Tags : religion | toleration | religious
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The Death of David Kelly - Lord Hutton made a request for the records provided to the inquiry, not produced in evidence, to be closed for 30 years, and that medical (including post-mortem) reports and photographs be closed for 70 years: evidence relating to the death of Government weapons inspector David Kelly is to be kept secret for 70 years, it has been reported (more here and here). Kelly was the UK weapons inspector whose suspiciously timed death in 2003, ruled a suicide, has remained a point of controversy ever since.
Sky burials in Tibet - Sky burials are often practiced in the mountains of Tibet, both for religious and practical reasons. Basically, the corpse is placed on a mountain top and sliced open in various places, to attract the birds of prey circling above. They'd probably feast on it anyway, but an invitation like that doesn't hurt.
Read my lips - As is well known by now, the opening spectacle of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing featured a young girl's performance of Ode to the Motherland which was later revealed to be a lip-synch. The talented original singer Yang Peiyi was considered not "cute" enough. As is perhaps not so well known, however, the resultant flap resulted in the creation of a strict anti-lip-synch law in China, and now two Chinese pop stars face a $12,000 lip-synching fine. Some Chinese rockers have eagerly supported the creation of the ban on lip-synch, and, interestingly, the practice of lip-synching in Chinese musical entertainment had been under discussion in Chinese government circles since at least 2005.
For the Emperor! - Dan Abnett, writer for 2000ad, DC Comics and some of the more well regarded Warhammer 40k novels, has been guest blogging this week at the Borders Sci-Fi blog Babel Clash. Topics have include working with other peoples characters and writing within the Warhammer 40k universe. Fellow Black Library writer Graham McNeill is now taking up the reigns.
Pioneers of Love - Pioneers of Love - a three part documentary about relations between the Ngadjonji people of Far North Queensland, Australia & early white settlers. More about the Ngadjonji people can be found here, including early photos, language, traditional stories, ancient history & more. [previously]
The Russian anti-ship missile we have no defense against? - SS-N-22 Sunburn is the NATO designation for a Russian-made anti-ship missile that the US Navy (it seems) currently has no defense against.
Many years ago, Soviet planners gave up trying to match the US Navy ship for ship, gun for gun, and dollar for dollar. The Soviets simply could not compete with the high levels of US spending required to build up and maintain a huge naval armada. They shrewdly adopted an alternative approach based on strategic defense. They searched for weaknesses, and sought relatively inexpensive ways to exploit those weaknesses. The Soviets succeeded: by developing several supersonic anti-ship missiles, one of which, the SS-N-22 Sunburn, has been called "the most lethal missile in the world today...I'm really hoping that this article turns out to be out-of-date, that we have developed technologies to defend against these weapons that the Russkies custom-designed to exploit the weaknesses in our ships.
The Sunburn can deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear payload, or: a 750-pound conventional warhead, within a range of 100 miles, more than twice the range of the Exocet. The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.1 speed (two times the speed of sound) with a flight pattern that hugs the deck and includes "violent end maneuvers" to elude enemy defenses. The missile was specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis radar defense system. Should a US Navy Phalanx point defense somehow manage to detect an incoming Sunburn missile, the system has only seconds to calculate a fire solution –– not enough time to take out the intruding missile. The US Phalanx defense employs a six-barreled gun that fires 3,000 depleted-uranium rounds a minute, but the gun must have precise coordinates to destroy an intruder "just in time."
Especially since Iran has a bunch of them and we're sending anti-missile ships into the Persian Gulf as a show of force. Having missiles sink our anti-missile-ships would be so many kinds of bad I can't even count them.
Plane For Sale; Hero Not Included. - New time lapse video [04:48] of the salvage of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 (aka 'Miracle on the Hudson'). The A320 is up for sale. It was put "on the online auction block by the insurance company Chartis...The sale attracted widespread attention within hours on Friday, and Chartis was apparently so inundated by curiosity or online bids that it removed the information from its Web site. Chartis identified the plane only by its registration number and its family name, A320, and yet it was instantly recognizable."
"'Due to the volume of interest in aircraft N106US we will provide additional and necessary information in the near future so that all interested parties can be accommodated,' a statement read on the page listing items for auction. 'Thank you for your interest in the aircraft.'"Previously on MeFi.
Timeless Music - "I put every dollar I have into this. I've spent over $1 million, almost $2 million, on this album [...] I think within the first week we will definitely make our money back. The songs will make an impact in pop history." Reality television star Heidi Montag released her debut album, entitled Superficial, this month, to record-breaking lows: The LP sold just 658 copies in the first week of its release.
