Great Britain: A Fascist Democracy

The UK is going to hell in a handcart.
We have more CCTV than any other country, a government intent on knowing what we say, who we say it to, when and why, illegal imprisonment under the guise of terrorism and innocent people being dragged from their homes and interrogated.
This is the woman heading the charge.


--And I put it to the honourable member, that I am an insufferable bitch.
This is Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, and the dilapidated, baggy eyed chimp behind her is Gordon Brown, our 'Prime Minister'. (More like Prime Ateister! Am I right?)


On top of all this, Smith's latest idea is to monitor all our internet use, including email, downloading and social networking sites, like Facebook.
They're saying it's like with phone calls... They can see where the call originated and it's destination but don't know the content of the conversation but I call bullshit. How long before they're essentially tapping all our online activity?
Of course they're citing terrorism and pedophilia, as usual, but it will be average people who are basically innocent who will get screwed in the end. It always is.
They say it's about big stuff but then you mention that you smoked a joint once to a friend online and before you know it the police are raiding your house at dawn claiming you're a terrorist pedophile drug lord.


This guy admitted online that he sometimes lets his dog crap on the pavement.
You accidentally click the wrong link on a porn site, google something dodgy or download an MP3 and the police will be at your door.
Before you know it they will be spending so much time busting people who downloaded the latest chart topper illegally that the terrorists will slip by unnoticed.
We have less freedoms and more rules than most dictatorships and we now have a government controlled by people who consult experts and then ignore them completely!
It's a slippery slope and the water at the bottom is full of fascist alligators.

Well how would you photoshop a Fascist Alligator?!

Our freedoms are being reduced weekly and do you know what? It's the Government that are the terrorists, now.
A terrorist is somebody who uses terror to further their own agenda and I think the current governments in the UK and USA fit that bill.
They use our terror of attack, youths, disease, whatever as a way to control us and keep us subordinate.
I'm not a conspiracy nut or anything but you don't need to be in this day and age!
Plus, I really disagree with the government having info about me considering government officials loosing private and confidential data is now a monthly occurrence.
How many times recently have government workers left laptops, documents, CDs, flash drives, etc. on trains, in cabs, in the street? Too fucking many, because once is too many times.


Pictured: Identity Thief's wet dream.
Why, just the other day a leading government official, the most senior counter terrorism police officer in fact, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick made a serious blunder when he was photographed getting out of a car on his way to a briefing with the PM, with a Top Secret document under his arm in plain view that detailed a list of places that would be subject to dawn anti-terror raids!


--They'll never see these raids coming!
This piece of utter idiocy actually forced the government to go ahead with the raids the very next morning, rather than when originally planned and Quick, erm... quickly resigned (I'm sorry).

The worst part? We all just roll over and take it. We accept that every week or so the government comes up with another thing we cant do or another way to monitor the few things we can still do.
When they're not doing that they're raising taxes to pay for their second homes and rampant nepotism, usually under the guise of another pointless environmental band wagon or to further the 'War On Terror' but mostly the money is just used to fight the war against common sense.
So, be careful Jacqui Smith. You're supposedly left wing, but this is where you're heading:

--Heil Smithler!

See ya'll in jail.

What if all the computers died?

This is something I was thinking about the other night and I realised that if all the computers died we would be fucked!
Forget how or why, just imagine IF.

What if all the computers in the whole world just stopped tomorrow? For a start you wouldn't be able to waste time at work reading articles like this, but then again you probably wont have a job anymore anyway. Everyone and everything now needs computers.



-Dear Mother, Big city computing job going well. Please send money.


Think about it. Try and think of one business, institution or utility that doesn't rely on computers to keep them running. You can't, can you?

All the banks would collapse and, of course, as most of the money lives in computers now all that would be gone, too.
Assuming this mystery computer blight also killed the computers that keep your car running and on the road we could expect a lot of this:



Forget about your phone. It doesn't work. Planes are gonna fall out of the sky. The whole civilised world is going to collapse. And do you know what really sucks? You wont be able to watch people being retarded on YouTube!



This is all we'll have left!
Just something to think about...

Amazing feats: The Circus is in town!

So, last Sunday I went to see Cirque De Soleil, or more specifically Quidam, and it was truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my entire life! The skill and huge brass balls required to perform the acts they do are awe inspiring, so in honour of that I thought I'd do an article on amazing feats the like of which me and you could never hope to achieve.

