January 19, 2004

Starbusian remix of a Vietnam atrocity photo. This remix of a classic Vietnam war-atrocity shot may not be suitable for those of weak constitutions or delicate natures, but there's something amazing about the cognitive dissonance of the Starbusian iconography and the black-and-white familiarity of the original photo. 36K JPEG Link (Thanks, grum!) [Boing Boing Blog] 9:22:06 PM

Creative Class War: Reverse Brain Drain in US?. AlterNet is carrying an interesting article by CMU's Richard Florida called the Creative Class War. The article details the decline of what the author terms the "creative class" in the US and how these people are now both not immigrating to the US and how US policies are resulting in a reverse brain drain of educated people fleeing the US. Among examples cited are how Peter Jackson's (LOTR) new movie facilities in New Zealand contributes to the decline of Hollywood, IT outsourcing trends, how MIT had to cancel a large AI project "because the university couldn't find enough graduate students who weren't foreigners and who could thus clear new security regulations," down to individual examples such as stem cell researcher Roger Pederson leaving California to do research in the UK because "they haven't made such a political football out of stem cells." Overall, a fascinating and thought-provoking article. [kuro5hin.org] 9:20:15 PM

© Copyright 2004 Ted Ritzer.