I really should have been doing something else with the last eleven hours, but instead I made this:
http://www.matazone.co.uk/animpages/em/woe.html
Hurrah!
I decided that I’d have a go at classic animation for a change, i.e. animation where you draw many of the frames by hand. Last time I did this it took me ages, but with the stripped down character design here I got it done in under a day. I think I should probably go and eat now though…
Click for bigger.
What? It’s not spring 2005? It’s the end of 2005? Dammit, this happens every year. I just get used to it being 2005, I feel like I’m in the swing of things and then it goes and ends before I’ve even noticed summer coming.
Right, that’s it. This year I am making a resolution to enjoy summer more. And to get my doctorate. And to make a decent living from being creative rather than living on a little more than a pittance. Hm… These aims might be a bit contradictory…
‘Have a good, safe night everyone and I’ll see you in 2006.
To the future! Ho!
Tony Blair has made a statement about British complicity with the US policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (which basically means sending people off to countries that can torture people to gain ‘evidence’). In this he states:
I, I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything illegal has been happening here at all, and I’m not going to start ordering inquires into this, that and the next thing when I’ve got no evidence to show whether this is right or not – and I honestly, and you know, it’s like all this stuff about camps in Europe or something – I don’t know, I’ve never heard of such a thing.
I can’t tell you whether such a thing exists – because, er – I don’t know.
Well, that’s convincing. I feel that my concerns have been addressed, don’t you? More here.
Craig Murray, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan who I’ve quoted from before, is also causing the UK government more grief by publishing openly what were previously confidential letters that prove that the UK government has been complicit with using information gained through torture. Here’s editted ‘highlights’:
Jack Straw: “Not to the best of my knowledge… let me make this clear… the British government does not support torture in any circumstances. Full stop. We do not support the obtaining of intelligence by torture, or its use.” – Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, election hustings, Blackburn, April 2005
In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers. – Craig Murray
I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened.
1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.
2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.
3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.
As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.
Even a hardened cynic such as myself has trouble believing that these are not real documents, and if they really are accurate recordings of what has been told to the UK government then it is clear evidence that we are being lied to. Full details here.
This year we’re getting a leap second added on to the final day to account for a something to do with the earth’s rotation. I’m not quite sure what precisely, but boffin-type people seem to know what they’re talking about so I’ll leave them to it. Apparently the important clocks of the world will tick over to 23:59:60 before moving on to 00:00:00.
On related ‘end of the year’ stuff, AOL say that spam email these days is usually scams about money, such as fake mortgage offers, and drugs for sex or painkillers. I’m not sure if this means that porn has become old fashioned, or perhaps it’s just the evolution of the internet that more money can be scammed in other ways. Apparently 8 out of 10 emails going through their system are junk, which seems about right when compared to the amount that I get that are usually offering me junk bonds, some drug called Cialis (whatever that may be), and fake Rolex watches (with ‘98% Perfectly Accurate Markings’!)… And that’s with junk filters turned on at my server. Ho hum.
AOL say that they are blocking 1.5 billion spam messages every day, so with the extra second that’s been added to 2005 there will be another 17,361 spam emails blocked. Now that’s what I call a happy new year.
Today I finished the first full draft of my PhD thesis. 61,602 words of decent insight and occasional wisdom about the works of the author William Gibson. The first chapter still needs a fair bit of editing, and the conclusion needs a few tweaks, but for the most part it’s done. A friend of mine has kindly agreed to copy edit the whole thing for me (thanks Amelia, if you’re reading this!) but it’ll take me a couple of weeks to get it all polished enough to hand over to her.
One of the things that I need to change is the title of the piece. Originally I proposed a thesis called ‘The Gendering of Cyberspace: Gender, Identity, and Sexuality in the works of William Gibson’, but in the six years since I came up with that subject I’ve realised that in his books he doesn’t actually care that much about gender and sexuality, instead he’s got a lot of interest in identity and a couple of related topics. When you’re writing a PhD, you can change the title right up until the point where you hand it in, as long as it stays in a related field. Of course, changing this does mean that I’ll need to occasionally refocus a phrase here-and-there in the thesis, but I’m changing the title better reflect the thesis so the refocussing should be pretty painless.
