Absurdity, Allegory and China

Google just can’t seem to keep themselves out of the news. With the developing tales of Chinese hacking – possibly traced to Jiaotong Univertsity in Shangahi and a particular class taught by a Ukranian prof at Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong province – and their warning to China that they would be, sometime in the [...]

[Read more →]

Here’s a question from the “things may not always be what they seem” file. Is Google’s rushed and premature rollout of its latest product, Buzz, related to its ongoing cyber tussle with China? With the world’s two most popular social networking products, Facebook and Twitter, blocked in the People’s Republic (PRC), and Google believed to [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve ranted in here for the past two days concerning Google’s saddling of all Gmail account holders with Buzz, and what that might mean for info/data miners in countries where public security bureaus use geek goons to harvest information and lists. I think that if you have people in your Gmail contacts list who might [...]

[Read more →]

I am a hard sell when it comes to supporting conspiracy theories. That said, I am also not one to buy into private corporations’ self-promoting jingles, even if they have a long trail of mission statements, supportive philosophical documents, digitally spinning prayer wheels and mumbled mantras. Google doesn’t get a pass because they preach a [...]

[Read more →]

In Nicholas Ray’s classic 1955 film Rebel Without A Cause there’s a short exchange between Jim Stark (James Dean), the rebellious protagonist, and leather-jacketed Buzz Gunderson (Corey Allen), the popular crowd favorite and daring, darling meathead who has challenged Jim to a game of chicken: a drive at full speed in stolen cars toward the [...]

[Read more →]