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It’s my own fault really. Because I like to see different sides to an argument before making up my own mind (see Rule 9 below) then I am unfortunately exposed to comments from people whose opinions are badly argued, uninformed, prejudiced, immature and just plain stupid. And this does annoy me at times.
I like to think that the 55 rules below are ones that I at least try to stick to when commenting online. I wish other people would too, even though a few of my ‘rules’ are actually opinions. Some of the rules are not so much rules for debate, more rules you should live by if you want me to value your opinion. Put it this way, the more of my rules that you break, the less highly will I rate your opinion.
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American Graffiti director George Lucas's forgotten 1977 science fiction movie.
Want a cuddly archaeopteryx? There's still time to back the kickstarter!
Göbekli Tepe: a "smoking gun" for the Younger-Dryas impact hypothesis? (The Younger-Dryas impact hypothesis proposes that comet airburst or impact caused the Younger-Dryas cole period of the 11th millennium BC.)
A staff officer on the military strategy of Siege of Gondor.
The dangerous delusions of folk economics.
More anti-semitism at British universities.
"Letter to my younger self", by Ryan Leaf. Leaf was the second pick in the 1998 NFL Draft (right after Peyton Manning), and one of the worst draft busts ever.
Ten signs you're a pretentious foodie.
The best predictions from the first Earth Day.
Frank Frazetta, the grandmaster of pulp swords & sorcery art, once did some Lord of the Rings illustrations. And to be fair, they’re pretty damned good. At least you’ll start off thinking that, and then you’ll get to Eowyn’s arse. And then the orcs’ arses.
A brilliant gallery of nerds trying and failing to look hard. Some of them are actually scary. I wouldn’t want to mess with the big guy in the grey polo shirt, even without the knife.
12 things that prove Doom will run on anything.
Star Wars: Rogue One is coming to VHS!
Uncannily skilled Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast might be Antichrist.
At Dawn We Ate Sugar Smacks: Wargaming Newbies Tackle the Monster of Monsters If you read this and think to yourself “I’ve gotta play that game!”, then a) you’re a bit weird and b) you’re in luck, because we have it in stock! https://www.shopontheborderlands.co.uk/product/a-world-at-war-boxed-wargame/ If you read this and think to yourself “Sounds quite good, but maybe a bit too short? I mean it would be better if the game started in say 1935”, then a) you’re more than a bit weird and b) you’re still in luck, because we have the prequel in stock too! https://www.shopontheborderlands.co.uk/product/gathering-storm-boxed-strategy-wargame/
Pendle Borough Council meetings must be...interesting.
Florida sheriffs failing to "not look like ISIS".
Good article about the new edition of Traveller.
On the taxonomy of spaceships.
Eight medieval African kingdoms.
The Raiders are moving to Vegas! Which local business do you think will be the first to cash in? (If you’re thinking the pawn shop in ‘Pawn Stars’, you’re very wrong.
The incredible 96-year Royal Navy career of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Provo William Parry Wallis.
Five weird things you (possibly) didn't know about time zones.
This video of Coventry City striker Yakubu (formerly a Premier League star) is wonderful.
Photos of animals that "look like they're about to drop the hottest albums of the year". (Thanks for this one beckyc.)
Regional popularity of different US television programmes displayed with heat maps.
"Groupthink mentality is rife within (British) academia."
There was life on Earth from a very early date.
If you need to overthrow a Dark Lord, don't invite the lefties to your Council...
Great visualisation of the 5th edition D&D adventure 'Out of the Abyss'. (Spoilers, obviously.) (Available for just £33.99 from your favourite online RPG store!)
Is this the most dangerous man in the world?
The Goal of Political Correctness
In China, there is a fake Tower Bridge with FOUR towers. But the bridge doesn’t lift, so obviously it’s not as good as the real thing.
The giant ship that ships other ships.
Wadebridge Veterans striker Mark Rapsey has now scored 2,000 goals. OK, so it’s not exactly the Champions League…
But what have you done for us lately?.
I had no idea that American bacon was different. Our stuff looks so much better.
PETA wrote to Games Workshop to ask them to remove plastic and metal fur garments from their plastic and metal miniatures. (I can’t decide if this was clever PR on PETA’s part or another example of them doing something that will only make people ridicule them.)
27 MPs voted in favour of a referendum on EU membership and then voted to ignore the result. Here’s a list of them. If one of them is your MP, please vote for someone else (anyone else really) at the next election.
Refreshingly Radioactive? The Wild History of Energy Drinks
These Game of Thrones pens are rather nice. Personally, I’d want the Targaryen fountain pen.
The 80s D&D cartoon series played like an actual D&D game
New Doctor Who should be a Dalek, say Daleks
A(nother) new low for campus craziness
Guess which corrupt leftie is a friend of struck-off tank chasing ex-lawyer Paul Shiner?
It's unfortunate when the early edition of the local newspaper of one of the teams in the Super Bowl has to go to press when they're losing 28-3 with only 17 minutes left to play, but I guess you have to go ahead and print... (Final score: 28-34, biggest comeback in Super Bowl history and tied for the fifth biggest comeback in any game in the NFL’s 96 year history.)
Really clever Russians cheating on slot machines
Possibly one of the most unknowingly ironic articles ever written.
A triple century in T20??!!! Bloody hell. 300 off 72 balls. 39 sixes. Wow. Were they bowling underarm? Was the boundary ten yards away?
