Cat Vincent's Journal
 
 [Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]

Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in Cat Vincent's InsaneJournal:

    [ << Previous 20 -- Next 20 >> ]
    Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
    12:14 am
    Banned swords, the monopoly of force and the history of Okinawa
    Samurai swords were outlawed in the UK today.

    " Legislation against selling, making, hiring or importing samurai swords in England and Wales has come into force. Those breaking the law face six months in jail and a £5,000 fine. Carrying a sword in public is already illegal.

    Exemptions will cover swords which are used for re-enactments or antique weapons kept on display by collectors. "

    Now it's a truism that government is by definition an organisation which holds a monopoly on the use of force - and they really like having that monopoly. Of course in other countries - rightly or wrongly - firearms are acceptable forms of personal or home defence. Those governments include registration of the firearms, limits on public concealment etc. We Brits have no right to firearms, except in limited conditions (basically, being a farmer allows you a shotgun as a needed tool & that's it) and our right to carry other defensive tools is highly restricted. Blades above a very short length, collapsible batons - banned in public (but somehow, not for sale) for 10 years.

    This is why the history of the little island of Okinawa is notable. When Shogunate Japan banned edged weapons from the farmers and other peasants, fearing a revolt, the farmers complied - turning their farm tools into weapons themselves. The Sai is a threshing fork, the nunchuku a flail for rice threshing, etc. The peasants also came up with a style of fighting movement designed to work empty-handed - Shotokan Karate, by name.

    I wonder what martial arts and weapons our society will discover/adapt/invent? Homebrew tasers are already out in the wild. A mobile phone kata would turn the ubiquitous object into a nice little short-range club, similar to a Kongo. Umbrellas and walking sticks have a noble tradition in improvised (and sometimes not-so-improvised - hat tip to John Steed) weaponry.

    NEVER FORGET - as my wife answered the Customs officer at Heathrow once, "anything can be a weapon if you try hard enough". And of course don't start fights... but always finish them.

    Current Mood: peeved
    Current Music: Kashmir-Led Zeppelin
    Monday, April 7th, 2008
    11:15 pm
    Today's dodgy spam concept is...
    ...referring to a well-known story to promote your product, without grasping how that story ended, viz:

    "Grow your men's treasure like a Jack's Bean Tree!".

    Remember what Jack did to the beanstalk? Not an association one wants with Viagra, I suspect.

    Current Mood: amused
    Current Music: Third Eye-Tool-Ænima
    9:07 pm
    Psychics and the EU law
    New EU law to protect consumers from 'fraudulent' psychics. How to tell is the big question...

    "...a whole list of disclaimers must be added to the spiritualists' spiel if they are to avoid an avalanche of writs following the repeal next month of the Fraudulent Mediums Act, to be replaced by the new Consumer Protection Regulations. Promises to raise the dead, secure good fortune or heal through the laying on of hands are all at risk of legal action from disgruntled customers. Spiritualists say they will be forced to issue disclaimers, such as 'this is a scientific experiment, the results of which cannot be guaranteed'. They claim the new regulations will leave them open to malicious civil action by sceptics.

    The problem is that very little in the multi-million-pound psychic industry in Britain is for free, and anyone charging or accepting 'gifts' in exchange for a service is bound by the new regulations. There are charges for seances, Tarot, psychic readings and clairvoyance. Spiritualist church service-goers - and there are more than 300 spiritualist churches in Britain - are charged or asked for donations. Psychic mailings - letters promising spiritualist services in exchange for a cheque - are estimated to have cost Britons £40m in 2006-07, according to Office of Fair Trading research. Psychic services via telephone, online and satellite TV keep the tills ringing further.

    For the past half-century, 'genuine' mediums have been protected by the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act, under which prosecutors had to prove fraud and dishonest intent to secure a criminal conviction, which was difficult. There have been fewer than 10 convictions in the past 20 years. With that protection gone, there will now be nothing between the medium and the trading standards officer - and no need to prove fraud. Instead it will be up to the trader, in this case the medium, to prove they did not mislead, coerce or take advantage of any 'vulnerable' consumers."

