April 30, 2010
Telephone Remake
I shudder to think what Agent Bedhead and SondraK will have to say.
Perhaps this is too good to be true
Vincent Gray at Climate Realists has noticed a little flaw in the mythical Computer Model of global warming.
The model is based on a flat Earth.
(Via Five Feet of Fury)
Slave Leia Splashdown
This original series inspired Star Wars Charity Car Wash may be the greatest car wash of all time (via Agent Bedhead).
Related: This interview with a Slave Leia fan suggests the character may have played a part in the sexual awakening of impressionable young men of a certain generation. Astonishing.
The Gladiator version of Robin Hood
Ridley Scott explains why he hasn't made a good film in ten years.
According to Scott, “The Nottingham script read a bit like CSI in green tights and I thought, 'Why are we doing this?’ If you’ve got a subject about Robin Hood, why on earth are you calling it Nottingham? So we rewrote it from page one. It’s not a remake, it’s a brand new story.
Whereas I think, "Why did you do that?" Since Universal bought Nottingham in a bidding war they presumably saw something of merit in the property. Now you discover you don't like its CSI in green tights take on the subject matter, perhaps you should have read it before agreeing to direct the project.
Meanwhile someone wrote a potentially interesting take on Robin Hood and, thanks to Ridley Scott and Universal, our chances of ever seeing it are nil. Instead, we get yet another warmed over version of Gladiator.
Strong Horse, Weak Horse: Power and Perception
Mark Steyn is almost always good. He was very good here. This video is 1:31:00 long and well worth your time. Amongst other things, he does a great job at retasking Baudrillard's analysis of the first Gulf War.
April 29, 2010
Nasty, stupid and backward
Gordon Brown has sent a grovelling email to Labour supporters apologising for hurting the party's campaign.
A TV microphone overheard Mr Brown privately attacking Mrs Duffy, 66, as a 'bigot' for daring to raise immigration with him - seconds after telling her she was a 'good woman'.
It came on the day that Labour's favourite think-tank admitted those concerned about mass immigration had been treated as 'nasty, stupid and backward.
Read the whole thing. They finally threw water on him and now he is melting.
The Eagles of Hornby Island
Doug Carrick's Hornby Island eagle cam is just the ticket to free the minds of the cubicle bound (hat tip to the Sister of the Flea).
April 28, 2010
The Whisperer in Darkness
H.P. Lovecraft's weird tale of Alien Horror comes to Vivid Life...
April 27, 2010
Werner Herzog Reads Curious George
Would you like to touch my monkey? Touch him! Touch my monkey!
Japanese sign Final Surrender
Anonymoose points to a previously unreleased news reel of the Japanese surrender aboard Battleship Missouri Sunday Sept. 2, 1945.
April 26, 2010
Yet another nightmare
The Club-K shipping container missile system.
Iran and Venezuela have already shown an interest in the Club-K Container Missile System which could allow them to carry out pre-emptive strikes from behind an enemy's missile defences.
China to overtake U.S. as world's biggest asshole by 2020
The Onion reports.
The findings, published in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, support recent speculation that America's unquestioned reign as the leading super-prick may soon be drawing to a close, leaving China as the foremost shithead among all developed nations.
RTWT. Via Chris Myrick.
While we are on the subject of farce: What kind of U.N. environmental ambassador builds a 20,000 square-foot home with a six-car garage, an elevator and a lagoon?
The normal kind, I assume.
April 25, 2010
Wilkins Coffee
The before of Kermit the Frog (hat tip to the Sister of the Flea).
That tragic reality
Victor Davis Hanson on war.
Related: Rob Johnson, Author and lecturer in the History of War, Oxford University - who wears a silly rag around his neck - offers ten of the greatest battlefield tactics of all time.
Without a thought
Stephen Hawking suggests contact with aliens is "a little too risky". This suggests Stephen Hawking is paying attention.
The V reboot has already aired in England, apparently.
April 24, 2010
Survivalism A-Z
A guide to crossing your fingers and hoping against hope.
Rule 1: Get out of the cities.
Rule 2: Get out of the cities.
Rule 3: Get out of the cities.
