On June 17, the Czech art group Ztohoven hacked into a weather channel showing panorama views. Into the peaceful panorama of a mountain view, they inserted a pretty realistic nuclear explosion:

Ztohoven see their hack as a comment on media credibility:

On the 17th of June 2007 this group attacked the space of TV broadcasting. It distorted it, questioned its truthfulness and its credibility. It drew attention to the possibility of using images of the world created by the media in place of the existing, real world.Is everything we see daily on our TV screens real? Is everything presented to us by the media, newspapers, television, Internet actually real? This is the concept our project would like to introduce and remind of.
(cited from the English translation of the Czech original statement)

Ztohoven got an award for their project by the National Gallery of Prague, together with a cash prize of about 12’000 Euros… and a lawsuit against them. They were charged with spreading false information. If they are convicted, they might face up to three years imprisonment.

I hope that Ztohoven get away without spending years in prison. The hack was kinda nasty, but also kinda cool. :) Unfortunately, I do not know many details about the aftermath of the staged nuclear explosion, but I do not think that anyone was harmed.

(via CNN via Boing Boing)

(This article is also available in German)

The discussion about the benefit of nuclear power for the global climate is kinda broken on both sides. Supporters keep claiming that nuclear power is “free of CO2”. The other side brings up claims like “nuclear power has a higher CO2 output than coal powered plants”. Both arguments are nonsense.

» read on!