The flat that fits in a three-wheel van. It looks bizarre and it probably has all the stability of a box of sweaty gelignite, but there were times in my life when this would have been a brilliant solution to my travel and living problems.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Bufalino
The flat that fits in a three-wheel van. It looks bizarre and it probably has all the stability of a box of sweaty gelignite, but there were times in my life when this would have been a brilliant solution to my travel and living problems.
Monday, 23 August 2010
The fourth plinth follies
It's a wonder that Lord Nelson doesn't shinny down his column and storm off in disgust.
Back to the Commonwealth
The Internet is drawing Britain away from the EU and back to the the Anglosphere. Predictably, the Groaniad is crying in their beer about this, but given what a totalitarian state the EU is becoming and how its corrupting the British police, all I can say is, roll on the Anglosphere!
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Saturday, 21 August 2010
Friday, 20 August 2010
ID8 Mobile
I will admit that I have a soft spot for any device that has a slot to insert one of its accessories into.
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Very well, alone!
Once a depiction of the Dunkirk spirit during the war, now a portryal of Britain's armed forces after the projected defence cuts.
Acquaefuoco's Tube
The "bioethanol fireplace for the eco-conscious". I had one of these aboard a boat once, though it was less an overpriced "green" accessory than an alcohol stove in a galley that developed a leak and caught fire.
How to be a good hook-up
But will he respect me in the morning? Don't be daft.
Get the secateurs, quick!
From the BBC:A Cornwall couple said they returned from holiday to find a plant in their garden had grown 8m (26ft) high.Yeah, I've had similar. It didn't end well.
Digging from the Air
I was pottering about the BBC archives web site when I came across a 1979 gem of a documentary on aerial archaeology. Digging from the Air is such a solid piece of scholarship and so lacking in any sort of pandering or condescension that I would have happily presented it to one of my university classes. It isn't afraid to assume a certain level of education and intelligence in an audience with an attention span greater than that of a hyperactive meerkat. It really feels like a film made by makers and scientists who genuinely want to teach something. I even learned some new things and I'm supposed to be an expert.It was a delightful nostalgia trip that took me back to the days that saw the start of my own archaeological career. It also showed how great the BBC once was and how far it has fallen from grace.
Today, if they made this programme at all, it would be full of fast cuts, shots of swooping aircraft, flashy CGI graphics, background music that irritates with its relentless pounding, a succession of talking heads who don't actually say anything, and an information content so minimal that one would suspect that the producers were ashamed of being caught teaching anything. If there were a presenter, he would be a very young man in very casual clothes, far too enthusiastic, have the gravitas of a fourteen-year old, have no idea what to do with his hands, and speak with a pronounced regional accent that is 80 percent affectation. Or it would be a very young woman with the put upon air of someone who'd far rather be doing better things, like documentaries on the plight of immigrant Muslim transsexual Hobbits in Notting Hill, and have a pronounced regional accent that is 100 percent affectation and impossible to understand.
Thank God for the BBC archive; a lifeline from a more civilised age.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
What's the punch line?
From the BBC:Wales' in-roads into space exploration could be jeopardised if cuts are made to science budgets, a researcher warns.The Welsh space programme; it sounds like the start of a joke.
We are zee kiler bees!
Sir Michael Caine was unavailable for comment.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Carts and horses
With Mr David Cameron out of town, Mr Nicholas Cregg forgets that as deputy prime minister he is actually part of the government and says something typically daft:Trident replacement makes welfare cuts harder to justifyNo, Mr Clegg; it's the other way around: Trident replacement justifies welfare cuts. Now go away and write out "Defence of the realm is government's primary duty" one hundred times.
Missing the point
This makes it hallowed.Mr Daryl Lang at History Eraser Button weighs in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy. He takes issue with the notion that the proximity of the former site of the World Trade Center is "hallowed ground". Just because Jihadists hijacked airliners packed with innocent human beings and slammed them into skyscrapers packed with more innocent human beings with the express purpose of murdering as many people as possible for the express purpose of glorifying Islam and declaring war on civilisation, why should this be any reason to object to the raising of a 13 storey mosque named after the capital of the Andalusian Caliphate?
