Yang Jisheng. A Chinese academic who has written a book that might do Mao’s memory irreparable damage. Yes, it’s about the Great Famine that resulted from Mao’s absurd and evil schemes. Yang Jisheng - at great personal risk - dug out the archives on a period of human insanity and vileness that ought to be [...]
Posts under ‘censorship’
The Arab Autumn
I suppose you’ve all heard about the appalling attacks on the US Embassy in Cairo and the Benghazi consulate. The obvious reason that the Benghazi attack is bigger news is the murder of the US Ambassador and three other staff. Both attacks of course were apparently precipitated by a movie on Youtube. I shall [...]
All Your Game Are Belong To Us
2012 may be the 60th anniversary of the first videogame: a version of Noughts and Crosses for the Cambridge EDSAC. It certainly seems to be the earliest I’ve ever come across, and I say “seems to be” because there’s always the possibility it’s been mis-dated; I can’t confirm it. Here it is (without the subroutines [...]
Generation Porn
From The Telegraph…
A generation is growing up skewed by internet pornography, court hears, as 12-year-old who raped a schoolgirl is spared jail.
A generation of youngsters may be developing a skewed view of sex from pornography, a court has heard, after a 12-year-old schoolboy raped and sexually assaulted a younger girl after copying a hardcore film [...]
Custer’s Revenge.
From Wikipedia…
Custer’s Revenge (also known as Westward Ho and The White Man Came) is a controversial video game made for the Atari 2600 by Mystique, a company that produced a number of adult video game titles for the system. The player character is based on General George Armstrong Custer. The game was first released on [...]
For the children…
I’m an IT tech*. I am 38. My wife is 33. I have a cat and he is a minor but a complete innocent (he doesn’t have any bollocks for a start) and certainly no interest in pr0n - or at least not what you or me would regard as pr0n - I dunno about [...]
A classical education is clearly not required by the Met.*
While London looks increasingly like a city under martial law it is nice to see the Met still have time for pursuing nonsenses as well as going round looking like characters from some post-apocalyptic FPS game…
There were no complaints from the public when a Mayfair gallery exhibited a dramatic modern rendering of the ancient Greek [...]
Such Things As Communism Could only Dream of…
Cats seems to think this is sinister. It ain’t got nothing on this though. It’s a long article but well worth reading in full. I’m excerpting bits to give the flavour.
On the surface, Shustorovich’s project is a public-spirited attempt to bring Russia’s education system into the digital era. In the 2010-11 academic year, around 300 [...]
The moral panic that runs and runs…
… and takes on many forms.
I recall as a very small kid there was a moral panic over Space Invaders and that was over thirty years ago. Ever since this panic has periodically risen like a zombie on you didn’t put enough (virtual) ordnance into. Computer games have been blamed for almost everything: addiction and [...]
About that Wikipedia Blackout…
I’m not about to start a whole involved debate about Copyright in the Internet Age, becuase it’s almost teatime and I’m famished (although I expect the comments thread will probably turn into one, as is the way of such things) but as far as the blackout itself goes… well, it turns out it’s not as [...]
Hip-Hop Diplomacy and the War on Cameras.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time:”Send an American rap crew on a tour of Pakistan to help build bridges between two countries whose relations have plumbed new depths this year”.
But after being detained by security officials in Rawalpindi and then seeing a major concert cancelled by a venue in Lahore [...]
Shhh
As Tim Blair offers his tuppence worth on this topic:
In his findings against Bolt, Bromberg took issue with words Bolt didn’t actually use: “It is language which invites the readers not only to read the lines, but to read between the lines.” This is remarkable. Reading between the lines of Bromberg’s ruling, Bolt seems to [...]
