Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Like the poster?

Sorry about that little blip of downtime earlier today; there was a software problem so I took advantage of the interjection to install all the latest security patches — what are they, daily?

Anyway, I'm not sure how many people saw this, but it's looking like the Blaster worm was one of the causes of the powerblackout up here and across the northeast US (more) — not so much in that it caused it, but that it made it cascade. The grid is of course a real-time system, and the Blaster worm hugely degraded latency across the netwrok causing the control systems communications links to malfunction. In addition, the havoc it played on email made it difficult to bring the system back up again afterwards.

Hannibal over at ArsTechnica (more) points out something obvious that you don't see discussed much,

What's amazing to me is that none of the major viruses has yet had a payload that's designed to wreak serious havoc, like formatting hard drives, subtly altering numbers in Excel spreadsheets, or otherwise messing with people's data in a way that might really mess up major industries. But of course, it's only a matter of time.

He's right of course… Oh, it's giving me Fight Club visions. You know at the end when all the banking buildings come tumbling down? Now, in real life, that's not going to work, but there are other ways…

As Hannibal points out, all it would take is a very minor tweak of these viruses and worms (which have incredibly deep penetration — a huge percentage of commercial systems are infected) and they can edit accounting documents. If you trash a system (ie. format the drive), then backups will be used… But slowly tweaking and editing spreadsheets would eventually cause trillions of dollars worth of damage, damage that would be nearly impossible to recover from, and that, done right, would literally bring the Western economy to its knees.

And it's not that hard to do…

So Rachel went up to Toronto for the wedding a day before me. We were staying at the Royal York, and when I called to say when I was heading in she warned me, “I think there's some kind of developmentally challenged convention here; there are a lot of people with various problems and wearing weird outfits here… I feel guilty saying it, but it's really annoying to be here.”

When I got there I discovered she was partially right; almost everyone at the hotel was massively overweight, truly bizarrely socially inept (constantly shouting out really corny jokes and puns and so on), and many were dressed as bards, middle-ages — and middle-aged — damsels, as well as people with their faces painted all green and in checkerboards… and a lot of older, fatter, balding wizards with a little too much makeup on (who all did plenty of glaring at me). Turns out we were in the hotel for TORCON, one of the largest and oldest science fiction conventions in the world.

Riding the elevator was not fun. It was the first time in my life that I've been on an elevator that's lurched over and over and then refused to move and forced people to get off due to weight restrictions — and they all refused to get off, not believing that could possibly be true so it took forever until they eventually decided “oh it must be malfunctioning”… Even though it had a warning right on the display and a posted maximum weight (hint: if you're at TORCON, read the “maximum weight” part, not the “maximum number of people” part). Seriously, it happened several times to me; every time there was a TORCON crowd. Now, don't get me wrong — not only do I love sci-fi, but I've played Dungeons and Dragons for most of my life… but this was messed up and in a lot of ways really sad.

And before you say the PC line, “oh but Shannon it's not fair to pick on fat people” — which I agree with — let me point out the obvious which is that fat kills. It's one thing if it happens to you for reasons you can't control… But it's another thing when an entire subculture collectively commits suicide — after all they are shaving ten to twenty years off their lives voluntarily… and yes, I believe the same thing about cigarettes.

Anyway, it made me wonder; were these people attracted to science fiction because it offered an escape, or was this all just a coincidence? That is, was the love for science fiction (which I do believe is a valid literary artform) a symptom of a larger problem — we've certainly all seen people who are attracted to body modification for that reason, and in so doing, have often tarnished the mainstream's opinion of body modification in general.

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Thanks to Jody I've also had a chance to read over the article from the Vancouver Sun that everyone's pissed off about (understandably). I'm not sure if it's quite as bad as everyone thinks, but I have to admit it's shockingly poor journalism and a very thinly veiled personal attack on this community that would definitely not be supported by any research had she bothered to do it.

