Word: actualizers
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...dance party with a really bad buffet in a room without seats. I did not see Robert Redford. Standing near the stage, rehearsing my speech, I was relieved not to get any of the eight "honorable mentions," which is some kind of Sundancespeak for "loser." But when the actual award was given, they called up a young hipster named Destin Cretton, who not only did not have a speech prepared but also was holding a half-eaten lollipop. Trying to be a gracious runner-up, I walked over to congratulate Cretton...
...turns out that human memory is like an analog cassette tape: overwrite it too many times, and you start to hear the ghosts of old voices. Actives are meant to be clean slates, with no messy human baggage. But as preamnesia Echo notes, "You ever try cleaning an actual slate? You can always see what was on it before...
Just as curious, and ethically intriguing, is what gets written on that slate. For each job, an active is overwritten with a customized composite of the minds and memories of actual people. (Between tasks, the actives are creepily affectless tabulae rasae--like children or especially pretty, dumb actors.) Some of those people, like the voices on an old laugh track, are now dead. Which raises questions: What does it mean to be alive? What is the Dollhouse's obligation to the people whose memories it "resurrects"? Is Echo herself, Caroline or the sum of her borrowed parts...
...this staffer's account, during the transition, Summers, his deputy Jason Furman and the White House's top congressional liaison, Phil Schiliro, laid out the broad principles they wanted the bill to adhere to, but when it came to actual content, they deferred to the committee leaders. "Because otherwise what's the point in doing something, pie in the sky, if it doesn't have the votes?" the staffer says...
...government willing to enforce them. But even a relatively scrupulous government offers no guarantee of fish-stock safety; Canada, Pitcher notes, has great fishing laws but in recent years, under a conservative government, they haven't always been executed. "It's not just intention that matters, but actual performance," Pitcher says. (See the top 10 food trends...