Adam Curtis has a new series coming out soon

Its about computers and their affects on our everyday lives. Watch a trailer here.

Looks good, but its an Adam Curtis documentary, of course it looks good.

Aliens tech is now real.

We have long known that monstrous parasitic alien lifeforms with acid for blood exist but now the other half of James Cameron's 1986 classic is starting to be realised. Helmet cams were used by US Special forces so Obama could watch, allegedly only until the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden started, yeah just like you told your mother you'd change the channel if the film got too violent or rude.

To be fair I don't think helmet cams themselves are too new, I'm pretty sure they were proposed for British Police a few years ago but it all went quiet, the coppers are fine with CCTV but something that records their own actions on duty is somehow much less worthy in their view. But the way the system of transmitting via WiFi back to a helicopter (much like the APC in Aliens) and then up to a satellite and command is really close to how the film portrayed it.

Tune in next time for more trenchant examinations of how I think something in real life is similar to a film!

We support such charmers.

Not an indepth post but I was just reading the BBC website's monthly column of obituaries for more obscure people (yes the hallmark of adulthood that is the greater interest in obituaries has hit me) and the first lady of the South Vietnamese regime that was the US puppet until support was switched to a military junta in 1963 has recently died, heres her summary:

Dubbed by her opponents as a latter-day Lucrezia Borgia, Madame Nhu was one of South Asia's most powerful women. She was effectively the first lady of South Vietnam between 1955 and 1963 during the regime of her unmarried brother, Ngo Dinh Diem. She also participated in the nepotism and corruption that was a feature of his presidency, giving government positions to her relatives and living a luxurious lifestyle. She became famous both for her glamorous appearances in figure-hugging clothes and her drive to outlaw abortion and make adultery and divorce illegal. She also attempted to ban beauty pageants, musical entertainment and boxing matches. She was widely condemned for her dismissive attitude to Buddhist monks who had begun setting fire to themselves in public as a protest against Diem's repression of their religion. Her offer to bring fuel and matches to the self-immolations alienated even her own family and, more importantly, undermined American support for the Diem regime. Her power abruptly ended in 1963 when Diem was assassinated, and she was forced into exile in France.

Seriously where do we dig these loonies up from? The article, which cover a lot of more benign figures can be found here.

BBC Newsman takes blaming the victim to a new low.

In essence a BBC News presenter accused a severely disabled man of provoking and posing a threat to the police and thus justifying them forcibly removing him from his wheelchair twice during a protest. Jody McIntyre stood up to the absurd questioning very well but jeez those questions should not have been asked by anyone with any kind of grasp of reality.



To better understand why this happened I suggest two older posts:

Firstly Noam Chomsky explaining to another BBC man of a very similar mode to the above asshole interviewer about the propaganda model. Note Andrew Marr's reactions and how that thinking might well lead to how Ben Brown behaved above.

Secondly Mark Ames' coverage of anti-IMF protests in 2000. Note the media reactions and behaviour to that situation and the inherent similarities.

Weekend Watch

This is a new feature that is neither innovative nor requiring effort on my part so maybe, just maybe, I'll keep up with it. As you may well be able to infer this feature is about encouraging you to watch worthwhile stuff, generally documentaries and lectures. At least for now I'll try to alternate between the two. For the next three weeks we'll be watching babby's first geopolitics aka The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis. A three part documentary about the similarities between the rise to prominence of the Neo-conservative and Islamist movements.

This is part one.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1320822957676559056#

I highly recommend you watch it if you haven't before.

Your knowledge of salaries.

BBC Radio 4 have made a fun little quiz where you look at 12 jobs and see how much you think they're paids and how much they should be paid then you get to see their actual salary. Worth the five minutes it takes, especially for the salary comparison you see if you do all 12.

BBC is pretty sexist.

Yeah, shes really pretty so you'd probs be safe to assume she spends all her time thinking about shoes or handbags or something but shes actually capable of carrying out proper people stuff!

From here.

The rest of the article is standard panic mongering about why we should be terrified Russia is still conducting espionage in rival nations. Something we would never do.