The German Wheel



In the Quidam show they pretty much opened with this guy and when he rolled out I may as well have been 6 years old again! I was giddy as a school girl and could not take my eyes off him.
This is what I saw:


Because Sphereing is for pussies!

Now if that isn't fucking bad ass, then I don't know what is! It makes me wish I was born into a french circus family! That guy makes it look easy but this is what happened to Christopher Knight when he tried it on Celebrity Circus:


Can you say "Dislocated Shoulder"?

Wanna have a go?

You can pick on up at Firetoys.co.uk for just £720!

Diabolos



Diabolo (or "The Devil On Two Sticks" or "Devil Stick") is a form of juggling, in a way. At some point you will have seen one of these in a toy shop or being wielded by a hippie at a festival. They look like this:


Now, I doubt you learnt to use on of these in school, but in Asia they teach 'em different!
Here are the Quidam Diabolos:


Yes, they are children.

And here's the Malaysian Diabolo Team:



Wanna have a go?

You can pick one up at Firetoys.co.uk from around £7 and there's a host of tricks to try at Diablotricks.com.

Juggling



I will say this first... I'm a juggler. A bad one. Sure, I can keep three balls in the air and do rudimentary tricks but nothing like this!


From about 1:15 it just gets silly!

And don't think those balls need to stay airborne, either!


Crazy shit from around 3:30 onwards.

You can even use your balls to play music:


Is it just me, or does the still look like he's shitting a ball?!

Wanna have a go?

Once again, over at Firetoys.co.uk you can pick some up from 89p a ball (these fuckers should be paying me commission!) or make your own from a material of your choice filled with lentils. There's a pretty decent tutorial here and some tricks to try here.

Trapeze



Ever wanted to swing 20 feet above imminent and painful death or disability? No? Well, want no more! These guys will do it for you! This is the Dual Trapeze from Cirque De Soleil's Dralion.


Do you see any support wires?!

Wanna have a go?

Then you, my friend, are out of your fucking mind.

5 'Dinosaurs' that are still alive and kickin

It is a commonly held belief that Dinosaurs died out around 65 Million years ago. This belief is wrong. OK, I'll grant you that T-Rex is no longer roaming the plains and there isn't likely to be a Dipolodocus eating your hedges when you get home, but I assure you that there are still plenty of 'Dinosaurs' about.

5 - Coelacanth


Thought to have died out 80 Million years ago , it was discovered to still be very much alive in 1938 when one was found off the coast of South Africa. It turned out that fisherman had caught many but threw them back as their oily, foul tasting skin had no commercial value.
The Coelacanth is essentially unchanged from the fossilised specimens from 80 million years ago.


4 - Purple Frog


This ugly little thing that looks like a mole shagged a toad is a Purple Frog, found in the Seychelles, off the coast of India. It can be traced back around 100 Million years through fossil evidence. The reason it was thought to be extinct for so long is that it spends around 50 weeks a year underground, only surfacing during monsoon season for mating. Unlike other burrowing frogs that surface for food, this little guy uses his tongue to eat termites and such whilst underground.

3 - Horseshoe Crab


Thought to have evolved around 570-248 million years ago, the horseshoe crab is actually a relative of the Spider, though a distant one. It is the last member of the Xiphosura, one of the oldest classes of marine arthropods.
The Horseshoe Crab is very, very weird in a number of ways.
First off, it has no mandibles. Instead, it's mouth is located in the middle of the underneath of it's body, between it's 5 pairs of legs, each of which is equipped with a set of gills which allow it to breath in water and on land for short periods if it's gills are kept moist. It has two compound eyes, 5 other simple eyes in varying locations (thought to be important during embryonic stages) and blue blood. The blood is blue as it is copper based, rather than iron, like many molluscs.
It also has the ability to re-grow lost limbs.

2 - Crocodilians


This is the general classification for the Crocodile, Alligator, Gharial and Caiman famillies.

