Monthly archives: March 2013


B-Movie Night double feature: Black Samurai and Black Ninja

Black men who know martial arts, a staple of seventies cinema (even though one of these films is from 2003).

Robert Sand (Jim Kelly) is The Black Samuraui, top agent of D.R.A.G.O.N. (Defense Reserve Agency Guardian Of Nations). When his old squeeze- the daughter of the Minister for the Samurai Code- is kidnapped so that her father can be blackmailed, Sand cuts short his holiday to take down the satanists who have snatched her.

Sand investigates the only way he knows how- by beating the shit out of a bunch of people and eventually getting caught. There’s an entertaining, if over-long, jetpack sequence, a sportscar with a gun hidden in its rear wheelwell and lots of fights of varying quality. It’s never explained why the satanists employ so many persons of reduced stature, or how their leader’s pet vulture turns out to be a better fighter- keeping the BS pinned for at least a minute- than his henchmen. The story, such as there is, exists merely to hang these bits and pieces on and, as such, doesn’t have to make much sense. Which is good, because it doesn’t.

Next to Black Ninja, however, Black Samurai is a masterpiece of plotting, acting, editing and fight choreography. Black Ninja is a really, really bad film, but some of the awfulness is the sort that’s hilarious.

Malik Ali is a high flying defence attorney whose power suits are almost as bad as his closing arguments. Somehow, he keeps getting obviously guilty crims off the hook. Then he goes out in the night wearing a face mask and Zorro outfit to beat up the guys he just got freed. It doesn’t make any sense as a plan, but he does get to castrate the rapist he got cleared on grounds of stupidity.

All the while, Black Ninja is tracking down the man who killed his family- a Japanese martial artist who dresses like Fu Manchu and has an accent and camp mannerisms that jump across the line into racism. When Malik falls for the key witness in a mafia murder case it all begins to come together, sort of.

The lack of budget shows. The sound is awful, lighting is murky, the scenes static and the acting stilted. The plotting is dire and the script mostly maudlin rubbish. But it’s worth it for the occasional moments where it appears to develop self awareness and is genuinely hilarious. If only the rest of the film could have maintained the standard of these few bits of brightness.

Buy Black Samurai from Amazon.

Buy Black Ninja from Amazon.


B-Movie Night: Death Wish

The Big Daddy of all those vigilante/urban America is hell films, it’s incredible I hadn’t seen this yet.

It’s 1974 and all sorts of petty criminals, purse snatchers and muggers- including evil Jeff Goldblum- stalk the streets of New York. Well meaning architect Paul Kersey finds this out the hard way when Goldblum’s gang (Freaks #1, 2 and 3) do a home invasion which leaves his wife dead and his daughter traumatised by sexual assault.

As the Police investigation falters and his daughter becomes ever more withdrawn, Kersey takes a job designing some suburban sprawl in Arizona. Reintroduced to guns (his father was killed in a shooting accident and Kersey hasn’t touched a gun since) and shown a Wild West show, he begins to re-think his attitude to Manhattan’s street crime problem. Armed with an illicit pistol, he returns to the Big Apple determined to get revenge of a sort. In the way of seventies films, it takes a while for Kersey to get to this point. It’s almost 45 minutes before he’s wandering down dark alleys looking for trouble- so his conversion is more believable than just grabbing the gun and donning the beanie hat at the first opportunity.

Kersey’s vigilante acts are brief and brutal- but not all that bloody. He draws his attackers out by looking like a gormless chump with too much money or simply putting himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then he goes home to read the growing commentary on the mystery vigilante and enjoy comedy footage of the copycats he’s inspired. But, all the while, the Police are closing in, piecing together his identity from minor details in a procedural story that runs as a counterpoint to the blood-letting.

The denouement, when it comes, is something of a let down (and jittery on the version I watched because the DVD was scratched) when the politics of avoiding making Kersey a martyr override justice and he’s run out of town with a stiff warning. Arriving in Chicago, Kersey looks set to start it all again.

Death Wish is quite obviously a conservative and reactionary tale- though not going as frothingly over the top as so many of its successors and imitators. Kersey’s position at the start of the film would be better suited to solving the city’s crime problem- cut poverty and regenerate the slums. This wouldn’t make for as much drama- you can’t entice recession, inflation and bad policies down an alley so you can shoot them, but you can blow away a few of the brutes who are the symptoms whilst ignoring the cause.