To prove his point, Mr Lang posts a number of photos of the area showing things like strip clubs, tee-shirt vendors, and an Irish pub and claims that this refutes any possible claim of Ground Zero being "hallowed".
Aside from an obvious indulgence in the fallacy of equivocation, Mr Lang magnificently misses the point. If a load of tee-shirt wearing strippers from Limerick had slaughtered 2700 people in the neighbourhood as the opening salvo in a campaign of conquest and then proposed to open a pub called "The Boot on the Neck" on the site of their atrocity, I might see the relevance of his argument.
But they didn't, so I don't.
Update: Putting aside the question of should it be built, all things being equal, the proponents can build the Ground Zero mosque as soon as they like, but all things are not equal. There are still questions to be answered about who owns the site, the intended use of the mosque, the people behind it, how it is funded, and (wait for it) whether the federal government is using taxpayer money to support it in violation of the first amendment. These are all legitimate impediments that need to be addressed.
It doesn't end there. The notion that New York City's hands are tied and that they can only sit by and watch the Ground Zero mosque be built is a dubious one. Having dealt with many local authorities in the past, the official line never impressed me. If New York really opposed the mosque, they could quite legally hinder its progress for decades, if not stop it in its tracks, by reviewing permit after permit, requiring inspection after inspection, and demanding endless impact studies and proof of compliance with the smallest regulation, initiative, and revision. Then, of course, there's listening to every appeal from every pressure group no matter how thin the grievance or concern. The entire Californian electricity generating industry was destroyed by that one.
This isn't even in the abstract. A Greek Orthodox church that stood at the site of the World Trade Center since 1922 and was destroyed in the attack on 9/11 still remains waiting to be rebuilt nine years later. The reason? The Port Authority doesn't want it rebuilt and is dragging its feet in exactly the way outlined above. Surely if New York can be utter jerks with one religion, they can be so with another.
Update: The beginning of the end?
Monday, 16 August 2010
AutoTram
Everyone hates bendy buses; they say they're ugly, no fun to ride in and dangerous. What should we do?Make the ends slopier and call them "trams". They'll never know the difference.
Glass-bottomed balloon gondola
Another example of what not to try to get me on unless you want two foot-deep furrows dug into the airfield by my fingers.
We'll have to go on halfs
A report from The Telegraph:
The four men have just visited their 14,000th pub across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.Amateurs.
Farnborough Air Show 1950
Report followed by raw footage.
Newsreel report on aviation in the days when we still gave a damn about what Britain produced and our standing in the world. Granted, not every ship was a coconut and a couple were bloody awful, but at least we tried.
Alpha strike
What? Sarah Connor hasn't even been born yet?Alpha: A saga of robots, rebellion, and poor fact-checking.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Saturday, 14 August 2010
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Friday, 13 August 2010
The case against
Miss Bryony Gordon in The Telegraph claims that there is nothing wrong with topless sunbathing and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a stuck-up prude. This, of course, is in an opinion piece illustrated with the above image of Bridget Bardot.This is a bit unfair. I might agree with Miss Gordon if topless beaches were frequented exclusively by women of the standard of young Miss Bardot in her prime. I well recall in my youth going to a park in Scandinavia where nubile young women ran about in the all together. Being a visitor in the city and not wanting to appear like the prude of Miss Gordon's imagination, I girded my loins and carried on eating my sandwiches so as not to cause offence. After several hours, it grew dark, so I had to leave anyway.
That being said, I must point out that also in my youth I had the unfortunate experience at Oxford of punting past the Cherwell-side retreat known as Parson's Pleasure where dons of a naturist persuasion used to literally hang out. That was when that I learned that there are some things that man is not meant to know. That experience set in stone my opposition to topless beaches on the grounds of aesthetics and a desire not to have to boil my eyeballs.
Fake Future Past
James Lileks tears apart a fake retro advert from Brazil that's been annoying me for a week.Future Past: Accept no substitutes!
Serious meat
Speaking of Lileks, this week his update at the Gallery of Regrettable Foods looks at a topic near and dear to your heart and mine: meat curing.This brings back memories. On the farm, making a bacon sandwich was a bit involved.
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Unsuckit
The hallmark of good writing is to avoid cant, slang, jargon, cliché, buzzwords, and any other linguist abominations that come between the reader and clarity. Unsuckit is a handy little tool in the war against nonsense. Type in whatever bit of businessspeak you're stuck on and it delivers a translation in plain English.
