"Sustainable"

What's the difference between wind power and nuclear power?  One goes offline when struck by a giant earthquake, a fist-slam of a tsunami and rescue crew made unable to bring in power lines for a week.  The other explodes when it gets a bit gusty.

I'll take reliable over "sustainable" any day.

I think they should leave this one alone

British scientists conclude: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

Crank up the iPod and off we go

The Scottish island of Taransay, where the BBC filmed the Ur reality series Castaways, is up for sale for £2 million and Ben Fogle, the cast member who went on to a career as a television presenter, wants to buy it.

His plan is to turn it into a nature preserve.  All very well and good, but if I had the scratch, I'd put in a bid, too. Though instead of a preserve I'd use it as a venue for non-stop dancing in my underwear.

Alternative alternatives

Distilling for Blessed Gaia.

Scottish distilleries in Speyside announce that beginning in 2013 they'll be using residuals from whisky distilling as a sustainable fuel.

It always warms my heart to see innovators finding ways to come up with fuels to meet our growing energy needs–especially sustainable fuels.  In the spirit of helpful helpfulness, I'd like put forward my own small list of sustainable fuels that I've discovered are cheap, efficient, clean if properly used, and abundant enough to last us for the millennia, which is a pretty good definition of "sustainable".  The fuels are:

• Oil
• Natural gas
• Coal
• Uranium
• Thorium

With all this, it's curious that Scotland is taking such a retrograde step of going back to the equivalent of peat burning.  Come on, you Hibernians, and join the rest of us in the 21st century.  You helped create the Industrial Revolution, why not enjoy it's benefits?

(Yes, I am being sarcastic.  If the distilleries were presenting this as a practical way to turn rubbish into cash, like the old-fashioned wheeze of feeding spent mash to pigs, I'd have no objections, but this endless stream of "alternatives" that are nothing but expensive, pointless "green" gestures strikes me as pure waste–the unrecyclable kind.)

Concombre de mer flambé

Matt Slater, a sea cucumber specialist at Newcastle University, claims that these disgusting little invertebrates could be the answer to the layers of uneaten food and fish poo that collect under salmon farms.  Despite its lack of any aesthetic appeal, the sea cucumber has a voracious appetite and will suck up all the detritus like a Hoover.  Once properly fattened, the cucumber can then be collected and sold to gourmet restaurants for a tidy profit.

It's a brilliant idea.  Where it falls down is that the sea cucumber tastes as disgusting as it looks.  This tends to produce what is known as consumer resistance.  Maybe they'll claim it's high in anti-oxidants or something.

A first step

That's more like it.

Scotland reintroduces manual labour for "low-level" offenders.  It's not a bad start, but the Scots are falling down by having criminals doing useful things like shoveling snow or redoing old peoples' homes.  This smacks a bit too much of labour camps for my tastes and it muddies the waters by blurring the line between punishment and work.  It would be far better if they returned to the Victorian idea that punishment is punishment and set the little darling to breaking rocks, pounding sand, pricking oakum, or filing logs.

Surely there's an old treadmill lying about somewhere.

The End Times are upon us

That's it.  I'm leaving.

And I thought this was bad.  Scottish Spirits, a Panama-based company with offices in Glasgow, plans to market Scotch in... Sit down, please... Cans.

Well, civilisation had a nice run.  I'll miss it, but now that the barbarians have overrun the gates, it's time to grab a gun and flee for the hills.

Tattletale plastic

The University of Strathclyde claim to have invented a plastic package that can tell you when the food inside has gone off so you don't have to figure it out for yourself.

And yet another of life's little pleasures is denied from us.

Saint Andrew's Day

Happy Saint Andrew's Day

From

Ephemeral Isle

Eigg on their faces

The Isle of Eigg has won all sorts of praise and awards amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds for its go-ahead "green" approach to its electricity supply. According to the BBC, the island's 95 inhabitants "champion" renewable energy production with all manner of wind turbines micro-hydroelectrics, and solar panels (in Scotland?!?).

The thing is, all this sustainable energy isn't sustaining itself. Despite servicing less than a hundred people, the island is still utterly dependent on backup diesel generators and a light rainfall this year means that the Eiggians can't even run their toasters.

This is a shame, because electricity for the Hebrides is a serious problem and not a "green" rathole to pour down money that the country doesn't have and never should waste on such follies. Still, there is one silver lining. At least the Isle of Eigg can stand as a warning example of what the Greens intend to inflict on the rest of us, though not themselves.

Now, if you will excuse me, my toast is getting cold.

Speech bubbles

Can't hear someone talking in a crowded night club with insipid music blaring out of oversized and under-engineered speakers of ear-shattering decibels that reduce every song to teeth-rattling thuds while the incessant strobes give you a blinding headache and the ludicrous fog machine makes you certain that you're going to suffocate, which would be a good thing because then it would at least allow you to escape the fug of stale sweat, cheap perfume, and fresh sick that the watery, overpriced drinks do nothing to dull the pain of? Why are you in that hellhole in the first place?

If you insist, then these "speech bubbles" may be the answer. However, like many great inventions, this one was thought up over forty years ago with predictable results.

Killed by the safety regulations

From The Times:

An injured woman lay for six hours at the foot of a disused mine shaft because safety rules banned firefighters from rescuing her, an inquiry heard yesterday. As Alison Hume was brought to the surface by mountain rescuers she died of a heart attack.

A senior fire officer at the scene admitted that crews could only listen to her cries for help, after she fell down the 60ft shaft, because regulations said their lifting equipment could not be used on the public. A memo had been circulated in Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations months previously stating that it was for use by firefighters only.

New Labour may not have achieved much in thirteen years, but they have managed to badger the British people so badly that they'd let a woman die in slow, lonely agony rather than cross their masters' insane whims.

Don't hold your breath

Remember last year when reports circulated about HP face recognition software having trouble with darker faces under certain lighting conditions? How this sparked cries of racism? Now Edinburgh University claims that voice recognition software has trouble with male voices.

Stand by for cries of sexism in 1, 2, 3..... 482964, 482965.....

US legalises haggis

The United States has at last rejoined the rest of the civilised world by lifting its ban on importing haggis.

An' sae oan thes Burns nicht, lit us aw clutch a volume ay th' poet's wark an' raise a glass ay single malt in silent cheers.

Mind you, the impact of all this will be considerable. The ban lifting will inevitably result in increased haggis exports, which will lead to higher prices and this will cause more haggis poaching. Not only will this endanger Scotland's stocks of wild haggis's, but also a bagpipe shortage because poachers rarely save the haggis skins from which bagpipes are made.

None of this helped by the fact that haggis's have tartan fur, which makes them dead easy to pick out on the moors where you can hear their plaintive droning and squealling.

Blue pencil time

Grammar check:

From The Times:

A priest has failed to in her bid to become Britain’s first woman bishop.

Correction:

A priest priestess has failed to in her bid to become Britain’s first woman bishop.

Where are the great copy editors of yesterday? One with Nineveh and Tyre, I'm afraid.

A remarkable recovery

In August, convicted Lockerbie Jihadist and mass murderer Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was given compassionate leave by a Scottish government that had so thoroughly taken leave of its senses that it's a wonder that devolution was allowed to stand. Mr al-Megrahi allegedly was suffering from prostate cancer and had only three months to live, but here it is almost Christmas and the remarkable Mr al-Megrahi is not only alive, but well enough to have done a runner on his house arrest.

The age of miracles is not passed.

Bar shot found

A history enthusiast has uncovered a round of bar shot in a garden in Scotland. In light of looming budget cuts, the Royal Navy has asked if they can have it back.

Pirate priority

Having solved all other problems, the Scottish Parliament now has time to consider the case of a pirate who's been dead for over three hundred years.

St. Andrew's Day

Happy St. Andrew's Day from Ephemeral Isle

Doing Porridge

Ian Bishop of Carrbridge, Strathspey has won the World Porridge-Making Championship.

In other news, there seems to be a bit of bother down the Stock Exchange.