Not that I’m complaining. Urban regeneration and architecture are fascinating, but sometimes you just want to see a gruff man with a silly moustache shoot people.

Buy Death Wish from Amazon.


Daily Blog 03/10/2013

  • Online fiction is a remote world, peopled by elves, dragons and whey-faced vampires. At least that is the view shared by millions of devoted readers of the printed novel. But now serious British literary talent is aiming to colonise territory occupied until now by fantasy authors and amateur fan-fiction writers.

    tags: ebooks fiction books

  • London has been selected to host a race in the debut Formula E series, which will see electric cars race around major world cities.

    Rome, Miami, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro are also among the eight cities so far named as sites for races in 2014.

    tags: london motorracing

  • A century and a half after the ironclad USS Monitor went down in a storm, two of its sailors were interred with full military honours on Friday at Arlington national cemetery in Virginia. The sailors were discovered when the ironclad’s turret was recovered in 2002, and nearly 100 people who have a distant familial tie to the 16 Union sailors who died when the ship went down were invited to attend the funeral. It is likely to be the last time civil war remains are interred at the cemetery

    tags: monitor civil war

  • In the extended timeframe, Marcott found that temperatures in about 20 percent of this time were higher than they are today. However, a six-thousand-year cooling trend has been dramatically halted in the space of a very short timeframe; temperatures have never changed as fast as they’re changing today.

    “What we found is that temperatures increased in the last hundred years as much as they had cooled in the last six or seven thousand,” he said. “In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we’ve seen in the whole Holocene [the current geological epoch, which started around 12,000 years ago].”

    tags: ClimateChange

  • At the SxSW conference in Austin, Texas, 3D printer manufacturer MakerBot has announced a 3D scanner called the “Digitizer”.

    The desktop-sized device uses cameras and lasers to scan objects and create digital files that can then be used to replicate the object exactly using one of MakerBot’s digital printers.

    tags: scanner 3DPrinting

  • It is the hit West End show that is delighting critics and the public alike.

    But behind the scenes of The Audience, which stars Dame Helen Mirren as the Queen, it has not all been running as smoothly as it appears on stage, with producers forced to sack one of the cast just days before opening night.

    Lizzy, an appropriately regally-named corgi, had to go because of its refusal to obey the commands of its co-star, Dame Helen.

    tags: silly

  • An inquiry has been launched in China after more than 900 dead pigs were found floating in a river near the eastern city of Shanghai.

    No evidence has been found that the animals in the Huangpu river were dumped there or died of any animal epidemic, officials say.

    But measures are being taken to monitor the quality of the water.

    The authorities are trying to establish where the animals came from, after they appeared in the river on Friday.

    tags: china

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Petition to include the Green Party in the General Election TV Debates

Green Party in the General Election TV Debates – e-petitions.

We, the undersigned, acknowledge that recent polling indicates a majority of the British public would like to see the Green Party represented in the general election television debates. We therefore feel it is right and in keeping with the democratic principles this country upholds that a representative of the Green Party be invited to take part, broadening the debate and presenting the electorate with a greater political spectrum with which to engage.

The Green Party polled third in the London mayoral elections, has an MP, MEPs and 141councillors. It is a viable party to which many people are looking for a fresh approach to politics. We therefore ask that the Green Party be represented in the general election television debates.

This seems fair and proper, and I’m puting my name to it.  We have an alternative to the increasingly identikit Lab/Lib/Con gang that isn’t the reactionary bullshit of UKIP and the BNP, but they don’t get as much coverage because their main platform is based upon accepted science rather than prejudice.  I reckon the main parties would be happy if it stayed that way because a swing toward reality based policies would require them to do things which would upset their rich backers and actually make long term, rather than headline grabbing, changes.


Daily Blog 03/08/2013

  • The worm has turned. The banks and government alike have failed to deliver recovery. The people want revenge, and have found it – of all places – in the European parliament. It has declared that EU bankers cannot get bonuses bigger than their salaries, or twice as big if shareholders approve. This applies wherever EU bankers work, and to any overseas banker working in the EU.

    Meanwhile, a Swiss referendum now requires top executives to seek explicit shareholder approval for their pay, with a ban on golden hellos and goodbyes. The Netherlands is talking of a tighter 20% cap on bonuses. Even laissez-faire Britain has seen the National Association of Pension Funds demand that boards keep executive pay rises down to inflation.

    tags: bankers economy

  • David Cameron and George Osborne will not execute a Plan B for the economy because abandoning Plan A will make them look weak. The weakness derives from the fact that Ed Balls has been loudly calling for a Plan B since 2010.

