Cain, Abel and Vegetarianism

Adam and Eve / Noah are all cartoon regulars so I thought I'd bring some less well know Genesis characters to this week's CCGB compedition whose theme is 'Vegetarianism'.

Okay it's a stretch given the story in Genesis 4 only says Cain was a farmer and Abel was a hunter.  Also as all the commentaries will say it's not really about divine disapproval of vegetarian vs meats but rather the attitude behind the offerings.  Yes and Cain did murder Abel but that's another story.

I Am Spartacus

Earlier this year Sony's Play Station Network was compromised and I got a nice email from Sony that sent me into a frantic round of password changing.  Since then hacker attacks on vunerable websites have increased leading to much more media reporting and groups like Luiz Security and Anonymous becoming household names.

So this week when reports started circulating that the UK census data had been stolen (and the identity of all the countries Jedi's exposed) it seemed so plausible that both the implicated hacker group and the UK government had to promptly come out and flatly deny it. 

However just as alarming as massive corporations having obsolete servers and poor security is the fact that so much personal information about every one of us is already floating around the Internet.  Just on your Facebook page you have the ability to share your date of birth, home town, mobile phone details and plenty other juicy identity theft morsels.

To be fair banks have been alive to the fact that questions like 'What is your mother's maiden name' and 'What is your date of birth' are insufficient as security questions for the last few years (as this report from 2007 shows) and have started to move towards different types of authentication.  Yet the first barrier to a hacker gaining access to your online banking or other services is still your password and this quite often tends to be made up of memorable such as your dog's name + your year of birth.  For those worried about this sort of thing consider a password manager like Keepass or use a random method like Dicewise for generating your passwords.

So to protect our identity rather than complex security maybe we should start posting disinformation about ourselves to throw would be identity thieves off the scent.  Since I have already given you too many true titbit of info about myself today (I have a Playstation and a computer) I should muddy the waters a little.  So here are a few personal nuggets of information about myself:

• My birthday is May 28th (like the Queen).
• I am 27.
• I was born in Butte Falls, Oregon (population 431)
• My mother's maiden name was 'Mummy'
• My first school was Grange Hill
• My favourite colour is Aqua Marine
• I have a dog called Brutus

The Spartacus gag came to mind when I thought of Identity Theft.  Spartacus (whose real name was Kirk Douglas) lead an unsuccessful slave revolt against Rome and made a film where all his friends pretended to assume his identity and didn't empty his bank account.

Hamilton Remote Control

The problem with drawing topical cartoons is it draws you into public debates about matters you know very little about (apart from the current angle the media is chasing).  Take this example from the CCGB compedition which is on the theme of 'Remote Control' where I have taken the criticism from the Canadian Grand Prix around Lewis Hamilton's reckless driving and used it to try and be funny.

I haven't watched F1 for a while mainly because it is long and in my opinion mostly dull (although many will disagree).  In my mind Lewis Hamilton driving a bit aggressively and causing a few crashes is not a bad thing from the point of view of entertainment unless someone gets hurt. Anyway by tomorrow it won't matter as I'll be taking a different news story and trying to get an angle on that.

Dave Conner - DC1

On the 6th June 2011 David Conner passed away to much shock on the cartoonist forum where he was known as DC1 and well liked.  This weekend's caption compedition was a tribute to him based around three themes of Real Ale, Martial Arts and Cartooning (David's interests).  I hope my crude Matrix gag does him justice.

Fish Spa

As we were discussing fish spa treatment at work this rather obvious cartoon came to mind.  This version is about the anticipation of the event rather than drawing the woman with the piranhas already in the tank (which would have been gruesome).

X-MEN pre-school

X-Men First Class is out at cinemas and I want to see it having enjoyed the original trilogy (2 is the best) but not Wolverine.

Hollywood have used the old prequel mechanism which can only work so many times so once they run out of sequels and prequels maybe we'll end up with prequel prequels kinda like a Muppet Babies version of X-Men (for those of you who remember such things).

Rapture Pack

This week's CCGB caption compedition gave me a chance to reference the recent media storm surrounding one pastor's prediction the rapture would happen on May 21st.  

Modern Meditation

Today's cartoon is in preparation for a seminar on Meditation with Martin Hannington my church is running which should be interesting.

I don't know if monk's are allowed to text or use tablets (I suspect not) but it gave me a vehicle to talk about how distracting sitting in-front of a computer at work is when the temptation of tabbed browsing is always to open another tab and go look at something from the wide wide web.  Even at home when you are trying to do something creative or constructive the temptation is always to check the CCGB forum one more time or Tweetbook or anything that gives you a quick hit rather than the less immediate satisfaction of focusing or creating something yourself.

The slightly hand drawn look is because the cartoon is hand drawn while my office is being dismantled.  Digital cartooning will return soon.