Category Archives: Transhuman News

Angry Anderson will join the cast of Housos. Photo: Danielle Smith

SBS promised a bold and daring 2013 today, that will range the spectrum from "relevant and credible" to "bloody and unabashedly politically incorrect".

Tony Iffland, SBS director of television, today announced the 2013 program highlights, which he feels will continue the "sense of momentum" that follows a year he described as "tremendously successful".

With a mantra of "fresh, relevant and credible programs", Iffland highlighted return seasons of Once Upon A Time (with series two based around the Lebanese community in Punchbowl) and Who Do You Think You Are season five (which will have two extra episodes and include subjects such as Rove McManus and Asher Keddie), before announcing two potentially explosive documentaries for next year, examining mining in Australia and the Cronulla riots.

SBS will air the documentary Cronulla Riots - The Day that Shocked the Nation which is sure to spark heated debate. Photo: Andrew Meares

Dirty Business How Mining Made Australia is based upon the notion that "mining is a battleground that has forged and divided the nation", said Iffland, and the three-part series will examine the history of mining from the first gold rush to the latest political debate.

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Cronulla Riots The Day That Shocked the Nation has been commissioned to run alongside Once Upon a Time in Punchbowl, and likely to stir up debate on what remains a heated topic.

Iffland also highlighted the first local drama commissioned by SBS in three years, Better Man, Khoa Do's tale of Tran Van Nguyen, the 25-year-old Vietnamese-Australian who was convicted and executed in Singapore for drug trafficking in 2005. Iffland was able to announce the cast for the show - which goes into production in Melbourne next week - including David Wenham as Julian McMahon and Bryan Brown as Lex Lasry, Van Nguyen's two lawyers, plus Claudia Karvan as McMahon's wife and Remy Hii as Van Nguyen.

Mining will come under SBS inspection in Dirty Business - How Mining Made Australia

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SBS reveals bold 2013 line-up

Ann Coulter (Photo: Getty)

As is her custom, provocative conservative commentator Ann Coulter was decidedly politically incorrect in her assessment of the final presidential debate last night. Ms. Coulter took to Twitter where she used a derogatory term to describe President Barack Obama.

I highly approve of Romneys decision to be kind and gentle to the retard, Ms. Coulter wrote.

Her comment comes less than two weeks after Dan Niblock, the father of a young boy with Down syndrome, published an essay on the website of NBCs Today taking Ms. Coulter to task for using the same term in another tweet. Its apparently a habit of Ms. Coulters.

I want Ann Coulter to apologize for using a form of hate speech that is particularly searing to people who have special needs. This isnt the first time she has tweeted the word retarded to insult her rivals, and she needs to stop. Her behavior is not acceptable, Mr. Niblock wrote.

These complaints clearly havent had much effect on Ms. Coulter, who has been unapologetic of her past politically incorrect remarks. Still, we reached out to Ms. Coulter to see if she had any regrets about her post-debate tweet. As of this writing, we have yet to receive a response. We wont hold our breath.

Update (3:00 a.m.): In an email to Politicker, Ms. Coulter doubled down and made it clear shes not worried about upsetting anyone with her choice of words.

The only people who will be offended are too retarded to understand it, she wrote.

Follow Hunter Walker on Twitter or via RSS. hwalker@observer.com

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Ann Coulter Calls Obama ‘The Retard’

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RAVENS: Pro Bowl linebacker Terrell Suggs practiced for the first time since tearing his right Achilles tendon, but he was extremely limited Wednesday. According to The Baltimore Sun, Suggs jogged from sideline to sideline on an adjacent field and also threw the football around to teammates during the media viewing portion of practice. "He's really the biggest key. We need him right now. It's a huge thing to have him back," linebacker Paul Kruger told the paper. "He's just the type of player that can really change a game and change a season for you. He's also a leader and someone who can really change the attitude and the atmosphere." It's unlikely that Suggs will play Sunday at Houston. Coach John Harbaugh classified him as day-to-day.

BENGALS: For the first time in his brief NFL career, cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick wasn't on the injury report. And, for the first time in his career, Kirkpatrick has a shot to play in a game. "That's coach's decision, I'm just playing my role, Kirkpatrick said, via the team's official website. When my number is called, it will be called. I'm not going to bug coach with that. It's not my job to ask. I'm ready. Body feels good. Just waiting. With the Bengals having a bye after Sunday's game, there's a chance that Cincinnati will decide to hold out its first-round pick to give him an extra week to rest the injured knee.

