Germany pre-Holocaust

Is what South Africa is turning into today.

Instead of Jews they're hunting the foreigners... IOL reports here offer a small window into what's happening.

Read about the holocaust and you will hear that things started long before... that many parts of Europe were anti-semitic... well here is the series of these events from my point of view. As a bystander. Who feels absolutely helpless.

Or something like it.

Be very careful with private messages. I keep getting messages from "friends" that say I should go to random sites... but the messages aren't actually in my facebook inbox.

Has anyone else had this happen? It's a bit worrying...

I wrote this back in 2005 but I think it's even more relevant now considering the recent xenophobic attacks

I posted earlier about a virus that is doing the rounds (apparently again). It sends you a message on MSN going "is this you?" with a hyperlink. If you click the link the virus infects your email, internet connectivity and sends itself to other people on your msn contacts list. It also does a good job of disabling your antivirus.

If your msn pops up with a strange message asking "is this you?" with a link - DON'T CLICK ON IT. It's a virus. And a rather nasty one.

More later when I find out more details.

How much of our lives is reality and how much is fantasy?

The answer may seem simple: you get up every day, go to work or school, and then settle down in front of the TV or curl up with a good book and wella you transcend the divide between reality and fantasy .

But perhaps it's not that simple... perhaps fantasy and reality are the same thing. No I'm not talking about the matrix. Or the fact that perhaps we're living in a dream. If I wanted to talk about that I'd just tell you to watch Waking Life and be done with it. I'm talking about something much more subtle.

How monitored our lives are. Big Brother isn't even just watching anymore, he's trying to sell us stuff *and* selling our information to other people who want to sell us stuff.

Does anyone else get the feeling that life is divided into slices? Not really like a pie (unless you do believe that everything goes around in a circle and you get born again after you die) but more like a gigantic chocolate cake. One of those square ones. Kind of stretching off into the distance... I remember a fold out birthday card like that when I was a kid. It seemed like the most amazing thing possible: infinite cake.

David Bullard has been fired from the Sunday Times because of a racist column he wrote on Sunday.

We were having a discussion on irc about David Bullard getting fired for this.
(read the comments if you are at all puzzled)

After a long debate (contents of which I won't post here) I can kind of summarise my views as this: