The history of Scientology

Thanks to Eugene for this:

The Dissertation three

Well the word count hasn’t gotten any further but I had my presentation today and it went really well so here’s hoping….

Smoke on the Yangtze

A version of ‘Smoke on the water’ by Deep Purple by some Japanese (?) musicians which according to the comments should be ‘Smoke on the Biwa’ because of the ethnicity but… Thanks to Eugene for this.

A very interesting Art Show

Thanks to Warren Ellis for this. Alison Jackson and her ‘paparazzi images’. I particularly like the ‘Prince Harry’ ones.

Reasons to be cheerful?

Very interesting article from the Economist as to why the world is getting better:

In China 25 years ago, over 600m people—two-thirds of the population—were living in extreme poverty (on $1 a day or less). Now, the number on $1 a day is below 180m. In the world as a whole, a stunning 135m people escaped dire poverty between 1999 and 2004. This is more than the population of Japan or Russia—and more people, more quickly than at any other time in history.

Poverty alleviation has gone hand in hand with improvements in basic services. Digging canals and building water-treatment plants has increased the number of people with access to safe water: in South Asia, for instance, the number of those without clean water has been nearly halved since 1990. Thanks to this, and to better public-health provision, the rate at which people die from infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis is falling in most poor countries, Africa excepted.

That in turn has cut child mortality. In 2007 Unicef, the United Nations child-welfare body, said that for the first time in modern history fewer than 10m children were dying each year before the age of five. That is still an awful lot but it represents a fall of a quarter since 1990. Life expectancy has increased a bit in low- and middle-income countries. The long march to literacy is nearing an end: three-quarters of people aged 15-25 were literate in 1975; now the rate is nearly nine-tenths.

I’m always amazed when you see this sort of short-sighted reporting

From ABC.Net

A Japanese father has called for his own son to hang after a gruesome murder spree in which the teenager killed three family members before slashing open his mother’s belly and putting a doll inside. The father says he will seek the death penalty for his 18-year-old son, who is a fan of the grisly Hannibal Lecter novels and has written horror stories himself.

Now the part I have emphasised suggests that it was the ‘horror interest’ that made that kid bad no? But further down the article:

The father, who divorced the boy’s mother a decade ago and has been in and out of prison on blackmail charges, admitted he was partly responsible for his son’s poor upbringing.

I really hate the fact that the way that article is written is done in such a way that it clearly places more emphasis on the ‘interests’ of the child than in his upbringing, I mean this sort of crap always happens in the analysis of these ‘youth violence’ incidents, especially in the American media, I mean you can just see this event being used by some ‘moral majority’ jackass to ‘prove’ how ‘horror movies corrupt children’..

Bah, I’m tired and cranky but still… This crap really pisses me off..

A Decleration of ‘War’ against the Cult of Scientology

Thanks to Warrenellis.com for this interesting video:

Update: As Warren Ellis points out - what makes these videos so interesting is the sense of ‘threat’ within these videos as much as anything else…. Read the rest of this entry »

I swear the world gets more sci-fi every day…

Its not quite

but

is an interesting idea

Relying on real-time data from an array of sensors that detect muscle movement, the suit enhances physical strength by controlling the movement of 8 different motors that provide support to the shoulders, knees, arms and legs. To the wearer, heavy objects seem as light as 10 kilograms (22 lbs).

The Dissertation Two

1,997 words. Currently starting into Kermit Roosevelt’s ‘counter-coup’ a rather interesting adventure romp and one of my major primary sources so far. On the other hand its an awfully limited book given the nature of the person who is writing it. I mean he’s hardly going to give an unflattering account of the whole thing and the people involved is he?

‘Kiosk’ by Bruce Sterling

This is a pretty good short story - take a look:

Borislav moved from his booth into the freezing wreck of a warehouse, where the survivors sorted and sold the effects of the dead. Another awful winter. They burned furniture to stay warm. When they coughed, people stared in terror at their handkerchiefs. Food shortages, too, this time: the dizzy edge of famine. Crazy times.
He had nothing left of that former life but his pictures. During the mayhem, he took thousands of photographs. That was something to mark the day, to point a lens, to squeeze a button, when there was nothing else to do, except to hustle, or sit and grieve, or jump from a bridge. He still had all those pictures, every last one of them. Everyday photographs of extraordinary times. His own extraordinary self: he was young, gaunt, wounded, hungry, burning-eyed.