More Than Just a Prosthetic Limb

Half-man, half-machine. That's how Bradley Rhodes likes to think of himself.

Rhodes, a computer scientist at MIT at the time this article was written, is one of a small group of people who are pioneering the "smart outfit." This basically means that Rhodes wears a computer and uses it to help navigate his everyday life. People like him tend to call themselves "borgs," a shortening of "cyborgs."

I understand that eventually everyone will be wearing computers and Rhodes is just ahead of the curve. But calling yourself a "borg" and dressing up like a machine is the equivalent of stamping the word "nerd" across your forehead. And these few people wear their computers all day, every day. What must their lives be like?

I imagine this would be a diary entry on an average day:

8:00 a.m. – Wake up. Take a shower. Electrocuted, again.
9:30 a.m. – Weird looks on the subway. A little girl screams.
11:00 a.m. – Boss catches me playing solitaire during a boring board meeting.
12:30 p.m. – Eat lunch alone.
2:00 p.m. – Chat with other borgs online. I hate my life.
3:30 p.m. – Juice box Mom packed me spilled on my hard drive. To the repair shop in the garage! *Superman pose!*
5:00 p.m. – Watch Star Trek and ogle Uhura.
6:30 p.m. – Watch Star Wars and ogle Princess Leia.
8:00 p.m. – Eat dinner with Mom. Talk about a borg meeting next week. She cries.
9:30 p.m. – Try to sleep despite sound from Mom's kegger in the basement.

A True Coward

In the March 11 issue of the Stony Brook Press, the editors ran an anti-Semitic cartoon that calls the New York Times the "Jew York Times" (ha ha very original) and puts symbols of Judaism on its masthead. The two headlines on this cartoon paper are "Kikes Rule, Muslims Drool" and "Ham Sucks," and they are followed by a picture of an orthodox Jew with his eyes censored.

After the shock wears off from seeing this intensely offensive cartoon in print, many questions come to mind. Why would the Press run it? Why are they allowed to print these words and images using money from the school? Using money that each student, including Jews, contributes as part of school fees? And who the hell is John Tucker?

Oh, wait. I know who John Tucker is. He's a character from a movie about a guy who has a lot of girlfriends at once, and then the girls want to get even with him when they find out about each other.

In case this is just a coincidence, I emailed the Press at the address provided at the bottom of the cartoon page. I asked if John Tucker was a normal contributor or if it was a fake name. All they had to say was, "He is a good man." The person who responded did not even bother signing his or her name.

So whoever drew this cartoon is too much of a coward to take credit for his work, and the Press didn't feel it was necessary to make the "artist" stand behind his racist garbage. I guess the editors feel that the theme of accountability, which is drilled into the head of every journalism student, doesn't apply in this case. This issue of the Press is a really sad example of journalism, and I hope that it will come back to bite them.

Some people may say that the creator of the cartoon is just someone trying to make a point using shock value. But that's no excuse. A smart person can work within the system to make their point, without offending others. Whoever this "John Tucker" is, he is not one of those smart people. He is just a Jew-hater. A Jew-hater who is too scared to give his real name and face criticism.

Women Who Don't Need a Man

Erika La Tour Eiffel. Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer. Amy Wolfe. If you didn’t know these names before, you’ll never be able to forget them.

La Tour Eiffel, Berliner-Mauer and Wolfe are three of 39 women who are declared objectum sexuals. Each of these women believes she is in a loving relationship with at least one inanimate object. They believe that the objects have souls and love them as much as they love the objects. They visit them and show their affection in public, and have scale models and pictures for intimacy at home.

Now let’s get to the gory details.

The documentary about these women starts out with La Tour Eiffel talking about her love for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. She has a piece of it- two metal beams in the shape of an “X”- and she carries it with her to the bridge, where she kisses, hugs, fondles, and whispers sweet nothings in its girders. Although this is all shocking and confusing, my main question is this: when she drives to visit her Golden Gate Love, does she put the beams in the passenger seat and strap them in? She obviously can’t put them in the trunk or just toss them in the back seat. That would be rude for a woman to do to her boyfriend.

Later in the documentary we learn that the Berlin Wall is a total chick magnet. Not only is La Tour Eiffel in a relationship with the wall (which makes this her third relationship after the Golden Gate Bridge and her marriage to the Eiffel Tower), but Berliner-Mauer (which literally means ‘Berlin Wall’ in German- she took its name) is also “married” to “him.” The women explain that polygamy is not a big deal to objectum sexuals and they have an understanding with one another. So here’s what I want to know: do they each pick a side, or do they make love to the whole thing? And what happens when someone tags it? Because the Wall is full of graffiti already. Do they ignore it, or are they outraged?

