According to this test site, The Phantom City is blocked in China. I feel almost famous…along with hundreds of thousands of other sites that are probably just blocked due to pattern-matching. And just to make it a good Friday… Meme Cats.
Virginia Tech teacher and filmmaker Paul Harrill on the media spectacle surrounding the shootings, before NBC decided to air the videos. Link courtesy of Boing Boing.
Nikki Giovanni: We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. ...
President Bush: Governor, thank you. President Steger, thank you very much. Students, and faculty, and staff, and grieving family members, and members of this really extraordinary place. Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full of sorrow. This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community – and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. We’ve come to express our sympathy. In this time of anguish, I hope you know that people all over this country are thinking about you, and asking God to provide comfort for all who have been affected. ...
Bruce Schneier blogs about the reaction on the part of police to some backpacks hung on a tree. Personally, I wouldn’t argue that treating backpacks on a tree as possible bombs is an overreaction in this case. It isn’t as if we haven’t seen bombs in backpacks. Admittedly, it seems unlikely someone wanting to commit a terrorist act would hang them in a tree, but that’s a fine line to tread. However, it did bring to mind one thing that has been bothering me for the last couple of days, and that is the assumptions we make about security, rather than using something akin to common sense. If a danger fits a profile currently popular with the public, it seems to be automatic to assume any situation that comes close to that profile must be a danger. As a result, you end up not being able to leave anything unattended in Boston, take pictures of public works facilities, or put your hand near your waistband in a poor neighborhood without taking the risk it will trigger someone’s sense of danger due to a scenario they have already constructed in their head. ...
April 30th.
At least 22 people dead. Damn. Update: At least 30 people dead, according to the AP. The gunman apparently killed himself. The Collegiate Times is putting up updates. The Roanoke Times is also doing updates. Planet Blacksburg has a local perspective.
If Chris Knight was running a log on a BBS before people started logging on the Web, does it mean it was the world’s first blog (weblog), or the world’s first slog (BBSlog)? :)
Seriously, Hawkman, no one wants to see what’s under that mask. Those things have weirded me out ever since I was a kid. A giant bird is bad enough; a giant bird with an expressionless human-shaped mask is a lot worse. Thanks, DC! :| That being said, Showcase Presents: Hawkman, Vol. 1, is out, featuring the Silver Age Hawkman, Katar Hol. While I like the Golden Age Carter Hall version better, you can’t go wrong with a hero whose automatic response to danger is to pick up a mace and start whaling on it. Twenty-foot-tall dinosaur attacking? Mace. White-collar criminal absconding with the pension funds? Mace. Roaches? Turn on the light, watch them scatter, and then it’s mace time. :) ...