A man walks into Room 101...
When a country loses its sense of humour, its liberty follows close behind.
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
The death knell?
The Telegraph claims to have seen leaked budget proposals that would entail defence cuts that would end Britain as a major military power.This is intolerable. Defence is the primary role of government, not a luxury. I accept that this is the current government having to deal with a crisis not of their own making, but if these cuts are true and they go through without being preceded by the wholesale abolition of entire departments, the halting of all foreign aid, and a firm commitment to dismantle the welfare state, then I will still regard the coalition as being criminally negligent and of questionable legitimacy.
Update: £43 million thrown away on useless electric cars while the Army faces a cut of 40,000 men? Just how much crack is the government smoking? I know they must be on crack. I just want to know how much.
Update: Ah, well. If we can't defend Britain, there's always the alternative.
Sarah Connor runs for cover
This terrifying prediction courtesy of the BBC World Service:Dr Kaku believes robots could become as intelligent as monkeys this century.Great. On top of everything else I have to look forward to, I can add robomonkeys flinging cyberpoo.
Reliable sources
Pakistani floods, more floods in China, and Russia's heatwave are all due to global warming. They really, really are. The Telegraph can prove it, too. How? By stating that the claim is supported by that sterling trio of unimpeachable authority: the IPCC, the Met Office, and the University of East Anglia.
Next up: Bernie Madoff gives investment advice.
Next up: Bernie Madoff gives investment advice.
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
I ache, therefore I am
Andrew Brown over at The Guardian hefts a bucket of cold water and points out that, publicity to the contrary, robots don't have emotions. Thank God.Share and enjoy.
Newspad, PADD, & iPad
Ars technica looks at how Star Trek foresaw the iPad back in 1987.
Maybe so, but Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick beat them by 19 years.
Monday, 9 August 2010
Lord Summerisle, call your service
So far, the organisers claim to have pledges to save some 215 barrels of oil. How that's calculated is a mystery. For my part, I plan to do my bit this weekend offsetting the offsets. Diesel locomotive pulls and giant flamethrower competitions, anyone?
When you're dead, you're screwed
The screw-in coffin; not as undignified as the giant trebuchet to catapult the deceased out to sea, but a pretty darn close second.
Top Gear USA
Also, it's going to air on the History Channel, which theses days has about as much to do with history as the Sci-Fi Channel did with science fiction before they had a burst of honesty and changed their name. That sort of identity crisis doesn't help anyone.
Patricia Neal 1926-2010
The actress Patricia Neal passes on at the age of 84. She had a considerable career, but I'll always remember her for two roles:
That of the heroine in The Day the Earth Stood Still; the sci-fi classic about an alien who comes to Earth to hurl abuse at us and urges mankind to embrace the ways of peace or be incinerated by giant killer robots.
And The Fountainhead; the most incredible mixture of cod philosophy and over-wrought sexual fantasy ever to see the light of day.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Friday, 6 August 2010
Where do you get your ideas?
New Quill & The Keyboard post is up; including part two of the Aldous Huxley interview.
The future that never happened
Will Ferrel takes on... the FUTURE!Here's a sample:
As the kids say, read the whole thing.It’s the year 2010: Why hasn’t anyone designed an edible fake beard? I don’t know how many times I’ve arrived late to some high-class function and the kitchen has just closed. Guess what? I’m starving, but there’s nothing to eat. How many time have I thought to myself, “Boy, I wish I could eat my fake beard.” I will admit that on a rare occasion, I have tasted fake beard. Take it from me: terrible. It’s time for someone to invent a delicious, edible fake beard… and make millions.
Thursday, 5 August 2010
Aqualet
I don't what's scarier, the pointless and impossible to decipher high-tech control panel or that the thing looks like it's about to fall off the wall.
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Another dentist day
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Girl guideless
I remember when the Girl Guides used to waste their time doing all sorts of useless things like trying to build young girls' characters and teaching them practical skills. It's good to see that in this go-ahead age the Guides have finally got their priorities right and are demanding the the government censor "airbrushed" photos of celebrities by labeling them so that I mean, what's the alternative? To tell the little perishers that vanity is a sin and that they shouldn't indulge in it? That's so judgmental. It's far better to treat them like livestock unable to control themselves and micromanage their lives while they shrivel up as responsible human beings.
