civilisationReview

Pet Shop Boys isn't as much my cup of Darjeeling as is Depeche Mode - whose Delta Machine concert at the London o2 i attended...and it was amazing! to say the least.  But it still has the 80s spirit to it, or at least the 2nd half of the concert where they performed quite a few of my favourites from Domino Dancing to Surburbia and Opportunities.  I went on my own.  But i wasn't alone.  There were people of all ages up to their 50s, sizes, dress-styles....and they were loving it.  So i was in good company.  Epping to Stratford, Stratford to North Greenwich where the o2 is located....nice ride, nice sights.  Fantastic concert, especially when it was amongst the people whom produced the Pet Shop Boys.  They weren't there because it was the 'in-thing', but because they loved it.  That certainly makes it all the more of a great experience as everyone feeds off everyone's spirit.  Good one! Next stop, Santana at the Wembley Arena in...

Facebook's decision to remove videos showing people being decapitated leaves the firm in a quandary: should or shouldn't it impose a wider censorship policy?

 Since publishing the article, readers have contacted the BBC to complain about other videos, including:
 - one that shows killings which do not involve beheadings - clips involving cruelty to dogs and other animals - a smartphone recording of a schoolgirl being punched to the ground by another pupil 
In all cases they said the network had refused their requests to remove the material. A spokeswoman for Facebook confirmed its policy had only been amended in regard to decapitations. - bbc Back in the 70s, people criticised The Waltons, Little House on the Prarie, etc, for not reflecting 'real life'. Thereafter came 'real life' shows which basically killed of the Idyllic family in real life or any inclinations towards it.  It became 'corny' or 'embarrassing' to be close to one's family th...

I'm still in love with the printed word, be it in ink or e-ink


  ~  ed I had been an avid book-reader since i was a child, but with books tearing on me, i decided that it would be wiser for me to upgrade my views on this so that i wouldn't have to keep buying the same books over and over again - like my Sherlock Holmes, Rumpole, and Jeeves and Wooster (Rumpole has the Oxford Book of English Verse as a constant bedside companion, i have the Rumpole Omnibuses and the aforementioned:) ) I save space on books and DVDs (the latter replaced by a hard-drive and a WDTV) and replace it with music-making tools, toys, comics and records now As for the issue of book vs ebook-reader, it is a non-issue for me now. What i'm focused on is what is the best e-reader in terms of function and feature. Kindle has great marketing strategies, the Kobo has a great e-book reader - given its non-proprietary approach, and its memory card slots. As for being able to share e-books, well, unlike mysel...


An extreme artist has been performing acrobatics hundreds of metres above a canyon in central China. Eskil Ronningsbakken, who worked on the Aizhai suspension bridge in Hunan province without a safety harness, later balanced on a rope ladder hanging from a hot air balloon. - bbc “There were times when intellectual, spiritual, and creative achievement preoccupied quite some people. Now, its just 'career advancement', reproduction, grocery shopping, celeb worship and reality shows. With the devaluation of life, its no wonder that people put it at risk for 'kicks' as a last effort at feeling alive. People who like 'living on the edge' are those who don't have anything going on in the plains of the lives, if you think about it.” - ed, on facebook What we are seeing all around us is the best a child would do if pushed to be creative and intelligent but forced to remain a child.  The child can reach the maximum of its intelligent and creative potential as a ch...

Superheroes have evolved with the passage of times.  Once, they were saints and Gods, whom represented ideals which we could internalise and become Godlike.  Of course, many people say that the belief in God only led to underdevelopment amongst people.  They, of course, are wrong.  It is the failure to follow God to the final conclusion, to realise that He made all of us in His image, and that to realise that ‘image’ in ourselves by unifying with every culture and country, and extricating the best elements of all religions, recipes, etc, etc, etc, that would bring together the still-disparate pieces of the puzzle of God, and finally bring to hand the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, that had led to disenchantment with religion and God.  The failure to do this is that which led us to be disempowered.  That is when we produced, became susceptible to, and handed control over to, the elite, celebs, and corporations of our day.  What happened then was that ...

Musing...... If i had kids, i'll invest in lots of books, DVDs, music, records....from the 40s to the 80s so that they can have a good upbringing.  Histories of time past from the times before The Christ or The Buddha.  Books and films on Religion of all sorts, from Satanism to Christianity.  Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, Highway to Heaven, Sherlock Holmes, Only Fools and Horses, 40s - 70s music, Indian/Western/Arab/African classical, spiritual stuff, etc, etc, etc, is far better perspectival nutrition that the crap they produce these days. If you think about it, which you probably don't unfortunately, our genetic make-up comprises much of those genes that had 'learnt' much from our millions of years of evolution. It contains such 'knowledge' so that we can be better with age and cope better with the vagaries that come with the unpredictable tide of times. 

Or at least it is supposed to. However, this does not apply to knowledge itself as the young ...

From text messages and email to chat rooms and video games , technology has over the past few decades brought an extraordinary new arena of verbal exchange into being - and one whose controversies relate not so much to foreign infiltrations as to informality, abbreviation and self-indulgence. Hence the swelling legions of acronyms ( LOL! ), grunts of internet-inspired indifference ( meh ) and social-media-inspired techniques for dramatising the business of typing ( #knowwhatImean ).  - bbc Language Purists were dismayed that the internet slang, “LOL” was included in the dictionary.  What is a ‘Language Purist’ anyway?  Well, they are simply people whom like the way language already is, and want it to remain that way.  If there was a dictionary around, say, 1000 years ago, what would its contents be like.  Well, it would have the vocab of the elite, and the peasants, and limited by the cultural and technological state of affairs of that time.  In the p...

A 20-year-old Greek footballer has been banned for life from playing for his national team after a controversial goal celebration in which he appeared to give a Nazi salute. The player says he hadn't understood the meaning of the gesture - but is it possible, in 2013, for a European to be so poorly informed? On Saturday, Giorgos Katidis gestured with his right arm extended and hand straightened, to celebrate scoring the winning goal for his team AEK Athens in a Super League game at the Olympic Stadium in Athens. After the match, the former captain of the Greek under-19 team turned to Twitter to explain his actions. "I am not a fascist and I would not have done it if I had known what it means," he wrote. His team's German coach also said his player was ignorant of what the salute signified. "He is a young kid who does not have any political ideas. He most likely saw such a salute on the internet or somewhere else and did it, without knowing what it means," he...

Labour has accused the government of "weak leadership" after it emerged plans for minimum pricing of alcohol in England and Wales may be dropped. Conservative ministers are understood to be split over a proposed 45p per unit price to tackle problem drinking. Tory MP and ex-GP Sarah Wollaston said: "We have to set a minimum below which it's unsafe to sell alcohol." Labour said it was a "humiliating climbdown". - bbc (Conversations below extracted from Facebook BBC ) Andy: On principle, why should I have to pay more for alcohol just because other people don't know when to stop? Pete: why should the responsible have to pay for the mindless minority? Ed: I don't think we should be dividing ourselves between those who 'drink sensibly' and the 'irresponsible drunks', and arguing that the former should not be paying for the latter. That's exactly what the 'divide and conquer' strategists want. Instead, lets talk about ho...

The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation, the government's chief medical officer for England has said. Professor Dame Sally Davies described it as a "ticking time bomb". She warned that routine operations could become deadly in just 20 years if we lose the ability to fight infection. Dame Sally urged the government to raise the issue during next month's G8 Summit in London. Dame Sally said: "If we don't take action, then we may all be back in an almost 19th Century environment where infections kill us as a result of routine operations. We won't be able to do a lot of our cancer treatments or organ transplants." She said pharmaceutical companies needed to be encouraged to develop new drugs, because the manufacture of antibiotics was not viewed as profitable. - bbc I try to stay off antibiotics, flu jabs, and the like by substituting them with a chopped clove of garli...