Third-hand smoke

Oh, for the love of God!

Droughtgate

Now it's just getting silly.

Quote of the day

A comment on the BBC website from someone who needs looking after:

Why shouldn’t Iran have nuclear capability? Israel, India, and many other countries which are no more stable than Iran have the capability. Another case of the USA trying to impose it’s homophobic prejudices on the rest of the world and, to my shame, with this country’s backing!

Um... Right.

Robomilker

Automatically milks cows and mucks out after them.

Highly unlikely to find Sarah Connor.

Update: More here. I particularly like this bit (emphasis added):

Today, they manage their operation using both a traditional 40-unit rotary dairy, which is milking 239 cows twice a day on their home farm, while 171 cows are milked through their robotic dairy on the recently-purchased country.

A traditional rotary dairy? I'll have you know that back in 1939 the rotary dairy was known as the Rotolactor; and as for traditional, it was the centrepiece for Borden's Dairy World of Tomorrow at the New York World's Fair.

Have people no respect for the dreams of Future Past?

Copy editing corner

Strangely, I didn't notice the irony until I'd read it through four times. Too many years with the blue pencil. Too many years.

The Great Office War

This is why I work from home.

Mind you,my family does on occasion use Nerf guns to recreate the climactic gun battle from Hot Fuzz.

Hot air alert

We are deep into Human Shield territory here. Do you know why the "anti-war" movement never went anywhere? What it really lacked to put it over the top? What could bring our boys home and spark a global Kumbaya moment? A blimp!

Take a look at the site's text as it floats joyously away from reality (glosses added):

Imagine...a "Peace Blimp" (let's not, please.)- defiantly displaying a message of peace across the skies of the nation, unable to be dismissed, ignored or brushed aside (Unless people do). Rallies for peace greet the blimp in every city it visits (Or police and aviation officials wanting to see your permits). Politicians, celebrities, movie stars, athletes, war veterans and peace activists make the call to bring our troops home by boarding the blimp for a ride (Or realise that they have better things to do with their time). Crowds flock to the events (Or not) and are educated about the war (Harangued, is the word you're looking for). With each stop along the tour the momentum for peace grows from a dull roar into an undeniable fervor (Or lapses into the chirping of crickets) until the seemingly endless wars (Which wars? Where?) come to an end (Of course wars can end in defeat, but let's not dwell on that).

Good grief, I know it's fun, but please stop inhaling the helium in the party balloons.

I thought this sort of idiocy died at Greenham Common back in the '80s. I think I'll keep an eye on Youtube for when Herr Hitler finds out about this.

Pensiongate

They're coming so fast you can hardly keep up with them. Climategate, then Glaciergate, and even before I had a chance to comment on Africagate we have Pensiongate.

The "settled science" of global warming is leaking out through more gates than Rome.

Dr Spacely-Trellis, call your service

It's an historic moment as the go-ahead Church of England bellows "screw Christian doctrine!" and thunders off into irrelevancy.

Expect joyous guitar strumming and tambourine banging at churches interfaith and non-faith, LGBTQQSAAATSQED-friendly, vegan, non-judgmental, dolphin-safe, gun and nuclear-free, carbon-free, sustainable community centres* across Britain.

*Those that still haven't been turned into coffee shops or mosques, of course.

Site down

My hosting service, in its infinite wisdom, is shifting servers and didn't bother to tell me they were doing it today, so I've no way to post this. That makes this both an explanation of why the site is down and an exercise in futility because you shan't be reading this until it comes back up again (and only Providence knows when that will be).

Dan Dare Part 2

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 2

Harrison Bergeron

Camel burgers

I once ate camel at a wedding out East and it wasn't bad. Of course, that particular dish required stuffing the camel with two sheep that were, in turn, stuffed with saffron rice and the whole thing placed in a charcoal pit to roast for two days, so the burger option might be more practical at a busy lunch time.

Steyn the decline

Mark Steyn looks at the decline of empire and what is in store for the world if the United States buys into the mind set.

