Research and the library card

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Sci-fi bios

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

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.

Requiem

Click on title link to play.

Undersea Kingdom: Chapter 4 - Revenge of the Volkites

The Hound of the Baskervilles

I once knew a girl who lived in the house where the Hound of the Baskervilles from this film was buried. Apparently, it was the sweetest dog in Creation.

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.

David Vincent, call your service

The Invaders' car was a clever copy, but it had one flaw.

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.

Tasty, but deadly

A collection of foods that turn supper into Russian roulette.

When life intrudes

New Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

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.

Yet another dentist day

This time it's the daughter. It never ends.