Seeking a Little Truth

2012-02-15T20:53:00.001Z

2012-02-15T07:24:00.001Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-02-14T14:30:00.000Z

OK, so it's not exactly random but I am going easy this year...... [grin]

2012-02-14T09:25:00.001Z

2012-02-13T18:31:00.002Z

2012-02-13T17:10:00.002Z

My Favourite TV: The Invaders

For those of you too young to remember The Invaders was an American SF show running for 43 episodes over 2 series in 1967 and 1968. Even though I was very much alive at the time I doubt if I saw the original run of either series – partially because it probably ran in a late evening slot and it may have been before we had our first TV. One thing I do know is that it certainly made an impact on me in my pre-teens as Architect David Vincent (played superbly by Roy Thinnes) tracked across 60’s America attempting to convince a disbelieving world that the Invaders were already here (to quote the fantastically evocative voiceover).

Over the last few weeks I’ve been enjoying sitting down, at the end of a hectic day, to this slice of pure nostalgic heaven. I finished Series one last week and Series two is waiting to be screened over the coming months. Of course I don’t expect there to be any conclusion to the fight against this deadly and largely ignored enemy – after all they look just like us (apart from the odd crooked finger) and who believes in aliens anyway? I’m guessing – after all these years it was like watching the series for the first time which was great – that the series was canned in mid-flow without any planned conclusion. So it’ll be left hanging. Did he finally defeat the aliens or convince enough people to join his cause? It’s difficult to say – the evidence (such as it was) was inconclusive. The aliens seemed very adept indeed at covering their tracks. It obviously helped that they self-disintegrated on death and they their weapons vaporised anything they hit (including equipment that could have given them away moments before the authorities arrived). Then of course there was the mixture of wilful disbelief at just about every level coupled with years of alien infiltration throughout the establishment to ensure that any evidence or reports of alien activity disappeared in one way or another without arousing too much suspicion.

Of course the whole thing was a product of Cold War paranoia. The aliens, emotionless and often seen wearing dark boiler-suits, where clearly meant to be Communist infiltrators. They had little regard for any life, including their own, and where dedicated to one cause only – the overthrow of the Earth (represented inevitably by the USA). In many ways – rather obvious in hindsight – The Invaders was very much a precursor of The X-Files where alien conspiracies are uncovered only to have any solid evidence whipped away at the last minute leaving the protagonist(s) looking rather foolish. It irritated me a great deal in the X-Files and it did irritate a little in The Invaders too. But I think the thing that exasperated me most about the show was that even when people (other than the lead) had direct contact with the aliens and survived – a fairly rare thing I admit – they still either didn’t believe or where too afraid to do anything about it except run and hide in a corner. But the things I loved about the show far exceed this rather minor irritation. I loved the idea of the show, its pervading sense of menace, the thought that anyone could be an alien. I loved the weird alien space craft, the noises they made and their clear technological superiority. I loved the guns the squirted globs of red flame that incinerated anything they touched and I loved the fact that David Vincent never gave up in his quest to rid the Earth of this menace. Despite the fact that, not surprisingly, this is very dated TV this is still a very watchable slice of SF history. If you have a slow evening, try an episode or two. You’ll be hooked before you know it.

2012-02-12T11:44:00.002Z

2012-02-12T09:59:00.000Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-02-11T17:15:00.002Z

2012-02-11T14:40:00.000Z

SeaWorld sued over 'enslaved' killer whales

From the BBC

7 February 2012

Deadly orca back in Florida show Five killer whales have been named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit which argues they deserve the same constitutional protection from slavery as humans. A US judge is considering a complant by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' (Peta) against SeaWorld. It is reportedly the first time a US court has heard legal arguments over whether animals should enjoy the same constitutional protections as humans. SeaWorld's legal team said the case was a waste of time and resources. The marine park's lawyer, Theodore Shaw, told the court in San Diego: "Neither orcas nor any other animal were included in the 'We the people'... when the Constitution was adopted." He said that if the case were successful, it could have implications not just on how other marine parks or zoos operate, but even on the police use of sniffer dogs to detect bombs and drugs.

Peta says the killer whales are treated like slaves for being forced to live in tanks and perform daily at the SeaWorld parks in California and Florida. It is not considered likely that the whales will win their freedom, but campaigners said they were pleased the case even made it to a courtroom. The lawsuit invokes the 13th Amendment to the constitution, which abolished "slavery or involuntary servitude" in the US. Jeffrey Kerr, the lawyer representing the five whales, said: "For the first time in our nation's history, a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human. By any definition these orcas have been enslaved here." Hearing the arguments for about an hour, US District Judge Jeffrey Miller raised concerns over whether animals could be represented as plaintiffs in a lawsuit. He will issue a ruling at a later date.

Peta names the five wild-captured orca plaintiffs as Tilikum and Katina, at SeaWorld Orlando; and Kasatka, Corky, and Ulises, at SeaWorld San Diego. It is not Tilikum's first time in the media spotlight - he drowned his trainer before horrified spectators in February 2010, prompting a ban on the Florida park's employees entering the water to perform tricks with the orcas. The same whale has also been linked to two other deaths.

[Of course if you’ve been following this story you’ll know that the case failed. It’s still an interesting proposition though – Are Orca’s people? Personally I wouldn’t have chosen them as the creatures to use to gain rights for non-humans. I’d picked some of the great apes such as Orang-utan’s or Gorilla’s. Orca’s are, I think, too alien to be easily classified as people even if they are self aware and as intelligent as they seem. I wouldn’t be too surprised if such a ruling is made somewhere at some point – especially if (actually when if I think about it for a second) we start to manipulate other creatures genomes to enhance their cognitive functioning. As they say: Watch this space!]

2012-02-10T16:25:00.001Z

2012-02-10T07:33:00.001Z

2012-02-09T21:56:00.002Z

Just Finished Reading: Dawn’s Uncertain Light by Neal Barrett, Jr

Decades after a Nuclear and Bacteriological war devastated the world what was the USA is still in deep trouble. Racked by a destructive and seemingly irresolvable civil war and existing without many of the large mammals who feed billions before the conflict every day is a struggle for existence. Born into this world is Howie Ryder, a young man who six years earlier watched his sister be chosen to live on Silver Island, a light in the darkness and the future of American society. Except that, as Howie has found out, is a lie. Silver Island does indeed exist but for much darker purposes. Desperate for meat of any kind the Government has developed a substitute for the lost cattle – cloned humans who live without developing consciousness or any sense of self. The only problem is that inbreeding over generations has weakened the stock. The only way to stop this inevitable decline is to introduce new blood, new genetic material – from humans. Howie quickly learns the fate of his sister and also that the meat grown for human consumption is a lot closer to human that anyone dares to realise. Horrified by the realisation of what humanity is doing to itself he determines that he will do all in his power to bring the whole project to an end. He is astonished when he finds friends to help him in his endeavours but is unaware that larger forces are moving in the background and that his every move is being calculated and manipulated by those closest to him.

This is another of those books that have been sitting on my shelf for far too long. I almost didn’t read it on this occasion after I discovered that it was the sequel to Through Darkest America published in 1987 which is presently out of print. Then I thought of the likelihood of ever picking up the original (about nil I would imagine) and said to myself ‘what the heck’. I need not have worried. Not only is this well written you don’t actually need to have read the first book to understand what’s going on. The occurrences in the first book are alluded to in enough detail – without becoming tedious – to give you enough background to what’s going on. Also I think most of us are fairly familiar with the post-apocalyptic sub-genre of SF to pick up enough of the references without too much effort. Because of the subject matter – virtual institutionalised cannibalism – this is sometimes a disturbing read as Howie realises what has been and still is going on (not least of which is that he was part of the accepting majority before he realised the truth). The novel also raises some very interesting philosophical and political questions about just how far would we, could we or should we go – both as individuals and societies – to survive in a hostile world. Eating the dead might just about be acceptable during a temporary survival situation but how acceptable is it the actually breed other ‘humans’ for their meat? This is often a haunting narrative that will linger long after you finish the last page. It’s well written and thoughtful with good characterisation and the subtle application of strong emotional themes. Recommended (though I think both books might be out of print now so you might have some problems picking either of them up).

