Leaked UK government plan to create “Pirate Finder General”
Boing Boing reports on information it has received from someone very close to the Labour Party on the forthcoming copyright proposal.
“What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anythingwithout Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright.
This is as bad as I’ve ever seen, folks. It’s a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.
This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.”
Full article over at Boing Boing
Demon Spirits Tax Thai Airport
Twelve large statues of demon spirits are being moved to new positions in Thailand’s main international airport. But it is not clear if the reason lies in aesthetics or superstition.
Officials say the 6m (20ft) figures, modelled on statues found in the grounds of the Royal Palace, are being moved to more prominent positions. But there are local news reports that airport staff had complained the demons had been bringing bad luck and should be relocated.
BBC (thanks, Eliza)
Christianity: A History
CH4 are running an interesting series on Christianity – now available on 40d. It features a few characters I know some fans here will like.
Watch the full series over at Ch4
New Bus Campaign
Had a delightful evening in the company of atheist heavyweights R Dawkins (on great form) and AC Grayling (I hadn’t met him before but love his work: he is particularly delightful in the flesh), as well as David Baddiel, who is always such a bright, switched-on pleasure. For anyone who came along to the Foyles event, I hope you enjoyed it, and apologies for rambling on too long about magic structure when I got asked a question.
Dinner after the event yielded the fact that a new atheist bus campaign is being kicked off. Araine, an organiser of the Foyles evening, a Guardian columist and the editor/driving force behind the Atheists’s Guide to Christmas (on our reading list of course), is behind the bus campaign too. Quite a claim to fame, and the sweetest, least imposing lady you could meet. The campaign focusses one unpleasant aspect of proselytising to children: the resultant labelling of tiny kids as ‘Christian’, ‘Muslim’ etc, in a way that we would never do with, say, political affiliations (labelling a small child ‘Conservative’, for example, seems very wrong). ‘Atheist’ is of course also included as an equally regrettable label to be attached to a child: the message is, to allow children to choose for themselves when they are old enough to decide.
Her column on the campaign is here.
The BBC story on the subject is here.
DBx
Agan Harahap “Super Hero” Photography
Born in 1980 photographer and illustrator Agan Harahap from Jakarta, Indonesia, currently works for music magazine TRAX. His latest photography project called ‘Super Hero’ consists of memorable political and wartime scenes from the mid-20th century featuring beloved superheros like Spiderman or Batman in some interesting and funny positions – true juxtaposition in effect. It’s fun to see Superman standing in the Neuschwanstein Castle.
Format Magazine (thanks, Fosca)
French Hamster Hotel Lets Guests Live Like Rodents
It’s a unique concept according to its creators. A hotel in the French city of Nantes is offering the chance for people to become a hamster.
For 99 euros (£88) a night, visitors to the hotel in Nantes can feast on hamster grain, get a workout by running in a giant wheel and sleep in hay stacks in the suite called the “Hamster Villa”.
It is the latest venture from owners Frederic Tabary and Yann Falquerho, who run a company which rents out unusual venues to adventure-seekers. Both architects, the men designed the room in an 18th century building to resemble the inside of a hamster’s cage.
Telegraph (Thanks SuZi and KirstyJ)
The Future of Evolution: What Will We Become?
The past of human evolution is more and more coming to light as scientists uncover a trove of fossils and genetic knowledge. But where might the future of human evolution go?
There are plenty of signs that humans are still evolving. However, whether humans develop along the lines portrayed by hackneyed science fiction is doubtful.
An old cliché has the highly evolved humans of the future sporting large heads to hold their advanced enlarged brains, “but that’s nonsense, whole nonsense,” said paleontologist Peter Ward at the University of Washington at Seattle, author of “Future Evolution.”
“If you’ve ever gone through a childbirth or witnessed one,” Ward says, “we’re already anatomically right on the edge of how big our heads can go — our big brains have already caused extreme problems in childbirth, and if we had bigger and bigger brains, that’d cause more mothers to die in childbirth, so evolution would select against that.”
LiveScience (thanks, KirstyJ)
Brit Wins Memory Olympics
(CBS) Today was the third and final day of the world memory championship in London. And no, remembering to pick up a loaf of BREAD on the way home would not have qualified you for the final, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
Ben Pridmore from Britain once again has proven he’s got the most powerful memory in the world.
The three time international champion faced down stiff competition in events that included matching names to faces and memorizing 4,000 numbers in sequence.
They call themselves mental athletes but most admit – proudly – they’re also nerds.
The contestants rely on a combination of unshakeable concentration and sound technique.
“If it’s a string of numbers, I see those numbers and I have pictures that correspond to every number,” said Ronnie WHITE, a memory competitor from Texas.
Derren BROWN is currently banned from the competition for “wearing an outrageously gorgeous suit”. We suspect otherwise.
Google Image Swirl
This is quite good fun.
Bigger Not Necessarily Better, When It Comes to Brains
Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, say scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.
“Animals with bigger brains are not necessarily more intelligent,” according to Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary’s Research Centre for Psychology and University of Cambridge colleague, Jeremy Niven. This begs the important question: what are they for?
Research repeatedly shows how insects are capable of some intelligent behaviours scientists previously thought was unique to larger animals. Honeybees, for example, can count, categorise similar objects like dogs or human faces, understand ‘same’ and ‘different’, and differentiate between shapes that are symmetrical and asymmetrical.