I’m sticking with issues of identity, but I’ve gone down a slightly different path. I don’t want to say much more about the choice that I’ve made at the moment due to the remote (but just about possible) chance that an academic might pinch it before I’m examined. I’m considering making a chapter available on my site for anyone who’s interested when it’s done, but I will likely be trying to get the thesis published as a book so I wouldn’t want to give everything away!
Anyway, merry Christmas to me, I’ve given myself the thesis that I’ve been promising myself for many years.
Season’s best wishes to you all too. ‘Hope you have a great Christmas, those of you who celebrate it. I’ll probably be taking a little break from blogging for a few days, so I’ll see you on the other side. Ho ho ho, and to all a good night!
It’s nice to know that some logic exists. If you’re paying any attention to science news on the web then you will have seen the small tidal wave of writers all expressing what can be summarised as ‘yay!’ over the past hour.
The Dover Federal Court judge, hearing the case arguing that Intelligent Design should not be taught as a viable alternative to the theory of evolution, has been scathing in his response:
this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
The judge also gives a sound and logical reason why ID should not be taught as science:
After a searching review of the record and applicable case law, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
This is the logic that the vast majority of the science community have applied to ID and it’s pleasing to see it confirmed by a court decision. I would have been astonished to see any other result, but that I even had any doubt at all suggests that my faith in the objective abilities of the US governmental system is very low at the moment. I’m very happy to see that a Republican judge has made a ruling that conflicts with the stated opinion of his Republican president.
In an additional point of amusement, the school board that first put ID into the school-room was voted out recently to be replaced with anti-ID members, showing that the people of the state were also behind the judge’s decision even before it was made.
Excerpts from the ruling here. NYT coverage here. The Register coverage here. Campaign for the adoption of the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of creation here.
I bet you thought that the Communist threat to America was over, but apparently not. It turns out that Communists are actually terrorists! I know, who’d have thought it, eh?
If you fancy writing a paper about Communism a quick tip is to make sure that you don’t try and get access to the proper source materials:
A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.”
The version that the student had requested was a full translation of the Chinese original and not the abridged version that is more commonly available. The combination of this and the student’s time abroad in the past led to him getting the book personally delivered by two NSA agents. Apparently it’s on a watch list of books, although I really do wonder why, Al Qaeda’s main claim to fame was being instrumental in defeating armies from the USSR when they invaded Afghanistan back in the 1980s so I can’t imagine that there is any lingering love there, so maybe the Bush administration believes that Communism is still a threat to them? Well, I suppose that if you’re going to have a ‘War On Terrorism’ you might as well try and find a good opponent. Yep, Afghanistan was a pushover*, Iraq is a warm-up**, next stop China! Yee-haw! Ride ’em cowboys! We’re gonna shoot us sum Commies!
And this is why things like a book watch-list is counter-productive when used in such a scatter-gun manner. If such things were done in a transparent way that could be examined by the public then department resources could be saved, but the current system breeds intimidation and paranoia, both of which cause fear in the general population (which appears to be the objective of such measures) and makes the truly militant few more careful and less likely to be found. I could understand the justification for agents visiting a person who has specifically requested obscure middle-eastern religious texts and bomb-making instructions, but what terrorist would order those things through the library? Putting a book of quotes from a dead Communist leader on a terror-suspect-book watch-list is typical of a govern-mental approach that equates all things non-democratic with Evil. There is a vast difference between a Communist state (which rejects religion) and the Caliphate desired by ‘Islamic’ extremists, but still the two are lumped together with a single threat response.
Not that such things are only happening in the US: about five or six years ago, before the Sept 11th 2001 attacks, I knew a guy who was doing his PhD thesis about the increase in surveillance on the British public by the government. After doing his course for a couple of years he finally quit after finding evidence that his own phone-line was now being tapped and strong suggestions a file was being kept about him because of his studies. Apparently finding out about what your government knows about you is considered a risk to the state. Amusingly, as an academic and a liberal minded person, there’s probably a file on me too.
More about the Little Red Book case.