2012-02-08T21:22:00.001Z

2012-02-08T07:34:00.000Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-02-07T21:04:00.002Z

2012-02-07T07:29:00.002Z

2012-02-06T22:55:00.002Z

2012-02-06T21:44:00.002Z

My Favourite Movies: The Long Kiss Goodnight

Now, if I was pitching an idea to a cynical studio executive about an amnesiac assassin who recovers her memory just in time to foil a terrorist plot I really wouldn’t go with the name Geena Davis in the lead role. Not that I don’t like her, I do, but just that “action hero” and “Geena Davis” don’t usually form parts of the same sentence or at least they didn’t until this 1996 movie came along.

The plot is about as far fetched as they come. We are introduced the frumpy local teacher and home maker Samantha Caine who can’t remember anything about her life prior to 8 years ago. Until that is she gets involved in a car wreck around Christmas time. Over the next few days she starts having nightmares and waking visions about another more violent version of herself. When someone tries to kill her in her own home (and fails) she goes on a hunt for her past with low-life detective Mitch Henessey played by Samuel L Jackson in his usual wisecracking form. Of course the bad-guys (in the guise of her former employers the CIA) want her out of the way before she can uncover the plot about to be hatched to manufacture a terrorist incident on US soil as a much needed ‘fundraiser’ care of the US tax payer. What the baddies don’t realise is that their actions to silence Charlie Baltimore (Samantha Caine’s ‘real’ name) awakens the ruthless assassin hidden deep inside her with awesome consequences.

A number of things lift this movie above the generic factory produced film this could have been. The way that Geena Davis and Samuel Jackson spark off each other is highly entertaining. Both actors are funny and quick witted with it. It must have been very amusing to watch them in action on the set. The action sequences where nicely done with plenty of bullets flying and some inventive additions to a pretty tired genre (even back then). Then, of course, there was the seemingly bizarre choice of Geena herself. Even sitting there watching it it’s difficult to believe that she’s doing the things she does – casually breaking bad guys necks and shooting them dead with astonishing accuracy and with barely a flicker of emotion. I think I watched this movie the first time 16 years ago honestly open mouthed followed by howls of laughter as bad guy after bad guy gets what’s coming to him. Both Geena and Sam get some great one-liners and their timing is flawless. All in all this is highly entertaining hokum where you really need to put your brain in neutral and just go for it. Let the whole thing just wash over you (carefully ignoring your critical faculties) and just have fun. But be warned – this is far from a family friendly film as the swearing content is very high as is the body count.

2012-02-05T13:47:00.002Z

2012-02-05T10:05:00.000Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-02-04T22:15:00.002Z

Welcome to my World (of Warcraft).

2012-02-04T22:13:00.001Z

Aliens May Destroy Humanity to Protect Other Civilizations, Say Scientists

by Ian Sample for The Guardian

Friday, August 19, 2011

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilization growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain. This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a NASA-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future. Shawn Domagal-Goldman of NASA's Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity "prepare for actual contact". In their report, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, the researchers divide alien contacts into three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful.

Beneficial encounters ranged from the mere detection of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), for example through the interception of alien broadcasts, to contact with cooperative organisms that help us advance our knowledge and solve global problems such as hunger, poverty and disease. Another beneficial outcome the authors entertain sees humanity triumph over a more powerful alien aggressor, or even being saved by a second group of ETs. "In these scenarios, humanity benefits not only from the major moral victory of having defeated a daunting rival, but also from the opportunity to reverse-engineer ETI technology," the authors write. Other kinds of close encounter may be less rewarding and leave much of human society feeling indifferent towards alien life. The extraterrestrials may be too different from us to communicate with usefully. They might invite humanity to join the "Galactic Club" only for the entry requirements to be too bureaucratic and tedious for humans to bother with. They could even become a nuisance, like the stranded, prawn-like creatures that are kept in a refugee camp in the 2009 South African movie, District 9, the report explains. The most unappealing outcomes would arise if extraterrestrials caused harm to humanity, even if by accident. While aliens may arrive to eat, enslave or attack us, the report adds that people might also suffer from being physically crushed or by contracting diseases carried by the visitors. In especially unfortunate incidents, humanity could be wiped out when a more advanced civilization accidentally unleashes an unfriendly artificial intelligence, or performs a catastrophic physics experiment that renders a portion of the galaxy uninhabitable.

To bolster humanity's chances of survival, the researchers call for caution in sending signals into space, and in particular warn against broadcasting information about our biological make-up, which could be used to manufacture weapons that target humans. Instead, any contact with ETs should be limited to mathematical discourse "until we have a better idea of the type of ETI we are dealing with." The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilizations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilizations. "A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilization may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilizational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states. "Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write. Even if we never make contact with extraterrestrials, the report argues that considering the potential scenarios may help to plot the future path of human civilization, avoid collapse and achieve long-term survival.

[Honestly……? I think that alien invasion is about the least likely future scenario I can think of……]

2012-02-03T10:49:00.002Z

2012-02-03T09:43:00.001Z

2012-02-02T21:49:00.002Z

Just Finished Reading: How to Survive the Titanic or The Sinking of J Bruce Ismay by Frances Wilson

I guess that there are a number of Titanic related books coming out at the moment because the 100^th anniversary is due soon – in about 10 weeks actually. This one caught my eye mainly because my local bookshop was selling it for half price. That’s still a hefty price (being in hardback) but I thought it’d probably be worth it. I was right.

I’ve been interested in the Titanic disaster for some time. I mean who wouldn’t be, it’s just such a great story on the human level, the technological level and the cultural level (and not forgetting the mystery level too). This absolutely fascinating book concentrated on the human, the personal, level focused through the lens of one man – J Bruce Ismay. He was, at the time of the tragedy, the owner of the White Star line who managed the Titanic and her sister ship. He was also one of the few survivors who, apparently, calmly stepped into a lifeboat and never looked back. After returning to England he became a social outcast who was shunned by high society as being tantamount to a coward who should, as did the captain, the chief engineer and a great many of the crew, have gone down with the ship. Of course, as the author makes clear, he didn’t do anything wrong. According to his own testimony, and those of others, he left on one of the last boats and there was no one else in that area at that time. At the same time a famous American polo player stepped into the boat with him and disappeared from history – after being divorced by his wife for abandoning her on the Titanic itself (she survived by getting into a boat of the opposite side – with no help from her husband). The problem with Ismay, unfortunately, was that his disposition didn’t lend itself to sympathy (little of which was available in that age if men survived and women and children died in their place). Ismay had a distant seeming personality and often failed to understand the emotions of others. Because of this he came across as being indifferent to the suffering of others as well as being arrogant in his attitude to both the American and British enquiry. Worst of all, despite no accusation actually being made, he was accused of influencing the route the ship took, the speed at which it travelled (and the speed at which it subsequently hit the infamous iceberg) and the fact that it tried to limp away to arrive at New York under its own power, which was something I was completely unaware of.

Without giving too much away this was an excellent addition to the growing number of books on one of the defining incidents of the early 20^th century. Not only does the central figure of Ismay give the whole book a focus, a backbone if you will, it allows an examination not only of Edwardian attitudes to the disaster, and Ismay’s apparently shocking behaviour, but also uncovers a series of fascinating sub-stories surrounding that fateful April night in mid-Atlantic. I found the whole thing fascinating and found myself reluctant to put it down at the end of the day. I’d certainly recommend it to anyone with an even passing interest in the subject.

[As an aside I remember reading some years ago a list of the survivors and was surprised (and pleased) to discover two people with my surname on it. However, on searching an on-line database recently I discovered that both young people – aged 21 and 23 – did not in fact survive. I can’t help wondering if they were related to me. My fathers name is not exactly common (though it is apparently far more common in his native Ireland) so you never know. Maybe I should try to find out? I wonder what else it might turn up?]

