This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://davidszondy.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://davidszondy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

1970s house

I came across this clip from BBC Four's 1970s House while looking up other things. As usual with this format, this 21st century family living in (insert period) home is as predictable as ever. The period is distilled into a concentrated morass of fashion and technology that no one actually suffered under (a bit like running into the statistical "average man"). The producers forgot that most people even back then thought the decor and clothing foisted on them were pretty horrible and that however much some radio stations played it, rock and disco weren't as popular as we've been led to imagine in retrospect.

Our modern family aren't exactly Sapphire and Steel when it comes to time travel (did they get a look in?). They seemed less inclined to understand their parents' or grandparents' era than to whine about the primitive technology, lower living standards, and lack of properly enforced Newspeak directives. At least in the real 1970s the kids didn't grumble at their parents like they were flatmates. They had there own forms of demonic torments to unleash.

I found the conniption fit over the lack of central heating particularly amusing. Here in bleeding-edge technology Chez Szondy we turned off the central heating years ago and never looked back. The fireplace and oil-electric heaters do the job just fine and at half the cost. As for the real 1970s, we didn't have central heating, but we did have small coal-burning fireplaces in all the rooms, but they dated back to when they were installed in the age of Queen Victoria in a farmhouse that dated back to the Stuarts. History, BBC Four; they had that in the 1970s, too.

And they missed the obvious point that the Ford Cortina was a piece of rubbish even by the standards of the day.

As for the most egregious failing, I will not have the Teasmade mocked! Behold in all its true glory:

Edible gold paint

Presenting edible spray-on gold paint.

Winner of the 2010 Utterly Disgusting Award.

Doner kebab robot

The perfect mate to the bar-tending robot. Makes donor kebabs; hunts for Sarah Connor–after the pub-closing rush, of course.

Kaffee-Hag

This would never happen at Chez Szondy because:

• I never drink coffee at home unless pecan pie is involved.
• I make the morning tea owing to the lack of a Teasmade.
• If the wife ever substituted caffeine-free for the real thing, she'd be wondering why I was lying face down on the carpet at nine in the morning.
  

Whither Britain?

I've often wondered about what would be the worst case scenario for Britain if the Jihadist threat continues to be downplayed as a mere criminal matter divorced from any other concern. Gates of Vienna looks at the question and comes up with what I'd call the third-worst outcome.

God preserve us from it, because the unwanted repercussions of the cure would be with us centuries after the disease was gone. As I keep saying, we only have the alternative between bad choices now and impossible choices later.

Browsers as transport

Where, I ask, is the Austin 7 of browsers?

For thee, but not for me

Who should be made to ride second class?

Members of Parliament who abdicated their power to an unelected Brussels elite and then proceeded to plunder their expense accounts like their personal bank?

Don't be ridiculous!

Military officers who actually do a job of work in defence of the realm in the face of insane budget cuts and command one of the few institutions that still embody traditional British values despite decades of social engineering?

Of course!

The darkening continent

3,000 White farmers have been murdered in South Africa since 1994. Is it the next Zimbabwe?

Sub-Saharan Africa is sliding back into barbarism and once prospering nations are turning into impoverished hellholes where the only equality is universal misery–unless you're a member of the Mercedes-driving elite, of course. Not that the West gives a damn anymore, since the oppressors are now an acceptable hue. Pity about all those Whites, Indians, and Chinese who have to flee for their lives or the Blacks who have nowhere to go to except the kingdom of another tyrant, but as Stalin said about eggs and omelettes...

The Foundation Trilogy Part 5

Continues in two weeks.

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 9

20 Million Miles to Earth

Avatar 2

Don't give Cameron any ideas.

Apollo 13 revisited

What's all this Ron Howard stuff? I was there, young man.

I'm not surprised that the actual fate of Apollo 13 would have been different than what was projected back in 1970. Since the crew was rescued, the old orbit suddenly became less interesting. Mind you, since the crew would have ended up just as dead, it isn't much of an alteration.

Orbital mechanics are always a bugger.

Earth Hour 2010

Earth Hour:Light a searchlight for sanity.

Tomorrow at 20:30 Zulu Time is Earth Hour, the annual hour when worshipers of Blessed Gaia prissy busy-bodies concerned citizens of the world show their utter divorce from reality self-righteous posturing respect for the environment by turning their lights off for one hour.

Here at Chez Szondy, we will, of course, have so many lights on that the main power lines crossing the valley below will start to glow cherry red.

Trim Jeans Theatre

Accept no substitutes.

Fox cubs adopted by Basil Brush

Your "Awww" photo of the day.

Wham-O Giant Comic

One of the nice things about the Internet is that it allows me to recover all sorts of ephemera from my youth without (and with) shelling out insane amounts of time and money. Latest example, I came across a download for the 1967 premiere and only issue of Wham-O Giant Comics; a comic book so large that you could convert it into an emergency shelter in the event of atomic war.

I regard this as the best buy in comic book history because for only one American dollar you got as veritable library of comic books–at least two of which were drawn by the immortal and slightly immoral Wally Wood.

Will they make a bigger one for fat people?

Urban congestion? Crappy public transport? City governments determined to spend money on Green initiatives, sensitivity training, and outreach centres instead of maintaining roads? According to Obama Motors General Motors the answer is obviously to stuff everyone into a vehicle that is the bastard child of a rickshaw and a G-Wiz.

If only someone could come up with a small transportation device that could move individuals or small groups of people from place to place with speed, efficiency, and flexibility in a way that is not only fun, but enhances basic human freedom.

Or even one of these:

Rober Culp 1930-2010

Sleep well, Trent.

Futurama 1964

Working on notes for a lecture on Future Past I'm giving tonight, so I'm posting this video of the 1964 GM Futurama exhibit.

Because that's what it's all about.

Or something.

UK Space Agency

The good news is that Britain has a new space agency. The bad news is that its logo looks like utter drek. No doubt HM government spent a bomb on this graphic disaster, though why is beyond me. Why spend all that money on a load of coloured shards when Britain has had a perfectly good space logo going spare for the past fifty years in Dan Dare's cap badge?

Simple,classic elegant and looks damn good with the uniform. What more could you want?

$&%ing right

The ((&&ing Washington State town of *&$%ing Twisp passes a @*%$ing ordinance against @*$&ing cussing.

$^%#!