Categories
Comics Uncategorized

Grindhouse Rapist No. 1

I have a lot of respect for Bitch Ph.D and read her blog regularly but I think she may be overreacting about the Rapist No.1 action figure from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s new movie Grindhouse.


As well as the Rapist figure (which is the likeness of Tarantino as he portrays said character in the movie in one of his customary cameo appearances) action figures of other characters such as Cherry and Dakota are available to buy.

She seems mostly concerned that it is being marketed by the name Rapist No.1 doll but that is just the name of the character in the movie and to my mind is no different than a Freddy Krueger action figure. It’s not as if the figure is even depicted in an act of rape and can hardly be considered glorifying rape or fostering an attitude that rape is acceptable.

I haven’t seen Grindhouse yet but I would imagine if Tarantino’s previous movies are any indicator that this rapist character meets a gory and well deserved end. I think there is a debate to be had about the depiction of rape in movies and on television and the trend for the sexualisation of female victims of rape in them as opposed to the depiction of male rape victims. Also there is a disturbing trend (in comics it is referred to as the Women in Refrigerators Syndrome) for using violence against women as a plot device and motivating factor for the hero protagonist of the story to whom the victim is connected.

I think that Bitch Ph.D has picked upon the wrong thing for her argument here.

I don’t see the appeal myself for these action figures designed for adults and they are very much a niche product that as opposed to movies have little to no impact on society at large. I believe that had she not written about it then virtually the entire readership of Bitch Ph.D would never have known that such a thing as a Rapist No.1 action figure even existed.

Categories
Uncategorized

Alfred Cunnington’s Phone


P3210111, originally uploaded by electricinca.

I recently discovered that my home town of Devizes was the site of the first commercial telephone system, made and used by an Alfred Cunnington in 1878 to connect his business with his home.

Categories
Uncategorized

1/3 Scale model of a Ferrari

Pierre Scerri of Avignon, France took 15 years and more than 20,000 hours to build this 1:3 scale Ferrari 312PB.

This marvel is the real thing in every sense, from its operating 12-cylinder engine to the exact scale operating Ferrari gauges which are calibrated precisely to indicate rpm, oil pressure, water temperature and oil temperature.

Find this video and thousands of others at vSocial!

It is an astonishing piece of work.

Categories
Computing

TrueCrypt irony

TrueCrypt is really astonishingly wonderful piece of cryptographic software and unfortunately and ironically for me it is too good at what it does.

TrueCrypt is a free and open source utility that performs on on-the-fly encryption allowing the user to create a virtual encrypted disk (TrueCrypt volume). TrueCrypt can either create an encrypted file that acts as a real disk or encrypt an entire hard disk partition or a storage device/medium, such as floppy disk or USB memory stick.

One of the best features of the TrueCrypt software is that allows you to use passwords based upon the content of files. So you designate one or more files as keyfiles and it combines that with the password you type in to create an ultra-secure unbreakable password. So say you choose the password Gazza after your favourite footballer of the 90s this would be a trivial password for a brute force attack to crack but if you were to combine it with a keyfile of an MP3 of Fog On The Tyne then it would become immeasurably more difficult.

However should you ever lose the keyfiles that you chose to use or like me forget which ones that you used the TrueCrypt volume that you have created becomes impossible to open and you lose all the data you have so carefully secured.

Luckily for me the drive that I had encrypted was merely used to back up important data for my publishing business and so I didn’t lose anything but the time it took to reformat the disk and back up all my business data yet again.

I do wonder what would have happened should I have been compelled to decrypt the volume under Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 as clearly I really could not have done so.

Categories
Reviews TV

The Trap

Just watched the third and final episode of Adam Curtis’s new documentary series The Trap on BBC 2.

Not all attempts to make the world a better place lead to tyranny.

I will come back to this later with a fuller review when I’ve watched all three episodes again, but I think Curtis has done yet again a fantastic job of solidify thoughts about modern society and politics that have been washing around in my head.

Categories
Uncategorized

Alcohol and tobacco more harmful than cannabis or ecstasy.

A study carried out by Bristol University [via] and published in The Lancet ranks both alcohol and tobacco as being more harmful than many illegal drugs such as cannabis or ecstasy.

Professor David Nutt, lead author on the paper, said:

Drug misuse and abuse are major health problems. Our methodology offers a systematic framework and process that could be used by national and international regulatory bodies to assess the harm of current and future drugs of abuse.

There is however no political will to actually change policy in the light of this and other studies that have shown that our current system is flawed.

Categories
Politics Reviews TV

Adam Curtis’ The Trap

Adam Curtis director of the brilliant The Power of Nightmares has a new three part documentary series titled The Trap.

The series consists of three one-hour programmes which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically, “how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom.”

Blairwatch has a synopsis of the series Parts one and two.

The Guardian’s review.

Metafilter has an interesting discussion about the series and another about The Power of Nightmares.

Categories
Uncategorized

We’re bachelors, baby.

Barfield

Starts off very one note then gets boring then becomes NSFW and ends sublimely.

Categories
Reviews TV

Heroes will return

This is usually the part when people start screaming.

Whiny little emo Peter Petrelli from the first few episodes would probably start screaming at this point but the new powerful Peter not so much I think.

Categories
Reviews TV

Heroes: Parasite

FREAKIN’ DAMMIT!!!!! APRIL 23RD IS THE NEXT DAMN EPISODE!!!!

I can’t wait that long.

I just knew Ando would be back. Perfect piece of sidekicking, get the hero’s back without even telling him he’s doing it.

The scene of Claire meeting Mama Petrelli was awesome. Is she part of the group that includes Linderman and Hiro’s dad? Or was her husband? She seems to be acting against their interests in any case and has brought the Haitian over to her side.

I’m betting that Simone’s dad was part of this group also and that we’ll get to see Richard Roundtree again in some flashbacks, I thought it odd that he would appear so briefly in the two episodes he was in.

Again April 23rd!!! I have to wait until then to see the fight between Sylar and Peter. I really do hope it lives up to my expectations.