Unmotivated

It’s Friday and today I am:

Fed up with work. It’s been a crappy week.
Looking forward to the weekend.
Unmotivated, which is connected to point 1.

I brought my unicycle to the office today, which has lightened the mood somewhat. No one can do it, apart from me of course.

Last night the Dragon had to work late at school and I therefore worked at home so that there was someone to pick up the boy. I rather like looking after him on my own. I don’t do it very often. He’s gone to school today dressed as the Monkey God. One day each term they are allowed to go to school dressed as a character from a book. They can choose whatever a character they like, but it must be from a book and they must bring the book to school. Most of the boys choose characters like Spiderman. I like that he chose something different, and it was nice that he chose something very Chinese. The book he has taken to school has both English and Chinese text.

The Dragon was really clever about his costume. She made him a little tunic from Chinese style material, and a headband thing. I made him a magic stick. Here’s a picture. She made the whole costume in two evenings.

For some reason this week I’ve not been paying much attention to the news. I have however come across a quite startling report suggesting that so called “nude body scanners”, now being used at airports, are alarmingly easy to defeat. It seems that an item like a gun or other large chunk of metal is very easily visible when a body part is behind it. But when against the background, which is invariably very dark, these objects vanish. There is a report and a video here which explains it very well and includes some experimental results. It’s really worth watching.

While on the subject of nudity, and we all know how much I like nudity stories, here’s another one. A group of exiled Iranian women have launched a protest video in which they pose topless in protest against sexual oppression in Iran. It’s actually a serious matter and I’m not going to poke fun at it. Click the link for a report and a video. It’s actually censored and is not likely to set off your office porn filters, but you may want to wait until you get home to view. It is hoped that the video will draw attention to the Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar. The calendar has been dedicated to an Egyptian activist who posted a full-length photo of herself on her blog last year in a stand against sexual discrimination in Islam.