RIBA

If this thing ever takes time off from hunting Sarah Conner to come near me, I'm giving it both barrels in its warm and reassuring conk.

Tactical Bacon

The right idea, but I would have thought "strategic" was more apt.

How the professor got his tenure

From the annals of the That's Too Much Like Hard Work Department:

• According to Johan Moan, of the Institute of Physics at the University of Oslo, white people evolved only 5500 years ago. His argument for this remarkably recent event is that farmed food is deficient in vitamin D, which darker skin produces from sunlight less efficiently than white.
• Meanwhile, an article in Psychology Review claims that depression came about to help people concentrate.
• And Oren Hasson at Tel Aviv University asserts that people cry because it's a sign of submission or some such.

Good Lord, this is a lazy bunch. Could someone tell me at what point evolutionary science threw out the science bit and devolved (sorry) into a collection of Just So stories that don't need anything as trivial as experimental proof?

Why are you doing this to me?

He looks enough like Carl the Cattle Dog to get my full sympathy.

Vanishing up one's own...

Times headline:

Seventies campsite in Forest of Dean excavated by Oxford archaeologist

That's campsite as in, well, a campsite. From the '70s.

I used to work for what was then Oxford Unit about the same time as this campsite was in operation and I find it amazing how far archaeology has fallen of the ideals of my time. Okay, those ideals revolved mostly around the pursuits lots of beer and sex (preferably in close proximity), but archaeology did get a look in.

Still, there is a ray of hope here. If we're now excavating thirty-year old campsites, why not thirty-year old excavations? I could come out of retirement and start a whole new career by digging up all the sites I dug up previously to find traces of my previous diggings. Infinitely reductive archaeology; a whole new field.

Not surprised

On Friday, the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Communication Complex,Canberra, Australia,sent out more than 25,000 messages to the extrasolar planet Gliese 581d. It was full of the usual "Hello, we welcome you in peace and hope you can help us with our problems" rubbish*, but we here at EI have the exclusive clip of the return message from the beings of Gliese 581d:

*My message was: "We are coming on with fire and sword; laying waste to all before us. Surrender, if you wish to live and we will roar with laughter at your cowardice." It didn't make the cut for some reason.

The Green Hills of Earth

The Space Children

Beware the horror of Jackie Coogan's shorts.

Oh, dear

An old wind

Sorry, we don't "do" human rights.

Hit woman

Next time you need someone "whacked" you need look no further than Dr Ruth Westheimer; sex expert and sniper.

Green nitpicking department

From the National Geographic:

As the Dead Sea—really a giant freshwater lake—dramatically shrinks, Palestinian, Israeli, and Jordanian environmentalists have begun to devise ways to slow the decline.

Unfortunately, the Dead Sea is really a large saltwater lake that is so saline that it is, for all practical purposes, dead.

From Slashdot:

Mr_Blank writes to mention that the United States' largest business lobby is pushing for a public trial to examine the evidence of global warming and have a judge make a ruling on whether human beings are warming the planet to dangerous effect. "The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court. The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a 'waste of time' and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be 'frivolous.' [...] Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end.

Not quite. Scope was found guilty and his conviction was later overturned because of the vagueness and constitutionality of the law involved, not the scientific validity of Darwinism.

When you have Blessed Gaia on your side, who needs fact checking?

The triumph of the left

Samoa sees the light.

Bob Hope and Change

Brussels may I

The British Video Recordings Act 1984 has been declared invalid because the act was not registered with the real government of Britain in Brussels.

We would be free of Europe and its bloodsucking with one easy afternoon's work if Parliament had the courage to do so, but apparently New Labour is too busy down at Minitruth.

Dutch "social workers" hate liberty

In the None Of Your Damn Business Department, Dutch jumped up little Napoleons social workers are trying to make a 13-year old girl a ward of the court in order to prevent her from sailing single-handed around the world despite the fact that she is an accomplished lifetime sailor and has her parents' blessings.

The tin-pot Himmlers social workers say that this is in her "best interests", but given the state of the Netherlands today, I'd say that sailing a small boat to the antipodes and back is the preferable option.

Ted Kennedy: 1932-2009

Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy has died of brain cancer at the age 0f 77.

The telescope: 400-years old

Today marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo unveiling his telescope in Venice.

To mark the occasion, the American Peeping Toms Society observed a minute of silence.

Divorce: The second hand smoke of matrimony

If the health and safety Nazis are consistent, then divorce should be banned immediately as a cancer risk.

1000 CCTVs, 1 crim caught

As I've said before, what frightens me about totalitarians isn't just what they do to our liberties, but that they can't even achieve what they claimed was the reason for doing it in the first place.

No longer funny

This is reason enough to abolish quangos.

Tyrants hate proper language and prefer to obscure meaning at every turn. That's why the first books to be censored are always dictionaries.

Coffee mug work station

Objective proof that your boss hates you personally.

Another nail

Courtesy of the nanny state once again sticking its oar in where it's not wanted: Good bye, the traditional pint glass; hello, plastic.

PLASTIC!?!

RESULT!

In England, dancing in the streets, in Australia, black armbands.

The Dunwich Horror

The Andromeda Strain

"Top Gear team immortalised in Lego"

Excuse me, I've got a cinder in my eye.

Bronze age butter

A 3000-year old cask of butter is found in Ireland. Archaeologists are now combing the countryside for some 3000-year old scones.

Try the dining room of the Randolph Hotel, Oxford. I'm sure I saw some last time I was there.

Robo fish farm

The latest twist in piscatorial matters is a robot fish farm designed to carry their finny charges along their natural migration routes.

Question is, why? Is it to increase yields or just to mess with their little heads?

Arabian atoms

Saudi Arabia is considering building its first nuclear reactor.

So much for being able to sleep at night.

Professor Peabody's Last Lecture

Yeah, happened to me a couple of times.

Lunar reactor

Not bad, but 2.3 kilowatts is hardly going to be enough to power the death ray that will hold the world for ransom, will it?

Needs more work.

Phantom Werks

Not bad, but I'd rather use the bar as my desk and keep this for meetings. One bad report and it's "hello, Martin Baker" time.

Now, where's my white cat?

Care for a rat?

A meat-eating plant big enough to scoff rats.

That's going to make for some awkward parties.

Marie of Romania

Artificial Tongue

From Wired:

A new artificial tongue is better than the real thing.

I'm not touching this with a barge pole.

Air taxi inventor killed in test crash

A pity. It looked like such a promising idea.

Trabant nT

How to reintroduce one of Communism's most horrible cars to the 21st century? Make is an all-electric, solar-powered version.

That'll work.

RESULT! 131 MPH on steam

The British Steam Car Challenge breaks the Mallard's steam speed record of 125.88 mph set in 1938 and Fred Mariott's 1906 speed in a Stanley Steamer of 127.659.

Well done, lads.

(And yes, my very American seven-year old daughter does know the chorus.)

The gauntlet is thrown down

The Food Police World Cancer Research Fund demands that ham be banned from school lunchboxes.

My advice to the WCF is to quit now and just walk away clean. Go after tobacco, go after coconut oil, go after sugar, or go after transfat if you like, but go after the ham and you're unsealing a tin of whup-ass on yourself.

Mixed war news

How is the war against the Jihadists going? Swings and roundabouts, really. On the one hand, Iraq looks to be more or less stable, Australia foils a Jihadist attack on an army base, and the Coalition is still pounding away at the Talaeban despite British equipment problems and foot-dragging NATO (for want of a better word) "allies". On the other hand, Yale University Press publishes a book on the Danish cartoons without the cartoons and burkinis are required even for infidels at British swimming pools.

With so many in the West so eager to surrender I sometimes wonder why the Jihadists even bother to plant bombs any more.

Who Goes There?

Quatermass and the Pit

Hi-de-Hi to Ocean hotel

Butlins gets into the luxury hotel business.

They've come a long way from the holiday camps, Redcoats, and "chalets" that I spent my younger days avoiding like an escaped prisoner of war.

Semi-hiatus

Family matters are going to be absorbing a lot of my time over the next month. Posting will be light, but I'll try to front load some special items, so keep checking back.

Ha har!

You cares about modern piracy? After all, it's just something that happens in faraway places like...

Uh, oh.

The new "N" word

Do you think that Barack Hussein Obama is a Socialist?

Then you, my friend, are a racist.

Update: and another code word.

Jimmy Carter in spandex

Cranmer discovers The Elders of the Earth, where self-regard meets senility.

I like the name, though. Didn't Stan Lee write the first issues?

Concorde bomber

What might have been.

It'll all end in tears, I know it

One Operating System to rule them all, One Operating System to find them, One Operating System to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

Things you should never say

Hillary Clinton:

My husband is not the Secretary of State, I am.

Translation:

My husband is the Secretary of State, not me.

The Ballad of G I Joe

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Sometimes you just need to put down the laser rifle and kick back.

An elephant handgun

One round, but one should be enough.

If it isn't, you're in deep doo doo.

Wile E Coyote, call your service

I love this idea; use sheets of cloth to detonate anti-tank rounds before they reach the armour. Brilliant.

I'm certain that the inventor was a bird-obsessed carnivore who tried to stop a train from hitting him by pulling down a window blind.

ChefStack

Good lord, it's like a heroin vending machine.

Where can I get one?

Gaius Julius Obama

I've characterised Barrack Hussein Obama's governing style as a man who'd rather be king, but I never felt that it really fit because feudalism implies not only reciprocal obligation, but right of birth–neither of which apply. Instapundit, however has the word that I was grasping for and hoped I'd never see raised in an anglophone democracy:

Caesar.

Thank God he has no legions.

Another nail

According to The Times, walking backwards in the presence of the Queen has been abolished on the grounds of (all together now!) health and safety.

In other news, the various health and safety busybodies have been abolished due to softening of the brain.

James May in space

Nearly.

This is the sort of documentary I like; not a load of talking heads, generic music, and fake drama, but someone who loves his subject and has the ability to convey that love.

And yes, I hate his guts, the lucky bastard.

And here's how not to wash your car

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Universe

Crack in the World

Remember, it's only a movie.

Or is it?

Woman marries rollercoaster

When you start redefining marriage, why stop with gender? Or reality?

And I thought I was "out there" when I brought up cheese sandwiches.

What Jihad?

There is no war. There are no Jihadists. Who knew you could simply define an enemy out of existence?

God help us all.

Why so Socialist?

This is insulting, racist, treasonous, hate speech, and utterly beyond the pale.

This is artistic, political satire, protected by the first amendment, and entirely proper.

Yeah. Right.

Update: Unfair to the Joker!

Thick or what?

Ron Liddle in The Spectator asks whether our Harriet is criminally disingenuous or just plain thick?

Along with Mr Liddle I suspect the latter, but my real question about our Harriet is how decadent has British politics become when the "Equality Minister" (may that post vanish after the next election) is tipped to become the next leader of New Labour while the Defence Minister is an ineffectual nobody who is forever apologising for his inadequacies.

Asylums and inmates, I suppose.