November 03, 2003

State of the MCN

The current state of the Major Consensus Narrative (MCN) is a topic that I am always very interested in. The best definition so far on what the MCN is comes from Bruce Sterling in his novel Zeitgeist. The MCN is in short words "the truth" as it has been accepted by the majority of the people. So everybody "knew" that the 21st century was to begin in 2000, except that technicaly it was only beginning in 2001. .

Now state propaganda and media influence generates a very strong influence on the MCN. Currently the main topics are of course the "threat from terrorism" and related topics. The EU has commisioned a study on how the Europeans feel about Iraq, terrorism and dangers to world peace. It has made big waves in the press because a high percentage of people questioned perceive Israel as a threat to world peace. Of course, the politicians were quick to discount the study as "wrong", "conceptualy false" or "asking the wrong questions". Yeah, right. Other interesting results from the study are the perceived threat from terrorism (still relatively high, except for Denmark and Finnland) and a serious feeling that th US is also among the states that present a high risk for world peace.

I always prefer to look at the original material and not to rely only on third-hand interpretations from overworked journalists, and I suggest that you also take a look at the original study. It can be found here .

Posted by frank at 10:31 PM | Comments (149) | TrackBack

Movie logic

I watched the movie Donnie Darko the other day. This is one of these movies that keep you thinking for a while because of their multiple levels of logic. If you havent seen the movie, please dont read ahead as the following contains some spoilers.

Most of the mysteries of the movie become clear after reading the excerpt from the fictous book The Philosophy of Time Travel that plays a major role in the movie. But one thing is still completely unclear to me: if the role of the Manipulating Dead is to make the Living Receiver close the vortex to the tangent universe by returning the artifact, why has Frank made Donnie wake up and leave the house in the first place? And if the goal was the return of the jet engine to the tangent universe, why does he need to die under it as it has obviously not been "returned"?

If you havent seen the movie the paragraph above may sound like I show serious signs of begining mental problems, but thats the usual effect of submerging into artificial constructs of logic. ;-)

Anyway, the movie is worth watching, even if you (like me) do not like horror movies. It has been marketed in a completely stupid and inappropriate way, so ignore all the marketing gibberish.

Posted by frank at 09:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack