Michael Moore - World-of-Newave.info http://answers.world-of-newave.info/michael-moore.htm Latest news and articles about Michael Moore en-us Copyright (c)2004-2008.§/Newave SARL. All rights reserved. webmaster@world-of-newave.com (Webmaster) Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:59:45 GMT Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:59:45 GMT Newave Lisa XML Engine v1.0 - http://www.world-of-newave.info/about.htm 60 http://www.world-of-newave.info/images/wi8831.gif World-of-Newave.info - Knowledge and Informational Database http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 88 31 {ENTERTAINMENT > PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA} - Moore's film to show free on web http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/moore-s-film-to-show-free-on-web-2008095406.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/moore-s-film-to-show-free-on-web-2008095406.htm Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:09:56 GMT Oscar winner Michael Moore is to show his latest documentary, Slacker Uprising, free of charge on the internet. News.Bbc.Co.Uk Moore's film to show free on web {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Oscar winner Michael Moore is to show his latest documentary, Slacker Uprising, free of charge on the internet.
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Moore's film to show free on web {...}
Published: September 5, 2008, 11:09 am - Indexed: September 6, 2008, 11:14 am - Page Size: 43KB
Category: Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media

]]> Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - Michael Moore's next movie will be a free download http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/michael-moore-s-next-movie-will-be-a-free-download-2008097908.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/michael-moore-s-next-movie-will-be-a-free-download-2008097908.htm Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:37:02 GMT Michael Moore will make his next movie available as a free download at the same time as it is in cinemas. I downloaded Sicko free and then paid to see it at the Cinerama Dome in LA again. Smart. (Let's just hope that Moore's smart enough to dodge DRM and other evil crap in the download). I've been trying to get a review copy of his next book out of his publishers, but no luck. Guess I'll just have to buy it when it hits shelves here in London. The film, "Slacker Uprising," follows Moore's 62-city tour during the 2004 election to rally young voters. It will be available for three weeks as a free download to North American residents, beginning Sept. 23. An official announcement of the film is planned for Friday. Moore said he considered releasing "Slacker Uprising" theatrically as "Michael Moore's big election year movie" as he did with 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which was highly critical of President Bush. Instead, Moore opted for a symbol of gratitude to his fans as he approaches the 20th anniversary of his first film, 1989's "Roger & Me." "I thought it'd be a nice way to celebrate my 20th year of doing this," Moore said. "And also help get out the vote for November. I've been thinking about what I want to do to help with the election this year." Michael Moore to release new film online for free (via The Long Tail)... Boingboing.Net Michael Moore's next movie will be a free download {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - Michael Moore will make his next movie available as a free download at the same time as it is in cinemas. I downloaded Sicko free and then paid to see it at the Cinerama Dome in LA again. Smart. (Let's just hope that Moore's smart enough to dodge DRM and other evil crap in the download). I've been trying to get a review copy of his next book out of his publishers, but no luck. Guess I'll just have to buy it when it hits shelves here in London. The film, "Slacker Uprising," follows Moore's 62-city tour during the 2004 election to rally young voters. It will be available for three weeks as a free download to North American residents, beginning Sept. 23. An official announcement of the film is planned for Friday. Moore said he considered releasing "Slacker Uprising" theatrically as "Michael Moore's big election year movie" as he did with 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which was highly critical of President Bush. Instead, Moore opted for a symbol of gratitude to his fans as he approaches the 20th anniversary of his first film, 1989's "Roger & Me." "I thought it'd be a nice way to celebrate my 20th year of doing this," Moore said. "And also help get out the vote for November. I've been thinking about what I want to do to help with the election this year." Michael Moore to release new film online for free (via The Long Tail)...
Michael Moore's next movie will be a free download - Boing Boing {...}
Published: September 5, 2008, 7:37 am - Indexed: September 6, 2008, 10:13 am - Page Size: 89KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk {COMPUTERS > INTERNET} - Michael Moore plans Net-only film premiere http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/michael-moore-plans-net-only-film-premiere-2008094058.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/michael-moore-plans-net-only-film-premiere-2008094058.htm Fri, 05 Sep 2008 05:20:00 GMT Filmmaker plans to premiere his latest documentary exclusively on the Internet for free, forgoing the traditional theatrical release. News.Cnet.Com Michael Moore plans Net-only film premiere {new window}   News.Cnet.Com - Filmmaker plans to premiere his latest documentary exclusively on the Internet for free, forgoing the traditional theatrical release.
Michael Moore plans Net-only film premiere | News - Digital Media - CNET News {...} Filmmaker plans to premiere his latest documentary exclusively on the Internet for free, forgoing the traditional theatrical release. Read this blog post by Steven Musil on News - Digital Media. {...}
Published: September 5, 2008, 5:20 am - Indexed: September 6, 2008, 11:42 am - Page Size: 98KB
Category: Computers > Internet

]]> Computers > Internet {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Michael Moore to Release Next Movie, Slacker Uprising, for Free Online http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/michael-moore-to-release-next-movie-slacker-uprising-20080961711.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/michael-moore-to-release-next-movie-slacker-uprising-20080961711.htm Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:00:00 GMT The Fahrenheit 9/11 director plays the Radiohead card with his new documentary about the 2004 election, Slacker Uprising. Blog.Wired.Com Michael Moore to Release Next Movie, Slacker Uprising, for Free Online {new window}   Blog.Wired.Com - The Fahrenheit 9/11 director plays the Radiohead card with his new documentary about the 2004 election, Slacker Uprising.
Michael Moore to Release Slacker Uprising for Free Online | The Underwire from Wired.com {...} Michael Moore says he will release his next movie free online, the first major major film to be released in such a way, according to the Associated Press. The film, {...}
Published: September 5, 2008, 4:00 am - Indexed: September 7, 2008, 10:15 am - Page Size: 80KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/meet-leland-chee-the-star-wars-franchise-continuity-2008089619.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/meet-leland-chee-the-star-wars-franchise-continuity-2008089619.htm Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:55:00 GMT On the wall behind Leland Chee's desk is a portrait of an Ithorian, an alien with a hammer-shaped head that you glimpse briefly in the famous Star Wars cantina scene. In its leathery, foot-long fingers, the Ithorian holds a cube decorated with elaborate metallic tracings, a device known as a holocron. Think of it as a Force-powered hard drive, capable of storing an enormous quantity of information. "It's a piece of Jedi technology," Chee says. "It tells you ... everything." To Star Wars fans, Chee is the Keeper of the Holocron, arguably the leading expert on everything that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. His official title is continuity database administrator for the Lucas Licensing arm of Lucasfilm—which means Chee keeps meticulous track of not just the six live-action movies but also cartoons, TV specials, scores of videogames and reference books, and hundreds of novels and comics. Keepin' it canonical: Leland Chee, continuity database administrator at Lucas Licensing, maintains the Holocron — a vast FileMaker database that's consulted to make sure that any new elements added to the Star Wars franchise fit within the existing mythology. Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross For more, visit video.wired.com. Of course, Chee's Holocron isn't a Force-sensitive crystal. It's a FileMaker database, a searchable repository of more than 30,000 entries covering almost every character, planet, and weapon mentioned, however fleetingly, in the vast array of Star Wars titles and products. The Holocron isn't just for fun—when Lucas Licensing inks a deal with a toy company or a T-shirt designer, it vets those ancillary products to ensure they conform to the spirit and letter of the continuity that has come before and will continue afterward. In the past 31 years, Star Wars movies have grossed in excess of $4 billion worldwide. But retail sales of merchandise stand at $15 billion, and 20 percent of that has been earned since 2006, the year after the final film was released. Careful nurture of the Star Wars canon—thousands of years of story time, running through all the bits and pieces of merchandise—has kept the franchise popular for decades. So Chee spends three-quarters of his typical workday consulting or updating the Holocron. He also approves packaging designs, scans novels for errors, and creates Talmudic charts and documents addressing such issues as which Jedi were still alive during the Clone Wars and how long it takes a spaceship to get from Dagobah, where Yoda trained Luke Skywalker, to Luke's homeworld of Tatooine. The Keeper of the Holocron takes this very seriously: "Someone has to be able to say, 'Luke Skywalker would not have that color of lightsaber.'" The screening room at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, Lucasfilm's sprawling facility in San Francisco's Presidio District, is as opulent as you would expect—plush seats, wood panels, crystal-clear projection, and a perfect sound system. So when that classic John Williams fanfare begins and the Star Wars logo appears onscreen in that distinctive font, in that distinctive yellow, it quickens the pulse. It's also when Chee, sitting next to me, tells me that in an early version of what we're watching—a new LucasArts videogame called The Force Unleashed, due out in September—the logo was slightly wrong. "It was off by only a few pixels, but someone in Licensing spotted it and submitted a report." I grab an Xbox 360 controller and soon I'm striding through the corridors of a satellite that orbits the smugglers' moon of Nar Shaddaa, destroying everyone in my path. My character, Starkiller, is the secret apprentice of Darth Vader, sent here to eliminate a Jedi elder ... and leave no witnesses. I deflect laser blasts from militia troops with my lightsaber and then use the Force to hurl a chunk of metal through a window behind them. The glass shatters, and several foes are sucked into the vacuum of space before a safety wall snaps shut. I'm beginning to understand the power of the Dark Side. On the scale of badassedness, obliterating legions of good