spoonfork

Poverty, political and cultural division prevents creation of early-warning system:

The major obstacles to creating an early-warning system that could have saved many victims of Asia's massive tsunami are not money and technology, but poverty and political and cultural division besetting the region it hit, experts and officials said on Monday.

The wall of water that killed more than 23,300 people in coastal villages in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka was tracked by U.S. seismologists who said they had no way to warn local governments of the danger. (Link

Scientists in USA saw tsunami coming, but they didn't know whom to tell:

Minutes after a massive earthquake rocked the Indian Ocean on Sunday, international ocean monitors knew that a tsunami would likely follow. But they didn't know whom to tell.

"We put out a bulletin within 20 minutes, technically as fast as we could do it," says Jeff LaDouce of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. LaDouce says e-mails were dispatched to Indonesian officials, but he doesn't know what happened to the information. (Link

To sum it up: You either like Darkness, or you don't. Let me elaborate. You hate the Darkness the moment you hear the first song and before the first lyrics were sung, you quickly take it out the CD player, put it back in its cover and throw it into the dust bin, then take out any Linkin Park CDs is within range, listen to it, and then you feel glad and rejoice at the realization that now you are listening to something more hardcore and tragic and nu-metal. Yeah. And from then on, you'll never mentioned having the Darkness CDs, and if conversation pops up regarding the band, you just go "darkness who? are they goth?"

Why? Because The Darkness shits on all the other bands out there - so-called nu-metal bands like Linkin Park, hardcore rap like Limp Biskut, or even Kid Rock. And hell, The Darkness shits ont he face of emo-bands like Simple Plan and Maroon 5 too.

So what do The Darkness sounds like? They play a blend of 70s rock, early 80s metal and arena rock. Their sounds will surely reminds die-hard rock fans of the good old days of AC/DC, KISS, Queen, Iggy Pop, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, even Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. The band members wear open-chested catsuits and tight pants (that will sure make Gene Simmons jealous), and frontmen Justin Hawkins sports Steven Tyler-hair.

Not only that - Justin has a high falseto voice (AC/DC), which is uplifting - compare that to grunge's ambassador the late Kurt Cobain or the screaming of Linkin Park's frontman. Then there's the excellent guitar riffs by his brother Dan Hawkins. Now, finally, I am getting to hear real riffs playing on the radio.

A lot of people will seem to quick bash The Darkness for the simple reason that they sounds much like AC/DC or whichever band that comes to mind. I should remind everyone that, the golden rule of enjoying music is not to question one's authenticity. You see, people tend to get buoyed by marketing, and most bands are shaped by marketing. And that, on the surface, may seems true for The Darkness, but hell, they are damn good at writing catchy pop-rock songs. "I Believe in Thing Called Love" is a testament to this. And they are damn good at 'feely-touchy' songs too. Just listen to "Love is Only a Feeling". Hell, they even spruce things up a bit with "Friday Night". Isn't those qualities true of Van Halen and AC/DC as well?

Again it is easy to dismiss The Darkness as copycats, but then again, Permission to Land screams "Fuck you all, I wanna have fun and I wanna rawk the lights out of you all!". All in all, it is a good album, has its ass-kicking moments, and a great relief from the other crap that I listen on the radio.

Approximate death tolls of the major wars of the 20th century.

• World War I - 15, 000, 000


• World War II - 55, 000, 000. Approximately 6 million Jews were exterminated by Hitler alone.


• Russian Civil War - 9,000,000


• Stalin's Regime - 20,000,000


• Chinese Civil War - 2,500,000


• Post war expulsion of Germans from East Europe - 2,500,000

Estimated death toll of the Sumatra tidal wave: more than 21,000
Current estimate of civilian death since military intevention in Iraq: 14880 (min), 17076 (max) (source)

One of my greatest fears is that knowing God exists, but he doesn't care too much about humans.

On an icy, black Sunday night, police officers brought terrible news to the rural idyll of Kevin McMullan's home: A relative had just been killed in a car crash, they said. It was a lie -- and it launched one of the world's biggest bank robberies.

Once inside, the phony officers put a gun to McMullan's head and tied him up, blindfolded his wife, Karen, and then took her away at gunpoint in her own car into the forest.

They told McMullan, a senior executive at Northern Bank in his mid-30s, that he must get the gang into the bank's major cash vault the next night. If he or another abducted bank official, Chris Ward, refused to help or raised any alarm, their families would be put to death. (News)

And they got away with USD 42 million! That's RM 160,000,000. That's a lot of money, yo!

However.... The gang behind the Ã