khbrown

Interns exploited:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8348394.stm

Shock, horror. And we wonder why such positions are largely closed to those who can afford to life off their parents or similar.

Some epicfail here:

http://www.11points.com/Misc/11_Unbelievably_Insensitive_%28and_Often_Racist%29_Holiday_Advertisements

I cut myself up for the first time in nine months or so tonight.

As a coping mechanism it is not good.

The passing of Barry Letts:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8344057.stm

Spearhead from Space etc; if you don't know his name then you're only a Johnny-come-lately Dr Who fan.

"Tributes to five men of courage"

How about

"Tributes to five men of limited opportunity, with that limitation by economic and cultural design"

Or, they die for oil and US hegemony

After all, the only nation with a special relationship with the US, getting more than it gives, is Israel...

Science fiction/Speculative fiction is like Psychological thriller/horror or slasher film.

As in, The Silence of the Lambs is okay and Halloween (the original, for sake of argument) isn't. But Lektor's superhuman/supernatural powers make him just as much an incredible bogeyman as Michael Myers.

"There are only two kinds of music [X]. Good and bad" - Ellington, Weill, goodness knows who else.

My mother has been diagnosed with cancer, and will be starting chemotherapy/radiotherapy in the next couple of weeks.

I do not know how to respond 'properly'...

Rape, paedophilia, the Holocaust, and so forth are not funny.
But jokes about them can be.

Discuss.

Opinions?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8327636.stm

I just wonder if having one Jew decide who is a Jew is like having one Christian (e.g. the Pope, or Ian Paisley) decide who else is a Christian, as in, it's not about religion, but about secular power politics.

Where are the humanist or atheist schools?

Is there a player out there which will play a DVD-R with music in FLAC format? I like the idea of being able to put an artist's entire discography onto one disc, lossless, and playing it in uninterrupted sequence. Or indeed having a CD-R with two or four albums on it.

Piece on the BBC website about Blurton, Stoke-on-Trent and those supposedly abandoned by mainstream political parties, making the place ideal territory for the BNP:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8319515.stm

Two statistics in the piece seemed odd together:

"Though the population of Blurton is more than 98% white, people I spoke to endlessly blamed immigrants for taking their jobs and jumping the housing queue.
Stoke Council say less than 4% of social housing in Blurton is occupied by ethnic minority tenants."

Now, while the intention is clearly to say that immigrants are not to blame, and there could be any number of other factors in play, the two statistics together do suggest that ethnic minority tenants are twice as likely to be in social housing (4%) as their numbers (2%) would suggest. So, couldn't these figures be used to say (amongst other things) that there is some form of discrimination here? Non-white people (of certain types) are more likely to be given social housing than white people (again, of certain types, but not necessarily the same ones).

Intepretation...

Fascists against the BNP?

As in, fascism is just a label used against those whose politics we don't agree with? And Fascism, of the original Italian variety, had its intellectual defenders and theorists just like any other ideology (cf. Mussolini's Intellectuals).

Does the BNP even mention autarky or syndicalism?

The World of Yaad

A religion, not a D&D campaign or a fantasy trilogy.

http://www.uxbridgegazette.co.uk/west-london-news/local-uxbridge-news/2009/10/05/religious-sect-members-jailed-after-attack-on-former-members-113046-24857697/

Two Jews, three opinions?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6857571.ece

(On Jews for Jesus in Israel)

Are there any browsers or plugins for browsers (Firefox) which will allow the user to drag over an area and then right click with an option to open all links in the selection? Or, even better, which allow selecting non-contiguous links like files and then opening all those selected?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_and_Religious_Hatred_Act_2006

And where is my protection as a non-believer? Or do I/we have to (non-)believe in a parody religion to be accepted?

"a number of MPs, including Rob Marris and Keith Vaz, called on the BBC to do more to represent Britain's minority faiths. "I am disappointed," said Mr Vaz. "It is only right that as licence fee payers all faiths are represented in a way that mirrors their make-up in society."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC

What about atheism? Or the Satanist, Wicca, Jedi and Pastafarian faiths, for instance? I want to see a Jedi "Songs of Praise" ;-)

List of celebrities who have signed the free Roman Polanksi petition:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/39618660.html

How many would also sign a stop hunting Nazi war criminals petition, on the basis that that was all so long ago etc.?

Or a free Charles Manson one, that he's a political prisoner (okay, so he wanted a race war...)

This seems emblematic of the problems with white collar crime:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8275626.stm

a) The old bosses not being prosecuted
b) The fine less than the contracts won, and so presumably economically rational cost-benefit wise.

eXcepting the X Men, all the superhero franchises have been about individual heroes/characters. What is the box office success of these and does it suggest US-ians are unhappy with anything that is not individualist?

Would Luke Cage / Iron Fist as 'heroes for hire' be box office?

Or indeed any of Kirby's objectivist superheros. (IMO objectivism is crap, but at least it makes you think about your objections.)