guys with the Force ranks right up there with leaping Snake River Canyon in a monster truck that can transform into a robot. And it's true that the game's sophisticated physics, combined with clever AI software for characters, means that when you Force-throw a Wookiee into a tree on its home planet, Kashyyyk, the Wookiee writhes realistically and the tree explodes in a botanically accurate cloud of splinters. But that's not what has fans most excited about The Force Unleashed. It's the stuff that happens between the interactive killing sprees: brief cinematic interludes that add new details—new plot points—to the saga. "The game is set between episodes III and IV," says Haden Blackman, who led the development team. Translation: Play it and you'll learn what happened before the original Star Wars film trilogy and after the prequels, two decades that have been shrouded in mystery. Over the course of the game, players will learn the details of the internecine feud between Darth Vader and his mentor, Emperor Palpatine, and the way these two unwittingly created the very rebellion that brought them down. The game has yielded a bountiful crop of tie-ins: a book, a graphic novel, a tabletop role-playing game supplement, and several lines of toys. With no more live-action Star Wars films forthcoming (or so we are told), games from the subsidiary division LucasArts are becoming ever more important in expanding the universe—and perpetuating the story-product ecology. And with every narrative beat and plot point, Chee and his dozens of colleagues with Holocron access are there. "Licensing approves everything," he says. "Text, dialog, art ... It all comes through our office." This is where the work of hundreds of writers and artists gets woven into a vast, internally consistent continuum. The power of the Dark Side: LucasArts' Haden Blackman discusses the story and the technology behind the upcoming game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross For more, visit video.wired.com. In his 1932 book Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction, T. S. Blakeney used the term canonicity in reference to the mystery novels and short fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes enthusiasts treat Doyle's work as if the great detective inhabits a coherent and logically consistent universe. Some of the stories written by Doyle were canonical—genuine events in that alternate universe—while others had to be considered apocryphal. (It should come as no surprise that fans would appropriate theological terms. The ecstasy of true fandom can, after all, approximate religion.) Today, canon and its serial-fiction cousin, continuity, are integral to genres like mystery, fantasy, and sci-fi. The giants of the field are known as world-builders as much as writers. J. R. R. Tolkien supplemented his Lord of the Rings series with hundreds of pages of appendices, genealogical charts, even pronunciation and usage guides for the languages he invented. Yet in the multiverse of fictional realities, Holmes's London, Frodo's Middle-earth, Buffy's Sunnydale, and Batman's Gotham are mere planetary systems compared with the grand galactic enterprise of Star Trek. When the original series—known to devout fans as The Original Series—went off the air in 1969, acolytes kept the flame alive. They extended the stories with their own fiction. They created technical manuals. Eventually, the series became a movie, and then another, and then another TV series, and a few more after that. Each new iteration produced more canonical information. Spock's death, Kirk's son, Picard's adventures as a cadet ... eventually, the writers' room on a Trek show became a minefield. "Someone would tell you that a Voyager episode last year mentioned a bit of backstory with the Romulans, and now you can't do this over here," says Ron Moore, a writer and producer on several Star Trek shows who went on to create the new Battlestar Galactica. "You'd argue the validity of that, but they'd be, like, 'No, now it's established.'" Lucas Licensing oversees billions of dollars in merchandise—from pillows to Pez dispensers. Photo: Jeff Minton But the many strata of Star Trek books, games, comics, and cartoons haven't been well tended. Some events in the movies and even later TV shows contradict preexisting lore. (A backward change like that is called a retcon, short for "retroactive continuity.") Gene Roddenberry himself, creator of Star Trek, was known to second-guess his own pronouncements about what was and was not canonical. After a while, the retcons and inconsistencies can become off-putting to fans and render once-beloved universes impenetrable to newcomers. One solution: a reboot. Start from scratch, like Moore did with Galactica. Clever preservation of original story elements retains the old fans, and streamlining and modernizing lets newbies spend their hard-earned quatloos, too. To Chee, the orderliness of the Star Wars canon is what sets it apart, what makes it feel more real than all those other franchises. "Look at James Bond," he says. "What's real in the James Bond world? What year does it take place in? It's not grounded in a real timeline." The Star Wars chronology, on the other hand, marks time from the Battle of Yavin, the assault on the Death Star at the end of the original Star Wars. Luke Skywalker was born in the year 19 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin). It says so in the Holocron. Back in his office, Chee asks his database what else it has on young Skywalker. The result contains scores of fields covering lineage, favorite vehicles, the planet he's from, how to write his name in the Aurebesh alphabet. "Oops," Chee says, blocking the screen with his body until he has minimized the window. "There are things in the Holocron that aren't public knowledge, stuff coming down the pike two or three years from now." He won't say whether those secrets relate to upcoming books, movies, games, or toys. Probably all of them. Merch and more merch: Movies, games, comics, and novels are the tip of the iceberg. Leland Chee shows off more Star Wars goods, like Yoda skateboards, Wookiee slippers, and Darth Tater. Beware the Jar Jar lollipop! Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross For more, visit video.wired.com. Lucasfilm has to plan ahead and think long term. "We don't reboot. We don't start from scratch," Chee says. "When Chewbacca died, he died." (Poor Chewie yowled his last yowl in 25 ABY, when he was stuck on the planet Sernpidal as it collided with its moon, Dobido, in the novel Vector Prime, the first book in the New Jedi Order series. His death is now canon.) "The thing about Star Wars is that there's one universe," Chee says. "Everyone wants to know stuff, like, where did Mace Windu get that purple lightsaber? We want to establish that there's one and only one answer." Star Wars was the number two toy brand aimed at boys last year, behind only Transformers. But toys account for less than half of the revenue for licensed merchandise. The Lucas Licensing office is positively drowning in other merch. Bedspreads, window blinds, pillowcases, wastebaskets, guitars, chairs, baseball caps, beach balls, jewelry, lunch boxes, cookie jars, and kites all added up to $3 billion in retail sales in 2006 and 2007. That figure includes big-ticket items aimed at adults. An R2-D2 DVD projector. A stormtrooper golf bag. A high-end fashion line created with superstar designer Marc Ecko, including $300 Star Wars jeans and a replica of the poncho Han Solo wore on the ice planet Hoth. There was even a $3,000 suit of Darth Vader-style samurai armor. "We realize that our fans have different levels of disposable income," says Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing, who joined the company a week after the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back, in 1980. "The kids who played with the toys have grown up." Leland Chee strolls the San Francisco campus of Lucasfilm. Photo: Jeff Minton There have been some egregious missteps, like the Jar Jar lollipop. It looks like a plastic bust of the hated character, but push a button and it opens its mouth and sticks out a hideous candy tongue for children to suck on. "The tongue had bumps on it," Chee says, wrinkling his nose. Chee's sense of what is correct in the Star Wars universe has been a lifetime in development. He saw the original movie at the Coronet Theater in San Francisco at age 6. He got his first plastic Star Wars action figures—R2-D2 and that lame C-3P0 look-alike, Death Star Droid—for his seventh birthday and from there steadily enlarged his collection, storing them all in a case shaped like Darth Vader's head (which he still has). Chee even kept the cardboard they were mounted on. "The packaging had great visuals, plus, like, a paragraph of backstory on the character," he says. It's easy to forget that before Star Wars, licensed merchandise was a different, less profitable business. All the big toymakers turned down the rights to make Star Wars action figures; upstart Kenner didn't sign on until a month before the film's release. The earliest product tie-ins were novels and comics—Marvel published an adaptation of the movie a month after it hit theaters, then continued with its own stories. Soon Marvel had smugglers Solo and Chewbacca teaming up with questionable characters like Jaxxon, a furry green creature with big floppy ears who wisecracked like Bugs Bunny. "The idea of continuity was alien at the time," Roffman says. "We let Marvel Comics do the stories they wanted as long as it didn't interfere with the upcoming movies, and they went in some bizarre directions." The first Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, was published in 1978, before anyone knew that sequels would be filmed, much less that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia would later turn out to be siblings. "Luke and Leia get ... affectionate," Chee allows. "It's very wrong." The success of the movies led to more products: TV specials, a Saturday morning cartoon show, newspaper comics, a board game, a D&D-style tabletop role-playing game, simple arcade and console videogames. Young Chee bought as much as he could, including the sheet music for the iconic theme song, which he played at his first organ recital. After the release of Return of the Jedi, in 1983, Lucasfilm assumed that interest would wane. But the merch kept selling. And then, Chee remembers, the novel Heir to the Empire was published. "Wait, was it 1990?" he says, tapping a search into the Holocron. "I need to get this date right." It was actually 1991 when Hugo Award-winning writer Timothy Zahn released the novel, set five years after Return of the Jedi. The book spent 19 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and proved to Lucasfilm that even without new movies, it still had a market. "I was in college at UC Davis by then, but that book brought me back into Star Wars," Chee says. Without movies at the core, though, Lucas Licensing couldn't afford to be lackadaisical—no more Jaxxons, no more incestuous flirtations. "We set parameters," Roffman says. "It had to be an important extension of the continuity, and it had to have an internal integrity with the events portrayed in the films." Closely tending the canon was paying off with fans. Essentially, all the new comic books, novels, and games were prequels and sequels of one another. If you wanted to know the whole story, you had to buy them all. Neither Lucasfilm nor its licensees will divulge just how much money Lucasfilm gets for each item; suffice it to say the percentage is substantial. Chee applied for a job as a software tester at LucasArts