The Cons's Nook: www.ivanmconsiglio.com

A man has been arrested for making a Mandela joke: Welcome to Police State Britain!

Posted on December 12, 2013 by ivanmconsiglio

ABOVE: Ex miner, (left) Tom Christopher and Neil Phillips, from Rugeley, who have been question by police for posting jokes on Facebook

This is absolutely ridiculous!!!! Read on….

A joke which compared Nelson Mandela’s long time in passing to a slow-to-shut-down computer resulted in a Staffordshire man being arrested by police, finger-printed, DNA-swabbed and detained for eight hours—growing evidence of the police state into which modern Britain is turning!

Neil Phillips, who runs the Crumbs sandwich shop in Rugeley, also had his computer seized for three weeks after making the joke on a forum!

Mr Phillips was arrested at his home on September 10 and was taken to a police station where he was quizzed about the postings on the Rugeley Soap Box website.

He said: “It was an awful experience. I was fingerprinted, they took DNA and my computer. It was a couple of jokes, Bernard Manning type. There was no hatred.”

“You can question the taste, but they’re not hateful. I told the police they got plenty of ‘likes’. What happened to freedom of speech?”

“I think they over-reacted massively. Those jokes are ‘out there’, anyway.”

“When they took my computer, I thought, ‘what the hell are they looking for?’ To be questioned would have been over the top, never mind arrested.”

“They are jokes that I cut-and-pasted,” insisted Mr Phillips.

“I didn’t make them up and I didn’t put them on a public site. You have to sign-up and join. It’s turning into the thought police – you can’t do this, you can’t do that.”

After being BAILED Mr Phillips was finally informed by police that there “would be no further action based on CPS decision of there being insufficient evidence to support a prosecution.”

The arrest was the result of a complaint made by a local Liberal Democrat councillor, Tim Jones.

Apparently he was so “incensed” by these jokes that he called in the police!

Great Britain is fast becoming a sick society, choked by fascist political correctness where ordinary folk are persecuted and suffer in silence because no one out there is geared up to help them!

The low-life cretins behind this move should be absolutely
ashamed of their actions.

Read a fuller and more detailed report:
Two men from Rugeley questioned by police for posting jokes on Facebook

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The “Miniatur Wunderland” model railway attraction in Hamburg, Germany

Posted on December 12, 2013 by ivanmconsiglio

Miniatur Wunderland (German for miniature wonderland) is a model railway attraction in Hamburg, Germany and the largest of its kind in the world, built by the twins Gerrit and Frederik Braun. As of January 2011, the railway consists of 12,000 metres (39,370 ft) of track in HO scale, divided into seven sections: Harz, the fictitious city of Knuffingen, the Alps and Austria, Hamburg, America, Scandinavia, and Switzerland. Of the 6,400 square metres (68,889 sq ft) of floorspace, the model takes 1,150 m2 (12,378 sq ft).

By 2020, the exhibit is expected to have reached its final construction phase, including at least a total of ten new sections in a model area of over 2,300 m2 (24,757 sq ft). The next section covering an airport opened in May 2011. The exhibit includes 890 trains made up of over 11,000 carriages, 300,000 lights, 215,000 trees, and 200,000 human figurines. The creators will work on models of Italy and France now that the airport section is completed. The airport is named Knuffingen International Airport and is modeled after Hamburg International Airport. Possible future additions include Africa, England, or a futuristic landscape.

Watch “Miniatur Wunderland *** official video 2012 *** largest model railway / railroad of the world” on YouTube

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Posted in GEEKY OR TECHIE GADGET STUFF | Tagged largest model railway in the world, MINIATUR WUNDERLAND HAMBURG, most successful permanent exhibitions, Northern Germany | Leave a comment

NORDIC-DRIVEN E.U. IGNORES SOUTHERN SMALLER STATES PLIGHTS

Posted on December 11, 2013 by ivanmconsiglio

The Nordic-driven EU leadership persists in ignoring the plights of its southern member states in the Mediterranean on issues related to migration flows from North Africa and Asia.

Cannot avoid commenting on this, and it might be hard not being political about it either, in one sense or another. Again, some might add me to the ever growing disgruntled “mob” who are repeatedly disillusioned by the EU, and what it’s meant to stand for or do for ALL (!!) its citizens. Two news items (links below) in a local Maltese online newspaper came up back to back that simply couldn’t be simply dismissed or ignored with a shrug of indifference.

For the umpteenth time, those leading in the EU have decided to sideline and cast again to the back burner (if not right off the damn darned cooker hob), the issues to tackle adequetely the flows of illegal (I make a repeated emphasis on “illegal”, not the recommended politically correct buzz-term “irregular”!!) migration on the South and East Mediterreanean high seas.

Migration: Malta’s plea ignored in EP committee

MEPs ignore Malta’s position on Frontex

Posted in GENERAL OBSERVATIONS & THOUGHTS | Tagged E.U., EU, illegal migration, irregular migration, migration | Leave a comment

An Artist Counted Every Atomic Explosion On Earth And Shows Them All In A Matter Of Seconds

Posted on December 10, 2013 by ivanmconsiglio

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto decided to visualize all the nuclear detonations in the history of time, and has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

This doesn’t start to get terrifying until it just. Doesn’t. Stop.
(Which is around 1956 at the 1:47 mark for those playing the terrifying home game.)

Posted in GEEKY OR TECHIE GADGET STUFF, GENERAL OBSERVATIONS & THOUGHTS | Tagged Every Atomic Explosion On Earth, Isao Hashimoto | Leave a comment

5 Minutes Of What The Media Actually Does To Women

Posted on December 10, 2013 by ivanmconsiglio

True fact: Almost 100% of the images you see of models and celebrities are altered.

“I don’t look like that, and I don’t desire to look like that.” — Kate Winslet

( originally Published on Aug 24, 2012)

In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes — images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne’s groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.

Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and for her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. In the late 1960s she began her exploration of the connection between advertising and several public health issues, including violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction, and launched a movement to promote media literacy as a way to prevent these problems. A radical and original idea at the time, this approach is now mainstream and an integral part of most prevention programs. Her films, lectures and television appearances have been seen by millions of people throughout the world. Kilbourne was named by The New York Times Magazine as one of the three most popular speakers on college campuses. She is the creator of the renowned Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women film series and the author of the award-winning book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and co-author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids.

(Available on DVD http://www.mediaed.org)

Posted in GENERAL OBSERVATIONS & THOUGHTS, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tagged Cindy Crawford, Entertainment & Culture, feminism, gender studies, gender studies course, Health, Jean Kilbourne, Social Media, violence against women | 1 Comment

Where Freedom of the Press Is Muffled

Posted on December 10, 2013 by ivanmconsiglio

In a world leading country, which portrays itself as a beacon of democracy and freedom, where entrepreneurship and capitalism share the same bed, the common mortal would expect a free press and excercise of journalism.

Posted in GENERAL OBSERVATIONS & THOUGHTS | Tagged free press, journalism, press | Leave a comment

‘Identity Crisis’ in Photojournalism – AJR.org

Posted on December 9, 2013 by ivanmconsiglio

In news organizations around the country, reporters are increasingly providing visuals with their copy. Freelance writers are rebranding themselves as multimedia journalists, and journalism schools, conscious of where the jobs likely will be for their graduates, are training all their students to write and capture audio, photos and video.

This advent of the new Super Journalist, the photographer who writes and the writer who takes photographs, is creating one of the biggest upheavals in modern journalism since online platforms gave everyone, including monthly magazines, a 24-hour news cycle.

In this new world, a world in which everyone is a photographer, what then happens to the photojournalists?

http://ajr.org/photojournalism-new-era/

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