Tag: war

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Arty Awesomeness Cautionary Tales Featured

Loose Tweets Sink Fleets: Brian Moore’s WWIII Propaganda Posters

If you enjoyed Cliff Chiang’s set of WWII propaganda posters for the Star Wars universe, you make like designer Brian Moore’s latest project. Moore takes propaganda posters created during World War II and modifies them to be more relevant to this day and age.

The old “Loose lips sink ships” poster created by the War Advertising Council warned of “unguarded talk” and Moore’s updated one similarly tells us that a careless tweet can indeed sink a fleet. Moore also warns of the dangers of blogging, and the roles of Reddit and Wikipedia in the war effort. Have a look at his fantastic WWIII propaganda posters after the jump.

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Movies Video Clips

Robbo-Banksy Feud Hits South African Shores

Another day, another “viral” video. I know precious little about graffiti but as any other illegal activity, there is a right and a wrong way of doing things. In 2009, when Banksy was had told another graffiti artist, Robbo, that he hadn’t heard of him, he received a swift klap and told that he would never forget his attacker. This reportedly resulted in Banksy taking a trip down to the Regent’s Canal and having his decorator clean up a Robbo tag that had been there for some 25 years. Robbo replied to the conversation by improving the Banksy piece.

This feud seems to have hit our shores and a bunch of local graffiti artists have opened up a South African chapter of Team Robbo to fight the good fight against Banksy. According to the video Team Robbo SA released a week ago, they planned a cunning ruse to cash in on Bansky’s Oscar-nominated stellar documentary/mockumentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop. As comebacks go, it’s not particularly stinging but seeing as you’re here, you may as well watch it. Incidentally, I’m in the video playing the part of the unsuspecting movie watcher.

If you’re still interested, hit the jump to see the pieces that started this feud.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured

Still Life Weapons

Geliografic studio is design collective based in Moscow, Russia. In their “Art of Innovation” series, they created a set of colourful still life oil paintings as if they were done by the old renaissance masters and added guns, ammo, and other weapons of war into the scenes. The images are presented beautifully but it’s a little worrying that weapons are so commonplace in society these days and that I didn’t think anything was out-of the-ordinary with the massive multi-shot grenade launcher lying right next to the bunch of tasty pumpkins.

Have a look at the series of deadly art after the jump.

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Featured Game Reviews

The “Darksiders” Review

OK, let’s get down to business. In Darksiders by Vigil Games, you play the role of War, one of the biblical “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”. You have been mistakenly summoned to Earth where an almighty battle between Heaven and Hell is taking place. Having interfered with something you shouldn’t have, you are summoned to the “headmaster’s office”, given a severe talking to, and stripped of your awesome powers. As a last chance at redemption, you request to be sent back to Earth to find out who was responsible for bringing on the apocalypse prematurely. Darksiders chronicles your journey through god forsaken, scorched lands, ravaged citadels, subterranean lairs, and dusty plains in a quest for answers.

Let’s go through the mechanics that make up the soul of this a “whodunit” hack and slash extravaganza. Hit the jump to read the rest of the review.

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Awesomeness Cautionary Tales

Simo Hayha, The White Death

Do you have a nickname? I’ve had a fair share of embarrassing ones (my middle name is bad enough – thanks ever so much, mom & dad.) and it’s generally disastrous to one’s street cred to have such nicknames divulged.

However, there are some people whose actions – be they good or bad – have earned themselves a reputation, and supremely awesome nicknames to match. One of those people is Simo Häyhä, or known more notoriously as the White Death.

Häyhä, a Finnish farmer and hunter by trade, started this military career in 1925, at the age of 20. It was during the Winter War (1939–1940), when Finland was being invaded by the Soviet Union that he shot to fame. Armed with a standard bolt action rifle and dressed completely in white camouflage, Häyhä ventured out into the bitter cold, and amassed what is the highest recorded number of confirmed kills in any major war. Over 100 days, the sniper extinguished 505 Soviet soldiers with his rifle and reportedly offed a further 200 of them with a submachine gun, bringing the body count to a staggering 705! Isn’t that just mind-blowing?