shortly before Star Wars: Special Edition was rereleased in 1997. The film was an updated version of the 1977 original, with new visual effects and added scenes. (The special edition proved that the canon is vulnerable to retcons. In the most egregious example, an f/x tweak now has alien errand boy Greedo, not Han Solo, shooting first in the cantina duel. This made Solo a more simplistic character.) Chee scoffed at the fanboys who waited in line for three days outside the Coronet to see a movie they already owned on VHS. He had the self-restraint to wait until 5 am on the day of the release to queue up. When Chee got home from the movie, there was a message on his answering machine. He had the gig. "That was the last time I had to wait in line to see a Star Wars movie," he says. At first, his job entailed identifying and logging game bugs. His uncanny command of Star Wars lore and his organizational skills allowed him to rise quickly to the role of lead tester, which eventually led him to work on the 1998 title Behind the Magic. Magic wasn't so much a game as an interactive CD-ROM of Star Wars trivia, a treasure trove of data for überfans that included a timeline, a searchable glossary, scripts, and deleted scenes. Assembling it revealed inconsistencies in the canon. "There were differences in the layout of the Millennium Falcon between the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back," says Blackman, who, in addition to being project lead on The Force Unleashed, also wrote and did research for Magic. "The continuity fix is that Han Solo made some modifications to the ship's interior." Around 2000, Chee moved from LucasArts to Lucas Licensing, where he was tasked with creating an even more detailed version of Magic for internal use. "We had several game-design teams, several comic book writers, and dozens of novelists," Roffman says. "We needed a reference for everyone who was playing in our sandbox." Chee was the perfect person for the job. "I've been amassing Star Wars knowledge my whole life," he says. "My friends were always like, what the heck are you ever going to do with all of that?" Chee's answer: Create a FileMaker doc similar to the ones he had used to track game bugs. He started transferring information from Magic, from binders, and from the stream of new novels and comics. "You don't know how much you don't know until you get here," he says. "Like, I'd never heard the radio dramas." In a forum on StarWars.com, PiccoloKenobi poses a question that we've all wondered about at one time or another: Are the Low Altitude Assault Transport gunships used by the Grand Army of the Republic spaceworthy, or are they limited to traveling within a planet's atmosphere? "LAATs can be sealed to operate in the vacuum of space," Chee decrees in a response post. "But the standard LAAT is not equipped for long-distance space travel." In the world of continuity maintenance, Chee is something of an anomaly. Most geek-friendly franchises rely on volunteerism—while Chee was building the Holocron, fans of other canons were working outside official imprimatur. Babylon 5 has a fan-created database. The Buffyverse has several. In fact, the best source for Star Wars information on the older stuff that Chee hasn't logged yet is an online database created and maintained by a community of fans that Chee views with wary respect. It's called, inevitably, the Wookieepedia. Naturally, some fans chafe at the Lucasfilm pronouncement-from-on-high approach. Take Curtis Saxton, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the UK. Beginning in 1995, he released a series of amateur technical commentaries on TheForce.net, a Star Wars omnibus site, that sent shock waves through the fan community. A fan-made video critiquing Curtis Saxton's theory of the Endor Holocaust. Video: The Endor Holocaust Saxton wasn't writing fan fiction—it was more like fan physics. He started out by estimating the size and power of various Star Wars vehicles and weapons, including the Death Star's planet-destroying superlaser (2.4 x 1032 joules to blow up the planet Alderaan). His numbers didn't jibe with those in the Lucas Licensing-approved tech manuals. But he persisted. And that's what led to the Endor Holocaust. At the climax of Return of the Jedi, Death Star II explodes while orbiting a forested moon called Endor, populated by cuddly creatures called Ewoks. Saxton considered the Death Star's orbit, the power output of its hypermatter power source, and the sheer tonnage of debris its destruction would have generated, then concluded that the climactic battle must have rained death and nuclear winter onto the teddy-bear tribe. He wrote: "The mass-extinction event at Endor is an inevitable physical consequence of the circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi. As such, it indirectly enjoys canonical status, even though it was not clearly portrayed in the film." In other words, science says the Ewoks are dead. You can't posit the genocide of the Ewoks without igniting a backlash. In the forums, debates raged between self-described Saxtonites and their foes. This willingness of some obsessives to go deeper into the fictional world than its original creators did is a mainstay of fandom. "It goes back to Hugo Gernsback, the father of modern science fiction, who encouraged readers to dig into his stories, expand on them, and critique the science," says Henry Jenkins, a sci-fi fan and MIT media-studies professor. Despite Saxton's heretical notions, he later worked on four official technical manuals. And the notion of an Endor Holocaust has been incorporated into several comics—as foul propaganda spread by Imperial loyalists. But the fact that official Star Wars products even addressed the idea shows how influential writing like Saxton's can be. It's called fanon—fan-generated canon—and it's still a controversial notion to the priesthood at Lucasfilm. "I don't like the term," Chee says. "There's no such thing as fan continuity." Yet even within the Holocron, not all reality is created equal. Chee coded a pulldown menu that lets him categorize entries. S, for example, stands for secondary continuity—early unvetted works, such as The Star Wars Holiday Special. Sure, it introduced fan-favorite character Boba Fett to the continuity. But it also featured Princess Leia singing a carol to celebrate the Wookiee ceremony of Life Day, and Harvey Korman in drag playing a cooking instructor making Bantha Surprise. Princess Leia serenades Wookiees on their homeworld Kashyyyk. From the quasi-canonical Star Wars Holiday Special. Video: Star Wars Holiday Special - Leia sings And then there's the very top level of canon, the inviolable, infallible level of Truth, marked GWL—George Walton Lucas. It's the divine word of the Creator who stands outside his universe and is not subject to the rules that govern it. Lucas approves every important addition to the canon. The ambitious story beats contained in the new game The Force Unleashed were permitted only after he signed off—and spent hours talking to the developers about the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor. Yes, he'll accept outside ideas. The novel Heir to the Empire introduced the planet of Coruscant, capital of the Old Republic, which Lucas later incorporated into the prequels. But he also used those prequels to retcon the hell out of Chee's otherwise well-integrated universe. Anakin Skywalker built C-3P0? GWL. Yoda knows Chewbacca? GWL. "George's view of the universe is his view," Chee says with a slightly grudging tone. "He's not beholden to what's gone before." The careful tending of the Star Wars continuity has yielded great wealth, but the key to a productive farm is to leave some fields fallow. A complete Holocron would leave little room for fantasy—for fans who, as Jenkins says, "love unmapped nooks and crannies, the dark shadows we can fill in with our imagination." That's something that GWL understands. For instance, the origins of the Jedi master Yoda, his species, and his home planet are off-limits. The backstory isn't even in the Holocron. "It doesn't exist, except maybe in George's mind," Chee says. "He feels like, 'You don't have to explain everything all the time. Let's keep some mystery.'" But ... what about the Holocron? "We work around him," Chee says. Senior editor Chris Baker (chris_baker@wired.com) wrote about the return of Futurama in issue 15.12. Wired.Com Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - On the wall behind Leland Chee's desk is a portrait of an Ithorian, an alien with a hammer-shaped head that you glimpse briefly in the famous Star Wars cantina scene. In its leathery, foot-long fingers, the Ithorian holds a cube decorated with elaborate metallic tracings, a device known as a holocron. Think of it as a Force-powered hard drive, capable of storing an enormous quantity of information. "It's a piece of Jedi technology," Chee says. "It tells you ... everything." To Star Wars fans, Chee is the Keeper of the Holocron, arguably the leading expert on everything that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. His official title is continuity database administrator for the Lucas Licensing arm of Lucasfilm—which means Chee keeps meticulous track of not just the six live-action movies but also cartoons, TV specials, scores of videogames and reference books, and hundreds of novels and comics. Keepin' it canonical: Leland Chee, continuity database administrator at Lucas Licensing, maintains the Holocron — a vast FileMaker database that's consulted to make sure that any new elements added to the Star Wars franchise fit within the existing mythology. Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross For more, visit video.wired.com. Of course, Chee's Holocron isn't a Force-sensitive crystal. It's a FileMaker database, a searchable repository of more than 30,000 entries covering almost every character, planet, and weapon mentioned, however fleetingly, in the vast array of Star Wars titles and products. The Holocron isn't just for fun—when Lucas Licensing inks a deal with a toy company or a T-shirt designer, it vets those ancillary products to ensure they conform to the spirit and letter of the continuity that has come before and will continue afterward. In the past 31 years, Star Wars movies have grossed in excess of $4 billion worldwide. But retail sales of merchandise stand at $15 billion, and 20 percent of that has been earned since 2006, the year after the final film was released. Careful nurture of the Star Wars canon—thousands of years of story time, running through all the bits and pieces of merchandise—has kept the franchise popular for decades. So Chee spends three-quarters of his typical workday consulting or updating the Holocron. He also approves packaging designs, scans novels for errors, and creates Talmudic charts and documents addressing such issues as which Jedi were still alive during the Clone Wars and how long it takes a spaceship to get from Dagobah, where Yoda trained Luke Skywalker, to Luke's homeworld of Tatooine. The Keeper of the Holocron takes this very seriously: "Someone has to be able to say, 'Luke Skywalker would not have that color of lightsaber.'" The screening room at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, Lucasfilm's sprawling facility in San Francisco's Presidio District, is as opulent as you would expect—plush seats, wood panels, crystal-clear projection, and a perfect sound system. So when that classic John Williams fanfare begins and the Star Wars logo appears onscreen in that distinctive font, in that distinctive yellow, it quickens the pulse. It's also when Chee, sitting next to me, tells me that in an early