Chocolate Jesus exhibit cancelled

Here's the story as it appears on BBC.
But what really caught my eye was not that the Christian group was protesting against somebody making a chocolate sculpture of Jesus, but that they were protesting just as much about portraying Jesus naked:
Ms McCaffrey had called the exhibit "an assault on Christians".
"They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the Prophet Mohammed naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan."

Firstly, with Islam it would be a whole different deal because *any* sort of portrayal of God or Mohammed is not allowed by Islamic law AFAIK.

Secondly (and this is what I really want to talk about), Christ most likely *was* naked on the cross. The whole idea of Christianity is that God made his own son suffer torture in a very humiliating way to clear humanity of its sins. And while generally the gospels do not specify whether they took his underwear off, all four gospels do specify his clothes were taken off.
The Wikipedia entry for Crucifixion actually says that the procedure usually involved nudity:
The victim was, if able, made to drag the cross or a part of it (usually weighing 150 lb or more) to the place of execution. At this point he was stripped naked, and was either fastened to it or impaled upon it, and left to die.
I'm not sure why there's this whole attempt of hiding the fact that Jesus might have been naked on the cross (surely it just adds to his humiliation and therefore to his sacrifice?), but the attempt goes much further than just not portraying him so in art...
If you look up John 19:23 on the Bible Gateway, you'll find that the New International Version, New American Standard Bible, New International Reader's Version, New International Version - UK and Today's New International Version all have some sort of wording indicating that only Christ's outer garments were taken off. None of the other versions (including two "new" ones) have any mention of whether it was just his outer garments and I don't think any of the other gospels have anything mentioned either (though I only checked the New International Version). I also checked out the Polish Biblia Tysiąclecia translation and again nothing specific mentioned. Some of those olds versions were really well researched (definitely the King James version for example), so can there be any other reason for these changes in the new versions?

The cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out!

The Harry Potter books must be the only books ever which have people rampantly discussing their cover art and page count every time a new one is released ;) Here is the cover art for the seventh book. The page count for the British edition is 608 pages and 784 for the American edition (the text is the same, just that the American one has illustrations and I think the size of the print is bigger or something).

Here is Arthur Levine (the American editor) talking about the American artwork.

The seventh book will set a record with 12 mln first print copies in the US (the previous record holder was the sixth Harry Potter book with 10.8mln ;-P).

New Order of the Phoenix photos

You can see the pics here. I really love almost all the pics they've released so far - there's moments when I think I'll like the pics better than the film ;-P
These new pictures first appeared in this article which I think is a fun read :)

Slightly old news, but the test screenings for the film have already taken place. You'll find some reviews here.

Speech Recognition on Windows Vista

There are certain problems that computer technology might never be able to solve. Speech recognition might get further than it is today, but I think it's unlikely that a computer will ever understand fully natural speech. That is unless AI will become reality (which I very much doubt).
Serious work on AI started in the 1950s so it's been over 50 years with relatively little progress comparing to other areas of computing. After all 50 years is like five centuries in computing history (the World Wide Web was not made public until 1991!). The web evolved to the point it is at now in only 15 years (I bet nobody in 1991 even imagined things like blogging or youtube), but as far as AI goes there are still no computers that can pass the Turing test which was introduced in 1950!
The concept behind the Turing test is that a human judge chats by text to two "people" in a different room. One of them is a human and one is a computer. If the judge is not sure which is which then the computer has passed the test. Alan Turing who thought of this test (and did a number of other amazing things relating to computers) apparently predicted that computers would eventually be able to pass the test thanks to memory power alone, but so far it has not happened.
(Alan Turing is btw a very sad story. He was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexuality and then committed suicide - or so many think - in 1954 aged just 42. Quite a way to lose somebody of such importance to science, ha?)

Anyway, really what I wanted to post is not all these ramblings (which to be honest I'm in no way qualified to be writing and may have just as well given you incorrect information :-/), but a video of how Speech Recognition works on Windows Visa (and I mainly wanted to post it because I think it's funny ;)):

Daniel Radcliffe on the Jonathan Ross show once again

Daniel Radcliffe has given a new interview on the Jonathan Ross show (the one from last year which was just as hilarious has been taken off youtube, but you can still access it - unfortunately in poor quality - here). The new interview is about Equus and the fifth Harry Potter film and IMO it's the dirtiest interview Dan has given yet ;) (although with a presenter like that it would be difficult not to ;) ).
Just on a side note (cause I keep rambling on about things like this), I think it's interesting that people are commenting that in the US a 17 year old (or any sort of big star really) would not be getting those sorts of questions (they're not saying it's bad, just pointing out that it wouldn't happen in the US). But I guess the same would be true for Poland. I'm wondering - is this specific to the UK or is it the US and Poland that are unusual?
Anyway, the interview is here (again it was on youtube and I originally intended to embed it, but it's been taken off).