STEELERS: The Steelers rank near the top of the league in penalties per game. They're off to a disappointing 2-3 start. And rookie nose tackle Alameda Ta'amu was arrested after a late-night run-in with police over the weekend. But quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said there's not a lack of discipline under coach Mike Tomlin. I think people are just comparing him to Coach (Bill) Cowher, Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Every coach is a little bit different. ... Coach Tomlin is a players coach. Guys enjoy playing for him. He gets after us. He just doesnt do it in front of you guys (the media), which is good.

BROWNS: Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan stopped by the Browns' complex with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is a lifelong Browns fan. Ryan, though, is definitely not one. When talking to the team, it became apparent that Ryan got his quarterbacks confused, looking at Colt McCoy while talking about Brandon Weeden. "I think he saw the red (quarterback practice) jerseys and got us mixed up," Weeden said. "But he's got more important things on his mind right now than me and Colt. It was a good laugh."

Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Ravens, Pittsburgh Steelers, AFC North, Ben Roethlisberger, Paul Kruger, John Harbaugh, Bill Cowher, Terrell Suggs, Mike Tomlin, Colt McCoy, Dre Kirkpatrick, Brandon Weeden, Alameda Ta'amu, Paul Ryan

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Wake-up: 'Politically incorrect' Browns QBs

MIAMI -- While complaints can be heard far and wide that it's hard to find the right IT security experts to defend the nation's cyberspace, the real problem in hiring security professionals is the roadblocks put up by lawyers and human resources personnel and a complete lack of understanding of geek culture, says security consultant Winn Schwartau.

Take Janet Napolitano, U.S. secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who has said the country can't find the right people for network defense. The real problem is a misunderstanding of computer geeks, their personalities, habits and their backgrounds, said Schwartau today during his talk at the Hacker Halted information security conference here.

NEWS: Gartner: 10 critical IT trends for the next five years

MORE: Ernst & Young's IT Security survey shows struggle to secure mobile, social media, cloud

Computer geeks are discriminated against under hiring rules and legal niceties that often categorize them as undesirables. "We do not fit the mold. We at the outer limits of normal," Schwartau said.

According to Schwartau, there's a gauntlet of hiring obstacles today that actually work to discriminate against computer geeks who have the expertise to do the job of protecting government networks. Demands for college degrees and IT certifications and the ability to get IT security clearances should not be a priority in hiring, said Schwartau. "Forget education," he said, adding, "We need to re-design clearances -- they're a Cold War relic designed for nuclear secrets and 1950s crypto." The era of 9-to-5 is also over, he added.

He said what's holding up hiring IT security professionals can be found in the thinking of human resources departments that frown on conditions such as attention deficit disorder and autism, or obsessive-compulsive personalities which are typical of computer geeks willing to focus on an issue through the night. And although hiring rules in place tend to go the extra mile to accept alcoholism, the slightest type of illegal drug infraction makes it tough for job applicants. "We've got to start getting politically incorrect if we want to get the job done," said Schwartau.

If there are tests that need to be done to probe the basic trustworthiness of job applicants for sensitive network security jobs in government or industry, said Schwartau, it would be better to try industrial psychological profiling, making it clear that anyone that passed it and got hired would be subject to it over and over again during the time they were in their job.

Computer geeks could be asked something like, "If your wife and daughter were kidnapped, will you turn against my company?" he suggested. The answer would likely need to be "yes," because "anything else is deceptive."

"Do you need a secret clearance to defend a network? They say you do," said Schwartau, alluding to government rules. But the government is competing against private industry and, yes, the criminal world, for the kind of talent held by those who really know about network weaknesses.

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Want a security pro? For starters, get politically incorrect and understand geek culture

Miming a hook nose to refer to Jewish people is also now deemed unacceptable by signers, who have replaced the old sign with one involving a hand resting against a chin and making a short movement down, in the shape of a beard.

Gwilym Morris, from the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre at University College London, told the Guardian: We are nervous about this being seen as another example of political correctness because the changes are more about evolution rather than dictat of some body that approves language.

But Professor Benci Woll, director of the centre, said the changes in BSL were exactly like the changes to spoken English.

There are all sorts of words we used to refer to people 30 years ago that weve stopped using, she said.

The difference is that the change in BSL has been very rapid because it wasnt until deaf people were able to see each other over the internet that they were able to communicate with anyone who wasnt standing in front of them and see how foreign signers referred to themselves.

The younger deaf community doesnt use these old signs because of a clear process of political correctness.

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Sign language users drop politically incorrect signs