Will I-Phones Resolve the Missing Malaysian Airliner Mystery?

Alexander Graham Bell may have jetted out of his grave this morning. The Washington Post reports that some relatives insist they are achieving ring-tones on missing passengers' I-phones!

Could any message ever be more vital than the first one he sent on the telephone?

"Come here. I want you!"  

This is the very same message now ringing through the world for the passengers and crew of the missing Malaysian airliner. Bell didn't mince any words, did he? He could have wallowed in emotion, as current media do. He could have moaned and blamed the other party. Instead, he got right to the point. Hell freezes over until we solve this mystery: You are wanted--and right now! Come! Here! Travel to me via this vital instrument! 

Now two major publications are reporting this startling development:

the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/vanished-malaysia-airlines-flight-leaves-relatives-with-anger-and-phantom-phone-calls/2014/03/10/fdb78642-a862-11e3-b61e-8051b8b52d06_story.html

the UK Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2578020/Why-cellphones-missing-Malaysian-Airlines-passengers-ringing-Family-members-claim-loved-ones-smartphones-active.html

And both report the same supposed impossibilities: Not only are some passengers' I-Phones ringing, but some QQ accounts register missing passengers' activity online. 

Still missing, though, is any report of Iran's benevolent hopes for its apparent escapees, since the two passengers who purchased stolen passports did not want to call that country "home" any more--and were willing to try a space leap, if necessary, to get out.

So, will the I-Phones supply the clues that investigators need to solve this mystery? As the laws of physics dictate, every body--even an I-Phone--has got to be somewhere. Now, where there's a live I-Phone, is there also a live human being, even if s/he doesn't pick up that instrument to assure callers: Yes, Mr. Bell, my phone and I survived hell and high water!   

Missing Airliner: The Perfect Mystery?

Mystery fans follow the missing plane story because, so far, it appears to be the first case of a plane being virtually or actually vaporized. Not a single concrete clue to its location or disposal seems to exist. How does this happen in a concrete universe? 

So the passport trail becomes critical. The latest: one of those two Iranian false passport holders was supposedly seeking political asylum in Germany and was on his way there--and then the whole plot--plane, passengers and all--disappears? 

I have read mysteries for years, and there's never been one like this! Agatha Christie's novels are as close as any writer's ever come to this disappearing act--other than magicians. She wrote during wartime, so she used spies and double identities in her plots, as did Shakespeare, but Agatha Christie is famous for her locked room mystery 

Computer technology complicates events, of course. Is there a way now to erase a whole plane and its manifest from radar and memory? Were the Malaysian pilot and crew in on a plot to escape detection as the plane leaped from the South China Sea to Germany? 

Every nation on earth has a stake in this story, which has revealed that officials have not been checking passports against the Interpol list of stolen and lost passports, as they must do, as a critical step in avoiding disasters plotted by terrorists. 

If nations practice security measures perfectly, though, they also foil the schemes of freedom lovers seeking asylum. How do we resolve the plot of the missing plane without throwing the desperate back into the dragon's mouth? 

Is Barack Obama Talking to Daniel Suarez?

by Meg Curtis, PhD

The president can assess Daniel Suarez's qualifications as a consultant by viewing his TED talk here: http://www.keynotes.org/speaker/danielsuarez. Obama can gift himself with one of Suarez's novels, as a late Christmas present, to bring him up to date on the necessity of integrating challenges to the health, well-being, security, and freedom of the American citizenry. 

Obama can also read this summary on Suarez's book jackets: "Daniel Suarez is an independent systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies. He has designed and developed enterprise software for the defense, finance, and entertainment industries." This author functions on the cutting edge of Information Technology. He assesses the mentality of gamers, high tech workers, governments, and independent creators of robotics systems.

To listen to Suarez is to step, along with him, into the implications of technology for democracy. He illustrates his TED talk with graphics portraying how analysts can view data in groups so as to identify communications hubs, thus allowing analysts to facilitate community organization, or destroy each hub and communities along with the hubs. He can imagine where we are going from where are are--and how we keep the US safe from daemons. 

This consultant opens his book Daemons with these prophetic words in the frontispiece:

"daemon...A computer program that runs continuously in the background and performs specified operations at predetermined times or in response to certain events.

Condensed from '"Disk and Execution MONitor.'".

Is this concept not the hub of a functioning health care system? The patient about to undergo heart surgery may not have days to spend trying to contact his insurance provider before the anaesthesiologist grabs him. New parents need to keep their attention where it belongs: on new members of their families. And the US cannot afford any health care system which does not offer both computer expertise and respect for vital human beings. 

The Zombification of Language -- A New Rolling Eyes Column! ((0) (0))

by Meg Curtis, PhD

The use of language as a club offers the first sign that zombies have invaded America. 

Consider current phrases involving "there." 

1. "There's no there there.": Even a neuroscientist could not translate this sentence into a meaningful statement. First, repetition creates a tautology, which repeats the subject in the predicate. In such circular logic, the speaker whips listeners' heads around in a verbal tornado so fast that they forget to scream: "You aren't saying anything! You're short-circuiting my brain!" This is a classic case of violence committed on a literate audience. 

The same example serves to illustrate how language can be used to distract, instead of reveal, meaning. No speaker uttering these words can accuse anyone of obfuscation or propaganda because that speaker is violating the most basic principles of honest communication. To check the speaker, just proceed to http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/13/obama-on-benghazi-there-is-no-there-there/ to catch the press conference on May 13, 2013. 

Researchers may be surprised to discover that this sentence was not original to the speaker that day. Gertrude Stein uttered it first, as this website records: http://www.bartleby.com/73/148.html/. So, are elitist speakers in American now quoting even more elitist American authors to confuse the American public? Gertrude Stein is famous, of course, for saying: "A rose is a rose is a rose." Write that on a valentine, and see what happens. 