Pornography, sexual content and obscenity

According to this and this (both articles in Polish unfortunately!) Poland might be facing a full ban on pornography in the near future. The new legislation that some politicians want to bring in (perhaps they'll be in the minority, we shall see!) will make it possible for someone to get a prison sentence not just for distribution but even for possession of any kind of pornography.
No definition of what constitutes pornography is given in this proposal, which sort of brings me to what I want to discuss (other than how stupid our current government is I mean ;-P). I've always felt that the limit of what's ok and what's not ok as far as sexual content goes is a fascinating discussion topic. Of course it's largely about taste and I don't think I'm going to come up with any reasonable conclusions, but if you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them :)

Not so long ago in India, there was a legal complaint against the kissing scene between Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai in Dhoom 2 (imdb page, trailer on youtube). A quote from IndiaGlitz reads:
According to the complainant, the women felt offended after watching the scene and it promoted vulgarity in society, especially among the youth.
Now for anyone who read the Polish articles on the pornography ban you might have noticed that those are almost the exact reasons for which some of PiS want a full pornography ban in Poland. In case you're wondering, here's the scene which we're talking about (the actual kissing happens late in the clip and sorry for the lack of subtitles but didn't find a clip with them):

It's not even as if there's no kissing in commercial Indian cinema, so it's hard to say why this particular kiss was so controversial. In the end, the kiss was cut.

But even a Western perspective of what's ok and what's not may sound just as ridiculous at times. Having been rambling about Equus on this blog I'm going to link to a Guardian article which uses Equus as a starting point to write about the history of nudity in British theatre. Apparently 40 years ago only female nudes were ok in the theatre and only if they didn't move. If they moved they were automatically considered obscene.
Not that people in the West don't have (what I would call) weird ideas about nudity even now. If you check out some discussions about Equus on-line, a lot of people (many of whom seem to be American) think that Daniel Radcliffe appearing nude on stage is enough to constitute child pornography because he's not yet 18 (he will be in about 6 months by the way). In accordance with US laws this might actually be true, I'm not sure, but I still feel it's a bit weird...

Of course so far I've been writing about stuff which nowadays only a small minority of people in the West would call obscene or pornographic (if at all that is - I'd be shocked if someone considerd the Hrithik-Ash kiss as such!). When we think pornography we generally think about stuff which is more explicit - usually photos or films which show people really having sex rather than just pretending. But there are films which would confuse us even there because they show *real* intercourse and yet they probably wouldn't be of interest to someone who is looking for pornography. One such film is definitely Lars von Trier's The Idiots (imdb page, trailer on youtube), another (although I haven't actually seen it) is Michael Winterbottom's 9 songs (imdb page, trailer on youtube). Both of these were shown at art cinema festivals and entered normal distribution in many countries.
And it's not just with films. If you ever check out some sites which specialize in fetish photography you'll find that most of the photographs are very artistic (sometimes - especially when we're talking about the violent stuff - very unsettling, but still artistic). I'm not sure what it is specifically about the fetish community but they really take photos which are way more than something that's just supposed to turn people on (in fact I've not seen many fetish pics which show people "in the act"). And yet when people hear "fetish" we usually think "obscene". Check out Incubus Choice if you want to see some stuff (though I am warning you - if you click on the link you are straying into territory that maaaany would consider porn, not that I think that should scare you but I'm saying it all the same).

Ok, so I've gotten from kissing scenes to real intercourse and photography portraying naked people tied up. Surely there should be a limit somewhere, right?
Lets look at the law then - I found this article very interesting and useful for this. Law is obviously different in different countries. But what I think is true pretty much everywhere is that it is illegal to supply pornography to people below a certain age (usually 18 or 16 though in Poland surprisingly enough it's 15 at the moment - however most Polish shops dealing with any sort of porn would not sell it to anyone below 18). It is also illegal to force the viewing of pornography on anyone (hey, I warned you about that Incubus site so I've done nothing illegal! ;-P ). The other legislations differ. Usually depicting bestiality is illegal (though I don't think that is true in the Netherlands - I think it is ok there as long as the animal is not harmed in any way). And of course there's child pornography which also has different restrictions and definitions in different countries. Mostly nobody below the age of 18 should be depicted although sometimes it is 16. Shockingly enough until 1999 Japan was extremely liberal about child pornography:
Prior to 1999, the only Japanese statute prohibiting actual child pornography was very limited in its reach, applying only to children under 13 who filed complaints within six months of an incident. A general criminal obscenity law protected minors over 13, but it also specified that the material must depict sexual organs to be considered illegal. Consequently, pornographic materials in Japan often resorted to showing other sexually oriented depictions of children, including abuse or torture, to avoid running afoul of the law.
Most countries also have laws against possession of child pornography (reading through the imdb boards, I'm not sure if this is true but apparently in the US anybody with nude pics of Daniel Radcliffe from Equus on their computer could theoretically be arrested for child pornography - not that there are many non-photoshoped pics of him floating around but I think even those are not legal under US law).
Many countries have laws which seperate child pornography into "virtual" and "actual" penalizing the virtual kind just as much. Virtual pornography is defined as depictions in which adult models are made up to look like children, and artistic or computer simulations of children involved in sexual activity. Now while I can see the logic of this I at the same time can't help but wonder if some of the stuff I've read or seen wouldn't be considered child pornography of the virtual kind. I mean particularly when I think about Harry Potter fan fiction and fan art... there's a lot of teacher-student relationships portrayed in those. To give you some examples, here's fan art showing Snape with Draco, Snape with Harry and another of Snape and Harry. I can see how for some people this might be considered totally sick, but is it harmful?
There have been (more about this in the long article I linked to) attempts at trying to find a link between watching porn and comitting sexual offences, but generally it seems the results depended on who tried to find this out (conservatives found a correlation and liberals did not).