I think about this sort of thing from time to time and have decided to mutate with the flow and eat my neighbours instead. Plenty of good eating in the cities.
This is Chauncy Morlan...
"...and around 100 years ago his obesity was so shocking that people would pay money to see him as he toured the country as a circus 'fat man'."
April 23, 2010
April 22, 2010
All-Time Hottest Robots
Related Tags: comics, hottest robots, movies, robot, sci-fi sexy time, tv
The newest new Moon
"Thierry Legault is a French amateur astronomer… and if ever the word "amateur" were misleading, it’s here."
April 21, 2010
April 20, 2010
The Best Sign in the History of the World
Or a contender, anyway (hat tip to the Sister of the Flea).
Sign at the link.
British Airways sent a test flight into the ash cloud
It's a photo caption that reads like Quatermass.
Also: More from Eyjafjallajokull.
Close Combat Training
Kathy asks if this is the greatest commercial ever filmed. Possibly, if you are going for irony.
Over the top sincerity, by contrast...
If you scroll down at the AoSHQ post, Slack Power brings everything together.
Related somehow: Wet Goddess: Recollections Of A Dolphin Lover. Which, it turns out, exists.
April 19, 2010
April 18, 2010
The rise of militainment
P.W. Singer puts scare quotes around the word "game" to suggest we be cautious using tactical multiplayer first-person shooters for training or recruitment.
Because heaven knows the Army couldn't use technologically adept young men who enjoy shooting bad guys.
Which, unless you are a commie who hates America, is clearly a result.
Mercenary
If Her Majesty will not make provision for the armed forces Her Majesty's subjects will have to make do.
Cash from the fund was also used to pay for operational welfare equipment, personal kit and to pay-off the mortgages of two members of 23 SAS killed in southern Afghanistan in an earlier deployment.
Engine check
An engine check on a Finnish F-18 shows the effects of ingesting volcanic dust from recent activity in Iceland.
One aircraft’s engines have been inspected so far using a boroscope, with melted ash clearly visible on its inside surface.
Images at the link.
An excellent idea
Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?
...
I can just see it now: You're in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter, an announcement comes over the PA system, "Attention standby passengers, we now have a seat available on flight number.........."
Via Small Dead Animals.
April 17, 2010
Comic Book Cartography
Comic Book Cartography features a map of Krypton, a diagram of Batman's utility belt and a cutaway of the Avengers' Mansion (via io9).
Related: American states that never made it to the map.
April 16, 2010
Why we are losing
They've got the most often sensible J.K. Rowling.
Oh, I laughed at first
But then the possibility of a pig wool suit came to mind.
‘At first sight, people think they are sheep,’ Denise Cox, education co-ordinator, at Tropical Wings, said. ‘It is not until they turn around and you see their faces and snouts you realise they are in fact pigs.
April 15, 2010
Country Life
The Daily Mail rightly draws attention to Lieutenant Emma Spilsbury, now gracing the cover of Country Life in the Afghan sun.
But kudos too to photographer Rob Knight, aka Arkady001, for his "Girls Aloud - Sangin" inspiration and my favourite of Lt Spilsbury.
The question of freedom
Theodore Dalrymple on a depressing, and perhaps sinister aspect of public commentary that ignores the question of freedom.
...
For liberals, it seems, any trampling on freedom or individual conscience is now justified if it conduces to an end of which they approve. Thus liberalism turns into its opposite, illiberalism.
Porn for the blind
When you hear "Braille porn" you know without being told that the artist is a Canadian woman, right?
Lisa Murphy of Toronto takes the pictures herself, then uses materials like clay, metal, cardboard to make a relief that's put into a machine that spits out formed plastic pages.
April 14, 2010
Luke 6:48
Scientists participating in the global warming hoax chose a bad spot to pitch their tent.
It turns out the sky isn't falling after all.
April 13, 2010
Bread and circuses
First it is the Mob (blood pressure warning).
Then it is the Barbarians.
April 12, 2010
There's a brand new dance but I don't know its name
We are the goon squad and we're coming to town. Beep-beep.
Beep-beep (hat tip to Kathy).
