A toast!

Everyone! Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. It is with great joy that I announce that a cure for cancer is at hand. How do I know this? Because finally, finally scientists have figured out why some people like toast and so we can at last get on with the cancer thing.

Arthur C Clarke (1964, Part 1)

Weird Tales: Out of the Depths

Click title link to listen.

Nine years on

It's been nine years since that infamous day on 9/11 when the twin towers fell. I remember that day like it was this morning. I remember my wife waking me because a friend had called her and told her about the first airplane strike in New York. I remember turning on the television just minutes before the second plane struck. I remember seeing it hit the tower; the newsreader oblivious to what was happening on the screen. I remember the gut-wrenching realisation that this was no accident. I remember the Pentagon being hit. I remember the fourth going down in a field and no one yet knowing the story of the heroism and sacrifice on that flight. I remember the air traffic shutting down; the fear my neighbours felt when a police prop plane flew overhead and they didn't know what it was; the relief when we saw jet fighters streak across the sky. I remember my thirst for any news and my thanking God for the Internet.

I remember the fear and uncertainty as we learned who the enemy was. I remember not knowing what would happen in the days ahead. Would madmen show up in the streets with machine guns? Would poison gas be released in the shopping centres? I remember having a very serious conversation with a good friend about what handgun to buy--not whether to, just if a Walther PPK was the best choice. I remember putting together the emergency kits that we carry in our cars to this day.

Since then, we've had nine years of triumph and tragedy. There isn't room here to summarise it all. That would take a book to do it justice. I'm also not so sure that a memorial is the best thing to put forward now. What is more appropriate is a call to arms. Why? because I have always firmly believed that it is only the British and Americans who provide the world with the proper leadership needed in a war to preserve civilisation, which is what we are engaged in. Without it, I fear for our future. I fear that our leadership is now neglected and rudderless. In London we have a schizophrenic coalition that thinks that defence of the realm is secondary to protecting the jobs of NHS bureaucrats and ensuring that foreign aid cheques to Third World dictators arrive on time. In the Washington, we have a President (a man whom I believe to be a profound fool in the truest sense of the word) who apologises profusely for his own country, promotes absurd myths of an Islamic golden age, and only pursues the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan because he knows that if he hauled America's forces (not his, never his) back at the end of a rope as he'd like, he'd be committing political suicide. In both, we have governments unwilling to identify, let alone confront the Jihadists who wish to turn freedom into a memory and each man a prisoner within the confines of his own skull. They share a mindset that makes a crank pastor of a tiny heretical congregation into a world menace to be condemned by the leader of the Free World because his burning of a Koran might ironically send the adherents of the "Religion of Peace" into a homicidal rage. It is a sign of a political class that is, to put it bluntly and generously, gutless.

The Jihadists don't frighten me. This spinelessness does. This unwillingness to admit that we are in a war for our lives does. This is a war that the Jihadists cannot win, but we can lose if we allow ourselves to do so. If we apologise over and over for existing; if we hypocritically defend the building of a victory mosque at Ground Zero yet throw up our hands in horror at a crackpot burning a Koran while our enemies burn alive Christians, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else they see as Kuffirs; if we bleat on about multiculturalism and the "vibrancy" brought on by uncontrolled (mark that word) immigration; if we do not see that fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan means less fighting on our own shores; if we do not recognise that a US army officer gunning down his fellow soldiers while screaming "Allah akbar" really is an enemy action; if we do not see the enemy for who he is and the necessity of fighting him until he is utterly defeated and fleeing for his life, then we are in for very dark days.

Will we be defeated by the Jihadists? Will St. Paul's become a mosque and will the call to prayer echo out from the Washington Monument? No, but if our political class do not step up and do the job they were hired to do, then within a generation a very frightened people will sweep them aside and do it for them because when it gets to that point, it really will be a war for survival as a people and as a civilisation. And if that happens, it will be war to the knife and God have mercy on us all.

Don't let that happen.

What a clever chair

From the BBC:

The chair of the Mercury Prize has claimed that black British female artists are being ignored by the British public.

I don't know what is more bizarre; the implication that lackluster sales by "new female urban acts" can only be the result of some sort of musical racism or that the Mercury Prize presented its comment through a piece of furniture.

A matter of scale

In the future, flying cars will be scolded by giants.

Review: The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

H P Lovecraft: Part 4 of 5

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Oh, Lord

From The Telegraph:

Prince of Wales's eco-car 'spectacular' takes shape

He'll be talking to trees next.

