A Second Hand Conjecture

It seems the marriage of David Pollard and Amy Taylor is heading toward divorce, due to Pollard’s virtual affair with a virtual prostitute, uncovered by a virtual private detective hired by Taylor.

It occurs to me that the key thing William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and the 80s cyberpunk movement got wrong when they were conjecturing about the future of networked data communications, was that immersive media digital communities would be cool, awe-inspiring and practical.
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I must have dumped fifty bucks in change into this laserdisc game in early-80s arcades. It was not nearly as easy as the chap playing it makes it look.

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Douglas Farah notes that with the Al Qaeda leadership now dead or in flight from Iraq, we might be on the verge of a replication the experience of the Andean drug wars of the 1980s. In that situation, the death and flight of the cartel leadership (and subsequent cocaine supply network decentralization), only made them harder to directly combat. It’s a sound historical cautionary note. But the difference of course is that in the drug war the market for cocaine remained largely unchanged and highly lucrative during cartel suppression. Whereas in Iraq, it may be that the Awakening has permanently damaged the (niche) market for foreign terrorism.

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Well look at this. An entire fan site devoted to Night of the Comet. The film that answers the question of what would happen if two cute 80s valley girls were the last people alive in postapocalyptic L.A. Greatness, is the answer of course. The site’s author shares my taste for the movie as well: “Eighties! Teenagers with attitude – check; big hair and shoulder pads – check; keyboard-heavy soundtrack – check; cheesy dance scene – check. Nuff said.”

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Video clip of Sean Hannity asking Frank Luntz’s group of Democratic Obama supporters to name one (1) specific accomplishment of their candidate. They all fail embarrassingly and resort to offering Obama’s personality characteristics as achievements. One young girl does manage to meekly submit “community organizer,” which may be a valid allusion to Barack’s accomplishments on behalf of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago in the 1980s. The rest…ought to be ashamed of themselves. Anyone this uninformed about who they intend to vote for, should probably not be voting in an election to begin with.

From: HotAir

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Do you remember in the 80s when there were these bizarre quasi-political trash shows with psychopathic screaming hosts on television and the radio? They were something like a combination of Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Springer. Here’s video of two of the worst getting into a fight over who is more “conservative.” Wally wins, but his only redeeming virtue now and then was that he was the father of Rebecca De Mornay (and this will always be her song as far as I’m concerned). Edit. Ah, the scene.

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Short video clip on Maggie’s privatization efforts in the 1980s, and the intellectual rationale behind expanding the investor class. It’s not about creating prosperity, it’s about educating a nation in what makes prosperity possible.

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