Middle-earth is our world
Halls of Macademia does not like the look of it but I beg to disagree. The more cyclopean, Tolkienesque public art, the better.
The "Goddess of the North" will be made from 1.5 million tonnes of earth from the Shotton mine, near Cramlington. It will stand 34 metres - 10 metres higher than the Angel of the North - and will be 400 metres long.
The sculpture, also knows as Northumberlandia, will form the centrepiece of a 29 hectare public park on the Blagdon Estate.
Ruh-oh
Japan is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Public debt is expected to hit 200 percent of GDP in the next year as the government tries to spend its way out of the economic doldrums despite plummeting tax revenues and soaring welfare costs for its ageing population.
Not to worry, there is no problem as long as there are flows of money in the bond market, they say.
April 11, 2010
Glo-fi
Brendan McCarthy channels Steve Ditko as he creates "Fever", a new Spider-man/Doctor Strange series for Marvel, and invents Glo-fi along the way (via Warren Ellis).
Frank Brunner was drawing Doctor Strange by the time I was buying comic books from a spinner rack but these were true to Ditko's trippy, psychedelic parallel dimensions; I am delighted McCarthy is revisiting them.
You know how dumb the average guy is, right? Well, mathematically, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that.
The Church of the SubGenius has announced that the end of the world will take place on Monday, July 5, 2010 (hat tip to Ben).
All well and good. But I like the part where Scientologists don't get it.
Tentacular, tentacular!
Cthulhu dropped by Nate Anderson's office and left a manuscript.
In choose-your-own-adventure form (hat tip to CM).
"20,000 WORDS OF AWESOME. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY ME. I JUST WANT THE EXPOSURE SO I CAN MEET CHICKS. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO R'YLEH? ONE WORD: BORING."
The Life of J.R.R. Tolkien
Narrated by Judi Dench. In which Christopher Tolkien explains his father's philosophy including a passage on magic and "the machine" in Part 2.
April 10, 2010
Everything on the table
Doctor Zero thinks the unthinkable. But then, at the time of the Founding, what is now the unthinkable was then the blindingly obvious.
Such was the fate of Rome. RTWT, I am not certain he has reached the correct conclusion.
April 09, 2010
Malcolm McLaren: Madame Butterfly
Malcolm McLaren, R.I.P.
Also: "Diaghilev of Punk" Malcolm McLaren on the South Bank Show in 1984, he was 37 at the time.
April 08, 2010
Kim Jong-Il mode
The suits consist of an overall-style zipped-up tunic and matching trousers, usually in khaki or blueish-grey.
"The reason is that the august image of the Great General, who is always wearing the modest suit while working, leaves a deep impression on people's mind in the world," it said. "To sum it up, that is because his image as a great man is so outstanding."
The article quoted an unidentified French fashion expert as saying world fashion follows Kim Jong-Il's style.
"Kim Jong-Il mode which is now spreading expeditiously worldwide is something unprecedented in the world's history," the stylist was quoted as saying.
Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin
Virtually every extra job created under Labour has gone to a foreign worker.
The Tories seized on the revelation as evidence that the Government has totally failed to deliver its pledge of 'British jobs for British workers'.
...
Shadow immigration minister Damian Green revealed unpublished figures showing there are almost 730,000 fewer British-born workers in the private sector than in 1997.
April 07, 2010
Blood suckers
The University of Hertfordshire in England is set to offer an MA in Vampire Literature (via Agent Bedhead).
In case anyone is still unclear on the historic decadence of our elites, some presentations from "Open Graves, Open Minds" a conference/segue as prequel to the degree.
- The Brutal and Bloody: Representations of the ChupaCabra in Rudolfo Anaya's Curse of the ChupaCabra by Prof. Suryendu Chakraborty (Krishnagar Women's College).
- Fundamentalism, Hybridity and Remapping the Vampire body: Postmodern Vampirism and the Presidency of George W. Bush by Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland).
- Zombies and Ninjas and Class, Oh My!: Marxist Paradigms in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Julia S. Fullman (California State University, Fullerton, USA)
Not that I am against vampires, far from it, but I am a firm believer in applied vampire studies. Ruining good fun in the name of a stale dated poke at George Bush appears to be the best academia can manage.
