Gosha the raccoon likes washing things. // The secret Google searches of Commander Riker. // Everyone hold hands. // Big horn. // Beer storage solutions. // Ice carousel. // Drinking turtle tears. // Drinking toilet water. // A guide to ignoring foodstuff expiration dates. This blog is not responsible for any fever, delirium or catastrophic bowel trauma. // Where gummi bears roam. // Why Star Trek: Generations is a really, really bad film. // Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four. // Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, a 1973 radio broadcast. // Coping with wind. // More sci-fi corridors. // 365 paper models. // Roger Moore in Spectre. // Striking tube drivers, please take note. // A 500-metre ladder of fire. // And finally, via Simen, it turns out there’s a thing that people do called butt lips.

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are of course accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last eight years, the reheated series and greatest hits are good places to start. And do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Theodore Dalrymple on intellectual evasions: 

Sometimes the employment of a single word in common use gives away an entire worldview. There was just such a usage in the headline of a story in the Guardian late last month: “How the ‘Pompey Lads’ fell into the hands of Isis.” […] The word that implied a whole worldview was “fell.” According to the headline, the young men “fell” into the hands of Isis as an apple falls passively to the ground by gravitational force. The word suggests that it could have happened to anybody, this going to Syria via Turkey to join a movement that delights in decapitation and other such activities in the name of a religion — their religion. Joining Isis is like multiple sclerosis; it’s something that just happens to people. The word “fell” denies agency to the young men, as if they had no choice in the matter. They were victims of circumstance by virtue of their membership of a minority, for minorities are by definition victims without agency.

Mick Hartley quotes Anne Applebaum on the new titan of the British left: 

Jeremy Corbyn, would-be leader of the Labour party, is the latest in a long line of useful idiots. Corbyn has recommended that his Twitter followers watch the Russian propaganda channel Russia Today, which he has described as “more objective” than other channels. Never mind that Russia Today interviews actors who claim to be “witnesses” and invents stories — for example, that a Russian-speaking child was crucified by a Ukrainian.

When not describing Hamas and Hizballah as “friends” and declaring his “solidarity” with the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela, our Islington radical finds time to be a fearless supporter of taxpayer-funded homeopathy, which apparently “compliments ‘conventional’ medicine” because “they both come from organic matter.” 

And Tim Blair ponders the cultural and economic powerhouse that is taxpayer-funded interpretive dance: 

As Australia transitions from a mineral export-based economy to a dance-based economy, it is clearly important to make certain that the dance sector is as stable as possible. Choreographer Lucy Guerin told the [senate] hearings [into arts funding] that to do otherwise would risk us “eventually severing the future of artistic development in Australia and setting us back 30 years.” “It’s that serious,” she added, with all the gravity you’d expect from a choreographer addressing a bunch of senators.

Behold ye, wealth creation.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. 

New York Times, December 8, 1985:  

For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few… On the whole, people don’t want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper. Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.

In 1985, the New York Times claimed a weekday circulation of just over one million copies. Specifically, 1,013,211 on March 31. In 2015, when most Americans have computers in their pockets (and even use them at the beach and on trains), print sales of the New York Times have fallen to around half that figure, and the paper is chiefly read via the kind of devices once dismissed as implausible. Rather than “whiling away the hours reading the sports or business section,” the majority of readers are now “flybys,” their stays lasting for an average of four minutes, generally to read something linked via email and social media. And browsing one article isn’t quite the same thing as reading a newspaper.  

Via Kevin D Williamson. 

Beatboxing, opera and MRI. // Add rain to your day. // An interactive solar system orrery. // Compare the planets dot com. // Crimes against cheese. // More joys of parenthood. // Space probes sent by Earthlings. // The wisdom of Twitter. (h/t, dicentra) // Toothbrush machine is a partial success. // Blindfolded water boxing. You heard me. // Smartwatch for the blind. // Lionel says hello. // Soylent 2.0 is made of soy, not people. // Deadpool. // One minute in London. Stress and unpleasantness not depicted. // What if the slopes were flattened in Paris? // Smartphone-controlled paper aeroplane. // Robot, lacking leotard, does rhythmic gymnastics. // And finally, The Fantastic Four Radio Show (1975). Narrated by Stan Lee and starring a young Bill Murray as The Human Torch.