Categories
Reviews TV

Review: Generation Kill – episode 1

Do we really need yet another drama about the Iraq War? Even if it is from David Simon and Ed Burns the creators of arguably the greatest show on TV. Having now watched the first episode of the HBO miniseries Generation Kill I’m still not sure I can answer the question.

It is a dramatization based on the book of the same name which was a real life account of the journalist Evan Wright who was embedded with the First Recon Battalion of the USMC and so it is as close to the truth as it can be without being a documentary. Yet as you might expect it has gained harsh criticism from many sides with people decrying it as being anti-American and others attacking it for the homophobic comments made by marines in the show.

Based on this first episode I think Generation Kill is going to be a fantastically well made miniseries and will offer a different perspective on the Iraq War to the one we’ve been having for the last five years as it will depict only the 40 days that constituted the actual invasion.

A positive review from Marine Corps Times

A critical review from Democracy Project

Categories
Security Uncategorized

The Guardian Series: What liberty means to me

Rachel North: We are each other’s best security

But as any parent knows, it is not always possible to keep those you love safe, and a person who is always safe is a person who never knows freedom and who has no life.

…For no government can keep us safe, even if they watch over us and film us and check our emails and internet use and hold our most intimate data and fill hundreds of prison cells with people who are merely suspected of, but not charged with, any crime.

Rachel has great insight of this issue I think.

Categories
Surveillance Uncategorized

Estimate of 8.6 million CCTV cameras in UK by 2018

According to SecurityPark.net the number of CCTV cameras in the UK is expected to double by 2018.

Mirasys polled 150 delegates during IFSEC who came from different vertical sectors including banking, government, public sector and retail. Delegates estimated that the number of CCTV cameras in the UK would more than double by 2018.

The poll of security professionals estimated that an average of 8.6 million CCTV cameras will be in place by 2018, compared with the current figure of 4.2 million cameras. This figure includes deployments at people’s homes as well.

This is quite an astonishing number, it seems that everyone wants more surveillance to protect their property and ensure their security even though the actual efficacy is in doubt.

Categories
Comics Uncategorized

Pounds of gold in the sea

A line in Action Comics #244 from 1958 about there being 84 pounds of pure gold in every cubic mile of water got me thinking and with a quick back of an envelope calculation I worked out there had to be at least 100 Trillion US dollars worth of gold in the Earth’s oceans.

The volume of water in the Earth’s oceans according to Wikipedia is 310 million cu mi

The current price of gold is 943 US dollars troy ounce

There are 14.58 troy ounces in a pound.

161 962 513 200 000 dollars

Categories
Comics Uncategorized

Batman R.I.P.

Reread Grant Morrison’s run on Batman and have come up with many crazy ideas as to the identity of Black Glove.

Alfred. Classic of pulp crime novels ‘The butler did it’. Perhaps under orders from Bruce Wayne. What would happen if Batman won his war on crime? Would he know? Would he walk away? Or would he construct for himself a nemesis of such great intellect and knowledge that he gives Batman a new focus so that he can continue.

Speculation abounds online since #677 that it is Thomas Wayne and that he really did fake his death. Good reason for Bruce to quit if his primary motivation was taken away from him. That he can never avenge his parent’s deaths as his father never died and was responsible for his mother’s death.

Another theory occurred to me when I considered that perhaps Detective Comics and Batman although ostensibly separate titles telling different stories might actually be telling the same story. And the Batman RIP story does crossover into the other Bat-titles anyway. The villain Hush returns in Detective soon and I wondered what if Thomas Elliot had be named after his father and was actually the illegitimate offspring of Thomas Wayne. He would be Thomas Wayne II which is the true identity of Owlman the evil counterpart to Batman in Morrison’s Earth-Two graphic novel.

In fact the more I read it the more weird and fucked up this whole run of issues seems.

Categories
Uncategorized

Still sucking at Photoshop

Donnie has risen.

Categories
Movies Reviews

Review: Shotgun Stories

Shotgun Stories

Categories
Surveillance Uncategorized

Councils warned after overzealous use of surveillance

BBC News: Councils warned over spying laws

Sir Simon Milton, chairman of the Local Government Association, has warned councils that the powers granted to them under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act should not be used for “trivial offences” such as dog fouling.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was designed to regulate the powers of public bodies to carry out surveillance and investigation for the purpose of detecting crime, and was pushed through parliament under the banner of combating acts of terrorism and organised crime.

Categories
Movies Reviews

Review: Manufactured Landscapes

Manufactured Landscapes

Categories
Uncategorized

TED: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Astonishing talk given by Hans Rosling about poverty and the relative rises in the standard of living and prosperity of countries around the world over the last century.

Researcher Hans Rosling uses his cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He demos Dollar Street, comparing households of varying income levels worldwide. Then he does something really amazing.