April 06, 2010
My suspense of disbelief just gave out
Think back to the most farcical, absurd and exaggerated dystopian fiction of your Kafkas or your Orwells, write them up as the news and you are left with an accurate description of contemporary public policy in England.
Take Student Voice, for example, a government scheme based on the premise that children are entitled to a role in the management and delivery of their own education.
As a result, one teacher failed to be appointed after being labelled ‘Humpty Dumpty’ by a child.
Another was humiliated by being told to sing her favourite song; she refused and didn’t get the job. A third was asked by children on the interview panel how this candidate might impress the judges of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent.
These are the same people we have entrusted with the economy, the environment and the war.
It is a very good thing our enemy is hobbled by a culture and an ideology which render him functionally retarded because otherwise we would be in bigger trouble than we already are. Perhaps the best thing to do now is hope our civilization is overwhelmed by people who still know who they are, what they are about and what they want; the Chinese, for instance.
Yet more: Now teachers are ordered to smile at their pupils.
Staff have also been told to ensure they are not boring students by setting work that is too hard.
The directives appeared in a memo detailing student 'entitlements' and feedback from 'student voice discussions' at the comprehensive Buile Hill Visual Arts College in Salford.
Teachers said it made them feel 'undervalued and undermined'.
As opposed to feeling outraged and then doing something about it.
April 05, 2010
Good news and bad news
The bad news is Western civilization is broke. The good news is the reason we are broke (it is something we can fix, if we so choose).
It turns out our economies - and our economics - are fine. Incredibly robust, in fact, considering we have gone on for so long pissing away so much money on civil servants (via Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy).
Take Toronto's public transit workers, for example.
...
The list revealed 89 operators, and 14 station collectors, earned more than $100,000. A total of 724 TTC employees, including 134 non-management staff, earned more than $100,000. The top earner at the TTC was chief general manager Gary Webster, who raked in $280,037.
Of the 14 station collectors who made the list, down from 21 last year, Yasin Saleemi earned the highest salary, taking home $114,520 -- about $10,000 less than the top collector last year.
Station collectors, for Flea-readers who have yet to enjoy the thrill ride that is the Toronto subway system, are the trolls who exchange your cash for subway tokens. You could quite literally train a monkey to do the same job. And the monkey, at least, would smile at you as he took your money.
Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones Review
Hat tip to Bill. Same content warning as the last.
April 04, 2010
The 11th coming
Today, I join millions of others in celebrating the regeneration and the 11th coming.
- Chris Myrick
The new Doctor Who features, amongst other things, a new look TARDIS.
Moffat has revealed that the out-going Doctor, David Tennant, left a sealed envelope for his successor, in the manner of a departing prime minister. After the first episode in this series, it is clear the advice was powerful stuff.
It was stupendous.
Delia Derbyshire :Ziw-zih Ziw-zih OO-OO-OO
April 03, 2010
Sprockets: Germany's most disturbing home videos
Liebe meine Abschminke!
The changing demographic of London
Arranging deck chairs on the HMS Götterdämmerung.
Joanna Lumley on MOD's Gurkha smear campaign
The video tags blame New Labour. Joanna Lumley blames the Ministry of Defence.
April 02, 2010
Michelle Malkin: It's Time For A Spartacus Revolution!
Via Five Feet of Fury.
The Muppets: Stand By Me
Hat tip to various spots in the dextrosphere.
April 01, 2010
Ban the burka
Pending a vote in Parliament later this month, Belgium is set to be the first European "nation" to ban the burka.*
...
The text of the new law does not specifically mention burkas but makes it illegal for anyone to wear clothing ‘that covers all or most of the face’ in any public place.
* "Nation", indeed. To cite Charles de Gaulle, Belgium is a country invented by the British to annoy the French. I am delighted to observe it is still working.
Meanwhile: Lest we forget what brought about this cultural contretemps (via Gates of Vienna).
Welcome to the entire Western world.
Eyeful Tower
Hideous, projectile vomit as architecture.*
* I am in a mood today, apparently.
You should not drink and bake
160 greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes (hat tip to Agent Bedhead).