version of what we're watching—a new LucasArts videogame called The Force Unleashed, due out in September—the logo was slightly wrong. "It was off by only a few pixels, but someone in Licensing spotted it and submitted a report." I grab an Xbox 360 controller and soon I'm striding through the corridors of a satellite that orbits the smugglers' moon of Nar Shaddaa, destroying everyone in my path. My character, Starkiller, is the secret apprentice of Darth Vader, sent here to eliminate a Jedi elder ... and leave no witnesses. I deflect laser blasts from militia troops with my lightsaber and then use the Force to hurl a chunk of metal through a window behind them. The glass shatters, and several foes are sucked into the vacuum of space before a safety wall snaps shut. I'm beginning to understand the power of the Dark Side. On the scale of badassedness, obliterating legions of good guys with the Force ranks right up there with leaping Snake River Canyon in a monster truck that can transform into a robot. And it's true that the game's sophisticated physics, combined with clever AI software for characters, means that when you Force-throw a Wookiee into a tree on its home planet, Kashyyyk, the Wookiee writhes realistically and the tree explodes in a botanically accurate cloud of splinters. But that's not what has fans most excited about The Force Unleashed. It's the stuff that happens between the interactive killing sprees: brief cinematic interludes that add new details—new plot points—to the saga. "The game is set between episodes III and IV," says Haden Blackman, who led the development team. Translation: Play it and you'll learn what happened before the original Star Wars film trilogy and after the prequels, two decades that have been shrouded in mystery. Over the course of the game, players will learn the details of the internecine feud between Darth Vader and his mentor, Emperor Palpatine, and the way these two unwittingly created the very rebellion that brought them down. The game has yielded a bountiful crop of tie-ins: a book, a graphic novel, a tabletop role-playing game supplement, and several lines of toys. With no more live-action Star Wars films forthcoming (or so we are told), games from the subsidiary division LucasArts are becoming ever more important in expanding the universe—and perpetuating the story-product ecology. And with every narrative beat and plot point, Chee and his dozens of colleagues with Holocron access are there. "Licensing approves everything," he says. "Text, dialog, art ... It all comes through our office." This is where the work of hundreds of writers and artists gets woven into a vast, internally consistent continuum. The power of the Dark Side: LucasArts' Haden Blackman discusses the story and the technology behind the upcoming game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross For more, visit video.wired.com. In his 1932 book Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction, T. S. Blakeney used the term canonicity in reference to the mystery novels and short fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes enthusiasts treat Doyle's work as if the great detective inhabits a coherent and logically consistent universe. Some of the stories written by Doyle were canonical—genuine events in that alternate universe—while others had to be considered apocryphal. (It should come as no surprise that fans would appropriate theological terms. The ecstasy of true fandom can, after all, approximate religion.) Today, canon and its serial-fiction cousin, continuity, are integral to genres like mystery, fantasy, and sci-fi. The giants of the field are known as world-builders as much as writers. J. R. R. Tolkien supplemented his Lord of the Rings series with hundreds of pages of appendices, genealogical charts, even pronunciation and usage guides for the languages he invented. Yet in the multiverse of fictional realities, Holmes's London, Frodo's Middle-earth, Buffy's Sunnydale, and Batman's Gotham are mere planetary systems compared with the grand galactic enterprise of Star Trek. When the original series—known to devout fans as The Original Series—went off the air in 1969, acolytes kept the flame alive. They extended the stories with their own fiction. They created technical manuals. Eventually, the series became a movie, and then another, and then another TV series, and a few more after that. Each new iteration produced more canonical information. Spock's death, Kirk's son, Picard's adventures as a cadet ... eventually, the writers' room on a Trek show became a minefield. "Someone would tell you that a Voyager episode last year mentioned a bit of backstory with the Romulans, and now you can't do this over here," says Ron Moore, a writer and producer on several Star Trek shows who went on to create the new Battlestar Galactica. "You'd argue the validity of that, but they'd be, like, 'No, now it's established.'" Lucas Licensing oversees billions of dollars in merchandise—from pillows to Pez dispensers. Photo: Jeff Minton But the many strata of Star Trek books, games, comics, and cartoons haven't been well tended. Some events in the movies and even later TV shows contradict preexisting lore. (A backward change like that is called a retcon, short for "retroactive continuity.") Gene Roddenberry himself, creator of Star Trek, was known to second-guess his own pronouncements about what was and was not canonical. After a while, the retcons and inconsistencies can become off-putting to fans and render once-beloved universes impenetrable to newcomers. One solution: a reboot. Start from scratch, like Moore did with Galactica. Clever preservation of original story elements retains the old fans, and streamlining and modernizing lets newbies spend their hard-earned quatloos, too. To Chee, the orderliness of the Star Wars canon is what sets it apart, what makes it feel more real than all those other franchises. "Look at James Bond," he says. "What's real in the James Bond world? What year does it take place in? It's not grounded in a real timeline." The Star Wars chronology, on the other hand, marks time from the Battle of Yavin, the assault on the Death Star at the end of the original Star Wars. Luke Skywalker was born in the year 19 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin). It says so in the Holocron. Back in his office, Chee asks his database what else it has on young Skywalker. The result contains scores of fields covering lineage, favorite vehicles, the planet he's from, how to write his name in the Aurebesh alphabet. "Oops," Chee says, blocking the screen with his body until he has minimized the window. "There are things in the Holocron that aren't public knowledge, stuff coming down the pike two or three years from now." He won't say whether those secrets relate to upcoming books, movies, games, or toys. Probably all of them. Merch and more merch: Movies, games, comics, and novels are the tip of the iceberg. Leland Chee shows off more Star Wars goods, like Yoda skateboards, Wookiee slippers, and Darth Tater. Beware the Jar Jar lollipop! Producer: Annaliza Savage, Editor: Michael Lennon, Camera: John Ross For more, visit video.wired.com. Lucasfilm has to plan ahead and think long term. "We don't reboot. We don't start from scratch," Chee says. "When Chewbacca died, he died." (Poor Chewie yowled his last yowl in 25 ABY, when he was stuck on the planet Sernpidal as it collided with its moon, Dobido, in the novel Vector Prime, the first book in the New Jedi Order series. His death is now canon.) "The thing about Star Wars is that there's one universe," Chee says. "Everyone wants to know stuff, like, where did Mace Windu get that purple lightsaber? We want to establish that there's one and only one answer." Star Wars was the number two toy brand aimed at boys last year, behind only Transformers. But toys account for less than half of the revenue for licensed merchandise. The Lucas Licensing office is positively drowning in other merch. Bedspreads, window blinds, pillowcases, wastebaskets, guitars, chairs, baseball caps, beach balls, jewelry, lunch boxes, cookie jars, and kites all added up to $3 billion in retail sales in 2006 and 2007. That figure includes big-ticket items aimed at adults. An R2-D2 DVD projector. A stormtrooper golf bag. A high-end fashion line created with superstar designer Marc Ecko, including $300 Star Wars jeans and a replica of the poncho Han Solo wore on the ice planet Hoth. There was even a $3,000 suit of Darth Vader-style samurai armor. "We realize that our fans have different levels of disposable income," says Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing, who joined the company a week after the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back, in 1980. "The kids who played with the toys have grown up." Leland Chee strolls the San Francisco campus of Lucasfilm. Photo: Jeff Minton There have been some egregious missteps, like the Jar Jar lollipop. It looks like a plastic bust of the hated character, but push a button and it opens its mouth and sticks out a hideous candy tongue for children to suck on. "The tongue had bumps on it," Chee says, wrinkling his nose. Chee's sense of what is correct in the Star Wars universe has been a lifetime in development. He saw the original movie at the Coronet Theater in San Francisco at age 6. He got his first plastic Star Wars action figures—R2-D2 and that lame C-3P0 look-alike, Death Star Droid—for his seventh birthday and from there steadily enlarged his collection, storing them all in a case shaped like Darth Vader's head (which he still has). Chee even kept the cardboard they were mounted on. "The packaging had great visuals, plus, like, a paragraph of backstory on the character," he says. It's easy to forget that before Star Wars, licensed merchandise was a different, less profitable business. All the big toymakers turned down the rights to make Star Wars action figures; upstart Kenner didn't sign on until a month before the film's release. The earliest product tie-ins were novels and comics—Marvel published an adaptation of the movie a month after it hit theaters, then continued with its own stories. Soon Marvel had smugglers Solo and Chewbacca teaming up with questionable characters like Jaxxon, a furry green creature with big floppy ears who wisecracked like Bugs Bunny. "The idea of continuity was alien at the time," Roffman says. "We let Marvel Comics do the stories they wanted as long as it didn't interfere with the upcoming movies, and they went in some bizarre directions." The first Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, was published in 1978, before anyone knew that sequels would be filmed, much less that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia would later turn out to be siblings. "Luke and Leia get ... affectionate," Chee allows. "It's very wrong." The success of the movies led to more products: TV specials, a Saturday morning cartoon show, newspaper comics, a board game, a D&D-style tabletop role-playing game, simple arcade and console videogames. Young Chee bought as much as he could, including the sheet music for the iconic theme song, which he played at his first organ recital. After the release of Return of the Jedi, in 1983, Lucasfilm assumed that interest would wane. But the merch kept selling. And then, Chee remembers, the novel Heir to the Empire was published. "Wait, was it 1990?" he says, tapping a search into the Holocron. "I need to get this date right." It was actually 1991 when Hugo Award-winning writer Timothy Zahn released the novel, set five years after Return of the Jedi. The book spent 19 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and proved