    NB - Athanor Consulting charges for time spent on a job, like any consultancy. We never take money for psychic services - those are given free. A small but important distinction.

    Current Mood: concerned
    Current Music: Next-Sensational Alex Harvey Band-Next
    Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
    11:55 pm
    No! Way!!
    Bill and Ted - no third movie. But they just greenlit a fucking remake.

    Bogus.

    ' As in the original, Bill and Ted are high-school students who are in danger of flunking unless they create a "full presentation" on the subjects of all their classes. They travel through time and meet the historical figures they're supposed to have learned about, including Gandhi and Calamity Jane this time around.

    The main differences are that the phone Bill and Ted use to travel through time isn't an old-school phone booth, but something "funkier." Their band is called the Atomic Gorillas instead of the Wyld Stallions. The script is supposedly full of "hip" pop culture references for today's kids, like Bill and Ted worrying they're going to miss The Dark Knight. No clue whether there's a George Carlin character this time around, or who might play him. There are a lot fewer "Whoas." '

    Current Mood: non non, non non non, non non non triumphant
    Current Music: Queen B-Puscifer-V is for vagina
    Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
    9:48 pm
    Ghost 'hunters' on LJ
    Just found a thread on the LJ Occult group asking about 'ghost hunters', so of course I stuck my nose in.

    The thread OP has founded a I Hunt Ghosts group there also.

    I rather suspect their meaning of the word 'hunt' and mine are a little different... but we shall see.

    Current Mood: curious
    Current Music: The Knife-Various Artists-The Shadow - Motion Picture Soundtrack
    12:51 am
    Being social
    I joined in with the March Asylum meme as per here. My post was to the [info]allpaths community, with a couple of my old rants some of you may remember from the Dark Days on LJ. Looks like a cool place for folk of many beliefs to hang out.

    Current Mood: sleepy
    Current Music: I Can't Be Cool-Yoko Kanno-Stand Alone Complex O.S.T.2
    Saturday, March 29th, 2008
    11:43 pm
    A (environmental) Modest Proposal
    The very fine SF writer and biologist Peter Watts has a couple of trenchant points about the 'Earth Hour' switching-off-lights-protest-thingy at his blog, ' No moods, ads or cutesy fucking icons ':

    Why, I'll bet the reduced environmental impact from turning off those lights might even recoup a small fraction of the resources consumed to drive the massive multimedia extravaganza advertising Earth Hour.

    Oh, wait. There isn't going to be any reduction in environmental impact. Not unless the world's power-generating utilities decide to scale back the fossil fuels they're burning to reflect a one-time, one-hour tick in the time series.

    Yes, I know. It's only supposed to make "a statement". It's supposed to be a symbol. And what does it symbolize, exactly? It symbolizes "hope" — which is to say, our infinite capacity for denial, our unwillingness to restrain ourselves in any meaningful sense, our brain-dead refusal to see the brick wall we're hurtling towards. It symbolizes the sick fucking joke that is the human race.

    Then he makes a suggestion:

    So, you want to effect real change? You've got to make the threat matter to the ones who matter. You have to take the shit into their hallways until even they can smell it. You have to threaten something valuable to them, and threaten it now, if you want to awaken that fierce innovative spark of self-preservation that burns brightest when the danger is in your face and the piss is running down your leg.

    This is what you'd have to do: hunt down the Harpers and the Gordons and the Martins, the Roves and Cheneys, the Harrises and the Kleins and Bairds. (You might want to hunt down the Dubyas, too— they don't make any of the real decisions, but the symbolism is important.)

    ...Hunt down every pundit and commentator who, after years ridiculing the signposts, now shrugs and says Oh, well, I guess we fucked up the planet after all. Too late to fix it now, let's just adapt and make sure that economic growth doesn't drop below five percent... Take every family member who sided with any of them (most have); explain to them all the proximate nature of threat-perception in the human animal, and that you're going to motivate them only way you can.

    Then kill half of them. Give the other half a year to fix things. Hold back their families in, as the publishers say, "reasonable amounts against returns".

