FPI second podcast

After the short, first test podcast a few weeks back my web colleagues Paul, Lee and myself have put together a new show for the second Forbidden Planet International podcast. Lee covers some of the cool merch from the webstore while Paul, our resident dungeon-dwelling game fiend has the RPG segment, as well as editing it all together. It won't surprise anyone to know I have the SF books and graphic novels part of the podcast.



Paul has also created a new homepage for the podcast on the main webstore, with pics of the items we review linked to them on the website, so if you like the sound of something you cna click right through to it and check it out. It can be streamed with the windows media player or you can download it for an MP3 player - hopefully we'll set it up so folks can subscribe to it as they do with many other podcasts, ditto on archiving previous podcasts, but we're still learning as we go and no doubt will pick up and do more as we progress. And thanks to Cory Doctorow for giving us a nice mention on Boing Boing.

Word association

Blimey, been ages since I did the old word association thing from Luna Nina, used to do this regularly:

1. Newspaper :: snoozepaper


2. Crucify :: myself (as in 'why do I...' from Tori's song)


3. Sausage :: and egg


4. Handy :: not really


5. Cloak :: and dagger


6. Drunk :: not often enough


7. Fuel :: crisis


8. Caress :: not often enough


9. Itch :: scratch


10. Vehicle :: road

Albion Imagined

Very interesting series recently begun on BBC Radio 4: Imagining Albion - the Great British Future. Fronted by Francis Spufford (who wrote the charming Child That Books Built and The Backroom Boys - the Secret Return of the British Boffin, which I reviewed on the Alien Online a few years back) it is looking at the history of British SF, with the first episode (still available on the BBC's archive) focussing on utopias.

As well as Spufford Gwynneth Jones and China Mieville made appearances, as did Iain Banks who discussed the utopian aspects of the Culture. Scientist and writer Steve Jones is also included along with John Carey, who edited the Faber Book of Utopias a few years back (one of the first non-fiction books I reviewed online, back in the day when modems were powered by clockwork wound by small, trained monkeys and we posted primitive blogs using new-fangled Difference Engines). Well worth a listen - the second part is due this Thursday and will take the theme of invasions.

Napoleon on ice

I picked up this link via my mate Padraig's live journal; it's a video of a French advert for March of the Penguins, which was titled March of the Emperor in la belle France. The ad depicts a man explaining to his friend about a great film he saw called March of the Emperor on Canal Plus. Of course his friend, instead of visualising a marching Emperor penguin pictures Napoleon. When he remarks there are thousands of Emperors she pictures ranks of Napoleons marching across the ice then sliding on their bellies, being chased by giant seals...

Cameron's rights

Following on from yesterday's post about Conservative leader Tony Blair... Sorry, David Cameron's (hard to tell them apart) ill thought out scheme for the Human Rights legislation I see he has been panned by politicians of all types, lawyers and, most amusingly on the excellent Channel 4 News this evening Cameron's former politics tutor from university commented that it was badly put together and that if he had put these proposals forward in an essay he would have instructed him to go back and rewrite it! Heh.

Interestingly I haven't noticed any of the (London-based) media commenting on the fact that the Scottish legal system is seperate and we passed the rights legislation into Scots law ourselves. Instead they keep commenting about 'British' law in their myopic way, which is sloppy reporting since there isn't really such a thing - even before the return of the Edinburgh parliament seperate acts or amendments had to be passed to make any law valid also in Scotland. But then most of the London media probably aren't aware of that, even the political commentators; then again, many of them are unaware 'Britain' extends much further north than Watford (except for that mystical place they. refer to as 'the North', which to me is actually south).

Human rights, political wrongs

David Cameron, the new Tory leader who enjoys travelling by dog-sled to show us how gree his credential are (after polluting the atmosphere flying to this photo op and back of course) continues to show that he is trying to become Tony Blair. Chillingly Blair commented a few months ago that he would consider 're-writing' the European Convention on Human Rights where incovenient ideas like freedom, liberty and being innocent until proved guilty got in the way of holding people without charge for long periods of time for that old chestnut which some believe justifies any action - for the protection of the realm.

Now Cameron's latest PR stunt is to say that he would consider withdrawing from the Human Rights Act as well and replacing it with some other legislation. Given how many of our senior politicans have displayed a cavalier attitude to civil liberties (for our own protection, of course) does anyone trust these politicians who are so two faced they would make Janus blush to re-write the legal protections for our citizens? Especially as they move to force biometric ID cards upon us - am I cynical to think they would love to re-arrange the Act so they can make more use of the sensitive data such a scheme will allow them to gather on us all? Perhaps I am a little cynical, but certainly not paranoid - when political leaders want to bring in heavy-handed ID schemes and threaten to re-write our civil rights legislation it ain't paranoia, it is fact.

A lot of this, of course, is simple posturing for the tabloid presses to make Blair and Cameron (delete as applicable - if only we could) to make them look tough on crime and potential terrorists (you know, terrorists like those folks the Met keep arresting then finding out much later were ordinary folks - yeah, let's give them more power to do more of that!). I'm not actually certain that a UK government can withdraw from this legislation since it is part of a wider European Union system, so I suspect it is a lot of hot air. Also the European Convention on Human Rights was enshrined into Scots law along with the establishment of the Holyrood Parliament, so no London government can overturn that law in Scotland. So if some Westminister nupty was stupid enough to try and force the issue they would end up with different legislation in different parts of the UK, rendering it even more farcical. Attempts to force the Scottish parliament to toe the Westminister line would precipitate a constitutional crisis.

So if it is just posturing why get worried about it? Well for starters it is chilling that any democratic politician would tell the mass media they think they should get rid of legislation which protects the civil liberties and rights of citizens, even if they don't actually intend to go through with it. Secondly it sends a dreadfully wrong signal - they are clearly indicating to the population that human rights legislation is some bogus scheme dreamt up by liberal loons who care more for potential criminals than for law abiding citizens.

Yes, some folks have used loopholes in the legislation to escape prosecution when they were clearly guilty, but this is not unique to civil liberties laws - the phrase the law is an ass was around long before this Act was brought in. Lawyers have exploited loopholes and odd interpretations of the law for centuries to serve their clients regardless of the actual moral right or wrong of their actions. To select human rights legislation as the new bogeyman which will free evil terrorists to murder us all in our beds is not only misleading it is dangerous and sends out a dreadful signal to people. And to toy with such ideas simply for some politician to get a few inches in the weekend press is despicable.

Animated Python

More animation fun - this time the Camelot scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (shouldn't that be Gggrrrrrrrrraaiilll?) using Lego! Especially love the dopey grins on the knight's faces.