FoolishPeople

Batman Begins Teaser Trailer

Heads up. The Batman begins teaser trailer is up at http://batmanbegins.warnerbros.com/

The Profiles are Coming

Starting from this Sunday (1st August), there will be a profile of a Ruined Steel cast or crew member published on this blog. These will give you some interesting background to the people at the sharp end of the forthcoming production, and give you an inevitable thirst for more.

Error

"Things fall apart....the centre cannot hold" wrote Yeats in 1920. Same shit different century and in an age where perfection is thrust upon us as some kind of ideal the only valid response is chaos. Like a scream looking for a mouth, Error tear through the five tracks on this e.p. pissing on the dying embers of what we have come to accept as hardcore today. If punk is change then Error is the future. This is the sound of man and machine but they do not live in harmony - infact one wonders whether Error is working with their equipment or fighting against it.

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute

If intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades. That is the bold prediction from a leading light at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California.

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie

It’s a big old cliché, but it’s funny how your tastes change as you mature. Over the last few years, I’ve developed an appreciation of things I used to scoff at.

Red wine. Blue Cheese. Reading the morning papers. Showering regularly.

J-.

Ja-.

Jazz.

Hey! Whoa! Before you all start reaching for your mice, just let me explain will you?

It’s not jazz itself I’ve come accept. Good god no. It’s more those things which have heavy jazz overtones. Like red wine. And anybody who saw (or reads) American Splendour couldn’t deny that Harvey Pekar’s obsession with jazz gives it a uniquely geekish (in its truest, most uncool sense) slant. It works perfectly, no matter what your opinion of the music.

Same goes for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. Its soundtrack is distinctly jazz-biased but instead of turning me right off, it fits. Indeed, the film feels properly hip. It’s refreshing to watch some anime without pumping J-Rock peppering my eardrums.

Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe (more recently of Animatrix fame), the film sits neatly between episodes 22 and 23 of the series from which it originates. Centring around the ultra-cool yet implausibly-named Spike Spiegel (a noirish blend of Bruce Lee and Steve McQueen) and his band of slightly frazzled mercenaries – Space Cowboys – Bebop: The Movie feels exactly as it is: a bigger-budgeted, epic stand-alone episode. Without the strict turn-around deadlines of the series, more time and care has been lavished over every cell, every aspect of the film.

Set on a Mars (in the future, obviously) faced with the release of a deadly virus during its Halloween celebrations, the Cowboys’ job – for 30,000,000 Woolong, no less – is to track down and take out military madman Vincent. Thanks to his shadowy career in the army, Vincent now has what must be a terribly inconvenient inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. It’s his opinion that everybody bar him is insane and must be put out of their suffering. No wonder he's single, eh? To do it he’s gotten hold of a dirty great chemical bomb. This aspect of the movie – terrorism, chemical threats – has a worryingly relevant tone, and pushes it a good few degrees south of chilling.

Bebop is a true assault on the senses. The cityscape depicted is mind-boggling. In terms of scope and atmosphere – of almost being able to smell the streets and feel buffeted by passers-by – this must be an anime Blade Runner. The animation team even visited Morocco for inspiration for their Martian-Moroccan quarter. Famous landmarks from Earth have been recreated in the future, and a likeness of the Eiffel Tower seems to stand within walking distance of a Golden Gate Bridge replica.

Bebop has survived the transition to the big screen. Unlike some huge Hollywood adaptations, which seem to be a little removed from their sources, Bebop is simply a bigger and better version of the series. The film’s self-contained story means no character introduction is necessary. If you’re new to Cowboy Bebop, you can watch this cold and not miss out. It’s a perfect appetiser for the series. Of course, the experience is augmented many-fold if you are au fait.

Alas, crazy Ed, the young computer hacker, is still present. She (or he; I can’t tell) seems to be Bebop’s comic relief; a Jar Jars Binks sort of creation every bit as irritating as Lucas’ folly.

Ed aside, you must watch this movie. Preferably on a mansize television with all that Dolby bumph to gain maximum enjoyment. At a time when many movies are derided for being examples of style over substance, Cowboy Bebop is a triumph of style AS substance. Even with all that jazz.

No He's Not Dead, or Captured.

Osama bin Laden is trying, knowingly or otherwise, to take over the world disguised as a computer virus.
Thousands of messages have been posted on internet chat-rooms with a subject line suggesting that journalists have discovered that the leader of al-Qaida has been found hanged.

One version of the message says in the subject line: "Osama bin Laden captured".

Then follows the exciting news: "Hey, Just got this from CNN, Osama Bin Laden has been captured! A video and some pictures have been released. Go to the link below for pictures, I will update the page with the video as soon as I can."