Obviously, the things on this list so far weren't really 'Dinosaurs' in the true sense of the word, but this certainly is. Dinosaur means Terrible Lizard and, I think we can all agree, the Crocodile fits the bill. Crocodilians first appeared around 220 million years ago, but the Crocodilians we know today evolved around 84 million years ago.
The sheer power of these creatures is astounding! Only about 7 of the species are considered dangerous to humans but they're the 7 biggest. The ones that grow over 3 meters long! They can grow to up to 6 meters long (20 ft) or about the length of a truck.
A 6 meter crocodile can lie in a foot of water and be totally invisible. They have a bite force in excess of 5,000 pounds per square inch (2.5 tons) coming down on 60-80 teeth up to 13 cm (5 inches) long. And don't think you'll be safe on land, either. The land speed record for a croc is 11 Mph (17 km/h) and they can propel themselves out of the water to attack.


Like this with the ability to jump 10 feet straight up from standing... Yeah.

Oh and once they get hold of you they will pull you back into the water and drown you.

1 - Sharks


There are some weird evolutionary dead ends up there but nothing does weird quite like sharks. Sharks have been evolving for about 420 million years, with modern sharks going back about 100 million.
Sharks, Rays and Skates all evolved from a common ancestor and when they split into the separate species is not known with any degree of accuracy. They are cartilaginous fish, meaning their skeletons are made from cartilage.
Sharks come in many, many, many shapes and sizes but here are some of the weirdest Google could come up with:




Screaming PHOTOSHOP at them will not make them go away...

Clockwise from the top left they are the Megamouth Shark, Prickly Shark, Elephant Shark, Goblin Shark, Frill Shark and Shark Ray and these are but a few. Sharks range from a few inches (Dwarf Lantern Shark) to over 12 meters in length (Whale Shark).
Out of over 360 species only 4 have been involved in a significant number of attacks on humans. These are the Great White, Tiger, Bull and Oceanic White Tip. The Bull Shark is one of the most dangerous as they can tolerate both marine and fresh water environments, meaning they can swim up rivers and they have even been known to chase prey onto beaches.


Is it... Is it smiling at me?

Sharks usually have two or three working rows of teeth with roughly 20 to 30 teeth in each row (a whale shark has 300 per row) which are constantly replaced should they be damaged or fall out and a shark can go through up to 35,000 teeth in it's lifetime. I personally own a 30 Million year old sharks tooth, found in Morocco, and it still has an edge on it.


They can fucking jump as well!

Should you ever come face to face with an aggressive shark the best thing to do is make yourself seem like a credible threat. Punch, kick and scratch it, aiming for the eyes, gills and snout. Always keep an eye on it because it is likely it will try and retreat and sneak up on you. Outright retreat is futile as you will never out swim a shark so the best bet is to move towards your boat/the shore quickly and calmly whilst keeping an eye on the toothy bastard.

Or of course you could just cry and wait for the release of death...

Supervolcano: Prepare for Nuclear Winter

This is Yellowstone National Park
As you may or may not know, underneath Yellowstone there lies a Behemoth just biding it's time, waiting to totally fuck up your day.
I am talking, of course, about the Yellowstone Supervolcano. One of the biggest in the world, it's magma chamber is thought to be roughly 34 miles wide and 45 miles long.
It's last major eruption was 640,000 years ago during which it threw around 240 miles³ of ash and rock into the air, creating a caldera roughly 1km deep and 52 by 28 miles in area. It is so gratuitously humongous that it was only fully confirmed when viewed from space!

Now, meet Krakatoa.

This eruption occurred in 2007.

It has been postulated that an eruption of Krakatoa in 535 AD could have been responsible for a global climate change due to ash and water vapour being thrown into the stratosphere. It is thought that this may have caused a Nuclear Winter across much of the globe.

Therefore, it is totally within the realms of reality that a massive and catastrophic eruption at Yellowstone could end the world as we know it. If enough ash and vapour was forced into the Stratosphere it would block out the sun leading to a possible Ice Age and the mass extinction of pretty much everything, as no sun means no plants, famine and outbreaks of disease. It could also cause world wide weather phenomena such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. Some scientists even believe that it was a volcanic eruption of this magnitude that caused Dinosaurs to go extinct.


-AaaCHOOOOOOO!

Plus, humans being how we are you can expect looting and riots worldwide.
Except in this area:


Know why no-one will be looting here? Because this chunk of America will be pretty much totally destroyed.