I think I've finally come to the end of this post, but I don't really have a conclusion... I do believe people should be left with a choice as long as it doesn't harm anyone, but when it comes to "mental harm" it's very difficult to establish what is harmful and what is not (other than making somebody watch porn when they don't want to). Obviously if pornography causes sexual offences then something should be done about it (though I'm not sure a total ban would work), but we don't even know if it does (I've even heard claims that it actually makes the amount of sexual offences drop! but unfortunately don't have a link for this). Also I think even describing what pornography is is problematic. I'm not saying that any sort of porn is ok. There is definitely a lot of things happening in the porn industry which are not right - there are many reports of children and women being forced into starring in porn films (and in the case of children even if they did this willingly there would be reasons to say this is wrong).
On a final note, I think it's interesting that porn is apparently a huge economy booster and a pioneer in technology. The BBC article even says that the switch from Beta to VHS happened because of the porn industry.

"300" controversy

Little did I know when I posted this that 300 would fall into political controversy...
Iranians are unhappy with how their history has been portrayed, saying that the film tells total lies (including changing the outcome of many battles). While I tend to believe them, I'm rather surprised that this is causing such an uproar... I mean everyone should know films like this are nonsense...

Ricky Gervais' "Extras"

My cousin Matt tried to introduce me to The Office when he was here last year, but unfortunately (as with a lot of our film tastes) it did not go down well with me at all ;) I think it still hasn't been shown on Polish TV (though I could easilly be wrong seeing as I don't watch any TV really). The series was a huge success in the UK and was later remade for the US market. I clearly did not understand the humour of it, as demonstrated by the following clip (which is apparently a cult scene from the series) during which I did not laugh even once (something my cousin thought wasn't physically possible):

Please let me know if I'm not the only one who doesn't feel this humour - you'll make me feel better ;)
To be fair, I do believe it's a great idea for a series. I think my problem is that there's something about Ricky Gervais (the creator/writer and star of the series - seen on that clip dancing) that I just don't like.

Anyway that was off-topic ;-P My point is that in spite of not liking Ricky Gervais, his next series - Extras is going down very well with me (or at least many of the clips I've seen of it on youtube are). A major part of the series is celebrities doing guest appearances and totally destroying their images, which I guess is something that has always amused me. I love when actors do stuff against their images *grin*
Since the point of telling you all this information about my (lack of) sense of humour was to show you my favourite clips from Extras, you'll find them below (everything not related to the star in question is edited out in them, but they're perfectly easy to follow).

Anyway, here's Orlando Bloom doing an appearance. I've always thought he must be a rather boring guy with no sense of humour (that's how he comes across to me in the interviews I've seen), but clearly he can't be that bad ;)


And here's Daniel Radcliffe making an appearance. At the time he did this there were people who were surprised "that Harry Potter would do such a thing", but I guess after Equus it's rather tame ;)


Here's a totally hilarious one (I was laughing so hard I could barely breath), Sir Ian McKellan making an appearance:


And last but definitely not least - Patrick Stewart (this is from the first series, the other three are from the second series of Extras I think):

More on Equus

Since I've had lots of fun posting about the Harry Potter nude story, I thought I'd follow it up ;-P

The play opened in London at the end of February and so far all the reviews I've seen have been good. Pretty much everyone who's seen the play says that by the time he takes off his clothes nobody cares because that's really not the point ;) Even those who dislike Peter Shaffer's plays or Daniel Radcliffe's acting in Harry Potter seem to be giving rather good reviews.

Here's an interview with Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths (who plays Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter series and Dysart in Equus) after one of the shows:

Maria Olszewska-Lelonkiewicz dies

Today is the funeral of Maria Olszewska-Lelonkiewicz. She was a figure skating coach in Łódź, probably the best ice dance coach we had in Poland in recent times. Sylwia Nowak / Sebastian Kolasiński and Aleksandra Kauc / Michał Zych were amongst her students.
I've still not heard any news about what she died from, but there's a short article in Polish that you can read here. It is a great loss to skating in Poland.

300 trailer

As usual I suck at regularly updating my blog (I regularly update my blog with drafts but not posts you see ;-P - I'm currently at 105 drafts versus 48 published posts if anyone's interested) and this post will be a pathetic attempt at getting back into the rhythm of writing here.

Anyway, here's the trailer for 300 (an American movie in case you're wondering). I'm tempted to go see it once it releases because although it looks like total nonsense, visually it's absolutely stunning. I really haven't seen anything like it before: