I came across an interesting/disconcerting news bit today (via digg); it seems there’s a proposal in the House to use unmanned drones (spy planes) to surveil the United States. The author of the piece seems so matter-of-fact in discussing the possible uses of these planes, monitoring US borders, looking for “terrorist activity” etc. The word ‘privacy’ is mentioned only once, in passing. One disconcerting paragraph even discusses a county in North Carolina where the technology is already being put to use, “The aircraft has been dispatched to monitor gatherings of motorcycle riders at the Gaston County fairgrounds from just a few hundred feet in the air (close enough to identify faces) and many more uses, such as the aerial detection of marijuana fields, are planned.” .

But it was the final paragraph of the article that made me gulp my too hot morning coffee in horror: “It is quite easy to envision a future in which (UAVs), unaffected by pilot fatigue, provide 24-7 border and port surveillance to protect against terrorist intrusion,” said Mike Heintz on behalf of the UNITE Alliance which represents Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. “Other examples are limited only by our imagination.” emphasis mine

If you couple this information with info from another article posted on 365gay.com about ultra conservative Supreme Court Justice Scalia, where it says, “Earlier this month, the governor of South Dakota signed a law that makes it illegal for a woman to have an abortion. It is widely expected that the will be appealed, opening the way for the Supreme Court to revisit Roe v Wade. A similar scenario could also send sodomy back to the high court.”..it doesn’t take long to envision a world where a right-wing “moralist” government is using high tech equipment to spy inside peoples’ homes and where people disappear suddenly in the night, a’la V for Vendetta.

Speaking of which, I saw V last weekend with a bunch of friends. I should mention that I saw the movie, then read the comic, and then saw the movie again (yes, it’s true, I’m a total movie hound). And I have to say, that while I do have some points about the story that I don’t like..overall I really enjoyed it. As one of my friends said gleefully after the show, “I loved the explosions!” And it really was sort of cathartic to see the awful police-state big bro. government fall to bits in a shower of sparks accompanied by crashing Tchaikovsky.

I also have to say that I, personally, enjoyed the movie more than the comic. I’m not a big fan of Alan Moore to begin with, and in this case, I think the W brothers took the revolutionary aspects a lot farther in the movie. And I really appreciated that sentiment.

I, did wonder about V’s line of cash..where did he get it? Extortion? Trust Fund? There’s no back story to the character..in either the movie, or the comic..so you don’t know if he comes from wealth. It shouldn’t matter, though because there’s one tiny bit of dialogue where they explain that “the man in room V” has forgotten who he is..so he should have no need of a “back story”, really. But he had all that stuff, the nice cookware, the zillions of masks.. So is that the only way to have made his revolution feasible? A person really rich and “outside the system” has to inspire it or fund it? I think it would have to be more organic than that, really. But it’s a movie so you take it with a grain, as you do with all of Hollywood. It was quite entertaining.

I liked the queer subtexts and also the gender oddity of the main character. As high-action heroes go, V is different from most. I love the freakness of it. That long polyester hair..the cheek rouge..the performative camp..that’s pretty queer. and the whole bit about Evey falling in love with him..transcending his external presentation, transcending traditional romance. And there’s the whole bit where she reads the lesbian’s notes from the underground, kissing the paper they are written on, falling in love with the author..crying over her story, taking it away with her..living because of it.

Also, I appreciated the nearly transparent pointers to the current administration..tho I think some people actually MISS that, as I’ve heard people say that they see paralells to the Nazis, and not current times. Which how you can miss the obvious references to fear propaganda (terrorism, avian flu, etc) is totally beyond me. Plus there’s a nice implication about “the government being responsible for the deaths of thousands of people” and covering it up. heh. Fox News has been calling for it to be yanked from the theatres because it will incite “terrarism”, etc. IMO, anything that Fox News doesn’t like, I’ll go see (twice).

I sat through an hour long conference call today at work..the whole room reeked of sweaty gym sock.

In other news, I found this cool website with old photos of Iowa City and The University of Iowa today. Since I’m a history buff, I find these sorts of things totally fascinating. Here are the general links:

Iowa City

University of Iowa

Some highlights:

In this picture the Armory (seen to the left of the smokestack) is located on the exact spot where I now work: The Lindquist Center.

Here is a view from the top of my old building (gilmore hall), looking across the street at the Pentacrest. No dates on these photos, but i’d put it at the early part of the 20th. The brick buildings on the right are no longer there;

I like this pic of the original Iowa City Public Library, with the trees and whatnot. Now it’s an apartment building for college kids who don’t appreciate it as much. There’s been a lot of visible damage to the building since they started renting it out.

In this picture(from Anatomy, of course) , I’m wondering if the fellow on the table is actually a dead body, or if it’s a student posing as a dead body for the picture. I can’t really tell. If you have an opinion, let me know.

I’m in the 3rd week at my new job. I’ve spent so much time adjusting and trying to grok my new environment (and the massive scale change between 12 servers + 160 users to..like over 150 servers and thousands of users) that I haven’t taken the time to write for TextBandit.

Things seem to be going well so far. I have excellent teammates here. The interpersonal atomsphere seems to be one of respect; if you are part of the team you automatically are given a high level of respect from the other members. The management is also respectful, and is very comfortable with delegation, and then assuming that the worker bees are doing their jobs. In other words, we are trusted, supported and not micromanaged. That means no zombie effect(note: link gakked from arty|papers). huzzah! huzzah!

The physical environment is very dim. I call it the Twilight Zone because we’re in the basement where there are no windows, and the fellows who work down here don’t like the overheads. So it’s at a constant state of seeming like it’s about 7 PM..I have to remind myself every few hours to bubble up out of the basement and see what’s going on outside, get some view of the sky/sun and breathe fresh air. I found during the first 2 weeks that I was becomming totally exhausted by the end of each day, and was unsure whether this was related to the stress of starting a new job, or the lighting..my guess is both. I did realize I was getting eye-strain, so I added several desk lights and feel much better.

On a different note, a friend of mine in Illinois sent me an article this morning that made me very sad.

Octavia Butler, one of my all-time favorite sci-fi writers passed away on Friday, she was 58.

I frist read Butler’s “Wild Seed” in 1991 for a Women’s Studies class here at the U called “Feminist Utopias”. Her book grabbed my attention immediately. It included time travel, body changing, immortality..and coupled these with issues of race, gender, history. A totally entertaining and yet complex analysis of the human condition.

Later, thanks largely to The Pirate, who is also an avid Octavia Butler fan, I read “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the talents” both of which were apocalyptic dystopias. Apocalypse is one of my favorite topics, and Butler writes her scenario (a burning and murderous Los Angeles where people live in walled communities to protect themselves from nomadic, drug-crazed maniacs) very well.

In a write-up in the New York Times, Butler describes her position in the Sci-Fi genre:

“When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read,” Ms. Butler told The New York Times in 2000. “The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn’t manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writing.”

And I think that quote sort of embodies why hers was such a fresh voice in the largely white and male dominated world that is Sci-Fi writing.

She will be sorely missed.