Focus on Economics
The Economics of Oz: How Poppies, Metallic Masonry, and Winged, Simian Labor Built a Faux Empire
Alan Goldspan
Just as Tip O'Neill famously quipped that "all politics is local,” Goldspan contends that all fantasy is real. His analysis of L. Frank Baum's classic children's tales not only points out their historical relevance but their prescience. Instead of Grangers, Progressives and the gold standard, we have Afghanistan's biggest export, black gold, and the jet-set stooges of international capitalism and global laissez-faire. It was all very poignant, but no ruby slippers will wish us home now.
Serfing Cyberspace: Feudal Capitalism in the Information Age
Billy Gypsome
Remember those jet-set stooges of the corporate hegemony? Switch tropes to something dark ages and you get Gypsome's drift. Informatively, he outsourced his presentation to a crew from India to make his point. Unfortunately, we outsourced our attention spans when the crab puffs showed up.
The Little Injun that Could: How Casino Gambling is Slowly Winning the War Against Anglo-Invasion
Gatty Running Whites
We loved the paper, but it took us awhile to realize that his "demonstration" roulette wheel was actually a case-in-point. I sincerely apologize to my children: you'll have to pay your own ways through college now.
Lost in Confucian: the Tao of Global Capitalism
Grupavate Summet
Just as Taoism teaches us to be like a reed, bending so that we do not break, there was something both transcendent and mysterious about Summet's notion. While the philosophical outlook was attractive to our Occidental senses of the exotic, in the end it is still just about being violently sodomized by a bunch of soulless CEOs and learning to like it.
Focus on Technology
"We Cannot Allow a G-Mail Gap!": How Google "Reaganed" the Rest
Maj. Murtin T. Kong (Ret.)
I don't get the feeling it was on purpose, but Google's mass, momentum, and deep pockets have managed to keep the other cyber-infidels at bay, a move reminiscent of the Gipper's driving the "Evil Empire" into receivership by sheer force of $. Major Kong seems to think this is a pretty cool idea, but aside from the fact that Google is my homepage, controls my "g"-mail, and pretty much accounts for my first resource on any and all internet searches, I see no reason to think it is the web's "only remaining superpower." Though only tangentially related, Kong's "bucking warhead" ride was a direct hit.
Randomeering: Solving Real-World Problems Thru Web-Based Generators of Random Results
Leola Glasscock
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Patch Addams: Microsoft as Nightmare; Nightmare as Chronic Disease, an Essay in Single-Panel Cartoons
Charles V. Gustavsen
None of the 500 who listened in on this paper could really understand it, but it sure was funny. The disembodied hand that cruised about in the conference room was kind of a neat trick; however, we all could have done without the "popup" reminders in our seats admonishing us to download the latest updates. After several instances of ripped chinos, we were immensely satisfied when the computer running the PowerPoint program upon which the cartoon essay was projected displayed the "blue screen of death" and refused to respond to all inputs.