    In other words, the more Ed Balls calls for such a plan, the less Osborne and Cameron are likely to sign up to it. The last thing they want to do is give the impression that Ed Balls was right.

    tags: politics economy

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Daily Blog 03/05/2013

  • Mark Milsom, the assistant chief constable of West Yorkshire Police today told the parliamentary inquiry on cycling that police officers do not enforce 20mph speed limits.

    “We advise, we don’t enforce [on 20 mph],” said Milsom, at the inquiry representing Association of Chief Police Officers.

    An incredulous Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge asked: “What other laws do the police not enforce?”

    tags: police bicycle roadsafety

  • When Martyn Hillier was told he could turn his off-license in the Kent village of Herne into a pub, he didn’t realise the key role he would play in redefining Britain’s ailing pub trade. The ‘micropub‘ concept takes this enduring yet declining beacon of Britishness back to basics. Capitalising on the increasingly popular real ale market, micropubs focus on cask ales, good banter and friendly atmosphere. Wine, ciders and soft drinks are welcome. Lagers, jukeboxes and fruit machines are strictly prohibited!

    tags: Pub

  • A club where Friedrich Engels spent time during his early years in England has been uncovered by archaeologists in Manchester.

    Remnants of The Albert Club, founded by Germans in the 19th Century, were found during building work on the new £61m National Graphene Institute (NGI).

    tags: manchester

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Fuck the Revolution

It’s easy to mock Saint Bono (and I’m sure I have, many times), but I can forgive him any amount of self important nonsense and pretentious twaddle for this performance.

Earlier that day, an IRA bomb killed eleven people at a Remembrance Day ceremony in the Northern Irish town of Enniskillen (see Remembrance Day Bombing). During a performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, which appears on the film, Bono condemned the violence in a furious mid-song rant in which he yelled “Fuck the revolution.” So powerful was the performance, that the band said they were not sure the song should have been used in the film, and after watching the film, they considered not playing it on future tours. (from wikipedia)

I got the same chills watching that just now as I did when I first saw it twenty-odd years ago. I’m with Bono on this one. Fuck the revolution. Fuck the jihad. Fuck the Intifada and the IDF. Fuck the drones. Fuck any belief system that says it’s okay to kill civilians for the cause.


Daily Blog 03/04/2013

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“How many poor people can we kill with this policy?” 3

If there’s one thing the eighties should have taught us, it’s that the the Tories are scum. They’re a bunch of chancers who care more about their, and their cronies’, wealth than the nation’s health. They’ll take anything that benefits us all equally and find a way, preferably by stealth, to take it off us and give it to a rich, tax avoiding chums. If they can then find a way to have those of us on low to middle incomes pay for the dodgy deal, all the better.

The current government keep coming out with policies designed to kill people. They can’t be so stupid that they don’t see the damage they’re doing, so the only conclusion is that they’re a bunch of evil little sociopaths. So long as the ones who suffer are the little people who can’t afford to lobby then they don’t really care.

Assessment to Disability Living Allowance has been effectively privatised, turned into a box ticking exercise with incentives to fail as many people as possible and discourage those who could be helped from even applying. The changes have already killed people*.

Coming soon, we have the Bedroom Tax, which, you’ll be shocked to discover, is going to hurt poor parents and the disabled. Because someone who is already down can’t fight back as well and is easier to kick some more.

From April, Legal Aid is changing so that it no longer covers Family Law. People aren’t going to be able to settle custody battles, they’ll lose contact with their children and- without a doubt- some will be trapped in abusive relationships that see them being killed.

But, because they haven’t squeezed anyone enough, the Tories are now hoping to use the cover of the almost non-existent threat of “welfare tourism” to try to make changes which will make it even harder for anyone to access state aid they’re entitled to.

If the Tory government is bad, then the party is worse. The policy that has the party members up in arms isn’t any of the ones that will hurt people and destroy the country, but a rare example of Cameron and co. doing something humane and decent. Starve the sick and the poor, steal our money and give it to your pals to filter offshore and privatise the NHS all you want, they say, but don’t you dare let two people of the same sex call their union a marriage. That’s beyond the pale.

I want to believe we can get away from these people, but I don’t see who would take over. The Libdems are probably going to be relegated back to their previous status of novelty act at the next election** and Labour still carry the stink of Blair. The “new force” in British politics is UKIP, apparently, but they have undertones of racism and overtones of incompetence. I’m going to investigate the Green Party and, failing that, secession.