Review: Midnight by the Morphy Watch

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

HeroRats

African giant rats are trained to find landmines.

An interesting idea, but if Darwin is anything to shout about, I suspect that as time passes these rats will get worse and worse at the job.

The key is patience

I am pleased

MESSAGE BEGINS:

Preliminary tests in Helsinki successful. Redirecting satellites on Target London. Operation Thunderbolt on schedule.


MESSAGE ENDS.

Generic BBC America

Can't understand; won't understand.

H P Lovecraft: Part 3 of 5

Another Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Review: The Walls of Eryx

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Delayed, but not denied

A few weeks ago, Manchester Police refused to give chase to a motorbike thief because said thief wasn't wearing a helmet and the precious snowflake might have been hurt. Now, in a perfect example of irony balancing the scales, the thief, while riding a stolen motorbike, dies after colliding with a van.

He wasn't wearing a helmet.

Uboat Worx

It's okay, but what it really needs are a couple of cargo bays on either side of the bubble–say, large enough to comfortably hold a pair of standard-issue RAF nuclear warheads that one might have *ahem* acquired.

Solving binge drinking

The article is rubbish, but the comments include the best assessment of the binge drinking problem in Britain and how to solve it.

Short version: Go back to shutting down pubs that allow a drunk on the premises, enforce the laws against being drunk and disorderly, and imprison those who commit acts of violence or destruction of property.

H P Lovecraft: Part 2 of 5

A new Quill & the Keyboard post is up.

The wonderful world of mushrooms

Dark Roasted Blend looks at fungi in all its glory.

Who would have thought that decay could be so interesting?

Bacon skates

A frying pan worthy of a Batman villain.

Bacon skates: Invented in Chehalis, Washington in 1931 and only rediscovered now.

Is there time to have bacon skating declared an Olympic event by 2012?

Space-Girl Dance

Um...?

The rotting ivy

Victor Davis Hanson looks at modern academia and what a corrupt, cowardly, vain, impractical, parochial load of freeloaders modern "scholars" have become.

Having done my time in the trenches, I can confirm all of this–with the exception of the chainsaw beheading. That's a new one on me.

Happy Labour Day

It's Labour day in the United States–or as it's called at freelancing Chez Szondy, The Monday With No Post.

H P Lovecraft: Part 1 of 5

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

RESULT!

Property of Britain and ONLY Britain.

Both the British and French defence ministers have ruled out sharing aircraft carriers as "unrealistic". That's officialese for "barking mad".

The question remain, where did they get this uncharacteristic dose of common sense from and how can we get a great deal more?

Lord knows we need it.

Jihad? What Jihad?

Fareed Zakaria demonstrates why Newsweek is fading into justly deserved oblivion. With a perfectly straight face, he declares that because Al Qaeda hasn't been able to top 9/11, it was never much of a threat and that the United States "overreacted."

Tell that to the victims of Madrid, Beslan, Bali, London, Baghdad, Khandahar, Moscow, Bombay, Fort Hood, etcetera after bloody etcetera. Tell it to those who survived by sheer luck aboard the shoe bomber's plane, the panybomber's plane, the dozen airliners that escaped destruction over the Altantic on a single afternoon, the innocent people of Time's Square, London again, Glasgow, and on and on.

Tell that to Europeans and Britons who see their countries facing the greatest invasion since the 7th century by Muslims who include those in large numbers who struggle daily to turn Europe into part of the Umma, its people into dhimmis, and their coreligionists into subjects of the Sharia law that many risked their lives to flee. Tell it to the French who see cars set alight nightly, the Norwegians whose women wear headscarves for fear of rape, to the ghettos that have become no-go areas to "infidel" police.

Tell it to the Danish cartoonists who hide for fear of their lives, the publishers who censor themselves, and to the survivors of Theo Van Gogh, Daniel Pearl, and all the other headless victims of barbarism perpetrated by alleged followers of the Religion of Peace.

Tell it to the Coalition soldiers who still die every day in Afghanistan and battle in Iraq despite Mr Barack Hussein Obama declaring that the page has been turned and his people should forget about that unwanted distraction to his Socialist agenda. Tell it to the Iranian woman who was shown "mercy" when her stoning to death was commuted to a public flogging. Tell it to those of us who see the mad mullahs of Persia coming ever closer to building nuclear weapons that they have every intention of using. Tell it to Mr Geert Wilders, who has just had a fatwa put on his head demanding that he lose it.

