A topical Christmas card December 2012

For anyone who hasn't the time to make a card this year and wants to rub it in that the 2012  apocalypse didn't happen.

It's my gift to you all (I already e-mailed it to my friends).

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Posters - 2012

These three posters were for an exhibition for 4th year work at the Paisley campus at the University of the West of Scotland in June 2012.

(These images have been reduced in resolution for loading onto this blog. 

The original images were made for printing on A2.)

The Pile

Information Overload

The Jam

One month to the end of the World

As we are one month away from the Apocalypse (if you one of those people who believe in that misinterpreted Mayan calender stuff or are concerned about that newly discovered wondering planet, which has made Professor Brian Cox very pissed by the number of twits he's getting from you) I have a few spanners I like to throw into the conspiracy works.

Is it me, or is it a coincidence that the supposed date of the end of the world coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing?

And here's a few more events that happen to coincide with the end of the world...

(I may have got the numbers wrong, but they are close)

The 894th birthday of Archbishop  Thomas Becket
The 737th anniversary of the death of  Giovanni Boccaccio
The 392nd anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
The 208th birthday of  Benjamin Disraeli
The 199th birthday of Archbishop Archibald Campbell Tait
The 172nd anniversary of the founding of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers
The 105th anniversary of the Santa Maria School Massacre in Chile
The 99th anniversary of the publication of the world's first crossword puzzle
The 75th anniversary of the premiere of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The 72nd anniversary of the death of F. Scott Fitzgerald
The 50th anniversary of the finding of Rondane National Park, Norway
The 45th anniversary of the death of  Louis Washkansky
The 44th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 8
The 33rd anniversary of the signing of the  Lancaster House Agreement
The 20th anniversary of the crash of Martinair Flight 495
The 18th anniversary of the eruption of Popocatepeti, Mexico.

In fact, here's a list to sieve through yourself.

Wikipedia - December 21st

With such information, I'm sure all your conspiracy nuts could think of something that connects all these events (no matter how far-fetched). It'll give you something to do while you wait for the end of the world (and trying to find a way around that security system that's preventing you from stowing away on that rocket ship/ ark that's been built in a secret location to protect the best of the best from Earth (or whoever's got the most money)).

Although, recent excavations of the Mayan kingdom do show some evidence that the Mayans knew that some of us will assume the world is about to end because of their calculations. In fact, one recently discovered scribble on a wall has been translated and said "The simpletons will think this will mean the end of the world. What a jabe that will be - Bazinga!"

The BBC is 90

The BBC is now 90 years old. To celebrate, the BBC's various radio stations broadcast this message at 5:33pm on 14th November 2012.

What would the guys who built and run transmitter 2LO would have made of Orson Welles, Spike Milligan, Douglas Adams and Chris Moyles?

Its great that you are now 90, but sadly much of my radio listening is dominated by local commercial stations.  Today, I mostly change station during my listening time (thanks to digital push-button memory tuning) if the one I'm listening to is playing a song I don't like or a commercial.
But I wasn't always like that. During my high school days, I tuned in to the radio almost every weeknight Monday to Thursday to listen to Tiger Tim Stevens on Clyde 1. I do have fond memories of those nights (Except Fridays, as this was when George Bowie did his dance club music show (I wasn't into dance music then... or clubbing)).

My listening habits changed in 2006, when I got my first MP3 player (a small black 4Gb Archos Gemini XS10D).

I (mostly) stopped listening to the radio after that. But I still got my music fix. I have upgraded since (from two Sony Walkman MP4 players (the first one was destroyed in the washer when I left it in my pocket) to a massive 160Gb iPod Classic).

This is Gordon Wallace signing off now.

(Play end tune)

Ooohhh, oh oh oh oh oh oooohhhhh! Bye bye....!

What you can do with a book and not with an ebook

Why didn't he use the good old Yellow Pages?

3. http://xkcd.com/750/

PETA vs Pokémon?

On page 8 of issue 7of MyM magazine (November 2012) there is an news article about the animal rights group PETA releasing a spoof video game of Pokémon, on the belief that the game teaches children to tolerate animal abuse.

The article in question from page 8 of Issue 7 of MyM magazine (November 2012)

The game, PETA’s Pokémon Black and Blue (a play of words of the then recently released Pokémon Black and White Version 2 games), is an interesting angle on the game. Instead of a trainer played by you battling other trainer’s Pokémon, you play a seriously abused Pokémon who battle’s his/her trainer (who are the game’s human characters as depicted as they were the villains in a slasher film) for freedom. Now, I do not like the idea of people abusing animals for entertainment purposes, but I do know that not every single form of entertainment that involves an animal is out right abuse. But this story has intrigued me. As a kid who first developed an interest in the science of biology and ecology thanks to the Pokémon TV series (I don’t play much games), I’m interested right now on why an animal rights group like PETA would look at the Pokémon games in such a negative way.