Heinlein predicts
Prediction isn't an easy business and any writer of science fiction with any sense admits that the future is a sandbox where he tries to explain the present. Still, the public does expect science fiction authors to have some idea about what tomorrow has in store. Here we have Robert A Heinlein's predictions from 1949 about life in the 21st century (Published in Galaxy magazine, February 1952).Not a bad collection. Some nice hits and some very revealing misses.Here are things we won't get soon, if ever:
- Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door–C.O.D. It's yours when you pay for it.
- Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between sexes to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure.
- The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space.
- It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a "preventive war." We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have guaranteed to defend.
- In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a "breakthrough" into new technology which will make every house now standing as obsolete as privies.
- We'll all be getting a little hungry by and by.
- The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called "modern art" will be discussed only by psychiatrists.
- Freud will be classed as a pre-scientific, intuitive pioneer and psychoanalysis will be replaced by a growing, changing "operational psychology" based on measurement and prediction.
- Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish "regeneration," i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit him with an artificial limb.
- By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar system, and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be abuilding.
- Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple queries, and transmit vision.
- Intelligent life will be found on Mars.
- A thousand miles an hour at a cent a mile will be commonplace; short hauls will be made in evacuated subways at extreme speeds.
- A major objective of applied physics will be to control gravity.
- We will not achieve a "world state" in the predictable future. Nevertheless, Communism will vanish from this planet.
- Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population. About 1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while retaining the semblance.
- All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic "brain."
- Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will be a luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear.
- Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will "civilization" be destroyed.
- Travel through time.
- Travel faster than the speed of light
- "Radio" transmission of matter.
- Manlike robots with manlike reactions.
- Laboratory creation of life.
- Real understanding of what "thought" is and how it is related to matter.
- Scientific proof of personal survival after death.
- Nor a permanent end to war. (I don't like that prediction any better thanyou do.)
What the UN really thinks of you
Latest diktat from the UN, where the delegates tuck into the caviare like it's going out of style: Eat bugs, peasants.
The Complete Metropolis
I'm reserving my DVD copy straight away.
Project Troy
It looks very cool with a Collier's mission feel about it and I think it has a much better chance of success than some of the more anemic proposals put forth in recent years. This could get to Mars, though what's the point of doing so is another question. It's a shame that the Mars of '50s sci fi is dead and gone. It would have made the trip worth the ticket fare.
Straddling bus
From Red china comes this idea for easing traffic congestion: A bus that straddles the entire traffic lane so that cars can drive underneath it. This is such a simpler plan than going through all the expense and disruption of building, for example, an elevated rail system. True, the entire street has to be redesigned and rebuilt, special stations must be erected, and as for those cars driving under it, they'll hardly notice except for this:
About the ultrasonic waves put forth from the end of the bus, that is to keep those high cars or trucks away from entering the tunnel. Using laser ray to scan, cars get too close to the passage will activate the alarm on the bus end. Inside the bus, there are turning lights that indicate a the bus is intending to make a turn to warn the cars inside. Also radar scanning system is embedded on the walls to warn cars from getting too close to the bus wheels.Very simple–assuming that motorists have passed their intensive driving-under-the-bus training course (No Obama jokes, please). As to how this huge slab of metal is supposed to turn corners, don't ask because it makes the designers all cross.
Monday, 2 August 2010
Civilisation
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I am shocked, shocked that an adjunct professor
of Catholicism is sacked for teaching Catholicism.
of Catholicism is sacked for teaching Catholicism.
I'm not at all surprised at this story. Having spent many years researching and teaching in academia, I have come to the conclusion that we have appointed as guardians of Western civilisation a load of libertines and bigots who regard our heritage as an embarrassing and inconvenient mess to be disposed of as quickly and quietly as possible.
Fools of the world unite; you've nothing to lose but your sinuses!
Michael Deacon declares that the time has come for society to stop discriminating against stupid people and to do all it can to advance them.
And here I thought that was the purpose of Parliament all along.
And here I thought that was the purpose of Parliament all along.
Sunday, 1 August 2010
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