Some of you may have seen Vanessa Engle’s witty BBC4 documentary series, Lefties, screened in February last year. The 3-part series revisits the “alternative politics” of the 70s and 80s, when the far left was an all-too-serious force in British political life. Among the gems to savour are the endless factional disputes over exactly how capitalism should be toppled, the farcical mismanagement of the News on Sunday, an earnest exposition on “penile imperialism”, and interviews with former self-styled radicals, now sitting by private swimming pools, fretting about fridge ownership or planning to work on llama farms.

Here’s a brief taste.

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The three episodes – Property is Theft, Angry Wimmin and A Lot of Balls – can be viewed online here. Given a generation of young lefties with little, if any, experience of what their dreams entail when applied in the real world, it’s worth casting an eye over what happened when Socialism wasn’t just something people laughed at.

Help me buy my own llama farm.

Kazuko Shinoka’s tofu robots. 4” high. Extra firm. Not really made of tofu. // Also available: Astronaut Jesus. // Via Ace, Dr Grordbort’s retro-future ray guns. Atomise those moon soldiers. // Arcade games of the Soviet Union. // Okayama’s slightly alarming pedal-powered rollercoaster. // Aging Haight-Ashbury hippies hassled and disgusted by younger, “uncivilised” drop-outs. Bummer. // New age hippies bang drums, attempt “astral travelling.” One hippie leaves body. Permanently. (H/T, Tim Blair.) // The alien abduction lamp. (H/T, Technabob.) // Cow abduction. Watch the skies, click the cow. // Via Coudal, the best looking supermarkets in the world. // New punctuation mark to denote irony. Winking smileys not suitable for literature. (H/T, 1+1=3) // Remember the interrobang? Thought not. // 3D web browsing. // Inscrutable planetary clock. “The beautiful object where magnificent outer space is made to think.” // Flies on a window. // Beer-pouring robot. Noisy, slow and pointless, but lovely nonetheless. // Disembodied robot head grimaces at scary words. Later models could be “companions for the elderly.” // The ultimate deer hunting truck. Can drive over most large mammals. // The Dreidel Song. 

Busy today. Back tomorrow with fresh ephemera. Meanwhile, feel free to rummage through the archives for overlooked nuggets and curios. For heftier posts, see the greatest hits. If you’re really stuck for something to do, clicking the button below can, I’m told, be hugely entertaining.

Zombietime has posted video and transcripts of Christopher Hitchens’ recent debate with the leftwing jihad apologist and author of American Fascists, Chris Hedges. I urge you to watch the brief “Hitchens Highlights” clip below. A second compilation can be found here and a much longer exchange, in 7 parts, can be seen here with photos, transcripts and commentary. Needless to say, Hitchens does a fine job of highlighting the sneery, morally contorted posturing that now defines much of the left.

“The decline – not to say the moral eclipse – of the secular left has just been illustrated on this very platform by someone who makes excuses for suicide murder and tries to trace them to a second-rate sociology… Every member of the 82nd Airborne Division could be a snake-handling congregationalist, for all I know. But these men and women, though you sneer and jeer at them, and snigger when you hear applause and excuses for suicide bombers – and you have to live with the shame of having done that – these people are guarding you while you sleep, whether you know it or not. And they’re also creating space for secularism to emerge, and you better hope that they are successful.”

Someone buy that man a drink. More sneery posturing here. Related: this.

Developed by Japan’s Science and Technology Agency and unveiled last week at Osaka University, CB2 is a 1.3 metre robot toddler. This sexless automaton is fully jointed, equipped with hundreds of optical, auditory and tactile sensors, and, just like human babies, is moved with compressed air. It also has grey silicon skin, which only adds to its appeal. As the videos below demonstrate, CB2 approximates a 1- or 2-year-old toddler and can stand with adult assistance. CB2 can also blink, roll over, wave its legs in the air and make a slightly disturbing “eh” noise.

More of CB2 in action here. (H/T, Lepton.)