The frustrated Soviets sent out counter snipers and even an artillery strike, but the attempts failed to down the now infamous, White Death. Häyhä’s career came to an end in 1940 when he was shot in the jaw – he survived, but the injury blew off bits of his face and crushed his jaw. When asked whether he felt bad about his actions, he said, “I did what I was told to as well as I could.” The White Death passed away in 2002.

Read more about the White Death on Wikipedia and check out Listverse’s article on the top 10 well deserved nicknames.

[thanks Ranz]

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Cautionary Tales Featured News

The Russians Have Hitler’s Skull. Or Do They?

This came out from a comment left on our Nazis in Colour post about Hitler dying in Brazil as a big drug dealer.

Given that my only knowledge of Hitler’s death comes from Wikipedia, I accepted the general notion that he topped himself with his Walther PPK in the Führerbunker on April 30th, 1945. However, after a second of Googling, an interesting article turned up.

A year after Hitler’s death, fragments of his skull fragments dug up by Russian forces, and ABC News reports that recently a US archaeologist by the name of Nick Bellantoni visited Moscow to work on those very fragments. He returned to the United States with a sample from the skull and a sample of blood from the sofa on which Hitler is said to have committed suicide.

hitler_skullAfter doing some complex DNA tests on the bone sample, Bellantoni concluded that the it wasn’t as robust as a male bone tends to be, and that it corresponded to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40. This startling discovery has been refuted by Vasily Khristoforov, the director of Russia’s FSB intelligence service archives who insists bones are definitely Hitler’s; the vice president of the Russian state archive, Vladimir Kozlov, however is not so sure, saying “No one claimed that was Hitler’s skull.”

Did the Führer pull a fast one and escape death? Read the full article and let us know what you think.

Oh, and in other news, Hayibo.com reports that terrorist extraordinaire Osama bin Laden has been found in KwaZulu-Natal’s upmarket Umhlanga neighbourhood, posing as a woman. Read that article.

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Cautionary Tales

Hiroshima, 64 Years Ago

Earlier in July, the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 was celebrated. Today, however, another notable but deeply saddening event is remembered.

At approximately 8:15am on August 6th 1945, the U.S. B-29 bomber “Enola Gay” dropped its 4,000 Kg uranium bomb onto the Japanese city of Hiroshima. After freefalling for 57 seconds, the “Little Boy” detonated at an altitude of 580 metres. The calm and sunny Monday morning was shattered by a white light that burned patterns of clothing onto skin and the shadows of bodies onto walls.

The blast wave that followed destroyed almost every building within a three mile radius and the searing heat set off a raging firestorm. With a power of 13 to 16 kilotons, the bomb killed 66,000 people immediately, and by the end of 1945 the death toll was thought to be 140,000.

To mark 64 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Boston.com takes a poignant look at the event. There are 34 pictures in total – see them at The Big Picture.

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Arty Cautionary Tales

KENYONB: Graphic Satirist

Kenyon Bajus (or KENYONB) isn’t afraid to tackle issues of racism, sexism, classism, ageism, war, and homophobia in his work. Some may find his work sarcastic, others might be seriously offended, and that divided reaction is exactly what he’s looking for.

If I had a room full of people that were upset by my work, that would be better than everyone walking by with no reaction at all.

Here’s a small gallery of this work.

See more at KENYONB.

[via Design You Trust]

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Cautionary Tales TV Video Clips

Vegetarian Dinner: A Meat-Eater Fights Back

This is for all the meat-eaters out there. In this sketch from the That Mitchell and Webb Look, a dinner guest strikes a blow against the enemy by reversing the vegetarian issue and making a fuss about being a carnivore.

Check it out below.

[via Yep Yep]

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Movies Video Clips

The Basterds are Coming!

We ain’t in the prisoner-taking business. We in the killing-nazi business, and cousin, business is a’ booming!

In Quentin Tarantino’s war film, Inglourious Basterds, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as “The Basterds” set out to scalp and kill Nazis, and blow up a couple of things along the way. This is the latest trailer – see it below or watch it in HD at YouTube.

It’s due for release the US in August ’09.