I would think they would mind based upon this statement from Berliner-Mauer about her relationship with the Wall: “Like every married couple, we have our ups and downs. We even made it through the terrible disaster of 9 November 1989, when my husband was subjected to frenzied attacks by a mob,” (credit- The Independent). She is, of course, referring to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the unification of East and West Germany.

Although I could not stop laughing when I read that quote, it is not the most disturbing thing about objectum sexuality in the article or the documentary. The unsettling prize actually goes to Amy Wolfe. Among other things such as a rail in a church, Wolfe is in love with a carnival ride called “1001 Nacht.” In the documentary, she goes into painful detail about her thoughts and words while she is being intimate with the machine at her home (by way of pictures) and she talks about the machine’s “fluids.” The viewer is then scarred forever by a clip of Wolfe lying down under the carnival ride in New York and rubbing its filthy grease all over her face.

If you have a strong stomach and a high tolerance for other people's embarrassments, check out the documentary.

Proof That Nobody Reads Anymore: Approval of “Occupation 101”

The Social Justice Alliance at Stony Brook University recently abandoned their commitment to “global justice and human rights” by hosting a screening of the film “Occupation 101.”

This propaganda film is about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the point of view of people living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but it gives the viewer that little something extra by lying the entire time. Whether it’s lying outright or lying by omission of facts, this film has it all.

Out of all the fiction, there are certain points that seemed more blatantly false than others. For example, the speakers in the video said that when Israel was officially made the homeland of the Jews, the land chosen was very large and it was the best in the area. That is not even remotely true. If you look at maps for the UN’s partition plan to separate the area into Palestinian and Israeli states, the land is split into almost equal shares. And as far as the quality of land, in 1948 a lot of Israel was swamp and desert. The hard work of Israel’s residents made that swamp and desert into what it is now, and what people imagine when they think of Israel.

In other parts of the film, facts were thrown in without context so as to paint Israel in a bad light. For instance, there was footage of buildings in the Palestinian territories being demolished, and the only thing the viewer hears is that innocent people were killed or lost their homes for no reason. The speakers don’t explain that before the Israeli Defense Forces destroy anything, whether it be by explosives or wrecking equipment, they give a three hour warning in order to spare the lives of civilians, even if it means giving the terrorist targets time to escape. The speakers don’t mention that these Palestinian civilians are killed because they are being used as human shields. There is also nothing said about why the IDF chose the building to be demolished, such as it being a hiding place of weapons or retaliation for a strike against Israel.

Another huge problem with this film is that it is incredibly anti-Semitic. Alex Saiu, the treasurer of the SJA said after the screening that he didn’t think it was at all. Apparently he doesn’t think it’s anti-Semitic to say that Jews in Israel are trying to ethnically cleanse the area of all Palestinians, which is a complete fabrication. Apparently he doesn’t think it’s anti-Semitic to say that all Jews have great living accommodations while people in the Palestinian territories live in poverty. It’s statements like these that led to support for Hitler and the Holocaust. I thought the SJA was established to educate people, not to brainwash them.

After the film the floor was opened for discussion. While Rabbi Topek of Stony Brook Hillel was permitted to clear up some inaccuracies of the film before anyone else spoke, there was nothing stopping people from dispensing false facts during the student debate. One student said that the people in Gaza have no food, clean water or electricity, and that’s why they launch the Qassam rockets into Israel.

This is a ridiculous statement in two ways. First, although Israel no longer occupies Gaza, many international organizations insist that Israel must still provide food, water, electricity and emergency medical care to the people there. Why, if Gaza is now independent from Israel? There is no logical reason, but people in Gaza do actually have access to these things.

The second way that statement is absurd is that the student gave the falsehood as a justification for launching rockets into Israel and killing civilians. Let’s assume that people in Gaza don’t have water or food. Does that give them a license to kill? I don’t think so. If it did, the billions of people in the world living in poverty would be an extreme security threat. Poverty does not justify murder. The money spent on Qassam rockets could be used to buy a better quality of life for civilians. And at the end of the day, Israel does supply people who are not its own citizens with their basic survival needs. So what is the real excuse for the rockets?

The makers of “Occupation 101” call the film a documentary, but I refuse to do that. It is an incredible work of anti-Semitic fiction, and should not be thought of as anything other than that.

Saiu said that the SJA picked the film and just ran with it, despite objections from some students, because they wanted to dive right into this topic. As an organization that is meant to raise awareness, that was a terrible mistake. A group like that should be even more careful than others to present something balanced. I’d say they really messed up on this one, but I doubt the people brainwashed by this movie will agree.

Here's a picture of Tel Aviv before the legal inception of Israel as the Jewish homeland.