Feeding The Fish

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web censorship: Correspondent reports

Google, for example, has modified its Chinese language search engine so that it does not show results for sites the Chinese government deems “harmful”.

Not quite true, google.cn, the google based within China does indeed self-censor (but is unique among censoring search engines in that if some results are not being shown, a small disclaimer of this fact is given), while the chinese language version of google.com is completely uncensored (but often subject to large delays from within China, hence the establishment of google.cn).

Possible spoilers follow.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand was a good film if you enjoyed such classics as the Rush Hour films(Director Brett Ratner’s work), and certainly has an interesting premise, the idea of a cure for mutants to make them ‘normal’ (Llfted, I hear, from Joss Whedon’s ‘Amazing X-Men’ series) which the film then sadly forgets to address, more interested in that next big explosion.

Of course, X-Men has always had significant real world parallels to eugenics and homosexuality and the issue of how humanity treats minorities but all Ratner seems to interesting in is “Yeah…but this minority can kick ass! We need more kick-ass! Also some literal ass, let’s get that action in”, somewhat missing the point. There wasn’t a single issue in the film I felt was well addressed, or even competently addressed in a way that wasn’t setting up for a kick-ass fight scene (which was ruined for me by the sudden polarization of the characters, I’m sure Magneto used to be far more complex than in this film).

Mutants can be cured, thus defining them as deviant and their behaviour as wrong. Obvious implications for the homosexuality debate, if the ‘cure’ for homosexuality was discovered, would it be right to use it? Obviously, it’d be a matter of choice, people could chose which way of life they preferred… or alternatively be pressured into conforming to societies norms, which is far more likely. Once a choice is possible, social norms are self enforcing to an extent, even if as an adult they’d chose that life, why would a child who had no concept of his future chose the minority life-style if a choice was presented? This form of transformative eugenics is a very interesting question, but the movie uses it as a starting line then goes in completely the opposite direction.

The inter-relation between who people are and what they are could be seen as a definitive point in this series, mutants differ only in their mutation from other mutants, yet this characterizes their roles. While Xavier creates a place for mutants to become people in their own right again, Magneto radicalizes mutants for the purpose of enhancing his own power, not caring for them as people, only for them as a source of power. Another theme curiously underdeveloped is the mutants being used for their power. Whereas in the second film ‘Jason’ was obviously being manipulated and controlled by his father to extract his mind control ability, little motivation or explanation is given to the Cameron Bright character, does he mind being used to remove people’s powers? Why get Cameron Bright in if you’re not going to use him?

And what was the Angel sub-plot all about? You could remove it from the movie and have NOTHING effected.

Overall an undramatic and disappointing conclusion to the trilogy. I just didn’t care, major characters died for little good reason (other than they could, I suspect) only to wimp out with that little post-credits scene. If you kill someone, they should stay dead! It’s admitting the only purpose of the death was to effect the audience, but to what end other than ‘Yeah, we kill people! We might do something crazy like an explosion in a minute!’

But if all you want is explosions it’ll work for you.

Edit: I have to agree with the author of this review that Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde did a brilliant job and it’s a shame that she’s let down by the rest of the movie. I’m sure she’ll be around again though.

Some may have noticed the new Amnesty sign on the sidebar, it’s part of their new Campaign against Internet Censorship. I totally agree with this and believe it’s an initiative well worth supporting. But there IS a problem with this sign thing -  the idea given that this helps get around censorship by loading censored content onto lots of websites. Of course, in reality the quotes come from the central database which is blocked by the censors, rendering the quotes useless to those inside the firewall. Added to that, the quotes are too short to possibly be of any use to anyone. It is however a call for support from the uncensored internet and I have it for that reason. I just wish it wouldn’t be advertised as being helpful to people behind the firewalls when in actual fact it’s not for anything more than drumming up support.

Also check out peacefire.org, campaigning against web censorship far closer to home.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Spin between the raindrops

The preceding winter had been, we were told, “the fourth driest since records began”.
Now the warnings are here again, alongside the hosepipe bans, and threats of even more drastic drought measures to come.
And the country’s first drought order - for Sutton and East Surrey Water - starts on Saturday.
Yet to find a year drier than 2005 for most of the UK, there is no need to delve back into prehistory; 2003 fits the bill, as do 1997, 1996, 1991 and 1990.

A brilliant analysis of the gulf between the spin and the fact. Oddly reminicent of the Global Warming problem, where there is a danger, but over-hyping in the media leads to a gap between the fact and the risk. The problem then results from poor practice on both side, the Anti group attack the (easily disproven) media statistics and the Pro group is a little stuck because the view that ‘global warming is quite bad’ can be benifital for the public to have, while ‘The truth is just a liitttle bit better’ makes poor headlines.

School District to Monitor Student Blogs - Yahoo! News

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on
Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular
activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of “illegal or
inappropriate” behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for
disciplinary action.

“I don’t think they need to police what students are doing online,” she[A Parent] said. “That’s my job.”

Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea rebuffed that criticism.

“The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is
almost an oxymoron,” he said. “It is called the World Wide Web.”

Yet again, missing the point, no-one minds people READING the blogs, it’s taking action on it that is overstepping the school’s boundaries. And guess what, if there’s serious evidence of illegal activity on a blog there’s already a body in place to deal with it, THE POLICE.

I can understand there are plenty of situations where it might seem an idea to monitor what’s being said, but what’s really needed is better education for teachers on how to deal with student blogs, and for students to be taught what’s a good idea and bad idea to blog about legally.

Oh, I especially like the “all students participating in extracurricular
activities”, I’m sure legally these schools can’t force students into anything, but they have to sign if want to keep their school teams and clubs! It’s entirely voluntary, you just can’t do much without it.

I probably don’t want to post anything “illegal” (which would just be plain stupid)
or “inappropriate”(which I’m sure has a very wide, yet vague, definition) but
if I were in that situation, I’d sure think the school had no place in saying I
couldn’t.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Charging up the stairs

Reading this, your body at rest is emitting about 100 watts into the environment. If you’re sitting in an open plan office, count the number of surrounding colleagues and you don’t need to be a maths genius to appreciate the possibilities of tapping into all that wasted energy.

Like we don’t all know where this ends up, sure, it might be a big leap from self-powering stairs to humanity living in bubbles connected to a virtual world, but it’s really just an extension of the same principle.

In the meantime, neat!

I know at an intellectual level that we need a lot of water to rebuild our reserves, but they could have waited for a week where it wouldn’t rain EVERY DAY to announce the drought orders.

Of course, it’s comedy gold.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The junk food smugglers

Schools dump junk food? A vital step for a healthy Britain say some, but for those with a healthy eye for profit the golden age of cheap, readily available contraband has begun!

What I find most telling are comments such as “Even if the school started selling these things again, we’d still buy from these boys as they’re not so expensive”, giving the curious situation that the black-market is actually cheaper than the ‘tuck shops’ of old. This either shows that these sugar-runners aren’t quite as enterprising as they seem or, much more likely, that the schools were reeeaalllly ripping us off.

My site is invalid.

Basically this means that I’m missing a tag somewhere or I’m guilty of not closing an element, resulting in sub-standard code!

Fortunately for me, browser companies are so busy building browsers that clean-up after people like me that they’re not compliant either.

Premise: It’s a car show. A wacky car show! With lots of interesting and ‘different’ features.

Reality: Most of the features are utterly pointless without being funny. It looks like it thinks itself to be the self-appointed successor to Brainiac, but without Brainiac’s charm. It also suffers from the problem that EVERYTHING must be related to cars, limiting the good material to an extent. It’s not entirely unwatchable, just mostly unwatchable.