Threatened wildlife returns as clean-up of rivers pays off – Telegraph
Otters, water voles and kingfishers are returning to the rivers of Britain for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, according to an Environment Agency report that lists the 10 most improved waterways in the country.
Lunacy in Hollywood from Ken Block.
You can do Gymkhana style driving in the latest game from the Dirt series.
So I started the day at a cycle jumble at the Velodrome.
And had to photograph a levitating Formula 1 car before leaving town at the end of the day.
But in between, and luckily between rain showers, was this year’s Pride parade. The photoset is on Flickr. But let’s share a few here.
I don’t know who this is- apparently she’s the country’s favourite “trolley dolly”- but she headed the parade. I know it’s disrespectful, but when you’ve had Sir Ian McKellen at the front this is a bit of a climb down.
Balloons!
Don’t argue with the homosexuals, they have tanks.
Scary transgender Spice wants you. Baby transgender Spice looks like she doesn’t know where she is.
Oh pirate girl I love your look. If only I were your type.
The hairy arm of the law. The bears are always good for a cheeky float.
With all the hate filled people out there using religion to justify their ignorance and bile it’s nice to be reminded that some denominations are grown ups. The history of the Quakers is filled with decisions which are good examples to us all, whether we believe or not.
How do accidents happen? – Telegraph
Now, for the first time, a startling new report, Licensed to Skill, has broken down what happens in those mysterious “lost” moments leading to road accidents, analysing who is to blame, what sex or age they tend to be – and what they did wrong. Using data gathered by police and spanning 700,000 accidents from 2005-2009, the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has analysed, in breathtaking detail, the anatomy of a road accident.
Guest post: Could Amazon re-Kindle payment for content across the web? (Wired UK)
Picture the scene: You’re on your favourite blog or news source and it’s business as usual — most content remains free and freely available for your perusal. But every article now includes “Kindle” button that lets you send it to your Kindle reading list and automatically uploads it to whichever device you choose. So far, so Instapaper. But, some articles may be just snippets or synopses, as you often see on sites with paywalls. In these cases, the button shows a price, requiring you to link to your Kindle (Amazon) account the first time and providing “one-click” options for future purchases.
Wired has a fascinating article on Accuracy International, the British company which creates, and continually hones, the best sniper rifles in the world. The elite forces of just about every “friendly” nation uses AI weapons, and feedback from the field is used to improve them.
Cycling generates £3bn a year for the UK economy – Sky Ride
A report commissioned by British Cycling and Sky has found that cycling generates nearly £3bn a year for the UK economy. Produced by the London School of Economics, the report quantifies for the first time the full economic success story of the UK’s cycling sector which generates £2.9 billion for the British economy – that’s £230 for every biking Briton in the country.
This ‘gross cycling contribution’ takes into account factors like bike manufacturing, cycle and accessory retail and cycle-related employment.
Man-portable air-defense systems – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Perils of Libya’s Loose Arms – NYTimes.com
Friday’s New York Times covered fears that looted Libyan arms could find their way into terrorists’ hands. The article’s emphasis is on heat-seeking, shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles and the threats they pose to civilian aircraft.
Libyan Fallout: Greater MANPADS Threat
Forget rising oil prices, defense analysts say the fallout from escalating unrest in Libya could include more small arms flooding the black market – including portable heat-seeking missiles capable of shooting down an airliner, the New York Times reports.
Libyan Rebels Take Risks With Makeshift Arms – NYTimes.com
In cheerful and crisp English, Adel Sanfad presented his new weapon, which was mounted on a welded frame to the back of his jeep near the front lines in eastern Libya. “These used to be for airplanes,” he said. Then he added, in a flash of pride that was undercut slightly with a wince: “But we modified them.”
Part of the art and play events going on in the city centre, this hungry hungry hippo was perturbing a few of the children. There was a tiny bus as well, I’ll upload a photo of that later.
