Viktoria Modesta: The World’s First Bionic Pop Artist

“The time for boring ethical discussions around disability is over. It's only through feelings of admiration, aspiration, curiosity and envy that we can move forward.” So says British pop singer Viktoria Modesta and, if you haven’t heard of her before, prepare to have your perceptions of altered beauty changed. This bravura video was made for UK TV’s Channel 4 and was directed by Saam Farahmand of Rogue Films. Riveting.

Human Cost: 10,000 Cuts and Counting

In the UK a scandal is quietly brewing which much of the media chooses to quietly side-line or ignore altogether.  You might think that when over 10,000 people have died the government might sit up and take notice.  September 28 saw many people come together who refuse to take this situation any longer.

Here is a little background for those of you outside of the UK. ATOS Healthcare carries out disability assessments on behalf of Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government -specifically the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). It is basically outsourced work which the government does not want to do itself. Currently, ATOS is being investigated by the National Audit Office (NAO) in a in a major “value for money study”.

Meanwhile, since the inception of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), 10,600 people have died within six weeks of being deemed ‘fit for work’ by ATOS healthcare professionals.

Human Cost documents ‘10,000 Cuts & Counting’, held on the 28th of September, 2013 at Parliament Square, a ceremony of remembrance and solidarity for those who have had their lives devastated by Cameron’s austerity programmes.  10,600 flowers were laid in front of Parliament to highlight the devastation caused by the current UK government. This video was made by You and I Films.

Squawking About Hawking: Theoretical Physicist Gets Hate 'Mail'

Image Credit Flickr User alex_lee2001

Can you judge a newspaper by the people who write in to its letter pages? Possibly, but what about the ones who make comments underneath the online articles the paper publishes at its site?  The Daily Mail, that famous voice of reason and calm, recently published an article about Stephen Hawking's views on the future of our species.

They spotted his opinion about our inability to get on with each each other and prediliction toward anniilation on the website Big Think.  Hawking reasoned that we had better high tail it off Sol 3 within the next two hundred years or so or face extinction.  In that way, by spreading the gene pool throughout the known Milky Way, then if Earth just happened to go kaput it wouldn't be the worst thing ever as there would be people on other planets who could carry on the species (just wondering, tho, if he has read The Martian Chronicles. Hmmm).

OK, that's the background covered.  So, this being The Daily Mail, one could have expected, one should have expected the response to be as calm and measured as the usual copy to be found within its august pages (online or otherwise).  Yup.  You know what happened.  Here is one reader's response below.

If only Stephen Hawking wasn't crippled up in that wheelchair perhaps he could live a life without the sort of comment above, methinks.  If he was just another astrophysicist (note - he isn't really, he is a theoretical physicist with a sideline in cosmology) then he wouldn't get listened to nearly as much.  I can only wonder how many scientists, astrophysicist or otherwise that -R, CBD in Melbourne is aware of or has listened to lately.  Ho hum.

So, back to the original question - can you judge a newspaper by the comments left under their articles.  In this case, yeah.  As for CBD in Australia, we'll see you On The Beach.