2012-02-01T21:39:00.001Z

2012-02-01T07:38:00.000Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-31T21:27:00.002Z

2012-01-31T07:28:00.000Z

2012-01-30T22:15:00.000Z

My Favourite Movies: Black Hawk Down

This is a little more up to date than my last fave but still old enough to have some perspective on it. Along with my love of Westerns I’m a big fan of decent thoughtful War Stories. War can, despite all the questionable aspects surrounding it, bring out the best (though more often the worst) in people. BHD – based on the excellent account of the battle by Mark Bowden – is an example of what happens when young men, who are singularly unprepared for what happened to them, are put through the meat grinder. Inevitably the movie is a very much cut-down version of real events. Several actual people are often moulded into a single actor and incidents are told in the wrong order, enhanced for dramatic effect or missed out all together. It often needs to be remembered that we are watching a Hollywood movie here and not a documentary about contemporary events. What we see on the screen is, first and foremost, for our entertainment. All war movies come in for criticism. No matter how realistic they try to be they can never truly show both the horror and the banality of war. No matter the sentiment they will, inevitably it seems, be accused of either glorifying conflict, promoting imperialism (either political or cultural) or of being – as this movie was – racist. Sometimes it would seem you just can’t win.

But I guess Ridley Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer (yes, him again) must have been doing something right as this film won a pair of Oscars for Best Film Editing and Best Sound (now I can see why the DVD just said “Winner of 2 Oscars”) though it was at least nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Director. But what about the actual story? It takes place in Somalia in 1993 where a crushing civil war is tearing the country apart. The US decides (along with the UN) that enough is enough and sends in Delta Force and The Rangers to sort things out. The mission featured in the movie – and in far more detail in the book – is an attempt to capture senior members of the controlling militia. To that end helicopter forces drop in and start doing just that – but as everyone knows, no plan survives contact with the enemy. When a Black Hawk helicopter is shot down everything changes and the snatch becomes a rescue in hostile territory against incredible odds – with limited food, water and ammunition. Told that they would be away from their base for no more than a few hours many of the young soldiers didn’t take much of anything with them. Now trapped and running out of just about everything needed to survive they need to rely on each other to get through the night.

There are many outstanding performances in this film and I’ll highlight just a few. Josh Hartnett plays Sgt Eversmann who’s just been given his first command. Dedicated to keeping his men alive he finds the realities of combat almost too much to bear. Tom Sizemore played I think my favourite character Danny McKnight who walked across ever battlefield as if he was walking across a quiet beach or going for a stroll in his hometown. He seemed completely impervious to gunfire even when one bullet clipped his neck. Then there was Eric Banner as Hoot, a laconic member of Delta force who tries to teach Eversmann that no matter how hard he tries he can’t control events once the shooting starts.

Despite finding the last few minutes a little too ‘arty’ for my liking this was both an exciting and thoughtful modern war movie for the Call of Duty generation used to seeing US troops fighting and dying in 3^rd World countries. The combat was visceral, brutal and bloody. It certainly felt real – though I hope that I never find out just how accurately it was portrayed. Watching some of the mini-documentaries on the DVD I was amazed to discover just how much of the film was CGI. Things have certainly come a long way in putting the audience on the front line. If you’ve been put off watching this movie by some of the bad press it received on release in 2001 then don’t be. See it and make up your own mind. It certainly doesn’t glorify war and it most certainly isn’t racist.

2012-01-29T14:26:00.003Z

2012-01-29T13:32:00.002Z

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

2012-01-29T10:12:00.002Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-28T21:42:00.001Z

Bunnies....!

2012-01-28T21:39:00.002Z

NASA'S KEPLER MISSION DISCOVERS TWO PLANETS TRANSITING SAME STAR

From NASA

Aug. 26, 2010

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star. The transit signatures of two distinct planets were seen in the data for the sun-like star designated Kepler-9. The planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The discovery incorporates seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars as part of an ongoing search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. The findings will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

Kepler's ultra-precise camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet transits them. The size of the planet can be derived from these temporary dips. The distance of the planet from the star can be calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Small variations in the regularity of these dips can be used to determine the masses of planets and detect other non-transiting planets in the system.

In June, mission scientists submitted findings for peer review that identified more than 700 planet candidates in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The data included five additional candidate systems that appear to exhibit more than one transiting planet. The Kepler team recently identified a sixth target exhibiting multiple transits and accumulated enough follow-up data to confirm this multi-planet system.

"Kepler's high quality data and round-the-clock coverage of transiting objects enable a whole host of unique measurements to be made of the parent stars and their planetary systems," said Doug Hudgins, the Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists refined the estimates of the masses of the planets using observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations show Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets, and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9b lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9c has an orbit of about 38 days. By observing several transits by each planet over the seven months of data, the time between successive transits could be analyzed.

"This discovery is the first clear detection of significant changes in the intervals from one planetary transit to the next, what we call transit timing variations," said Matthew Holman, a Kepler mission scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is evidence of the gravitational interaction between the two planets as seen by the Kepler spacecraft."

In addition to the two confirmed giant planets, Kepler scientists also have identified what appears to be a third, much smaller transit signature in the observations of Kepler-9. That signature is consistent with the transits of a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in a scorching, near-sun 1.6 day-orbit. Additional observations are required to determine whether this signal is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.

[Finding more planets is always good news. The more planets out there, the more environments there are for life to emerge and evolve which increases the odds that one day either we’ll find them or they’ll find us. So, pretty cool…..]

2012-01-27T21:04:00.001Z

2012-01-27T07:33:00.002Z

2012-01-26T21:45:00.002Z

Just Finished Reading: Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy – New Life for the Undead edited by Richard Greene and K Silem Mohammad

Although I have had a long fascination with Vampires I have never really understood the interest with the walking dead (or these days the running dead). Obviously I understand that they can be seen – though the eyes of the survivors of any zombie attack - as a metaphorical triumph over death itself, I can’t see where you go after you realise this. Then again I have never been a huge fan of any of the general horror genres so my lack of interest (or maybe understanding) in watching animating corpses shuffle after the tasty living.

So it should come as no surprise that I was hoping that the majority of this book dealt with the various philosophical and culture aspects of vampirism. Not so unfortunately – or at least I thought this to begin with. Rather surprisingly I actually enjoyed the sections on zombies and ended up thinking that the subset of articles on vampires were rather dull. The zombies in question were, almost exclusively, those created by George Romero – the ‘Dead’ series of movies (none of which I’ve actually seen all the way through. Probably my favourite article in the whole book discussed the philosophical idea of zombies – rather than its cinematic variant. This is the problem of other minds – that being that because we have direct access to the thoughts of others there’s no actual way to confirm that other people have minds like you (or actually like me – because I don’t know if you actually exist as people!). You can see the problem. Other ‘people’ might respond in an appropriate manner but how can you tell if that’s just a conditioned response rather anything driven by another consciousness? Dale Jacquette discussed this in an intriguing way – by thinking about zombie gladiators. What if we could train zombies (the philosophical type not the rotting corpse type) to fight in gladiatorial contests for our entertainment? What if they looked just like us, shouted in pain just like us and bled to death just like us? But what if they only acting these things out because they never actually had minds – and we could tell that because of a tattoo on their skin ‘inked on’ as soon as their lack of consciousness was discovered. Would such contests be OK and if not why not? Probably the second interesting argument – put forward by several authors – was the socio-economic view of what zombies mean (beyond the critique of consumerism so blatant in the second (?) ‘Dead’ film with its now classic Mall scenes). Typically the vampire related articles explored the question of whether vampires are inherently evil or if good vampires (with or without a soul) can actually exist outside of the Buffy universe.

Overall, despite my initial disappointment in the lower than hoped for number of vampire related articles, I found this book to be nicely diverting. I certainly learnt quite a lot about the zombie mystique – not that it is going to encourage me to watch any of Romero’s movies anytime soon. I can look at the whole zombie genre in a different way though – be it political, economic or philosophic. Books like these are great ways of ‘doing’ philosophy without appearing to do so. If you’re either a zombie or vampire fan you’ll find something in here that will interest you – and you might just pick up the odd (and sometimes very odd) philosophical concept along the way. Recommended.

2012-01-25T21:24:00.002Z

2012-01-25T07:50:00.000Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-24T21:09:00.002Z

2012-01-24T07:22:00.002Z

2012-01-23T21:39:00.000Z

My Favourite Movies: Adventures in Babysitting

I’m on a bit of a nostalgia kick at the moment. One of the results is that I’ve been recently re-watching some of my favourite 80’s movies. Adventures in Babysitting is a creditable example of its type. Coming late to the party (1987) it had all of the elements of the teen movie that many of us grew up with. The plot, whilst basically rather silly, is a simple one. Chris Parker (played by the lovely Elisabeth Shue) has been dumped by her boyfriend and is depressed enough to accept a babysitting job despite feeling too old to do so – she’s 17. During what is expected to be a very dull evening she gets a call from her best friend who has run away from home – only to have also run out of money at the cities bus station. Feeling threatened she calls Chris to come pick her up. Torn between her duty to her friend and her responsibility to the kids she’s sitting, she decides to take them into the city with her. But after a blow-out on the freeway and the discovery of a purse left in the suburbs they become caught up in a series of increasingly bizarre events as they are chased by criminals across town in search of a very special Playboy magazine.

This to me was 98 minutes of fun. Shue was delightfully cute and quirky and even had a reasonable voice during her Blues number (which honestly has to be seen to be believed). The three kids are hardly ever annoying with the 10 year old Maia Brewton in particular giving a notable performance as a Thor obsessed pre-teen. The baddies were suitably 2 dimensional cut-outs complete with bad Italian accents and there was the obligatory romance bit between the High school senior Shue and the College student (played by George Newbern) whose party they crashed to use the bathroom. Then of course there were the clothes, those haircuts and the music all of which dripped 80’s so-called ‘style’. All in all it was often unintentionally funny and just as unintentionally evocative of a simpler and much more innocent age. Although it will never be hailed as a work of art or even as the best of its genre this is still a good example of a particular type of teen movie. It managed to push quite a few of my buttons when I first saw it 25 years ago and it still managed to do so – somewhat more gently – a few days ago.

2012-01-22T14:13:00.002Z

2012-01-22T10:46:00.002Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-21T22:11:00.002Z

2012-01-21T22:09:00.000Z

Iran's Nuclear Scientists Are Not Being Assassinated. They Are Being Murdered

by Mehdi Hasan for The Guardian

January 17, 2012

On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of

Iran

's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield. Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.

On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes." These "men on motorbikes" have been described as "assassins". But assassination is just a more polite word for murder. Indeed, our politicians and their securocrats cloak the premeditated, lawless killing of scientists in Tehran, of civilians in Waziristan, of politicians in Gaza, in an array of euphemisms: not just assassinations but terminations, targeted killings, drone strikes. Their purpose is to inure us to such state-sponsored violence against foreigners. In his acclaimed book On Killing, the retired US army officer Dave Grossman examines mechanisms that enable us not just to ignore but even cheer such killings: cultural distance ("such as racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to dehumanise the victim"); moral distance ("the kind of intense belief in moral superiority"); and mechanical distance ("the sterile, Nintendo-game unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight or some other kind of mechanical buffer that permits the killer to deny the humanity of his victim").

Thus western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals – as state-sponsored murder fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process". Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments have arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad. Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law").

An investigation by Reuters last October noted how, under the Obama administration, US citizens accused of involvement in terrorism can now be "placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions … There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate." Should "secret panels" and "kill lists" be tolerated in a liberal democracy, governed by the rule of law? Did the founders of the United States intend for its president to be judge, jury and executioner? Whatever happened to checks and balances? Or due process? Imagine the response of our politicians and pundits to a campaign of assassinations against western scientists conducted by, say, Iran or North Korea. When it comes to state-sponsored killings, the double standard is brazen. "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them," George Orwell observed, "and there is almost no kind of outrage … which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side". But how many more of our values will we shred in the name of security? Once we have allowed our governments to order the killing of fellow citizens, fellow human beings, in secret, without oversight or accountability, what other powers will we dare deny them?

This isn't complicated; there are no shades of grey here. Do we disapprove of car bombings and drive-by shootings, or not? Do we consistently condemn state-sponsored, extrajudicial killings as acts of pure terror, no matter where in the world, or on whose orders, they occur? Or do we shrug our shoulders, turn a blind eye and continue our descent into lawless barbarism?

[If this is true – and I’m cynical enough to believe that it is – then what a bloody awful indictment of our so-called democracies, when we can, apparently with a clear conscience, reach out and kill those who might be a danger to us anywhere in the world. Do we have any right to do this? Can it be justified in any other way than by saying we can do it so we will do it? Can you imagine the furore if Iranian agents killed a nuclear scientist in London or New York? In the past such things have resulted in wars or retaliatory bombings. Do we authorise such things because we know we can, at least for now, get away with them without the fear of retaliation? Can we, in all honesty, be surprised at all when a car bomb goes off in a European or even an American city to say “Look, we can do this too”? Do we REALLY want to live in a world where nations assassinate each others brightest and best in order to degrade their future ability to do us harm? If the scientists become too hard to target shall we move on to targeting top University students or the brightest kids in High school? Where do we stop in the name of security? Just how far are we willing to stoop?]

2012-01-20T16:48:00.001Z

2012-01-20T07:25:00.002Z

2012-01-19T21:49:00.002Z

Just Finished Reading: The Secret Life of Bletchley Park – The WWII Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women who worked there by Sinclair McKay

What happened in Bletchley Park during WWII was one of Britain’s best kept secrets. Indeed the work carried out there remained a secret until the late 1970’s. For decades after the war friends and even partners of people who worked there, including rather surprisingly partners who actually met there, never knew the full story of its groundbreaking efforts in combating first the Germans and then the Japanese. It is widely believed that the famous breaking of the German military Enigma Code shortened the war by at least two years. Some authorities believe that the figure could be as high as five years. The significance of this result cannot be overstated. The codes broken in this most secret of places allowed Allied shipping to avoid U-boat attacks thereby allowing vital food and supplies to get to England to sustain her war effort. Without it the possibility exists that we may have lost the Battle of the Atlantic and have had to capitulate, leaving the US to fight alone.

What is almost as remarkable is the way the Park was set-up and operated and the kind of people who worked there. Initially it was a very British affair – when some very bright people managed to convince the military authorities that a modern code breaking service was needed. When the government turned out to be reluctant to provide the money it is rumoured that a wealthy senior naval officer bought the house himself and gave it to the Admiralty department staffed by many of his friends. The first recruits were largely made up of friends of friends and came from the higher echelons of society – in other words the ‘right set’ who were assumed to be loyal merely because of their social position. It was, in many ways, a very different world back then. Of course they needed academics too and these were recruited, again by word of mouth and private recommendations, from the great Universities of the land. Amongst them was the great Alan Turing who was instrumental in laying the foundations of the modern computer age.

The ultimate triumph of the breaking of the various Enigma Codes, despite its ramifications, is told here on a very human scale. Before the invention of the earliest computers it was human brain power exercised over long hours that chipped away at the German secrets. But as the war progressed and the numbers at Bletchley Park ballooned it became necessary to industrialise the process of cracking codes. This is where the technical genius of groundbreaking engineering ideas came to the fore which led, through necessity, to the invention of the world’s first computers. This in itself is a fascinating story. What the author brings home to the reader, through interviews with many of the people who worked there, is the human side of things. How they coped with the pressures when they knew that delays in code breaking cost lives and how many of them coped with being away from home for the very first time without the safety valve of talking about their work to anyone else. It reminded both myself and the author of going away to University – helped along by the fact that many of the senior code breakers where well known academics in their own fields – with the added elements of secrecy and inner knowledge of doing vital war work. It is, in many ways, a fascinating story of hardworking people doing incredible things in very difficult times. Recommended.

