So, today I had a look at the BBC News site to see what’s going on in the world today. I noticed the story about the horrible fire in Buxton where a little five year old girl and a little two year old boy died. I didn’t know the family at all, but just the thought of that poor family having to bear the loss of those two little children. The mother of the children was also burned and she’s in the specialist burns unit at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, and her baby son is in the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and is also doing alright.

The community is leaving flowers and teddies and nice messages at the front of the house that burned, which is nice I think. It’s just so terribly sad! Could you imagine losing two children? It’s one of those things that I think only my fiancé could pull me through. So long as I had him I’d be okay.

What makes this so much worse is that it seems that some fellow is responsible for setting the fire! I can’t understand the completely wretched decision making of some people. It’s shocking and horrid to think this was done on purpose!

I mean, what can you do? Obviously if the boy is guilty then the state will prosecute, and hopefully if this was done on purpose it won’t ever happen again at the hands of the same person, but still. This is serious, this isn’t some hurt on the job work claim kind of legal thing with the no win no fee solicitors chasing after the ambulance, this is the death of two little babies. Could you imagine having that on your conscience? That’d be enough to send you batty, no?

Anyway, that’s sad and I know I’m an emotional sort but yeah. Knitting pattern time; soft, comforting knitting. It’s got to be a baby pattern now, so these matching Poncho, Hat, and Socks will do nicely.

Okay so run down just in case you’ve missed all this, which would be bloody amazing because the story is everywhere, but here it is anyway. In mid-December, Google noticed that someone was trying to attack it. No news there, that happens all the time, however this was a very skilled and very targeted attack on their corporate site, and email accounts of many humanitarian workers in China. Google traced the attacks and found that they also targeted companies in the media, finance, and defence areas.

Some news stories have even suggested that the attacks have hit companies that currently hold defence contracts within the US. Google hasn’t come out and said that the Chinese government is behind the attacks, but the the level of sophistication, and Google’s reaction, people have pretty much assumed that the attacks are backed by the government.

These attacks come on the back of Google deciding that they would no longer censor their search results as China demanded they would have to do to be able to operate within the country. This was a very controversial decision on Google’s part, and I think many people are very happy to see it overturned. However there are now fears that, with Google pulling out of the country, the censorship of information for the Chinese people will be even greater… and that’s pretty crap.

Google isn’t the only company to be trying China at the moment, and it’s interesting to see these pushes on China’s demands all occurring at the same time. Companies that sell raw iron ore – used to make steel – usually sell around half their yearly product to China, and last year China used this buying strength to set the iron ore price for the year at a less than great rate to iron ore sellers. This year, iron ore sellers – Vale of Brazil, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton – skipped China and went straight to Japan, completely leaving China out of price negotiations for the year. That’s massive considering the proportion of sales that go to China.

In another aggravating move to ol’ China, the US has just signed a deal to sell over 200 missiles to Taiwan, something China expressly ‘asked’ the US not to do, and now they are rather persnickety over it. I have to say, I really do enjoy seeing countries say no to China. I don’t approve of their censorship, and other practices going on throughout the government, so I like to see the playing field evened out a little.

Oh, by the way, China does have it’s own set of hackers, who are often very patriotic – which leads many to believe that they are in fact sanctioned by the government – and lately these patriotic hackers have set themselves the task of defacing Iranian websites because Iranian hackers attacked one of China’s biggest search engines. If you’ve found this whole thing interesting at all, then please read this news story, because it brings up so many breaches of security perpetrated by China that I can’t mention them all here!

Okay now for a knitting pattern. How about a blanket? This pretty Sutter’s Mill Throw Blanket, to be precise. It’s chilly in my part of the world, and I’d like to have this blanket on my lap right now!

And on the rare occasions when a good news story is going to be shown, you end up having to wait all the way through the bad news to get to the little snippet of good news. Why is it that people want to hear every little bad thing that goes on in the world? Important events need to be shown to the world, no doubt, but it sort of seems… very negative to spend so much time reporting dreadful events, and not spend nearly equal time reporting good events. It’s no surprise that the English language has way more words for negative emotions than it does for positive ones!

I’ve been looking into good news sites, so I’m going to share them here! The first one is Happy News, and the site is really quite nice. It’s all free, which is great, and you can read lovely articles about all sorts of wonderful things. They have a nice topic browser, so you can navigate to different types of articles and see all the stories in that category.

Next is Optimist News, which is a nice idea. A bit of a cute/funky vibe to the graphics of the site, and it is a little harder to navigate to the good news stories that Happy News. Nonetheless, they have some nice stuff on there, too.

Gimundo is the last site I’m featuring today, and it is quite a nice site, really. Nice graphic style that is easy to navigate, and they have a lot of videos too. Be sure to look up ‘Babies eating lemons’ in their video section, because watching a few minutes straight of montage of babies pulling faces at the sourness of eating a lemon is just so very cute!

Good news is good for you, it brings you into a happier mind set, which studies suggest leads one to a better life. Today’s pattern has to be a real pretty one, a good one, so the Dayflower Cowl is the pattern of the day!