or a genre. Pride and Predator or Baby Got Back Gilbert and Sullivan style were absolute genius, however. What ideas for mixes and mashes do you have?
franking privilege or going postal
In order to steam open the envelop, a request need only be forwarded to the Post itself for approval and such a closed system of judge and juror has set precedence for prying into electronic correspondence as well. Being subject to tracing and inspection of course helps uncover networks after the fact and hopefully going forward, like any good detective work—scams, illicit trade and sympathies but such insatiate methods really only help build dossiers, accurate or otherwise, rather than keeping anyone safe and secure.
catagories: ๐ฅธ
Thursday 4 July 2013
tamarod or pitch and putsch
I do not know what to believe about the developing situation in Egypt and regret that I have not invested time in educating myself, since there are a lot of opinions out there either worthy of staving off or consideration, not that I was a particularly competent authority to comment on the previous revolution. I won't say that there was a lack of coverage exactly but a strange sort of disengagement when the protests swelled to the largest moment of mobilisation in human history with seventeen million people rallying for the regime to abdicate—not to mention anger at the US and its diplomacy for its policies and what has been interpreted by some as tacit support for the status quo. For the sake of the people of Egypt, I hope that this becomes a better turn, despite and in spite of speculators.
In what I hold to be a concession too far against tradition, the post by my workplace held its Independence Day celebrations last night, culminating with a fireworks display at around 2200 (it's considerate not to have people work on a federal holiday but it kind of loses its meaning when it becomes such a moveable feast), and I could see and hear the spectacle from my open hallway. It made me smile that the distant rumblings were perfectly in time to celebrations and fireworks going off in Tahrir Square as the regime was removed to jubilation. Differences are always mentionables among friends and co-celebrants.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, revolution