If you live in this area, might I suggest a move tothe UK? It's always cold and dark here anyway, so it'll help you adjust.
If you live anywhere else, buy yourself a rifle, start stockpiling Spam, jerky and Dehydrated water (wait... what?), huddle close with your loved ones for warmth and pray for spring.

The rock that ended the world (in the future).

I am fascinated by nature. All nature amazes me. The sheer power of Nature and the devastation it can cause, leave me in awe. Sure, man created the Atomic bomb and it can wipe cities off the map in one go, but nature has the power to devastate whole countries if it takes her fancy.

In what will probable be a series of ways nature is trying to kill you and your loved ones, I would like to introduce you to The Cumbre Vieja Volcano.


It wants to kill you!

How it intends to kill you:

This active volcano covers the southern third of Isla de La Palma in the Canary Islands. It last erupted in 1971 and when it did it loosened a chunk of rock roughly 500 km³ in size and roughly 1.5 x 10¹⁵ kg in weight (or "Fucking Big And Heavy").
Should a future eruption cause this chunk of the island to slide into the Atlantic the result would be a "Mega Tsunami" which would make the tsunami that devastated parts of Asia recently seem like an eddy in a paddling pool. That Tsunami topped out at around 30 meters tall when it hit the coast.
The Mega-tsunami Cumbre Vieja could cause would be more like 2 km (1 mile) high and would travel at an approximate speed of around 1000 km per hour (621 miles per hour) or roughly the speed of a jet fighter.


Like this. And it's coming for YOU!

It would hit Africa in around 1 hour then South West England in about 3 and a half hours, causing massive destruction.
At around 6 hours it would utterly decimate the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. By that time it would have become a succession of smaller waves, each one the size of the tsunami in Asia and possible surges up to 100 meters tall. Everything up to 25 miles in land would be totally fucked, including Miami, New York and Washington.

If you live in any of these places, I would advise in investing in one of these:


-FUCK YOU, BITCHES!

PS3 vs Xbox 360 - Why Microsoft can suck my balls.

Author's Note: This is my first artical attempt so I apologise in advance if it's a little rough. I'm still practicing! Any constructive critisism you have should be placed in the comments below. If you have nothing nice or constructive to say then please write your comment on some scrap paper using your usual crayon and then shove it up your arse, because nobody cares.

PS3 Vs XBox 360...
I have read many comparisons between the two and I'm sure you have as well.

My comparison, however, comes from a fairly unique stand point. I have played both the XBox 360 and PS3 extensively, yet own neither. My friend shares my love for consoles but has a lot more disposable cash than I do. He purchased a PS3 a while ago and recently purchased an Xbox 360. After playing both consoles but not being biased by spending hundred of pounds, I feel I can give a fair comparison.

I will, at this point, admit that I am well gay for Playstation. Always have been, probably always will be. Playstation is the Golden Boy of Sony's extensive empire, where as the XBox 360 is Microsoft's bastard child, born from greed and Microsoft's need to have all their dirty little fingers in as many pies as possible.

You may think this will bias me towards Playstation and you're damn fucking right it will, but as you will see, even XBox fan boys can't argue with the facts.

Cost

The Playstation 3 was flamed the moment it hit the shelves for being too expensive. Currently, according to Game.co.uk it's £299.99 (about $440) for the 80GB model on it's own. Now, this may seem steep but remember the PS3 comes wireless enabled, will play Blue-Ray disks and has a fuckton of computing power. The PS3 is so powerful that some scientists linked a few together to make an ad-hoc supercomputer because you just cannot get more computing power for the money! Sony are still selling them at a loss!

So, let's compare that to the XBox 360. Now, XBox fanboys will tell you that the XBox is way cheaper than the PS3 but I call bullshit. To be a fair comparison you have to compare comparative hardware. Obviously, this is flawed as the XBox hardware is poorly spec'd, poorly made and badly designed, but for the sake of this comparison we shall assume that XBox consoles actually work and aren't made from left over bits of scrap from the factory floor.

The 360 console comes in 3 basic forms; The Arcade, the Premium and the Elite.

The Arcade (£129.99/$190) isn't even worth mentioning really. You get a piss poor 256MB drive and 5 shitty XBoxLive arcade style titles, pre-loaded.

The Premium (£169.99/$250) is a little better. With that you get a 60GB hard drive and HDMI compatibility.

