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Bruce Schneier points us to another classic example of how fear/stupidity mongers are allowing terrorists to achieve their ultimate goal of getting us to disrupt our own lives for them.

In the latest Crypto-Gram Bruce Schneier comments on columnist John Tierney’s op-ed in the New York Times. Bruce has some interesting thoughts on terrorism and the media. I definitely recommend taking a few minutes to read it. Here’s a bit from the article.

Consider this thought experiment. If the press did not report the 9/11 attacks, if most people in the U.S. didn’t know about them, then the attacks wouldn’t have been such a defining moment in our national politics. If we lived 100 years ago, and people only read newspaper articles and saw still photographs of the attacks, then people wouldn’t have had such an emotional reaction. If we lived 200 years ago and all we had to go on was the written word and oral accounts, the emotional reaction would be even less. Modern news coverage amplifies the terrorists’ actions by endlessly replaying them, with real video and sound, burning them into the psyche of every viewer.

Geek Rapper MC Plus+’s album Algorhythms is available for download. I heard a track on Adam Curry’s podcast last week but when Crypto-Gram had blurb about it I went to the site and checked it out. I’m not much into rap but you’ve got to give these guys credit. This is pretty good stuff. Here’s a bit obout them from the bio page:

MC Plus+ - MC Plus+ is the founder and indisputably the #1 greatest computer science gangsta rapper ever. He is to CS gangsta rap what a blue screen is to Windows, what Vaseline, maple syrup and sour cream are to a good time. He’s putting CS on the map, producing raps for students from computer science departments around the world. With another 4 years still at Purdue, trying to get that PhD, he has promised to keep producing CS hip-hop for all the grad students in the struggle.

Spill Beers - Claims to be the producer of the album but the only thing we’ve seen him produce is his own beer. He helps with the raps and bitches at the beats. Someone told us he’d worked on a record before, no one told us it was a database record.

Lord Illingworth - He rocks unorthodox in flip-flops and D-latches. He processes you with batches and sons of batches. Lord Illingworth has 24 inch rims on his turntables. All that skratching is making him, well, no, there really isn’t all that much skratching. The one thing that’s certain is that his shit is blowing up, and that’s because he has a spastic colon. Even that won’t stop him. After all, he’s got more beats than a vegetable garden.

(Via Daily Source Code and Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram Newsletter)