to Lucasfilm that even without new movies, it still had a market. "I was in college at UC Davis by then, but that book brought me back into Star Wars," Chee says. Without movies at the core, though, Lucas Licensing couldn't afford to be lackadaisical—no more Jaxxons, no more incestuous flirtations. "We set parameters," Roffman says. "It had to be an important extension of the continuity, and it had to have an internal integrity with the events portrayed in the films." Closely tending the canon was paying off with fans. Essentially, all the new comic books, novels, and games were prequels and sequels of one another. If you wanted to know the whole story, you had to buy them all. Neither Lucasfilm nor its licensees will divulge just how much money Lucasfilm gets for each item; suffice it to say the percentage is substantial. Chee applied for a job as a software tester at LucasArts shortly before Star Wars: Special Edition was rereleased in 1997. The film was an updated version of the 1977 original, with new visual effects and added scenes. (The special edition proved that the canon is vulnerable to retcons. In the most egregious example, an f/x tweak now has alien errand boy Greedo, not Han Solo, shooting first in the cantina duel. This made Solo a more simplistic character.) Chee scoffed at the fanboys who waited in line for three days outside the Coronet to see a movie they already owned on VHS. He had the self-restraint to wait until 5 am on the day of the release to queue up. When Chee got home from the movie, there was a message on his answering machine. He had the gig. "That was the last time I had to wait in line to see a Star Wars movie," he says. At first, his job entailed identifying and logging game bugs. His uncanny command of Star Wars lore and his organizational skills allowed him to rise quickly to the role of lead tester, which eventually led him to work on the 1998 title Behind the Magic. Magic wasn't so much a game as an interactive CD-ROM of Star Wars trivia, a treasure trove of data for überfans that included a timeline, a searchable glossary, scripts, and deleted scenes. Assembling it revealed inconsistencies in the canon. "There were differences in the layout of the Millennium Falcon between the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back," says Blackman, who, in addition to being project lead on The Force Unleashed, also wrote and did research for Magic. "The continuity fix is that Han Solo made some modifications to the ship's interior." Around 2000, Chee moved from LucasArts to Lucas Licensing, where he was tasked with creating an even more detailed version of Magic for internal use. "We had several game-design teams, several comic book writers, and dozens of novelists," Roffman says. "We needed a reference for everyone who was playing in our sandbox." Chee was the perfect person for the job. "I've been amassing Star Wars knowledge my whole life," he says. "My friends were always like, what the heck are you ever going to do with all of that?" Chee's answer: Create a FileMaker doc similar to the ones he had used to track game bugs. He started transferring information from Magic, from binders, and from the stream of new novels and comics. "You don't know how much you don't know until you get here," he says. "Like, I'd never heard the radio dramas." In a forum on StarWars.com, PiccoloKenobi poses a question that we've all wondered about at one time or another: Are the Low Altitude Assault Transport gunships used by the Grand Army of the Republic spaceworthy, or are they limited to traveling within a planet's atmosphere? "LAATs can be sealed to operate in the vacuum of space," Chee decrees in a response post. "But the standard LAAT is not equipped for long-distance space travel." In the world of continuity maintenance, Chee is something of an anomaly. Most geek-friendly franchises rely on volunteerism—while Chee was building the Holocron, fans of other canons were working outside official imprimatur. Babylon 5 has a fan-created database. The Buffyverse has several. In fact, the best source for Star Wars information on the older stuff that Chee hasn't logged yet is an online database created and maintained by a community of fans that Chee views with wary respect. It's called, inevitably, the Wookieepedia. Naturally, some fans chafe at the Lucasfilm pronouncement-from-on-high approach. Take Curtis Saxton, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the UK. Beginning in 1995, he released a series of amateur technical commentaries on TheForce.net, a Star Wars omnibus site, that sent shock waves through the fan community. A fan-made video critiquing Curtis Saxton's theory of the Endor Holocaust. Video: The Endor Holocaust Saxton wasn't writing fan fiction—it was more like fan physics. He started out by estimating the size and power of various Star Wars vehicles and weapons, including the Death Star's planet-destroying superlaser (2.4 x 1032 joules to blow up the planet Alderaan). His numbers didn't jibe with those in the Lucas Licensing-approved tech manuals. But he persisted. And that's what led to the Endor Holocaust. At the climax of Return of the Jedi, Death Star II explodes while orbiting a forested moon called Endor, populated by cuddly creatures called Ewoks. Saxton considered the Death Star's orbit, the power output of its hypermatter power source, and the sheer tonnage of debris its destruction would have generated, then concluded that the climactic battle must have rained death and nuclear winter onto the teddy-bear tribe. He wrote: "The mass-extinction event at Endor is an inevitable physical consequence of the circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi. As such, it indirectly enjoys canonical status, even though it was not clearly portrayed in the film." In other words, science says the Ewoks are dead. You can't posit the genocide of the Ewoks without igniting a backlash. In the forums, debates raged between self-described Saxtonites and their foes. This willingness of some obsessives to go deeper into the fictional world than its original creators did is a mainstay of fandom. "It goes back to Hugo Gernsback, the father of modern science fiction, who encouraged readers to dig into his stories, expand on them, and critique the science," says Henry Jenkins, a sci-fi fan and MIT media-studies professor. Despite Saxton's heretical notions, he later worked on four official technical manuals. And the notion of an Endor Holocaust has been incorporated into several comics—as foul propaganda spread by Imperial loyalists. But the fact that official Star Wars products even addressed the idea shows how influential writing like Saxton's can be. It's called fanon—fan-generated canon—and it's still a controversial notion to the priesthood at Lucasfilm. "I don't like the term," Chee says. "There's no such thing as fan continuity." Yet even within the Holocron, not all reality is created equal. Chee coded a pulldown menu that lets him categorize entries. S, for example, stands for secondary continuity—early unvetted works, such as The Star Wars Holiday Special. Sure, it introduced fan-favorite character Boba Fett to the continuity. But it also featured Princess Leia singing a carol to celebrate the Wookiee ceremony of Life Day, and Harvey Korman in drag playing a cooking instructor making Bantha Surprise. Princess Leia serenades Wookiees on their homeworld Kashyyyk. From the quasi-canonical Star Wars Holiday Special. Video: Star Wars Holiday Special - Leia sings And then there's the very top level of canon, the inviolable, infallible level of Truth, marked GWL—George Walton Lucas. It's the divine word of the Creator who stands outside his universe and is not subject to the rules that govern it. Lucas approves every important addition to the canon. The ambitious story beats contained in the new game The Force Unleashed were permitted only after he signed off—and spent hours talking to the developers about the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor. Yes, he'll accept outside ideas. The novel Heir to the Empire introduced the planet of Coruscant, capital of the Old Republic, which Lucas later incorporated into the prequels. But he also used those prequels to retcon the hell out of Chee's otherwise well-integrated universe. Anakin Skywalker built C-3P0? GWL. Yoda knows Chewbacca? GWL. "George's view of the universe is his view," Chee says with a slightly grudging tone. "He's not beholden to what's gone before." The careful tending of the Star Wars continuity has yielded great wealth, but the key to a productive farm is to leave some fields fallow. A complete Holocron would leave little room for fantasy—for fans who, as Jenkins says, "love unmapped nooks and crannies, the dark shadows we can fill in with our imagination." That's something that GWL understands. For instance, the origins of the Jedi master Yoda, his species, and his home planet are off-limits. The backstory isn't even in the Holocron. "It doesn't exist, except maybe in George's mind," Chee says. "He feels like, 'You don't have to explain everything all the time. Let's keep some mystery.'" But ... what about the Holocron? "We work around him," Chee says. Senior editor Chris Baker (chris_baker@wired.com) wrote about the return of Futurama in issue 15.12.
Read about the latest Entertainment News on Wired.com, including art, technology, films, animation, music, web video, tv, podcasts, and blogs. {...}
Published: August 21, 2008, 9:55 pm - Indexed: August 24, 2008, 10:10 am - Page Size: 53KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {NEWS > ALTERNATIVE} - Michael Moore Dares to Ask: What's So Heroic About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians? http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/alternative/michael-moore-dares-to-ask-what-s-so-heroic-about-20080880120.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/alternative/michael-moore-dares-to-ask-what-s-so-heroic-about-20080880120.htm Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:35:01 GMT Like Iraq, Vietnam was not a noble cause. It's time we stopped letting politicians and the press perpetuate the McCain War Hero myth. Alternet.Org Michael Moore Dares to Ask: What's So Heroic About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians? {new window}   Www.Alternet.Org - Like Iraq, Vietnam was not a noble cause. It's time we stopped letting politicians and the press perpetuate the McCain War Hero myth.
Michael Moore Dares to Ask: What's So Heroic About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians? | War on Iraq | AlterNet {...}
Published: August 21, 2008, 7:35 pm - Indexed: August 22, 2008, 4:53 pm - Page Size: 206KB
Category: News > Alternative

]]> News > Alternative {LITERATURE > RSS FEEDS} - Virtuality Characters Unveiled http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/science-fiction/rss-feeds/virtuality-characters-unveiled-20080812914.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/science-fiction/rss-feeds/virtuality-characters-unveiled-20080812914.htm Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT SCI FI Wire visited the Vancouver, Canada, set of Virtuality, the SF pilot for Fox from Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor, and saw more--and less--of the show than we thought. But we got the scoop about the show's central characters. Scifi.Com Virtuality Characters Unveiled {new window}   Www.Scifi.Com - SCI FI Wire visited the Vancouver, Canada, set of Virtuality, the SF pilot for Fox from Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor, and saw more--and less--of the show than we thought. But we got the scoop about the show's central characters.