2012-01-18T21:08:00.002Z

2012-01-18T07:28:00.003Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-17T21:38:00.002Z

What a brilliant idea....!

2012-01-17T07:26:00.002Z

2012-01-16T21:39:00.000Z

The Best Books of 2011

I reviewed 71 books in 2011. These below are the best of the bunch.

Non-Fiction:

Bluestockings – The remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education by Jane Robinson

Jane’s Fame – How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman

The Resistance – The French Fight against the Nazis by Matthew Cobb

The Planet in a Pebble – A Journey into Earth’s Deep History by Jan Zalasiewicz

The Buried Soul – How Humans Invented Death by Timothy Taylor

Fiction:

Heart of the Comet by David Brin and Gregory Benford

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Ship of Rome by John Stack

A Gentle Axe by R N Morris

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Sharpe’s Trafalger by Bernard Cornwell

Emma by Jane Austen

Captain of Rome by John Stack

Destroyermen - Maelstrom by Taylor Anderson

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

The Sword of Albion by Mark Chadbourn

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Honourable Mentions: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Blood and Ice by Robert Masello, Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

2012-01-15T15:23:00.002Z

2012-01-15T11:18:00.002Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-14T21:26:00.002Z

2012-01-14T17:28:00.000Z

The Perils of 2012: When Austerity Bites Back

by Joseph Stiglitz

Friday, January 13, 2012

The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope. President John F. Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts had been lifted far higher, but also that many of the smaller boats had been dashed to pieces in their wake. In that brief moment when the rising tide was indeed rising, millions of people believed that they might have a fair chance of realizing the “American Dream.” Now those dreams, too, are receding. By 2011, the savings of those who had lost their jobs in 2008 or 2009 had been spent. Unemployment checks had run out. Headlines announcing new hiring – still not enough to keep pace with the number of those who would normally have entered the labor force – meant little to the 50 year olds with little hope of ever holding a job again. Indeed, middle-aged people who thought that they would be unemployed for a few months have now realized that they were, in fact, forcibly retired. Young people

who graduated from college with tens of thousands of dollars of education debt cannot find any jobs at all. People who moved in with friends and relatives have become homeless. Houses bought during the property boom are still on the market or have been sold at a loss. More than seven million American families have lost their homes.

The dark underbelly of the previous decade’s financial boom has been fully exposed in Europe as well. Dithering over Greece and key national governments’ devotion to austerity began to exact a heavy toll last year. Contagion spread to Italy. Spain’s unemployment, which had been near 20% since the beginning of the recession, crept even higher. The unthinkable – the end of the euro – began to seem like a real possibility. This year is set to be even worse. It is possible, of course, that the United States will solve its political problems and finally adopt the stimulus measures that it needs to bring down unemployment to 6% or 7% (the pre-crisis level of 4% or 5% is too much to hope for). But this is as unlikely as it is that Europe will figure out that austerity alone will not solve its problems. On the contrary, austerity will only exacerbate the economic slowdown. Without growth, the debt crisis – and the euro crisis – will only worsen. And the long crisis that began with the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 and the subsequent recession will continue. Moreover, the major emerging-market countries, which steered successfully through the storms of 2008 and 2009, may not cope as well with the problems looming on the horizon. Brazil’s growth has already stalled, fueling anxiety among its neighbors in Latin America.

Meanwhile, long-term problems – including climate change and other environmental threats, and increasing inequality in most countries around the world – have not gone away. Some have grown more severe. For example, high unemployment has depressed wages and increased poverty. The good news is that addressing these long-term problems would actually help to solve the short-term problems. Increased investment to retrofit the economy for global warming would help to stimulate economic activity, growth, and job creation. More progressive taxation, in effect redistributing income from the top to the middle and bottom, would simultaneously reduce inequality and increase employment by boosting total demand. Higher taxes at the top could generate revenues to finance needed public investment, and to provide some social protection for those at the bottom, including the unemployed. Even without widening the fiscal deficit, such “balanced budget” increases in taxes and spending would lower unemployment and increase output. The worry, however, is that politics and ideology on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially in the US, will not allow any of this to occur. Fixation on the deficit will induce cutbacks in social spending, worsening inequality. Likewise, the enduring attraction of supply-side economics, despite all of the evidence against it (especially in a period in which there is high unemployment), will prevent raising taxes at the top.

Even before the crisis, there was a rebalancing of economic power – in fact, a correction of a 200-year historical anomaly, in which Asia’s share of global GDP fell from nearly 50% to, at one point, below 10%. The pragmatic commitment to growth that one sees in Asia and other emerging markets today stands in contrast to the West’s misguided policies, which, driven by a combination of ideology and vested interests, almost seem to reflect a commitment not to grow. As a result, global economic rebalancing is likely to accelerate, almost inevitably giving rise to political tensions. With all of the problems confronting the global economy, we will be lucky if these strains do not begin to manifest themselves within the next twelve months.

[It looks like we’ll be living through ‘interesting times’ for a little while longer. I do sometimes wonder if things will ever get back to normal or if this is the beginning of a substantial change in the ways of the world. I guess only time will tell.]

2012-01-13T18:08:00.002Z

2012-01-13T07:29:00.002Z

2012-01-12T21:55:00.000Z

Just Finished Reading: Fairyland by Paul J McAuley

Alex Sharkey is in trouble – deep trouble. Unable to pay his protection to the local Mob boss and being threatened by the police to provide evidence against him he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. But then the Mob boss offers him a way to pay off all of his debt in one go. Jumping at the deal Alex agrees to bio-engineer a synthetic hormone that turns sexless artificial dolls into fully functional fairies. This is the world of mid-21^st Century Europe where nano-technology and bio-engineering has allowed anyone with the necessary equipment to produce tailored viruses capable of just about anything. It is a world where a company enhanced child tricks Sharkey into producing the first of a new race capable of its own reproduction, a race just as smart as man in many ways but without moral scruple. Travelling across a barely recognisable Europe Alex tries to put the genie back in the bottle the he and Milena released. But she has other plans both for her co-creation and for Alex.

This is both a very good and seriously strange novel. It is also one of the best almost-cyberpunk novels I’ve read. Concentrating on the impact of biotechnology, rather that computer technology, it considers what would happen if tomorrow’s hackers could hack the genome of any creature they have access to – including humanity itself. Where hackers, rather than hiding in their bedrooms breaking into computers on the other side of the world, break into the double helix in their bathrooms and produce viruses who function are only limited by their imaginations. It is both a deeply disturbing and fascinating world picture and certainly one I would not like to live in – though I suspect people living 100+ years ago would find our present day reality equally horrifying!

I’ve read a few of McAuley’s works now and have been singularly impressed by his power to create fully realised believable characters living in deeply complex rich worlds. Not only did I recognise places mentioned both in London and Paris I was shocked by how different they had ‘become’ in the future and no matter how strange things got – and they got very strange from time to time – the incidents in the book were always believable. The only thing I would have to recommend you do with this book is approach it with a very open mind. I have been reading SF now for over 30 years and this still managed to really mess with my head. SF, even after all that time, is still by far my mind altering drug of choice and books like this one are the LSD of the SF world. One more thing: this book is not for the faint of heart or the easily disturbed. I think of myself as very open-minded about most things but I have to admit that this book did manage to raise a few eyebrows here and there. It’s often violent, contains some graphic sex and some definitely disturbing images. It is however very well written and very thought provoking. If you feel in the mood to really blow your mind then I can heartily recommend this book to do that for you.

