Posts Tagged news

Cerrie Burnell – All About Me

This morning, I saw the BBC News Magazine article about Cerrie Burnell, who’s apparently a children’s television presenter (I’d never heard of her before, but that doesn’t mean anything – I can’t remember the last time I watched any kids’ TV). The article centres on the fact that Cerrie was born without a right hand (her right arm stops at the elbow), and states that some parents are finding it awkward to answer the questions that their inquisitive children are asking about it (“Where did her arm go?” etc.).

After reading most of the (brilliant, really supportive) comments in the Have Your Say at the end of the article, I thought I’d look up some more information about this presenter I’d never heard of (y’know, because that’s what you do). Her Wikipedia page was a little sparse, so I tried the link on it to her homepage (as provided by CBBC).

There, it lists a handful of questions that kids will ask, along with fun answers. Do you have any brothers and sisters? Yes, I have a younger brother and a cousin I’m close to as well. When is your birthday? It’s the 30th August. If you had a super-power, what would it be? I’d like to be able to grow a tail and turn into a mermaid. You see the kinds of things I’m talking about.

What’s your favourite game? Twister.

I laughed out loud. And then I felt bad about it.

And then I blogged.

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OMG Child Pr0n (or is it?)

What a mess this is turning into! I am of course referring to the UK-wide internet censorship of a Wikipedia page (the one about the Scorpions album, Virgin Killer – if that last link doesn’t work, you’re among those affected).

The thinking is, according to the Internet Watch Foundation, that the cover of the 1976 album constitues child pornography and therefore we all need to be protected from it. It’s all a little controversial, though, because they’re not suggesting that Amazon US be blocked, for example.

But the worst of it is the amount of news exposure it’s generating is actually drawing traffic to the banned content. I wouldn’t ever have seen the album cover if it weren’t for the ban, for example, after which I realised how trivial it is to see the offending Wikipedia page. And that without the offending content appearing in a Wikinews article about the ban!

It’s hard to justify this kind of policing. In accordance with Wikipedia’s own policies, it is not a creator of content so much as a distributor: it takes content that is already “out there” and, in theory at least, legal, and disseminates it in an approachable form.

I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.

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Toilets With Urinals? Toilets Without Urinals?

Remember this picture I took at BiCon this year?

Looks like as a concept it’s going to become not-so-strange, according to a report in Metro: University students open trans-gender toilets.

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Firefox 3 “Download Day”

Download Day 2008

Downloaded your copy of Mozilla Firefox 3 yet to help them make the world record? I’ve been using Firefox 3 since the early betas and I’ve got no qualms about recommending it wholeheartedly. The awsomebar is simply that: awesome, the speed and memory usage have become far better than the previous version, and the care and attention that have gone into the little things – like the fact that it now asks you if you want to save passwords after you’ve seen if they were correct, not before – really do make this the best web browser I’ve ever used.

Go download it already.

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Does Food Go Missing From Your Kitchen?

Does food ever go missing in your house and you don’t know who’s eaten it? You probably ought to check all of your cupboards, then, in case you’ve had a small Japanese woman living in one of them for the last year and you hadn’t noticed.

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The Surname Study

Go read a mind-bloggling study about the effect of names on happiness, success, and lifespan! Just brilliant, and only slightly scary.

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Politically Incorrect Human Nature

A recent article from Psychology Today talks about human nature, sex, and the best theories on why we act like we do. From the article:

Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes.

Now go read it.

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Orgasms And Biochemistry

Just read a great article on brain activity during sexual stimulation and specifically upon orgasm: scanning people’s brains while they’re engaged in sexual activity with their partners has lead to some fascinating results. From the article:

In men, greater activity was seen in the insula, which deals with emotion, and particularly in the secondary somatosensory cortex, which rates the significance of physical sensations. This suggests that the sensory input coming from the genitals is being judged highly important and pleasurable by the brain.

Women, however, show very little increased brain activity, and only in the primary somatosensory cortex – which registers purely that a sensation in the genitals is there.”In women the primary feeling is there, but not the marker that this is seen as a big deal,” Dr Holstege said.”For males, touch itself is all-important. For females, it is not so important.”

I fascination turned to amusement when I read about some of the difficulties the participants had under experimental conditions, though:

The experiments also revealed a rather surprising effect: both men and women found it easier to have an orgasm when they kept their socks on. Draughts in the scanning room left couples complaining of “literally cold feet”, and providing a pair of socks allowed 80 per cent rather than 50 per cent to reach a climax while their brains were scanned.

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On The Implausability Of The Explosives Plot

I read a really great article over on the Interesting People mailing list today: On The Implausability Of The Explosives Plot. It’s well-written, only slightly cynical, and – crucially – exhibits a knowledge of chemistry and basic security policy that seems to be beyond the entire research teams of the scaremongering governments of today’s Western world. Plus, it’s amusing. Enjoy.

On a not-unrelated note, if you didn’t see The Power Of Nightmares when it was broadcast and haven’t seen it since, you’ve missed out. Follow the link.

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SmartData Wasn’t At The Royal Welsh Show This Year

Pity. From a BBC report:

A young woman’s naked table-top dance in a cattle shed at the Royal Welsh Show has led to an official inquiry… One witness, who did not want to be named, said security guards rushed to the scene late on Tuesday, but had difficulty grabbing the woman because the water had made her skin slippery.

The Royal Welsh Show is certainly trying out some different entertainments these days. Last time I was there the highlight was the Dancing Diggers (which were great, it’s true, but they’re not strippers by any stretch of the imagination).

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