Superhero Captain America has been killed off after appearing in US comic books for 66 years.
The character, who appears in the Captain America comic book, was created in 1941 to build up patriotic feeling during World War II.

Co-creator Joe Simon told the New York Daily News: “It’s a hell of a time for him to go, We really need him now.”

Publisher Marvel Entertainment has confirmed it is developing a film based on the character.

Fans may not have seen the last of the character in print either, as the comic’s editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, refuses to rule out resurrecting him in the future.

The latest edition will show the superhero dying on the steps of a courthouse in New York, after he was shot by a sniper.

Captain America first appeared nine months before the Pearl Harbor bombings, punching Hitler on the cover of the comic’s first issue.

Since then, Marvel has sold more than 200 million copies of Captain America magazine in 75 countries.

PARIS–

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whose provocative, paradoxical style was reflected in the title of his 1991 work “The Gulf War did not take place”, has died, his publisher Galilee said on Wednesday. He was 77.

Well-known in the United States, and reportedly courted by the makers of “The Matrix” who wanted help in their futuristic film trilogy, Baudrillard was usually classified as postmodern. But he did not belong to any clearly defined school.

He had an iconic status in certain sections of the French intelligentsia, illustrated by the left-wing Liberation daily which carried a full front page photograph of Baudrillard on Wednesday, and covered his death over three pages inside.

Baudrillard argued that mass media and modern consumerist society had built up such a complex structure of symbols and simulated experience that it was no longer possible to comprehend reality as it might actually exist.

His dense, allusive style, peppered with expressions such as “hyperreality” and “simulation” was typical of the rarefied world of French cultural theory, but a mordant sense of humour underpinned his criticism.

He said that the 1991 Gulf War had been so artfully and comprehensively filtered and interpreted by television that the event apparently unfolding before the eyes of CNN viewers was a “simulacrum” (another favourite word) rather than an actual war.

His works on cultural theory and consumer society from the 1970s are still widely read and respected, but he attracted more criticism with later works.

These included “America”, a high-speed travelogue seeking to lay bare the “banality” of American culture, or articles on September 11, 2001 in which his theoretical reflections seemed to display a lack of sympathy for the victims.

A friend of mine forwarded me this BBC article.

And you thought the terrorist alert color system was the first major Orwellian tool of fear. The Doomsday clock, which first appeared in 1947 positioned—7 minutes to the hour (7 symbolic minutes until we all die!), was created to reflect concern about nuclear annihilation. With the recent panic over North Korea and Iran, as well as climate change, the doomsday clock has moved two minutes, resting on 5 symbolic minutes before we all die from whatever doomsday scenario du jour is popular in the news that day.

Anyway, here is the graph we’re all supposed to be using to calculate our imminent demise. Which doesn’t make a lick of sense because the proverbial “clock” can say anything and some trigger happy leader can still destroy an entire country with less effort than I’m putting into this rant.

In terms of climate change, an “expert” in the article say (and I’m so glad we have experts so we don’t have to think for ourselves…)

“I’m optimistic that we can address climate change,” he said. “We’ve dealt with such problems before, and we can do it again.”

What? When, in the course of recorded (or unrecorded) human history, have we as a species had to address anything remotely similar to our involvement in changing the climate of the planet? We’re not talking about buying hybrid cars or recycling here. To address climate change in a meaningful, enduring way, we will have to reevaluate our understanding of progress, the way we live with (not “on”) the planet. It will require a change in mindset, identity, and what this culture values. There is, in fact, very little in the present state of this culture that is truly sustainable, or ever can be. Humans have never faced a challenge so big, ever. Period.

Furthermore, I dare anybody, under any circumstances, to pose a moral argument for the existence of nuclear weapons. Instead of scaring the public with doomsday clocks, terror threat alerts, or news headlines that read more like football highlights, why isn’t the media talking about what really needs to be done to address these things?

End rant.