I don’t know much about Ted Talks, the science lecture link I put up on our network page. I do know that I like it. It seems to be based in Europe. The lecturer stands on a stage giving a large screen power point demonstration with a huge timer facing him. They seem to be limited to 20 minutes. This lecture was by Mikko Hypponen, some Belgian IT geek. He was discussing the Nazi Surveillance Army that is currently data-mining the world, to a degree that Orwell certainly would have found astonishing.
It was shocking to see a European discussing how privacy is the building block of democracy, in that privacy is a value that is no longer generally held as valuable in the U.S., which is ironically where Europeans who valued privacy once fled. He discussed the U.S. as the focus of evil in the world, pointing out that our nation has betrayed the rest of it. The most interesting part of his lecture was discussing the impossibility of secure web traffic, as most operating systems are based in the U.S. and have been hacked by the U.S. state security apparatus. What is more, operating systems made outside of the U.S. are being purchased by U.S. based entities and are then hacked by the U.S.
Mikko paints a bleak picture, though it is a picture that will not be viewed by many Americans. The relatively few U.S geeks who go to Ted Talks, I can imagine are being tracked. Mikko had me wondering how long it will be before the U.S. shuts down or limits web access for the general population like it does for the military.
Mikko’s talk brought to mind a conversation I had recently with an American university student about his summer trip to Europe. He said it felt odd, to be with an American group, primarily because even though he and his classmates were among the top 1% of educated U. S. people in his age group, they were not able to hold up their end of a conversation with their European counterparts. He said, “None of us knew anything about the issues they were discussing. It was as if we were retarded by comparison. All of these Europeans knew so much more about our country and our government than we did. And we knew nothing about their countries beyond beer and cars.”
This student’s words echoed in my mind while I listened to Mikko discuss the global enemy to freedom, privacy and democracy that he claims is the U.S. It was a mighty strange 17 minutes.
When your nation is the seat of the empire, why concern yourself with the vassal states? <sarcasm, but general mindset of average American, IMO.
Yes, our own peasants are vexing enough. The underlings of our vassal states do deserve even less consideration I suppose.
America is Europe's bastard child that embodies all of its noblest and lesser desires, to their respective extremes. Unfortunately, as of yet, our biggest vice - capital - is finally exhibiting its toll to a degree that can no longer be masked. If american students are dumber than euros, it's because someone wanted it that way, I assure you. But I don't think that's the case exactly... Besides the bottom half of Europe is starting to rot away and you still can't get a late-hour delivery pizza in the birthplace of the tomato. Bullocks.
So, the fact that all of my ladies lost have refereed to me as a 'bastard' is simply a measure of their geopolitical astuteness, and my status as an American of European ascent, not a reflection on my dubious mating qualifications, as I have feared?