2. "S/he was always there for me": This common claim illustrates the trickle down effect of both economics and language. No listener will ever be able to determine where "there" is from this sentence. Was this anonymous "she" waiting outside the speaker's bedroom with a hot towel and nuts, like an airline hostess? Was "she" the one who turned up to provide bail money after the speaker was charged with DUI? Meaningless tributes praise no one.

George Orwell spoke these words bravely: " It [the English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." His famous essay on this subject, "Politics and the English Language," is online at https://www.mtholyoke. edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm. Consider Orwell's warnings carefully. He fights zombification where it begins: in the brain.

Camille Paglia and Hallmark America

by Meg Sonata

Support for Camille Paglia's maverick views on feminism comes from an odd source during this holiday season. While she decries the emasculation of the American male in speeches and articles, the Hallmark channel has been presenting a series of movies which depicts Christmas as the quest for traditional romance between the sexes. 

Typically, the plots of these films portray women struggling for independence while simultaneously seeking a life-mate to join them in celebrating the difference between the sexes, too. Synchronicity between these forces would not be so startling--except Paglia has championed her lesbian cause for years, while Hallmark could have dramatized the difficult road to Bethlehem, but didn't. 

When polarized forces reverse course together, is a cultural movement afoot in America? Will women strengthen by championing men to stand up and be strong defenders of the women in their lives? Sounds like a good plot to explore in the New Year! 

Check out http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530741/Theres-no-room-MANLY-Controversial-feminist-writer-Camille-Paglia-speaks-against-loss-masculine-virtues-negative-impact-society.html

Meet John Doe: The American Dream in the Media Age

by Meg Sonata

This famous film leaps across decades to explain America to itself. The hero, a stalwart Gary Cooper, plays a nonexistent character in a media drama. The heroine, the beguiling Barbara Stanwyck, discovers the secret to creating a media sensation. Politicians hide behind the curtain of good intentions, fiddling with the cords of manipulation. Like the Wizard of Oz, Meet John Doe rips away the facade of ideals, leaving an expose in their place.

How do perfectly honest souls end up conspiring to fool their fellow citizens? This question reverberates through every scene of this troubling movie, which begets quandaries faster than a hunting dog can find fleas. Cooper's face becomes the icon it already is here. Stanwyck's face, too, bespeaks eternal adoration. So, an innocent public falls for anything their idols say. But what kind of plot is this, when the stars set out to imitate John Q Public?

Released in 1941, the plot tracks the transformation of a Mr. Nobody into a character who unwittingly launches thousands to do his bidding. From start to finish, the John Doe played by Gary Cooper never manages to know exactly who he is, for he progresses toward the realization of a columnist's memory. Her father gave her the words which she places in John Doe's/Gary Cooper's mouth, to fantastical effect. Voila! Daddy rises from the grave!

Yet who is really the reporter's father in this film? His words endorse a Good Neighbor policy, domestically practiced in the USA. In the background of memory, however, lurks that biblical indictment: Just who is my neighbor? Is he the criminal hanging on the cross next to Christ's? Or is she the beautiful scoundrel whose face launches ships for a hellacious war? Do my neighbors include pally pols who would do anything but die for my vote?

The film's famous director, Frank Capra, pivots the action toward a single choice: Gary Cooper must become the fictional character he has pretended to be, in order to win mass acclaim. Finally, he must decide if he is up for committing suicide on Christmas Eve, the threat written into the plot handed to him by his own personal Eve. For dramatic tension, this film is hard to beat. What does it mean to say: "Never say die"? See the movie, and see! 

Edward Snowden's Neighbor: Spying in America

by Meg Sonata

When I was a teenager living in Cassadaga, NY, a tiny village in Western New York State, I experienced the same oversight described in Der Spiegel today. The title of their lead article shows the same editorial restraint which characterizes this detailed expose. It might have been sensationally labeled "Paranoia and Xenophobia in America." Instead, it quietly introduces "Woman at the Window: Judging Edward Snowden from Next Door."

The woman of the title is Joyce Kinsey, whose occupation appears to be unemployed hairdresser in Der Spiegel's expose, but should be recorded as "spying on her neighbors." With a clear sense of entitlement to know her neighbors' every move and intention, Mrs. Kinsey innocently lays out for the author, Alexander Osang, a recipe for fascism which will leave Germans screaming after their WWII experience with neighbors reporting suspicious activity to Hitler's faithful followers, especially his storm troopers with the death's head on their helmets, the dreaded SS. 

Osang doesn't need to state that this woman doesn't watch the History Channel or read Der Spiegel. There, 
regular features appear addressing Germans' prolonged attempt to come to terms with loyal citizens sending 
their fellow human beings straight to the gas chambers and mass murder pits. Her world view derives strictly 
from the American mass media, along with the proclamations and suspicions of her relatives, according to her own statements in Osang's numerous direct quotations. 

The more one reads of Osang's litany of Kinsey's complaints against Snowden, the more horrific her isolation becomes. She is propelled into the spotlight only due to a whistle-blower's determination to examine US surveillance practices. Thus, she unconsciously reveals the ignorance of a popular base supporting spying on everyone and his mother worldwide, without a single consideration for the consequences of mindless nosiness. Nathaniel Hawthorne had Kinsey's number in The Scarlet Letter, but how many Americans have read that expose recently, too?

This writer has read that masterpiece, as well as Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Shakespeare's Macbeth, where ancient women stir the pot of trouble whenever they can. Her own case of neighborly surveillance defied that stereotype, since a lone man spread the blinds in the house next door every time she came home from a date. He very obviously, too, shut the blinds when she entered her house. God knows the latest employment figures in the US don't begin to assess the need for worthwhile jobs in the United States of America.