Today's news headlines
Here is the news (well, some of it):
- Santa 's helicopter comes under anti-aircraft fire in Rio de Janeiro airspace (from gangsters, who thought he was with the police).
- Bulgarian army officer arrested for smuggling stolen tanks out of the country — it appears he was only caught the second time he did it.
- Baby has two dead semi-developed siblings surgically removed from abdomen — obligatory grand guignol bit (thank you, Warren Ellis).
- Paris Hilton in smurf swearing shocker — well what do you think this is about?
- Army bomb disposal officers called in to defuse Christmas crackers — why can't they do what everyone else does and just shoot their SA-80s in the air?
- FCC votes to allow TV channel operators to own newspapers — which will make the Murdoch family very happy, and help ensure that in future all your news coverage will be as relevant as this!
Comments
The first two links are very disappointing when you actually go in to read them, Charlie.
Posted by: Noel Maurer | December 19, 2007 3:48 PM
See the final link, Noel. It'll make your day. Or your newspaper!
Posted by: Charlie Stross | December 19, 2007 3:56 PM
45e10 points if you can somehow theorise a link between each story that culminates in the destruction of reality by the Great Old Ones*.
*(AKA Murdoch family, SKY, Virgin)
Posted by: Serraphin | December 19, 2007 4:15 PM
I'm waiting for the day when Rupe has to take out Chinese citizenship to have a tv station there, the way he had to cease to be Australian to own whatever tv station he has in the USA..
I'm probably waiting in vain.
Posted by: martyn44 | December 19, 2007 4:29 PM
Clearly something unfortunate happened in Iraq or Afghanistan recently, and Ms. Braindead Celeb was called out to create what Alfred Bester once called "Fun, Fantasy, Confusion, and Catastrophe" to bury it on page 9.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) | December 19, 2007 8:05 PM
destruction of reality
With the sort of reality we get these days, who'd even notice?
Posted by: Roy G. Ovrebo | December 19, 2007 8:09 PM
" why can't they do what everyone else does and just shoot their SA-80s in the air?"
Well, they'd jam, obviously.
Posted by: Art | December 19, 2007 10:06 PM
Aye, you'd want an AK47 for a gig like that.
Posted by: D. O'Kane | December 19, 2007 10:09 PM
Paris Hilton vs. the Smurfs. I honestly don't know which side to choose.
Posted by: Branko Collin | December 19, 2007 11:47 PM
The first item had a link to another which wouldn't have looked out of place on your list: Save the world with liposuction.
Posted by: Ed Davies | December 20, 2007 12:58 AM
American newspapers already are as trivial and superficial as TV news divisions, and have rather more concentrated ownership and less competition. (In any US city, there are fewer daily newspapers than TV broadcast channels -- to say nothing of cable TV.) The FCC ruling just allows one bunch of dinosaurs to mate with another; its effect on US politics will be nearly nil.
Posted by: Michael Brazier | December 20, 2007 4:32 AM
Fetus in fetu is nature's turducken.
Posted by: Edmund Schluessel | December 20, 2007 7:14 AM
Paris is ours! (Go USA!) "Oh, they're so cute. Let them eat cake and then make them dance around the Christmas tree while singing Smurf songs! NOW!" What more could we want from one of our aristos?
Jeff
Posted by: Jeff | December 20, 2007 2:00 PM
Far be it from me to defend Paris Hilton but if I took a job that involved me getting painted blue and impersonating a Smurf I would expect a degree of indignity and patronising comments from the audience.
Posted by: Chris | December 20, 2007 2:22 PM
I'm more shocked by the Smurfs' unprofessionalism than Paris Hilton's behavior. If you're going to take a gig as a cartoon character, expect to be treated badly. Anyone who's worked at a theme park can give you a list of ways visitors abuse them
I had a friend who worked at Islands of Adventure and Universal in Orlando. One of his roles was a Doctor Doom before they had to remove all of the villains from the park. It seems that tourists thought it was great fun to walk up and punch the "bad guy" characters, or pull on their capes, or trip them, or whatever. Teenagers usually being the worst.
