OHHHH The Humanity

Charming ad for Visa's Check Card:



The whole thing creeps me out. You couldn't ask for a better example of why certain types see conforming to the mainstream is dehumanizing. Especially the choice of score: that tune, "Powerhouse," is what the old Looney Tunes would use for conveyor-belt type scenes. The whole message becomes "You, too, can be a cog in the machine, with a little help from your friends at VISA!" Goosebumps.

I originally wanted to tie this into some comment on the state of the public domain (like my man Matt Yglesias), thinking "Powerhouse" fell into that, thus explaining by economics the questionable choice. Turns out it don't, which just means they're stupid.

The Martian Microbe Multiplex

Blogs is great at the aggregatin', so here I am bringing you links to twin Martian posts.

From Slashdot yesterday, we have this -- there's bubbling speculation that we maybe made First Contact with life on Mars in '76! Except the life was protozoan, and the contact was fatal. Our probe unwittingly killed the poor dears, goes the hypothesis. This is mostly good for sadly funny irony with a law-of-unintended-consequences bent.

Then I see from Scott Adams today the headline Life On Mars. Lampooning managed failure being his bread and butter (and also being the kind of guy you can find on Slashdot), I just kind of assumed he'd seen the same story and was going to talk about That. Instead, he's independently come up with a horrific twist: even if those Martian microbes were intelligent, we'd still kind of not care about their deaths beyond having some fun at the expense of another botched NASA operation.