Word: machinas
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Alternative music is dying. The vibrancy that marked the Nirvana of our middle-school years has turned into the recent commercial failure of bands like Bush. Alternative rock is now the domain of the hackneyed melding of hip-hop and rock. That is why Machina, the upcoming Smashing Pumpkins release, is so important: no less than these poster boys for traditional alternative rock could resurrect thoughtful angst from its midget-infested Kid Rock death spiral. In the meantime, the 1991-1998 compilation showcases the legacy the Pumpkins have left. The pretentiousness of Billy Corgan aside, songs like "Disarm" and "Tonight...
...breeds contradictions. The physician's--and presumably the peacekeeper's--principle, "First, do no harm," loses to the general's "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." Everyone expects mistakes and stupidities in war; but when you make war by remote control, a superpower ex machina raining destruction without concomitant risk to self, then your invulnerability (the arrogance of powers unwilling to pay war's reciprocal price in blood) tends to subvert the moral basis of the exercise--and, incidentally, to magnify the importance of errors. Further, the use of computerized high technology creates an expectation...
...need any programming experience," insists Cheri Grand, a company spokeswoman. "I could create a Heather Locklear character, animate her and do whatever I want with her." Traditional Hollywood studios, she notes, have lots of overhead and immense production costs. "Not us. Everything is done inside the computer." Deus ex machina. Amen...
These days he has plenty of both. In the past 10 years, as international banks have struggled with competitors from American Express to America Online, McColl has engineered a kind of banking miracle in homey Charlotte, a deus ex machina where the machina is his very own NationsBank automated-teller machines, and the deus wears cowboy boots. Last week McColl announced the boldest deal yet: a plan to merge NationsBank with California-based BankAmerica to create a golden Godzilla with deposits of $346 billion. On Wall Street, where financial stocks have sizzled this year, the marriage was greeted with huge...
...Harvard's tenure policy resembles a story made up by someone with a lousy imagination, then perhaps we can hope for the deus ex machina that storytellers with lousy imaginations tend to provide. Maybe the University will notice the discontent brewing within its ranks and actually publish the details of its tenure process, so that junior scholars can at least know what to expect. Or maybe the "policy" of secrecy that Knowles holds so dear will be seen for the antiquated machine that it is, and those who stick around for the tenure process might at least be informed...