I just realised that the window of opportunity for human spaceflight has been and gone. It's no longer feasible. The orientation sensors on your smartphone won't work in zero gravity, so everyone's screens would be the wrong way round, which obviously makes the whole enterprise infeasible until the invention of artificial gravity.

Since vgrumpybastard is out of work at present, flickgc has nothing to ride. So I went out in the woods on my own for the first time, on Bess, who I generally ride on Sundays (she's the horse in this photo). She's very sociable, and refuses to go in front if there's another horse to go behind, so I was a bit worried about taking her out on her own, but in fact she was ( Read more... )

My mother works in the Oxfam shop in Chester. They've just been given a large collection (she says 35 crates, and estimates at least 1,000 items) of comics and RPGs. Does anyone know of any dealers who might be interested in taking a trip to Chester with a view to acquiring it?

In view of the current debate about gender parity at SF conventions, there's something I didn't mention about the horse show yesterday. Eighteen classes (or thereabouts; it's a bit hard to count exactly, as some classes were merged or cancelled). Average of five entrants per class (approx.). Let's assume the average person entered 2.5 classes. That ( Read more... )

Joyden's Riding Club show today, my first show. I came third of six in the Novice Senior Rider class (flickgc came first), which was better than I was expecting. "Senior" means over 17, so I qualify rather easily. And then second of four in the in-hand Veteran class (Veteran here being the pony, who is 17, rather than me).

( Here be photos )

Just how vigilant can the police be as the days turn to weeks and the weeks turn to months? Embassies must get quite a few visitors, and they can't search everyone as they're coming and going. Suppose that Assange grows a beard and dyes his hair, and then one day in a couple of months' time one of the visitors to the embassy is a bearded man with ( Read more... )

An otherwise satisfactory Google translation of an article about the Olympics in Der Spiegel reports that the snakes at the venues kept within tolerable limits. Thank goodness for that.

Can you spot the deliberate mistake in this quotation from this page on the BBC's site?

"Many people haven't driven at night or in bad weather conditions and haven't driven with other people in the car. That is not part of the test. That becomes a problem when they get into their car with a licence for the first time."

Since no other source that I follow has picked up on it, I thought I'd point out that FT Alphaville (which is not behind the FT's paywall) is running a really interesting series of posts on the current economic troubles viewed as the problems of a post-scarcity society. And there's Fuzzy Felt too.

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