Posted by: Andrew G. | December 20, 2007 2:33 PM
"Although worthless to the army the ancient tank is worth a fortune to collectors."
Well, that kinda puts things into perspective to me. Also, they could make them safe and auction them off, surely?
Posted by: Andrew Crystall | December 20, 2007 6:56 PM
How come you missed out on the Lakota unilaterally declaring treaties with the US government null and void?
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Descendants_of_Sitting_Bull_Crazy_Horse_1220.html
Posted by: tp1024 | December 21, 2007 2:22 AM
tp1024: that news broke after my posting. Plus, we know what happens to folks who unilaterally declare independence from the USA.
Posted by: Charlie Stross | December 21, 2007 1:29 PM
C.S said: we know what happens to folks who unilaterally declare independence from the USA
We pull them back into our loving fold. Once you are assimilated there's no going back. Ever.
Jeff
Posted by: Jeff | December 21, 2007 4:38 PM
Jeff @ 19:
That's not true. If your skin is dark enough the US is only too happy to get rid of you. Look at Cuba and Liberia.
Posted by: Andrew G. | December 21, 2007 11:42 PM
Har, har. So, of course, I only went to the Paris Hilton link. It immediately made me think of hyperreality. As Paris is herself a hyperreal figure (not to mention the capital of France), she is probably seriously confused about the nature of reality.
I discovered hyperreality when I acquired some late '20s - early '30s music by Annette Hanshaw and found out from Wikipedia that she was the real inspiration for the hyperreal character Bettie Boop. I'm thinking, great, more French Deridda-derived deconstructionist crap, but, you know, there just might be something to this hyperreality thing. Most Americans would probably prefer to go to Paris in Las Vegas than in France.
Sorry, Charlie, this is more of Gibson's recent schpeil than yours.
Interesting, the reference to hyperreality is gone from the Annette Hanshaw page at Wikipedia.
Posted by: Chris Heinz | December 22, 2007 1:01 AM
True, in a way. Except that maybe some president runner up might get the idea, that actually helping them, referring to the american dream, the pursuit of happiness etc (US residents here probably know these better than me) might help them offset a couple million dollars worth of money raised for their election campaigns ... (The hypocrisy of which I won't mention here ...)
Posted by: tp1024 | December 22, 2007 1:18 AM
Andrew G. , I think it's clear that the Federal Gov of the USA would not allow a state to secede from the Union. Of course the Constitution allows for secession (in some abstract way), but theory and practice are obviously two different things. Heinlein predicted that the Crazy Years would result in a United States that breaks up into lots of smaller countries, and the same was true in Stephenson's Snow Crash--taken to hyperbolic extreme. Quite a few sf writers seem to think it's inevitable that the US will collapse under its own blotted mass, imploding from some combination of chaos factors. But then, lots of people still want to come here, so perhaps we'll just have to assimilate more and more and more until we become a Doctorow-esque-post-scarcity-Bitchun-society. Dude!
Posted by: Jeff | December 22, 2007 5:35 PM
But then, lots of people still want to come here
Think osmosis, but with money instead of sugar.
Posted by: Adrian Smith | December 24, 2007 7:16 AM
Re state's seceding, the only scenario under which I could see this happening is if the Federal government went bankrupt. My impression was that the amount of money that the states get from the Feds is the main thing that keeps the union together. Unfortunately, in the Bush years, somehow that money has wound up flowing from blue states to red states -- go figure.
Posted by: Chris Heinz | December 24, 2007 2:12 PM
Chris Heinz@25: "...if the Federal government went bankrupt."
It's not a pretty thought. But stranger things have been known to happen. I believe that France went broke helping us to break up with England. All good things will come with a new year.
Posted by: Jeff | December 24, 2007 4:41 PM