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060222 12:03 Cartoons, religion

Christians are no better: Catholics urge South Park boycott.

New Zealand's Catholic bishops signed a letter on Sunday urging the country's 500,000 Catholics to boycott C4 and its sister station TV3, which recently apologised for showing the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. [...]

"Making known the extent of our offence might give them pause to consider that press freedom is not a licence to incite intolerance or to promote hated or derision based on religion, race or gender," the letter said.

Rick Friesen, head of TV Works, which runs C4, said that if Catholics felt they would be upset by South Park, then they should not watch it.

060222 11:35 Politics

Guantánamo actors questioned under terror act after film festival

Four actors who play al-Qaida suspects in a British movie that won a prestigious prize were detained by the police at Luton airport as they returned from the Berlin Film Festival and questioned under anti-terror laws, alongside two of the former terrorism suspects they play on screen.

They were returning last Thursday after the premiere of the film, The Road to Guantánamo. It depicts the life of three men from Tipton in the West Midlands, who go to Afghanistan and end up being held for two years by the US at its military base on Cuba before being released without charge.

The film, directed by Michael Winterbottom, won the Silver Bear award for direction at Berlin on Sunday. Released in Britain next month, it depicts the alleged shackling, torture and other ill treatment the Tipton detainees claim they suffered at the hands of the Americans.

060221 11:55 Anthropology

Prey not predator. We didn't evolve to hunt more successfully but to evade being hunted. The idea that language and co-operation was developed by hunting men was disproved long ago. It's more likely language was developed by women tending camp and children. But just so that men don't feel left out we now return to the hunting theory - however, with a twist: Man 'the hunted'.

He has imaged the brains of people playing a game under experimental conditions that involved choosing between co-operation and non-co-operation.

From the parts of the brain that were activated during the game, he found that mutual co-operation is rewarding; people reacted negatively when partners did not co-operate. [...]

Personally i think, this is far more chilling news:

By contrast, our closest relatives - chimpanzees - have been shown not to come to the aid of others, even when it would pose no cost to themselves.

060217 19:26 Comix

Until recently (and apart from 2000AD for a while) i've always been a collection edition reader rather than weeklies or monthlies buyer. Warren Ellis' Fell started me out again on monthlies, not because of the price or format or lack of advertisement. Just happened. But let me tell you: i love it. The story, the style, the visual format, the self-contained story format, the lack of advertisement... As happened before with Anime (started with Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo) Fell started me out at the top end, with the best. Now i constantly feel annoyed with other comics because of price, format, abrupt endings, 50% advertising... More like Fell please.

Here's an article about Fell's success which goes into details about the background of the concept:

Ellis has long been a proponent of self-contained stories in serialized comics, as seen most recently in his 12 issue Wildstorm miniseries Global Frequency. Using television programming as a rough model, Ellis' wrote each issue to be its own story, from beginning to end, while also carrying on other stories that develop over the length of the series. That way, a reader could pick up any issue and get a full story, but long-time readers would be rewarded with additional drama resulting from issues of development of the characters and their world. [...]

The biggest challenge for the creators of Fell was how to do this a monthly basis without a lapse in quality or consistency. Working under the standard Image contract of full creator ownership but no up-front payments, these two established creators had to find a way to make the monthly demand less taxing on them. Instead of the industry standard of 22 pages per issues, the Fell creators opted for a 16 page format. The loss of 6 pages per issue made the objective of telling a complete story even more challenging, but Ellis and Templesmith have developed a more condensed comic style that commonly uses 9 panels per page to relate their story.

Life on Mars reminds me so much of FELL. I think i like Life on Mars specifically because it reminds me of Fell.

060217 19:19 Science

Getting a step closer to teleportation (my personal number one tech wish for the future), starting with telecloning ('In-text links are advertising' alert!).

Imagine Captain Kirk being beamed back to the Starship Enterprise and two versions of the Star Trek hero arriving in the spacecraft's transporter room. It happened 40 years ago in an episode of the TV science fiction classic, and now scientists at the University of York and colleagues in Japan have managed something strikingly similar in the laboratory - though no starship commander was involved. [...]

The scientists have succeeded in making the first remote copies of beams of laser light, by combining quantum cloning with quantum teleportation into a single experimental step. Telecloning is more efficient than any combination of teleportation and local cloning because it relies on a new form of quantum entanglement - multipartite entanglement.

That's not completely fresh news, though. The Australians got there in 2002.

060211 20:14 Society

Via Worldchanging.com: Aging at home.

Community-based models for aging in place designed by the people who use them are the wave of the future, experts say, an alternative to nursing homes and assisted living centers run by large service providers.

060211 12:56 Intellectual property

The latest copyright madness is brought to you by the Red Cross, obviously just another capitalist company but also a symbol that people universally understand as health or that's where you get medical assistance. Suing first aid kit makers?! It's so stupid it could be a hoax. Sooner or later someone will claim copyright of the SOS morse code.

Previous coverage on BoingBoing includes fun comment:

Allen sez, "The Red Cross has an even bigger, more menacing trademark infringer. A little outfit they call Switzerland. Somebody should inform the Red Cross that these guys have been flagrantly using the unique design they created for their logo."

060210 22:31 Web development

Good news: accessibility and usability recommendations are now considered good modern design:

I'm glad to say that web design in 2006 is better than ever. And it's not just because there are more web sites out there, so more good stuff to look at. There's still an awful lot of crud too. I just think that more web designers know more about how to design than ever before.

The article goes on to explain what today's best designs have in common, which is basically a list of WAI recommendations:

• Simple layout
• 3D effects, used sparingly
• Soft, neutral background colours
• Strong colour, used sparingly
• Cute icons, used sparingly
• Plenty of whitespace
• Nice big text

060206 15:10 Search engines

See! This is what you get for unethical 'search engine optimization' practises: BMW's Google ranking has just been reset to zero to punish it for its attempts to artificially boost its popularity ranking.

On another subject... the page that above link leads to has some of those annoying in-text pop-up ads. Sigh.

060204 20:10 Intellectual property

British libraries fear that DRM will be used to override copyright exemptions, making items inaccessible to libraries users.

060202 22:47 Entertainment

Oscar Nominees announced.

Animated Feature

• HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE
• TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE
• WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT

It's very unfortunate they all released in the same year.

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