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Tuesday, Jul 23, 2002

rib roast

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -- Woody Allen"

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pop tarts

"Needless to say, the flavor of the Fanta ads is more about borderless fun than the gritty details of the global commerce machine. But in a funny way it was the ads themselves that reminded me, indirectly, of Fanta's origins: The commercials are basically a clever repackaging of almost every youth-marketing trope in recent memory—their leavings, if you will—with plenty of pop culture scraps besides. In the jargon of a pitch meeting, it's a post-ethnic, multinational, transracial, global village, lip-syncing girl band meets prefab boy band, retro-swinger, Austin Powers/Ocean's 11 semi-camp, quasi-kitsch, virtual nostalgia, club remix, neo-urban, alterna-brand, anti-Cola … vibe. Oh, and any of these ingredients may contain some irony—but it's the all-natural kind."

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Monday, Jul 22, 2002

safety first

"The U.S.'s nonlethal-weapons programs are drawing their own fire, mostly from human-rights activists who contend that the technologies being developed will be deployed to suppress dissent and that they defy international weapons treaties. Through public websites, interviews with defense researchers and data obtained in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by watchdog groups, TIME has managed to peer into the Pentagon's multimillion-dollar program and piece together this glimpse of the gentler, though not necessarily kinder, arsenal of tomorrow."

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