Published: August 20, 2008, 6:00 am - Indexed: August 20, 2008, 10:07 am - Page Size: 46KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Science Fiction > RSS Feeds

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Science Fiction > RSS Feeds {INTERNET > GOOGLE} - Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/introducing-our-european-2008-anita-borg-scholars-2008081613.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/introducing-our-european-2008-anita-borg-scholars-2008081613.htm Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:25:40 GMT Posted by Beate List, University Programme, ZurichA few months ago we had the great pleasure of announcing the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars in the U.S. and our first class of Scholars in Canada. Now it's the Europeans' turn.This scholarship program, originally established in the U.S. to honor the work of Anita Borg and to recognize outstanding young women scholars in computer science and related fields, expanded to Europe most recently. Nearly 300 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 31 countries applied for the award. Sixty-three finalists were selected; 20 women received a ?5,000 scholarship for the 2008-2009 academic year. The remaining 43 finalists received a ?1,000 award.Each of the finalists visited our Engineering Centre in Zurich for our annual Scholars' Retreat, which included tech talks, career panels and social fun. All of it was a way for the young women to share experiences and come together as leaders in the computer science field.Visit the Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship page for more on the program. Hearty congratulations to these winners!The 2008 Europe Anita Borg ScholarsCynthia Liem, Delft University of Technology, The NetherlandsDespina Michael - University of Cyprus, CyprusDina Petri - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainInbal Talgam -Weizmann Institute of Science, IsraelKaty Howland - University of Sussex, UKKerstin Wendt - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, SpainKsenia Rogova - Petrozavodsk State University, RussiaMirela Ben-Chen - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, IsraelNadezhda Baldina - Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, RussiaOlga Boronenko - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainPatricia Moore - Dublin City University, IrelandRebecca Stewart - Queen Mary, University of London, UKSara Elisabeth Adams - University of Oxford, UKSeda Gürses - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BelgiumSilvia Breu - University of Cambridge, UKSiska Fitrianie - Delft University of Technology, The NetherlandsStefanie Jegelka - Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, GermanySvetlana Obraztsova - Steklov Institute of Mathematics, RussiaSylvia Rueda - University of Nottingham, UKUlyana Tikhonova - Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, RussiaUpdate: Added photo. Googleblog.Blogspot.Com Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars {new window}   Googleblog.Blogspot.Com - Posted by Beate List, University Programme, ZurichA few months ago we had the great pleasure of announcing the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars in the U.S. and our first class of Scholars in Canada. Now it's the Europeans' turn.This scholarship program, originally established in the U.S. to honor the work of Anita Borg and to recognize outstanding young women scholars in computer science and related fields, expanded to Europe most recently. Nearly 300 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 31 countries applied for the award. Sixty-three finalists were selected; 20 women received a ?5,000 scholarship for the 2008-2009 academic year. The remaining 43 finalists received a ?1,000 award.Each of the finalists visited our Engineering Centre in Zurich for our annual Scholars' Retreat, which included tech talks, career panels and social fun. All of it was a way for the young women to share experiences and come together as leaders in the computer science field.Visit the Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship page for more on the program. Hearty congratulations to these winners!The 2008 Europe Anita Borg ScholarsCynthia Liem, Delft University of Technology, The NetherlandsDespina Michael - University of Cyprus, CyprusDina Petri - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainInbal Talgam -Weizmann Institute of Science, IsraelKaty Howland - University of Sussex, UKKerstin Wendt - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, SpainKsenia Rogova - Petrozavodsk State University, RussiaMirela Ben-Chen - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, IsraelNadezhda Baldina - Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, RussiaOlga Boronenko - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainPatricia Moore - Dublin City University, IrelandRebecca Stewart - Queen Mary, University of London, UKSara Elisabeth Adams - University of Oxford, UKSeda Gürses - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BelgiumSilvia Breu - University of Cambridge, UKSiska Fitrianie - Delft University of Technology, The NetherlandsStefanie Jegelka - Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, GermanySvetlana Obraztsova - Steklov Institute of Mathematics, RussiaSylvia Rueda - University of Nottingham, UKUlyana Tikhonova - Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, RussiaUpdate: Added photo.
Official Google Blog: Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars {...}
Indexed: August 6, 2008, 11:25 pm - Page Size: 78KB
Category: Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google

]]> Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google {INTERNET > GOOGLE} - Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/introducing-our-european-2008-anita-borg-scholars-20080731218.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/introducing-our-european-2008-anita-borg-scholars-20080731218.htm Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:05:22 GMT Posted by Beate List, University Programme, ZurichA few months ago we had the great pleasure of announcing the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars in the U.S. and our first class of Scholars in Canada. Now it's the Europeans' turn.This scholarship program, originally established in the U.S. to honor the work of Anita Borg and to recognize outstanding young women scholars in computer science and related fields, expanded to Europe most recently. Nearly 300 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 31 countries applied for the award. Sixty-three finalists were selected; 20 women received a ?5,000 scholarship for the 2008-2009 academic year. The remaining 43 finalists received a ?1,000 award.Each of the finalists visited our Engineering Centre in Zurich for our annual Scholars' Retreat, which included tech talks, career panels and social fun. All of it was a way for the young women to share experiences and come together as leaders in the computer science field.Visit the Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship page for more on the program. Hearty congratulations to these winners!The 2008 Europe Anita Borg ScholarsDespina Michael - University of CyprusDina Petri - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainInbal Talgam -Weizmann Institute of Science, IsraelKaty Howland - University of Sussex, UKKerstin Wendt - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, SpainKsenia Rogova - Petrozavodsk State University, RussiaMirela Ben-Chen - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, IsraelNadezhda Baldina - Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, RussiaOlga Boronenko - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainPatricia Moore - Dublin City University, IrelandRebecca Stewart - Queen Mary, University of London, UKSara Elisabeth Adams - University of Oxford, UKSeda Gürses - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BelgiumSilvia Breu - University of Cambridge, UKSiska Fitrianie - Delft University of Technology, The NetherlandsStefanie Jegelka - Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, GermanySvetlana Obraztsova - Steklov Institute of Mathematics, RussiaSylvia Rueda - University of Nottingham, UKUlyana Tikhonova - Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, RussiaUpdate: Added photo. Googleblog.Blogspot.Com Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars {new window}   Googleblog.Blogspot.Com - Posted by Beate List, University Programme, ZurichA few months ago we had the great pleasure of announcing the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars in the U.S. and our first class of Scholars in Canada. Now it's the Europeans' turn.This scholarship program, originally established in the U.S. to honor the work of Anita Borg and to recognize outstanding young women scholars in computer science and related fields, expanded to Europe most recently. Nearly 300 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 31 countries applied for the award. Sixty-three finalists were selected; 20 women received a ?5,000 scholarship for the 2008-2009 academic year. The remaining 43 finalists received a ?1,000 award.Each of the finalists visited our Engineering Centre in Zurich for our annual Scholars' Retreat, which included tech talks, career panels and social fun. All of it was a way for the young women to share experiences and come together as leaders in the computer science field.Visit the Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship page for more on the program. Hearty congratulations to these winners!The 2008 Europe Anita Borg ScholarsDespina Michael - University of CyprusDina Petri - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainInbal Talgam -Weizmann Institute of Science, IsraelKaty Howland - University of Sussex, UKKerstin Wendt - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, SpainKsenia Rogova - Petrozavodsk State University, RussiaMirela Ben-Chen - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, IsraelNadezhda Baldina - Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, RussiaOlga Boronenko - University of Reading, UK; Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainPatricia Moore - Dublin City University, IrelandRebecca Stewart - Queen Mary, University of London, UKSara Elisabeth Adams - University of Oxford, UKSeda Gürses - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BelgiumSilvia Breu - University of Cambridge, UKSiska Fitrianie - Delft University of Technology, The NetherlandsStefanie Jegelka - Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, GermanySvetlana Obraztsova - Steklov Institute of Mathematics, RussiaSylvia Rueda - University of Nottingham, UKUlyana Tikhonova - Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, RussiaUpdate: Added photo.
Official Google Blog: Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg Scholars {...}
Indexed: July 19, 2008, 1:05 am - Page Size: 78KB
Category: Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google

]]> Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google {ISSUES > BIAS AND BALANCE} - Media in a frenzy, but Clark's comment not extraordinary or unprecedented http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/media-in-a-frenzy-but-clark-s-comment-not-extraordinary-2008076552.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/media-in-a-frenzy-but-clark-s-comment-not-extraordinary-2008076552.htm Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:56:30 GMT The media frenzy that has followed retired Gen. Wesley Clark's comments on the June 29 edition of CBS' Face the Nation is based on at least two false premises: first, that Clark attacked Sen. John McCain's military service, and second, that his comment -- that one's, in this case McCain's, military heroism alone does not establish his qualification to be president -- is in any way extraordinary or unusual. As Media Matters for America has noted, Clark did not attack McCain's military service; he praised McCain as a "hero." Moreover, Clark's comments were far from the first time someone has said of a war veteran running for president that his military service alone does not make him qualified to be president. Indeed, in 2004, numerous media figures argued that Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) military record alone did not qualify him to be president. For example: On the September 10, 2004, edition (accessed via Nexis) of Fox News' Special Report, Roll Call executive editor Mort Kondracke asserted that "this whole business of John Kerry saying I'm qualified to be commander in chief because I was a Swift boat commander in Vietnam is bunk. ... It does not qualify you to be the commander in chief of all the Armed Forces because you were a Swift boat commander." In a February 13, 2004, column, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker wrote: "Given that military service neither qualifies nor disqualifies one for political office -- and given the fact of Bush's honorable discharge -- it's time to dismount this jackass. Vietnam is over. To judge people now on the basis of what they said or did then is to forget how emotionally riven we were. And how young and naive we were. ... What's more important now is what would a man do as president?" In a September 23, 2004, column, syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell wrote of Kerry: "Never mind that people who were actually there with him in the 1960s dispute what a great job he did then. