Hitman Hart:Wrestling With Shadows

Interesting documentary detailing the final part of Bret Hart’s career in the WWF and such. Maybe a little to close to its subject but well worth a watch, especially for its dealing with the ‘Montreal Screwjob’ & Bret’s inability to deal with the ‘Attitude’ era of pro wrestling. Addendum: Though the documentary seems to be aiming for some sort of ‘balance’ its interesting to see how much of what happens backs up Bret Hart’s version of the ’screwjob’. A lot of Vince’s actions seem rather petty and mean-spirited…
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Up until the 1990’s you could set off the British nuclear arsenal with a bike lock-key:

Unbelievable:

PALs (Permissive Action Links) were introduced in the 1960s in America to prevent a mad General or pilot launching a nuclear war off their own bat - the Dr Strangelove scenario.

And this was apparently all you needed to do if you were any British soldier wanting to set off WW3:

To arm the weapons you just open a panel held by two captive screws - like a battery cover on a radio - using a thumbnail or a coin.

Inside are the arming switch and a series of dials which you can turn with an Allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or groundburst and other parameters.

The Bomb is actually armed by inserting a bicycle lock key into the arming switch and turning it through 90 degrees. There is no code which needs to be entered or dual key system to prevent a rogue individual from arming the Bomb.

The Garden of Eden sucked:

One of the most entertaining things I’ve read in the economist in a while…

Constant warfare was necessary to keep population density down to one person per square mile. Farmers can live at 100 times that density. Hunter-gatherers may have been so lithe and healthy because the weak were dead. The invention of agriculture and the advent of settled society merely swapped high mortality for high morbidity, allowing people some relief from chronic warfare so they could at least grind out an existence, rather than being ground out of existence altogether.

Hunter S. Thompson

A short audio interview given about ‘hells angels’;

and the problem between the blurring of fantasy and reality:
gonzovision:

The Battle of Algiers

Recently ‘had’ to watch this as part of an International Relations course. Very enjoyable though it does take about 30 minutes to get good:

Charlie Rose, Alistair Horne, Henry Kissinger, Algeria and Iraq

Rather interesting (if somewhat long and occasionally disjointed) hour’s worth of talking heads…

The information age in numbers

Interesting stuff:

Enviormentalism is ‘bullshit’?

I’m doing a course on Enviornmental Politics (least I think that’s its title) and given that I came across this Penn & Teller episode I decided I’d have a look. As usual with ‘Bullshit!’ you do feel that they may be going a bit OTT but its still interesting watching….

Some great lines in this - ‘those that oppose Globablisation use the tools of it to organise’ and ‘we’re not sure exactly of the numbers of species that go extinct’ (and its great who says that line) being my two personal favourites.

Also, its weird to see people like Bjorn Lomborg who I have already come across in this course. It does point out that plenty of Lomborg’s figure’s are … questionable. Anyway, its worth a look.

The Reign of President Cheney

Brilliant (if somewhat gross) clip detailing the recent Presidential reign of our favorite war-monger. Though I wouldn’t have put it past him to have thought about going to war while George W. was under the knife…

Death in Mexico

Via ‘Ectomo.com’ one of those photos that makes you stop for a minute or several… take a look.