*When even the Daily Mail- the go-to newspaper for victim blaming- can bring itself to say there’s a problem, you know something is horribly wrong.

**I held out such great hopes for the Liberal Democrats at the last election, and I voted for them. To say I’m disappointed in them would be a massive understatement.


Daily Blog 03/03/2013

  • Teletubbies
    Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po are four brightly colored aliens whose sole mission is to occupy the minds of toddlers and begin their process of becoming mindless slaves of the television. They are a fever dream come to terrifying, Technicolor life; their dead, black eyes are belied by the TV sets in their stomachs, which frequently displays the souls of the actual children they have abducted. Also, according to their opening credits, they have set a baby’s head on fire and are using it as their sun. We always assume Cthulhu and his ilk with look like tentacled squid monsters; I would posit that Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po are the Elder Gods we ought to be worrying about.

    tags: aliens

  • Wacom’s dipped its electronic quill in a lot of stylus-enabled tablets, but hasn’t yet done what many of its creative pro users would like: build one of its own. It looks like that’s about to change as the Bamboo maker has posted a teaser on Facebook saying it’ll bring a mobile tablet “this summer” with a pressure-sensitive professional pen, multi-touch capability and an HD display. There are no other details like what OS such a device may boast, but if it offers its own functionality as well — say, Cintiq-style input on a desktop machine — then Wacom could be onto a winner.

    tags: tablet mobile wacom art

  • At first sight, this appears to be an unremarkable fixed-gantry crane spanning an access road at RAF Wittering. It consists of two tripod-frame columns, comprising rolled steel joists (RSJs) braced with diagonal and horizontal angle-iron stiffeners. Linking the tripods is a heavier RSJ runway beam that supports the travelling electrical hoist.

    In reality, this is a rare survival: a crane, erected in November 1952, specifically designed for lifting nuclear bombs – the earliest such crane built on an operating airfield in Britain.

    tags: bomb crane

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 03/02/2013

  • Crunchy, full of protein and to be found under a rock near you. Insects have long been overlooked as food in all but a handful of places around the world – but now they are crawling closer and closer to our plates.

    This spring will see a drive towards removing the yuck factor and putting insects not just on experimental gastronomic menus but also on supermarket shelves.

    tags: food insects

  • Most British Drag Race meetings in the 60s and 70s featured Drag Karts amongst the entries which made for some interesting matchups when they came up against and often shutdown some of the full-size machinery.

    tags: drag kart

  • But there is one name that stands alone at the apex of the daredevilry supply industry: the Turbonique Company of Orlando, Florida.

    Though the company no longer exists, mere mention of the name “Turbonique” still inspires a shudder of awe among drag racing enthusiast, the company’s principle target market.

    Even in the Wild West atmosphere of 1960s drag racing, Its products represented the zenith of no-compromise, crazyass crazy.

    tags: rocket engine drag

  • The story of Jack McClure begins on the muddy banking of the long dead Columbia Speedway in Cayce, South Carolina. Racing jalopy stock cars against the men who would go on to become the inaugural stars of the freshly minted NASCAR organization, McClure was unwittingly banging fenders with racing immortals. His original NASCAR license is hand signed by one of the founding fathers of the organization. We’re talking about stock car racing circa the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was rough and tumble, and perhaps no more so than at Columbia where big purses drew big names on Thursday nights. The careers of Richard Petty and Buck Baker were birthed there and Chevrolet’s first NASCAR win happened there in 1955. But why did they race on Thursdays? The track operator knew that local military personnel were paid on Thursdays and if he didn’t get their money quickly, someone else would.

    tags: dragracing rocket

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 03/01/2013

  • In the early 1890s, anarchist organisers in Manchester held regular public open-air meetings at a number of sites across the city. By the second half of 1893, particularly after complaints by a local vicar, the police became involved.

    tags: manchester history

  • Jerome Caminada was a real-life Victorian super-sleuth whose ground-breaking detective work in the notorious rookeries of 19th century Manchester earned him a place in the city’s history as the first Detective Superintendent. A poor boy from the slums with immigrant parents, he used his intimate knowledge of the criminal underworld as a powerful weapon in his fight against crime. He became one of Manchester’s most effective police officers with an extraordinary number of high profile cases to his credit. He was a master of disguise and developed ingenious methods of detection just like his fictional counterpart whose stories were being published at the height of Caminada’s career.

    tags: manchester

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