Chuck-ese

The Yellow-1 website is again online. The first thing one notices about it is that that the four language options (English, French, Spanish, German) are gone, with only English remaining. What was previously in the Media tab has been replaced with a video of a man reading the About section on the website. Applications are again being accepted. There is also a forum which claims to be dormant until the 15th of September.

Neurocam has also had a redesign. It now goes by Neurocam X04. Apparently, “protocol X04 [was?] initiated 10/07/08″ which date has not occurred yet. [Note: That text was buried in the bottom right hand corner of the page and is the same color as the background. I found it via the source code.] A link on the site called “Archives” takes you to Robin Heley’s website. Here, you can see various Neuro-documents, including assignment discriptions and reports made by operatives (including some famous Neuro-bloggers). I haven’t the time right now to peruse the cache of documents, but I will do so within the week.

Neurocam X04 Archives/Assignments Yellow-1
Getting back into this is fairly exciting. I just wish I hadn’t screwed the pooch so badly with EsotericTree.

[EDIT 22-September-2008: According to the second video, Neurocam claims to have been around for 30 years, about the same amount of time that the Orphanage claims to have been existent.]

Effective 27-August-2008, I am now at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Yellow-1 has apparently suspended operations until the 15th of September. I do not know when this went into effect.

A rather out of place note on the bottom of the screen claims no connection between Yellow 1 and Neurocam, which anyone who has read the Black Report will know is false.

Yellow-1.  The Black Report.

[EDIT 16-September-2008: I may or may not have initially misread the page, but the date for re-opening is the 19th.]

Ubik by Phillip K. Dick

The whole half-life/cold-pac setup was very Matrix-y.  Jory is a fairly accurate analog to Agent Smith, especially when he first reveals himself to Joe Chip (who makes a terrible Neo).The end of the book, where Runciter finds a Joe Chip quarter, left the reader still uncertain about the reality of the situation he characters found themselves in, as well as mightily pissed off.

Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle

May Day Mystery quote: “‘Religion must necessarily produce industry and frugality,’ Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, proclaimed, ‘and these cannot but produce riches.’” (Boyle, Kevin. Arc of Justice. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004. pg 50)

On January 1st 1923, a white mob from Sumner, Florida attacked the black town of Rosewood, killed 17 of its citizens, and forced the rest to flee before the town was put to the torch. (pg 123) This is not something they teach you in history class.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

Funny the whole way through.

The Truth, with Jokes by Al Franken

Also funny the whole way through, as well as insightful. His line about “[t]he ‘I will stop you from doing good because I don’t want you to get the credit’ thing” was particularly resonant. (pg 142)

The System of the World by Neil Stephenson

Entertaining. Of particular note is the scene on pgs 485-6 where Saturn (Peter Hoxton) tells the rest of his Clubb the difference between what he told the innkeeper, what the publican thinks, what he told the patrons, and the “conclusions” the patrons drew. “That’s not what they think. They think that you are Sodomites.”

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This book was depressing as hell, but compelling. It brought a new paradigm to the post-apocalyptic  society, one in so few people are actually killed in whatever vague event it was the ended the world that the majority of the suffering was caused by the flood of people who descended like locusts upon the land. (This is, or course, my interpretation. Usually in post-apocalyptic fiction, society reverts to some prior stage of human progress. That supposes that the number of people in urban areas were killed and the food that is available in the remainder cities is enough to prevent the urbanites from swamping the agricultural areas.)

Next on the Reading List:

The text of the Frank-Dodd bail-out.

The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank

The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

Law and the Long War by Benjamin Wittes

China: From the 1911 Revolution to Liberation