Bobby Chen Shen's Gig

Death Notes - "Poison, Creating Wicked Hearts"

Imitating events in the manga series Death Note, Chinese school students in the city of Shenyang have take to writing death notes. The students buy special stationary and follow instructions such as "Write the cause of death and the person's name backwards and the person will die in 40 seconds." A middle school student told the Shenyang Night Report, "Many of my friends have Death Note. When they are tired of studying, they have fun by writing down the names of teachers they don't like." Some Shenyang schools have banned the manga and related stationary, the newspaper called Death Note, "Poison, creating wicked hearts." Others however, including one major Chinese newspaper, feel that the ban is an over-reaction and is inappropriate. Some have suggested that overreactions such as these are what stifle creativity in China. Sounds like a great intro to me.

陳綺貞 表面的和平

陳綺貞 表面的和平 The award-winning video. Awesome stylistic animation. And of course, yet another brilliant piece of music from Cheer Chen 陳綺貞.

The "Antikythera Mechanism" - The 2000-Year-Old Computer

A bronze Greek device constructed in around 80BC could be the world's oldest computer, joint British-Greek research seems to suggest. The "Antikythera Mechanism" - consisting more than 30 bronze dials and wheels - was recovered from the wreck of a cargo ship off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1900, the Scotsman reports. Its exact purpose was unknown, although a previous theory centred on it being used to calculate the movement of the planets then known to the Greeks: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The researchers from the universities of Cardiff, Athens and Thessalonika now believe they are close to cracking the mystery, by bringing to bear very modern X-ray technology which has revealed a previously-hidden Greek inscriptions which may confirm the planetary hypothesis.