According to the article’s quotes from PETA, they say that “Pokémon games paint rosy pictures of things that are actually horrible.” In other words, they think that the games make children learn to tolerate the abuse of animals by making kids battle virtual creatures against each other. It’s the same argument that says that violet video games, like Grand Theft Auto, encourage violence in the real world. I can understand why people would think that, but I know that not every single teenage boy who has played such a game later went out to get a loaded gun and… (I stop here). The point is that the few people who would do it through ideas they got from video games are the subject of other influences (e.g. social isolation). Children are not the moronic simpletons the people who say such arguments say they are. They are not “monkeys” who “see” something and then “do” it. One of the earliest lessons a child gets is to tell the difference between fantasy and reality (well, I assume it is). Children can learn early that what they see on TV, films, comics, books and video games are all make believe (except the stuff that’s true). I can tell from personal experience (been a high-functioning autistic child) that children can tell when something is real and something is make believe. When I watch the Pokémon cartoon, I don’t see poor defenseless creatures been forced to fight against each other, I see imaginary creatures been battled. Although, when I watch the Pokémon cartoon, I can see animals been taken out of their habitats against their will and treated badly…. by terrible trainers, like Paul from the Sinnoh region, or the likes of Team Rocket. I see good trainers, like Ash, who do care for the wellbeing of their Pokémon and others. But this PETA stance against the franchise has put a spanner in the works for anyone who has lived with Pokémon since they first appeared in 1996. It has questioned the core beliefs of anyone who has become a carer for nature (including members of animal rights groups, like PETA) because of the environmental messages Pokémon seem to represent.

It’s like PETA has reduced the game of Pokémon to, basically, a virtual version of cock fighting (don’t snigger!). I can imagine that in the ancient history of the cartoon universe where Pokémon room the Earth with “regular” life forms (the aardvarks and zebras and so on) the battling of these critters was the Unova/Kanto/Johto etc.’s version of cock fighting (you still sniggering?). Most human beings back then didn’t look at animals as another form of being that has intelligence and feelings. They just saw them as autonomous things that happen to react to things and each other, which happen to be (if heated over a fire) editable. It’s a throwback to the days of cavemen. A time when survival meant taking what you can or else you die. In that world there was almost no time to pause and think about stuff, such as what is lightning or why are leaves green. In such as world, the idea of an animal having human-like characteristics couldn’t have been conceived, hence their mass mistreatment in history. It was only until the 19^th century, thanks to mechanized farming providing all our food, that the science of biology could discover and ponder such an idea, courteously of the likes of Charles Darwin. Because of this more recent development in our history, the issue of animal rights came about. Thanks to campaigners, cock fighting (and other forms of clear-animal-abusing entertainment) are illegal and that the only things been tried on mice in labs is medicines (as human volunteers are near-impossible to get). I can imagine the same thing happening in the Pokémon world. During their Age of Enlightenment, Pokémon owners begin to treat their Pokémon with respect, and over time as the knowledge of Pokémon medicine improves the days of severe Pokémon battles ended. Soon the first organized competitions happen and the rest is history. (When did this blog become a history lesson?)

In the article, PETA has said that “if its organization existed in the fictional land of Unova, its motto would be that Pokémon are not ours to use or abuse. It argued that the message children should be getting is that these animals exist for their own reasons.” Considering that PETA was founded in 1980, by then the world of Pokémon had already moved on form the extreme abuses of ancient times. I can imagine that their education system has the “Pokémon are not objects” lesson as part of the nursery curriculum, so they wouldn’t have been a need for PETA to set up a base there…. or they should, considering the behavior of certain trainers and organizations. I do love animals, but I do know that the real natural world is a cruel place. But the cruelty of a minority of people (i.e. poachers) can be more extreme than any violent experience any animal could experience in the wild. Children can tell that Wile E. Coyote is a fictional character that suffers slapstick bad luck, but its thanks to the undertones of  non-slapstick cartoons, like Pokémon, that children learn the truth about the real grown-up world. I can credit Pokémon in shaping my views on the treatment of animals and the environment and for making me study it. With this PETA parody game, I can understand the reason why… when I watched the cartoon, I was more interested in the drama between the characters and creatures (I didn’t care much of the battles (hence, why I didn’t play the games).

On another note from the article, PETA has had a problem with Mario wearing the Tanooki costume that first appeared in Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1988. They think this promotes fur. They are too quick to judge. To all we know, Mario may have been wearing a suit made of synthetic fur. Although, on the other hand, PETA would be angry about that as well, considering the millions of innocent ancient sea creatures that were killed and crushed into a paste through millions of years of seismic activity to make the crude oil that made that synthetic fur.

By the way, I did plan for my first post to be about why the colour blue keeps you awake at night, but this story surprised me so much that I had to comment about it, so thanks PETA (and the people of MyM magazine) for prompting me to write this blog. Things are going to get very interesting in deed.