Newseum has a short, interesting article up on how many newspapers made fairly hefty mistakes covering the Titanic‘s sinking. The Los Angeles Express rang with the heading “All passengers are safe”, while The New York Herald had “The Titanic Sinks With 1,800 on Board; Only 675, Mostly Women and Children, Saved”.
There were 2,200 people on the Titanic, of whom 1,500 died.
You almost have to see it to believe it.
If you have the cash, time and expertise, TK560.com has a tutorial on how to build an M41-A pulse rifle from the film Aliens. It’s such genius you have no choice but to check it out.
The game may be up for wild tigers.
According to a report in the June issue of BioScience, the animals now occupy only 7% of their traditional territories, with the areas known to be occupied by the big cats down 41% in the past 10 years. The felines once roamed from the Caspian Sea to Indonesia.
The study, compiled by 16 co-authors including Dr Eric Dinerstein of the World Wildlife Fund, says: “While the tiger as a wile species will most likely not go extinct with the next half-century, its current trajectory is catastrophic. If this trend continues, the current range will shrink even further, and wile populations will disappear from many more places, or dwindle to the point of ecological extinction.”
There are about 5,000 tigers — all of which require a lot of territory — left in the wild, their numbers having been hit by the trade in body parts for medicine as well as humans moving into the animals’ habitat.
The report recommends the establishment of large conservation areas linked by wildlife corridors, as is the case in north-west India and southern Nepal.
Fast fact: in 2004, the tiger was voted the world’s favourite animal in a poll for the Animal Planet television channel. It beat the dog into second place.
After such a serious post, some brevity is in order.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Spider-cat:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA97bT8WMSs]
Egypt has freed a blogger who was detained more than a month ago for being a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, who is also a correspondent for British-based Arabic television channel al-Hewar, had not officially been charged. He had been detained along with 23 others, who were also set free.
Human rights group the El Nadim Center has claimed Mahmoud was taken into custody because of “the role he played in exposing crimes committed by the Ministry of the Interior through his blog, where he called for the release of detainees”.
The organisation also points out that Mahmoud took part in media activities arranged by Amnesty International after that group released a report documenting torture in Egyptian police stations.
The Muslim Brotherhood advocates an Islamic state — and let me state quite clearly that I support complete separation of clergy and state — but with democratic reforms Egypt needs.
For example, Egyptian presidents, with whom almost all power rests, have typically been elected in single-candidate votes since the country became a republic in the 1950s. September 2005 saw the first multi-party presidential vote; however, candidates were screened by an electoral commission which only allowed 10 of the 30 applicants to run. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has the broadest support of the opposition groups, had no candidate.
Unsurprisingly, Hosni Mubarack was re-elected.
A March 2007 referendum — which Amnesty International said represented the biggest erosion of human rights since 1981, when emergency laws were introduced following the assassination of Anwar Sadat — gave the president the power to dissolve parliament.
It also prohibited parties using religion as a basis of political activity, ended judicial supervision of elections and allowed for civilians to be tried by military courts in terrorism cases.
Isn’t politics fun?
Turns out the Dutch TV show featuring three people competing for a dying woman’s kidney was a hoax. The trio, who knew it was all an illusion, really do need a transplant but the programme was made to highlight the lack of organ donors (the “dying woman” was an actress).
Have I ever told you I hate reality television?