No, Mr Zakaria, the United States didn't overreact. Saying that Al Qaeda hasn't been able to bring down the Sears towers despite years of American opposition proving that there was never any threat is like saying that a low crime rate despite the prisons being full proves that there was never a crime problem. You are arguing that the results of an effective solution means that there was never a problem in the first place.

Also, Al Qaeda was never the enemy; they were the foremost of a broad front of enemies dedicated to a Jihad that lusts for nothing less than the destruction of civilisation and its replacement by a universal gulag for all mankind. We fight a sick ideology, not a tactic or a group.

Overreaction? The United States, the West, Christians, moderate Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Athiests, Shintos, Animists, and all civilised men everywhere haven't reacted enough. As to Mr Zakaria's rhetorical question of when do we declare victory, we do so when relationships between Islam and other faiths are resolved in men's hearts and not through the gun, the knife and the bomb. Victory is when the last, scattered Jihadists know the fear and despair of the few remaining Nazis as they flee friendless and alone from the relentless hand of justice to the desolate corners of the Earth and their hateful ideology is rejected and reviled for all time.

We have victory when they are gone and forgotten.

The dictionary: weapon of freedom

Bruce Walker looks at the Left and how their attempts to manipulate language is a blow at the very foundations of freedom. I don't agree with some of his conclusions, but his general assessment on the threat of Newspeak is spot on.

Remember, the first books that real tyrants ban are dictionaries.

Quote of the day

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Click title link to listen.

Coming next week

Undersea Kingdom: Chapter 7 - The Submarine Trap

Random Quest

Oolon Colluphid, call your service

Stephen Hawking declares that God did not create the Universe. His reason?

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

Depends on how you define "nothing". Given that, by definition, God is also the author of the space/time continuum and everything else that isn't Himself, which means that the law of gravity is also a created thing requiring a primary cause and hence cannot create anything ex nihilo, I suspect that Mr Hawking is leaving out a step or two from his argument.

By the way, according to Mr Hawking, not only is God dead, but so is philosophy.

Child abuse by abusing history

A straight, white man did this, so it is of no importance whatsoever.

Zombie looks at the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead school of history teaching and how it does a disservice to America, children and even reality.

As a retired archaeologist and history professor, this is a particular bête noir of mine. I've always been sickened by the tendency of academics with a leftist agenda to push who are forever demanding "correctives" to traditional history that are invariably less "corrective" than consigning unpersons to the memory hole.

I see it in my daughter's schooling. Her school is actually quite a decent one and not a hotbed of Social Marxism, but last year she came away knowing who Sacajawea was, but not Lewis and Clark and she could rattle off all sorts of things about Amelia Earnhardt, but never heard of Charles Lindbergh.

It gets even worse at the university level. I once took over a course in first year World history and was assigned a doorstop of a textbook written by some maniac who thought that world history was a mammoth exercise in "me, too-ism" with every obscure culture and event on the planet crammed in at the expense of far more important events or even any sort of coherent narrative. Worse, it was an impossible book to teach from because it would have required a five-year class that would have had as much educational value as bolting through the British Museum at flat-out speed while chased by a pack of rabid dogs.

In the end, I dumped it and told my class, "The history of ancient China is fascinating and I'd be delighted to teach it–if this was a course on the history of China. It isn't. It's World history. And if we're going to study the events that shaped our modern society, that means we start in the Fertile Crescent, head for Greece via Egypt, on to to Rome, then we hang about in Europe until the 19th Century, and then bounce back and forth between the United States and the Old World with the odd imperial side trip until we clear the 20th century. That's where our world, everyone on this planet's world, was made and that's what we study. If aficionados of Mesoamerican or Icelandic history feel left out, tough."

Futuria Caravan Salon

When "roughing it" means kipping in an $840,000 caravan complete with rooftop jacuzzi and a storage bin for your supercar.

Dashed interesting

Dark Roasted Blend looks at some serious control panels.

Even the Belgians couldn't recognise him

The Telegraph looks at Mr Tony Blair's new book, A Journey or I didn't do it, don't blame me, my government was a success; it really, really was!

In his new book, A Journey, Mr Blair writes that the former US president was confused by the presence of Guy Verhofstadt at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa.

