The Mark of the Beast - tamed

The planet is a big place. And most of it is not the USA. Most of it is not Europe.
This is something that SciFi films and End Times believers always forget.

I was watching an episode of Farscape the other day. It was episode 6, Series 1 "Thank God It's Friday, Again" The Peacekeepers had drugged up an entire planet and had them growing the druggy root, which the Peacekeepers used in weaponry. Luckily the Farscape crew landed at the one town where the sole representative of the entire planet happened to be.
Which was lucky.

The program would have us believe that all the people on the planet grew the same crop. That all the people on the planet were under the control and reach of the Peacekeepers. It's not very likely is it?

And this is what SciFi has in common with End Time prophesy, the inability to grasp global scale.

Because with the current financial crisis, various christian knobs are getting excited and claiming it is a sign of the end. And when it is pointed out that the crisis will not last I read one person claiming that the solution to the crisis was
"International Socialism. The progression to worldwide totalitarian socialism is what is prophesied."
They go on about only being able to buy and sell if you have some kind of mark. And this is where I get global. Across the whole planet? So, while folks in USA and across Europe have some kind of mark/tattoo/chip that enables them to shop, peasant farmers in the Congo have them too? And fishermen in Bangladesh will have this chip? And trappers in Mongolia? They don't even have shops for chrissake! In Zimbabwe the official inflation rate is in the trillions percent and things are done by barter. Do you think Zimbabweans are going to get uptight about a tattoo? The shops are empty. So if the R
rapture and tribulations starts tomorrow, Zimbabwe will be exempt?

It's stupid. This antichrist, one-world government thing is so small minded. For the same reasons that the authors of Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel and Revelations were incapable of percieving a world beyond their horizons, so we tend to think that what effects us and our countries can have planet-wide applications. Small mindedness, lack of imagination.
The Left Behind series tried to make a nod towards the effect of the rapture in other countries, but in the same way that Independence Day did, by showing an alien craft crashing near the pyramids. A token effort.
The reality is, that christians in America think that God is uniquely concerned with America, just like christians in Britain think about the tribulation causing problems shopping at Boots.
But the reality is that the world is a big, big place, and the mark of the beast is simply a logistical impossibility.

The blogosphere to be policed - UK

From the Telegraph

Under the proposals, the new internet watchdog would operate in a similar way to other industry bodies such as the Press Complaints Commission, which enforces a code of practice for the UK newspaper and magazine industry, covering accuracy, discrimination and intrusion.
The watchdog would not have any statutory powers to impose fines but would investigate complaints and most likely publish its decisions in instances when its guidelines have been breached.
It is understood that it would also be able to order bloggers and social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace to take down offensive messages or photographs.

Oh my aching nerves.

It's quite simple. If you find a blog offensive, don't read it, and don't visit it again. What if there were proposals to police offensive books? If someone writes a crap book, it doesn't sell.

A source who has seen the report said that the committee wanted to give the public "a form of redress" "At the moment consumers don't know where to go if they want to complaint about something they have seen on the internet," the source said. "The absence of any industry body is leading to a great deal of confusion and to widely differing practices.

To use the book analogy again, if a book is published and it contains information that is libelous, incorrect or offensive, there are a few options. Revisionist history for example, critics and other historians publish books that debunk the errors. Authors get taken to court for libel or hate crime. And guess what? Similar laws already exist as a "form of redress" because the article goes on to state:

A British businessman was last week awarded £22,000 libel damages from a school friend who made false accusations against him on a fake Facebook profile.
Mathew Firscht launched the High Court action after inaccurate claims about his sexuality and political viewers were posted on the site.

So it seems there are adequate forms redress already.

As the Devil said in his Kitchen:

Blogs are governed by the same libel laws that newspapers are: that is a form of regulation. As for the idea that "internet users will be protected from abusive bloggers" it's a great pile of shit: internet users get protected from abusive bloggers by not reading the fucking blog. You don't like abuse? Fine, fuck off.
And if you find this blog offensive... well... that's free speech for you. You do not have the right not to be offended, OK?

and

Make no mistake, this is about sparing the blushes of our government; not only that, it's about blogs doing the media's job and actually finding out facts and throwing them back in the government's face. It is about stifling dissent.

You Bastards

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation says the headline.
And look at the picture that goes with the story.

I was really excited. And it IS an exciting story. But why do newspapers have to dumb down the thing by showing pictures of 'levitating' objects that have nothing to do with the physics involved.

You can click my pic to enlarge it or follow the link above.


The article is about manipulating the Casimir force on the nano level to possibly create frictionless nano machines.
The picture has no caption, but a mouse over caption reveals 'Beijing saleswoman demonstrates toy which levitates by magnetic force'
I hate shit like that.