And So It Begins
Posted: Wed 27 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »Today is, apparently, exactly seven years until the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games in 2012. And in a striking coincidence, the first National Lottery scratchcard to help fund the Olympics is launched today too.
This scratchcard (along with other Olympic-themed ones) is meant to help raise £750m of the £1.5bn needed for the games. So doesn’t this just mean that the public will be paying for at least half of the games?
Hot Coffee
Posted: Tue 26 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »I’ve been thinking a lot about the American furore about GTA-San Andreas “Hot Coffee” mod which enables the player to ‘have sex’ with in-game girlfriends. It seems that now even US politicians are getting involved and demanding a federal investigation into the game, because of how the nudity can corrupt the game-playing children.
Now I’m sorry, but what?!? This is a game where you’re actively encouraged to shoot policemen, and hire prostitutes. Half the missions involve theft, violence, guns, and the like. And it’s the nudity that’s going to corrupt? Fuck me dead, that’s some weird system of morality.
<Pause while I try to find something I thought I’d written, but it turns out I hadn’t>. Way back in Feb 2004, Janet Jackson caused outrage in the US when her tit got displayed on prime-time TV during the superbowl – an event which has since meant a whole new bundle of rules regarding live TV transmission in the US, and also a raft of fines for supposed “indecency” on-air. But they can still show as much violence as they want without any worry of castigation or financial retribution.
GTA does the same thing – it glorifies violence and death, but one mod where *shock* the characters get nude and some teenage boys can see some pixellated nipples and some nudity, and the game suddenly has to be “adults only”.
No wonder we sent the bloody puritan twats off on the fucking Mayflower…
Protected?
Posted: Tue 26 July, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »Since last Thursday, Bracknell station has had the addition of a couple of policemen standing on the platform all day. I assume this is supposed to be some kind of deterrent to terrorists carrying bombs, or somesuch.
Quite honestly, it’s effing useless. The plods aren’t armed, and seem to be about as alert as a very inert caterpillar. I’ve seen them change platforms once, but other than that they just stand around doing nowt, and not even paying attention to the people waiting for a train.
If one uses the current stereotype of a terrorist suicide bomber (i.e. a man of Asian descent, carrying a big rucksack loaded with ‘stuff’), there’s always at least three or four “potential terrorists” waiting for a train into London in the morning. No-one gets stopped, or asked what’s in their bag. Mine looked dodgy as shite yesterday, as I was carrying a video camera (left by last weekend’s house guests, and which needed to be posted back) in it as well as my normal daily stuff. But no, no questions, not even a look of interest. Then again, I don’t fit the other half of the blueprint for “typical terrorist”, if there is such a thing.
Does this kind of presence make people feel safer? Possibly. Does it actually do anything to prevent another bombing attack? No, most probably not. The entire thing of terrorism is that you don’t know who’s going to do it, or when. OK, if someone’s visibly nervous, and fulfils all the cliched requirements (or has something dumb, like ‘visible wires’) then they might get stopped. But any terrorist worth their salt isn’t going to do that – they’ll walk onto the train calmly, knowing that their vision of heaven awaits.
And just because so far all the bombers have fitted a certain set of criteria doesn’t mean they always will. In fact, because of the way people are now more aware of that set of criteria, it’s pretty dumb to use the same sorts again. For instance, in Russia the Chechnyans have seen the power of using female bombers. While rucksacks have become the “weapon of choice”, what’s to stop it being a woman with a large handbag/ holdall? Nothing. Even within the current set of criteria, what’s to stop it from being an Asian person, suited and booted, “going to work in the city” – laptop bag, briefcase, whatever?
Missed It
Posted: Tue 26 July, 2005 Filed under: Health, News 5 Comments »As it turns out, you can miss stuff happening if you blink. According to research, when you blink, certain parts of your brain (primarily the visual system, funnily enough) shut down. That’s why we don’t perceive blinks as mini-periods of darkness. Allegedly.
Interesting stuff, though.
And please note, I have avoided all use of the <blink> tag, and any “humour” therein.
Kinja
Posted: Mon 25 July, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 2 Comments »Out of interest, has Kinja died the death recently? I’ve used it for a while, but it seems to be just not there any more, and the links all end up as “URL couldn’t be found”.
UPDATED : Ah, it’s me, I’m a tube. I’d forgotten part of the URL – which doesn’t help. Problem now sorted.