This is sober reading first thing in the morning and should not only be on the desk of every congressman, but with the British defence budget facing an insane 20 percent cut in a time of war every MP as well.

Remember, it's a choice.

Update: I hope the West hasn't already made the choice. After all, not even the Romans at their worst turned restaurant bathrooms into BYO* brothels.

Climate consensus capers

Climate change, the MSM, and the blogosphere. Guess which ones look like the amateurs.

Killdozer

The former mayor of Burlington, Washington managed to run himself over with a bulldozer.

Of such talent one cannot comment, but only look upon with respectful awe.

Demonsheep feedback

Herr Hitler does not care for the Demonsheep advert.

Quiche crackdown

Apparently, you now cannot buy a quiche in Britain without presenting identification.

This is clearly vital because the public needs protecting against... against... I have no idea.

Bias blinders

To say that the BBC has a left-wing bias is like saying that killer whales are a very unfortunate thing to find in one's bath tub. Whether it's radio or television or the Web, if you tune into a BBC programme, you can be fairly sure that it will cover all sides of the issue: Left of centre, left, and far left with anything to the right of Clare Short reserved for the more exotic anthropology documentaries.

That's fairly sure, but not absolutely certain. That's because we're talking about "bias" here, not lock-step ideological conformity. Even the BBC can't afford to employ enough commissars to vet every second of airtime for ideological purity–not and pay their executives and, for want of a better word, talent the sort of salary the BBC condemns in every other industry. For that reason, Jeremy Clarkson has not been taken out by BBC snipers, Gordon Brown's face does not stare out of the telescreens ala Big Brother (and I don't mean the reality show), and the occasional report on global warming sneaks past that hints that manmade global warming might not actually have been pronounced true on golden tablets presented from the hands of Blessed Gaia herself.

That, however, isn't good enough for some people. Back in the 1980s, when the Grauniad was baying for Margaret Thatcher's blood with great passion and minimal copy editing, there was a cartoonist called Steve Bell whose Trotskyite strip "If" denounced all of the British news media as being firmly in Maggie's pocket. Aside from reasons that involve a lack of medication, Mr Bell seemed to base this opinion on the dismaying lack of inclination by everyone down to the junior copy boys to demand that the entire Conservative cabinet be drawn and quartered as part of coronation ceremony of King Arthur Scargill the First. Anyone who didn't agree with the agenda was clearly a raving Fascist with a picture of Ian Smith in his wallet.

Now those days are back with Sunny Hundal in the pages of the Guardian railing that the BBC is a hot bed of global warming "denialism" on a par, if not below, 9-11 truthers and holocaust denialists. Why? Because even though the Beeb never met a global warming scare story they didn't like (Yesterday they claimed it was killing off wolverines) the Corporation is clearly an implacable foe of Blessed Gaia. It's obvious; editors who allow a story or two that isn't a spit-lathered warmenist screed are clearly stooges of the Earth destroying capitalist death machine.

Keep taking the tablets, Sunny.

Aircruise

Aircruise is concept for a airship designed to carry 100 passengers in utter luxury on slow trans-oceanic cruises.

The designs look charming, but I fancy that if it ever goes into production the backers will very quickly discover that airships are airship-shaped for a reason. It generally involves not crashing into skyscrapers, mooring masts, mountains, and other very hard, pointy objects that are not healthy for airships and other flying things.

Piston prince

The Prince of Wales is having the pistons from his Aston Martin DB6 Volante made into cuff links to raise money for charity, though what the attraction is in having a couple of dirty great pistons dangling off one's sleeves continues to elude me.

A question of motivation

Physiologist Peter Weyand of Southern Methodist University says that it is entirely possible for a man to run at 40 miles per hour.

Having been caught in Liverpool on a wet Saturday night and trying to catch the last train home, I can tell Dr Weyand that this is not only possible, but attainable in walking boots while carrying a rucksack.

Clark Kent, call your service

French scientists at the University of Lyon report finding a strange crystal harder than diamond in a Finnish meteorite.

Superman issues statement saying he's not going near Lyon without a lead suit.