Modern Art

And this year's Turner winner is . . . a painter - The Times

I am not sure whether to be pleased or not at this revelation. In the one sense, I am pleased that a 'simple' painting won the Turner Prize, rather than a pickled cow, or a painting with blobs of dung on it. On the other hand, I think the abstract painting itself is rather bland.

Taking Damien Hirst's pieces as an example, I think you can either love them, hate them, or nothing them. I find them visually interesting to look upon... for the first few minutes. Then I just find them dull. I fail to see the artistic value in them in the long term. In the short, it's fascinating. In the long term, it's just a dead animal pickled and left sitting for years at a time.

Don't get me wrong, I still feel people should see Hirst's work, I just don't feel that it should be held in as high a regard and awarded as prestigiously as it has been. On the other hand I still prefer him to Tracy Emmin, though that's not saying much.

I would rather look upon a beautifully created and technically complex piece of work. Something I don't see in 'Modern Art'. I have more respect for a painter who can paint photo-realistically, than one who paints abstract geometric shapes to represent emotions. Abstract art doesn't have to be painted in this way though. I once saw a series of work by a female artist who painted from photos. The photos themselves were taken with an electro-microscope and whilst what she was painting looked like a tree, it was in fact a cell dying. She was painting this scene photo-realistically though, and technically it was superb, whilst having an underlying meaning through 'the seen and the unseen'.

Call me old-fashioned, but I find skill in that.

Endangered Species?

"How can the human race survive the next hundred years?" Prof. Stephen Hawking - Yahoo

What intrigued me about this article, was not the article itself, but the sheer amount of responses. With that in mind, I thought I would pitch my own theory as to what I think will destroy the human race, and what I think could save us.

Technology is becoming better and better and artificial intelligence is becoming more and more advanced. The Matrix is an obvious example of what could happen, though other films have put forward interesting concepts. iRobot presented a future where man was imprisoned by machines in order to care for us in the long run. It would be remiss of me not to mention 2001: A Space Odyssey where a computer goes insane and kills everyone 'for no good reason'.

Medical technology has extended our life spans, to the point where people now live in awkwardness and sometimes pain for years at a time. This has led to people requesting death, rather than be kept alive by medical science. The film, Interview with a Vampire, proposed the interesting concept that given eternal life, no one chose to prolong it beyond 500 years. They all gently retreated from society and were lost.

In military terms, I am sure we will destroy ourselves if we avoid artificial intelligence either starting it for us or preventing us from doing it. We give weapons to our 'friends' and then hide from said weapons when our 'enemies' turn them on us.

Space Exploration as a means to extend life sounds like an interesting plan. It helps us escape from our ravaged planet, though it ultimately leads us to ravage another. We can hop from planet to planet for as long as we can, though inevitably we will fail. We are in fact the planetary equivalent of Necrotizing Fasciitis.

Bureaucracy and Political Correctness Epidemic

Organisers of a village Christmas party have been told they must carry out a risk assessment of their mince pies - or their festivities will be cancelled - BBC News

I'm not sure whether to laugh, cry, or just shake my head at this. I'm tempted to call it discriminatory against pies. Unfortunately, this is the state of the society we live in. I remember being in a lecture and the professor kept asking us to refer to the wipe-board in front of him. After a suitably large number of perplexed looks he explained to us that he'd received a memo that morning telling him it was racist to refer to the wipe-board as a wipe-board. The audience was predominantly white and we could see no problem with it. I spoke to a black student afterwards and he thought it silly.

I'm curious to see how long it will be before I need a permit to walk down the street, or need to file a risk assessment on my shoes before I wear them outside.

American Lunar Base

US space agency NASA has said it plans to start work on a permanently-occupied base on the Moon after astronauts begin flying back there in 2020 - BBC News

America's plan to build a base on the moon reminds me of the imperialistic notion of "I've stuck a flag there, I now own it". I'm curious if they received permission from the person who owns that piece of the moon - (Buy A Gift). That in itself throws up the question, how can you buy a piece of the moon? How can someone even be able to own the moon and go on to sell it? Do these issues even get discussed at the UN? How was it decided that America could build on the moon? I'm curious as to Russia's opinion.

Though the base will study the polar region, what else will it study? When it is finished, will it be signed over to private organisations, or handed over to the military?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against space travel and exploration. I'm just skeptical as to America's views on ownership and their need to force their views on others.