I would first like to start by commenting on the absurdity of the childish bickering going on over Kerry’s botched joke. Who among us haven’t told a horrible joke? The key is for the captain to go down with the ship, for the joke teller to acknowledge his or her blunder, and hit the audience with another zinger to keep their head above water. That’s beside the point. The real point is the huge deal the GOP has made, again questioning Kerry’s patriotism. Are the midterm elections turning into Bush vs. Kerry round 2? Maybe the GOP should stop deliberating on people’s comments that supposedly denigrate the troops, and focus on their own decisions and policies which are LITERALLY detrimental to the troops. Why is it that the people actually responsible for throwing the troops into harm’s way, the GOP, are able to point fingers at Kerry who told a bad joke that has zero impact on the troops themselves?

The Daily Show touched in this last night. They put together a montage of jokes that Bush told in the past about the lack of WMD’s and a reference he made to his propensity to over-enjoy himself when in the Houston area. This joke was made while addressing thousands of homeless and battered Katrina victims. Now that’s comedy!

The 2 fiction pieces we read for this week tie into the Kurzweil piece nicely. Kurzweil portrays a dislike for the flesh itself. He argues that the mind and the body can be separated, at which point the mind can flourish without the limitations of the body. This notion is played out in Gibson’s piece. Lise, a cyborg, is able to flourish as an artist once her body became artificial and as a result, immortal. To think of humans as program as they do in Gibson’s piece brings about the ultimate quandary: Is it really you? Is there a metaphysical element to human life that goes beyond a complex series of input and output algorithms? If not, then the notion of religion will die out, and if that happens, who will save the south?