    That's probably what it would take to get these people to give a shit

    I do not of course endorse mass murder as a tool to change public opinion. After all, that sort of thing never works... plus I don't think those involved really give that much of a shit about their kin.

    Current Mood: cynical
    Current Music: Doomed: Dark music for tortured souls [SomaFM]
    11:22 pm
    Soma movie news
    ...sorry about the pun.
    No, not really.

    Here's an announcement that Ridley Scott is to direct an adaptation of Huxley's 'Brave New World', starring Leo DeCaprio.
    http://www.bigpictureradio.com/2008/03/dicaprio-and-ridley-scott-to-join.html

    Current Mood: hmm...
    Current Music: Doomed: Dark music for tortured souls [SomaFM]
    Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
    10:07 pm
    Tentacle-on-tentacle action
    Via Boing, today's best lede:

    "In the violent tangle that is sex between giant squids, almost anything can happen, including accidentally injecting yourself with firehose-pressure blasts of sperm."

    http://www.cdnn.info/news/eco/e050925.html

    Current Mood: amused
    Current Music: inceptdate radio
    Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
    10:46 pm
    The power of tea
    Via the Danger Room blog at Wired.com:

    http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Health/2008/03/14/bioterror_defense_--_tea_anthrax_antidote/9315/

    ' Welsh and U.S. researchers say black tea -- without milk -- may be an antidote to the Bacillus anthracis -- anthrax.

    Scientists led by Les Baillie of the Welsh School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University and Theresa Gallagher, Biodefence Institute, Medical Biotechnology Center of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in Baltimore, have found that the widely available English Breakfast tea has the potential to inhibit the activity of anthrax.

    The study, published in Microbiologist, also found the addition of whole milk to a standard cup of tea completely inhibited its antibacterial activity against anthrax...

    "What's more, given the ability of tea to bring solace and steady the mind and to inactivate Bacillus anthracis and its toxin, perhaps the Boston Tea Party was not such a good idea after all," Baillie said in a statement. '

    Current Mood: fancying a nice cuppa
    Current Music: Drone Zone: Atmospheric ambient space music. Serve Best Chilled. Safe with most medications. [SomaFM]
    Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
    11:11 pm
    Arthur C Clarke is dead, alas
    You can't deny the influence of the man who not only wrote 2001 - A Space Odyssey, but invented the telecommunications satellite.

    Dead at 90. He saw a lot of change and wrote pretty well about it.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7304004.stm

    Current Mood: nostalgic
    Current Music: Drone Zone: Atmospheric ambient space music. Serve Best Chilled. Safe with most medications. [SomaFM]
    Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
    11:36 pm
    Privacy Deathmatch - Schneier versus Brin
    Great minds not thinking alike... here's Bruce Schenier critiquing the sousveillance idea:

    "When I write and speak about privacy, I am regularly confronted with the mutual disclosure argument. Explained in books like David Brin's The Transparent Society, the argument goes something like this: In a world of ubiquitous surveillance, you'll know all about me, but I will also know all about you. The government will be watching us, but we'll also be watching the government. This is different than before, but it's not automatically worse. And because I know your secrets, you can't use my secrets as a weapon against me.

    This might not be everybody's idea of utopia -- and it certainly doesn't address the inherent value of privacy -- but this theory has a glossy appeal, and could easily be mistaken for a way out of the problem of technology's continuing erosion of privacy. Except it doesn't work, because it ignores the crucial dissimilarity of power.

    You cannot evaluate the value of privacy and disclosure unless you account for the relative power levels of the discloser and the disclosee.

    If I disclose information to you, your power with respect to me increases. One way to address this power imbalance is for you to similarly disclose information to me. We both have less privacy, but the balance of power is maintained. But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with.

    An example will make this clearer. You're stopped by a police officer, who demands to see identification. Divulging your identity will give the officer enormous power over you: He or she can search police databases using the information on your ID; he or she can create a police record attached to your name; he or she can put you on this or that secret terrorist watch list. Asking to see the officer's ID in return gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power imbalance is too great, and mutual disclosure does not make it OK."

