Category: Hathos Alert

Hathos Alert

[youtube http://youtu.be/Ub22k36YwLA]

Chris Sims revisits the 1999 made-for-TV movie NetForce:

You know that stereotype about older people and computers, how they use Internet Explorer with 26 toolbars and make phone calls to their kids for step-by-step instructions on how to log into Facebook? If you took that exact person and asked them to write a three-and-a-half hour movie about cybercops who battled Internet crime, you would still end up with something that had a slightly better grasp of technology than NetForce.

Based on a series of novels by 132-year-old writer Tom Clancy, NetForce follows the adventures of Alex Michaels (Scott Bakula), who takes charge of the FBI’s NetForce division in the not-too-distant future of 2005, a time when “technology has outstripped our morality.” Michaels is something of a loose cannon, to the point where he even goes so far as to time-jump an e-warrant that he got from a virtual courtroom — and I swear that these are actually things grown-ups were paid to say to each other while standing in front of cameras — but he gets the job when his boss, Kris Kristofferson, “one of the major architects of the internet,” is assassinated.

Money quote from the video compilation seen above:

The problem is, the whole cyberuniverse is expanding so fast that any kid who can hyperlink a GIF is a webmaster nowadays!

Hathos Alert

Kimber Streams digs up a gem:

In this clip from “Lost Without a Compass,” a promotional video by The 700 Club (part of the Christian Broadcasting Network) from 1993, the group cautions against the evil and dangerous occult practices of Dungeons & Dragons players. The full two-hour broadcast is also available to view, and the Dungeons & Dragons clip begins around 8 minutes and 30 seconds.

Update from a reader:

Boy, that clip sure brought me back. In the late 1980s I was a nerdy D&D-er. My single mom (a smart, progressive Charismatic Catholic) and other parents in our church had the bejesus scared out of them by a D&D smear-and-fear piece produced by pre-scandal Jim Bakker, then of the 700 Club.

Our church was a pretty loose place: we had an informal folk group, a brother everyone called Bro’ Chuck (who later left the church, moved to San Francisco and came out – I kid you not), and met in a small convention hall. To their great credit, they didn’t ban D&D or buy into the fundies’ garbage. Instead, they organized a meeting of parents and priests at which I and a fellow D&Der explained the game, the rules, the details of play, and – most importantly – responded to Bakker’s specific allegations. After about two hours, parents and priests alike concluded that Jim Bakker was full of shit, we were good kids who knew right from wrong and good from evil, and the fundies were liars.

It was a powerful lesson for a couple of teenagers – and our parents and priests – that the fundies were more concerned with keep people scared and donating than anything else. Thanks for the memory!