Short Sharp Science: British used bioweapon in US war of independence
Washington’s order was likely a response, not just to a normal smallpox epidemic, but to a bioweapon wielded by the British enemy – a strategy that the redcoats had already used against the colonists to great effect earlier in the American revolutionary war.
Civil disorder and looting hits Britain: We have been here before | The Economist
These are bold claims, amounting to a thesis that Britain has been wrecked and transformed from a familiar, law-abiding spot to an alien hell hole in just three or four decades. But here is an odd thing, surely: go back precisely three decades and you get to the summer of 1981, scene of some of the nastiest riots in modern British history, when racially charged violence saw tracts of Brixton in south London and Toxteth in Liverpool burn for days.
Seeking guidance, Bagehot decided to go off-line and read some books. From the shelves of the London Library, a gem: “Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears” a calm and witty history of moral panics that have gripped England over the ages, published in 1982, and written by a Bradford University academic, Geoffrey Pearson (later at Goldsmiths). The book is out of print, so I trust I will be forgiven (not least by Professor Pearson) for quoting from it at length: it is a brilliant survey.
Just what happens if we take a time machine back three decades, to the time before the revolutionary transformation identified by Melanie Phillips?
The end of the road for motormania – opinion – 16 August 2011 – New Scientist
IS THE west falling out of love with the car? For environmentalists it seems an impossible dream, but it is happening. While baby boomers and those with young families may stick with four wheels, a combination of our ageing societies and a new zeitgeist among the young seems to be breaking our 20th-century car addiction. Somewhere along the road, we reached “peak car” and are now cruising down the other side.
A quick tip of the hat to So So Gay, who have used one of my pictures from last year’s Manchester Pride parade to headline their preview of this year’s events. To celebrate its 21st year, Pride’s starting this Friday and going on to Bank Holiday Monday. I should be photographing the parade, but finances mean that this year I’ll be missing most of the stuff going on in the village. Shame.
I started writing Sounds of Soldiers on November 1st 2008. It’s a near future travelogue satire on the presumptions and world view of technothrillers which takes place, mostly, after a big dumb war. Given when I started it, I always saw it as what could happen if “the wrong people” won the US elections.
Thankfully Obama won. His presidency may be turning out a huge disappointment, but just imagine how much worse it would have been if McCain/Palin had won. The simplified back story of Sounds of Soldiers was that McCain keeled over after a couple of years in one of the most stressful jobs in the world, Palin took over and the stupid just cascaded from there until the Americans were bombing their European allies and ordering their soldiers to run amok across the continent. This is mostly alluded to, but there is at least one mention of “the mad woman” taking over.
The mad woman was Palin, of course, but now Michelle Bachmann has come along as the Tea Party’s preferred Republican candidate and she may be even more scary. So Sounds of Soldiers is relevant again (well, Palin never went away, I guess Bachmann makes it more relevant).
Sounds of Soldiers is available from
Five Chinese Crackers: Should we be scared of black culture’s influence on white kids?
Before the Windrush even landed on these shores, working class people in London used rhyming slang, which was possibly invented to fool detectives who were listening in on you creating your nefarious criminal plans. For a hundred years, white working class people in London spoke in a way that was influenced by criminality.
Dear Channel 4,
You commissioned this piece of awesome, kindly create a show about cycling where Danny MacAskill can be the cycling Stig, taking on a different set of obstacles every week and testing bikes to see how easy they are to bunny hop. There would have to be more sensible stuff as well, but you know this would be brilliant.
First life: The search for the first replicator – life – 15 August 2011 – New Scientist
Life must have begun with a simple molecule that could reproduce itself – and now we think we know how to make one
Futuristic Electric-Car Dream Dead? Aptera To Refund Deposits
It was great while it lasted, but the dream of being able to buy a sleek, three-wheeled Aptera 2e electric car seems to be receding into the distance.
Govt research: cutting benefits of “problem families” won’t work | Liberal Conspiracy
A few years ago, the Communities and Local Government department looked into efforts to deal with people accused of ‘anti-social behaviour’ (hat-tip @chrisgurr)
The finished report looked into pioneering projects for families put at risk of losing their homes as a result of anti-social behaviour.