Further: Montag performs the first single, "Body Language", for the 2009 Miss Universe pageant. Then there's this deliciously deluded interview in Entertainment Weekly:
EW: Why did it take three years to put this together?
HEIDI MONTAG: Well, I did it independently. If you look back at the superstars throughout history it used to take that long to put albums together. Now it's more manufactured. I really wanted to take my time, and every song means so much to me. And every song was a true journey. I had to track down the songs myself, because it was just Spencer and I doing it independently. We really took our time with every single process, because we wanted it to be the highest quality possible. I wanted it to be back to the Thriller days, to that kind of sound. It's timeless music, so whenever it comes out was the right timing.
EW: Do you think Superficial holds up against something like Thriller?
HM: I definitely do. I think people might not see it now, because it's my first album coming out. But I've spent as much time–maybe more, even–than Thriller.
The Vice Guide to Liberia - The Vice Guide to Liberia (trailer & parts 1-4 of 8).
Episode 1
Welcome to The Vice Guide to Liberia. In this eight-part series, VBS travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war. Despite the United Nation's eventual intervention, most of Liberia's young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias are lying in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust. America's one and only foray into African colonialism is keeping a very uneasy peace indeed. In Part 1, Vice's own Shane Smith provides a brief history lesson and some essential context for understanding what caused Liberia's civil war and how things got so bad. Liberia was originally planned and founded as a homeland for former slaves back in 1821. But fast forward a bunch of years and a military coup and you find the First Liberian Civil War in 1989: yet another third-world regime change in which the US-backed opposition, led by Charles Taylor, overthrows a government unfriendly to US interests. Once in power, Taylor's corrupt, dysfunctional government quickly finds itself under attack by local warlords, leading to the Second Liberian Civil War ten years later. From there things go from bad to total shit.
Episode 2
While Liberia's former president Charles Taylor's trial for war crimes and sundry other atrocities continues at the Hague, the ex warlords of Liberia remain in their native country. Some are harassed by cops; others are hunted by vengeful gangs. The lucky few still maintain control over some territory.
In this chapter, VBS meets General bin Laden, so named to strike terror in the hearts of his enemies. After springing bin Laden from jail, VBS is invited back to his compound, where bin Laden leads us to his roof and tells us about his neighborhood improvement plans. Mid-interview, after a suspect group of men unfamiliar to bin Laden assembles in the courtyard down below, VBS is forced to flee.
Episode 3
Eager to see what the UN and Liberian government are actually doing, VBS meets up with a local journalist who plops us down in the center of West Point, the worst slum in Liberia. Without any modern plumbing, the people of West Point have taken to using the beach as a dump and giant outhouse. The area smells like, well, a dump and a giant outhouse, and it goes without saying that residents' health suffers a whole host of issues. Here we also happen on a young Liberian rapper, who gives us a couple verses about the scourge of Africa: AIDS. From there it's off the visit a heroin den, where we watch a twelve year-old smoke heroin and describes raping a woman at gunpoint. It gets worse.
Episode 4
Nearly 70 percent of Liberia's female population has been raped, but that horrifying figure just begins to describe the depths of Liberia's depravity. There's also the not-minor issue of cannibalism—specifically, the devouring of one's enemies. To learn more about these atrocities, we pick up General Rambo and take him to the compound where he once commanded his own rebel faction. Rambo convinces us that the Liberian rebels who lay in wait outside Monrovia could take over the city in two hours if the UN leaves the city. The UN is scheduled to begin pulling out next year.
You will never vanquish the Lizard People, Monsieur Debonaire! Mwahahaha! - Maybe D&D has disappointed you. Too complicated*, too slow, too restrictive? Spirit of the Century (free version, blurbs/store) is a Fate game designed for fast-paced, pulpy adventures. And we should thank Fudge, too.
Fudge (pdf) is essentially a customisable rpg toolkit based on simple resolution mechanics. Fate is an rpg system based on Fudge.
Some setting conversions for Fate can be found here. Defunct Fudge wiki. SubterFUDGE. Character creator/Fudge dice roller. The creator of Fudge has some extra material here.
And of course you can adapt other settings or subsystems till the cows come home.
*or the wrong kind of complicated. Your favorite edition sucks.
21st century executions. - 10 executions that defined the 2000s. Ten executions that most palpably captured the decade's Zeitgeist. Some clips may be NSFW.
Formosan aborigines - Formosa – photographed by Torii Ryuzo.