Who said it? Donald Trump or Alan Partridge. (For those of you who haven’t heard of him, the other guy is a comedy character, an incompetent celebrity. I assume everyone knows who Alan Partridge is…)
"Post-truth politics" is nothing new.
"So a friend of mine found this box by the trash..."
The 2012 Olympics has been paid for...yet Londoners are still paying the tax. What a surprise.
"Officials say she can't survive"...yet she has. HOW?
"Brexit will be good for British universities" - or at least, Oxford thinks so.
A final farewell to the USS Enterprise. No, not that one. No, not the failed Space Shuttle. The real one.
Were those photos showing nobody at Trump's inauguration "fake news"?
Raiders punter Marquette King punting a football through a basketball hoop from 60 feet
Now while most fantasy wargamers use 28mm scale, that's far too big to look right for a big battle. (Unless you have a truly enormous space). So we use 6mm scale, in which a typical human figure is 6mm high.
This year, without giving too many spoilers to my players, the battle may well feature the castle which guards the only easy entrance to the mountain province of Angren. This is the Morkai Gate.
So, in my first ever work along these lines, I have made a 6mm model of the Morkai Gate.
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Now it's time to think of a replacement. This is the sort of thing you can put bets on. (Question for scholars of Who and betting: Which new Doctor casting was the first to be covered by a high street or online bookmaker? How far back does this sort of thing go?)
I was greatly amused by this article from the Daily Mash, which pleasingly takes the piss out of those Doctor Who fans (and politicians) who maintain that the next Doctor "has to be" a woman. Harriet Harman even "demanded" that the next Doctor should be female. This woman used to be Deputy Prime Minister for god's sake. It's a good job that there's nothing else going on in the world for feminists to worry about at the moment... Thankfully nobody ever listened to her when she was a member of the government, and now she's a backbench member of one of the least popular opposition parties in history, really nobody listens to her at all except to poke fun at her when she says something stupid like this. Our actual Prime Minister Theresa May was also asked about this (she's a Who fan apparently (allegedly)) but replied rather more sensibly that it was for the programme-makers to decide. Having a state television company is bad enough, it would be really absurd if the Prime Minister was consulted on casting decisions...
You know what though? Go onto the more annoying parts of social media and search for #nextdoctorwho or whatever the appropriate shortcut is, and what do you find? Plenty of sensible suggestions (including some interesting leftfield ones, plenty of joke suggestions, plenty of people saying that it should be them (!), and unfortunately plenty of people saying that it has to be a woman and that anyone who disagrees is clearly a "misogynist". I really hope this isn't going to go on for the next few months.
I'm going to say it. I think making the Doctor female would be absurd. It was bad enough that they did it with the Master and turned a brilliant archenemy into a comedy freakshow (mind you, they did this with the Sontarans too). Making the Doctor female would be jumping the shark. It would hammer the ratings. Those fans (and 'fans') demanding a female Doctor might be loud and obnoxious, but they just aren't that common. Those who are into science fiction probably watch already. So making the Doctor female would gain no new viewers. But it would lose millions.
(And another thing it would lose: a positive male role model for young boys. A male hero who always tries to do the right thing, who prefers to avoid violence, who solves problems by being clever, who is brave, self-sacrificing and noble. If you are concerned about making society better (that 'social justice' thing that people are always talking about) then think about what happens when you remove one of the more obvious positive male role models for young boys.)
However...
I do appreciate that there are fans who want to see an actress in the lead role in Doctor Who.
So I have a compromise. And, if I say so myself, it's brilliant.
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Rather odd article from a website called The Art of Manliness (logo: handlebar moustache, so I approve of that bit at least). I daresay most if not all of these could be enjoyed by women too, so I thought this had the makings of an LJ meme.
Bold the hobbies that you regularly take part in and italicise the ones you’ve tried at least once as an adult. Ones that you do as part of your job, or did as a child, don't count. It also doesn't count if you did the activity as a chore rather than as a hobby to be enjoyed.
Copy and repost on your own journals, or just comment here. This might be a way of finding someone else who shares a hobby with you but never posts about it because they didn't think anyone else would be interested.
Applying that decluttering bollocks to a post-apocalyptic world.
This guy really didn't like this year's Sherlock. (SPOILERS in the article.) I gave up on Sherlock years ago. Much prefer the ITV series.
Always funny: posh students completely unaware of quite how patronising they are.
The best and worst memes of 2016.
A truly bizarre BBC article attacking Donald Trump for being teetotal. That’s not the most ridiculous part. The worst is that they quoted Ted Kennedy explaining why Jimmy Carter being teetotal was so bad. TED KENNEDY??? I bet Mary-Jo’s family wish that Ted had been teetotal too!
"Taliban bomb expert accidentally kills himself and 4 sons" I question the use of the term “expert” in this news story…
CIA assessment of British politics from 1985 "The Labour Party is in the hands of urban leftists given to ideological extremes with only fringe appeal". It also identified Jeremy Corbyn’s links to Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador. Since that’s only mentioned in passing, I assume that everyone already knows that Corbyn is friends with mass murdering scum…
Some really nice photographs of trees.
Trump returns Churchill's bust to the Oval Office.
Life in a nutshell according to Google. (Thanks topum.)
The Tunguska Event might not have been a meteorite impact.
The best day to trigger Article 50 would be March 25th. For the lolz.
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