Review: Business as Usual During Alterations

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

Andrea

Air need a bit of purifying?   Then you can either drop €149.00 on a special "space station" pod with a little fan to scientifically waft the bad air into the bio-environmental purification unit or you can just stick your aloe plant in a pot like everyone else.

Personally, I use old yogurt containers.  Or I would if I didn't despise yogurt.

Waldos

Cyberticzoo looks at waldos; both fictional and actual.

They're actually kind of cool.  I got to muck about with a pair back at university and for some reason lab supervisors don't look kindly when you use them to make martinis.

World's oldest soup

From the BBC:

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report.

Interesting, but no prizes.  The world's oldest soup was discovered by myself in a British Rail buffet at Crewe in 1983.

Lentil, I think.

When the going gets tough....

Too tough, Barry?

Remember when I said that Mr Barack Hussein Obama's tax cut compromise press conference was the low point of his presidency?

I was wrong.  Really, really wrong.

Planetary engineering

When bigger is better.  If only physics actually supported this sort of thing.  A pity about all that drifting into the sun, but still...

War with the Newts

Click title link to listen.

Captain America: Chapter 8

The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

Astounding Science Fiction Jaunary 1956

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up

The Ascent of Man Part 1: Lower than the Angels.

I'm going to be a bit busy today, so I'm letting Dr. Jacob Bronowski take up the slack with the first installment of our new Friday item.

RoboTentacle

And now for something completely different:  A prosthetic arm concept that works like a tentacle.

The question remains:   Is this meant to enhance mobility or just to freak people out?

Dragon is go

The Falcon 9 booster successfully places the Dragon space capsule into orbit, which is then recovered after reentry.

I love private enterprise.  At this rate, it won't matter much what government space policy is if the private sector has its own manned flight capabilities.  Perhaps by the time the Chinese fulfill their ambition of getting to the Moon a half century after everyone else, there'll be a Starbucks waiting for them.

But can they prevent earthquakes?

"This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how frogs' bladders may be employed to remove foreign objects."

Sign of the times

I want flying cars, I get “the electric bus of the future.” The future ain’t what it used to be.

Glenn Reynolds

Poul Anderson interview

A new Quill & The Keyboard post is up.

The mask slips

Hostage takers?  Bomb throwers?  Endorsing a bill that you think is wrong?  Scolding your base for daring to criticise you?  This is the lowest point I've seen yet for Mr Barack Hussein Obama.

Own goal, Barry?

The once messiah who was going to stop the oceans rising and heal the planet (remember that he said that when he'd merely won the nomination!) is now forced to act like an ordinary mortal and deal in messy things like negotiations and compromises.  This "historic" figure must now face electoral catastrophe, criticism from both sides of the aisle, and discovering that running down his country has made foreign leaders regard only Mr Obama as unexceptional, not the United States.  No wonder he looks so drawn and acts so bad tempered and thin skinned at a press conference intended to improve his image.  As one pundit put it, it's like a press conference with Napoleon Bonaparte the day after Waterloo.

If Mr Soetoro doesn't learn some real political and diplomatic skills by New Year's, this is the start of a political death spiral that will make Gordon Brown's look like a graceful retirement.  Unless he changes (and fast), I lay even money that within a year we will see the President of the United States lose it on live television and shake his fist at the American people while declaring they're not worthy of him, or he'll make a bitter and most likely racist remark (I don't believe that he slept  through 20 years of Reverend Wright's sermons) in what he thinks is private, but isn't, that will drop his reputation to levels generally associated with coal mining.

Preserve the oath

From the BBC:

At question time on 7 December 2010, Lady Boothroyd referred to Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson's claim that he was "open to suggestions" from Sinn Fein on ways to vary the oath of allegiance taken by MPs. 

Gerry Adams can't take his seat because he refuses to swear loyalty to the Queen, so the oath has to be changed to square with his black little heart?   Good Lord!

It's times like this that I think that the world has gone mad.  Change to oath to accommodate a man who ordered the deaths and mutilations of thousands of people?  A terrorist commander?  A self-confessed traitor who worked hand in glove with the Soviets and Colonel Qadaffi?  Who made the Republican cause a by-word for murder and gangsterism?  A man who walks free solely because of the most sordid deal ever struck in British history?  The only accommodation Adams and his ilk deserves is asking him whether or not he wants a cigarette before they drop him through the trap at the end of a rope.

Rat curry

Students at Rajshahi University in western Bangladesh stage angry protests after finding rat meat in the cafeteria curry.

Luxury!  When I were a lad we used to dream of rat curry.   We had to make do with a plate of cockroaches boiled in wet sick. 

Tell that to young people today and they'd never believe you.

How much?

Wall St. 24/7 looks at the 25 most valuable blogs on the Web with Gawker clocking in at $240 million.

Ephemeral Isle was valued at 10/6d.   They didn't even bother to decimalise it.