    (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_pow.html)

    And like a gent, he links to Brin's reply:
    "People who never read The Transparent Society assume I
    want everybody walking around naked. Balderdash. But
    it does take some mental flexibility to ponder how a
    generally open society will be privacy-friendly. Even
    though it was a generally open society that invented
    modern privacy.

    Look around you. Today, the person who most-often and
    most capably defends your privacy is... you. But in
    order to do that, you must be able to catch peeping
    toms and busybodies. And you cannot do that shrouded
    in clouds of secrecy.

    Try the "Restaurant Analogy." People who are nosy,
    leaning toward other customers in order to snoop, are
    caught by those customers. Moreover, our culture
    deems such intrusion to be a worse sin than anything
    that may be overheard.

    Now try setting up a diner where customer tables are
    separated by paper shoji screens, giving a surface
    illusion of greater privacy. But where peepers can
    press their ears against the screen and peer through
    little slits, with impunity. Which approach better
    protects privacy? Which have people, chosen?"

    http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20080303/048646.html

    Who's right? Hell, I dunno - but the debate is an important one.

    Current Mood: cold
    Current Music: Drone Zone: Atmospheric ambient space music. Serve Best Chilled. Safe with most medications. [SomaFM]
    Friday, March 7th, 2008
    7:33 pm
    Best obituary for Gygax
    As many of you know, Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons (and thus a huge influence on my life) died this week.

    Here's what XKCD had to say:
    http://xkcd.com/393/

    Current Mood: wistful
    Current Music: Drone Zone: Atmospheric ambient space music. Serve Best Chil
    Friday, February 29th, 2008
    12:36 am
    Your mutant necro jollies for the day - assquatch art.
    Coilhouse gives us a taste of this redneck artform, which consists of altering a dead deer ass into a face, Examples at the kink link.

    http://coilhouse.net/2008/02/26/the-sublime-nihilistic-elegance-of-assquatch-art/

    Current Mood: amused
    Current Music: Groove Salad: a nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves. [SomaFM]
    Thursday, February 28th, 2008
    11:11 pm
    Airport security scanner - you know, for kids...
    Get 'em used to it while they're young...

    http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/toy_xray_machin.html

    Current Mood: bemused
    Current Music: Doomed: Dark music for tortured souls [SomaFM]
    4:53 pm
    As you were
    Email seems to be back up for the zoo.co.uk address - drop me a line if you've sent anything in the last week or so and had no reply. please.

    Current Music: Doomed: Dark music for tortured souls [SomaFM]
    Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
    11:11 pm
    Format change
    To stop my RSS feed to LJ going all unreadable, links are now separate from text body.

    Ta to [info]happyuncledave for the hint.

    Current Music: Drone Zone: Atmospheric ambient space music. Serve Best Chilled. Safe with most medications. [SomaFM]
    11:09 pm
    The blind leading the bland
    "David Blunkett, the ex-Home Secretary, is to front a TV show called Banged Up With Blunkett.
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/26/blunkett_five_docu/
    Sadly it seems the title is slightly misleading - Blunkett will not be sent to prison but will oversee a Big Brother type show where off-the-rails teenagers are scared back onto the straight and narrow by Blunkett and some ex-cons.
    The short-tempered MP heads up a pseudo parole board which decides what to do with errant youngsters."

    Between this and the recent doco series Portillo On Thatcher (and if that's not a perfect description of his best wank fantasy...) there's way to many politicos showing up in light entertainment. Starve 'em of the oxygen of publicity, I say!

    Current Mood: tired
    Current Music: Drone Zone: Atmospheric ambient space music. Serve Best Chilled. Safe with most medications. [SomaFM]
    Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
    2:20 pm
    Email down!
    My standard email address - the one that ends zoo.co.uk - is down and I dunno when it'll be back.

    Until further notice, use the work email address to reach me:

    vincent AT athanor.org.uk

    Current Mood: pissed off
    Current Music: Candyman Suite: Face To Razor-Philip Glass-The Music Of Candyman
    Friday, February 22nd, 2008
    10:28 pm
[ << Previous 20 -- Next 20 >> ]
Athanor Consuting - my paranormal protection company   About InsaneJournal