*not actually true: ‘There has been more money and more weapons flowing into their [militant insurgent’s] hands in recent months,’source, November 28, 2005
Do you find towels irritating? Perhaps you have a massive phobia of damp cloth? Or maybe you are just too lazy to bother manually drying yourself and are looking for a machine to do it for you? If you find yourself saying ‘yes! That’s me!’ to any of these questions then you need the Triton Luxury Body Drier.
You know those hand-driers that you get in public toilets? This is like a big version of those that attaches to your ceiling. Why would you want this? Err… It’s a bit of fun? Towels are just too common? Well, for £400 you could get one for your house. It’s even remote controlled so you can pretend that you’re using a television, which, for a person who can’t even be bothered to dry themself, is probably a common hobby.
I think that’s probably among the most pointless gadgets that I’ve seen for a very long time.
The astonishing thing here to me is that torture was not already banned. That coy little phrase ‘in the custody of the U.S. government’ appears though, which may allow ‘extraordinary rendition’ to continue, a.k.a. sending people off to other countries to be tortured by governments with lower standards.
‘No matter how evil or bad they are’ is a problematic phrase for me, because it suggests still the idea ‘but we’ll still think that they deserve it’ is silently added on the end, which doesn’t really encourage good behaviour by all departments involved.
It’s also a little surprising that Bush is still using the phrase ‘war on terror’. Hasn’t he realised what an incredibly stupid phrase that is by now? In particular it is utterly ridiculous considering that Iraq now has more terrorists in it than before Bush started. If you were to attempt to organise a method to ostracise and potentially radicalise large sections of the world’s population then you would go about it just the way that he has, but for some unknown reason he still believes that firstly he is engaged in a war (which by definition is between nations, so why aren’t we invading Terrorismia? Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t exist so no-one can be at war with terrorism) and secondly that he can somehow win a fight in which killing people for their beliefs will most likely make their families feel violently angry.
On a related note, the Patriot Act is in grave danger of disappearing from the law books thanks to suspciously well-timed revelations that hundreds or possibly thousands of people have had their conversations listened to on authorisation of the US president without any court approval. Bush states that he ‘authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations’, but, given the simple fact that he had consistently led his country to believe that there were links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, I can’t help but wonder just how rigourously established these ‘known links’ really are. The strange thing here is that systems exist through which Bush can ask for a secret court hearing to permit electronic surveillance but he has decided to ignore that process and authorise the whole thing himself without any court approval; the result would be exactly the same except that additional safe-guards to protect the rights of individuals would be place, so why is he doing this secretly? I do worry when the leader of the most powerful nation on earth begins to act in ways that appear irrational at best and paranoid at worst.
Article about Bush tapping phones (quote taken from page two).
It was always going to be a tough sell to the Japanese, but Micro$oft were insisting that they were going to crack it. It seems that they have failed. The Xbox 360 sold less than 30% of its available stock in its first weekend and many retailers have been cutting prices to shift them faster. This is a huge difference to the US and Europe where supplies have run out very quickly, although it’s estimated that 10% of all 360s sold in the US went directly onto eBay.
So why has this happened? The Japanese market is often quite insular, with Japanese brands leading the way in terms of hardware and software production. The 360s launch line-up is distinctly western in its approach to gaming, with many racing games and (American) sports simulations. More of a problem is the reliance on First-Person-Shooters. The Japanese are known for some reason to suffer motion sickness while playing these, more so than gamers in the west. My girlfriend suffers from the same problem and it can leave her feeling rather unwell! If you take out the Call Of Duty franchise and Perfect Dark Zero then you have a distinctly bland first release schedule. Kameo remains an interesting attempt at next-gen gaming (whatever that may mean) but one that doesn’t wholly convince many players. Many Japanese gamers cancelled their pre-orders for the 360 system when the fighting game Dead Or Alive 4 was pushed back in the schedules to late December. This leaves the only really interesting titles being racing games, and, while nicer graphics are always good, the gameplay isn’t really introducing anything truly new into the mix that make a killer application to inspire people to buy the 360.