In strikingly similar parallels, the research noted that the biggest complaints were around ‘youth nuisance’. Would such penalties change their behaviour, it was asked.
The answer was a resounding no.
A recent poll has revealed that 85 percent of drivers admit to running through amber lights to cut time off their journeys, according to Fleet News.
Thrifty, a leading car and van rental firm, questioned 3,000 motorists about their attitude to amber lights. Almost four out of ten stated that they would rarely stop when faced with an amber light, with 16 percent confessing that they treat an amber light as if it was green.
Crossing a traffic light while it is on amber, about to turn to red, is a moving traffic offence, unless the driver can show that it was unsafe to stop. Thirty-five percent of motorists, however, were unaware that this is illegal, and carries the threat of penalty points and a fine.
Running an amber light can place road users in danger, with 13 percent of motorists being involved in an accident or near miss because of ‘amber gamblers’. Almost a quarter of respondents admitted to being sworn at or beeped by another driver and half said that a passenger had shouted at them.
The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom – Telegraph Blogs
The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington.
Who’s to blame for riots? Play the right-wing bingo! | Liberal Conspiracy
As you know it’s a tough life being a right-wing commentator when you have to deal with political correctness, complete political domination by liberal elites, and an oppressive media where literally nothing can be discussed unless first cleared by eco-feminazis and Diversity Officers.
This fearless breed of truth-tellers are always at hand to explain how the left is to blame for the latest atrocity, from terriorist attacks in Norway to burning buses in London. Nothing will escape their sharp gaze.
For the last year, Great Britain has embraced austerity to a degree that would make some American conservatives blush. The purpose of shrinking government was to reduce debt. But the effect has been to kill the economy. With the UK tottering on the razor’s edge of recession, consumer confidence is at a record low, unemployment is rising, and even the most optimistic economists predict one-percent expansion for the rest of the year.
US military loses fastest ever plane – Channel 4 News
The United States military loses contact with an unmanned plane designed to be able to reach any global target in one hour. The hypersonic Falcon HTV-2 was on a test flight.
The problem is, I know her. I met her in a feminist squat in 1975 near Regents Park. I didn’t like her, even though I liked and supported feminists at the time and made tea for them when they visited, Melanie Phillips was a vicious, critical, inhumane Stalinist feminist, a sexist bully, a ranter and a right old pain in the arse. I know many women who knew her then and didn’t like her very much either, and this was at a time when criticising a ‘sister’ to a man was almost criminal.
Petition wants gay marriage for Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie – PinkNews.co.uk
An online petition signed by more than 900 people is calling for Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie to have gay wedding.
To accuse those who make those obvious links of being apologists or “making excuses” for attacks on firefighters or robbing small shopkeepers is equally fatuous. To refuse to recognise the causes of the unrest is to make it more likely to recur – and ministers themselves certainly won’t be making that mistake behind closed doors if they care about their own political futures.
Top 100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Books : NPR
More than 60,000 ballots were cast in our annual summer readers’ poll. Here’s a printable list of the top 100 winners. For even more great reads, check out the complete list of 237 finalists.
David Cameron knows that if you want to keep a country from descending into anarchy and crime, if you want to give its citizens the best possible hope for their future and you want to create prosperity then you have to spend money providing support for the poorest citizens. He also knows that this is the best, and in the long term cheapest, investment to prevent criminality.
At least, he knows this as far as foreign aid is concerned. Speaking at the G8 summit in May he rightly defended the UK’s foreign aid budget, making the point that-
We should be in no doubt that if we get this wrong, if we fail to support these countries, we risk giving oxygen to the extremists who prey on the frustrations and aspirations of young people.
Now if only he could recognise this at home and have the balls to invest in our future even if it means tax rises for his rich friends.
(This is not a call to cut the foreign aid budget. I know that you’re intelligent enough to realise this, but some of the other people reading this post may not be.)