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he did all the things he said he did and none of the things that eyewitnesses in Vietnam said he did. How does that qualify anyone to be President of the United States?" In an August 26, 2004, column, National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg wrote that "experience -- while more often than not superior to the lack of it -- isn't as powerful or important as we like to think. If service in Vietnam or in uniform were the prerequisite for correct thinking on military and foreign-policy issues, then you'd think Veterans would all agree with each other. Obviously, they don't. The media's favorite veteran, John McCain, disagrees with John Kerry about Iraq and most foreign-policy issues." Moreover, then-staff writer Ronald Brownstein wrote in a July 28, 2004, Los Angeles Times news analysis (retrieved from Nexis) that President Bush's "aides quickly insisted that Kerry's military service in Vietnam, however laudable, was less relevant to his qualifications as commander in chief than his Senate voting record on national security issues -- which the Bush campaign has tried to portray as soft on defense. 'Every American, including the president ... believes John Kerry's service in Vietnam was admirable,' said Steve Schmidt, the Bush campaign's deputy communications director. 'But what's most striking is that in order to talk about John Kerry's accomplishments, they've had to go back for 35 years. There is no mention of what John Kerry has done in the Senate the past 20 years.'" On the June 29 edition of CBS' Face the Nation, Clark said of McCain: CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy-making, it's a matter of understanding risk. It's a matter of gauging your opponents, and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands of millions of others in the Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Air -- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn't a wartime squadron. He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, "I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it publicly?" He hasn't made those calls, Bob. After Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer said, "[Sen.] Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down," Clark replied: "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president. ... But Barack is not -- he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements. He's running on his other strengths." From the September 10, 2004, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume: JUAN WILLIAMS (Fox News contributor): Well, that's what they say. But let me just say, these documents have slowly poured out over the course of Mr. Bush's term. And they haven't been in a consistent fashion, where I were to say, here is an entire record of President Bush's service and here is why he did not show up for a period in the Alabama National Guard. KONDRACKE: Let us stipulate this whole business is nonsense. It is a diversion. WILLIAMS: That is a good point. KONDRACKE: It's a diversion -- FRED BARNES (Weekly Standard executive editor): No, I don't agree with that. KONDRACKE: No, it's a diversion from what the voters of America deserve. WILLIAMS: I agree. KONDRACKE: And that is a discussion of their future. I mean, this whole business of John Kerry saying I'm qualified to be commander in chief because I was a Swift boat commander in Vietnam is bunk. And the idea -- WILLIAMS: Why is it bunk? KONDRACKE: Because you command a little boat. You are not commanding -- WILLIAMS: Let me just say this to you. KONDRACKE: Just a second. WILLIAMS: If you are in the military -- KONDRACKE: Just a minute. WILLIAMS: -- and served -- KONDRACKE: Just a minute. Just a minute. Just a minute. It does not qualify you to be commander in chief. Abraham Lincoln did not fight in any wars, right? And he ran a very good war in the Civil War. FDR did not fight in any wars and he ran a very good war in World War II. It does not qualify you to be the commander in chief of all the Armed Forces because you were a Swift boat commander. WILLIAMS: Can I respond to this point? KONDRACKE: Nor does it mean that you were a lousy commander in chief if you were a hack-off back in the 1970s, and then became an upstanding person because you had a religious conversion -- WILLIAMS: Do you think that it adds to your credibility as the American people look at the fact that we're in war right now that you were able to say, I put myself on the line. I went to war for this country. I risked my life? Do you think that adds to something to the voters in terms of their information about your character and your willingness to put their children at risk? KONDRACKE: But your record for 20 years on foreign policy is a much more important thing. And that's very weak. WILLIAMS: I think people have a strong feeling about your character on this point. JIM ANGLE (guest host): We need to take a break at this point. Coming up, maybe a little bit more of this. [laughter] ANGLE: But also, John Kerry says if the president were serious about fighting terrorism, he'd extend the weapons assault ban -- the assault weapons ban, rather. We'll ask our All-Star panel about that and maybe some more of this next. From Parker's February 13, 2004, column: In defense of Bush's record, the White House has produced military pay receipts. Outside entities, including The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, have investigated records and found nothing to substantiate claims of desertion. (www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=131) Kerry wisely has taken the high road during this obvious witch-hunt, saying he has no interest in Bush's record. Of course as long as he has people like Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe cluster-bombing the media with AWOL charges, the high road is a pretty easy leap. There's no way to go but up when the source for "desertion" is movie producer Michael Moore. Given that military service neither qualifies nor disqualifies one for political office -- and given the fact of Bush's honorable discharge -- it's time to dismount this jackass. Vietnam is over. To judge people now on the basis of what they said or did then is to forget how emotionally riven we were. And how young and naive we were. By that standard, it is possible to forgive Kerry's 1970 Harvard Crimson interview in which he said he wanted to eliminate CIA activity and turn our troops over to the United Nations. He's changed his tune. Presumably he's wiser. So are we all. What's more important now is what would a man do as president? We know what Bush would do. Kerry voted for the war on Iraq but against funding to finish the job, thus making life more difficult for our service men and women still on the front lines. Which Kerry would be president, the hero who advances assertively against the threat of danger? Or the antiwar demonstrator who turns protest into political currency? From Sowell's September 23, 2004, column: Yet for the most important job in this country -- indeed, the most important job in the world -- Senator John Kerry has applied by talking about what he did in a wholly different job back in the 1960s. Never mind that people who were actually there with him in the 1960s dispute what a great job he did then. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he did all the things he said he did and none of the things that eyewitnesses in Vietnam said he did. How does that qualify anyone to be President of the United States? The Kerry campaign and the liberal media want to make this election a referendum on President Bush, especially as regards Iraq. That too is an insult to our intelligence. From Goldberg's August 26, 2004, column: As for the president, the only area in which he beats John Kerry decisively in the polls is, broadly, in his capacity as commander-in-chief. The American people -- as well as a majority of veterans and (I presume) those serving in the military -- generally think Bush is a better war president than Kerry would be. And yet the Kerry campaign insists that Kerry's stint in Vietnam makes him more qualified to be a war president because George W. Bush's four-year term as a war president cannot outweigh the fact that John Kerry spent four months in Vietnam. Meanwhile a bunch of guys who served alongside Kerry under similar circumstances all say that Kerry's full of it, and the Democrats say they have no right to talk at all. Indeed, they want the book pulled from bookstores. Follow all of that? Now, keep in mind this is all largely a reversal from twelve years ago when Bill Clinton ran for office. Back then the Paul Begalas and John Kerrys claimed that service in Vietnam -- or anywhere else -- was irrelevant to being an effective president (while some Republicans were largely saying the reverse). Now, suddenly, it is the qualification that trumps all others. My point isn't the usual hypocrisy gotcha, though that's certainly worth pointing out. It's that experience -- while more often than not superior to the lack of it -- isn't as powerful or important as we like to think. If service in Vietnam or in uniform were the prerequisite for correct thinking on military and foreign-policy issues, then you'd think Veterans would all agree with each other. Obviously, they don't. The media's favorite veteran, John McCain, disagrees with John Kerry about Iraq and most foreign-policy issues (depending on which day of the week Kerry is talking). John Edwards talks about how Kerry still carries shrapnel in his leg and therefore...therefore...therefore, well, something along the lines of nobody's ever allowed to criticize John Kerry. Obviously, that's idiotic on its face. If it's not, maybe we should count the side with the most shrapnel in its collective body and declare it the most qualified to lead the country. My guess is Karl Rove would be happy with that. We do not live in the world of Starship Troopers where only veterans are allowed to vote. In a democracy, arguments and reason must count for something, if not necessarily everything. During the lead-up to the war, opponents of the war (including hundreds of nasty folks in my e-mail box) declared that the White House had no right to send troops into combat because they hadn't seen it themselves. Or, I remember Chris Matthews trying to bully Rich Lowry into silence during the lead-up to the war. Matthews shrieked at Rich something to the effect of "Have you ever been to the Middle East!?" And when Rich said no, Matthews responded something like "Well, then you have no right to talk." This is the path to madness. If reading books and articles, talking to experts -- including veterans -- and making arguments built on facts and logic is always insufficient compared to the experience of being shot at -- or taking a walking tour of a Middle Eastern city -- then we must have compulsory military conscription for everybody -- men, women, Quakers, Amish, gays, and invalids included (and then find ways to rotate them through combat). That's the only way to ensure that everyone maintains their rights. From the July 28, 2004, Los Angeles Times article: And Bush aides quickly insisted that Kerry's military service in Vietnam, however laudable, was less relevant to his qualifications as commander in chief than his Senate voting record on national security issues -- which the Bush campaign has tried to portray as soft on defense. "Every American, including the president ... believes John Kerry's service in Vietnam was admirable," said Steve Schmidt, the Bush campaign's deputy communications director. "But what's most striking is that in order to talk about John Kerry 's accomplishments, they've had to go back for 35 years. There is no mention of what John Kerry has done in the Senate the past 20 years." The dueling arguments over the relevance of Kerry's Vietnam experience illustrate a key way the convention is sharpening and advancing the debate between the two contenders. In effect, the two sides are competing to define the frame that swing voters could use to assess Kerry's fitness to be president. Mediamatters.Org Media in a frenzy, but Clark's comment not extraordinary or unprecedented {new window}   Mediamatters.Org - The media frenzy that has followed retired Gen. Wesley Clark's comments on the June 29 edition of CBS' Face the Nation is based on at least two false premises: first, that Clark attacked Sen. John McCain's military service, and second, that his comment -- that one's, in this case McCain's, military heroism alone does not establish his qualification to be president -- is in any way extraordinary or unusual. As Media Matters for America has noted, Clark did not attack McCain's military service; he praised McCain as a "hero." Moreover, Clark's comments were far from the first time someone has said of a war veteran running for president that his military service alone does not make him qualified to be president. Indeed, in 2004, numerous media figures argued that Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) military record alone did not qualify him to be president. For example: On the September 10, 2004, edition (accessed via Nexis) of Fox News' Special Report, Roll Call executive editor Mort Kondracke asserted that "this whole business of John Kerry saying I'm qualified to be commander in chief because I was a Swift boat commander in Vietnam is bunk. ... It does not qualify you to be the commander in chief of all the Armed Forces because you were a Swift boat commander." In a February 13, 2004, column, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker wrote: "Given that military service neither qualifies nor disqualifies one for political office -- and given the fact of Bush's honorable discharge -- it's time to dismount this jackass. Vietnam is over. To judge people now on the basis of what they said or did then is to forget how emotionally riven we were. And how young and naive we were. ... What's more important now is what would a man do as president?" In a September 23, 2004, column, syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell wrote of Kerry: "Never mind that people who were actually there with him in the 1960s dispute what a great job he did then. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he did all the things he said he did and none of the things that eyewitnesses in Vietnam said he did. How does that qualify anyone to be President of the United States?" In an August 26, 2004, column, National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg wrote that "experience -- while more often than not superior to the lack of it -- isn't as powerful or important as we like to think. If service in Vietnam or in uniform were the prerequisite for correct thinking on military and foreign-policy issues, then you'd think Veterans would all agree with each other. Obviously, they don't. The media's favorite veteran, John McCain, disagrees with John Kerry about Iraq and most foreign-policy issues." Moreover, then-staff writer Ronald Brownstein wrote in a July 28, 2004, Los Angeles Times news analysis (retrieved from Nexis) that President Bush's "aides quickly insisted that Kerry's military service in Vietnam, however laudable, was less relevant to his qualifications as commander in chief than his Senate voting record on national security issues -- which the Bush campaign has tried to portray as soft on defense. 'Every American, including the president ... believes John Kerry's service in Vietnam was admirable,' said Steve Schmidt, the Bush campaign's deputy communications director. 'But what's most striking is that in order to talk about John Kerry's accomplishments, they've had to go back for 35 years. There is no mention of what John Kerry has done in the Senate the past 20 years.'" On the June 29 edition of CBS' Face the Nation, Clark said of McCain: CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy-making, it's a matter of understanding risk. It's a matter of gauging your opponents, and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands of millions of others in the Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Air -- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn't a wartime squadron. He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, "I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it publicly?" He hasn't made those calls, Bob. After Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer said, "[Sen.] Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down," Clark replied: "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president. ... But Barack is not -- he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements. He's running on his other strengths." From the September 10, 2004, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume: JUAN WILLIAMS (Fox News contributor): Well, that's what they say. But let me just say, these documents have slowly poured out over the course of Mr. Bush's term. And they haven't been in a consistent fashion, where I were to say, here is an entire record of President Bush's service and here is why he did not show up for a period in the Alabama National Guard. KONDRACKE: Let us stipulate this whole business is nonsense. It is a diversion. WILLIAMS: That is a good point. KONDRACKE: It's a diversion -- FRED BARNES (Weekly Standard executive editor): No, I don't agree with that. KONDRACKE: No, it's a diversion from what the voters of America deserve. WILLIAMS: I agree. KONDRACKE: And that is a discussion of their future. I mean, this whole business of John Kerry saying I'm qualified to be commander in chief because I was a Swift boat commander in Vietnam is bunk. And the idea -- WILLIAMS: Why is it bunk? KONDRACKE: Because you command a little boat. You are not commanding -- WILLIAMS: Let me just say this to you. KONDRACKE: Just a second. WILLIAMS: If you are in the military -- KONDRACKE: Just a minute. WILLIAMS: -- and served -- KONDRACKE: Just a minute. Just a minute. Just a minute. It does not qualify you to be commander in chief. Abraham Lincoln did not fight in any wars, right? And he ran a very good war in the Civil War. FDR did not fight in any wars and he ran a very good war in World War II. It does not qualify you to be the commander in chief of all the Armed Forces because you were a Swift boat commander. WILLIAMS: Can I respond to this point? KONDRACKE: Nor does it mean that you were a lousy commander in chief if you were a hack-off back in the 1970s, and then became an upstanding person because you had a religious conversion -- WILLIAMS: Do you think that it adds to your credibility as the American people look at the fact that we're in war right now that you were able to say, I put myself on the line. I went to war for this country. I risked my life? Do you think that adds to something to the voters in terms of their information about your character and your willingness to put their children at risk? KONDRACKE: But your record for 20 years on foreign policy is a much more important thing. And that's very weak. WILLIAMS: I think people have a strong feeling about your character on this point. JIM ANGLE (guest host): We need to take a break at this point. Coming up, maybe a little bit more of this. [laughter] ANGLE: But also, John Kerry says if the president were serious about fighting terrorism, he'd extend the weapons assault ban -- the assault weapons ban, rather. We'll ask our All-Star panel about that and maybe some more of this next. From Parker's February 13, 2004, column: In defense of Bush's record, the White House has produced military pay receipts. Outside entities, including The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, have investigated records and found nothing to substantiate claims of desertion. (www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=131) Kerry wisely has taken the high road during this obvious witch-hunt, saying he has no interest in Bush's record. Of course as long as he has people like Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe cluster-bombing the media with AWOL charges, the high road is a pretty easy leap. There's no way to go but up when the source for "desertion" is movie producer Michael Moore. Given that military service neither qualifies nor disqualifies one for political office -- and given the fact of Bush's honorable discharge -- it's time to dismount this jackass. Vietnam is over. To judge people now on the basis of what they said or did then is to forget how emotionally riven we were. And how young and naive we were. By that standard, it is possible to forgive Kerry's 1970 Harvard Crimson interview in which he said he wanted to eliminate CIA activity and turn our troops over to the United Nations. He's changed his tune. Presumably he's wiser. So are we all. What's more important now is what would a man do as president? We know what Bush would do. Kerry voted for the war on Iraq but against funding to finish the job, thus making life more difficult for our service men and women still on the front lines. Which Kerry would be president, the hero who advances assertively against the threat of danger? Or the antiwar demonstrator who turns protest into political currency? From Sowell's September 23, 2004, column: Yet for the most important job in this country -- indeed, the most important job in the world -- Senator John Kerry has applied by talking about what he did in a wholly different job back in the 1960s. Never mind that people who were actually there with him in the 1960s dispute what a great job he did then. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he did all the things he said he did and none of the things that eyewitnesses in Vietnam said he did. How does that qualify anyone to be President of the United States? The Kerry campaign and the liberal media want to make this election a referendum on President Bush, especially as regards Iraq. That too is an insult to our intelligence. From Goldberg's August 26, 2004, column: As for the president, the only area in which he beats John Kerry decisively in the polls is, broadly, in his capacity as commander-in-chief. The American people -- as well as a majority of veterans and (I presume) those serving in the military -- generally think Bush is a better war president than Kerry would be. And yet the Kerry campaign insists that Kerry's stint in Vietnam makes him more qualified to be a war president because George W. Bush's four-year term as a war president cannot outweigh the fact that John Kerry spent four months in Vietnam. Meanwhile a bunch of guys who served alongside Kerry under similar circumstances all say that Kerry's full of it, and the Democrats say they have no right to talk at all. Indeed, they want the book pulled from bookstores. Follow all of that? Now, keep in mind this is all largely a reversal from twelve years ago when Bill Clinton ran for office. Back then the Paul Begalas and John Kerrys claimed that service in Vietnam -- or anywhere else -- was irrelevant to being an effective president (while some Republicans were largely saying the reverse). Now, suddenly, it is the qualification that trumps all others. My point isn't the usual hypocrisy gotcha, though that's certainly worth pointing out. It's that experience -- while more often than not superior to the lack of it -- isn't as powerful or important as we like to think. If service in Vietnam or in uniform were the prerequisite for correct thinking on military and foreign-policy issues, then you'd think Veterans would all agree with each other. Obviously, they don't. The media's favorite veteran, John McCain, disagrees with John Kerry about Iraq and most foreign-policy issues (depending on which day of the week Kerry is talking). John Edwards talks about how Kerry still carries shrapnel in his leg and therefore...therefore...therefore, well, something along the lines of nobody's ever allowed to criticize John Kerry. Obviously, that's idiotic on its face. If it's not, maybe we should count the side with the most shrapnel in its collective body and declare it the most qualified to lead the country. My guess is Karl Rove would be happy with that. We do not live in the world of Starship Troopers where only veterans are allowed to vote. In a democracy, arguments and reason must count for something, if not necessarily everything. During the lead-up to the war, opponents of the war (including hundreds of nasty folks in my e-mail box) declared that the White House had no right to send troops into combat because they hadn't seen it themselves. Or, I remember Chris Matthews trying to bully Rich Lowry into silence during the lead-up to the war. Matthews shrieked at Rich something to the effect of "Have you ever been to the Middle East!?" And when Rich said no, Matthews responded something like "Well, then you have no right to talk." This is the path to madness. If reading books and articles, talking to experts -- including veterans -- and making arguments built on facts and logic is always insufficient compared to the experience of being shot at -- or taking a walking tour of a Middle Eastern city -- then we must have compulsory military conscription for everybody -- men, women, Quakers, Amish, gays, and invalids included (and then find ways to rotate them through combat). That's the only way to ensure that everyone maintains their rights. From the July 28, 2004, Los Angeles Times article: And Bush aides quickly insisted that Kerry's military service in Vietnam, however laudable, was less relevant to his qualifications as commander in chief than his Senate voting record on national security issues -- which the Bush campaign has tried to portray as soft on defense. "Every American, including the president ... believes John Kerry's service in Vietnam was admirable," said Steve Schmidt, the Bush campaign's deputy communications director. "But what's most striking is that in order to talk about John Kerry 's accomplishments, they've had to go back for 35 years. There is no mention of what John Kerry has done in the Senate the past 20 years." The dueling arguments over the relevance of Kerry's Vietnam experience illustrate a key way the convention is sharpening and advancing the debate between the two contenders. In effect, the two sides are competing to define the frame that swing voters could use to assess Kerry's fitness to be president.
Media Matters - Media in a frenzy, but Clark's comment not extraordinary or unprecedented {...} The media frenzy that has followed Wesley Clark's June 29 comment on CBS' Face the Nation that Sen. John McCain's military heroism alone does not establish his qualification to be president is partially based on the false premise that the comment is in some way extraordinary or unusual. In fact, in 2004, numerous media figures argued that Sen. John Kerry's military record alone did not qualify him to be president. {...}
Published: July 1, 2008, 10:56 pm - Indexed: July 2, 2008, 4:45 pm - Page Size: 29KB
Category: Society > Issues > Business > Media > Bias and Balance

]]> Society > Issues > Business > Media > Bias and Balance