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070525 15:18 Culture / History

History changed for fear of offending others: Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims.

070525 15:08 Urban development

Two days ago the scales tipped. The world's population has just become more urban than rural. More people now live in cities than in rural environments.

There’s no big countdown billboard or sign in Times Square to denote it, but Wednesday, May 23, 2007, represents a major demographic shift, according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time in human history, the earth’s population will be more urban than rural.

Working with United Nations estimates that predict the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010, the researchers projected the May 23, 2007, transition day based on the average daily rural and urban population increases from 2005 to 2010. On that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 will exceed that of 3,303,866,404 rural people.

070514 23:03 Environment

Burning Man's art theme this year is "The Green Man". The ambition is to redress nature's balance, not by tuning it down a bit and decreasing the Man's footprint (the environmental impact) but by paying dues outside. Hmmm. Plant a tree in your backyard and your energy consumption at BM will be forgiven. ...which perfectly describes human nature.

...we'll sponsor projects in the outside world that will efface this imprint. Such actions might include the planting of trees or the development of non-polluting energy resources. Having played with fire, we'll take care to cleanse its atmospheric playground.

Ok, ok, i shouldn't be so cynical. It's good, really. Just not really hitting the mark.

One artist is doing better by doing it right there on the playa:

If you head to Burning Man this summer and see an 80-foot slug belching plumes of fire as it inches across the desert, don't worry: it's not an environmental disaster.

It's quite the opposite. The slug, named Mechabolic, will be converting the festival's garbage into clean energy as people walk around inside it to see the process in action.

070421 19:18 Media

TV Turnoff Week is coming up again.

The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you'll be shocked at just how difficult - yet also how life-changing - a week spent unplugged can really be.

But there's a lot more to TV Turnoff Week than shaking up your relationship with passive entertainment. It's all about saying no to being bombarded with unwelcome and unhealthy commercial messages. It's about saying no to unfettered corporate media concentration and to the democratic deficit that results. And it's about challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see on the screen, a reflection that is keeping us ill-informed and unaware of the very real political and environmental crises that we all currently face.

I've done mine already. I took one week off over Easter. No computers. No TV. I spent it sitting in the tuscan sun reading the 400 page book my sister just wrote.

070421 17:02 Entertainment

Are you fed up with how Lost is developing - or not developing. Here's some suggestions how it could be saved. My favorite line is 'Locke used to be cool'

070403 23:30 SciFi

Serenity beats Star Wars! Woohoo! A smashing 61% of SFX readers declared Serenity their favourite film. Here's the full list:

1. Serenity
2. Star Wars
3. Blade Runner
4. Planet of the Apes
5. The Matrix
6. Alien
7. Forbidden Planet
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. The Terminator
10. Back to the Future

070401 14:47 April Fool's Roundup

My favorite one this year: Mozilla Foundation Sues Microsoft Over Tabbed Browsing.

Best April Fool's joke ever:

Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

This one isn't actually an April Fool's joke but it could well be: Global warming problem solved: Stop breathing!

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