Archive for September 2005
The first horror story
September 23, 2005, 10:30 amArinn’s second Pretty Scary column is up and as always blows away everything else on the site.
—castewar | Comments Off
(posted in the General category)
New Double-speak
September 20, 2005, 3:22 pm
I first heard about this story on the front page of the Globe and Mail. Thier picture is slightly earlier than the one above - the tanker was half out of the hatch in the Globe’s picture, but still very much on fire. As a side note, as you’ll see, CNN has a picture of the jail ruins. No burning tanker. The Middle East Online has a picture of the tank on fire, no tanker, and an Iraq citizen, fist in air, standing in front of the Warrior tank. Media is a subtle subject.
What I’d like to point out though, beyond selective picture use, is the latest non-term to enter contemporary discussion - “undercover soldier” (or, if you’re jaunty, like CNN, “undercover troops”.)
We have a perfectly good word for this. It’s been around for ages.
undercover soldier = spy
You can see why they switched though - spying is, well, a game that the public isn’t supposed to see in action. Spies get into some dirty business and really, nobody wan’ts to think their country gets up to dirty deeds. Plus, spies - which are, loosely, defined as soldiers out of uniform in the rules of war - are subject to death. It’s an old and strangely balanced approach to war. If you march around with a uniform and a gun, should you happen to survive and be captured, like someone taking a dodgeball to the head, you’re out and in time will get to go home. Spying, however, is hard to counter - spies don’t announce their presence of intent. So the rule is if you’re a spy and you get caught, pray your side has one of the enemy’s spies in jail, so they can swap you. Otherwise, you’re hooped.
It worked really well during the second world war. In fact, it seemed kind of dashing, for spies on either side. I’m sure most spies were jerks like the rest of the human race, but sneaking around, blowing up bridges had a certain j’ne sais quois. During the cold war it got a lot boring (a lot of information that the public never ever saw was going on) and a little unsettling (once the Russians used an umbrella to inject a guy in England with what amounted to uber-tetanus, the romance of The Great Game was gone for good.)
I don’t know that it’s such a good idea to let them breakdown the line between civilian and soldier.
—castewar | Comments Off
(posted in the General category)
Fun fact of the day
September 15, 2005, 5:14 pmIt turns out that the woman singing the original Star Trek theme song… isn’t a woman. She’s an Ondes Martenot (comes from the same school of early electronic music as the Theremin.)
Who knew?
—castewar | 1 comment
(posted in the General category)
Mythbusters is out…
September 14, 2005, 3:45 pm…Brainiac is in.
Spread the word.
—castewar | 5 comments
(posted in the General category)
No compassion in response = making things worse
September 9, 2005, 12:04 pm“Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of “victims,” they saw “mob” or “riot.” We felt safety in numbers. Our “we must stay together” attitude was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.”
—castewar | Comments Off
(posted in the General category)
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