“He didn’t know or recognise Guy, whose advice he listened to with considerable astonishment,” Mr Blair writes. “He then turned to me and whispered, ‘Who is this guy?’ ‘He is the prime minister of Belgium,’ I said.

“Belgium? George said, clearly aghast at the possible full extent of his stupidity. ‘Belgium is not part of the G8’.”

Mr Blair explained to Mr Bush that Mr Verhofstadt was there as “president of Europe”. Belgium held the presidency of the EU council at the time.

Mr Bush responded: “You got the Belgians running Europe?” before shaking his head, “now aghast at our stupidity”, Mr Blair writes.

If there is any stupidity in the episode, the only one it does not reside in is President Bush.

Update: "Atrociously written."

Summing up

Roger Kimball gives the best analysis of Mr Barack Hussein Obama's forgettable speech about Iraq:

Is that really any better than Roderick Spode’s assurance (in The Code of the Woosters, I think) that “Nothing stands between us and our victory except defeat! Tomorrow is a new day! The future lies ahead!”

Every politician has his followers. Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps was as impressed by Spode’s little tautologies — “D’you know, I never thought of that” — as Frank Rich or Paul Krugman is by Obama.

I think he jumped

Click for full image.

A date with wine

Here's an interesting little invention. It's a wine stopper with a rotatable calendar to remind you when you opened the wine.

Interesting, but I don't quite catch the concept. What's the point of commemorating the opening date of an empty bottle?

They get the ship, we get the (propeller) shaft

Agence France-Presse reports that Britain is approaching France with the idea of sharing the new carriers with them. Given how hard it is to get hedge trimmers back, I can imagine the scene in Whitehall if Argentina makes another grab for the Falklands while it's Paris's turn with the hulls. Can't we do something more sensible like sharing the dole recipients or the NHS bureaucracy with the Frenchies?

Somewhere, the shade of Cochrane is doing a spit take.

Too late

From Slashdot:

Whisky Made From Diabetics' Urine

Clearly, they never tasted Genuine Scotch Whisky Distilled in Bomaby. Unfortunately, it's real and I have.

Handicapping

According to the disability charity Scope, the disabled are "socially excluded" because they aren't invited to enough dinner parties.

Stand by for the inevitable demand that the Party order the Thoughtpolice to send an officer around to Outer Party members' houses to make sure that their party lists are suitably inclusive–or else.

The shakedown

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi tells Europe to pay him €5 billion a year to stop "illegal immigration".

Translation: Pay the Danegeld or I invade.

I seem to recall Gaddafi behaving himself after a few bombs were dropped on his house and when a brother dictator was toppled from power and he thought he was next on the list.

Maybe it's time he was given another little lesson.

Wanted: Copy editor

Here's the text without the fancy font:

The Making of a
Terrorist Coddling
Warmongering
Wall Street Loving
Socialistic
Godless
Muslim
President
*Who isn’t actually any of those things

Ed Driscoll notes that this means that Newsweek does not believe that Mr Barack Hussein Obama is president.

When Newsweek was sold for a dollar the buyer got rooked.

Rod Serling interview: Part 1

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

The elephant in the room

Defense Tech looks at the DARPA idea of a "flying Humvee" and asks the obvious question: Who the *&^ is going to drive the thing?

Release the Kraken!

The BBC looks at the mackerel war and the state of the fisheries.

Between two stories, they manage to bring up everything from diminishing numbers of water voles to good old human greed (how dare anyone except a BBC executive order the plaice!), but, no prizes, totally ignores the real culprit for the dwindling fish stocks around the British Isles: The Common Fisheries policy that allows the European Empire to treat British waters as theirs to plunder at will.

Maybe Providence will allow a delightful bit of irony and we'll soon be reading about European fishing fleets being gobbled up by marauding giant squid.

Straight down

Due to a government that thinks that electric cars and fat cheques to African dictators are more important than the defence of the realm, the Royal Navy abandons any hope of fielding VSTOL fighters.

At this rate, we'll be seeing Arab slave raiders off the Devon coast by Christmas.

The old story

MyNorthwest.com headline:

Seattle police officer fatally shoots man with knife

He didn't know the knife was loaded.

Review: Survivors: Genesis of a Hero

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Fair weekend

Fluffy: the $35 unicorn.

