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Why is the sea blue?

This is one of my favourite little pieces of science because it is the kind of question that a small child might ask and for which there is a very simple answer that you’ll almost never get from people who know why.

Most answers you might hear will talk about reflection of the sky and the differences in refraction by the surface of the water between the red and the blue ends end of the spectrum of light.

But a simple and satisfying answer (particularly for a 5 year old child) is because water is blue, as can be seen in these amazingly beautiful photographs.

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Computing

The 10 worst security breaches of all time from unencrypted data

Laptop Losers Hall of Shame: The 10 worst security breaches of all time from unencrypted data.

Slideshow of the ten worst incidents of a security breach caused by the loss or theft of a laptop computer.

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Movies Reviews

Review: Heartbeat Detector

Heartbeat Detector

Overlong but interesting French film that draws parallels between the fascism of Nazi Germany and modern corporations particularly in the language used to describe human beings. Music is offered as a counterbalance to the dehumanizing nature of corporate culture.

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Movies Reviews

Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I’m in two minds about the fourth Indiana Jones movie I have to say that I enjoyed the hell out of it, but it is flawed. Harrison Ford has proved that he’s still got it as Indy which ironically feeds into one of the film’s flaws and that is that there is too little of him doing what he’s good at in the final act of the movie.

It is a kind of best of album featuring callbacks or references to scenes and events from the previous three films and yet being set in the fifties it’s very much it’s own beast in a lot of ways. I’m not sure the Soviets make as good as a villain as the Nazis did and their characters are curiously underdeveloped. I recognised Andrew Divoff and Pavel Lychnikoff as Russian soldiers but in the film they are merely extras with little to no lines as far as I can recall which makes me wonder if they had fuller parts at one point that were cut in the edit.

I think the major flaw of the movie is that it feels bloated with cast and this impacts on other aspects of the film. I think Ray Winstone’s character could have been excised completely from the film or at least after the first act. Similarly with John Hurt’s character if he’d been killed by the Russians in the camp then that would have both given Indy a chance to be the brains of the operation in the final expedition and given a little more motivation to the trio of Indy, Mutt and Marion to beat the Russians.

I think that if like me you loved the first three Indiana Jones movies then you’ll most likely love this one too.

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Computing Surveillance

ISP Content Filtering Might be a ‘Five Year Felony’

In stark contrast with the UK a former federal computer crimes prosecutor believes that ISP Content Filtering Might be a ‘Five Year Felony’

University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm, argues that ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T and Charter Communications that are or are contemplating ways to throttle bandwidth, police for copyright violations and serve targeted ads by examining their customers’ internet packets are putting themselves in criminal and civil jeopardy by breaking federal wiretapping laws.

In spite of this I’m sure that there will be a push by the US government as there has been here in the UK for ISPs to start doing this.

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Movies Reviews

Review: The Magic Christian

The Magic Christian

The Magic Christian is: antiestablishmentarian, antibellum, antitrust, antiseptic, antibiotic, antisocial & antipasto.

This 1969 Peter Sellers film is a zany madcap satire of greed. Sellers stars as Sir Guy Grand, eccentric and extremely wealthy, who believes that everyone has their price and sets out to prove that in a series of elaborate practical jokes. He brings with him on this adventure a vagrant (played by Ringo Starr) whom he adopts at the begnning of the movie and names Youngman Grand.

The most elaborate of Grand’s schemes involves the luxury liner the SS Magic Christian which features cameos of Christopher Lee as a vampiric ship’s porter, Yul Brynner as a transvestite cabaret singer and finally a wonderful engine room scene that reveals in fact that the ship is propelled by hordes of topless rowing slaves, under the Priestess of the Whip’s (Raquel Welch) command.

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Movies Reviews

Review: The Bucket List

The Bucket List

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Computing Surveillance

UK goverment want email and phone database

The Times: ‘Big Brother’ database for phones and e-mails

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.

This seems very much par for the course with this Labour government put absolutely everyone under surveillance in order to catch the criminals and terrorists. I think ministers are being lobbied by technology companies that promise more than they can deliver because the government seeks technological solutions to problems that might otherwise be solved in better ways or in ways that at least do not have a negative impact on British citizens as a whole.

This will be just a step towards a future where they keep a permanent database of every single email you receive, every website you visit and everything you download.

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Uncategorized

This Technology Will Blow Your Mind..

This Technology Will Blow Your Mind..

The future of visual media, this is really amazing.

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Imagine what would happen to Pulp Fiction if when Jules looked into the briefcase, he "woke up" in mid-scene

From Barbelith

– imagine what would happen to Pulp Fiction if, when the character of Jules looked into the briefcase, he “woke up” in mid-scene and not only realized that he was a character in a movie, but also realized that he “was” also Mace Windu and Shaft and a bunch of other characters in realities he can scarcely comprehend, while also glimpsing an uber-reality where all of those realities are just movies and he’s an actor called Samuel L. Jackson.- dizfactor

I think this is a brilliant concept and is as good as any description for what Grant Morrison is trying to portray in The Invisibles and The Filth.