It may be that sales pick up when Dead Or Alive 4 is released; however when initial sales of 62k in the first weekend for the 360 are compared to 123k in the same period for the original Xbox it doesn’t suggest that Micro$oft will be dominating the key global gaming territory of Japan this time around. $ony now have to live up to their reputation and produce something great in the PS3, because many gamers may be waiting to see which system gets the better game line up. If $ony can take advantage of Micro$oft’s mis-step then they will likely continue to control the Japanese market and maintain the interest of one of the most lively game producing arenas for yet another generation of consoles.
Source here.
Oh dear… I really shouldn’t have found this site:
It’s remakes of classic 8bit games. I’m cutting myself off after rediscovering how much fun Lunar Jetman still is (remade as Solar Jetman). These are lovely, simple old games given a new lease of life for the PC age. They’re free to download too!
I must stop playing, I must start studying, I must stop playing, I must start studying, I must stop playing, I must start studying, I must stop playing, I must start studying, I must stop playing, I must start studying, I must stop playing, I must start studying, I must stop playing, I must start studying …
You’ve probably heard of the narwal. It’s a whale with a huge tusk coming from its forehead, and the tusks were sold in the middle ages around the world as unicorn horns.
Males weigh up to 1.5 tons, grow about 15 feet long and are conspicuous by their tusks, which can grow from six to nine feet in length. A few females have tusks and, in rare cases, narwhals can wield two of the long teeth. Though often ramrod strait, the tusks always grow in tight spirals that, from the animal’s point of view, turn counterclockwise.
The horn has presented a problem for scientists for a long time now, because they really didn’t know what they are for. They occur in the males and sometimes in females, they aren’t used for fighting according to Inuit witnesses, and there seems to be few good practical applications for them, but in a paper being presented today it has been discovered that the horn has masses of nerve endings going along it, exposed to the environment directly through tiny tubules. This is really puzzling, because the horn is just an oddly placed and shaped tooth, and we get tooth ache when our teeth decay, exposing the nerve endings to the cold. For some reason, narwals living in freezing waters have evolved exposed nerve endings but no-one’s quite sure why. Possibly it’s to help them measure the weather, or to detect changes in the water that suggest when it will freeze over (like other whales, they need to surface to breath, so getting trapped under the ice is a major hazard for them).
Of course, there’s another, more amusing, option:
Dr. Nweeia noted that the discovery does not eliminate some early theories of the whale’s behavior. Tusks acting as sophisticated sensors, he said, may still play a role in mating rituals or determining male hierarchies.
He added that the nerve endings, in addition to other readings, undoubtedly produce tactile sensations when the tusk is rubbed or touched, and that these might be interpreted as pleasurable.
This tactile sense might explain why narwhals engage in what is known as “tusking,” where two males gently rub tusks together, Dr. Nweeia said.
Gay whales! Hurrah! No wonder some of the females grow them as well, although maybe they then become lesbians? Perhaps the whole narwal community is involved is massive bisexual teeth-rubbing orgies! You didn’t see that in March of the Penguins did you?
On a slightly more serious note, there’s some interesting stuff about the history of unicorns on the second page of the article, including this snippet:
Churches put small pieces of “unicorn horn” in holy water, giving ailing commoners hope of miracle cures.
I’ve always liked narwals, primarily because of the unicorn-hoax association I think, but they’re a strange looking creature and such things always capture the imagination (like the duck-billed platypus). It’s an interesting article that gets more interesting as it goes on, you can read here.
Or is it a tall story?
Merry seasons everyone, here’s my new Mittens animation:
http://www.matazone.co.uk/animpages/mittens-christmas-animation-2005.html
While I’m here, don’t forget last shipping dates in my shop are drawing very near:
Australia 9th
US 12th
Western Europe 14th
UK 20th
If you would like something then please order as soon as possible!
The NYT reports that a stone wall, dating somewhere between the late 1600s and 1760s, has been found during excavations to create a new subway line. It’s thought to be a remaining part of the Colonial defence structures from that time, probably used to protect the settlement from sea-based attacks using cannons and known as the Battery (some records show that the walls were manned by Duracell bunnies, and rumours suggesting that those records are written in my hand are all lies).