It's been an exhausting week here at Chez Szondy. Summer is drawing to a close, which means two things: First, decent weather where a man can put on a cardy isn't far off and second, it's time for a final fling of family fun before the school gates clang shut on the daughter for another year. I've just spent an exhausting three days that weren't helped by my having just finished a contract for a client nor that I'll need to work like a dog to make up for the last three days, but that's fatherhood for you; loads of responsibilities, tons of joy, and no time to squeeze it all into the annoyingly finite days that God sends to us. Why we can't get the occasional 28 hour day is beyond me.

Anyway, on Friday, the Szondy family went to the Evergreen State Fair. I've always loved agricultural shows, village fêtes, and all the other rural gatherings that filled my childhood in Yorkshire. Give me a tombola, a quince jam competition, a bran tub, and a steam-powered carousel and I'm happy. Throw in a beer tent and a barbecue and I may never go home. Things are a bit different in the States. The fairs are far larger, more professionally organised, and much more expensive, but I can still find a tractor show set up in a field that costs a fiver, if they bother to collect it, and is a joyous day out of hay rides and grizzled old men showing off Ford tractors that were new when Kitchner was alive.

Anyway, back to the Evergreen State Fair. That thing is a money Hoover, so we played it smart and bought our admission, midway, and parking tickets in advance and planned out our day for the most fun for the least expenditure. Then we hit our first and only fairground game and within five minutes the daughter was holding a stuffed unicorn that cost $35. I plan to keep it in a vault.

Things went uphill from there. The wife thought I was insane on insisting that we go there from basically opening to closing, but she soon saw the method in my madness as we let the daughter run her all-you-ride wristband into the ground in the Midway, then alternated that with taking in the free shows, gawping at the handicraft and homemaking competitions, and (my favourite) visiting the animal barns. Naturally, this was punctuated with downing all sorts of meaty, sugary, high-fat, high-cholesterol, low-vitamin, and generally bad for you food that would make a Vegan go into systemic shock.

Warning: Avoid the deep-fried Twinkies; they are disgusting beyond the measure of man.

You'd think this sort of thing would take it's toll and you're right. That's why they invented the Shire horse competition so Mama could take an antacid pill and we could put our feet up for a couple of hours.

The daughter had a particularly good time. Not only did we get to see the pig races, her particular favourite, but she was picked as the cheerleader for her chosen pig, who won and the daughter ended up with a blue ribbon and a photo with the speedy rasher of bacon. She then fell into more luck when a roving magician picked her as an assistant and she got to be as much the centre of attention as an eight-year old could want.

The end of our day was as perfect as we could have hoped. Nearly, anyway. A good portion of it was spent with my having to go on the rides, which I don't care for. I hate being pummeled and whirled about unless there's a point to it and flying through the air suspended by a very thin looking chain isn't so much fun for me as terrifying. Still, the wife timed our evening so that the last ride we went on was the Ferris wheel and that we'd be at the zenith of the giant wheel just at the moment when the fireworks show started. The crowning touch was when some teenagers barged the queue in front of us and I whispered to my wife, "Go ahead. We're destroying the world economy; let's see who laughs last."

They were then ejected for having counterfeit wristbands.

The dogs hate us, by the way. We came home that night reeking of farm animals, grease, sugar, sweat, and sawdust and they were convinced that we'd gone to Heaven and left them behind.

The winning Shire horse team at the parade.

They really were a magnificent rig.

Next day, the town of Monroe had it's State Fair parade, which we attended with our neighbours. it was a perfect example of a small-town fair with everybody in the district taking part from the radio station to the high school to the local cafe. Hard candy was flung to cries of "Look out! Incoming!" Okay, that was me. Equestrian teams rode by followed by a man with a wheelbarrow, and local candidates schmoozed for votes. It was the sort of eclectic, untidy, uneven affair that was tremendous fun simply because everyone was having fun doing it as well as watching it.

It was a hot day and we ended up setting our chairs on the sunny side of the street, which proved a mistake, but we were close enough to the radio station's stand that the daughter and the neighbour kids could bop to their beat.. or something... and that local churches passed out water to us. The latter was fortunate, as the whole thing went on for two hours and without the water and the sweets that I nicked from the daughter's hoard I don't think I'd have made it.

Today, was more of a recuperation day, but the wife's feet and legs were in such bad shape from all the walking that we spent most of it at the local pool where taking the weight off with a bit of buoyancy followed by a soak in the spa did us all a world of good. The water slide was open, which delighted the daughter–especially when she insisted that I have several goes on it. Sometimes I think I agree because the cup of tea that I have in the lobby to restore my nerves while wife and daughter dry their hair is so much more welcome after that.

