Le Grand Frère Vous Observe

Planning a night on the town in Paris? Then plan to be breathalysed–even if you're not driving.

Good to see that the French police have so much spare time now that the "youths" torching cars problem is under control.

Microtransat Challenge

This October sees the start of the Microtransit Challenge, where eight robot sailboats will set sail from Viana do Castelo, Portugal with an "imaginary" finish line that stretches" between St. Lucia and Martinique in the Carribean Ocean" (sic).

It's billed as "a three-month journey that will push the designers of these vessels to the limits of what robotics and artificial intelligence can presently accomplish", though it's clear that at least the writer of the report isn't a sailor, because this doesn't seem much of a challenge. Any sailing craft with the wheel lashed and the sails properly set will keep a constant heading and with a wind vane, autopilot and GPS it's practically a doddle outside of the odd hurricane. Besides, a line twenty miles across is a pretty big target even for a Transatlantic passage, so I suspect that there's more to this challenge than meets the eye.

Now if they could get one to pilot its way into the Port of London against heavy traffic even without an ocean passage, then I'd be impressed.

Combination Nail Clipper/Butane Lighter

In God's name, WHY?!?

HP Webber Faster One

Presenting the HP Webber Faster One, reportedly the fastest street-legal supercar in the world.

Stats:

• Engine: 900 hp V-8
• Acceleration: 0-62 mph in 2.7 seconds, 0-124 mph 6.6 seconds
• Top Speed: At least 248 mph
• Mileage: Who the Hell cares!

Cell Phone Centenary

The cell phone is one hundred years old.

From the size of the antenna, you can see why it took a while to catch on.

Canton Chunder

Another sign of Communist China's rush to modernisation: Nightclub vomatoriums.

Caligula was unavailable for comment

Soylent Green is Squirrels!

Save the Planet^tm; eat a squirrel.

Now they're just messing with us.

Happy Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day here at Chez Szondy, so I'm off for a bit of quality time.

Back tomorrow.

They Came From Beyond Space

And stayed beyond their welcome.

Outlaw Veggies

Gordon Ramsey wants it to be illegal to serve out of season produce in restaurants. That's illegal as in "against the law".

First Jamie Oliver and now Ramsey. What is it about celebrity chefs that brings out the totalitarian in them? I once ran a kitchen myself, so I understand how wielding the big knife can instill delusions of grandeur, but usually the pocket dictatorship doesn't extend beyond terrorising the staff and browbeating the customers in the dining room.

Happy days, happy days.

Carts and Horses

Police in Strathclyde are recruiting Muslims so that they have a chance to show that moderate Muslims have a stake in this war and so that their knowledge and contacts inside the Islamic community can be used to hunt down and destroy Jihadist cells quickly and ruthlessly.

Just kidding. It's to,

(T)ackle Islamophobia and improve understanding of Islam.

Good to see that Scotland has got its head jammed firmly up its fundament.

Home Ethanol

Install the E-Fuel MicroFueler in your home garage and convert sugars and leftover alcohol into ethanol for your car.

But what is this "leftover alcohol" of which they speak?

Mystery of the Ages

From the BBC:

Every day British people throw away more than a million pots of unopened yoghurt. Why?

Having tasted "cheesecake" yoghurt by mistake, I offer this possibility:

Maybe because it's nasty?

Nesting Cuckoos

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Harry Lime

I think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair.

G K Chesterton

Ah, Switzerland! Where plants have "dignity", there are dog licences–for the owners, where the rights and proper care of every pet from goldfish to rhinoceros is enshrined in laws written by politicians who are never anything save altruistic, and soon to be an alpine wasteland because the regulations for raising, keeping or in any way interacting with any flora or fauna makes it simpler to just exterminate the whole bloody lot of them and be done with it.

Breaking News: Head of Al Qaeda in Iraq Captured

According to the BBC, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq has been captured.

This still needs to be confirmed, but in the meantime:

RESULT!

VW 1L

Presenting the Volkswagen 1L motor car designed to run at up to 235 MPG and on the market by 2010.

Not so much a car as a diesel-powered tandem bike.

Art-Eggcident

Because nothing says "art" like a cheap to conceive, but expensive to execute and impossible to live with visual pun.

USS Independence

Proof that not only does the United States take the future of its Navy seriously, but that it understands the meaning of the word "cool".

RinSpeed sQuba

Rinspeed of Switzerland have come up with a zero-emissions that is also amphibious AND can go underwater.

This is truly ambitious, but I hope they're aware that the plucky Brits are giving them some stiff competition.

Plus Four Wristlet Route Indicator

1927's answer to getting around.

Low tech solution, high grade ludicrous.

Robohorse

My daughter uses one of these.

It costs 25 cents down the Safeway.

Aqua Paws Platinum Underwater Treadmill

An underwater treadmill for dogs; are some people complete and total nutters?

Carl the Cattle Dog would never get out from under the bed again.

Le Bouche Artificielle

French scientists create an robot mouth.

When they start working on the other end, I'm leaving.

Organ Recital

BBC headline:

Ireland appoint Kidney as coach

Apparently the spleen wasn't up to scratch.

Cool Hand Luke, Call Your Service

Deciding that the old bloodhounds were a bit tame, Louisiana State Penitentiary has moved on to using bears to patrol the grounds and...

BEARS!?!?!

Orwellian Logic

According to the head of Scotland Yard's Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido), CCTV is utterly useless in detecting or preventing crime or for convicting criminals.

The solution (All together now!): More cameras and a national database!

Somewhere the shade of Stalin smiles as if upon a little child.

Moral Posturing, Real Consequences

New Zealand provides us with an object lesson on the real cost of playing King Canute in the service of Blessed Gaia Saving the Planet^TM.

New Zealand produces about 0.2 per cent of the world’s man-made production of CO2. Even if NZ totally eliminated CO2 emissions, the difference would be to reduce the annual rate of increase in the atmosphere by 0.2 per cent of 1.5ppm, equalling 0.003ppm which equals 3 parts per billion. This of course is a far lower amount than can even be detected.

Are we seriously going to shatter our economy, restrict ourselves to a fragile electricity system, cost every family in the land $1000 to $1500 per year in electricity expenses alone, seriously damage our agriculture industry, etc. by trying to reduce New Zealand’s minuscule CO2 contribution?

But it’s worse than that. The Government’s stated goal is to reduce our CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. So if we were to succeed in this, and thereby reduce New Zealand’s 3 parts per billion contribution to 20 per cent of this figure, the reduction in global CO2 arising from our action would amount to 0.6 parts per billion per year.

Short version: Even if we accept all the premises of the worshipers of Blessed Gaia global warming activists, it's a lot of suffering for absolutely nothing.

Tip o' the hat to Tim Blair.

Honesty in Academia

Over at the New Criterion, Alan Charles Kors shares his dream of what he'd like to see slapped on page one of every university catalogue if academia were required to conform to the Trades Descriptions Act:

This University believes that your sons and daughters are the racist, sexist, homophobic, Eurocentric progeny or victims of an oppressive society from which most of them receive unjust privilege. In return for tuition and massive taxpayer subsidy, we shall assign rights on a compensatory basis and undertake by coercion their moral and political enlightenment.

Having done my share of years teaching university, I predict that this will happen on the day the bacon flies onto my breakfast plate unaided.

Last One Out, Turn Off The Lights

A frightening statistic: At the current birthrate, the population of Japan will fall by two thirds within a century. That's a demographic implosion that no society has ever survived.

It's a good job that the Japanese are responding to this crisis by relying more and more on robots. It won't solve a thing, but at least someone–or something will inherit the place.