2012-01-11T21:34:00.001Z

2012-01-11T07:31:00.000Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-10T21:15:00.003Z

2012-01-10T07:24:00.001Z

2012-01-09T22:29:00.000Z

My Favourite TV: Firefly

Those of you who read my Blog on a regular basis will know that I spent a pleasant New Years watching the 2002 SF series Firefly. I could do this in one day – actually in about 12 hours with a few breaks - because they only made 14 episodes. Oddly when I first saw it I couldn’t understand why it lasted that long.

A bit of background might help here. I was, and still am, a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When I heard that its creator, Joss Whedon, was working on another show and that it was going to be SF I was already signed up to the area. When it finally arrived I was shocked. I mean… cowboys in space, dressed like cowboys, acting like cowboys, talking like cowboys…. In the future? What was that all about? But because I really liked the creator I gave it enough time to make an impact on me. At episode 4 or 5 I gave up and wrote it off as a turkey. By the sounds of it, as it was axed half way through the first series, I wasn’t alone in my assessment. It was just too damned strange and a little too different to work properly.

Then, as with Stargate: Atlantis, I caught the inevitable re-runs and then I watched the re-runs after that and fell in love with this quirky misunderstood gem of a TV show. It’s strange looking back on it that I loved the show later for what I disliked about it the first time around. I really started to love the mix of genres and realised that it really did work. Space, or at least that bit of space in the series, was the Wild West complete with frontier towns and Indians in the shape of Reavers (scary, scary stuff!) There are soldiers who lost a kind of Civil War despite being on the ‘right side’ – it didn’t take much of a leap to see them as the remnants of the Confederacy and the victorious Alliance as the Union who are technologically strong but morally weak. I’m sure that an expert on the Civil War period and just after could draw all kinds of parallels. Of course what really made this show so special in my mind was the cast and, more importantly, how they acted together as a group. From episode one it seemed that the crew of the spaceship Serenity had known each other for years. It felt right. The unspoken history was there, some of which we found out about later, the usually unspoken tensions were there too as they would be in any group.

Of course it did the show no harm in my eyes that it was packed with very attractive women. My favourite (difficult as it was to pick just one) had to be the brilliantly natural engineer Kaylee played by the beautiful Jewel Staite. I loved the way she talked as much as the way she looked. Then there was the captain’s love interest Inara played by the very sultry Morena Baccarin. Inara was a high class, high cost prostitute or, as the captain repeatedly called her, a whore. Plain speaking about such things was a central aspect of the show. They really didn’t beat about the bush on adult issues. Next in line was Zoe played by Gina Torres, wife of the pilot Alan Tudyk. She played the ships second in command and was in the captains unit during the war. Lastly was River Tam, a young girl hunted by top Alliance operatives because of what she knows and what she can do. River was played by the disturbingly excellent Summer Glau. Probably the character I identified with most was the captain himself – Malcolm Reynolds played by Nathan Fillion. He played a man of honour in a universe largely without any, a man on the raggedy edge with little to lose except his crew, his ship and his self respect. I liked him a lot.

With only 14 episodes to work with we didn’t really learn that much about the characters themselves or about the worlds they inhabited. What we did learn was enough to unfold in a half dozen series. Cut short (even with a later movie filling in some of the background detail) we never learnt what Shepherd Book was before he became a Shepherd. We never had closure with Mal and Inara. That will they won’t they thing could have lasted years! As could the maybe/maybe not relationship between the doctor (River’s older brother) and Kaylee. We could also have found out far more about the Alliance and just how those guys with the blue gloves fitted into things. So many questions we’ll never know the answers to now.

If you’re either a fan of SF, Buffy, Joss Whedon or Westerns this might be the thing for you – if you haven’t already seen it. It is weird so you might not ‘get it’ the first time. But its only 14 episodes so you’ll be able to watch it a few times in a month or so. After repeated exposure you will (probably) begin to love it as much as I do. It’s a real, real shame that it was canned so early and that the movie didn’t do very well at the box-office. It was, I suspect just a bit too quirky and different to be popular. I for one know how that feels which is probably why I’m such a fan.

2012-01-08T14:54:00.002Z

2012-01-08T09:23:00.002Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-07T17:37:00.000Z

Kids: Teach them to love books and give them a cat........

2012-01-07T17:31:00.000Z

US Had 'Frighteningly Simplistic' View of Afghanistan, says McChrystal

by Declan Walsh for The Guardian

Friday, October 7, 2011

One of America's most celebrated generals has issued a harsh indictment of his country's campaign in Afghanistan on the 10th anniversary of the invasion to topple the Taliban. Stanley McChrystal said the US and Nato were only 50% of the way to achieving their goals in Afghanistan. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP The US began the war with a "frighteningly simplistic" view of Afghanistan, the retired general Stanley McChrystal said, and even now the military lacks sufficient local knowledge to bring the conflict to an end.

The US and NATO are only "50% of the way" towards achieving their goals in

Afghanistan

, he told the Council on Foreign Relations. "We didn't know enough and we still don't know enough. Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years." McChrystal led the Obama administration's "surge" strategy that started in 2009 and sent US troop levels in Afghanistan to more than 100,000. Widely acknowledged as a gifted military commander, he was forced to resign last year amid controversy over remarks he made to Rolling Stone magazine. The 10th anniversary of the war, marked on Friday, has prompted sober reflection in the US about a conflict that has passed Vietnam as the military's longest war. Just over 2,750 foreign troops have been killed – 28% of them in Helmand – while between 14,000 and 18,000 civilians have died as a result of fighting, according to various estimates. Yet although the US entered Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden and topple the Taliban, its most prominent targets quickly slipped across the border into Pakistan. The al-Qaida leader was discovered in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, last May, while the Taliban have used remote border bases in Pakistan's tribal areas to launched a stiff resurgence.

In his comments on Thursday night, McChrystal also indirectly criticized the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, saying it made success in Afghanistan more difficult to achieve. The invasion "changed the Muslim world's view of

America

's effort", he said. "When we went after the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, there was a certain understanding that we had the ability and the right to defend ourselves and the fact that al-Qaida had been harbored by the Taliban was legitimate. I think when we made the decision to go into

Iraq

that was less legitimate [in the eyes of the Muslim world]." The 10th anniversary has also been marked in downbeat fashion in Afghanistan where talk of US-driven "nation building" has largely evaporated. Despite $57bn in international aid since 2001, aid agencies say most people remain mired in deep poverty. "There has been some important progress, especially in urban areas," said Anne Garella of Acbar, an umbrella group of 111 foreign and local aid agencies. "But our research highlights the gap behind positive rhetoric and grim reality." An Acbar study found that 80% of Afghans now have access to health services compared with 9% in 2001. The number of children in school has rocketed from barely one million a decade ago, 5,000 of them girls, to seven million today, one third of whom are girls. But Afghanistan still has been some of the world's worst health indicators due to shoddy facilities, conflict and official corruption. Afghans have grown highly skeptical of western aid over the years, with a widespread perception – partly well founded – that much of the money finds its way back to western countries through security costs and inflated expatriate wages.

But the greatest worry for most Afghans now is the consequence of the US drawdown planned for the end of 2014, which will see the vast majority of 150,000 foreign troops leave the country. The American plan is to hand power to the shaky Karzai-led government, which is plagued by corruption and enjoys diminishing credibility. McChrystal said that building a legitimate government that ordinary Afghans believed in, and which could serve as a counterweight to the Taliban, was among the greatest challenges facing US forces. Efforts are under way to bolster the government's authority. NATO says it will have trained 325,000 Afghan soldiers by January 2015, and the US is likely to continue financial support, although exact levels have yet to be decided. But rising ethnic and political tensions could destabilize the country before then. And plans to bring the Taliban to peace talks were hit by the assassination of Karzai's main peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani, last month.

