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Dostoievski once had a character imagine what a head would think if for some seconds it were aware of having been cut off by an executioner's guillotine, or if somehow it were aware for a full minute, or even for five minutes.
I should think such a head would think thoughts entirely dependent on the circumstances and that the type of blade that committed the murder wouldn't affect the thoughts too greatly.
I loved you, it might think, thinking of its loved ones. I did well there, if might think, thinking of its accomplishments. I'm sorry, it might think, dwelling momentarily on its deepest regrets -- as likely as not relatively trivial incidents in which the head together with its body had hurt someone's feelings.
I've died in a war, the head might think, despite opposing wars. I took the risk and enjoyed the thrill, yet the injustice remains. I didn't launch the war. I didn't make millions off it. I didn't win votes from it. I tried to tell people what it was, and here I am no better than a soccer ball about to cease existing as a consciousness.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm and the rights to everything Star Wars from George Lucas in 2012, there was an explosion of speculation about what this would mean for the franchise. Some worried that this would mean a dumbing down of any future movies for a younger audience. Others noted how well Disney handled Marvel Studios and how badly Lucasfilm was already managing Star Wars. Now we’re getting our first look at Disney’s take on the series with Star Wars Rebels, an animated action series that just premiered on their own Disney XD cable network.
After Disney bought Lucasfilm, it was no surprise when they brought competitor Cartoon Network’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars series to an end so they could create something of their own. And with a similar computer-animated look and some of the same production crew, it’s hard not to compare the newer show to The Clone Wars.
In a speech to Conservative Party members last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron invoked the death of his disabled son in 2009 to argue that he has a “personal” commitment to protecting the National Health Service (NHS). Ivan Cameron, who was six years old and suffered from epilepsy and cerebral palsy, died in February 2009 in the care of NHS nurses fifteen months before Mr. Cameron became Prime Minister.
Delivering the keynote address at this year's Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, England, Mr. Cameron took on accusations of cronyism and corruption by charities, opposition politicians, and leading members of the NHS itself, accusing these figures of scaremongering and claiming “for me this is personal.”
In a reference to Ivan's death, Cameron said “I'm someone who has relied on the NHS and whose family knows more than most just how important it is, who knows what it's like when you go to hospital night after night with a sick child in your arms, knowing that when you get there, there are people who will love that child and care for that child just as like it was their own.”
At his parents’ house in Westerville, R.G. Florey keeps the original list of the 10 things he wants to accomplish after one of his friends, Sgt. 1st Class Johnny R. Polk, was killed in a grenade attack in Kirkuk, Iraq.
Since he returned to Columbus, Florey has put check marks beside eight of the 10 goals including becoming the captain for the Capital University men’s soccer team (4-4 overall before Oct. 1). Florey, who scored goals in a 2-0 win over St. Fisher College on Sept. 6, a 3-0 win over Wooster on Sept. 17 and in a 5-1 loss to second-ranked Kenyon on Sept. 23, won’t rest until he accomplishes them all.
“I set very specific goals after (Polk) passed away,” Florey says. “Johnny was always there to motivate you and push you. All my drive since that day has been to please him and remember him in a positive way through my actions.”
Polk’s death has been the keystone in Florey’s unlikely path to Capital. The 2007 Westerville South graduate spent three years on active duty in the U.S. Army including a year-long deployment in Iraq before joining the Crusaders.
Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD has returned to ABC for a second season, following Agent Phil Coulson and his team as they try to salvage something of their mostly-benevolent government organization from the mess left by the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
With the recent iCloud account hacks that put private celebrity photos in the hands of Reddit jerks, it’s a good time for us to all take a moment to look over what our phones and online accounts are doing. For most of us there’s no danger of someone running a coordinated attack to access our dick pics, but some of the same steps can also keep you safe in the event of larger cloud storage hacks and security breaches like the Heartbleed bug. They’re also useful if you’re going to be participating in political activism. While our smartphones do a lot of super convenient things, some of them aren’t worth the security risks.
(As a note, I don’t mean to victim-blame here. What happened to Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, etc. was WRONG and no one’s fault but the hackers’. But it’s still a reminder to practice good data hygiene.)
Unrestrained corporate power is the Ebola virus of our global ecological crisis. Rooting it out will demand a whole new level of resistance.
The worldwide march for the climate this weekend is focussed on moving us to a Solartopian energy supply, a green-powered Earth.
But those who march must also focus on the real core problem: the nature of the modern corporation.
As currently structured, the corporation’s sole mandate is to make profit. Its insatiable need for more and more money, and its immunity from the consequences of its actions, are unsustainable in any sense.
Its fossil fuels heat our planet. Its atomic reactors threaten us all.