One of the things about a print newspaper is one assumes that unlike some cheap *cough* drudge *cough* websites, they have fact checkers and quality control mechanisms… This article is just littered with really basic factual errors; stuff like saying Fakir Musafar is the author of Modern Primitives and other lame errors that just shouldn't be there.

Then of course there's the author's clear bias and shallow stereotyping of this community. I'm going to read it over again, but I may rip it to shreds — show what a poor piece of journalism it is — in a new editorial called “Karen Romell is a Liar and a Poor Reporter”… And since BME gets millions of times more hits than anything she writes for, any time anyone types in the name of that reporter, they'll find out what kind of “quality” she produces.

Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea in general… a wall of shame for all the bigotted reporters. Might be a good way to use BME's google-power to our advantage!

So get this through your head, reporters: If you slag body modification, body modification may just slag you back. And there are more of us now than there are of you so this is not a mistake you want to make!

So if it's not obvious, I was in Toronto yesterday for Saira's wedding, and yes, I was the only guy in the bridal party. Now, to you horny dudes that might seem awesome but I assure you it's not so pornographically exciting… mostly wedding staff coming up to you and saying “excuse me, the groom's party is supposed to be over here.” Anyway, first some pictures from the wedding (which obviously was a mix of Scottish and Indian traditions):

The view out of my hotel window, showing the concrete graveyard marring an otherwise beautiful waterfront.	Me and Michael before the wedding (he's not allowed to see the bride before the wedding, thus the mask).	Bagpipes; I think the one on the left is Michael's younger sister's husband.
In the bridal party area before the weeding; Leila (middle) looks like she's thinking “Got married before me? Enjoy the poison in your tea, bi-otch!”	The wedding ceremony; the ceremony itself was probably two to three hours long and even involved pyrotechnics.	Right after the deed was done (the lighting was really bad, sorry).
Saira and Michael in “casual clothes” for the reception.	The flash blew out the details, but I still liked this photo of Michael.	Saira with the bridesmaids. I'm the woman on the right that got hit with the ugly stick.

People in the know might also recognize Emma of Immaculate Conception jewelry in the party, and you might know Leila as being the first double rook on BME (and yes, I realize that photo would never be approved under current standards for posting)… pointless trivia…

On the train home there were some truly obnoxiously loud Polish women who got on about half way. Even though they were sitting across from a sleeping baby they yelled their heads off in Polish cackling madly. They were dressed head to toe in cheap knock-off fashions and costume jewelry, and just screaming stories at each other (the photo doesn't do justice to just how annoying they were).

Here's a hint to people who speak foreign languages extremely boisterously: If you plan on talking about about the people sitting across from you, they're going to clue in when you suddenly shift to a hushed tone and keep making furtive glances. Here's a second hint: The cheap sunglasses don't disguise what you're doing.

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On a less pleasant note I wanted to share this quote from the newspaper. It's from a woman who was travelling through South-East Asia, and when the war broke out ended up in Iraq to see what she could do to help stop the carnage — when she returned to America, she (a pentioner) was told that she'd have to either pay a minimum $10,000 fine or face ten years in prison (she's told them to send her to prison since she won't support the war machine).

Anyway, the story recounts,

"On a quiet day I went to a hospital that didn't have room for all the casualties of a US missile blast; we were far from any military installation. The hospital was filled [with the maimed and dismembered]."

"I sat with a dying wife whose six kids had died in the blast. I met her husband ... I stayed for 24 hours at the hospital and there was blood everywhere, little staff, but lots of blood."

"They were trying to treat people but children were dying." She wept as she described comforting a "beautiful, pregnant woman" whose arms were ripped off in the attack, then gave birth prematurely. "She kept saying to me, 'I can't hold my baby. I can't hold my baby.' "

That's about the most fucked up thing I can imagine. The US response shouldn't be sending her to prison for ten years — it should be to say “Please, if you have photos and video, share them with us”. I think it should be mandatory for every world leader, every soldier, every weapons manufacturer, and every citizen heartlessly supporting war to know exactly what the cost is.

Maybe then they'd take mass-murder a little more seriously and consider other means to the world's problems…