[Maybe the 'Frighteningly Simplistic' or indeed dangerously simplistic view of Afghanistan has something to do with the apparently simplistic US view of the rest of the world? From what I’ve heard of the views of leading US politicians and military men this certainly seems to be the case. What is worse is that the people at the top don’t seem to be learning the reasons behind military and diplomatic failures. You cannot simply view your ‘enemies’ as rabid, evil men bent on your destruction for completely irrational reasons and prevail against them. To fight an enemy successfully you have first and foremost to understand them. Without such an understanding any conflict is doomed to last years longer than it should and probably end in failure. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are classic examples of this and should be held up as such.]

2012-01-06T16:28:00.002Z

2012-01-06T07:44:00.002Z

2012-01-05T22:00:00.002Z

Just Finished Reading: Full Circle – How the Classical World came back to us by Ferdinand Mount

I remember seeing this ages ago in hardback and thinking that it looked vaguely interesting. So when I recently had some money – actually some vouchers from work – to spend I treated myself to the paperback. The author had an remarkable premise – that we are returning to a world that our ancient Greek and Roman ancestors would understand. In many ways, at least according to the author, we are coming full circle, after a 2000 year detour, back to a pagan world. Why you may ask: Simply because of the decline of Christianity especially in Western Europe. Where Christianity declines, he proposes, the natural pagan virtues return as if the intervening millennia had not existed. We are, he seems to be saying, deeply pagan at heart.

It’s an interesting idea – even if not wholly convincing. He starts, rather oddly I thought, by discussing public baths. Big in the classical world they declined heavily after Christianity became the empire-wide religion of choice. Because, he maintains, the new Christians either denigrated the body or thought physical pleasure of any kind unseemly or irrelevant. But the baths never really went away (surviving in the Eastern Empire as Turkish baths) and where reintroduced by, of all people, the Victorians. Their numbers have been steadily growing ever since. Likewise Gym culture which was hugely popular in pre-Christian times. Today even the smallest of towns has at least one gym if not more. This re-engagement with the body beautiful (something again seen as almost unthinkable until fairly recently) has become pervasive as our culture surrounds itself with sexual imagery and is reflected in the belief that virtually ‘anything goes’ between consenting adults. Again these are, the author contends, pagan attitudes rather than Christian ones. Another part of the sensual spectrum is reflected in our obsession with the food we cook, eat and talk about. Foodies are no longer viewed with suspicion but given their own TV shows and best selling books (and the ear of governments).

But I’m not going to attempt to précis the entire book. The arguments the author makes and the evidence he uses to back them up has an impressive range although some links back to antiquity are a bit of a stretch. He is, for instance, too liberal with his interpretation of Greco-Roman science in comparison to today. The Greek idea of atoms, for example, was as far as I understand it not exactly analogous to our own ideas and hardly widely accepted at the time. They might have been groping towards an idea we might recognise but, like their ideas on Evolution, it was a speculation amongst many without any real evidence to back it up.

Overall though this was an interesting argument well presented which made me look at things I consider to be very modern with different eyes. It seems that we are not as forward looking as it first appears. It also underlies, at least theoretically, that our default mind-set (once Christianity has withdrawn enough) is a deeply pagan one. Maybe the Christianity out culture lived through was nothing more than a thin coat of paint applied to a pagan statue. As the paint flaked off over the centuries the pagan statue begins to emerge in all its sensual glory. It’s most certainly an entertaining thought. Recommended.

2012-01-04T21:40:00.000Z

2012-01-04T07:26:00.002Z

Cartoon Time.

2012-01-03T21:54:00.000Z

A Sign of the true Bibliophile

2012-01-03T07:12:00.000Z

2012-01-02T17:44:00.000Z

Christmas & New Years DVDs

2011 was the year when I almost stopped watching TV. Weekday mornings I have it on when I’m getting ready for work to catch up on news and current events. In the evening I watch the news (again) and some of whatever catches my eye for a half hour or so before gaming time. Weekends I don’t watch TV at all from when I get home on Friday afternoon till Monday morning when I get up for work. This Christmas and New Year break has been no exception with the TV being on only to watch DVDs at any point in the last 17 days. If I wasn’t such a movie fan I might even consider not having a TV at all. I really don’t think I’d miss it all that much. But with a stack of DVDs to watch and plenty of time to watch them I most certainly made serious inroads to the pile stacked in front of the TV. They where (in chronological order):

There Will be Blood

The Breakfast Club

Weird Science

Black Swan

Pale Rider

Déjà Vu

The Runaways

The Outlaw Josey Wales

Emma

Mr Nobody

Unforgiven

I also finished off Season 4 of Futurama, saw Puss in Boots at the cinema and watched the first episode of the ITV classic Inspector Morse detective series. I tried, and failed, to watch Blue Valentine only managing to sit through 50 minutes (after two attempts) before giving up. Oh, and I watched all 14 episodes of Firefly back-to-back on New Years Eve just because I could. So numbers wise it wasn’t not too bad though I couldn’t help but be disappointed with the overall quality. Maybe I’ll have better luck with new movies in 2012 – but I’m not exactly holding my breath here.

2012-01-01T15:41:00.003Z

2012-01-01T10:03:00.002Z

Cartoon Time.

2011-12-31T21:56:00.002Z

I have a feeling that this just won't catch on.......

2011-12-31T19:39:00.000Z

2011 is UK's second warmest year on record - Met Office

From The BBC

30 December 2011

This year was the second warmest on record for the

, the Met Office says. Provisional figures show that only 2006, with an average temperature of 9.73C (49.5F), was warmer than 2011's average temperature of 9.62C (49.3F). This year saw high temperatures for lengthy periods; including the warmest April and spring on record, the second warmest autumn and the warmest October day. Early figures suggest 2011 is ending with a "close to average" December. The Met Office said its figures were a mean temperature taken over day and night.

John Prior, national climate manager at the Met Office, said: "While it may have felt mild for many so far this December, temperatures overall have been close to what we would expect. It may be that the stark change from last year, which was the coldest December on record for the

, has led many to think it has been unseasonably warm." All bar one of the top 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997 and all the UK's top seven warmest years happened in the past decade. The warmest temperature recorded this year was 33.1C (91.5F) on Monday 27 June at Gravesend in Kent. The Met Office said it was the warmest temperature recorded in the UK for five years. Apart from January, the other months that had below-average temperatures were June, July and August.

Gravesend was the location for the warmest October temperature ever, when 29.9C (85.8F) was recorded on 1 October, beating the previous record of 29.4C (84.9F) in the Cambridgeshire town of March on the same day in 1985. The coldest temperature was -13C (8.6F) at Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands on 8 January, while the strongest gust of wind was 165mph (265.5kph), recorded at the highest point of the Cairngorms mountain range on 8 December.

[This doesn’t stop Global Warming being a Myth of course…. [laughs]]

2011-12-30T18:17:00.002Z

2011-12-30T14:31:00.002Z

2011-12-30T11:29:00.001Z

Just Finished Reading: Valentine's Resolve by E E Knight

In 2075 Earth is under new management. For over 50 years the alien Kurians have ruled with an iron fist and an insatiable lust for blood. They are effectively immortal, living in high places around the world they send out their Reapers to gather the life force of their human subjects to enhance their own. But for years now a human resistance has been growing. Winning small victories here and there they finally seem to be turning the tide. With the aid of Lifeweavers, who have enhanced the innate capabilities of some humans such as Valentine himself, they have taken the fight to the hated enemy.

But now Valentine is on his own. Abandoned by Southern Command he pursues his own agenda striking at Quislings working for the Kurian Order. However, when he is apparently captured by a special unit he thinks his days are finally numbered. But it is not to be. The ‘unit’ is made of serving Southern Command soldiers who offer him reinstatement if he accepts a covert mission from them: Travel to Seattle where a new force is successfully pushing back the territorial ambitions of one of the worlds most feared Kurians. Valentine’s mission is to join this new army and to discover its secret and to confirm the existence of a Lifeweaver amongst them – possibly the last of its breed. But as usual in a world turned upside down not everything is exactly like it seems.

This is a welcome return to form after the disappointing Valentine’s Exile. I suppose that after 6 books in a series it’s difficult to maintain the required focus and forward momentum. But the lacklustre Exile seems to have been a wobble (or quite possibly the fact that I wasn’t really in the mood at that time for another Vampire Earth novel). I found Resolve to be a more tightly scripted affair than its predecessor which certainly helped. The format (or formula) was a familiar one. We didn’t learn a whole lot more about the new world – except regarding Kurian death games and in-fighting and the rather surprising remnant of human government living deep undergrownd. We were presented with a few more mysteries regarding the apparent demise of the Lifeweavers (which I suspect are simply a different faction of Kurian) and interesting hints that the invasion of Earth was part of a much larger attack on other now Kurian occupied worlds – which of course opens up literally whole other worlds of possibilities. There are also hints of a reuniting of Valentine with his alien side-kick who apparently died in a previous novel. These things are never exactly great works of literature and should never be viewed as such. This was however an entertaining enough novel to keep me interesting in the next volume and, probably, the next 2-3 after that. Reasonable.

2011-12-28T21:59:00.002Z

2011-12-28T11:26:00.000Z

Cartoon Time.

2011-12-27T14:11:00.002Z

2011-12-27T09:19:00.002Z

2011-12-26T22:06:00.000Z

My Favourite Movies: Déjà vu

My regular readers will realise that I’m a big fan of films starring Denzil Washington and an equally big fan of clever well thought out movies. In Déjà vu we have an excellent example of both.

Seemingly we are, at first, presented with a by the numbers Jerry Bruckheimer visual spectacular. But the fact that the movie is directed by Tony Scott should hint that something more than explosions and clever camera effects will be forthcoming. In the opening sequences we see a New Orleans ferry filling with hundreds of Navy personnel and their families on the way to a celebration. Before they travel too far down the river there is a huge explosion and the ferry sinks with a large loss of life. It is very soon obvious that this was no accident and that terrorism is involved. Enter ATF officer Doug Carlin played by Denzil Washington. We see him investigate the crime scene before being pulled away on an apparently unconnected death of a young black woman identified as Claire Kuchever played by Paula Patton. While trying to understand how her death firs in with the unfolding tragedy he is approached by FBI Agent Paul Pryzwarra played by Val Kilmer. He is the head of a new Task Force set up to investigate such events and wants Carlin to join the team as a local expert. Carlin quickly discovers that the new Task Forces technology is not exactly as advertised. Let in on the secret he is told that scientists working on optics at NASA accidentally discovered a way to see back in time. Although though limited in range – both in distance terms and in time – this could be a valuable tool in the war on terror. But they need to know where to look. Carlin decides to look into the life of Claire Kuchever during the 4 day window prior to her death and the attack on the ferry. As he learns more about Clire’s life he realises two things – he is beginning to discover that she can sense them watching her and he is starting to fall in love with her. When he asks if any information could be sent back to notify the authorities of the upcoming attack he is given an ambiguous answer. But the more fundamental question remains completely unknown: Can you change the past and if you can what then happens to the present?

Even without the time-travel aspects this would have been a very creditable police thriller. With those aspects added in it knocked it out of the park for me. I’m a sucker for a good cinematic portrayal of time-travel (even if its just viewing the past as it happens) and this was a very good example of that. My favourite bit – without spoiling things too much – is a ‘car chase’ along a freeway where Carlin chases the suspects car ‘now’ but also 4 days in the past using a head-mounted unit to see where he was and what he did. That to me was very clever indeed and very dramatic. All in all this was a gripping police thriller, a race against time and with more that a little SF thrown in for good measure. Good acting throughout along with high drama and rather inventive camera work add spice as well as a host of other aspects to admire. If you missed this at the cinema back in 2006 I’d recommend you fix that oversight as soon as you can. I’ve watched it three times now and have enjoyed it just as much on each viewing. Enjoy.

2011-12-25T20:35:00.002Z

2011-12-25T17:10:00.002Z

Cartoon Time.

2011-12-25T09:58:00.002Z

Merry Christmas everyone! I do hope that you got something nice in your stockings this morning.....

2011-12-24T17:29:00.002Z

Is it Christmas yet....?

2011-12-24T14:12:00.002Z

NASA MARS ROVER FINDS MINERAL VEIN DEPOSITED BY WATER

From NASA

Dec. 7, 2011

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water. Analysis of the vein will help improve understanding of the history of wet environments on Mars.

"This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Opportunity. "This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it. That can't be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It's not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it's the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs." The latest findings by Opportunity were presented Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco.

The vein examined most closely by Opportunity is about the width of a human thumb (0.4 to 0.8 inch), 16 to 20 inches long, and protrudes slightly higher than the bedrock on either side of it. Observations by the durable rover reveal this vein and others like it within an apron surrounding a segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater. None like it were seen in the 20 miles (33 kilometers) of crater-pocked plains that Opportunity explored for 90 months before it reached Endeavour, nor in the higher ground of the rim. Last month, researchers used the Microscopic Imager and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on the rover's arm and multiple filters of the Panoramic Camera on the rover's mast to examine the vein, which is informally named "Homestake." The spectrometer identified plentiful calcium and sulfur, in a ratio pointing to relatively pure calcium sulfate.

Calcium sulfate can exist in many forms, varying by how much water is bound into the minerals' crystalline structure. The multi-filter data from the camera suggest gypsum, a hydrated calcium sulfate. On Earth, gypsum is used for making drywall and plaster of Paris. Observations from orbit have detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

"It is a mystery where the gypsum sand on northern Mars comes from," said Opportunity science-team member Benton Clark of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "At Homestake, we see the mineral right where it formed. It will be important to see if there are deposits like this in other areas of Mars." The Homestake deposit, whether gypsum or another form of calcium sulfate, likely formed from water dissolving calcium out of volcanic rocks. The minerals combined with sulfur either leached from the rocks or introduced as volcanic gas, and was deposited as calcium sulfate into an underground fracture that later became exposed at the surface.

Throughout Opportunity's long traverse across Mars' Meridiani plain, the rover has driven over bedrock composed of magnesium, iron and calcium sulfate minerals that also indicate a wet environment billions of years ago. The highly concentrated calcium sulfate at Homestake could have been produced in conditions more neutral than the harshly acidic conditions indicated by the other sulfate deposits observed by Opportunity. "It could have formed in a different type of water environment, one more hospitable for a larger variety of living organisms," Clark said.

Homestake and similar-looking veins appear in a zone where the sulfate-rich sedimentary bedrock of the plains meets older, volcanic bedrock exposed at the rim of Endeavour. That location may offer a clue about their origin. "We want to understand why these veins are in the apron but not out on the plains," said the mission's deputy principal investigator, Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis. "The answer may be that rising groundwater coming from the ancient crust moved through material adjacent to Cape York and deposited gypsum, because this material would be relatively insoluble compared with either magnesium or iron sulfates."

Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of extended missions and made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity continues exploring, currently heading to a sun-facing slope on the northern end of the Endeavour rim fragment called "Cape York" to keep its solar panels at a favorable angle during the mission's fifth Martian winter. NASA launched the next-generation Mars rover, the car-sized Curiosity, on Nov. 26. It is slated for arrival at the planet's Gale Crater in August 2012.

[If water flowed on the surface of Mars for long enough it might, just might, have been around long enough for life to emerge within it…. And if that life was around for long enough to evolve diversity some of it might have survived the drying conditions by, possibly, living below the surface. Mars might not be as dead as it looks at first sight. As our probes become more numerous and more sophisticated maybe one day [soon?] they will stumble upon definitive proof of life. Here’s hoping!]

2011-12-23T13:39:00.001Z

Because nothing says Christmas quite like handguns....... [rotflmao]

2011-12-23T10:12:00.002Z

2011-12-22T17:31:00.002Z

The Winter Solstice at last...... Longer days ahead.................................. [grin]