I'd like to say that I went home and slept soundly after that, but I've three columns to write and a load of jobs to chase after, what with money being insanely tight in this economy (rattles the tip jar), so here it is nearly midnight and I'm pounding away at the keyboard.

Next up: the final road trip of the summer. I have no idea where we're going or if the car will survive, but getting there is half the fun. Getting back is another matter.

Review: Survivors

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Keep at it

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

The Cold Equations

Click the title link to play.

Undersea Kingdom: Chapter 6 - The Juggernaut Strikes

Destination Moon

Fair day

It's the Evergreen State Fair today, so I'm off to look at a bunch of livestock, eat food that is really bad for my ulcer, and take the wife and daughter on a lot of rides that will guarantee that the food does not stay in my system.

In other words, having fun.

Obamadollars

The One on the one dollar note–and the designers are serious!

If these ever get printed, find a wheelbarrow because you'll need to fill one to buy a loaf of bread.

PC Alert

From the BBC:

Researchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows.

Or as we call them on planet Earth, man-made.

The Strange Case of Eric Frank Russell

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Cap in hand

The Royal Navy may have to borrow fighter planes from the Americans to arm the new carriers.

Dear God, why can't we get a government that can find its backside with both hands?

Paleo-future interview

Virginia Postrel interviews the man behind Paleo-Future. If you don't know the site, do check it out. It's worth the effort.

All fired up about Saint Anthony

It's good to see the BBC holding true to its hard-won reputation for scrupulous journalism with this article about an outbreak of ergot poisoning in France in 1951 that claims that it was really an evil experiment the the evil American evil CIA evilly subjecting a village to evil LSD for evil reasons of great evilness.

The fact that the accusation is based on the sort of evidence that wouldn't stand up five minutes in a drunken pub argument is totally irrelevant. Someone should point out that veiled references, an anonymous and ambiguous quote, and blandly stating out that a factory is on the same continent as France is hardly evidence.

Fire Tornado

When hibachis go horribly wrong.

An interview with Jack Williamson (1991)

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Heat ray for the big house

Castaic jail in California joins the 21st century this week as it installs a new heat ray to put down riots and other outbreaks of violence.

It's okay, but I can't help feeling that it won't be quite up to standard until it has an pulsing blue neon tube in its mechanism and an ominous hum that rises in pitch as it locks onto its target. A deep electronic "donk donk donk donk donk" sound just before it fires with a loud "pew pew pew" would be perfect.

No doubt he answers to Minilove

From Roger Kimball:

An American friend who lives in London sent me copy of an email he received about bicycling in the city. The communication was innocuous enough, just an announcement that they had updated their website, along with some information about the upcoming “Mayor of London’s Sky Ride.” What attracted my friend’s attention, and mine, was the chap’s title: “Head of Behaviour Change.”

I took this one with a grain of salt until I googled it and came up with this want ad:

TRANSPORT FOR LONDON: Head of Behaviour Change Programmes
Posted by superuser on Wed, 17/03/2010 - 16:55

£75,000 - £85,000 + excellent benefits:

TRANSPORT FOR LONDON

Well, at least they raised the chocoration to 20 grams.

So die all enemies of the Crown

Time Advanced

Past and future

Today is the 1,600th anniversary of the sack of Rome by the Visigoths.

Historic event or preview of what we have in store if we don't admit that civilisation is a good thing and start defending it?

The ghastly shrug

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Been there

A 62-mile ling traffic tailback that lasted nine days. Or, as it's called in Britain, Monday on the M25.

Wishful thinking

Should the Royal Navy be cut yet again? Go ahead, but you'd better pray that none of our enemies notice.

Maybe they'll just go away

How to handle the problem of drug addiction? According to the UK Drug Policy Commission stop calling addicts "addicts".

If that doesn't work, screw your eyes shut, stick your fingers in your ears, and go "La la la la la".

Arctic Drifter

An arctic laboratory inside a set of inflatable bags designed to blow like a bit of thistledown across the polar wilderness–until it goes sailing off a cliff or a shoggoth tries to mate with it, of course.,

Budget quiz

The Seattle city budget is in crisis. Do you,

a) Postpone an unpopular plan to alter main streets that gives up two lanes in favour of giant bike lanes that no one uses and results in permanent tailbacks.
b) Close the public libraries for a week and cheese everybody off.

If you chose b, congratulations! You are now mayor of Seattle.