This obviously poses a problem, because a 45 foot wall of archaeological interest right in the path of your very expensive subway is always going to slow things down. I can’t say for sure, but in the UK we would measure, photograph, and record it as much as possible, then put a hole through it where it needs to be; if we didn’t know about the wall for centuries then the data will be preserved and overall there will be a gain. This is the most sensible option and has been suggested, with a twist, by the people on the project: ‘One idea the authority floated was to remove a three-foot-long section of the wall to be preserved elsewhere, and then go ahead with the excavation.’
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting massive flashbacks to a Sheryl Crow lyric: ‘They pull up all the trees and put them in a tree museum’. Sometimes historical items only really make sense in context. How about moving Stonehenge to central London to make it more convenient for tourists to visit? It’s nice to know that the wall is there, but it loses all meaning when you move it somewhere else. Warrie Price, president of the Battery Conservancy, summarises the strangeness of this attitude:
“If these stones are able to be reused,” she said, “it would be wonderful to be able to actually touch this history.”
Yes, shock news indeed; stones have been around for a long time. How many generations would it take before the surface of the stones would be worn down by tourist hands, leaving nothing of the original workings? So instead, it would likely be in a cabinet, and then you have created a strange relic: ‘Come See The Original Stones!’ The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote about the idea of simulation, suggesting that natural authenticity is being replaced by icons that represent authenticity. These icons simulate the properties of the original object or experience but repackage it out of context so that it loses its meaning. A wall only has meaning when it is in the place that it was built, because that is the defining feature of it, so by removing it from that location you get a distancing from the original purpose; it becomes a symbol of an old wall.
Perhaps I’m misjudging Warrie Price, maybe she means that it would be good if the stones could be put in as part of a new building, which is a different activity. Reusing them as a part of a wall, not as part of an exhibit as is suggested by the article, adds to their meaning rather than subtracting from it. They become a part of the continuous history of being, repurposed into an ongoing historical narrative. Yes, their value as a building material is equal to others, but the meaning of the stones is added to by their reuse rather than subtracted from by being placed out of context. In other words, a wall that is no longer a wall is just a pile of stones, and we already know that rocks are old.*
*unless everything was created 4000 years ago by a supernatural/alien being, of course.
Well, I don’t know who the person is, but a visitor to this site has been buying some very nice camera equipment in the last few weeks. Here’s the real cream of their picks:
Wooo… Purdy. Wouldn’t you just love to play with one of those? I’d just like to say a big thank you to whoever it is for using my associate links. The funding is greatly appreciated.
For new people, using the Amazon associate search boxes under the animations on my site means that I get around 5% of what you spend to put towards covering the costs of keeping this site running. It’s usually not a huge amount, but it adds up over a few months to a nice lump towards updating software, renewing hosting contracts, and paying for cup-a-soups so that I can have easy lunches while animating!
If you are going to be shopping on Amazon soon then please start your trip using a search box on my site!
Amazon.co.uk search box:
Amazon.com search box:
Hurrah! At bloomin’ last I can take credit cards in my shop.
I can cover Visa, Mastercard, Switch/Maestro, Delta, Solo, Electron, and even Purchasing (if you’re lucky enough to be trusted with one of those).
http://www.matazone.co.uk/shop
Shipping dates are getting close for Christmas though:
Australia 9th
US 12th
Western Europe 14th
UK 20th
Don’t hang around!
This is just taking ‘Christmas Cheer’ way too far. Tescos, a UK supemarket chain, have made a sandwich with a chip in the packaging that ‘plays a medley of classic Christmas tunes including Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and We Wish You a Merry Christmas’.
This is one of those noise chips that have been around for years that creates a horrible tinny bit of music when you open cards. They sound awful, and so the idea of putting these things into sandwich boxes is utterly baffling. Why do it? Do people really want to hear slightly flat renditions of Christmas tunes while eating their lunch?
Although I hate the things singly, they can be quite fun en masse. Get a huge load of them together and try to get them all playing at the same time and you create a strange whining harmony. Damn… I guess I’ve found a reason to buy lots of Christmas tune sandwiches…