The Elite (£229.99/$336) has a 120GB hard drive and you get a head set with it. Oh and it's matt black...

So, it does seem cheaper on the surface but this is Microsoft so you know there are going to be plenty more expenses where those came from!

First of all you're going to need to pay £40 a year ($60) for XBoxLive, so that you can get your arse handed to you by 8 year olds from Japan.

Then, to get it up to a similar spec to a standard PS3 you need to add wireless, for a start. That's going to cost you about £60 ($88) and for that you get this:
Impressive, huh? No.
Now you're gonna need to spend another £15/$22 per control so that you can charge them rather than having to use AA batteries. PS3 conrollers, of course, are rechargeable as standard and don't weigh the same amount as a full grown Hippo.

S0, if you bought the Elite, 1 extra controller, the wireless dongle, charge packs for both controllers and your XboxLive subscription that is gonna run you in the region of £390 or $570 and if you got the Premium instead then it's still £330/$483!
Add to that the fact that XBox's are notoriously unreliable. There are already a plethora of FAQs and Forums that recommend wrapping your XBox in towels to over heat it so that the solder used will melt onto the board correctly!

Winner
PS3

At this point, a lot of people would go into an in-depth spec of each machine but that sounds like a lot of effort and this is already pretty long, so instead I'm going to compare the "Desktop" on each, offered features and the general playability and issues I have come across. I shall catagorise these under:

Performance

The PS3 "desktop" or Dashboard, is very well designed. It's got a good, linear feel that is easy to navigate, fully customisable and is pretty packed with extra bits. First of all, the PS3 has it's own internet browser. It isn't the best but compared to the one the XBox has, which is a non existent one, it's pretty damn good. You can happily browse YouTube and watch videos, read blogs and access pretty much any site with only minor issues. You can also install a second OS on it, should you want to, but your only real option is Linux. It works on a UNIX file system but as far as I am aware MacOS compatibillity is not yet available.

The XBox 360 dashboard is, to put it succinctly, fucking awful. It's ugly, complicated and mostly pointless. You have a number of different rows, most of which are populated with useless crap, adverts and propaganda. Everything you actually need is crammed onto one of these rows but to access anything you always have to work your way through two or three embedded menus and to get back to the main screen you have to back track through them all the other way, which gets very tiresome.

The PS3 has it's glitchy moments and does sometimes crash but problems tend to be taken care of pretty quickly, with regular software updates.
The XBox, however, can be pretty slow at times and freezes and crashes pretty often. Often enough to make playing any game that has long sections between saves a chore.
The only major update I have seen on the XBox was when they changed the Dashboard from the old, semi-useable interface to the new shitty one.

The PS3 store works very much like buying anything online with PayPal. You set up an account, add a Credit/Debit card to it and then add funds as and when you wish to buy something. The store is well set out, easy to use and well organised.
The XBox store is more like buying things using coupons. Coupons you have to pay for. To purchase anything on the XBox store you need to buy credits from Microsoft. You can buy them in varying amounts but there is no discount offered for buying in bulk. Once you have paid for these credits you then use them to buy content. Why they couldn't just have a system like the PS3 store and pretty much every other shop ever is unclear.

Another small thing is that the PS3 controllers can be assigned to player 1-4 at anytime. For example: If you're playing a two player game with a friend where menu functions can only be controlled by player one, player two can switch their controller to P1 in seconds then switch it straight back, thus removing the need to swap controllers around.
This may seem like a small thing but in practice it really isn't. Many games, such as Pro Evolution Soccer or the New Resident Evil have times when being able to switch players quickly and easily cuts out a whole load of pissing about. (Read: You dont have to get off your backside as often.)
It still may not seem like a big deal but you cannot do it on the XBox. Once your controller is on and assigned to a player number the only way to swap it is to turn both off, which doesn't work because the XBox then stops whatever you're doing and tells you to re-connect the controller even if you turn off controller 2 during a one player game! And just swapping controllers isn't easy when the controller is the size of a bus and weighs a ton! If you try to throw it to someone there's a good chance you'll then be off to the Emergency Room so they can get stitches in their face.

Winner
PS3

In summary, the PS3 outstrips the XBox 360 at every turn. I cannot think of one thing the XBox beats it on. So, if you want to buy a new console and you want the best, there is only option.


The PS3.