Savings

At last, some real savings! And let’s hope that this attempt to reacquaint our MPs with the real world actually wakens some of them up!

Those that are foolish enough to resist the cuts will be able to take full advantage of the new, and dare I say improved, scheme to help them “adjust to the costs of non-Parliamentary life”. A scheme that I call:

Get a job you useless gits!!!

Cows

Chortle.

Space Gizmo

Space Gizmo is a web site that I found my way to recently. According to its author it…

…is primarily a photo and video blog exploring the past, present, and future of manned and unmanned space exploration.

And there are indeed some very nice pictures and informative videos posted there. Well worth a visit for those interested in our exploration of the final frontier.

Darwinopterus

Here’s an impression (from National Geographic News) of what the recently discovered Darwinopterus may have looked like:

As a fossil, this one’s particularly interesting because it helps fill in one of the gaps that are so beloved of those that would deny the theory of evolution. How so? Well, according to reports (such as this from the BBC), Darwinopterus has features akin to it’s more primitive ancestors and also to those of later, more evolved, pterosaurs. It’s a sort of half-way-house, if you will, that shows evolution in action.

Or perhaps a transitional fossil? One of those missing links that creationists say do not exist.

Dried

I was feeling a bit bummed-out yesterday but this made me laugh…

I’m sure there isn’t really a mistranslation at work here but I still think it’s very funny.

Visit www.jesusandmo.net for more.

Jerusalem?

I think Dara O’Briain is one of the funniest comics doing the rounds of tv and theatres at the moment. In today’s Guardian Online he tells us The truth about the English. And as you read the article, you can very easily picture him on stage weaving these strands into an amusing routine.

The article, which is very good, has a couple of points worth highlighting.

The English, despite all that football’s coming home crap, did not invent the game. They did apply a set of rules to it but that’s not the same thing now, is it? As with so many other things, the Chinese got there first with a game called cuju!

He remarks on the English fondness for the hymn Jerusalem (something I’ve often wondered about too) and answers the questions the hymn poses thus:

And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? No.

And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen?Nope.

And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? Still a big nooo, I’m afraid.

And was Jerusalem builded here Among those dark Satanic mills? No. It wasn’t. Sorry about that. (And it’s “built”, by the way.)

So there!

Puppy

Scaryduck regularly offers a very funny yet at times painfully close-to-the-bone look at life. His latest offering, Neither Mirth Nor Woe: Menace At The Gates, rather neatly covers both of these bases.

Deep

There is nothing more likely to give some perspective to our place in the universe than a look at either the Hubble Deep Field or the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

As this video I say on unreasonable faith recently shows:

It always humbles me to see just how inconceivably big the universe is and how small we, the human race, are in that context – despite our pretensions.

Porcupine Tree!!! That’s Who!

It’s back… Prog rock assaults album charts, proclaimed a headline on the BBC web site the other week.

Well, actually, it never went away! Despite the neo-prog “revival” of the 80s, the symphonic outbreaks of the 90s and the retro- outfits of the 00s, my CD collection is testament to the fact that prog rock has been with us all along.

However, it is good to see the mighty Porcupine Tree getting a mention in current dispatches. They are a particularly fine example of what music should be about (yes, music, not that processed, image-oriented pap so beloved of the smarm-meisters that pollute the airwaves with X Factor guff).

Alan Turing

Noticed the other day that there’s a good profile of Alan Turing on the BBC’s web site. It always makes me a bit mad to think about how he was treated by the government despite the importance of his contribution to the war effort.