Another version suggests, with some sloppy syntax, that the reporters themselves may have carried out the execution: "Osama bin Laden was found hanged by two CNN journalists early Wednesday evening. As evidence they took several photos, some of which I have included here.

"As yet, this information has not hit the headlines due to Bush wanting confirmation of his identity but the journalists have released some early photos over the internet."

Stories of Bin Laden's death have turned out to be exaggerated and the messages are the latest in a long line of urban myths - but this one has a vicious cyber-twist.

Those who click a link are directed to a website to view pictures. But viewers curious to glimpse the corpse of the world's most wanted man will find that attempts to load the pictures get nowhere.

What they may not realise is that their computer might have been infected with a piece of malicious software, a Trojan horse, named because it uses a back-door method of infection and is programmed to steal sensitive information such as bank details. It may also spread spam.

Experts are warning users to ensure they have up-to-date anti-virus software. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the anti-virus software company Sophos, said: "Hackers and virus writers will try all kinds of tricks to entice people into downloading their malicious code.

"It seems this time that the hacker has focused on the public's appetite for news on the war against terror."

Home Office admits Ignorance

In a startling admission in response to a parliamentary question by Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock, Home Office Minister Caroline Flint has stated that her department has not commissioned or evaluated any formal research on the usefulness of animal experiments (March 31). The admission makes nonsense of repeated claims that all applications to conduct experiments on animals first have to pass a stringent 'cost/benefit' analysis, whereby the perceived gains for human health are measured against the pain inflicted. Without a formal assessment of the scientific merits of animal experiments, such a 'cost/benefit' analysis is plainly worthless.

The validity of animal experiments took another heavy drubbing with the publication of an analysis of previously published reports on animal experiments. This was undertaken on behalf of the 'RATS' (Reviewing Animal Trials Systematically) group by scientists from the University of Bristol, the University of Edinburgh, Yale University and the London School of Hygiene. The analysis posed the question: 'Where is the evidence that animal experiments benefit humans?' The scientists' final report cites examples where animal research had been badly designed or where it had been carried out alongside human trials, rendering it completely unnecessary. In one study, it found that clinical (patient) trials were conducted despite the fact that animal tests had revealed symptoms which indicated potential danger to people. It also found that there were many weaknesses in claims that animal experiments have clinical relevance to patients. The overall conclusion is that animal testing procedures should urgently be reviewed.

Well yay to that.

Source: Animal Aid (www.animalaid.org.uk)

Fluffy

Better late than never at all...

I'd like to thank John for the glowing praise (I'm blushing), and he and everyone else here at FoolishPeople for this wonderful opportunity to help out with the Ruined Steel project. I've been exceptionally quiet online regarding my own views about Transhumanism, if not cryptically vague when I've taken the rare moment to publicly speak up about anything. It stems mostly from fear. Fear of seeming too 'out there'. Fear of being misunderstood, misread, misquoted, and overall...wrong. I've come to the realisation that being wrong is impossible in speculation. If you're 'wrong', in the end it either means you weren't inspiring, not read by the right people, or technology hasn't yet met with your estimation. Maybe, just maybe, you want to be wrong on purpose, like George Orwell. Unfortunately, he was too damned spot-on for his own good. For our own good. Then there's Phil Dick. All these years of being an underdog science fiction author, and now we've bred two generations of mutants who actually get Phil Dick and are molding surreality to their own approximation of his writing. Aleister Crowley should be so lucky. If only they had our Internet when they were alive.

Immortality. It's a key element in the periodic table of Transhumanism. The Internet can be seen as a limited means of reaching this goal, yet the alchemy required to turn it into virtual gold lies in the occulted regions of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Dumping your brain onto the Internet in textual form, you're fashioning a crude personality construct. How accurate or tailored this online persona is to that which exists as flesh and bone, is up to you, the creator. Long after you're dead and gone, if not sooner, your LiveJournal emoting, political screeds, MeFi and /. posts... even your drunken party pictures may lie dormant in a digital archive, awaiting the day it's ultimately devoured by a growing AI that's coming to grips with its own existence. The world's leading governments and corporations may already have virtual personality constructs for some of you, awaiting the day when computers are inexpensive and powerful enough to model each and every person from birth to death, in an attempt to simulate reality in the achievement of elusive (inter)National Security objectives. In the charge to preserve the perceived systems of existence, our random and unpredictable humanity may be destroyed. This form of Transhumanism is an inevitable conclusion of sufficiently funded bureaucratic paranoia. It's up to free-thinking individuals to ensure the system remains full of exploitable holes. What fun is immortality if you're stuck in someone else's idea of Heaven?

Alexander McQueen

The new website is up and looks fantastic, would have posted a new pic but couldn't catch one in my net....